Say Cheese Read Free Page B

in a powder blue V-neck sweater lounging in a chair by the departure door. “It had seats on it, too. Where’ve you been?”
    â€œRunning around this M.C. Escher airport hell looking for Gate 52!” Shep said. “We came in to Gate 48! How is that half an hour away from Gate 52?”
    Once he found Gate 50, two steps away from Gate 48, he’d turned in circles at the end of the concourse for five minutes in frustration. Where the hell was Gate 52? Surely this airline would have all of its gates gathered together. There was a sign overhead with an arrow for Gates 51-60, which he tentatively followed, but it seemed to be pointing backward—he passed Gate 48, Gate 46, Gate 44—surely he wasn’t supposed to hurry through a hall of down-counting 40s to find Gate 52?
    The Hall of Forties spit him into a white-tiled food court. It was filled with plastic tables, ringed with rows of leatherette loungers, and thronged with people in short shorts juggling pizza boxes, and takeaway coffee cups, and suitcases, and neck pillows, and paperback thrillers, but it was certainly a dead-end on the road to Gate 52. He had to ask a passing custodian as she rearranged the oversized trash bags in her oversized plastic wheelbarrow, and even when she pointed out the entrance to the Hall of Fifties, Shep asked her again, carefully enunciating, certain she’d misunderstood the nature of his inquiry.
    â€œIt’s hard to see,” she said patiently, “don’t ask me why. See the Chinese place?” She pointed again.
    That he did see, and he told her as much.
    â€œOkay, and see the Subway?”
    â€œRight next to it?”
    â€œThat’s how it looks from here. The concourse is right between them.”
    â€œWhy isn’t Gate 50 by Gate 51?”
    She shrugged. “Why are the Kardashians famous? The world is a crazy place.”
    â€œEspecially the Houston part of it.” Shep lit out with a quick over-the-shoulder, “Thanks!”
    â€œYeah, it’s definitely annoying,” agreed the pear-shaped young agent currently ruling over the Gate 52 domain. “Especially when I have to work one flight over there, one flight over here, the next flight over there....” He levered himself up from his chair and lumbered toward the counter. “You can see I’m not a runner.” He had a helpful, if unhurried air, and Shep took care to dial down his frustration, intuiting the importance of an airline ally when trying to fly standby.
    Still, he had to ask: “I don’t suppose they’d come back for me.”
    â€œAre you Oprah?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThen don’t get your hopes up.”
    â€œWould they come back for Oprah?”
    The agent scoffed. “If I’m not gonna call it back for some hot guy, you think I’m gonna call it back for her?”
    Shep affected a shy face and looked down at his feet. “Aw, shucks.”
    â€œOh,” the agent said. “I was just talking hypothetically. How embarrassing for you.” He winked, and Shep laughed.
    The agent sidled up to his computer. “Okay, for real,” he said, “what’s your story?”
    Shep spilled. “I’m trying to get home. I missed my flight in New Orleans this morning, the girl there said I should come here and go standby to L.A.”
    The agent—his airline employee badge identified him as ‘Carlos’—clacked at a few keys and scrutinized the screen in front of him. “Well,” he eventually said, “I wish she hadn’ta told you that. Flights to L.A. today look terrible for standbys. Noah had less demand for seats on the Ark.”
    â€œShe said people miss flights all the time.”
    â€œYeah, well, look at you,” Carlos quipped. “Two so far today and it’s not quite noon.”
    â€œYeah, she kind of used me as an example, too. She said all I need is ‘one poor sap’ to miss his