Four Years Later

This place never sleeps.

The baggage claim is a deafening, fragrant milieu of sights and sounds, mainly those relating to people in a hurry. They stride quickly across the white tiles under the bright lights, eager to be away from the body odor and tingling sense of claustrophobia that lingers with them after the interminable wait to disembark a plane.

Among them, two figures are noticeably more bedraggled than the rest. The two young women don’t look like much at the moment: a slim, Black girl with glorious, but frizzy hair and a slightly shorter, slightly rounder blonde with rosy cheeks and a sullen expression.

Meri wears a long, fashionable top over leggings and bold boots, a stark contrast to Colby’s messy hair, pajama bottoms, and Naruto hoodie.

They’re holding hands, but they aren’t paying any attention to each other. Or to anything. Blearily, they peer around at the chaos, frozen by the magnitude of it.

Meri wakes up first, rubbing her eyes and squinting at the time.

“This was a bad idea,” she says, rubbing harder. The sandy feeling won’t go away. “We should’ve driven.”

“We don’t have a working car,” Colby notes.

“Right. We need coffee.”

“I don’t want coffee. I want to pee,” Colby says, looking around for a bathroom.

“Why didn’t you go on the plane?”

“Ew. Who does that?”

Meri looks at her fiancé in puzzlement. Who does that? More like who doesn’t do that? Their bags come around: Meri’s plain, black suitcase and Colby’s zebra stripe one with a flamboyant Hello Kitty luggage tag.

Yawning, they stumble along, Colby puling Meri out of the way as Meri taps away at her phone to get them a cab.

“What is taking so long?” Colby asks as they ride an escalator up.

Before Meri can answer, they reach the top and the view. The interior of LaGuardia sprawls out in front of them in all its glory. Up here, it smells like Starbucks, not humans.

“Oh, thank you Lord,” Meri says, looking up from her phone. She sniffs the air like a puppy and unconsciously begins to drag her suitcase toward the nearest coffee place. Colby knows better than to fight and stands stoically beside her in line. “Cabs are hard to get.”

“Cabs? Get an Uber,” Colby says.

“No. I want a cab. A real cab. A yellow one,” Meri says stubbornly.

“Oh my God.”

“Sure you don’t want to freshen up a little?” Meri asks.

“You’re lucky I’m even here,” Colby tells her grumpily.

Meri slips her arm around Colby and leans over to plant a kiss on her cheek.

“I’m very lucky,” she says.

“Fuck off.”

“Love you too, baby.”

Coffees in hand, and with pastries in little paper bags, they step out into the warm air. It’s still dark. The city glows, headlights blind, and distant car horns wail. People push past on the sidewalk. Having a cab actually find them in all this will be impossible. Meri starts looking for one that she can flag down.

It’s New York City, it’s just past four in the morning, and those dark clouds gathering up above look downright scary.

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