Airport’s more like a bus station with a bar inside. Big place, high ceilings, big windows looking out over the runway that could be a parking lot. Bar’s bigger than the rest of the airport. Might make more sense to say it’s a bar with an airport attached. Big enough to hold everyone who’s supposed to be on the plane no problem. Don’t know how long it will be, just have to let the storm blow through. Valley’s only ever hot in the summer, storm is a surprise. Storm is unpredictable. Everyone’s willing to wait it out, take their chances. Everyone’s going to Vegas. Call it a warm up, playing the odds. Anyone at the airport is only going to Vegas. Flights only go from here to Vegas and back. I’m going to Vegas and so is the man sitting at the bar next to me. He says I remind him of his dead daughter and that’s where I should walk away but I don’t. Tell him he reminds me of my dead dad and that’s where he should walk away but he doesn’t.
Rain’s bright blue green, glows like a neon light. Streaks the windows, bunch of DayGlo comets on the glass. Someone says bioluminescence. Someone says end of the world. Someone says what’s bioluminescence and they tell her it means it glows and she asks why didn’t you just say that, why you gotta use words that no one understands. Someone says people glow and no one buys that, doesn’t matter if it’s true if they can’t see it.
Bottles lined up along the wall, all these options. Too many maybe, how could anybody choose from all that. Dad would get a Paloma I tell him. Chrissy would get a Hemingway daiquiri. Can’t have that because of the grapefruit. He can’t have a Paloma. Same reason. Settle on a margarita and a regular daiquiri.
How do you make that the bartender asks. A daiquiri or a margarita? Both she says. Flips through a beat up copy of the Savoy and then brings us two glasses that look identical. Mine’s a gin and tonic. So’s his.
Outside the rain is glowing brighter. Maybe there’s just more of it. Coming down harder. Raining buckets. Puddles on the runway now. Even the plane is glowing.
No matter what we ask for the bartender gives us gin and tonics. We take turns making up drinks. Gimmie a snakebite sling. Gimmie a trapeze squeeze with a twist. Gimmie a sunshine and brambles, shaken. Gin and tonics every time. Heavy on the gin.
Says he thinks losing his daughter has made him colder. Always waiting for the bad thing to happen now. Tell him I feel the opposite. Soft. Everything makes me cry. Not everything but a lot. Old people. Hmm, he says. Drinks his drink. On a plane you’re supposed to put on your own mask before you help anyone else. Rules aren’t so clear out here.
Only takes a couple inches to float a car, same for planes turns out. The water has it now, drags it down the runway. Not fast enough to take off, can’t get in the air without us. Can only crawl. Can only be stuck on the ground same way we are.
Gets to be hard to see out the windows, water coming down in sheets. Hard to see inside, too bright. People are shielding their eyes. People are hiding under tables. Old couple crouches together holding each other laughing, like it’s some big game. Course it makes me cry. We have sunglasses, dead daughter like dead father. Stay at the bar. Order trout droughts and drink our gin and tonics. They glow. It’s the tonic that does that he says. Ask him why he’s going to Vegas and he says he’s not. He’s going home.
Clouds pass but the puddles keep glowing, plane keeps crawling down the runway like it doesn’t need us, like it knows where it’s going, can get there no problem. Goodbye it’s saying as it slides into the field where the asphalt ends. Big bright sun way out there in the corn, little galaxies scattered along the runway. We order a universe where daughters and dads don’t die. We get gin and tonics.
