Carrion Luggage

The man arrives at the airport early, early enough to sit outside the security gates and have an espresso with a croissant.  He pays in change and saves the paper napkin, neatly folding it into fourths and then placing it softly inside his button-down breast pocket for future use.  He has three pieces of luggage, all identical in color and design.  One over the shoulder, a smaller one over the other shoulder, and one squeaking along behind like some small terrier.  He approaches the ticket counter with the big conveyer belt that children and adults always want to climb on, but never can because a man with absurdly high boots and an M-16 would grab you by the scruff of your neck and pluck you from the moving floor beneath you.  

The counter woman eyes the man as he steps forward and clicks her long acrylic nails on the plastic blue countertop.  Clicicictick.  Clickictick.  Click.  She greets him without inflection or emotion, and he takes this as a cue, smoothly sliding his oversized pamphlet of ticket information across the counter.  She wrinkles her nose slightly, and flexes her large nostrils, searching for some fetid odor.  The man shifts his weight uncomfortably and glances over his shoulder, his weak chin brushing against the collar of his shirt.  The moment passes, and the awkward and abrupt sound shift quickly dissolves back into the calculated mayhem of an international airport.  

She still has not spoken to him short of the initial hello, and her hands like wack-a-mole mallets, spanning the keyboard, smooth and brown with deadly precision and raging speed.  Finally, the question arrives, sharper than a new winter hatchet:

"Will you be checking any bags today, sir?"

He slowly shakes his head, no, and digs in his pocket for a phantom vibrating phone.  The woman says nothing, reaches over the counter, curling her wrist and finger together like an organic backhoe, and taps on a plexiglass sign with her oblong index nail.

"Two carry-on items per person.  Additional luggage is subject to fees."

The man sighs out of boredom and partial despair, allowing the woman to loop some identification flair around his wheeled luggage, fluorescent green and orange stickers clashing with the carefully chosen colors of his designer bags.  This flash-typing woman is equally adept at looping luggage, but again, something causes her to pause, some sickly sweet odor wafting from places unknown to tickle miniscule nasal hairs.  Again, the moment passes, and normal speed is resumed.

"Enjoy your flight, sir."

He nods at her and his squeaky wheeled case disappears through the yellow translucent noodle mouth of the baggage belt.

At the security gate, everything smells like feet.  Dr. Scholls come flying out of shoes like small rubber dolphins, flip-flops are flung with surprising accuracy into plastic gray bins, shoe laces are untied and re-tied without reflection of how this skill was perfected in the first place.  A family with two blind parents stands ahead of the man, their young children leading them like shepherds into the desert of the A wing terminal.  Their bottles of expensive spring water are compromised and confiscated, and they stare at an empty space next to the security attendant with anger in their blank eyes as it to say, that four-dollar bottle of water might have held the power to restore my vision.  You have taken it from me.  Thank you.

The man steps slowly forward as his turn comes, neatly places his glinting brown shoes into the stack of gray bins as they embrace each other from below.  Gold wrist watch, phantom cell phone, all go in the bin along with his obscenely thick wallet that could act as a booster seat for a toddler.  He then gently lowers the bags from his shoulders, a married couple of luggage, one the size of a beaver and the other the size of a beaver-shaped basketball.  Somewhere across the cornfields of security lanes, an argument has broken out in at least four different dialects and there is a collective sigh, followed the sound of hundreds of wet rolling eyeballs, people trying to look backwards into their own skulls and understand why their brains aren't working well enough.  They ask themselves why they are bored and cannot find suitable answers.

The man pads quickly and quietly through the metal detector, socks vaguely resembling the blue and gold-diamond pattern on the carpeted terminal floors.  He waits for his bags to arrive on the belt, but no such sushi glides up.  There is a problem, and in just a few short moments, there are six security agents crowded around the small X-ray monitor like it's game 6 of the '86 World Series.  There are hushed tones, a few sharp glances at the man; one of the guards hurries away quickly to the staunch white innards of the security offices, and comes back towing a stern-looking superviser in a blue blazer and a diagonally striped tie.  There is more pointing and looking.  The man stands straight, shoeless and without possessions like a well dressed brahmin.  Finally, blue blazer man makes an executive decision and the bags are advanced from the dark tunnel of transparency.

The locks are cut with some menacing hand tool, and the once-rolling eyes all snap toward the mystery threat, many people hoping to witness some sort of carnage.  Security drones form a ring around the bags, but when they are opened, there is no need for sight.  The putrid and sticky sweet smell of rotting flesh rips through the security gates like a nuclear bomb, waves of people being brought to their knees in growing concentric circles as the stench spreads from the epicenter.  Women vomit into their Gucci purses, grown men faint, teenage girls scream in pitches inaudible to human ears.  The conveyer belts are strewn with people, gagging and hacking as they try to expel the taste of rotting animal from their acid windpipes.  

The shoeless man is handcuffed by uniformed men with tears twinkling in the corners of their eyes.  He is led away by the four blurry-eyed men, past legions of cursing detractors, insults being lobbed like flaming volleyballs in myriad languages.  The shoeless man walks elegantly with his detainers to one of the benches facing the massive windows overlooking the taxiing jumbo jets and luggage trains, weaving like Indy cars on unseen courses.  He is seated facing the action on a vinyl, ochre bench.  He does not move or speak, simply staring out the tinted glass as he is poked and prodded by questioning faces.  

Suddenly, the corners of his mouth turn up slightly, invisible to everyone except the imaginary camera hovering inches from his face.  The reflection of a silver 747 glints off his wet left eye, and glowing reflection appears in his cornea.  He looks on as, off in the far distance, a vulture circles gracefully over a snaking luggage train.