Spitball Army

(continued from Reunion Journal: 31 July 2008, part 2)

The Las Vegas Airport terminal is busy.  Not overwhelmingly so, but steady streams of travelers are moving in all directions along the walkways.  There is no airline representative at our gate but, by simply reading the Arrival/Departure screens banked against the wall, we determine the gate location of our connecting flight.  Then, we enter the human flow.

I am hungry, and have my eye out for some place to grab a quick bite.  We turn a corner and I spy a vending cart with a basket of bananas, the peels just beginning to turn brown (thus, at the absolutely perfect point of ripeness).  I slide out of the flow and purchase one.  With the banana slipped safely into a pouch in my backpack, I get moving again.

Diane and Walter are right there alongside me.  We encounter a smattering of doltish travelers, trying to fight their way through our group by shoving us, “ooph”ing, and kicking the bags that we are toting.  Three to four feet away, to our left, the human flow that is going in their desired direction is neither crowded or disturbed.  Walter seems agitated.  I most certainly am.

Out of nowhere, a man appears, walking in a straight line toward us, directly down the middle of the terminal walkway.  There is nothing remarkable about him except that he is glaring straight ahead, seeming to have no peripheral vision, and oblivious to the oncoming human traffic.  A man in a gray suit is walking by his side.  I observe, as we approach him, that the crowd parts for him quite naturally.  Then, when he gets closer to us, I see why this might be so.  He is wearing a metal grate over his face, similar to a baseball catcher’s mask.  I can’t help thinking of Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, being transported across the airport tarmac on a cargo dolly.  The man brushes my left arm, marching right between Diane and me.  Diane turns her head and looks in my direction.  The encounter has made an impression on her: her eyes are wide…like saucers.

We reach our destination, and find that we have about half an hour before we can board the plane.  Walter leans over and says something in Diane’s ear.  She nods.  He places his bag against the wall next to where we are standing and leaves us.  As fortune would have it, there is an electrical outlet right at my feet.  I open up my laptop case and begin re-charging the computer.

After about fifteen minutes, Walter returns with news that he has won ten dollars in a slot machine.  “Ten dollars?” Diane asks excitedly.  “Let’s go buy something to eat with it!”  Walter tells her that he bought a beer with his winnings.  The beer, of course, is gone.  Diane directs Walter’s eyes to their bags and heads off on her own to find some nourishment.

The Las Vegas airport – the Las Vegas McCarran International Airport – has a distinctive feature that I have never seen before in an aviation terminal: slot machines.  Lining the walls of the corridors are banks of gambling machines, rows and rows of token-fed boxes lit up and flashing with reds, whites, yellows and greens, pulsing with an electric glow that pulls the eye and demands to be fed.  Where there is an area of open real estate that isn’t taken by a gift shop or restaurant or information booth or bar, there are more slot machines.  They click and they whirr and they ding and, I would imagine, become more and more occupied as the day grows on and the resistance of travelers is worn down by long waits and alcohol consumption.  On this day, the machines seem to be making noises for their own benefit, and are largely ignored.  It is still rather early in the day.  Some of the stools permanently attached to the machines are getting use as seating for the adjacent waiting areas.

(photo: spitballarmy.com)

I succeed in avoiding a political discussion with Walter by engaging the elderly couple seated next to me in conversation.  They are headed for a two-week vacation in San Diego and have scheduled their entire stay at the Hotel del Coronado.  I ask them, somewhat inappropriately but jokingly, if they are spending their life’s savings on accommodations.  They reply by nodding in the affirmative.  She smiles, but neither of them laugh.  The husband speaks for both of them and tells me that they had dreamed of staying on Coronado Island for their honeymoon decades ago, and are only now getting the chance to go.  I notice that his wife is using a walker.

Diane returns to the fold, having purchased an apple.  We eat our snacks: my banana, her apple.  Eventually, we are notified that it is time to board the plane to San Diego.  I unplug my laptop from the wall, pack it up, and join my fellow passengers for the last leg of the trip.