subject to change

i thought i had given myself plenty of time. it ordinarily takes about an hour to get to the airport. i gave myself two, and at eight-thirty most people would already be at work, or so i had reasoned, having apparently forgotten that other people can be counted on to be wherever i need them not to be.

they were all here. nobody had gone to work.

construction had rearranged which lanes moved and which lanes did not. i knew this road. i knew where to be. kept getting into the lane that used to go somewhere and watching the other one go instead.

there is no useful way around this. pittsburgh has water where you might put another road and mountains where you might put anything else, so through the mountains we go. two tunnels between me and the airport. all of us going through them together, very slowly.

8:47. tapping the steering wheel. i calculate arrival time, flight time, parking, walking, security. i can still do it.

8:53.

9:01. i run the numbers again, faster this time, as though the speed at which i do the arithmetic has anything to do with the speed of the fucking cars.

eventually i get to the airport.

or an airport. someone has done quite a lot to the one i remember.

the only sign i can find that explicitly says parking delivers me into a new garage. i take a ticket before discovering that it costs thirty-eight dollars a day. seven days. i can already see my boss opening the expense report.

nope. get out.

except the lanes have been arranged with considerable confidence that i intend to stay, and now i am reversing and pulling aside and checking my phone while trying to remain somewhere a car is allowed to be. shuttle lot. that is what i want. i had seen signs for “shuttle,” but thought those were for shuttles. the ambiguity almost feels like an intentional personal attack.

getting out of the situation involves a questionable cut-through and a single lane between concrete dividers and no room to reconsider. i drive along it hoping an oncoming vehicle does not confirm that i am using an on-ramp as an off-ramp. back to the terminal loop, around again, where the signs for the “shuttle” lane become “SHUTTLE LOT” at the exact fork where i needed that information several seconds ago.

brake. turn.

i take the first space i find, get the luggage out, go. i am approximately as far from the terminal as parking permits, but i know where the walkway is. uphill. still faster than waiting for a shuttle, and i have done it before, which at this point is worth considerably more to me than any actual measure of convenience.

ten minutes of walking and there it is.

boarded up.

i stand there with my luggage.

i knew how to do this. i had been counting on knowing how to do this, just this part, getting from the car to the building, and i am so fucking tired of arriving at something familiar only to find that it has changed while i was busy getting there. yes, i can be overwhelmed and keep going. i seem to be able to do that indefinitely. i would prefer the fucking walkway.

instead i get the luggage over a curb and drag it down a grassy hill toward some lower system of airport roads i have never seen before. a bus pulls away as i approach. possibly because i approach. the driver looked like she was on a break. i probably looked like the end of it.

check the time. i am still calculating walking speed against distance, though i no longer know the distance because i no longer know where the terminal is. drivers look at me as they pass. i would look at me too.

then an official-looking yellow truck shows mercy, pulls over.

the driver is a county foreman. his crew handles the grass and, apparently, whatever passengers accumulate in it. he says this happens all the time.

all the time. reassuring about me. less reassuring about the airport.

he tells me the old terminal is not even open anymore. there is an entirely new terminal. wherever i thought i was going, i would not have reached it by continuing to go there.

he asks when my flight leaves, checks the clock, and becomes visibly more alarmed than i am. he also seems more determined to make sure i get there on time than i ever had been. suddenly this is his problem, too.

thank God.

i get to sit in the truck while somebody else knows what to do. he takes service roads, shortcuts, and pieces of pavement that apparently become roads if you are driving the correct yellow truck. i have no idea where we are. for the first time all morning, i do not need to.

there is a line of cars waiting to pull in at departures. he noses through and goes straight past them.

municipal vehicle, he says with satisfaction. means we have jurisdiction.

he deposits me directly at the doors. a man responsible for the landscaping has successfully completed my ground transportation, and i tell him he has literally saved my life because otherwise his crew would eventually have had to scrape me off the side of the road with the roadkill.

he seems to accept this assessment.

inside, security is empty.

which is good. of course it is good. except normally there are people ahead of me and i can watch what they do with their shoes and laptops and all the little objects they have brought with them. i can find out whether the bag goes in a bin or directly on the belt without having to ask, and have my things ready when it is my turn.

it is already my turn.

i am putting things in the wrong places. somebody is helping me. i am trying to listen while the rest of my brain catches up from wherever i left it, probably beneath an overpass behind a terminal that no longer accepts passengers.

i guess i look harmless enough. they wave me on through and let me bypass the invasive body scanner. i am grateful for that.

and somehow i have time. actual time left over. the man in the yellow truck has got me here early enough that i do not have to immediately do the next thing.

the sensory room, i discover with immense relief, is one thing that is still there, right where it has always been.

i throw myself into the texture wall. turn on the bubble tube and crawl into the little tunnel underneath it, where i can stay for a while without being in anybody’s way. the tube hums above me. i know what that sound is. i do not have to do anything about it.

all morning trying to get through a tunnel and now i am lying in one.

fine. i like this one.

for a few minutes, i stop checking the clock. then enough time means it is time to leave.

new airline. i do not know how they board, but there is a sign explaining it. my zone is the first one supposed to enter on the right side of the divider.

good. an instruction.

i get over there quickly, along with a growing herd of people who have read the same sign, or another sign, or no sign at all and just like the look of where i am standing. the lane fills and keeps filling. we are back in traffic, only now the vehicles have elbows and i cannot remain inside my own metal box and hate everyone privately. i have to get my actual body through them.

the flight attendant has already announced there is not enough overhead storage. later passengers may have to check their carry-ons.

absolutely fucking not. i break my back, my shoulders, occasionally the wheels and seams of the luggage itself to avoid checking it. i have carried this thing up a hill and down a hill and across whatever the hell that was beside the road. it is coming with me.

i get on. find the seat, wrestle everything into the overhead bin, sit.

exit row. tons of legroom. a nice little old lady beside me. i begin to think i might be all right.

“ummmm. i think you’re in my seat.”

a man is standing in the aisle looking at me.

of course i am in his seat. wrong row and wrong side of the plane. diagonally incorrect. i could not have put myself farther from where i belonged without making a more deliberate effort.

now i have to get back up, and everybody is still boarding, and my things are already in the seat pocket and around my feet. i grab what i can identify as mine and try to move while people keep coming. there is nowhere to put myself that is not where somebody else needs to be. smaller. faster. get out of the fucking aisle.

only later do i realize i have also taken the airline literature.

stole the poor man’s seat and then ran off with his safety instructions.

my actual seat has considerably less room in every direction. large man on one side, extra-large man on the other. both immediately establish armrest sovereignty. the couple in front has a screaming baby.

we have not taken off.

the wifi is free, but not fast enough to actually do anything productive, just enough bandwidth for everyone around me to keep scrolling brain rot. i pull out my journal and try to write. to do this normally would require moving an arm into territory already occupied, so i keep my arms where they will fit and do what i can from the wrist. tiny cramped lines. i am going to have to decipher these words later. presumably. if i can.

the one thing i am trying to do with all of this and i cannot even get my fucking arms into position.

my handwriting is worse sober than it ever was fucked up.

—

i survive the first flight.

there is a short layover, and the connection is in a different terminal, which means a train. more signs to read while walking. i would like to stop moving long enough to find out where i am supposed to be moving to.

1:10 p.m. i have not eaten.

but i do not have to board until two. i can get food. a burger and sweet potato fries to go, plenty of time, yes, i am still using that expression.

i place my order and check the flight status as i wait. oh, fuck me. two is departure.

boarding is at 1:20.

i have ten minutes and a burger that does not exist yet.

so i wait for the bag to appear, check the time, calculate the walk, check the time again. there is nothing useful i can do here, though i am putting a great deal of effort into looking toward the place where the food will come from.

it comes. i make it to the gate. there is no time to eat.

i stuff the bag into my already too-full suitcase and get on the plane with it, lunch now safely transported to another place i cannot get to it. as i write this, it is probably oozing grease all over everything in the overhead compartment.

i am still standing in the boarding line when a man in the first row catches my attention.

“excuse me, miss.”

what now. i have not even sat down. surely i cannot already be in the wrong seat.

then i recognize him. our broker-dealer’s relationship manager. he is fucking with me.

i continue all the way to the back of the plane.

once i am seated, he texts to congratulate me on my promotion and offers to send me a drink.

i say yes. my manners still drink.

the beverage arrives. i look at it and leave it closed.

when we land, he offers to ride together in an uber. he is our relationship manager, so i understand this to mean he will order it and pay for it and i will get into it when it comes. i could fucking weep. a whole trip for which my only responsibility is to be a passenger.

i follow him to the waiting area. we wait. the uber arrives, according to the uber.

nothing in front of us.

he checks his phone. we look at the empty space where the car ought to be, then back at the phone, which places us exactly where we are supposed to be. and we are, except vertically. the car is one level up.

oh, good. his fuckup.

i am almost happy about the extra walking. somebody else can misunderstand a building for once.

we go upstairs, find the car, spend the ride talking shop and gossip. i settle in.

we part ways in the lobby, and i find my room and change clothes as quickly as i can. i have to get downstairs to meet the division president and one of our branch managers at the bar before dinner.

heels.

i have been dreading putting them on because i sprained my ankle last week and have since treated it to everything you have just read. it was injured before the grassy hill. before i started hauling luggage around an airport i no longer knew how to use. none of that has helped.

i put them on.

downstairs, they drink. i ask for water. the waitress forgets. i ask again. water is proving difficult to obtain in a room otherwise very well equipped to provide liquids.

eventually we move to dinner. our top producer joins us along with his daughter, the chairman arrives later, and somewhere in there i realize i am enjoying myself.

i had not expected to have anything left for this. a whole dinner with people after a whole day of people, but here i am, talking, following the conversation without having to drag myself back into it. i know these people. i can sit here.

the branch manager orders grouper and i order scallops. we split both. the producer’s daughter and i split a praline chocolate marshmallow bar for dessert, and the president has found a wine on the list that he is very excited about.

he is a california wine snob, so this is something. he starts ordering entire bottles for the table with the enthusiasm of a man who has located buried treasure.

red wine. my favorite.

i stay with the water. it is not much of a decision. which, even after the day i have just had, does not come to me as much of a surprise. still. always nice to get those little confirmations that i am not delusional.

well, not about my relationship with intoxicants at least. how delusional i am about my toxic relationships? still up for debate.

by eleven everybody is ready to call it. early for these things.

i walk back to my room happy as a clam. after all that. i have had a good night and i am pleased to be here and then i take off my shoes.

oh, fuck.

the ankle.

i had actually forgotten about it for a while. standing barefoot brings it back in some detail.

i have dragged that thing through ten hours of tumultuous travel, then put it in heels from six to eleven. a sprain. i did the entire fucking day on a sprain.

a whole day of “i cannot fucking do this,” during which i did all of it.

so yeah, my ankle might still be screaming. but the rest of me is reclining in bed with a big smile on my face.

goodnight, world.