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By Root 1944 0

Here was a gate for Phoenix. There was a gate for Raleigh-Durham. One locale was pretty much like another. People made a big deal of their own geographical differences to give themselves specific details to talk about. Los Angeles, Cedar Rapids, Duluth. What did it matter where anyone lived—Rome, Chicago, or Romania? All she really wanted was to be in the same room with her as-of-yesterday ex. Just being around him had made her happy. It was horrible but true. She had loved him so much it gave her the creeps. He wasn’t worthy of her love but so what. Maybe, she thought, she should start doing an inventory of her faults, you know, figure the whole thing out—scars, bad habits, phrases she had used that he hadn’t liked. Then she could do an inventory of his faults. She felt some ketchup under her shoe and let herself fall.

She looked up.

Hands gripped her. Random sounds of sympathy. “Hey, lady, are you all right?” “Can you stand?” “Do you need some help?” A man, a woman, a second man: Ovid’s public brigade of first-aiders held her, clutched at her where she had sprawled sort of deliberately, here in the Red concourse. Expressions of fake concern like faces painted on flesh-colored balloons lowered themselves to her level. “I just slipped.” “You’re okay, you’re fine?” “Yes.” She felt her breast being brushed against, not totally and completely unpleasantly. It felt like the memory of a touch rather than a touch itself, no desire in it, no nothing. There: She was up. Upright. And dragging herself off, Ovid under her arm, to the bus back to the Loop and her apartment. Falling in the airport and being lifted up: okay, so it happened as predicted, but it didn’t make you feel wonderful. Comfortably numb was more like it. She dropped the Remedia amoris into a trash bin. Then she thought, Uh-oh, big mistake, maybe the advice is all wrong but at least he wants to cheer me up, who else wants to do that? She reached her hand into the trash bin and, looking like a wino grasping for return bottles, she pulled out her soiled book, smeared with mustard and relish.

“Kit?”

A voice.

“Yes?” She turned around. She faced an expression of pleased surprise, on a woman she couldn’t remember ever seeing before.

“It’s me. Caroline.”

“Caroline?” As if she recognized her. Which she didn’t. At all.

“What a coincidence! This is too amazing! What are you doing here?”

“I’m, um, I was here. Seeing someone off. You know. To … ah, Seattle.”

“Seattle.” The Caroline-person nodded, in a, well, professional way, one of those therapeutic nods. Her hair had a spiky thickness, like straw or hay. Maybe Caroline would mention the traffic in Seattle. The ferries? Puget Sound? “What’s that?” She pointed at the haplessly soiled book.

“Oh, this?” Kit shrugged. “Ovid.”

More nodding. Blondish hair spiked here and there, arrows pointing at the ceiling and the light fixtures and the arrival-and-departure screens. The Caroline-person carried—no, actually pulled on wheels—a tan suitcase, and she wore a business suit, account executive attire, a little gold pin in the shape of the Greek lambda on her lapel. Not a very pretty pin, but maybe a clue: lambda, lambda, now what would that … possibly mean? Suitcase: This woman didn’t live here in Chicago. Or else she did.

“You were always reading, Kit. All that Greek and Latin!” She stepped back and surveyed. “You look simply fabulous! With the cap? Such a cute retro look, it’s so street-smart, like … who’s that actress?”

“Yeah, well, I have to … It’s nice to see you, Caroline, but I’m headed back to the Loop, it’s late, and I have to—”

“Is your car here?” A hand wave: Caroline-person wedding ring: tasteful diamond, of course, that’s the way it goes in the Midwest, wedding rings everyfuckingwhere.

“Uh, no, we took, I mean, he and I took the taxi out.” Somehow it seemed important to repeat that. “We took a taxi.”

“Great! I’ll give you a ride back. I’ll take you to your place. I’ll drop you right at the doorstep. Would you like some company? Come on!”

She felt her elbow being touched.

Down the long corridors of O’Hare