Airport

          Flight 752, departing for Los Angeles.
          It is hot in Los Angeles. Mira looks forward to it like a hot shower. The airport is dry with air-conditioning, and smells stale with the mindless anxiety of too many people. It annoys her. A tag itches her hip beneath the fragile cotton of her tank top. She shifts and hunches – it’s far too cold in the building for shorts and flip flops.
          She looks over at her family, sitting in the faux-leather banks of chairs, stuffing bursting in dirty clumps from the cushions beneath their legs. Her little brother Todd is slouched, his brow beetled in concentration, as he fiddles his way through some game on his cell phone. Her mother is casual, legs crossed, absorbed in a book Mira gave her when she was finished with it.
          When did he get those? , she wonders, looking at the gray hairs combed through coarse black ones, dominating her father’s goatee. It is dignified, but aging all the same. She hopes he doesn’t get too old. She takes a slow breath, running her fingers along the cover of the novel on her lap. She looks at her father’s narrow-rimmed reading glasses, and up again.
          Then the world skips.
          No one else is affected by the sudden jolt. The short, dark-haired man walking behind her father looks like any business man: suit crisp, shiny leather briefcase scuffed at the bottom from scraping along floors. Matching black shoes. He is handsome enough: clean-shaven, with full lips like a Classical cherub. Not particularly outstanding.
          But Mira knows him.
          Her stomach clenches. Perfect time for a flashback , she thinks, with a hysterical sort of mental giggle, but all she gets is the feeling. It is sparking from her brain stem in a primitive panic, melting into a too-hot, uncontrollable roil under her sternum before running in wild coil down to her groin – completely out of place in the coolness of the airport. She is shredding from the inside out, trying to embed herself in the musty pleather of the seat.
          The glass ceiling seems to push skyward. Her family slides rapidly away from her without looking up. She feels very small, so isolated it’s as if she’ll drop away and leave her body sitting up there, book on it’s lap. Alone.
          He’ll know me , her brain is whispering, hoarse and terrified, he’ll know me . The insistent hushing cry seems to echo in the vaults of her skull.
          The moment comes. Her mouth is dry and cracking open, she feels like swooning: a broken damsel in frantic, stupid distress. The world is tumbling away from her in a cascade of perfectly normal colors and sound bytes, shrinking back to leave her utterly vulnerable –
          And he looks at her.
          His eyes slide across Mira’s face, slick as oil. His gaze is alive, hazel, aware.
          In the next moment, he is gone. Walking down the terminal. No recognition had clicked open in his gaze. There were no double takes, no backwards glances.
          He didn’t know remember.
          He didn’t know her.

           Nausea runs up from her stomach in a thread of acid. It burns her nose, makes her eyes water. She is shocked. She is broken all over again. Slowly, to master her dizziness, she drops her head against her elbow and curls her slender body into the seat. The metal armrest bites into her hip. She doesn’t cry. Instead, she stares, transfixed, at a small freckle on the inside of her arm.