[home] [contents] [back issues] [subscribe]
[submissions] [mission] [message board] [contact us]
Purgatory
Midnight in LAX
by Marisa Handler
Excerpts:
“Four hours! We’ve been waiting four hours!” she shrieks, blonde french twist bouncing in aggravation. “Maybe if you’d, like, told us we needed to have our luggage here RIGHT NOW it would . . .”
“I’m calling my lawyer tomorrow!” Her sunglasses-and-black-leather bedecked friend chimes in, not to be outdone. “He’ll have your ass for this! We’ve been waiting four hours and you can’t make the airplane wait three goddamn minutes . . .” She pauses magnanimously to pat the blonde head, now dripping fat tears of frustration onto her shoulder. The combined years of both, I reflect, would still run shy of middle-age.
“What kind of business is this? Doesn’t capitalism, like, prevent companies like you . . .” Realizing she was somewhat out of her depth, the teenaged prosecutor returns judiciously to the point at hand. “Anyway, you’d better like put us on this flight or . . . or . . .”
“Or her fat ass is gonna fuckin’ explode, man!” chuckles a boy ten feet away, doubling over in mirth. Recovering somewhat, he steers his white dreadlocked head toward the seats on the side of the hall, yards of baggy denim trailing uncertainly after him. “Dude, mind if I sit?”
“Well, actually I think someone . . .” The dude’s words trail off as the other dude sits down. “Yeah, sure, hey . . .”
I sigh, amused that I am amused. Three days in and out of Purgatory and one gains a certain perspective, a “gentle martyr’s patience” (Matthew 20:27), to borrow a phrase from my Jesus-worshiping neighbor in the Disney sweats and taupe nail polish. Taupe, incidentally, is not to be confused with pink, the color of her sweatshirt. Taupe is a hue that tap-dances the slender line between pink and brown.
Like her Savior, I have been crucified. However, my cross is manufactured of fluorescent lights and imitation-marble tiles. And I have arrived here, in Purgatory. Actually, being stuck in an LAX departures lounge after three days in transit is probably somewhat closer to the darker echelons. My neighbor, to considerately emphasize this point, begins to loudly hum a hymn. Visions of the Whore Stewardess of Babylon, caught in a vice-grip waltz with a frowning Jesus in a polyester suit, dance before my closed eyelids.
“I’m sorry, sir. There’s nothing we can do.” Distant nasal tones inflect themselves upon my serene ears . . .
