Ellipse Magazine - Terminal

TERMINAL

MITCHELL | WHITE | BREAKMAN

You walk through the terminal, your one large piece of luggage in tow. You check your inside coat pocket once more to make sure your passport and ID are still there. They are. Of course they are; you never take them out.

You arrive at your gate and sit at the end of a row of seats, grunting as you pull your oversized bag onto the adjacent one to ward off unwanted close physical contact. You plug your headphones into your phone to watch a movie, but your device doesn’t connect to the internet. You should have expected that; there’s never any connection. It had been more out of habit than hope.

You settle for some music you’ve already downloaded instead and simply watch as people pass by, wondering not for the first time whether the activity will pacify the fluttering of your heart, the twitchiness in your legs and fingers, the constantly constricting knot in your stomach.

Even though they’re strangers, a lot of these people are familiar. You’ve been here long enough that you can recite their most likely destinations, luggage color, some even their occupation. The tall young man with the navy duffel passes, wearing his usual athletic shorts and sneakers. The last time he passed through he had seemed quite dejected, eyes fixated on the linoleum floor before him. This time he was standing tall, eyes bright with an apparent victory as he listened to his earbuds. You wonder who he is on the way to celebrate with once he leaves. You grin shyly at him as he walks by, but his eyes never gaze lower than his height.

Then there’s the older woman with her sensible brown shoes and colorful knit shawl, humming pleasantly as she sits down. She promptly takes out a novel by Agatha Christie, The Thirteen Problems emblazoned on the front cover. Last time she had been reading Murder on the Orient Express. Even though she always has a thick volume with her, she always pauses to make small talk with whoever is sitting in the same gate. Everyone except you, that is.

A groan rumbles up from your stomach, so you decide to take a break from people watching to go buy something to eat. You reach into your sweatshirt pocket and pull out a crumpled five dollar bill, the remnants of what you spent on the last trip you took. You take your luggage and walk towards the food court, eyes sweeping over all of the colorful signs as they take in the options. You don’t even need to read them, though. There’s the bright yellow, ethnically ambiguous sandwich shop; then the pizza place covered in red tile. After that is the knockoff burger joint with purple patterned counters, then the green and tan pastry shop, and lastly the indoor supermarket with too-bright lights and pixelated photos of farmer’s fields on every wall. You recite them with each footstep: yellow, red, purple, green and tan, fluorescents.

You check your watch before choosing the same one as always, a flattened burger with under-salted fries, and sit down at one of the small teetering, wooden tables. Even though you’re hungry, you try not to eat too much. Greasy food and potential air turbulence are never a good combination.

As you’re eating, you spot another familiar suit rushing past, one of the many pilots trekking across the airport to fly his plane. The pilot with the blonde hair and round tortoiseshell glasses is usually quite put-together, clicking across the atrium with his shined shoes and small black bag. Today, something must have gone wrong on his morning commute— fair, unshaven fuzz coats his chin and cheeks, and his hair flies back in feathery tufts, devoid of its usual copious amounts of product. He checks his watch multiple times in the few seconds it takes for him to pass you.

Your chest suddenly tightens and you’re seized in a moment of panic.

Was he on the way to pilot the plane that you’re supposed to board? You dismiss this thought immediately though, shoving it into the back of your mind until the tightness in your chest dulls and settles back into that familiar knot in the pit of your stomach. Your flight is delayed, and has been for a while. You repeat this simple statement to yourself a few times before throwing out your used napkins and half-emptied ketchup packet.

Your feet pace back and forth between shops selling the same knick-knacks until eventually they find their way back to the first gate and over to the same seat you had sat in before. As you lug your suitcase up onto the seat beside you, out of the corner of your eye you notice someone walking past the opposite gate. There’s nothing especially different or interesting about them, just one of the many shop cashiers on their way out after clocking out for the night. For a moment, though, you thought he had been looking in your direction. But that’s impossible, no one ever looks at you here. You’re the one that does the looking. Everyone else is in perpetual motion, landing and departing, but not you. Not yet, at least.

You check the wifi on your phone once more, but the outcome is the same as before. You sit there silently, listening to the same few downloaded songs that you have on repeat. First the older woman and her novel leave, then everyone else. The airport empties out as the light outside fades into nothingness.

The light outside slowly returns, along with the growling from your stomach, working its way out around the ever-present knot within. You reach into your sweatshirt pocket and pull out a crumpled five dollar bill, the remnants of what you spent on the last trip you took. No matter how much you spend each day it’s always the same crumpled five dollar bill. You check your inside coat pocket once more to make sure your passport and ID are still there. They are. You take your luggage, not wanting to leave it unattended, and pull it towards the food court. Yellow, red, purple, green and tan, fluorescents. You choose the same one as always, the pastry shop with the stale bagels and bitter coffee, and sit down in a small worn booth. You nibble on your bagel, although you never like eating this early in the morning especially before getting on a plane.

You try to fight off the idea of nausea by watching the early-morning travelers. Most are bleary-eyed and slow, but some are bright-eyed and light-footed. You spot a middle-aged woman with curly hair pulling along a young boy with matching bouncy locks. They walk happily right past you without even a glance. You don’t remember seeing the jolly pair before, although that doesn’t mean you haven’t. You’ve seen so many people during the time you’ve spent here that you could have easily forgotten a few. You remember a lot of them though, most of them in fact, and you wonder absently if any of them remembered you in return. Doubtful. dashes

You wrap up the half-eaten bagel and unzip your bag to deposit it for later. You take out an identical half-eaten, napkin-wrapped bagel that’s already within, toss it in the trash, and replace it with the bagel from this morning. You get up to leave when you notice someone on the other side of the food court. There’s nothing especially different or interesting about them, just one of the many shop cashiers apparently eating some breakfast before going on shift, but you recognize him from last night. You could have sworn for a split second his eyes met yours and lit up with similar recognition, but you must have imagined it. You must have. Your palms start sweating as you turn and start walking in the opposite direction. dashes

The rest of the morning and afternoon follow the usual routine. You browse postcards and keychains in a few different shops but walk out empty-handed. You constantly check your watch as you have your usual lunch of droopy pizza and soda. You then make your usual circuit around the airport, sitting for a time in the same seat at each gate, listening to the same downloaded music on your phone, watching as many people as possible, anything to take your mind off of how large the knot in the pit of your stomach is growing. After using the bathroom, you return to your gate and find a seat at the end of a row. You’re about to pull your bag up on the seat next to you, when suddenly they appear again. dashes

“Is this seat taken?” the cashier from this morning asks. You look down at the seat and then back up at them.
“Oh, um, no,” you say. “Go ahead.”
“Thanks,” they reply. The fluttering of your heart increases to a hammer, pounding away at the inside of your chest.

“I’ve seen you around here a lot. You must really like to travel,” they say. The knot in your stomach begins to rise towards your throat and prevent you from replying. The cashier tries again. “What’s your name?” You’re suspicious, but have no reason to keep the information to yourself. Somehow you’re able to speak, and you tell them your name. They reply with their own.

“Nice to meet you,” they say. You nod in return. “So where are you going?”

“I’m—” You freeze. There’s that nagging feeling in the back of your head, the hint of a taste on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t seem to grasp either of them. For the first time, you don’t push it away, but push into it. You let the instability envelope you. Your mind reaches out as far as back it can, but it’s only the terminal, always the terminal, stretching out into infinite grayness. It doesn’t matter how fast you run, how many seats you sit in or how many songs you listen to, how many miles of terminal you walk, the answer keeps eluding you.
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You look up at the cashier, tears pricking your eyes from the effort. The cashier’s brows knit together with concern, but his face is still open, his eyes gleaming with knowledge.
“You’ve been here for a very long time, haven’t you,” they say. It’s not a question, but a statement. “I’ve done the same thing, too.”
“Really?” you ask. They nod. “What did you do?”
“The first thing is to make sure you still have your boarding pass.”
“Boarding pass,” you repeat. You know you must have had one at one point; you couldn’t have gotten into the terminal without one. You have a creeping suspicion that you know where it is, but you’d rather not go there. You check all of your coat pockets, your sweatshirt pocket, your pants pockets, but all you find is a crumpled five dollar bill, your ID, and your passport.
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“What about your luggage?” the cashier asks.
“I barely ever open that,” you say, and it’s true. The only time you unzip that bag is to put some leftover food in for later, take some leftover food out that you never ended up eating, or to put wrappers or napkins in when you don’t feel like walking to a trash can.
“It seems like the most likely place, though,” the cashier says, and you know they’re right. You kneel down next to your bag, take a deep breath, and slowly unzip it. You dig through layers of half-eaten bagels, empty soda bottles, and extra napkins; hats, scarves, hard-cover books, and dog-eared magazines; crumpled up notebook paper, loose change, and charging cords. Finally, you spot a piece of printer paper at the very bottom and pick it out to examine it. You read the printed information. Your eyes grow wide.
“That’s right!” you find yourself exclaiming.
“You’d better go check the boards for your gate number,” the cashier says. They offer you a smile and you receive it gratefully, more gratefully than you’ve ever received anything.
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Leaving your bag on the floor, surrounded by its gutted remains, you dash through the terminal towards the large ever-changing monitors. You’ve never really payed attention to them before, but then again, you never had any reason to. But now you do. You have a destination.
Your eyes search the screen, chest heaving, and you spot it. It’s close, only a few gates away, and you reach it in minutes. You stop and stare at the lines of seats bathed in the afternoon light streaming through the windows. The ever-present knot in the pit of your stomach suddenly bursts apart, untangling itself. Instead of a dumbbell dragging you ever downwards, inside you feel electrified.

It’s the same creature, but a different form. You clutch your boarding pass to your chest, take a deep breath, and step up to the jet bridge. Onward. dashes