Say Cheese by Michael P. Thomas

Author:Michael P. Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wayward Ink Publishing
Published: 2015-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

LIKE ERNESTINE’S on a Sunday, by the time Shep dragged himself up to the gate for the 6:10 L.A. departure, the Houston airport was a mob scene. Where had all these people come from? His reminiscing daydream had ushered in a short, sitting-up nap, and when he awoke, he had a brief flash of irrational fear that maybe he’d slept for four months until the Thanksgiving travel rush. Announcements were louder and more frequent, suitcases seemed larger and more unwieldy, and everywhere he tried to pick a pathway there appeared another family of corn-rowed tweens in matching beaded Playa Del Carmen! tees to slalom through. When he finally arrived, back where he’d started his Odyssey at Gate 48, he glanced out the window to see if We’ll Take You There! Lines had started flying jumbo jets. But what was surely the same little MD-80 he’d been looking at all day sat at the end of the jet bridge, and he wondered where in the hell the airline was planning to put all these people. Did this plane have handles dangling from the ceiling? Was the plan to smash ‘em in like a rush hour Tokyo subway? At this point, if they’d let him stand the whole way home, he’d jump at the chance.

The gate agents were two visibly harassed women Shep was seeing for the first time. He’d been at this for almost seven hours, and clearly there’d been a shift change. His heart dipped just a bit. If his new buddy Carlos was gone for the day, so too, he figured, were his best chances of getting on a plane out of town. Where no-nonsense women were concerned, his flirting skills were drastically reduced on a good day, and the agents at this gate were making an effort to get their message across loud and clear: they were in No Mood.

Still, he stood by. He had to stand somewhere, and as the crowd grew feistier, he began to pick favorites. He’d never been to a cockfight, but he imagined a similar, if smokier, atmosphere. When the Bluetooth earpiece business jerk jostled a pregnant mom to cut in line, Shep cheered to see her five-year-old stick her tiny fearless foot under the wheels of his suitcase. Business Jerk dropped the bag, along with a few choice swear words, and Mom herded her harried brood around him. A hipster kid in a handlebar mustache stopped in his tracks to ‘absent-mindedly’ tap at his phone, infuriating the seat-hungry rabble behind him, but clearing a path for Granny, in her wheelchair, and her slow-moving husband to splash into the otherwise relentless stream.

Clearly within sight of the end of her ever-lovin’ rope, and falling fast, one of the agents hollered a series of announcements. She eventually all but screamed that she wouldn’t even entertain the wild notion of trying to accommodate standbys, whipping the mob beating on her portable counter into a proper froth. Shep distanced himself from the torch-and-pitchfork hunt he saw brewing, but he shared the mob’s frustrated disappointment.

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