There she was again. About half a dozen people behind him in the passport queue, snaked back around the partition. Had she noticed him? Should he try and catch her eye? He turned his eyes back to his book and shuffled forwards again, smiling at the old lady in front. They had exchanged a few words when her husband was allowed out of the longer queue to pass through the empty gateway reserved for those with new electronic passports. “Just make sure he doesn’t get on the wrong flight now,” he'd told the lady. “It’s ok, I have his tickets. He can't go anywhere,” she said.
Now he glanced back over his shoulder at her again, she was looking away.
“Maybe see you on the flight back,” she had said when the taxi dropped him off a week ago. They’d shared a cab because no buses were forthcoming. Her friend was going to take an earlier return flight, she’d said, so now she was travelling alone. He didn’t find her attractive but she’d appeared clever and chatty a week ago, she was around his age, and he’d barely conversed with anyone for a week, not properly.
He shuffled forwards again, the old lady in front was beckoned to have her passport checked, before passing through to the gate. He resigned the pretence of reading the heavy book, and waited.
For fifteen minutes he sat under a small television screen with his laptop, half watching football highlights, half checking his emails, surprised there was a free connection in the lounge next to the runway.
Realising he was still quite alone and the seats around him hadn't filled with other waiting passengers, he checked over his shoulder. Fellow passengers were already queuing for the door, staff were tearing ticket stubs and people were slowly trickling out onto exposed concrete, towards the metal vessel. Still the queue back into the lounge was bottle-necked, a mess of fifty or so people straggled back out. Seats near the line were occupied by those apparently unfussed about the choice positions aboard the aircraft. He had wanted a window seat for the return flight but this now seemed unlikely. He slumped down onto a seat and waited for the clot of people to thin out.
She was sitting on a seat backing onto his. “Oh, hello,” he said, genuinely surprised because he hadn't noticed her when he'd decided to sit. “Hi!” she smiled, though she couldn’t have escaped if she’d wanted to. She wore wooden jewellery – earrings and a necklace. He didn’t know what he thought of it. Ikea?
They exchanged the story of their week, fast-paced and generally positive. He grew giddy with freely speaking to another person, aware of speaking unnecessarily fast, blurting. He slowed and let her speak. He noticed she was reading a chunky serious book he’d also read and would comment on, if time and circumstance allowed.
They kept chatting: the holiday, areas of the island, walking, the day when it rained, tourism, travel, vehicles, motorbikes, driving. This took them through the door and out onto the runway where the plane waited. They took the rear staircase into the aircraft, had their ticket stubs checked a final time and looked for seats in the mostly full plane. There weren’t two together anywhere, even across an aisle. She took an aisle seat; he found a window seat further down with extra leg room, sandwiched between an emergency exit and an old couple.
*
The aircraft came to a halt at its destination terminal and the aisle seated passengers lumbered out first, unlatching the overhead compartments to withdraw their hand luggage. They stood waiting while the window-seated sat waiting, and the middle-seated hovered half up, half down, waiting.
He saw her standing waiting further back. They exchanged brave, tired smiles.
During the flight he’d considered giving her a business card. Her line of work wasn’t far removed from his. He had clients like her employers. He had no other ulterior motives, although if she did, would he be averse..? She was bright and interesting. He often wondered if he could convince himself to do that, compromise on physical attraction, block it out and pretend it wasn’t an issue if there wasn't any, as long as someone, one reasonable enough person liked him. If he could go through the motions because it was better than continued, protracted, maddening solitariness. Perhaps he could do it, for a while.
Finally at the aisle, he turned to collect his bulky hand luggage from the overhead locker. Just out of grasp, it was slid in his direction by a fellow passenger: the nervous looking young man who he’d almost dropped the bag on when hoisting it into the locker before take-off. He’d put an apologetic hand on his shoulder and said that he thought he’d distract him from any fear of flying. People around them had laughed. There was a warm buzz. He felt briefly liked.
Now standing in the aisle with his bag, he realised that he was about half a dozen people in front of her again. Would he stop somewhere and give her his card, mention business, 'if your employer needs..?' He paced down the aircraft, down the steps, across the new exposed concrete, into a door and on down the long connecting corridors. He felt free and fast, unshackled by too much trailing hand luggage, children, babies or companions to keep pace with. Finally he was halted by the final passport control.
It wasn’t long before she joined the same queue, snaked about half a dozen people behind. Another exchange of tossed eyebrows; this whole passport nonsense eh?
He was summoned, boredly checked and waved through.
Having no other luggage to arrive on the carousels, there was nothing stopping him from walking out and away. But he paused, waited to see if she’d enter the baggage area soon. She wasn’t that far behind, after all, only six people or so. He waited for ten more seconds, gave up and passed under the Nothing To Declare sign.
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