Page 7 of Backslide
Sabrina
Fine. And yes. Of course I’m on the Noah Sucks Ass team.
Cara
Oooh. I like that. The NSA!
Nellie
That acronym might be taken.
But Sabrina is not done:
Sabrina
But you know, Nellie, it might help if you finally told us WHY we hate him. Aside from the fact that he’s an entitled jock who once took your maidenhood.
I gag while speed-typing:
Nellie
Maidenhood? I think I just threw up in my mouth.
Sabrina
Better than in a water bottle.
I can practically see Sabrina shrug, all attitude. Her black lob grazing her shoulders.
Surely to defuse any tension, Cara types:
Cara
I bet you’re really wishing Alfie was here, Nellie. I’m so sorry he couldn’t come.
I give her message a thumbs-up. It’s all I can muster in answer.
Nellie
Uh, oh. Gotta go! Bags are coming. Bags, bags, bags!
The bags are not coming. In fact, some of my fellow travelers have given up, sinking down to the floor against enormous blue cement pillars as they wait. Like they might live here now.
I sigh with resignation. In truth, I am not sad Alfie is absent, even if he would have served as a convenient buffer. But I don’t want to get into that with my friends. Right now, he would be complaining about something—the pathetic snack selection on the plane, the luggage delay, the fact that people on the West Coast are not from the East Coast.
Not that some of those things aren’t annoying, but sometimes it’s better to accept your circumstances and make the best of things rather than torture the people around you. Suffer in silence. Or go silent so others don’t have to suffer through your bullshit.
Griping doesn’t make adversitymoretolerable.
It isn’t until the luggage starts dropping down from that trapdoor in the sky and rotating around the carousel that I do sort of wish he was here, for manual labor’s sake. The airline—in its infinite wisdom—has decided to combine bags from two flights willy-nilly, one from New York City and one from Portland, Oregon. The carousel is a full-on culture war in the making. New Yorkers elbow their way up to grab their belongings, while Oregonians shoot themhorrified looks. As a stout woman in a Brooklyn’s Finest T-shirt pushes aggressively to the front, a young skater dude nearby mumbles “Chill” under his breath.
She whips around. “Youfucking CHILL!” she snaps, her finger in his face. His eyes bulge.
That’s when I spot my suitcase.Hallelujah!
It is giant. It is green. In fact, a while back, Alfie nicknamed it the Jolly Green Giant during a semi-joking rant about my overpacking habit. And it stuck.
An expert in crowd weaving, I work my way to the front of the group, a bit ahead of the bag, my shins braced against the metal frame for leverage. My suitcase is behind some other luggage in a kind of de facto second row, though. So, as it nears, I have to lunge toward it. Only Brooklyn’s Finest thinks I’m trying to cut in front of her and she boxes me out, so by the time I grab on to my bag’s handle, it’s for dear life. It’s too heavy and too far away to yank from its position, but I will not let go.
