Then before I could do anything, or come up with a plan, a man in a nice-looking business suit, his ear to a phone, pointed at the spare rocker beside me. I held out my hand to block him, but then realized that was a pretty ballsy reaction. I dropped my hand and nodded to him. He smiled a thank-you and dragged the chair away. It had been close to me from when Jack had sat in it. It bothered me to see him drag it off.
“Would you mind?” I said to the man, pointing to my backpack.
I wanted him to watch it. He covered the mouth of his phone and shook his head. He told me in French he was going to be only a minute.
“Please watch it as long as you can,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”
The man gave me a French lip purse. As if to say, Americans. As if to say, Maybe, maybe not. I didn’t have time to negotiate a deal with him. I walked in the direction Jack had taken. People walked toward me, and for an instant I had an image of The Catcher in the Rye. It was a novel we had read in high school, and I never liked it much, but I did recall the image of the main character, Holden, as a catcher in the rye. He wanted to be a boy who went through the tall meadow and kept children from falling, his arms outstretched, his eyes trained on their safety. That was how I felt walking against the grain on the passenger way. Jack had to be in there somewhere, in among the people, and I walked with my arms nearly outstretched, trying to see him.
A little farther on, I pulled out my phone and texted him.
Where are you? I texted.
I held the phone in front of me, expecting his reply to come instantly. But it didn’t. I realized I had stopped in the middle of the moving traffic, a boulder in a streambed, and people moved past me, clearly annoyed, their faces bright little bubbles of mini-rage. I was violating rules. I was an imbecile. It was all they could do not to strike me.
I tucked my phone back in my pocket and went down the passenger way until I found the men’s room. I looked at various men as they went in and out, and I wondered if I could ask one or the other to check on Jack for me. He could be sick, I realized. Something could have happened. But then I thought, The hell with it, and I ducked inside, keeping my eyes innocent and glanced away, and called out in what I knew must sound like a shrewish wifely voice.
“Jack? Is Jack Quiller-Couch in here?”
The bathroom attendant, a thin, tall African man in a blue coat, came toward me and held his arm out to prevent me from penetrating farther into the bathroom.
“Mademoiselle, non,” he said. “Non, non, non.”
“Jack!” I shouted louder. “Jack, where are you?”
The bathroom attendant backed me out of the bathroom. My voice had echoed in the tile chamber.
“I am missing my traveling companion,” I said, trying to speak in French but failing horribly. “My boyfriend, he went in here, I think.”
“Non, mademoiselle. Les gar?ons—seulement les gar?ons.”
“I understand, I do, but he is missing.”
A text came in on my phone. I pulled my phone out so quickly that I dropped it. It skidded on the floor, and I had to scramble after it. I thought it might be broken, but it seemed all right when I examined it. The text was from my mother saying she couldn’t wait to see me. I didn’t even want to think about my phone skidding across a bathroom floor.
I texted Jack again.
Jack?
Almost in the same moment, the PA system called our flight.
New York City. JFK. Group four now boarding.
“Mademoiselle,” the bathroom attendant said again, and it wasn’t until I heard him speak that I realized I remained in the outside portion of the restroom. I backed up. The main streambed of passengers felt as busy as ever with people rushing down toward their flights, their roll-on luggage trailing behind them like obedient dogs.
My brain began speeding up, and I thought, My backpack. What kind of idiot leaves a backpack unattended in an airport? I started back toward our gate, and I realized, as I went, that Occam’s razor applied here. I knew the rule from a first-year philosophy seminar. I even knew it in Latin as lex parsimoniae. Simply stated, it recommended when confronted by conflicting hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. In short, keep it simple. Assume the easiest line of reason. I was letting my mind get carried away. I needed to follow Occam’s razor instead.
Another voice—a voice outside my head—came over the PA system and announced a flight for Algiers. That stopped me. A small flood of panic kicked into my bloodstream. I turned and began jogging in the direction Jack had taken. It was nearly impossible to jog with the people coming toward me, but I did my best. My breath felt like a sword plunging in and out of my lungs. The fact that Jack might have left, had gone, was such a raw thought that I could not allow it space to emerge, to uncurl like a ghastly baby bird pecking its way horribly through a gray egg wall.
But then a saner, more measured voice began whispering calming things. He did not leave, it told me. No one does that. He would not simply walk away. It told me to take it easy, to go slow, and I slowed to a walk and continued another five minutes down the long footbridge, trying to be a normal tourist, trying to look unconcerned, trying to believe that when I went back, when I returned to the backpack that I had recklessly left in the middle of an airport loading gate, he would be there, air guitar in hand. I even forced myself to stop in a magazine and candy shop, pretending to browse, my stomach as raw and horrible as if I had swallowed a cat covered in Crisco. I snatched up a copy of Match and flicked through the pages. I wanted Jack to have time to return. I wanted him to be unrushed.
I took my time returning. I looked at the faces passing by me, coming at me, or whisking by, and I wondered what secrets they had held that they could not reveal. Everyone appeared to be searching. Everyone seemed to be looking for someone else, something else, and twice I nearly collided with people wheeling bags. Then, without meaning to, I saw my backpack, and I smiled to see it, glad it was still there, happy that I had taken a small risk and won, but I did not see Jack. I walked closer, and still he did not appear, and I turned to inspect the waiting area, the small checkin desk, and he was not there, either.
I went and sat next to my backpack. I stared straight ahead.
I was aware of time passing, but only in a marginal way. When the people around me began to stand and move, I realized, almost in a haze, that it was past time to board. New York City. JFK. I stood and bent and lifted my backpack. I chucked it up onto my shoulder, and it bounced against my back, and a tiny gurgled grunt worked out of my lungs. I bent and made it hit me again. It felt good to be hit, to feel the solid weight strike like a pendulum against my back and beltline.