Traveling from City A to City B you’re told there’s a layover in City C, and you think, no problem, because the layover in City C is not very long, not long at all; in fact, you think, it’s nearly perfect as far as layovers are concerned, the layover not being so long as to be an obstacle to your incredibly important appointment in City B (hell, why call it an appointment, it’s an interview, not just an interview, that’s an injustice to the weight and import of the trip, because this interview is the opportunity to improve your entire existence: shorter commute, health insurance, shit, standard of life, not something that comes along very often, you think), yet the layover is also not too short, where you’ll find yourself harried and harassed, rushed to find the terminal and gate for your connection to City B (this happened once in City F and good God it was a nightmare: the running, the sweat, the panic). However, once you land in City C and disembark amid the herd of weary travelers, you quickly find the information board, an enormous electronic chart blinking with times, arrivals, destinations, delays, gates, and of course cancellations, and your eyes race, not because your layover is short, you have time, but you want to find the gate, reach the gate, perhaps enjoy a coffee at the gate while you quiz yourself on the answers to the expected and not-so-expected questions that will inevitably arise during the interview in City B, also to rehearse the background questions: why you left position T, your short stint at position L, your performance reviews at position R, the references from Z, F, and D, and so on, a need to once more rehearse and try putting yourself in the best light, a chance to display your pragmatic attitude toward teamwork, goals, the ease and affinity you have for thinking critically, and the litany of questions that will no doubt arise regarding your attitude about the ethics of work, answers rehearsed over the past week while circling your studio apartment in City A, often pausing to correct a word or phrase, berating yourself about the tone of voice in which you speak, the tone, you feel, sounding too eager and too earnest, perhaps just a bit too willing to impress, how you must get this job in City B, you tell yourself, chiefly to leave the heartache and disappointment of City A behind; the relationship with Q that ended in tears, insomnia, lack of appetite, and eventually weekly appointments with a therapist who has of late begun looking at you with the exact expression Q had when things were beginning to end, namely pity, disbelief, and a smidgen of regret; every building, street, and frequented café in City A suddenly reminding you of Q and all the feelings, good and bad, that are connected to Q, the way you felt when you’d fallen in love with Q, then, sadly, most recently, Q telling you it was over, Q ending things, Q returning the key to your studio apartment as well as retrieving the toothbrush, cardigan, and French press left behind in your studio apartment, because Q wasn’t coming back and said as much in the swift, soft, indirect way Q had, her voice as soft as a cloud but with lightning inside, suggesting it wasn’t you, not at all, both of you knowing it was, without a doubt, undeniably you, never said aloud, never even intimated, but known in the deepest part of your soul as well as, more than likely, Q’s soul, and with Q’s departure City A, the first city you’d lived in as an adult, a city you adopted in your own small way, took on the aspect of a complex series of disconnected edifices emptied of warmth, drained of kindness, the entire protracted grid of City A, incidentally a not-very-small city, once so warm and hospitable, now feeling terribly lonesome and bleak.
The information board in City C’s airport is an enormous, electronic grid illuminating countless places, times, and flights, City L and City R and City G, and you laugh, you’ve been to City G and it’s a goddamned dump, anyway, your eyes race across the litany of arrivals and cancellations to find the gate for your connecting flight to City B and relief washes over you because the gate for your connecting flight is not very far, in fact a slight pivot of the head and the large block letters of your gate, Gate 3, are illuminated in white upon a large black placard, Gate 3 a mere twenty-five yards from where you stand and, even better, a kiosk selling drinks and food stands adjacent to Gate 3, and as you walk you begin rehearsing the hypothetical answers to the hypothetical questions once again, wanting the job more than anything you’ve wanted in a long time, maybe ever, admittedly more for the relocation to City B and away from City A than for the job itself, because City B is a new city, a city unexplored and unfamiliar, hence a city with very little besides your own thoughts to remind you of Q, a city that won’t bludgeon you with memories of Q, a place not halting you at each crosswalk to nudge you with despair, exacerbating your lack of appetite and broken heart and the pills you’ve been prescribed for depression, a depression you can’t help but connect to City A and, by default, Q. And once a small coffee is purchased you approach Gate 3 and take a seat; there’re dozens of empty seats, not another person waiting to fly to City B it seems, not yet at least, and you read the sign behind the empty counter at Gate 3 to confirm you are indeed at the correct gate and once this is confirmed you sit with your coffee and your thoughts, which inevitably return to Q: the way Q had of smiling, the scent of Q in the morning, the way Q entered a room and made everything else fade away, and you can’t understand how Q made a small studio apartment feel like the entire world, but enough with that thinking, you think, sipping the tepid coffee, going over in your mind the responsibilities of position T, beginning with the most important and difficult tasks to the more common and straightforward, not thinking about Q for over a minute you suddenly think, congratulating yourself, considering this a success, sure, a small one, but a success nonetheless, because the biggest hurdle has been avoiding thinking of Q, of putting Q in the back of your mind, not as easy as it sounds, you think, and the answers you’ve rehearsed in your studio apartment in City A, an unspeakably small apartment that of late has begun to exude the ambience of a morgue, have been relentlessly rehearsed, exhaustively recited; you can talk too about the projects at position L, the data studied and analyzed at positions R and L, how much passion and vision you’ll bring to the position, how you’d like to continue this work, this analyzing of data, but please in another city, preferably City B, since it’s not only a great distance from City A, but in another time zone. How refreshing it would be, you think, sipping the cold coffee, to wake up in the morning and know Q had already begun her day, hours before in fact, to know your life and Q’s life are no longer aligned or synched in any way, your schedules not mimicking each other’s, and what a salve this would be to your aching soul, and where is everyone, you ask yourself, standing and turning in every direction, making a full circle in front of your seat in Gate 3, seeing not a single soul. You leave your coffee, take your bag, and approach the counter at Gate 3 in the hopes that simply standing at the counter will produce an attendant or an agent, someone with answers as to why there’s no one else at Gate 3 waiting to board the flight to City B, since the flight is due to board in less than an hour and Gate 3, you think to yourself, is starting to resemble your studio apartment, namely a catacomb where no one, besides you, exists.
Five minutes pass. Then ten. Still the counter at Gate 3 is empty; not a single employee, official, or human even. You return to your seat to retrieve your coffee before searching the airport for anyone who can confirm you are indeed at the right place at the right time, namely the correct gate to your connecting flight to City B, and this is when you see Q standing across the rotunda, her back to you; a knot of panic and despair rises in your chest because why would she be here? Why would Q be at the same airport at the same gate at the same time as you, and does Q want to reconcile? Did Q realize she missed you, missed you the way you missed her, with insomnia, headaches, anxiety, and loss of appetite? Did Q miss the way you told your stupid jokes or made tea or the ironic way you had of mimicking the movies you watched, both of you curled on the couch, limbs intertwined, all those shared memories that belong to no one on earth besides the two of you? This seems highly unlikely, you think, as she was the one who ended things and this breakup, this ending of things, was performed with scalpel-like precision, as if Q had been trained at ending relationships with a grace and subtlety more akin to some delicate art like origami or brain surgery. And you approach slowly, making sure the person with her back to you is indeed Q, and you avoid walking too fast, you avert stumbling, you try to regain some feeling in your legs, renouncing the questions and answers to your highly important, upcoming interview, because suddenly everything you want, in a word, Q, is standing just feet away, back still turned, and the interview and the new job, even City B, dissolve, Q being infinitely more important than any of those concerns, because reuniting with Q, going back to the way things had been, is what you wanted in the first place. Now, with the questions and answers for the interview put aside, you quickly rehearse the words you’ll say to Q—Why are you here, What a coincidence, Hello there—and the moment you’re steps away, this person who resembles Q from behind but who indeed is not Q turns to face you; instantly you see your error; this person’s nose is much sharper, her skin paler, her eyes not hazel but brown, and idiotically you nod and stumble away, hating yourself, your mind, your infatuation with a person who seldom if ever even thinks of you, who likely forgot about you the second she’d collected her toothbrush, cardigan, and French press, and maybe the pills you’ve been prescribed for depression should be stronger, the strength of the prescription doubled or perhaps tripled, because a suffocating pathos has clung to your heart, a shroud, shapeless and heavy, has blanketed every aspect of existence, and wherever hope had been has been replaced by hopelessness and sure, the therapist said this may take months to pass, this period, this phase, but what about Q being everywhere? Is that normal? Are you supposed to question every passing thought, each passing person? Are you prepared to constantly question your own sanity because even now, walking toward Gate 3, a stranger passes whose scent smacks of Q, not reminiscent of Q or somewhat similar to Q, but exactly how Q smells, and you wonder if you should be committed, if an asylum is missing a patient, if somehow a broken heart has led to a broken mind and this is swiftly confirmed by another passing person who’s wearing the same coat Q loved to wear, the same entire outfit in fact, you think, shoes and scarf, even luggage, and this seeming insanity is further confirmed seconds later by your cell phone. It begins to ring and looking at the screen it isn’t the airline or your parents or a colleague from work who’s calling, but Q. It says it right there on the screen: Q. And you laugh at your own madness, smile at the slipping away of concrete facts, how the slide from sanity to insanity is as supple and swift as a shifting sandcastle, and you won’t answer the phone, you refuse; that’s inviting disaster, you think, it’s courting misery. And before you reach the counter at Gate 3 you stop, turn around, find the nearest trashcan to drop the still-ringing phone inside, leaving the phone where it can’t be retrieved, because there’s no chance the person calling you is Q (you’ve been tricked before) even while you look at the screen and see the photo of Q set to appear whenever she called, you’re certain it’s only your anxiety and hysteria, and with very little hesitation you drop the phone in the trash and find yourself laughing, in fact you can’t stop laughing, overcome by a sort of hilarity that skirts happiness and terror, and you wonder if the laughter of an insane person sounds the same as a person with their wits about them and could an outsider, say a person conducting an interview, tell? A question you ponder as you continue to laugh, a laughter heavier and more unforgiving than any you can remember, a laughter that refuses to stop, a paralyzing mirth as if you’ve completely lost your mind or won a million dollars, who’s to say? And approaching the counter at Gate 3 an agent finally appears, ready to answer any and all questions, and you attempt a smile, prepared to ask about your flight to City B, just as soon as you’ve stopped laughing, a laughter that, more and more, resembles weeping. 
Mark Haber was born in Washington, DC, and grew up in Florida. His novel Reinhardt’s Garden (Coffee House Press) was nominated for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway Award for debut novel. His second novel, Saint Sebastian’s Abyss (Coffee House Press) was named a best book of fiction 2022 by the New York Public Library, LitHub, and Southwest Review. His third novel, Lesser Ruins (Coffee House Press), will be published in the spring of 2025, along with a novella in the fall, Ada. Mark lives in Minneapolis.
Illustration: Anna Resmini
