This Is How I Think In Airports

I've been here, once. Then was the same as now: LaGuardia, just long enough to leave. The city was swamped in winter as the plane drifted in, a pale blue and white haze that seemed to form the negative image of the cloudy sky above. I recognized a flat, empty area lined with dark neat rows, a scar on the irregular rectangles of the cityscape. New York has large graveyards.

I didn't remember the terminal until I was pretty well in it. By some odd syncrosity I entered by the same gate I had then, and the deja vu was so strong as to stun me for a moment. But for all that, it was really just an airport terminal. Three wannabe gangsters waiting for their food at McDonald's and the voice of the president over the loudspeaker; an aging hippy sitting across from me and a gourmet coffee shop. Nothing more, but then, nothing less.

She was reading. That's the fact of the matter. Her sister slumped next to her with a bored expression, a kind of angry humanoid protoplasm, but she simply sat with her sleek bellbottoms crossed and her head cocked slightly as she flipped the binding of the book back and forth absently. Her chin ran at a narrow angle to the hanging of her short blonde hair, a kind of casual mathematical beauty as if she was etched out of the air by a modernist painter. Maybe our eyes played tag once or twice, but it was more likely my tired imagination. I watched the precise sway of her hips as she hefted her backpack and thought about the virtues of minimalism.