I am lying on my couch reading. The dog lies on her little floor bed and the cat is – is always – perched above me on the teetering middle couch cushion. She is always in danger of tumbling over the cushion and plopping unwittingly upon my midsection. This has happened before. I wouldn’t care, but she has razorblades attached to her fingertips, little spatial understanding when it comes to using them to stop her falls, and I am perhaps overly fond of parts of my midsection.
It’s pouring outside, so the dog is not comfortable. But then, neither am I, since it is 3:55 am. Along with the thunder and unending patter of rain comes the sound of a skidding tires and large crunch. All three of us look up.
My flight back to Prague was a bit strange this year. My flights (almost) invariably leave from Philadelphia or New York in the early evening – 6 or 7 pm. I get into wherever – Heathrow, Charles DeGaulle, or some other place conceived of by Satan – at 6 or 7 am. My connecting flight to Prague is usually 90–120 minutes after that. All told, I usually leave my parents’ house in Langhorne at about 3 pm, worry about my connecting flight for the entire trip over the Atlantic, and then walk into my door in Prague, sweaty, sticky, in need of a toilet and a stiff drink (but not in that order) the next day at 2 pm or so. If you were bored enough to add it up, it would be about a 14-hour travel day. Not that bad considering.
This year, however, my flight from Philadelphia was at 10 pm, which threw things off on its own. Making matters worse, I had a 7.5-hour layover in Heathrow. For one thing, I knew this meant my flight from Philadelphia would be – if not perfectly on time – then early. Primarily, though, it meant that I would be sitting for several hours in an airport as the starting volleys of jetlag made my day like the end of a bad acid trip.
I was right on the first count. The captain, with his oh so comforting slightly southern drawl, informed us of this lucky turn at around 8:30 am the following morning.
‘Good morning, folks. Well, I’m happy to report that we caught a nice tailwind over the Atlantic, there’s unusually little air traffic over Heathrow, and we’ll be coming in for our landing about fifteen minutes early.
People did silent cheers. I assumed that these people were either getting an early start on their day in London or they had a little more breathing room to catch their connecting flight. Either way, I hated them all. Our lucky and easy passage in a 100-ton metal death tube only meant my layover went from 7.5 hours to 7.75 hours. We landed on butter and I groaned.
Being stuck in an airport for hours in the morning sucks if you’re not one who has access to one of those elite clubs where they eat oranges while lying atop a bed of poor people’s dreams. I am determined to work. I get three shots of espresso and hole up in a café. In the café. I open up documents to be edited and get down to it. The caffeine does its job, but after a few hours, I find myself waking with my finger having been pressed on the space bar, a page and a half separating a writer’s beginning clause with his second clause. Then the gremlins start in. I hear things, see things out of the corner of my eye. I begin talking to them and me both. At about 2:30 I close my computer and decide to quell the demons with beer.
By the time I get on my second flight, I am delirious – too punch drunk to care that I’m in the middle seat, too actually drunk to care that I’m about to be seven miles above the world. When we land in Prague, I cry like someone who’s been a hostage for ten months. If I didn’t think customs officers would take me aside, I would kiss the ground.
As long as I live, I will never not be astounded by long-distance commercial air travel. The fact that about sixty years ago it suddenly became possible for you to start drinking in San Antonio and finish drinking in Paris should be on the front page of every newspaper on Earth every day. Jetlag is just as amazing. A whole new sickness created by this one advancement. One, for me, that has been getting worse with age. You do your best to stay awake and then you do your best to fall asleep. It’s a cosmic joke. But the worst thing about jetlag is that nobody else is jetlagged. While you meander in a world of travel-induced schizophrenia, everyone else is just fine.
The one benefit I thought my long layover might have for me is a bypass of jetlag. I got home at 9:30 pm, ate a few pieces of candy, caught up with the fam, and fell asleep like a person who’d died on the Titanic. I awoke the next morning at 7 am. ‘My God,’ I thought, ‘I’m going to be OK.’
Morgan Freeman’s voice: He was not OK.
And so, it has come to pass, that at 3:55 am on a Sunday morning, as I lay reading a horror novel surrounded by furry animals, I heard a car crash outside. I ran out onto my balcony but could only see the back of a car. The absence of screaming and/or crying suggested that all was more or less well. I went back inside, explained everything to the dog and cat, who accepted the news with a stoicism I’ve always admired.
I at least decide that this is as bad as it will get. Up at 4 am (since midnight) and ear-witnessing a car crash. That’s as bad as it will get. Right?
9:30 am. I’ve finished the horror novel and its ingestion is causing the appropriate amount of unsettling. I am now reading a book of short stories by another horror writer. (NB: John Langan. Find him if you haven’t yet.) when me, the cat, and the dog all hear another skid and crash. We all run out onto the balcony. Up at the corner, two cars sit a few meters away from each other. Lights are blinking. People are pointing. Again, no screaming, no ambulances, no major panic – other than a kid who’s clearly got an unpleasant call to make to mom and dad – so I go back inside.
But the seed has been planted: this is my fault.
I get back to my horror stories.
This does not help.
I relay my concern to Burke, who, even with her healthy levels of conspiracy theories both cosmic and governmental, things I’ve lost my mind. I don’t disagree. I’m too tired. I go back to my book. I am trying to induce sleep, but for unput I have chosen poorly. Columbo one-more-things it on TV and John Langan’s terrifying stories are freaking me out any potential stupor.
When the third car accident occurs at around 2 pm, Burke gives me a side-eye look that eliminates any joy I have of possibly being right – a thing that almost never happens. (Or, according to Burke, never happens). We four go out onto the balcony – Burke with some adrenalin, me and the cat and dog with some been-there-done-that weariness. No screaming, no crying. We breathe relief. We watch a man push his car to the shoulder of the road. We make sure no ambulances screech for us. Then we go inside.
I sit on the couch. Burke on the chair. The dog is in her floor-bed. The cat has elected for the chair across the room. She looks at me now through wary slits.
I close my book and head to bed. I have to sleep, if but for the good of those in Prague. When I awake six hours later, ready for another night of sleeplessness, the dog is next to me, the cat is sleeping on my back, Sphinx-like, keeping me in place.
