Permanently Late

I don't know exactly what's in my suitcase, but I know that all I need is there, and I hang on to it. Ever since that nurse insisted on taking away from me the white plastic bag into which my parents had put a couple of comic-books, some paper and a pen when I was 6 and in hospital to have my tonsils taken out, I hang on to my things. It didn't help much that my parents managed to figure out the window of my hospital room and knocked from outside with smiling faces, for moral support -- the damage had been done, the evil nurse had removed my one personal possession in that neutrally sterilized building, and I felt abandoned.

This is the first time I'm at the L.A. airport, and I look around rather nervously, presuming it is a big place and wondering if I'll make it to the gate in time. If I stand on my toes and look left and right around people's backs and shoulders, I can just about see my family slipping behind a corner ahead. I can't remember why I am lagging behind, but trying to catch up is a hell of a task in this sleek and curved ultra-modern space crawling with people, all running somewhere with a clear map of immediate intentions stamped on their faces. I was actually never late for a plane. Once, I was late for a train, and another time I was almost late for a bus. The train debacle happened in Ottawa, one December when I went to visit my friend Steve for New Year's. We left the house too late, and standing in the bus taking us to the train station, I could see we were going to be late but didn't say anything. Steve was trying to be cool about it and made small jokes as silhouetted shapes of buildings passed by behind steamed up bus windows. As soon as we stepped down from the bus, we ran insanely towards the platform only to see the behind of the train, teasing with two red rear lights in the distance, like in the movies. They were nice at the ticket-office, though, simply exchanging my ticket for the following day (you can go to Halifax only once a day, 6 days a week). At first just a light chill condensing in small pools in the areas of my skin exposed to the vacuum-cold airport air-conditioning, an ominous dread begins to invade me and fill me up. I turn the corner where the others disappeared but have now lost them completely from view. My accelerated breathing is suddenly a painfully present variable to keep in mind; my feet automatically try to match the tempo. What saved me from being late for the bus that other time was the short distance between my home and the bus station in my hometown, and the fact that my father drove as fast as he could to drop me off at the station, before going to work himself. I was 17, and was travelling to Belgrade with Ognjen and Dijana from my high-school class -- I can't remember exactly why, but I'm guessing we were going to take the university entrance exams that summer. For some forgotten reason, I was the one who had all three bus tickets, and was supposed to meet the others directly at the bus station. Which I did, 4 minutes before the departure, when all the passengers and their baggage were already on board, the engine rumbling in preparation, with Dijana standing next to the bus awkwardly and Ognjen pacing nervously up and down the platform, the sharp movements of his thin gangly limbs betraying unspoken fury.

My right-shoe lace seems to be tied too tightly: as I arch my right foot, trying to walk fast, I feel constriction but have no time now to take care of it. I reach the end of the corridor whose entire wall is made of glass giving onto a strip of tarmac, and realize there is an elevator leading somewhere below. A white beluga of a plane on whose side is written in red letters Kenya Airways glides lazily on the ground level by the windows. Is this really L.A.? I begin the arm & shoulder twisting manoeuvre of slinging my backpack from behind me towards the front in order to unzip one of the small top pockets and pull out my passport and the boarding pass which they will request in the elevator. Omnia mea mecum porto, always. Like in that gigantic suitcase made of gray fabric which my father's colleague, Milan, who had once travelled to America, lent me indefinitely (he wasn't going to go back to America) when I was leaving for England. I was leaving for 10 months, but I was carrying half of our household with me in that gigantic suitcase, including an iron. On the way back, the front pocket carried the neatly folded massive World Map where people I hung out with that year signed their names and wrote small messages across seas and oceans.

Then I remember that I carefully packed all the documents into a purse and stuck the purse into the big compartment in the backpack so that it's safer and so that I'd have a hand free. Now I'm positively panicking -- it will take me several additional minutes to get to the purse and wrestle the papers out. The next second I know that I am not making it in time; I know I will keep running with a half-swallowed breath stuck in my throat, but I won't make it. I begin to mourn this fact, an image of my family laughing at some joke just 15 minutes ago while I was still with them flashing through my mind. And it is horrible, much worse than any of the atom-bomb mushrooms blossoming across the dream-skies of my childhood. Once -- I was in elementary school -- the puffed up, quickly-spreading atomic mushroom loomed big right behind the paper-factory elephantine chimney which we could see from our third-floor balcony, in the same direction as the ugly-green atomic shelter built in the 70s, which was later turned into an indoor parking lot. These dreams never went beyond the mushroom-in-the-sky image; it all always stopped at this moment of initial dread, hanging in the air, but was never "consummated" in the fire and brimstone of a fear completely played out, labelled, and demanding reaction.

This time it's different, the elevator arrives, the heavy slabs of metal slide open, and I step in, still fumbling inside the backpack, looking for my documents. Inside, two uniformed officials stand with a wheel-on cart filled with rubber stamps, and give me a quick, professional look. Without waiting for anything further, and clearly not interested in what kinds of papers I could produce, the one with a stern face selects a stamp from a tray, leans towards me, and presses it against my forehead. When he leans back, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind them, and read my label backwards: PERMANENTLY LATE. The elevator doors close, the suspended machine twitches into action, and my descent towards something I am already late for begins.