Up In The Air Part 3

"I'm doing a benefit for an interim senator. The wife of the guy who died water-skiing."

"Nielsen."

"Widowhood with a purpose, that's my theme. Grays and golds for a color scheme. The food? Rare prime rib, I'm thinking. All that blood. Sacrifice and renewal. Martyrdom."

"Complicated work."

"It's textbook, actually."

This statement offends me; it's subtly disrespectful. Alex doesn't yet know my occupation, but I doubt that she takes me for a neurosurgeon or someone whose work is more challenging than hers. So if she's just a hack, an uninspired grunt, then what does that make me-this man with a standard-issue side-part, wearing a lightweight navy travel suit and synthetic-blend odor-resistant stay-up socks.

"What's textbook about it?"

"It's just so middle-cla.s.s."

"What's wrong with that?" I ask her.

She touches her gla.s.ses, pushing them higher on her bony nose. Her face is handsome, angular, distinguished, the product of generations of prudent mating by people who worked hard and skimped on frills only to give rise to a bohemian.

Her att.i.tude reminds me of my college years. My father should never have sent me to DeWitt. It was the name that impressed him, the slick brochure, the aura of humanistic broad-mindedness. In fact, the place was a haven for bratty p.r.i.c.ks-reggae-grooving, seaboard hippie kids in school to refine their contempt for people like me, who'd been raised in the wheaty void between the coasts by mothers who draped plastic on their sofas, which they called davenports. My roommate, a boy from the Washington, D.C., suburbs, smoked dope from a Native American hand-carved pipe, cashed monthly checks from his trust fund that made me gulp, and listened to "world music" on a high-end stereo worth more than one of my father's propane tankers. He called himself a feminist, of all things, and enlisted me in "a self-criticism circle." We met in our opium den of a dorm room, its windows blacked out with Indian batiks that forced me to use an alarm to wake for cla.s.ses, and when it was my turn to confess my prejudices, I announced that I had none. My roommate kicked me out. I rigged up an "independent concentration" in Comparative Commercial Culture-as close as a kid could get to going square there-and bought a nice glowing Timex and started wearing it.

"I'm sorry to hear you feel that way," I say. "If your work's beneath you, you should change professions." Maybe we're bound for conflict, after all.

Alex produces, from somewhere, a small inhaler, and mists her lungs with steroids. Her color changes. Not for the better, necessarily.

"I already have. Events are my act two. It's not the job, it's the clients who wear me out. This lady senator. A power b.i.t.c.h. She sent back my sketches of the floral arrangements with big black X's through them and a note: 'More funereal, please.' Can you believe it? Her poor old husband's beheaded by a speedboat and she sees a fund-raising gimmick."

"A Democrat?"

"You've got it. I ought to switch parties."

"They're both corrupt."

"Disempowerment machines," she says.

She's speaking my language now. Maybe she's read Sandy Pinter, or read of him. Maybe there are layers to this Alex.

"So what do you do?" she says.

I leave out my work in CTC and play up my infrequent coaching jobs, using my Reno a.s.signment to ill.u.s.trate. It's a canned presentation: the Art Krusk story. Retired army tank captain and cancer survivor opens modest Mexican buffet featuring mariachis and wife's recipes. Expands his operation with borrowed money, staying one step ahead of swelling debt load by targeting growing market: young working families. Inst.i.tutes generous compensation plan to retain top employees but overshoots, breeding widespread resentment when he scales back. Absenteeism follows. An act of sabotage: the suspected contamination of spiced ground meat with human feces. The resulting E. coli E. coli outbreak sickens dozens and tarnishes Krusk's name. Among my recommendations: a company sports league to raise morale and, on the public relations front, sponsorship of medical "scholarships" for needy local children. outbreak sickens dozens and tarnishes Krusk's name. Among my recommendations: a company sports league to raise morale and, on the public relations front, sponsorship of medical "scholarships" for needy local children.

A snack is served: bagel sandwiches of ham or turkey dressed with mayonnaise and lettuce leaves. Alex asks questions, good ones, about Krusk's case, probing the fine points of Brand Reconstruction-a term she actually uses. She's with me, frowning and nodding, synthesizing. It orders her features, draws life into her eyes.

When I'm finished, Alex tells me about herself. She hails from a town in Wyoming, as small as mine, whose claim to fame is the time a local deputy stopped Robert Redford for speeding. I can top this. Back in Polk Center we had a doctor, a friend of my father's through the Shriners lodge, who specialized in medically questionable oversize breast implants. He once performed surgery on a president's mistress. We knew this because the local Western Union handled a White House get-well telegram. The clerk made a copy and tucked it in the files of the county history museum, where my father took me to view it as a teenager, explaining that it was important for young men to see through the saintly posturings of their leaders.

"Wise parent," Alex says.

"I miss him badly."

"When did he pa.s.s away?"

"Six years ago."

I feel the syrup well up and stop myself. My memories of my happy youth confuse people-they can't tell if I'm bragging, kidding, or crazy. It's a problem for me, a curious burden: my golden Mark Twain boyhood of State Fair corn dogs and station wagon vacations to Yellowstone. So few shadows, so much, such varied, light. The autumn radiance of sunset boxcars bearing away the grain of Lewis County; the midsummer glare off the fenders of my Schwinn. And my father, the seeming source of all this light, dressed in Red Wing boots and Carhartt coveralls as he strode out at dawn to his truck, a yellow supercab, and woke the town to another day of work. His deliveries fueled the county's furnaces and heated its morning showers. He warmed the world.

But who wants to hear this? No one. I used to try. I tried in the creative writing seminar. A girl half my age said "Show, don't tell." It's pointless.

Alex peels the turkey from her bagel, folds the slice in half, in half again, wraps the whole package in lettuce, and bites down. I admire her willingness to take what's given and improve on it. It's a traveler's trait, and I ask her how much she flies. Her numbers are medium: sixty thousand miles in twelve months, all domestic, on Delta and United. Her preferred lodgings are Courtyard Marriotts, although she agrees that Homestead Suites offers an equal value and better food. She opens her wallet and out falls an accordion of clear vinyl pockets holding her VIP cards.

"You're satisifed with Avis?"

"I am," she says.

"They're stingy with the miles. I like Maestro."

"Maestro keeps its vehicles too long. If a car's over twenty-thousand, I get nervous."

"That new outfit, Colonial, isn't bad."

"No instant checkout. I like to park and go. A question," she says. "Have you ever flown with pets?"

"I don't keep pets, but I wouldn't fly with them. The climate controls in the holds are always wacky."

Alex's face sags. "My new cat's along. I couldn't bear to leave him. An Abyssinian."

"I'm sure he'll be fine. Is he tranquilized?"

"One pill. It's a human prescription. Are animal doses different?"

We descend into Elko through layered sheets of smoke. The Sierras are burning this summer, from Tahoe south, and the sun, which has just ticked over into the west, glows hot pink in my window. Bad news for Alex. Reno is even closer to the fires, though she tells me that smoke doesn't bother her, just 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 a.s.sume. 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 pa.s.s 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 rea.s.suring.

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 Newsweek at fourteen. How she settled on at fourteen. How she settled on Newsweek Newsweek I don't know. 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 the young guy at the pay phone by the pop machine wraps up his already-endless conversation about a lost mountain bike.

I make a pleading face.

"What?" the man whispers.

"Emergency."

"Me too."

Elko is not my town. I've never done well here.

Alex looks distressed when I return, her lips clamped down so hard on the inhaler that the tendons in her jaw stand up. I motion for her to stay seated and edge in front of her, eyeing my phone, which I won't have time to use, since the credit card company's voice-mail labyrinth will keep me on hold for fifteen minutes, minimum.

"How's my boy? They taking good care of him?"

"Yes, but he's sluggish."

"You saw him?"

I fib. "I did."

Alex looks unrea.s.sured. She tucks the inhaler in her seatback pocket and cinches tight her lap belt. I see now that this is a woman who's made her way in life by playing the spread between modern a.s.sertiveness and Victorian fragility.

We take off into the smoke. I'm jumpy too now. Aside from a slim civilian corridor that roughly follows I-80 toward California, the central Nevada skies are Air Force territory, a vast mock battleground for the latest jets, some so highly cla.s.sified and agile that witnesses take them for otherworldly craft. I thought I glimpsed one once: a silver arrowhead corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g straight up into the sun. Radar dishes stud the scrubby mountaintops, tracking war games and bombing runs and dogfights. America's airs.p.a.ce has its own geography, and this is its no-man's-land, ringed by virtual razor wire. If our plane went down here, they might not tell our relatives.

Alex leafs through an issue of Cosmopolitan, Cosmopolitan, which seems beneath her, though I do the same thing: read below my level while in flight. Maybe she's trying not to think about the cat, which I suspect she knows she overdosed. I imagine the creature comatose in the hold, surrounded by Styrofoam coolers of frozen trout, boxes of catalogue sweaters, tennis rackets. A plane is a van whose cargo includes people, but there's nothing special about us, we're just tonnage, less profitable, pound for pound, than first-cla.s.s mail. which seems beneath her, though I do the same thing: read below my level while in flight. Maybe she's trying not to think about the cat, which I suspect she knows she overdosed. I imagine the creature comatose in the hold, surrounded by Styrofoam coolers of frozen trout, boxes of catalogue sweaters, tennis rackets. A plane is a van whose cargo includes people, but there's nothing special about us, we're just tonnage, less profitable, pound for pound, than first-cla.s.s mail.

I take out my pencil and paper and try to work, refining my plan for Art Krusk's commercial comeback. I can't say I'm optimistic about his prospects. Healing the wound to Reno's public memory caused by the poison tacos should prove simple, but rehabilitating Art the manager won't be easy. The man's a bitter wreck. Word has it that he's connected to Reno's underworld and that he's placed a bounty on the head of the unknown saboteur. I hope not. Breaking some busboy's arm won't bring his patrons back.

Art may not make it, but he's my only coaching client, my sole relief from the dolors of CTC. Maybe the best I can do is help him fail. There are two kinds of consultants, basically: the accountants and operations specialists who minister to the body of the patient, and those who treat its mind and spirit, approaching the company as a vital being animated by conflicts and desires. Enterprises feel and think and dream, and often when they die, as Art's may die, and as my father's propane business died, they die of loneliness. Businesses may thrive on compet.i.tion, Sandor Pinter wrote in one of his books, but they need love and understanding, too.

Alex goes off to use the bathroom, leaving me with decisions to make. Every flight is a three-act play-takeoff, cruising, descent; past, present, future-which means that it's time to prepare for how we'll part, on what terms, and with what expectation. She already knows I'm staying at Homestead Suites and I know that she'll be at Harrah's on the Strip, overseeing her benefit, which starts at eight. Maybe she has a local flame, and maybe she thinks I do. She'd be right. Anita deals Pai Gow poker at Circus Circus, a twenty-nine-year-old Sarah Lawrence grad who came west with the Park Service as a stream biologist but fell in with the local color crowd. We got together, chastely, a month ago and took in a traditional Irish dance troupe at the Silver Legacy, but I don't plan to look her up again. Anita had ugly opinions about the Asians who patronize her table, and though I humored her bigotry at first, I hated myself for it afterwards. She's one of those women who take up right-wing views as a subst.i.tute for a pistol or can of Mace-in self-defense, as a warning to creeps and stalkers. It's tiresome armor. Time-consuming, too. The Kennedy family this, the World Bank that.

In truth, I don't have much time for Alex, either, a.s.suming that we have prospects, which I doubt. No, the challenge for us will be to separate without so much as a gesture toward this evening. We'll have to use the descent to drift apart and retract any curiosity we've shown. To confirm to ourselves that we worked best as strangers.

It's time to bore each other, if possible.

"California tomorrow," I say when she returns, rosy-cheeked and smelling of moist towelettes. "You know how, in magazine food surveys you read, it rivals New York now? I think that's wrong."

"How so?"

"I just think it's wrong. Where you headed after Reno?"

"Back to Salt Lake City. I just moved there."

"Are you a Mormon?"

"No. They're trying, though. I like having people coming to the door."

"They wear undergarments they claim are bulletproof. I swear it. They'll tell you stories of stopping bullets."

"I haven't heard that one yet."

"Just date a Mormon."

"I thought they didn't date."

"They date like mad. And they're ready with the engagement ring, first night."

I stop. This is getting too interesting, too personal.

"You're sure it was my my cat you saw, not someone else's? They lose them, I've heard. People's pets wind up in Greece." cat you saw, not someone else's? They lose them, I've heard. People's pets wind up in Greece."

"What's that movie called, Amazing Journey Amazing Journey? The one where the family relocates to a new town and their dog walks a thousand miles or something to find them? I think it fights a bear along the way."

"There are more than one of those movies. It's a genre."

"I know that word, but I've never quite spit it out. p.r.o.nunciation anxiety."

"I know. I'm like that with 'cigarillo.' Hard l l?"