[Brigit's Flame] Stolen Moments
This week's brigits_flame topic is there it goes.
This is a two perspective story fragment, mostly fiction but with some smattering of inspiration from my recent vacation to California.
Stolen Moments
Alex
"There it goes. Again." Alex murmured to himself, watching through the giant plate glass windows at gate B45, as Anna's plane taxied away from the gate.
He stood and gazed out at the gray, overcast day, watching until he saw the plane lift from the runway and disappear into the sky before he turned and extended the handle of his own rolling carry-on bag. Alex's plane wasn't due to take off from gate C54 for another hour and a half, but he and Anna had so little time together that he was unwilling to spend any of the precious, available moments away from her. Anna had a long flight tonight, over 6 hours, but she had been just as loathe to leave as Alex and hadn't even taken the time to have dinner before her flight, lest she lose too much time. She had told Alex that she'd just get whatever meal they were offering, even though he knew she generally detested airline food. Alex had a much shorter flight ahead of him, just under 90 minutes, so unless he wanted to try to find something besides grease-ball fast food on the other end of it, he had better find something now.
"Ugh, airport prices for nothing more than I could get anywhere else." Alex muttered aloud to no one in particular. "They have us by the short hairs here, and they know it."
"I'm sorry, sir, what did you say?" The Hispanic woman behind the counter looked confused, wondering if she had missed Alex's order.
"Oh, uh, nothing. Just a cheeseburger, hold the onions, and a 20 oz soda please." Alex covered quickly. He had the bad habit of talking aloud to himself because he was so seldom around other conscious, coherent individuals, and the silence would prey on his mind if he didn't hear someone's voice occasionally.
"Sure, sure. That will be $10.24 please." The woman smiled faintly as she tapped the order into the computer. When Alex handed her his credit card, she swiped it without bothering to glance at more than the expiration date and handed it back without a word.
Alex sighed silently and put the card back into his wallet. It took almost 10 minutes for his order to be ready, during which time he stared out into the wide expanse of the wing of the airport. The banks of television screens that displayed current flight arrival/departure times and gates, the gate check-in counters and rows of chairs for waiting, the motorized walkways that ran down the center of the hallway in either direction, the flashy poster-sized ads that lined the walls - Alex's eyes slid over each piece, not really seeing them. He spent so much time in airports these days that the scenery just faded into the background now.
"Here you go, sir, enjoy your flight." The woman behind the counter set a tray of food down and turned away before she finished speaking.
Alex sniffed and sighed again, not really hungry. Then again, he never was when it came time to leave Anna again. They had such different careers, and they both traveled more than 75% of the time. Connected smartphones, unlimited data plans, and as many stolen weekends together as they could manage were the best they could do for each other right now.
Alex worked as a nurse consultant, helping companies solve employee absenteeism complaints. Most of his time was spent going over flies and physician reports with a few meetings with management tacked onto the end. A week, maybe up to 3 or 4 in one place if he was lucky, and he was off to another assignment - this time he was headed to Chapel Hill. Anna worked for a major IT security company, traveling even more often than Alex to work at a variety of sites and make sure that their systems were in compliance with company policies and regulations. Alex did not pretend to fully understand the reasons behind Anna's work, since it seemed to him that once a location was brought in line that it shouldn't require Anna's specialized knowledge to keep it there - but he was glad she had work that fulfilled her and did not leave her stuck somewhere while Alex traveled. Tonight she was on her way west, going up to their office in Seattle for the third time in two months.
Alex manfully swallowed at least half of the food he had ordered before dumping the rest in the garbage as he grabbed his carry-on and walked briskly toward the concourse his gate was on. The hall was mostly deserted, late in the evening as it was. A few janitorial staff here or there, the occasional business traveler, or flight crew member speed-walking toward their goal were all the people Alex saw as he walked. It was empty enough that Alex didn't bother to stop himself when he found that he was talking to himself out loud again.
"Sometimes... sometimes I think these long visits are worse on us both. We just start to get used to waking up next to each other in the morning, seeing her pink Hello Kitty toothbrush in the bathroom next to my shaving kit, or my black clogs next to her flats by the door, and then it's gone again." Anna had been working out of the Philadelphia office for close to two weeks, and in a rare stroke of serendipity an assignment option had come up for Drexel University for Alex. He hadn't even told Anna that it was a possibility until he got the confirmation of the assignment, and then he just sent her a text picture of the confirmation email with the location and dates. It took her less than 3 minutes to call him back, joy coloring her voice as she asked how early he could get into Philadelphia. In the end it had been almost 10 days they had gotten to spend together, even managing to sleep in the same bed together every night. Alex could have gotten a room of his own on his company's account, but really, why would he?
"Passengers on US Airways flight 3167 with service from Philadelphia to Raleigh, North Carolina, please come to gate C54. We will begin preboarding our first class passengers and those who need special assistance in 20 minutes. Please have your boarding pass out and ready for the flight attendant." A pleasant female voice came through the slightly crackly speakers overhead. Alex jerked a bit, startled. He had been so caught up in his own thoughts he hadn't been paying attention to the time, or where on the concourse he was. A quick glance around revealed he wasn't all that far off the mark, just about 20 gates down the line. He picked up his speed, arriving at his gate with 10 minutes to spare, and smiled a bit as he arrived and realized the flight was not going to be crowded. When the flight attendant called his boarding group, Alex was at the head of the line, moving mechanically through the motions of handing over the slip of paper, smiling as the flight attendant handed it back, walking down the long, extendable hallway to the plane, smiling at the two attendants near the door, and finding his seat. Only after he slumped into his window seat did Alex let the facade fall.
Anna's plane had left almost 2 hours earlier, but until Alex boarded his own plane he didn't feel quite alone again. He hated this feeling - like some part of himself was somewhere over Chicago by now, rather than firmly attached to the rest of him. He loved his job, and he loved getting to see new people and places, but being away from her was becoming increasingly difficult for Alex - and for Anna too, he liked to think. He could not imagine giving up his work just now, and he would never ask Anna to do the same, but he was starting to see a point in the future when they would both rather be together in one place, pursuing the same dreams, instead of all over the country, chasing their individual ones.
Alex ignored the preflight safety instructions in favor of checking his email one last time from his phone. He knew it was a pointless gesture - Anna could not possibly have sent him anything, she was certainly still in the air - but he couldn't help himself. Any sweet words from her would warm his heart and salve the ache of separation at least a little. As the plane began to taxi away from the gate, Alex sent a quick 8 word message: I miss you already. Love you so much. He flipped the phone off, snapped the case shut, and closed his eyes to remember her face, her startling green eyes, her mischievous smile, and the slightly breathy quality of her deep laugh. Alex smiled faintly as the plane disappeared into the sky.
Anna
"And there it goes." Anna's voice was barely above a whisper, but it cracked as she spoke.
"What, dear?" An elderly woman in the next seat turned to look at Anna, her age-spot covered hand shaking slightly as she raised it in question.
"Nothing, sorry to bother you." Anna's face closed up, all emotion slid back behind the carefully cultivated walls of her professional poker face. The woman nodded and went back to her magazine.
Anna was having a hard enough time leaving Alex behind again, she didn't think she could keep up her professional face if she actually tried to interact with another person. They weren't even off the runway yet, and Anna wanted to cry. She debated the wisdom of ordering something stronger than her usual Diet Coke, but couldn't decide if that would blunt the ache in her chest or make her more likely to break down in this semi-public environment.
Engrossed in her thoughts and staring at some invisible speck on the wall, Anna didn't even notice when the plane shuddered and lifted from the pavement and climbed into the graying light of evening. It wasn't until the old woman beside her shifted restlessly and started digging out her knitting needles that Anna looked around again and realized they were nearly at cruising altitude.
The flight attendant made the trip up and down the aisle, asking each passenger if they wanted something for dinner, something to drink, a pillow, a blanket, etc. Anna ordered whatever the main entree for the flight was, as well as a Jack & Coke to drink. Fuck the risk of breaking down, she needed something to numb this cold ache that was practically making her shiver physically.
Anna stared out the window into the mostly dark sky, with just the faintest line of sunset horizontally bisecting the horizon. She loved Alex more than she could tell him, and it hurt terribly to be away from him. But they both had careers - lucrative, successful, with wide open paths of advancement before them both. The only problem was that finding each other in the same geographic location practically took an act of God to accomplish. A couple weekends a month, if they were lucky, or a weekend every other month if they weren't, and they had to be satisfied with that. Since neither Anna nor Alex were ready or willing to give up what they had worked so hard for, they were stuck. Anna tried not to think about it too much, because she just knew that if she did she would come to conclusions that were more painful than the separation.
Anna had spent years dating, even going so far as to get married once, but nothing ever satisfied her. She just was not cut out for the wife life; she had too many goals, too many dreams, and turning over that much of herself to another person made her feel like nothing so much as cherished pet in a cage. When she finally found her feet, she started running and had yet to stop. Anna went back to school, finding a new career in which she could excel, and threw herself into it with single-minded determination. It was pure, random chance that she had even met Alex - he was working a consultant assignment with one of the satellite offices of her company, and she happened to be working on the network there. He was charming and witty, and he respected her boundaries in a way she had never seen a man do before. They had dinner together every night for a week while they were both working their assignments, and then ran up huge cellphone bills with texting and talking over the next month. He flew out to see her on a long holiday weekend the following month, and she reciprocated at the next opportunity.
It had been almost 2 years in this holding pattern now. Anna still had an apartment in northern California, and Alex was still based out of Virginia, but they were both home so seldom that it hardly seemed to matter. It frightened her, but Anna had lately found herself thinking of "home" as any place that Alex was, rather than as her apartment that never seemed more familiar to her than a hotel room. It scared her because Anna had no frame of reference for that kind of intertwining of lives other than that in which one person gives up everything they have, want, and dream about to make sure the other one has the chance to succeed.
"I've worked too hard..." Anna mouthed the words to the darkness out her window. "I love him so much, but I don't know what comes next." Whether from the fatigue, the hour, the alcohol, or all three, Anna could not stop a few tears that slipped from beneath her lower eyelashes. She sighed shakily and closed her eyes to give the appearance of sleep to her seat-mate and the passing flight attendants, and slowed her breathing down, focusing on each individual breath. When she felt reasonably calm again, Anna began her nightly ritual of reconstructing Alex's face in her mind. His soft, dark hair, his crystal blue eyes, the single dimple on the right side of his face, and the faint scar along the left side of his jawline from when he was still working as a nurse on the floor and caught the wrong end of an instrument a confused patient had gotten a hold of.
Anna's soft smile crossed her face as she drifted into a sweet dream of a time and place where she and Alex could be together always, but still hold onto their individual dreams.
This is a two perspective story fragment, mostly fiction but with some smattering of inspiration from my recent vacation to California.
Stolen Moments
Alex
"There it goes. Again." Alex murmured to himself, watching through the giant plate glass windows at gate B45, as Anna's plane taxied away from the gate.
He stood and gazed out at the gray, overcast day, watching until he saw the plane lift from the runway and disappear into the sky before he turned and extended the handle of his own rolling carry-on bag. Alex's plane wasn't due to take off from gate C54 for another hour and a half, but he and Anna had so little time together that he was unwilling to spend any of the precious, available moments away from her. Anna had a long flight tonight, over 6 hours, but she had been just as loathe to leave as Alex and hadn't even taken the time to have dinner before her flight, lest she lose too much time. She had told Alex that she'd just get whatever meal they were offering, even though he knew she generally detested airline food. Alex had a much shorter flight ahead of him, just under 90 minutes, so unless he wanted to try to find something besides grease-ball fast food on the other end of it, he had better find something now.
"Ugh, airport prices for nothing more than I could get anywhere else." Alex muttered aloud to no one in particular. "They have us by the short hairs here, and they know it."
"I'm sorry, sir, what did you say?" The Hispanic woman behind the counter looked confused, wondering if she had missed Alex's order.
"Oh, uh, nothing. Just a cheeseburger, hold the onions, and a 20 oz soda please." Alex covered quickly. He had the bad habit of talking aloud to himself because he was so seldom around other conscious, coherent individuals, and the silence would prey on his mind if he didn't hear someone's voice occasionally.
"Sure, sure. That will be $10.24 please." The woman smiled faintly as she tapped the order into the computer. When Alex handed her his credit card, she swiped it without bothering to glance at more than the expiration date and handed it back without a word.
Alex sighed silently and put the card back into his wallet. It took almost 10 minutes for his order to be ready, during which time he stared out into the wide expanse of the wing of the airport. The banks of television screens that displayed current flight arrival/departure times and gates, the gate check-in counters and rows of chairs for waiting, the motorized walkways that ran down the center of the hallway in either direction, the flashy poster-sized ads that lined the walls - Alex's eyes slid over each piece, not really seeing them. He spent so much time in airports these days that the scenery just faded into the background now.
"Here you go, sir, enjoy your flight." The woman behind the counter set a tray of food down and turned away before she finished speaking.
Alex sniffed and sighed again, not really hungry. Then again, he never was when it came time to leave Anna again. They had such different careers, and they both traveled more than 75% of the time. Connected smartphones, unlimited data plans, and as many stolen weekends together as they could manage were the best they could do for each other right now.
Alex worked as a nurse consultant, helping companies solve employee absenteeism complaints. Most of his time was spent going over flies and physician reports with a few meetings with management tacked onto the end. A week, maybe up to 3 or 4 in one place if he was lucky, and he was off to another assignment - this time he was headed to Chapel Hill. Anna worked for a major IT security company, traveling even more often than Alex to work at a variety of sites and make sure that their systems were in compliance with company policies and regulations. Alex did not pretend to fully understand the reasons behind Anna's work, since it seemed to him that once a location was brought in line that it shouldn't require Anna's specialized knowledge to keep it there - but he was glad she had work that fulfilled her and did not leave her stuck somewhere while Alex traveled. Tonight she was on her way west, going up to their office in Seattle for the third time in two months.
Alex manfully swallowed at least half of the food he had ordered before dumping the rest in the garbage as he grabbed his carry-on and walked briskly toward the concourse his gate was on. The hall was mostly deserted, late in the evening as it was. A few janitorial staff here or there, the occasional business traveler, or flight crew member speed-walking toward their goal were all the people Alex saw as he walked. It was empty enough that Alex didn't bother to stop himself when he found that he was talking to himself out loud again.
"Sometimes... sometimes I think these long visits are worse on us both. We just start to get used to waking up next to each other in the morning, seeing her pink Hello Kitty toothbrush in the bathroom next to my shaving kit, or my black clogs next to her flats by the door, and then it's gone again." Anna had been working out of the Philadelphia office for close to two weeks, and in a rare stroke of serendipity an assignment option had come up for Drexel University for Alex. He hadn't even told Anna that it was a possibility until he got the confirmation of the assignment, and then he just sent her a text picture of the confirmation email with the location and dates. It took her less than 3 minutes to call him back, joy coloring her voice as she asked how early he could get into Philadelphia. In the end it had been almost 10 days they had gotten to spend together, even managing to sleep in the same bed together every night. Alex could have gotten a room of his own on his company's account, but really, why would he?
"Passengers on US Airways flight 3167 with service from Philadelphia to Raleigh, North Carolina, please come to gate C54. We will begin preboarding our first class passengers and those who need special assistance in 20 minutes. Please have your boarding pass out and ready for the flight attendant." A pleasant female voice came through the slightly crackly speakers overhead. Alex jerked a bit, startled. He had been so caught up in his own thoughts he hadn't been paying attention to the time, or where on the concourse he was. A quick glance around revealed he wasn't all that far off the mark, just about 20 gates down the line. He picked up his speed, arriving at his gate with 10 minutes to spare, and smiled a bit as he arrived and realized the flight was not going to be crowded. When the flight attendant called his boarding group, Alex was at the head of the line, moving mechanically through the motions of handing over the slip of paper, smiling as the flight attendant handed it back, walking down the long, extendable hallway to the plane, smiling at the two attendants near the door, and finding his seat. Only after he slumped into his window seat did Alex let the facade fall.
Anna's plane had left almost 2 hours earlier, but until Alex boarded his own plane he didn't feel quite alone again. He hated this feeling - like some part of himself was somewhere over Chicago by now, rather than firmly attached to the rest of him. He loved his job, and he loved getting to see new people and places, but being away from her was becoming increasingly difficult for Alex - and for Anna too, he liked to think. He could not imagine giving up his work just now, and he would never ask Anna to do the same, but he was starting to see a point in the future when they would both rather be together in one place, pursuing the same dreams, instead of all over the country, chasing their individual ones.
Alex ignored the preflight safety instructions in favor of checking his email one last time from his phone. He knew it was a pointless gesture - Anna could not possibly have sent him anything, she was certainly still in the air - but he couldn't help himself. Any sweet words from her would warm his heart and salve the ache of separation at least a little. As the plane began to taxi away from the gate, Alex sent a quick 8 word message: I miss you already. Love you so much. He flipped the phone off, snapped the case shut, and closed his eyes to remember her face, her startling green eyes, her mischievous smile, and the slightly breathy quality of her deep laugh. Alex smiled faintly as the plane disappeared into the sky.
Anna
"And there it goes." Anna's voice was barely above a whisper, but it cracked as she spoke.
"What, dear?" An elderly woman in the next seat turned to look at Anna, her age-spot covered hand shaking slightly as she raised it in question.
"Nothing, sorry to bother you." Anna's face closed up, all emotion slid back behind the carefully cultivated walls of her professional poker face. The woman nodded and went back to her magazine.
Anna was having a hard enough time leaving Alex behind again, she didn't think she could keep up her professional face if she actually tried to interact with another person. They weren't even off the runway yet, and Anna wanted to cry. She debated the wisdom of ordering something stronger than her usual Diet Coke, but couldn't decide if that would blunt the ache in her chest or make her more likely to break down in this semi-public environment.
Engrossed in her thoughts and staring at some invisible speck on the wall, Anna didn't even notice when the plane shuddered and lifted from the pavement and climbed into the graying light of evening. It wasn't until the old woman beside her shifted restlessly and started digging out her knitting needles that Anna looked around again and realized they were nearly at cruising altitude.
The flight attendant made the trip up and down the aisle, asking each passenger if they wanted something for dinner, something to drink, a pillow, a blanket, etc. Anna ordered whatever the main entree for the flight was, as well as a Jack & Coke to drink. Fuck the risk of breaking down, she needed something to numb this cold ache that was practically making her shiver physically.
Anna stared out the window into the mostly dark sky, with just the faintest line of sunset horizontally bisecting the horizon. She loved Alex more than she could tell him, and it hurt terribly to be away from him. But they both had careers - lucrative, successful, with wide open paths of advancement before them both. The only problem was that finding each other in the same geographic location practically took an act of God to accomplish. A couple weekends a month, if they were lucky, or a weekend every other month if they weren't, and they had to be satisfied with that. Since neither Anna nor Alex were ready or willing to give up what they had worked so hard for, they were stuck. Anna tried not to think about it too much, because she just knew that if she did she would come to conclusions that were more painful than the separation.
Anna had spent years dating, even going so far as to get married once, but nothing ever satisfied her. She just was not cut out for the wife life; she had too many goals, too many dreams, and turning over that much of herself to another person made her feel like nothing so much as cherished pet in a cage. When she finally found her feet, she started running and had yet to stop. Anna went back to school, finding a new career in which she could excel, and threw herself into it with single-minded determination. It was pure, random chance that she had even met Alex - he was working a consultant assignment with one of the satellite offices of her company, and she happened to be working on the network there. He was charming and witty, and he respected her boundaries in a way she had never seen a man do before. They had dinner together every night for a week while they were both working their assignments, and then ran up huge cellphone bills with texting and talking over the next month. He flew out to see her on a long holiday weekend the following month, and she reciprocated at the next opportunity.
It had been almost 2 years in this holding pattern now. Anna still had an apartment in northern California, and Alex was still based out of Virginia, but they were both home so seldom that it hardly seemed to matter. It frightened her, but Anna had lately found herself thinking of "home" as any place that Alex was, rather than as her apartment that never seemed more familiar to her than a hotel room. It scared her because Anna had no frame of reference for that kind of intertwining of lives other than that in which one person gives up everything they have, want, and dream about to make sure the other one has the chance to succeed.
"I've worked too hard..." Anna mouthed the words to the darkness out her window. "I love him so much, but I don't know what comes next." Whether from the fatigue, the hour, the alcohol, or all three, Anna could not stop a few tears that slipped from beneath her lower eyelashes. She sighed shakily and closed her eyes to give the appearance of sleep to her seat-mate and the passing flight attendants, and slowed her breathing down, focusing on each individual breath. When she felt reasonably calm again, Anna began her nightly ritual of reconstructing Alex's face in her mind. His soft, dark hair, his crystal blue eyes, the single dimple on the right side of his face, and the faint scar along the left side of his jawline from when he was still working as a nurse on the floor and caught the wrong end of an instrument a confused patient had gotten a hold of.
Anna's soft smile crossed her face as she drifted into a sweet dream of a time and place where she and Alex could be together always, but still hold onto their individual dreams.