5
AT O’HARE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, terminal five, people waited quietly in lines: lines to get their ticket, lines to drop off their luggage, lines to get through security, all the lines running at such a laggard and reluctant and frankly un-American pace that they forced everyone to fully imbibe the terminal’s deeply disorienting combination of melancholy and chaos. The smell of car exhaust from all the taxis outside, and the inside smells of meats that had been cooking all day at Gold Coast Dogs. Easy-listening standards heavy on saxophone occupied the aural spaces between security announcements. Televisions showing airport news that was different from regular news in unknown ways. Samuel felt disappointed that a foreigner’s first impression of America would be made here, and what America was offering them was a McDonald’s (whose big message to the incoming throngs seemed to be that the McRib was back) and a store specializing in gadgets of questionable necessity: HD video pens, shiatsu massage chairs, wireless Bluetooth-activated reading lamps, heated foot spas, compression socks, automatic wine-bottle openers, motorized barbecue-grill brushes, orthopedic dog couches, cat thundershirts, weight-loss armbands, gray hair prevention pills, isometric meal replacement packs, liquid protein shots, television swivel stands, hands-free blow-dryer holders, a bath towel that said “Face” on one end and “Butt” on the other.
This is who we are.
Men’s bathrooms that required you touch nothing but yourself. Automated dispensers that pooed little globs of generic pink soap onto your hands. Sinks that did not run enough water to fully wash. The same threat-level warning issued ad nauseam. The security mandates—empty your pockets, remove your shoes, laptops out, gels and liquids in separate bags—repeated so many times that eventually everyone stopped hearing them. All of this so reflexive and automatic and habituated and slow that the travelers were a little zoned out and playing with their phones and just simply enduring this uniquely modern, first world ordeal that is not per se “difficult” but is definitely exhausting. Spiritually debilitating. Everyone feeling a small ache of regret, suspecting that, as a people, we could do better. But we don’t. The line for a McRib was quiet and solemn and twenty people deep.
“I’m feeling a surge of pessimism about our plan,” Faye said to Samuel as they stood in the security line. “I mean, do you think they’re really going to let us through? Like, Oh yes, Miss Fugitive from Justice, right this way.”
“Would you keep it down?” Samuel said.
“I can feel the drugs wearing off. I can feel my anxiety bounding back to me like a lost dog.”
“We are normal passengers taking a normal vacation abroad.”
“A normal vacation to a country with very strict extradition laws, I sincerely hope.”
“Don’t worry. Remember what Simon said.”
“I can literally feel my confidence in our plan disintegrating. It’s like someone has taken our plan and applied a cheese grater. That’s what it feels like.”
“Please be quiet and please relax.”
They had taken a cab to the airport and purchased one-way tickets on the next available international flight, a nonstop to London. Their boarding passes were issued without a problem. They checked their luggage, again without a problem. They waited in the security line. And when they finally handed their tickets and passports to the blue-uniformed TSA agent, whose job it was to visually inspect their photographs and run their tickets over a bar-code scanner and wait for the computer to make a pleasant sound and for the light to flash green, the computer did not, in fact, make the pleasant sound. The sound it made instead was the harsh errrrrr sound like the buzzer at the end of a basketball game, that sound indicating authority and finality. And in case anyone was confused over the sound’s meaning, the light also turned red.
The security agent sat up straighter at this, surprised at the computer’s negative judgment. A rare moment of drama in terminal five.
“Could you please wait over there,” he said, pointing at an empty little holding pen whose boundaries were demarcated only by strips of dirty purple masking tape on the floor.
While they waited, the other travelers glanced at them once or twice, then were drawn back to their phones. A television above them showed the airport news network, currently a story about Governor Packer.
“They know about me,” Faye whispered into Samuel’s ear. “That I’m a fugitive. I’m on the run.”
“You are neither of those things.”
“Of course they know. This is the information age. They all have access to the same data. There’s probably a room somewhere covered with TV screens monitoring us right now. It’s in Langley, or Los Alamos.”
“I doubt you’d register as that high a threat.”
They watched the slow crawl of the line through the security checkpoint: people taking off their shoes and belts and standing in clear plastic tubes and putting their hands over their heads while gray metal arms circled their bodies, probing them.
“This is the post-9/11 world,” Faye said. “The post-privacy world. The law knows where I am at all times. Of course they wouldn’t let me fly.”
“Relax. We don’t know what’s happening yet.”
“And you. They’ll arrest you as an accessory.”
“Accessory to what? A vacation?”
“They’ll never believe we’re taking a vacation.”
“Aiding and abetting a weekend trip abroad? Hardly criminal.”
“We’re being watched right now on a bank of televisions and computer screens. Probably in the basement of the Pentagon. A feed from every port in the world. Bundles of fiber-optic cables. Face-recognition software. Technology we don’t even know exists. They are probably reading my lips at this exact moment. The FBI and CIA working in conjunction with local law enforcement. That’s how they always say it on the news.”
“This is not the news.”
“This is not the news yet.”
A man with a clipboard had by now begun talking in low tones with the security agent, glancing at them occasionally. He looked like he’d been pulled from a previous era—his hair cut into a severe and geometric flattop, a white short-sleeved shirt and thin black tie, square jaw, bright blue eyes—like he’d once been an Apollo astronaut but was now doing this. A badge hanging on his shirt pocket turned out to be, upon closer inspection, a laminated card with the image of a badge on it.
“He’s talking about us,” Faye said. “Something is about to happen.”
“Just stay calm.”
“Do you remember the story I told you about the Nix?”
“Which one was that?”
“The horse.”
“Right, yeah. The white horse that picked up children, then drowned them.”
“That’s the one.”
“Excellent story to tell a nine-year-old, by the way.”
“Do you remember the moral?”
“That the things you love the most can hurt you the worst.”
“Yes. That people can be a Nix to each other. Sometimes without even knowing it.”
“What’s your point?”
The man with the clipboard had begun walking in their direction.
“That’s what I was to you,” she said. “I was your Nix. You loved me most, and I was hurting you. You asked me once why I left you and your father. That’s why.”
“And you’re telling me this now?”
“I wanted to get it in under the wire.”
The man with the clipboard crossed the purple tape and cleared his throat.
“So it looks like we have sort of a problem here,” he said in an unusually upbeat way, like one of those customer-service people you sometimes get on the phone who seem really into their jobs. He was not making eye contact with either of them, staring instead at whatever was on his clipboard. “It looks like, it turns out, you’re on that no-fly list, there.” He seemed uncomfortable having to say this, as if it were his fault.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” Faye said. “I should have known.”
“Oh, no, not you,” the man said, looking surprised. “You’re not on the list. He is.”
“Me?” Samuel said.
“Yes, sir. That’s what it says right here,” tapping the clipboard. “Samuel Andresen-Anderson. Absolutely not allowed on an airplane.”
“How am I on the no-fly list?”
“Well,” he said, flipping through the pages as if he were reading them for the first time. “Were you recently in Iowa?”
“Yes.”
“Did you visit the ChemStar factory while you were there?”
“I stopped by.”
“Did you, um”—and here he lowered his voice, as if he were saying something obscene—“did you take photographs of the factory?”
“A couple, yeah.”
“Well,” he said, and shrugged as if the answer should have been obvious. “There you go.”
“Why were you taking photographs of ChemStar?” Faye said.
“Yes,” the man with the clipboard said. “Why were you?”
“I don’t know. It’s nostalgic.”
“You were taking nostalgic pictures of a factory,” the man said. He frowned. He was dubious. Not buying it. “Who does that?”
“My grandfather works there. Used to work there.”
“That part is true,” Faye said.
“That part? All of it is true. I was visiting my grandfather and took some pictures of all the old childhood places. The old house, the old park, and yes, the old factory. I think the better question here is why am I on the no-fly list for photographing a corn-processing plant?”
“Oh, well, those kinds of facilities have some pretty dangerous toxic chemicals. And it’s right there on the Mississippi. Let’s just say that your presence raised”—and here he put up two fingers to indicate air quotes—“homeland security concerns.”
“I see.”
He flipped to another page on his clipboard. “It says here that they saw you on their closed-circuit cameras, and you fled when security approached.”
“Fled? I didn’t flee. I left. I was done photographing. I never even saw security.”
“That’s exactly what I would say if I were fleeing,” the man said to Faye, who nodded.
“I know,” she said. “You’re exactly right.”
“Would you stop?” Samuel said. “So am I never going to fly again? Is that what this means?”
“It means you’re not going to fly today. But you can take steps to remove yourself from the list. There’s a website for that.”
“A website.”
“Or an 800 number, if you prefer,” he said. “Then an average wait time of six to eight weeks. I’m afraid I’m going to have to escort you out of the airport now.”