Baggage

Nate’s bag didn’t come out.

“Son of a bitch.”

The other people on his flight were there, taking bags. He checked one going by and it was his flight number. He walked around, looked carefully, even checked the ones that sort of looked like his in case the little souvenir luggage tag he’s gotten from Hawaii had fallen off. It wasn’t there. He was stuck at O’Hare without his suitcase.

“Son of a goddamned bitch.” Eight hours’ travel, counting delays, from Seattle. It was late. It was at best an hour’s drive home.

Nate trudged up to the luggage service counter. No one was there. No one was even in line; whatever misfortune had happened, it had visited itself solely on Nate. He looked over his shoulder at the throngs of other travellers who had no idea how insanely lucky they were to be in possession of their clothing and toiletries.

“Hello?” he called. No one. “Hello?”

Sigh. He turned around and began mentally steeling himself for the agony of calling the number on his United claim ticket.

“May I help you, sir?”

Nate turned, surprised. A smiling woman had appeared behind the counter, apparently having crept out from out back somewhere. She was tall, older. Her nametag said she was VIRELAI. That struck Nate as an odd name. “Having trouble finding something of yours, sir?”

“My bag didn’t come out,” Nate said. He slid the claim ticket over, knowing what the woman would say; she would now challenge him, asking if he’d REALLY looked. All bags look alike, blah blah blah. He’d had a bag vanish in Miami once, years before, and they…

“Of course, sir. I’ll locate it for you at once.” She typed away at her terminal happily. She was actually whistling. Nate found it a bit jarring; airports weren’t usually happy places. After a few moments, Virelai said, “Sorry, sir, but it appears your bag has been directed to carousel 31.”

Nate didn’t have to turn around to know the carousels in this terminal only went up to 14. “Uh, what terminal is that in?” He shuddered at the thought of taking a shuttle bus.

“This one, sir,” she said, “but you’ll have to walk there. It’s down that hallway a piece.” She pointed to Nate’s right, at a faraway path on a side of the luggage claim area he’d never had to go to, because it was opposite the exits from the terminal.

“Just down there?”

“Yes, sir. If it seems a long way, don’t lose hope! It’s down there quite a piece.”

Nate shrugged, adjusted his briefcase bag on his shoulder, and started off. He turned to ask HOW much of a “piece” it was, but Virelai had vanished as swiftly as she had appeared.

Nate took the path and found himself alone in a long airport hallway. Beige walls, endless grey carpet. Metal benches at random intervals were interspersed amongst equally random water fountains, defibrillator stations, and advertisements.

It really was a very long way. Quite a piece, so to speak. Finally, a sign; SPECIAL BAGGAGE CLAIM (31), with the upwards pointing arrow indicating “this is ahead,” confirmed he hadn’t been sent on a wild goose chase. But he still hadn’t reached it.

Another ten minutes of walking, and finally, an entrance; SPECIAL BAGGAGE CLAIM, off to the left. Nate was tiring. “Finally, Christ,” he said. He was going to make a point to complain to United about this nonsense.

Carousel 31 was a standard luggage return carousel like any other. The room, or really a hall, it was in was huge, far bigger than it needed to be. A single service desk, unattended, was on the far wall. Scattered about were more benches and, of course, an odd pile of orphaned bags. There were at least forty or fifty people here. It looked like fewer, because the space was so big, but Nate made a point of counting.

He walked up to the carousel, where the display screen didn’t have any flights listed on it. The carousel was rotating, a few bags making their leisurely circuit. Nate walked around, looking for his, and looked at the tags. They bore all the usual origin codes, airports Nate himself had visited. JFK, DFW, LAX, YVR, DCA, all going to ORD. Travels of hundreds, thousands of miles, trips taken for reasons of love, money, family, escape expressed in alphanumerics.

Nate’s wasn’t out yet.

He picked a bench and sat. Checked his phone; no reception. Well, crap. Nate looked around the huge hall; it was as beige and dull as the rest of the airport. He found, as it always did, a creeping sadness visiting him. These places were lonely. He was about to fire up a game to kill the time when he noticed the woman at the carousel.

She was perhaps sixty, thin, and impeccably dressed. She was in business attire, and Nate could tell she was not some mere salesperson; she was C-suite. He wasn’t into fashion, but when your own stuff was from Men’s Wearhouse, you knew the stuff you couldn’t afford. Her hair was perfect, jewelry impressive.

The woman was looking intently at the carousel, and she finally went for something, but almost gingerly. It wasn’t a suitcase, but a box, wrapped in twine. Nate couldn’t see a baggage claim tag. She took the box, turning away from the carousel, and Nate could see a look of confusion on her face. Something’s wrong with her thing, he thought. Maybe it was damaged.

The woman placed the box down on the floor, untied the twine extremely carefully, and opened the box almost in fear, as if she expected a snake to lunge at her. She looked at the contents and, as Nate watched, began to weep.

“What the hell,” Nate said aloud.

The woman took, from the box, an ice skate. A white one, like something a figure skater would wear. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She closed her eyes and held the skate for what seemed to Nate to be an impossibly long time, and then placed it back in the box, closed it, and got up. She turned and walked out, but not out the way Nate had come. There was another exit on the far wall of the hall, and she went out there.

“That was something,” said Nate.

A man, around Nate’s age, plunked down on the bench next to him.

“Hey,” Nate said. “They sent your bag here too, huh?”

“Yeah,” the man said. He didn’t turn to look at Nate.

“Man, mine’s not out yet. How long you been waiting?”

“Oh, it’s there,” the man said. He pointed at the carousel. “It’s out. Has been for awhile.”

“Er, alright. So, uh, are you waiting for another one?”

“No. Nope, just that one. Just gotta decide. Gotta decide.”

Nate was starting to wonder if the guy was on drugs. Maybe this was the claim area they directed suspicious packages to. They weren’t gonna find much in his. “Decide what?” he asked.

“If that’s the way I’m gonna go.”

Oooookay. Nate was thinking of finding a way to politely excuse himself, but that problem was solved when he saw his bag tumble out.

“Finally,” he said more to himself than the man on the bench.

“Just think about it, buddy,” said the man. “Think about it. Big call, man.”

Nate was happy to put some distance between him and the weirdo, and he went to grab his familiar black case with the Hawaii tourism tag, and as he reached for it his breath stopped and his blood ran cold. He froze in shock.

Next to the standard suitcase was an old Jansport backpack. It was not merely any of the millions of those, though. It was his. It was a backpack Nate hadn’t seen in, well, what was it, twenty-five years? At least. He’d lost it or thrown it out so long ago. It was not just one that looked like his. It WAS his. Navy blue, faux leather bottom. A green string, which had once held on something Nate couldn’t recall, was tied around the lower pocket zipper. Sewn into the side were an American flag and rock band logos. The ones he’d sewn on. He knew every one, recognized the stitching. On the other side, sewn on, was a patch for Notre Dame, where Nate had gone.

“The fuck is this?” he said. He followed the two bags around as they made their way around on the carousel, but swivelled his head. This was a joke, some kind of setup.

No one was paying any attention to him at all.

“This isn’t funny,” Nate said loudly enough for anyone within a hundred feet to hear. “This is not funny.” He grabbed his suitcase off the carousel, plonked it down, and then reached down and grabbed the backpack.

Everything went black. His stomach whirled. He was nowhere, in space, without form, and then he was outside a house. At night. Nate stood in shock, confusion, total disorientation, but then he knew where he was. The vertigo went away.

It was a big house, standing alone on a wooded street. The adjoining houses were a hundred yards away or more. He knew this house well. It was Samantha’s house. This was where she had lived, back then. When they were young.

“Oh God,” was all Nate could say.

Light shone out through the windows. This was the house where he’d picked her up on their first date, where he dropped her off. She lived her with her father and his girlfriend, in this house that was so oddly large for three. Her bedroom was upstairs, on the right, where, from time to time, when no one else was there, they had touched one another, loved one another. Or they would be together on the couch downstairs, playing games or listening to music. It was outside the front door when he’d said goodbye to her for the last time, angrily, both of them full of fury and pride, their words meant to hurt.

Nate knew he was now standing some distance west of South Bend, in Indiana. He looked down. He was no longer wearing his mediocre business clothes. His body was different. He was wearing the clothes of a university senior. If he turned his head, he knew his old Civic would be there. The one in which he and Sam had driven in so much, sang so many songs.

“What…” Nate staggered backwards. The world went black, the world whirled.

He was sitting on the floor of the baggage claim hall. He’d fallen. The Jansport backback lay next to his suitcase. Nate looked around, but, again, no one was paying attention to him. They were all waiting for their own things.

Nate rubbed his eyes, but the backpack remained. His backpack. He reached out, like Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, with one finger, and just brushed the top of the carrying loop. The world started to fade. He pulled his finger away like he’d been electrocuted.

“What, what, what.”

Nate got up and backed away from the bag, the totem, the talisman, whatever it now was. His mind whirled. Samantha? What was happening? And why?

Why, except, perhaps, that she was who he’d thought of, not every day, certainly, not every week, but every now and then, through thirty years, countless other loves, a marriage, a life?

Nate strode over to the service counter. Standing behind it was the same woman. But now her nametag read HECATE. “May I help you, sir?”

“What the hell is going on?”

“You’re here to retrieve your things, sir.”

“I’m here to get a suitcase, that’s… you… why was I in the past? What is this?”

“Sir, this is special baggage claim,” she said, with a patient air. “I assure you that bag is yours. Of course, if you didn’t want it, you could leave it behind and return the way you came. We’d certainly never force you to take it. But if you like, please do, and exit out that way.” Hecate, or Virelai, motioned towards the other way out, the one the woman had taken with her skates.

No, now her nametag read ALETHEIA.

Nate stared out that way. “And then what?”

“Then sir, you have that back. And you may do with it as you wish. But you may only take one of your items. The other must remain behind.”

“Why me? Why am I here?”

The woman said, “I do not know why some are chosen. I am here to guide and explain.”

Nate turned back and looked at the two bags, now far away at the other end of the carousel. He looked at the other travellers. One man was going back the way everyone came, looking back at his package with unmistakable fear. And on the other side of the carousel, a couple, a young couple, were almost running towards the far way out. The woman was holding a child’s blanket. They were holding hands.

Nate turned back around, but the woman was gone.

He slowly, ever so slowly, began towards the backpack. Things with Sam had been so magical, but hard. She was inaccessible, closed off, or had he just been too stupid to know what she needed? She was tall and proud, her face set when she had decided something, fixed in that path even if it was irrational. When they were together it was electricity. When apart, they argued. It had been easier, so much easier, to leave, and to be with Amy. So, he hadn’t tried. He’d gone the safe route. That relationship, with Amy, was smooth, simple, and doomed. They married, and they had the boys, and then eventually the collapse and the divorce. Amy was far away now, aged beyond her years, angry and drunk.

But the boys. They were okay. Jim was a good young man. Martin struggled.

Nate reached out and touched the backpack. The transition was faster now.

He wasn’t outside her house. He was outside the north dining hall at Notre Dame. The sun blinded him; it was the middle of the day and students were everywhere. Some brushed by him, without noticing. He was with Amy now, close to graduation. It was six months after he and Sam had broken up. He could feel the bitter March air. Nate knew if he waited, Sam would appear. She’d walk out just as he was walking in, and her face would break into a smile, and they would hug and say hello and talk briefly. But the look on her face, the tone of their voices, he remembered it so well. It was right there. He knew it. Had he just said sorry, had he said he still wanted her, they would have been together again. Life would have been different.

Nate let go with his hand, and he was back in the baggage claim hall.

He and Amy had moved to Chicago, moved in together, and that was the path. He had the boys. Would he have had the boys with Sam? Or other children? Was, was that how it worked? Would other children be the same? Could they be? The same souls, or different?

For a few years after that, Nate had followed Sam on social media, and her him. But she’d left those things at some point, and vanished. There were times, late at night, even when he was still with Amy, even later when he was with Bridgette, the nice woman he’d been with for four years and yet somehow that just didn’t work out, that he’d searched for Sam online. But nothing. She was gone. But perhaps not.

Nate went over to the man on the bench. Perhaps he would have wisdom.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said to the man. It wasn’t necessary to explain. The man had baggage too. He had seen.

“I don’t either,” said the man.

“What’s past that door?” Nate asked. It looked dark.

“Well,” the man said, “I think it’s a gift. Maybe. Yes, I think it’s a gift, though it could be a curse. But, don’t stay long. Some of these people,” and the man pointed around the hall, “I think they’ve been here a very, very long time. Oh yes. Very long. They just keep looking. They can’t decide. They’re lost in here.”

Nate nodded. He was very frightened. He had always been so sad. “It’s been so hard,” Nate said. “God, it’s just been so hard.”

“Yes,” the man said. “Life is. I don’t know. Should I live it again?”

Nate remembered the first time he dropped Samantha off, after that first night together. How they’d hidden to the side of the door to kiss, so no one inside would see. His hands on her waist. The fragrance of her hair. There had never been anyone else like her, couldn’t be. Her danger, though. Her pride, her rush to anger. What would have happened? What terrible, terrible heartbreak? Or joy? Was this a gift? Or a curse?

Terrible, or blessed? Or both? A gift and a curse?

He thought of Sam’s face. Her eyes. Her. Then.

Nate grabbed the backpack and ran to the far exit, calling her name.