The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [43]
“Take your time,” Annie told him as he walked away from their gate. As soon as Daniel was out of sight, she hurried over to the counter, manned by two airline employees, and waited for them to acknowledge her. The two women shuffled papers, squinted at the computer screen, and then said, in unison, “Well, that’s wrong.” Annie looked over her shoulder for Daniel to reappear, feeling like ominous violin strains should be playing over the airport’s sound system, a movie score for a thriller about an incredibly stupid woman and her insane ex-boyfriend.
“Can I ask you something?” Annie said, and both of the women looked up from the screen and set their mouths into thin expressions of annoyance that might, if challenged, be called a smile. “Uh-huh?” they said in unison.
“I’m wondering about my plane ticket,” she said.
“It’s in your hand there,” the woman on the right said.
“I know,” Annie continued, trying to convey the necessity for speed, “but I wondered if I could change it.”
“You want a different seat?” the woman on the left said.
“I want a different airplane,” Annie told her.
“Say what?” they said.
“I want to get on a different flight.”
“Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Well,” the woman on the right said, “it’s pretty complicated to switch your plane ticket.”
“Okay, fine,” Annie said, still no sign of Daniel, thank god. “My ex-boyfriend asked me to go on a trip with him to Wyoming to try and get back together and I said yes and now I think I should have said no.”
“Ooh, this is good,” the woman on the left said.
“He’s in the bathroom, and I need to get on a different flight, something leaving right now, before he finds out.”
“This is real good,” the woman on the right said.
A few keystrokes later, the women, taking turns, read off destinations while Annie considered the possibilities. She did not want to go to New York or Chicago or Dallas. “Somewhere else,” she said. “Better hurry,” the woman on the right said. “Your boyfriend’s been in the bathroom for a long time.”
“He’s probably staring at his reflection in the mirror,” Annie said.
“I know the type,” the woman replied. “You don’t want to go to Wyoming with a man like that.”
She was escaping. It was a great escape. She took out her cell phone, afraid that it would begin to ring at any moment, and tossed it into a nearby trash can. There would be no one to tell her to do anything other than what she was doing right this minute. She was off the grid now and she felt the excitement that went along with cutting the lines of communication. She would be somewhere far away by evening and she would, well, she wasn’t sure what she would do except try to turn herself invisible with substances. As the women magically moved her from one plane to another, mere minutes from leaving everything behind, Annie thought of Buster, propped up in his childhood bed, face distorted, trapped in that house while their parents tried, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, to fix what was broken in him. She knew that she was falling apart and that Buster had already been disassembled and she wondered if there was any possibility that, every Fang restored under one roof, they might be good for each other. It seemed unlikely, but, standing in the airport terminal, people moving in all directions, she was willing to risk it. She was not going to Wyoming with Daniel. Wherever she ended up would be better than that.
“Do you have any flights to Nashville?” she asked.
“Got a flight leaving for Detroit in ten minutes, and then you can catch a flight to Nashville.”
“You need to decide right now,” the woman on the left said. “I think I see your boyfriend coming.”
“Ex-boyfriend,” Annie said. “And, I’ll take it.”
A new boarding pass in her hand, she thanked the women, who assured her that they would relay her message to Daniel—that she could not go with him—in their own unique way. “It’ll be real good,” the women said. “He’ll be crushed.”
Annie unwound the electrical tape on her hand and tossed it into the trash, flexed her fingers and found them to