Greg Baxter - Munich Airport

The terminal seems twice, or ten times, as crowded now as it did when we were sitting in front of our breakfasts. All you have to do is look around to see that there is not enough capacity and there are not enough hours in the rest of the day to get everybody out of here. We are no longer all in it together, this paralysis. The haze that was the fog is bronze now. It is the moment, now, just before it burns up, a spectacular moment. The horizon, in virtually every direction, now, is visible. Airplanes are landing, taxiing. I walk around a bit, up toward the gates near the bathrooms. There are gates on both sides. The gate areas are enormous. The names of destinations are listed on the displays by the gate numbers — Cairo, Bucharest, Madrid, Manchester, Warsaw, Moscow, Athens, London Heathrow, London Gatwick. When we land in Atlanta, the displays will show place names like Memphis, Charlotte, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, San Antonio, Des Moines, Chicago. I stop at the London Heathrow gate. I stand around. I watch a television with some other people, then I move, and stand around some people checking their phones, and I check my phone. I see Richard sitting with a magazine, no more than twenty feet away. He is sitting beside a woman, and the woman looks very like the woman he was married to when I knew him, but is not that woman. She has red hair and pretty brown eyes, and next to her is a child, a boy of about six or seven, who looks like Richard. I move closer and closer. The woman is reading her own magazine, and from time to time Richard stops reading his to look at hers. The woman is beautiful. Richard is handsome, more handsome than when I knew him, having acquired an extra ten pounds or so. The magazine he is pretending to read is about cycling and the magazine she is reading, and which Richard appears to prefer, is a celebrity magazine. I decide to stop watching them and say hello. And just as I move forward with intent, Richard looks up, as though he has known the whole time that I have been there. The look on his face is one of the strangest looks I have ever received. It says, This is not for you, what you see here, go away. We have not seen each other in many, many years, and I am making a face that stupidly says, Good to see you after all this time, Richard. The woman looks up. It is no longer possible to turn around and walk away, so I stick my hand out for Richard to shake. I say, Funny to meet you here. He stays sitting. The woman smiles at me. I introduce myself. She says her name is Catherine. It’s very nice to meet you, Catherine, I say. Richard says, You are looking good. I say, As are you. Catherine says, Are you flying to London? I am, I say, though it doesn’t seem like we’re going anywhere for a while. Catherine says, It’s clearing, not long now.

What has you in Germany? I ask them.

Richard says, Catherine is from Germany.

You’re German? I ask.

Yes, she says.

You have no accent, I say.

Catherine smiles. Richard yawns. I almost say, Well, sorry for bothering you, but instead I say, Well, it was nice seeing you again. You too, says Richard, then he adds, Are you here for work? No, I say, my sister lived here, and she died a few weeks ago. Your sister? he asks. That’s right, I say, her name was Miriam, she lived in Berlin for twenty years.

I’m sorry to hear that, says Richard.

Catherine says, Yes, me too.

The child looks up from the screen he is watching, but not for long.

Richard looks at Catherine and says, Mind if we go have a quick drink?

Listen for the announcements, she says, and he says, I have my phone, text me if something happens. He gives her a dry, swift kiss on the temple, then he waves at the boy by sticking his hand between the boy’s face and the screen, though the boy just moves the screen. As we walk away, Richard says, Do you have any kids? No, I say, nope, no kids.

The first bar, seven or eight gates away, does not have the atmosphere Richard desires, or else he wants to put a bit more distance between himself and Catherine and his son. We go another hundred yards and find another just like it. It is grossly overpacked, and it feels humid, tropical, like it has been raining warm beer. There is an English stag party heading home, more than a dozen men, some of them in oversized Union Jack hats, others in oversized Irish tricolor hats, and some in no hats. Frankenstein! they yell at Richard. They are flying to Manchester, not London. I can see exactly how their day has passed. At seven or eight, just hours or minutes after most of them passed out, they crawled out of their hotel beds, showered, had a greasy breakfast. They gathered quietly in the lobby, all of them pale, stinking, and ill. Some of them had to throw up. They slept in chairs and on couches in the lobby, they wore sunglasses even though it was dark, even though it was foggy. Arriving at the airport, they must have felt like dying. Security took a year off all their lives. After that, they wandered around like a lost flock, encountered a mostly empty bar and entered because somebody realized that a drink was the only way to avoid the pain of this hangover. There are two staff behind the bar, a pale blonde girl who is serving drinks and a pale blond boy who is furiously cleaning everything. They are both wearing black button-down long-sleeve shirts. The girl’s is too tight and the boy’s is too loose. The boy looks exhausted. The girl looks traumatized. Richard starts to speak to her in English. She refuses to speak English, or she can no longer speak English, so I order. Richard gets a scotch and I take a sparkling water. The only table that is free has a puddle of beer on it, so we find a ledge along a wall and place our glasses there. Richard leans against the wall. I try not to touch anything. The smell is potent. A man from the stag grabs me around the neck and says, Oi! And his breath slithers into my breath. I think he will kiss me, on the lips, until his friend pulls him away from me.

Richard says, What are you up to these days?

I’m on my own now, started a consultancy. Twelve years now. You?

He says he left the bank and got rehired back at four times the salary as a consultant. Now he runs a consultancy with six employees. I tell him what I’ve been doing, the supermarket and various other clients, but that I’m starting up full-time work with a French aerospace firm as soon as I return to London.

Just over Richard’s sloped shoulder, I see a man from the stag — no, the stag himself — trying to kiss a woman at the bar. She will not kiss him back. This is an airport, she is telling him, and I have a husband. We cannot, of course, hear them, but this is what I imagine she has told him. This is how she gazes at him. Richard looks behind him to see what I am looking at. He turns back and says, referring to the stag party, Fucking trolls, fucking scumbags.

You’ve got a new wife, I say.

Yes, he says. But we’re not married.

She’s very pretty, I say, and the kid is good-looking.

Thanks, he says.

What happened with your ex?

Nothing, he says, we’re still together. We’ve got two kids.

For a moment I think he is joking, and I laugh, but then I see he is not joking so I grab my glass of water and pretend to drink.

Richard seems to grow very large suddenly with thoughtfulness. He says, I asked for a divorce, and she said I was insane. We see each other once or twice a month, the rest of the time I’m in Germany or the States, we have a house, let’s keep the house, let’s keep the kids in school, I do what I want, she does what she wants, I come home once or twice a month to see the kids. After Richard says this, he smiles and cheers up, and comes down to his normal size.

This works out okay?

Yes and no, he says. I mean, I don’t know how the alternatives are going. He takes a drink and says, Have you remarried?