Up in the Air Read Free Page A

want to spoil things by telling you, but I read it when it was in hardback. There’s no plot.
two

    r ushing, racing, delayed at the hotel by a wake-up call that never came, I hop from the parking lot shuttle to the curb with nothing to check, just a briefcase and a carry-on, cross the terminal, smile at the agent, flash my Compass Class card and driver’s license, say Yes, my bags have remained in my possession, say No, I haven’t let strangers handle them, then take my upgraded boarding pass and ticket, recross the terminal to security, empty my pockets—change, keys, mobile phone, foil blister-pack of sleeping tablets, mechanical pencil; the stuff just keeps on coming—flop my bags on the X-ray, straighten up, and step through the metal detector.
    The alarm sounds. I pat my pockets, find nothing, pass through again.
    Once more the alarm sounds.
    “Sir, step over here.”
    A female guard works me over with the wand. Sometimes I swear I can feel its waves pass through me—invasive pulses of radiation that light up my chromosomes, stir my spinal fluid. There’s bound to be a class-action suit someday and I plan to sit in full view of the bench, smack in the middle of the wheelchair section with my portable IV.
    “I’m clean,” I say. “Your equipment must be shot.” But then, around my knees, the wand starts squawking.
    “Your boots, sir?”
    “They’re new.”
    “They must have steel-lined arches.”
    I groan as she goes over me again, playing to some tourists in line behind me. I’ve lost momentum when I can least afford it, a Monday morning, when every slipup snowballs. The boots were a foolish purchase. Vanity. It’s all the shoe salesman’s fault, the man was sharp, mocking my credentials as a westerner after I mentioned I came from Minnesota. Instead of buying the boots I should have told him that there
are
no westerners, just displaced easterners, and that includes most of the Indian tribes—read history. The problem is that the boots will trip alarms at every checkpoint for the next five days, wasting minutes and chewing up my margin. Yes, I always budget for uncertainty and I can try to recapture the lost time—cancel a dinner appointment, skimp on sleep—but the smart move would be to buy new shoes.
    I ride the escalator to the tram that will carry me to Concourse B. The man one step up from me nods and jerks his head, jabbering into a hands-free mobile phone whose mouthpiece must be clipped to his lapel. The guy looks schizoid, raving at thin air, flinging his arms around and making fists. “How can I blame him? They made him a fat offer. Plus, he’s a load on our health plan. Prostate shit.” I’ve seen this creep before, en route to Boise, when he sat across the aisle from me berating the flight attendant about his food. He demanded a vegetarian entrée despite not having ordered one pre-flight, then fired off a string of asterisks and ampersands when she couldn’t find one in the galley. These jokers are everywhere lately, they’re multiplying, and the higher their fare class, the louder their abuse. Economy is a park compared to first.
    Through the moving windows of the tram I view this month’s art installation: foil propellers stuck to the walls of the tunnel, hundreds of them. They shiver and whirl as the cars gain speed and pass them. How much was the artist paid for this? Who paid him? Is this where the airport’s per-ticket surcharge goes? Last month’s masterpiece was a row of masks with progressively wider mouths and eyes that seemed to open as the viewer rode by, climaxing in a howl, a staring scream. Art. It always makes me feel diminished. There’s something smug about it. Cocky. Cold. Public works commissioners just love the stuff—it eases their bad consciences, I suspect, for hiring their nephews and steaming open sealed bids. Behind every sculpture garden, a great crime.
    The tram lets out and feeds its passengers onto another packed escalator, which lifts us into