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A Late Arrival

David Larsen

    Scooter Bidell couldn’t make out one syllable of the garbled alerts that blared from the unseen speakers in the cavernous waiting area, a mausoleum of a room just inside the airport’s main entrance, a space conspicuously located between the ticket counters and the rattly conveyor belts where beleaguered travelers waited impatiently for their precious belongings, suitcases, duffel bags and guitar cases. “Geez,” Scooter wondered, “how many assholes play guitar? Too goddamned many. That’s all the world needs, more shitty versions of ‘Michael, Row Your fuckin’ Boat Ashore’.”
    He’d attempted to make eye contact with the pert, young blonds who manned the brightly-lit kiosks of the car-rental companies as he sauntered past them. To no avail. The girls obviously had more lucrative offers. Besides, he wasn’t there to meet babes. He’d been summoned to meet Cindy Magnuson, the only woman in the world who could help him get his shit together.
    Before 9-11 he could’ve sat and waited at one of the terminals where glassy-eyed passengers disembarked from their late-night flights. “Fuck those damned terrorists. Because of those assholes, I’m stuck in this goddamned foyer with a gaggle of old biddies and dickheads. Condescending assholes. And all because some shitheads off in some desert halfway around the fuckin’ world decided that it would be cool to fly jets into buildings. With nothing more than boxcutters, for Christ’s sake.”
    To make matters worse, there had been COVID. Masks. Shots. Social distancing. Scooter couldn’t breathe in those damned masks—too many Marlboros and too much weed—and he wasn’t about to let someone stick a goddamned needle, loaded with God knows what, into his arm. “Look at me”, he boasted to anyone who would listen, “I’m just fine.” He was. Not even so much as a sniffle. It really was a hoax. “All of those assholes would’ve gotten sick anyway. COVID or no COVID. Fuck Fauci.”
    Announcements of arrivals and departures bounced from wall to wall, high ceiling to fake terracotta floor, then right back again, like rabid bats in a cave, without so much as one word registering in Scooter’s bedraggled mind.
    He’d tried the electronic board that flashed the status of flights, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it. Line after line blinked at him, without any semblance of order. He didn’t know shit from Shinola when it came to Cindy’s itinerary vis a vis what lit up on the board. All he knew was that she was coming back to town, more than likely so the two of them could pick up where they’d left off two years ago.
    Three nights and two days of drinking tequila and smoking weed with his fellow between-jobs fuck-offs had finally caught up with him. How he’d managed to drive to the airport was a puzzle, but he wasn’t worried. Where did he park the car? He couldn’t remember. He’d find it when the time came. He was pretty sure of that. He always did. And whose car was it that he borrowed to get to the airport? Someone’s. His ’86 Corolla, such as it was, was impounded. A goddamned DUI. He did remember that. “Let those SOB’s try to get that piece of crap started. They’ll curse the day they arrested me.”
    What he knew was that Cindy Magnuson, his girlfriend, or former squeeze, was to arrive sometime after ten. Her text offered nothing more than a cryptic message: “Arriving at ten. Could you pick me up?” No airline. No flight number. Not even where she was arriving from.
    People, young, old, stodgy, hip, businessmen in suits, young mothers with babies in papoose-styled baby carriers around their necks, stared quizzically at him as he sat in the blue plastic chair in the middle of a line of identical chairs against the wall near the men’s room. “Fuck ‘em.” One little boy, perhaps four, had stuck his tongue out at Scooter. Scooter flipped the little bastard off.
    Scooter suspected that he might be a bit unsightly. He hadn’t showered in days and he was on day four (or was it five?) of the same plaid shirt and pair of blue jeans. He might’ve bothered to change underwear at some point over the past few days. He couldn’t remember. Being unshaven wasn’t a problem; he hadn’t shaved in more than six months. His mother, bless her heart, had started calling him “Rasputin”. She loved to get his goat. Sometimes, she could be a real bitch. His father couldn’t bring himself to say much of anything to his “good-for-nothing son”. “The man’s an asshole,” Scooter thought.
    The scruffy dropout scrutinized passersby, determined, stylishly-decked-out folks with important things on their minds, carry-on luggage in hands, backpacks on backs, briefcases or attaches handcuffed to their wrists (he might have imagined that), toddlers in tow, people of consequence, people unlike himself, a twenty-five-year-old slacker with more than a few issues he needed to work on.
    There would plenty of time for that once he and Cindy got settled into a place together. Would he recognize Cindy? It had been more than two years (or had it been two and a half?) since she returned to A & M for her junior year. “Of course, I’ll know her. She couldn’t have changed that much.” He had. He did know that. What would she think when she got a look at him? He shrugged and mumbled, “Screw it.”
    Two pair of shoes appeared before him on the tiled floor, two women’s sneakers, a pair of men’s cordovan weejuns.
    “Scooter?” said Cindy. She was all prepped up. Better looking than he remembered. “This is Brad. We really appreciate your giving us a ride to my parents’ house. They’re out of town, you know.” She paused, then blinked. “Your mother did tell you about our getting married, didn’t she? I told her when I called her to remind you to pick us up.”
    Brad, corduroy sport coat and all, reached out to shake Scooter’s hand.

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