LAX

Near Los Angeles, United States

"We leave for LAX at ten o'clock," the bus driver smiled, stretching her lips so wide that her sunglasses rose up on her nose. She then began to talk about the various security functions of the airport shuttle which no one--myself included--seemed to particularly care about. My twenty or so shuttle companions were instead engaged in their own conversations (German, Chinese, and English were all simultaneously audible), all anticipating the day's coming adventures.

With a groan, the bus rolled forward and merged unto the freeway. For a moment I watched Union Station revolve as the bus turned, but soon it was eclipsed by some nameless office building. The Disney Center peeked out behind a string of corporate buildings, before it too was lost behind a partiucularly large and dull one and was not seen again. Then the Staples Center. A few underpasses. Cars.

Apart from myself--for the moment immersed in a novel--there was only one other person who sat alone, a middle-aged man who clicked through the photo archive in his camera, reflecting on the people and times that he was leaving behind as the bus drove away.

Two planes descended overhead, each bearing travels whose journey would end a few gates away from where mine would begin.

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LAX. Tickets. Can I see your passport? As always I've arrived in the terminal far too early, fighting the weight of my eyelids as I sit at the gate and watch people appear and disappear like a silent film with missing frames.

The man in front of me is on the phone with his wife, and things aren't going well. He's trying to fix something with her that's been broken a long time. He seems to want resolution before he gets on the plane, and his insistance is making the problem far worse. He walks away, but his voice and sadness trail behind him like the smoke of a cigarette.

Two women and two men stand at the newstand, thumbing through magazines they don't intend to buy. I hear bits of their conversation--bickering but affectionate--and try and deduce who is dating whom. Any permutation seems possible.

A young-man--his arms akimbo, his stature still--stands against the window and stares into the distance at the hazy Los Angeles skyline. He carries a large (ostensibly heavy) green backpack, but never thinks to set it down. Adults run by him, kids run into him, yet he stands still as his thoughts race.

A large group of Canadians appears in my seating area, exposed by their passports and my immediate neighbor's persistent "aboots". The whole group of them are clad in various shades of black and grey, a color motif stretching even into their gloves and fedoras. I ask them where they are coming from. "We're in various bands," says my neighbor, whose nose-ring wiggles as he speaks. "There's a big bagpipe convention."

"Good luck to you then," I say.

"It's over. It was in LA."

"Oh," I apologize. "How did it go?"

"Not very well," he and his nose-ring sighed.

A man sleeps with his head wrapped in a plaid shirt, his head balanced on his backpack in a way that is sure to render his back even more sore than air travel naturally induces.

A group of three men mutter in Portguese against the window. They carry with them large bags that undoubtedly bear some sort of instrument, and I wonder if these men were more victorious than the disallusioned Canadians I had just met. I eavesdrop on their conversation to find out, fail, and comfort myself knowing that I could hardly be expected to know the word "bagpipe" anyway.

The boarding call. Heads turn, and mouths yawn. The Canadians have left. The Portuguese move toward the line. The quiet man in the green backpack moves toward his sleeping friend, peeling the plaid shirt of his head to tell him it is time to board. The mysterious couples put the magazines back on the rack and rush past a disappointed cashier. Presumably somewhere a sad man is still on the phone with his wife.

I close my notebook, extract my ticket from its pages, and join them all at the gate.