In the cool hours of the morning I catch a cab to the airport. I pick up an electronic ticket from the kiosk. My beloved Gladstone carries two changes of clothes, incidentals, and my laptop. The line through security is short, the TSA employees blinking their eyes sleepily. I hand the inspector my medical card and the metal detector chimes over my pinned ribs. Breakfast is cinnamon coffee cake and a cup of Peet's coffee, tall and black. It is a leisurely hour's wait on a plastic couch in the nearly empty boarding area.
Once on the plane I manage to fall asleep before it even gets off the ground. I wake up somewhere over the Mississippi. I order a Bloody Mary from the flight attendant and root through the seat back for the airline's in-flight magazine. I read an article about Borneo. I read a second article about Costa Rica. I start the third article, about Chicago, when a picture falls into my lap.
It is the picture of a woman. It is a candid snap shot of her sitting at a kitchen table, looking directly into the camera from a middle distance, in an indifferent light. She has blue-green eyes, an up turned nose, and her mouth is curved in the remnants of a laugh. She is wearing a heavy blue denim shirt over a white blouse of some sort and it looks like she just came in from outside. I can see the outline of a cigarette box in one pocket and her left hand has pinned a disposable lighter to the table top. A small gold crucifix glints on a short chain around her throat. She is handsome. Not pretty, not beautiful, but handsome. There is a reserve of power, poised and subtle, in her form.
I turn the picture over. In black ball point pen on the reverse side is written "Abandoned In Flight" and a date three weeks ago. I put the picture in my pocket and carry it with me into Baltimore. Later that night in my room at the airport Marriott, watching the news, empty room service plates on the tray before me, I pull the picture out of my pocket and look at it. I turn it over and draw a single line through "Abandoned In Flight". I carefully write "Found On Flight" below it, with a new date. I prop the picture up on the night table and fall asleep looking at it. In the morning, I tuck it in the room's bible and leave it behind. Remembering a woman I abandoned in flight I am hollow as I leave the room.
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