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project runway

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Stuck at Gate D2
with delayed flight, bad weather.
Guess I’ll read a book.

• • •

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Posted: Tuesday, February 21, 2006, 8:28 pm, in Daily Haiku.
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2 Yips for “project runway”

  1. keila
    Wednesday, February 22, 2006, 12:34 am
    1

    Stuck at Gate D2
    two nights in San Francisco
    that was my christmas.

    Had a cardboard sign
    “Albany, New York or Bust!”
    Simple, ironic.

    What book did you read?
    I had Stephen King’s “The Stand”
    and a square of floor.

    we arrive at the airport and it’s cold out, and probably raining and probably windy although you know i just can’t remember… and they’re overbooked as all hell, and as we check in they’re begging us all to consider giving up our ticket in exchange for one that will leave tomorrow. and we don’t. but someone does, because they start to bother us about something else… there’s too much luggage in the hold. will we please carry on our smaller items of checked baggage? and so we do, we take the little suitcase we borrowed from my mother, the one that’s small and boxy and full of dirty clothes (remember the dirty clothes bit, kiddies, it’ll matter in the end) and eventually everyone’s got their small bags in their laps and then they’re asking us to check our other luggage on the /next/ flight (in exchange for $100 off our next flight with united [just ask me if i’ll ever fly united ever again]). and then we go. we get on the plane and it takes off and tom’s scared but we go, and we arrive safely in san francisco.

    forty five minutes late.

    and so we run, we run hard. the heel of my boot starts coming loose and my foot is still blistered from those damned red-star shoes but we run, and tom wrenches his back, but we run hard and when we get to the checkin they let us through, and when we get to the gate they’re still boarding but THEY HAVE GIVEN AWAY OUR TICKETS. why? because they’re overbooked. because they’re pawns on a giant corporate chessboard whose goal is to get a financial stranglehold on the world and finally checkmate human kindness and christmas togetherness and triumph over decency and have a victory of pure profit.

    and so they put us on standby for the next flight, the redeye, the last one heading east that night.
    and it’s full, and we don’t get on, and i cry on tom’s shoulder. and we go to the usairways counter and they tell us they can do nothing until tomorrow, when we can be on standby for the first flight. and tom has more questions and he goes back to the counter and they tell him “sorry, we’re closed. come back tomorrow at 5 a.m.” and simply turn around and walk away. i never saw someone get hung up on in person before.

    and we sleep on the floor. not really sleep, we have fast periods of waking and resting interrupted by “YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. THIS IS A SECURITY ADVISORY….” etc. i get four hours of rest, maybe. tom gets none that first night, i think. sometime around midnight i get a magic marker and a piece of cardboard tom has brought me and i make a huge sign which reads “ALBANY, NY OR BUST” and i prop it up on my stuff as i sleep and i look like a bum buried under tom’s trench coat and i don’t sleep well and at some point tom brings me an omlette and i eat it and he wakes me up at 3:45 and it’s time to get in line at the ticket counter because the vultures have arrived, the people who want to buy tickets, or the other people who have gotten shafted and want to fly standby so they can get where they were supposed to get to long ago… and we wait in line, and they put us on the standby list and we are on standby, hovering around the counter as every flight leaves hoping for the scraps of rotting flesh that would have been someone else’s missed-out-on seat but every flight is solid full, and when they’re not, someone else gets on. someone else who isn’t us. partway through the day we begin to form a club with the other standby-ers and we wander the desert together for forty days and forty nights, and we know that if some of us go and some will stay it will be awful and sad and gutwrenching and the leavers will leave and the stayers will wish them luck. and we’re assured that we’ll be the next to go, because our tickets are “higher priority” than the others’s… the old fat couple seems to have worked for the airline and is using employee tickets, and they know how such things work. they say we will go first, ahead of them and ahead of the old black woman with the beautiful accent whose back is hurt so she can barely lift her own carry-on and the other fat couple (the wife is cheerful, despite having to wheel around the airport in a wheelchair) and ahead of violindude.

    violindude.

    sometime before the redeye he busts out his violin and i bust out my rusty alto voice and we sing christmas carols and people clap. and i know that if i get a seat and he doesn’t, i’ll always remember him. and i know that if he gets a seat and i do not, i’ll be angry and sad and i’ll flash him a thumbs up and i’ll always remember him.

    and then we’re at the gate of the LAST redeye, and we sing and he plays and i sing and so many people join in and just for a few minutes it IS joy to the world. it’s joy to a murky, rainy world in which no one has any sympathy and you can miss one flight and spend the rest of your life in an airport paying $10.00 for a plate of chow mein.

    and they let him on the redeye. he boards the plane, we see him. and the fat older man who has assured us that his ticket and violindude’s ticket are lower priority than mine and tom’s… he comes walking up and he’s brusqe and rude and grabs his confused wife by the arm and they walk away and we never see them again… except that violindude comes back off the plane and says “turns out their tickets were higher priority than mine”. and that’s it, we’ve missed the last flight out of SFO. and i cry on tom’s shoulder. and then…

    sherry jackson, i will always, always, ALWAYS love you. sherry jackson figures out that if we give her $300 more, she can get us first-class seats on the next flight out, which isn’t until 7:00 in the morning. and i bust out my visa platinum like a rectangular bullet and we’re IN. and violindude and the old fragile black lady go off to pay phones to let their families know they’re still stranded and tom and i go off to let our families know that we’re still stranded but only for a while and i cry because we got seats on the plane but when the next morning comes and violindude is still trying to get on the plane i walk on. i cry, but i walk past him and board and he sits there at the gate holding tickets and a violin…

    and i look for him as the other passengers board and he doesn’t get on.

  2. Wade
    Monday, February 27, 2006, 10:17 pm
    2

    You win for longest and saddest story in response to a haiku. Good thing I didn’t write a sonnet or ode to inclement weather.

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