Airport Novel

Once upon a time, I wrote that airports are narrative deserts - places so sterile that narratives rarely unfold in them. But, under certain conditions, such as a busy, understaffed Sunday morning in a mid-tier city, airports can in fact feel like Murder on the Orient Express - everyone suspicious of other people's intents, scornful of the ones who are in longer lines, prideful of the little privileges they enjoy - be it giving their retinal scan to a private company to get ahead in line or paying $100 for 2 inches of extra legroom.

I was flying to New York. The check-in line snaked across the length of the arrival terminal, interrupted by a no man's land, kept clear so that passengers didn't crowd near an entrance. As the glass doors parted way for you, for a brief moment, it felt like you had waltzed into the breeziest Sunday morning in Austin airport history. Only when an airport employee directed you to the back of the line, that snaked around several blindspots, did it suddenly dawn on you that you may miss your flight.

In front of me in line was an older woman wearing a light green jacket, pants that seemed to consume her, and open-back sandals that revealed socks that glitter. I presumed that she was one of those Keep Austin Weird people who had owned a house in Hyde Park since the 70s and didn't like new housing getting built. This was proven wrong when she turned around, looked up at me, and said with a thick French accent "You're tall, can you tell me how far the check-in gate is?". She said "You're tall" in such a cold French way that I considered not answering her, but my Indian agreeableness had the better of me. As the wait continued, she asked me if the lines were usually this long and then answered the question herself with "The airport website says 15-20 mins". When I agreed that it was unusual, she paused for a second, looked around, and asked "Where is everyone going?" - in a matter-of-fact way and not rhetorical at all. I do not know why she thought I would have this information. I'm not the village elder of Austin International Airport. I saw they had the security dog out today as we approached the gate. Before becoming an American citizen, the security dog sniffing my bag always made me anxious. Even though I never carried any contraband, I feared that I'd be on my way to being deported if the dog barked at me.

The French woman saw the dog, turned to me, and in a high-pitched voice, said, "Ooh I love dogs. I can't help but touch when I see them." That felt like an un-French thing to say. I even started suspecting that the French accent was a scam. So I was glad we parted ways to go to different bag scanners.

The people with toddlers always appear to be the most prepared at the bag scanner. The mom and dad operate like a pair of synchronized swimmers at the Olympics - handing the baby, folding the stroller, digging their laptops from under baby stuff. Expressionless, focused, and swift, unlike the others who are slouching, groggy, and acting like it's their first time on a plane. You can afford to be a baby if you don't have one.

It was too early in the morning to voluntarily lift my hands when I walked through the metal detector. As I got to the other side, I noticed a small crowd near where you collect your bags. I joined the crowd, who was watching a woman have an argument with the TSA. She wore a politically confusing outfit - an all-camo, tacti-cool jumper with a pink vest on top. She looked like Israeli Defense Forces Barbie. The TSA officer had a long, slick aluminum pole in her hand that IDF Barbie had put through the scanner. "You cannot take this on the plane, you can go back and check it in," said the officer. The woman seemed to be protesting this to which the TSA officer declared, "This is a pole". In fact, she repeated that line several times: "This is a pole, This a pole." At one point, the woman seemed to be pointing to the luggage handles that everyone carried around. I couldn't hear her exact words, but I imagine she said, "Well, that is an aluminum pole too. There are poles around us." I considered this argument with the rest of the crowd. The man in front of me, wearing one of those polythene polo t-shirts that made crinkling sounds when you moved, appeared impatient. He broke the trance of the crowd still contemplating "poles are all around us" with two loud claps, and announced, "I am going to miss my flight." The TSA officer looked at him and said, "Okay" and went back to settling the matter of the pole. The man, accepting the failure of his mutiny, replied apologetically "It’s not your fault". The woman didn't get her pole, but we all got our bags eventually.

Finally at the gate, as I was about to board the plane a deep male voice came on the airport announcement, it said, "Please come to Gate 8 if you left behind your rubber ducky, please come to the gate if you left behind your rubber ducky." I looked around and no one appeared to acknowledge it - no laugh, no jokes, not even a te-hee. Was I hallucinating? It felt like the right way to be primed for New York - a place desensitized to all kinds of surreal strangeness.