Read Online Up in the Air by Walter Kirn - Free Book Online

chemicals. She used to think her allergies were emotional, a product of childhood tension, she says, but now she blames them on solvents, glues, and dyes. She’d like to remain inside to get her breath back, so she asks if I’ll check on her kitten with the ground crew.
    “Want anything from the terminal? Milky Way?”
    “Have to trim down. Can’t risk it.”
    “Understood.”
    “I try to go light on the carbs when I’m out traveling.”
    “It affects the digestion, no doubt about it. Smart. With me it’s fats and oils. My scalp breaks out.”
    “Take chromium tablets.”
    “I have. I’ve tried them all.”
    A ground worker, sportily dressed in shorts and cap and looking content, for once, with his union contract, pushes a wheeled staircase against the exit. Stopping off in transit beats arriving. There’s the feeling of visiting an island, of stepping, briefly and sweetly, out of time into a scene you’ve had absolutely no hand in and have no designs on, no intentions toward. A truly neutral charge is tough to find in life, and that’s how Elko feels as I deplane: irrelevant and tranquil. A mirage.
    On the tarmac I notice a pet crate being unloaded—to give its occupant water, I assume. I approach, but the baggage handler waves me off. Restricted zone. “The cat okay?” I yell. The handler doesn’t answer, too much engine noise, but something in his face concerns me as I watch him crouch, unlatch the crate, and reach one arm inside. He flags down a coworker driving a cart and together they peer through the grating at the kitten.
    The second man stands and comes over to me. “Yours?”
    “A friend’s. Is it okay?”
    “Has it been tranquilized?”
    “Just one pill.”
    “It’s acting awfully sluggish. Make sure it gets more water first thing in Reno.”
    I pass through the cinder-block terminal, acknowledging one or two Great West employees whose faces I remember from other trips. By rotating its personnel, who pop up again and again in different cities, the airline creates a sense in flyers like me of running in place. I find this reassuring.
    I head for the gift shop. According to my HandStar, Art Krusk has two young daughters, five and nine. I scan the shelves for souvenirs and pick out two figurines of rearing mustangs. Don’t all girls love horses? Sure they do. My sisters were horse-obsessed well into their teens, when my mother cut back on their riding as a way to stimulate interest in boys. They hated her for it. My mother was a scientific parent; she’d taught third grade before she married my father. She believed in stages of development. Under her system, keyed to crucial birthdays, teddy bears disappeared when kids turned eight, replaced by clarinets or swimming lessons. She had us baptized at ten, confirmed at twelve, and bought us subscriptions to
Newsweek
at fourteen. How she settled on
Newsweek
I don’t know.
    The gift shop lady, a buzzardy old gal with nicotine fingers and casino eyes, slides my credit card through her machine. I can tell she’d rather I pay in cash so she can skim a few bucks to play the slots.
    “Refused,” she says.
    “That’s impossible.”
    She shrugs. “Want to try another one?”
    I don’t. The card is the only one that pays me miles and enters me in a contest for a new Audi. “Try it over. It’ll work this time.”
    Since my payments are current, there has to be a glitch. But maybe my payments aren’t current. I think back. The last load of mail delivered to my old address showed signs of mishandling. Two torn envelopes. Was there a credit card bill? I don’t remember. I put through a forwarding order ten days ago listing my office at ISM—I think—but as of last Friday nothing had arrived.
    “Refused again,” the woman says. She hands back the card as though it’s covered in microbes.
    I pay with cash, forsaking thirty-three miles. Worse, I left my cell phone on the plane, so I can’t call the credit card’s customer service line until