ORD
"Nobody does the right thing."
-Marie, The Bourne Identity
ORD. The only reason it resides in a slightly different spot in my head is based purely on emotion; Chicago will always be the closest thing I’ll consider to be home. But an airport’s an airport, whether it’s a giant international hub like ORD or LHR or LAX or SFO or some tiny domestic airport in the Azores with a dirt runway. The anticipation of recirculated air and oppressive mental dulling often leads me to anticipatory altitude headaches.
Just before I step out of the transport and onto the cold international departures walkway I grab a bottle of water from the console and use it to pop a pair of liquigels.
The only ace up my sleeve is abusing privilege. This works especially well at ORD since the facilitators of abuse are local. After securing our boarding passes, I lead Emily to a plain white door off to the right of where the TSA drones are performing their absolute best security theater. Oscar worthy, really.
I open the door and step into a glorified closet really. The CFL bulbs are overexposing a room hardly large enough to fit Emily and I plus our carry-on luggage and one additional man; tall and generally imposing, efficient hair, eyes that pierce in our direction… though I can see the tiniest hint of a sparkle when he and I lock eyes. It’s Loch, wearing a pair of crisply creased slacks and a dark blue, almost black, polo, the company’s logo ironically emblazoned just above a chest pocket. When I used to work there such things were considered superfluous. Maybe it was a joke.
Loch nods at both of us. He knows Emily, though that’s a whole saga unto itself. She and I both know better than to bother with greetings and handshake exchanges. He flips out a keycard and slides it through a reader next to the only other door in the room and keys in a PIN. The door audibly unlocks, and we follow Loch through.
The next room is just as overexposed, and I hope to God that the lighting sacrifices we make really do make a difference in the global war against environmental ruin. It’s much bigger though. In fact it’s a regular office: a couple of desks with plenty of the usual office shit, and a one way window looking out onto the security floor. Loch leads us to one of the desks, where a balding, bored man looks up and asks for our IDs and boarding passes. He, like Loch, is also wearing a polo, though this one is white, wrinkled, and has what I suspect are grease spots just below his collar. He mindlessly types some stuff into a computer, looks at our paperwork, gives us a once over, then hands everything back. He stands up and tells us to put our luggage on a small scanning machine in the office, runs it through, then gives us a wanding that ends just about as quick as I could probably go through one of the automatic machines. “OK,” he says, walking back to his desk and barely giving us a look.
Loch leads us to the back of the office and opens a door. “Have a good time,” he says curtly, then secures the door after us.
We walk down a short featureless hallway. It’s overexposed as well, and what must’ve been a new white paint job is refracting off the linoleum; the CFL-thrown light makes me feel like I’m walking through a cloud. The only color in the hallway is Em, me, our luggage, and a sign on the door at the end of the hallway, which, upon reaching it, reads “MAKE SURE DOOR CLOSES BEHIND YOU.” I push it open, and we find ourselves in the main wing of the international terminal. The door swings shut and clicks.
We start walking to our gate, and I see Em turn around, looking at a camera positioned just over the door. She waves, then turns her attention back forward. “Remember when everyone swore you were some kind of government spook?” she says without turning her head.
“It’s an easy mistake to make,” I say. “But I would never work for the government.”
“No,” she says. “Just people that are post-government.”
“Is that the roughly equivalent to post-modern?”
“A post-modern agent,” she says. “You.”
“Just logistics and statistical analysis.”
“Right.”
We walked to our gate and waited.