"Forget the Runway—Foam the Terminal!"

Full Version, © 2001 Cashew Lou

Author's note: many of the incidents recounted below actually happened, though thankfully not on one single flight. I would surely have lost my mind, then.

Cashew Lou sprinted into the airport, gasping for breath. His ride there had been woefully late, and the wolf felt like O.J. Simpson dashing in one of those rental car commercials. You recall those, right? Back when he was the Juice and not the world's most famous passenger in a Ford Bronco? Right. But I digress.

Lou was horribly late, at least in his fastidious a-place-for-everything-and-everything-in-its-place mind. It was only half an hour to his flight's departure time, and he liked to be there at least an hour before, if not more. As a result, his brain was buzzing in a state of low-grade panic.

Charging from the curb to the terminal door, he tucked himself into one of the pie slice-shaped wedges of the revolving door, his momentum carrying him smack-dab into the door's huge glass panel. The moistness of his black nose left a little smear on the tinted pane.

When one is in a position of great embarrassment, one always glances around to see if anyone has noticed the faux pas. And of course, there are always witnesses. Lou rubbed his nose (little could be done for his wounded pride), just then noticing the 'out of order' notice on the door directly before him. Several of his fellow travelers tittered and stared at him as he backed out of the revolving door.

Luckily, where he needed to check in was just inside the door. He handled the manual door handle without incident...then stopped dead cold in his tracks.

There was a line. One heck of a line. Certainly more than one half hour's worth of a line.

Lou's ears drooped and his shoulders slumped, and he shuffled his hindpaws to the end of the line. Perhaps there was another flight going out soon after this one, he thought, a flight for grievously tardy wolves like me.

A young girl tugged on the skirt of the woman directly before Lou, staring up at the wolf. "Mommy? Why he bleeding?"

As clandestinely as he could, Cashew lifted a paw to his nose, and he drew back a small smear of blood on his pawfingers. Apparently the revolving door had bapped him a good one.

"Honey, don't point," the young girl's mother admonished her. The admonishment was a little moot, though; for the woman gave Lou a good staring at before finally looking away.

Lou sniffed softly as he looked around, his embarrassment doubling, trebling. The cursory sniff pulled a lot more liquid back than it should have; he had bled quite a bit, actually. Finally, he spied what he had been looking for--the bathroom. It was a good fifty feet down the hall from the ticket counter, and Lou was not about to lose his place in line. Just since he had entered, seven more people had lined up behind him.

Ah, well, he resolved, nothing else to be done about it. He had weighed the possible added embarrassment against being even later, and decided he could shoulder the former.

The Yukon wolf unwrapped his customary hunter green scarf from around his neck, lifted it to his muzzle....and blew. After a couple of dabs to his snout, he sniffed again. All seemed to be clear. Crouching down, he bundled up the now-ruined scarf and tucked it into the side pocket of his bag.

As he stood back up, he spotted a gentleman about ten positions ahead of him in line giving him a mild look of revulsion. "Sorry," Lou mouthed, and the man shrugged and turned away.

The clock on the wall above the ticket counter showed that Lou's flight was to leave in eighteen minutes. Not board, but LEAVE. His mind raced. Weren't you supposed to be on board ten minutes before the departure time? Or was it fifteen? Twenty? Gads, if it was twenty, he was hosed beyond comprehension. Would they hold a flight for someone who was late? If so, how long would they hold it? Ten minutes? Fifteen? Was there any way he could announce he was HERE, he was READY, but there was a LINE? And what if....

Needless to say, Lou's low-grade panic had been upgraded to first class.

Midway through his internal babbling, there came a light tap on Lou's shoulder. "Huh!" he gasped, in surprise, his mind trying desperately to whirl back to the here and now. He blinked stupidly at an airline employee standing before him.

"Sir?" she asked, blinking back at the wolf. "Sir, are you booked on Flight 906?"

Lou shook his head a little, clearing out his mental cobwebs. "Uh...um, let me check...." Unzipping the side pocket of his bag, he fished out the rectangular ticket envelope--upside-down. Its contents spilled all over the tiled floor of the terminal. As he stood back up, he hoped fervently that the airline lady hadn't noticed the small smear of blood on the back of the envelope. He had tucked his scarf in right on top of it earlier, not thinking.

Grey-furred pawfingers flipped through the tickets. "Let's see...yup. 906." He handed the appropriate ticket to the attendant. "906...same upside-down as right-side-up. Heh." This little observation was punctuated with a meek little smile.

"Hmmm. Yes. So it is." With barely a glance at the ticket, she returned it to Lou. "Well, your flight has been delayed." Spinning around, she glanced at the clock. "Thirty to forty-five minutes." And on she went, to the next person in line.

Lou's mind processed the news in a flurried, fevered manner as he put his tickets back in his bag--then decided to take them back out again, since he would need them at the ticket counter. First came the rush of relief; he had ample time to make his flight. That was all well and good. Then a second, darker thought shouldered its way in.

WHY was the flight delayed?

It couldn't be the weather, could it? He had checked the forecast and radar that morning, and it looked to be smooth sailing all the way through. Had a storm system popped up out of nowhere? Would the plane be caught up in one of those invisible microbursts or downdrafts or whatever they called them, smacking the jet out of the sky to plummet to the earth below?

Or engine trouble? What about that, hmmm? How would that be, to have a necessary chunk of the plane burn out and separate, spiraling to the ground, trailing a black ribbon of smoke? That would pretty much turn the plane into a big, downward-hurtling projectile, wouldn't it? Gads!

Cashew's triangular ears swiveled as a rasping squawk came out of a speaker hidden somewhere overhead. Coming around again, he spied the attendant who had just spoken to him standing at the counter, holding what looked like a CB radio handset.

"Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Flight 906 nonstop to Philadelphia has been delayed, with an expected departure time of 10:40 AM. Members of our flight crew were detained in crosstown traffic, but have since arrived at the terminal. Please have your tickets and a form of picture ID ready when you approach the counter. Thank you."

This was followed by another static-filled burst as she put the microphone away.

Traffic? TRAFFIC? THAT was the problem?

Lou couldn't help but chuckle and shake his head. Traffic. Heh. It's amazing what worst-case scenarios the mind can cook up--and at what inopportune moments it chooses to do so. He was sorely tempted to pull a Homer Simpson and attack his brain with a really long Q-Tip. Take that! And that! I'll teach you to think!

In considerably better spirits, he approached the ticket counter when his turn came around. With a flourish, he placed his ticket and picture ID on the counter, greeting the attendant there with a hearty, "Good morning!" and a smile.

The scripted interrogation began. No, he had no baggage to claim; all he had was carry-on. No, the bags had not left his sight since they were packed. No, no strangers had asked him to carry anything on for them.

"Sir, this form of identification is Canadian." The counter attendant looked up at Lou with an eyebrow raised. "Are you Canadian, sir?"

The temptation to leap over the counter and throttle the attendant while yelling, "Well, DUH!" was quite overwhelming. Somehow, he suppressed it and smiled through his clenched teeth. His glance followed that of the attendant, who was eyeing the maple leaf embroidered on the front flap of Lou's stocking cap. "Yes, I am indeed Canadian." A second temptation, that of throwing in the word 'eh' at the end of the sentence, was likewise suppressed.

"You do realize, sir, that anything you may purchase in the United States may have to be claimed, and that your luggage may be searched pending your return to Canada?"

The Canuck wolf almost blurted out, "SO?!"

"Yyyessss...." Lou replied, uncertain where this was going, if anywhere. His mind screamed, "I just wanna get on the PLANE!"

"Very well, sir. Your flight boards at gate A11, down the hallway to your left. Enjoy your flight." An artificial smile flashed on the attendant's face. "Next in line, please?"

Cashew blinked, dumbfounded. Just what was THAT all about? Pondering whether or not he should have read his horoscope this morning, or if it would have made one whit of difference if he had, the Yukon lupine padded to the security kiosk.

A steady stream of passengers dropped their carry-on luggage onto the conveyor belt at security, and Lou did the same. He idly watched the x-ray monitor as it peeked into each piece of luggage.

As he waited his turn to walk through the metal detector, he was fully prepared for the microscopic amounts of metals in his body to set the cursed thing off. It had been that kind of morning. Luckily, no such thing happened, and he reached to his right to pick up his bag. His paw brushed across the handle of a burgundy purse, instead, and a stern-looking woman behind him cleared her throat noisily. It was obviously hers.

So where in tarnation was his luggage? He watched the conveyor belt until it was obvious his bag was not going to make an appearance. Underneath? No, it wasn't there, either. What the...? Was his bag being held back, for some reason? No one who looked official at the kiosk seemed to be concerned.

By the time he had put two and two together, the man who had snagged his luggage was well down the corridor, walking at a quick got-to-be-somewhere-fast kind of businessman's pace. Lou's toeclaws clacked busily against the floor as he ran to catch up. "Sir!" he called out. "Excuse me, sir!"

The wolf was just a few paces behind when the suit-and-tie man finally wheeled around. Squinting, the businessman gave Lou a quick once-over with his gaze--and the look on his face didn't exactly beam with approval. "May I...help you?" he asked, in a tone used on those judged beyond help.

"You...you have my bag," Lou panted, "my bag...there."

The businessman seemed to regard the bag in earnest for the first time. It was festooned with Canadian maple leaf and Fur Pride decals. "Ah. Hrm. So it would seem I do." Instead of handing the bag over, he set it on the floor and scooted it toward Lou with his foot. "Now may I have my briefcase?"

"...briefcase?" Cashew glanced around him, as if a briefcase was going to materialize magically. "I'm sorry, I didn't see any--"

"Nevermind!" With a gruff snort of contempt, he was gone, half-jogging back toward the security area.

Lou padded toward gate A11, muttering under his breath, "YOU took MY bag, I wasn't gonna look for your briefcase...how would I know which bag was yours?...where's your briefcase....I got your briefcase right here...do I look like a skycap? Sheesh...."

Once at the gate, he had to stand, since every seat in the vicinity was already taken, no doubt by folks who had been on TIME for the flight and had to wait even longer, thanks to the delay. With a yawn and a stretch, he leaned against a post, entertained by a small platoon of screaming children who apparently had no adult supervision at the moment. Somehow he knew they would be sitting within two rows of him, once on the plane.

Boarding went off without a hitch, essentially. There were the row-jumpers who liked to board before their row numbers were called, but the attendant at the jetway door was about to have no part of THAT. Lou really, REALLY liked her.

Down the walkway and into the plane he strolled. The flight crew did look a little haggard; perhaps the traffic snarl had been a pretty nasty one. How they made their business smiles look genuine was beyond him, but it was relaxing to see. He made it a point to flash them a genuine smile of his own.

His ticket told him his seat was 17F, on the right as he boarded, a window seat. Somewhere in the neighborhood of row ten, an elderly gentleman was wrestling with a bag that was clearly larger than carry-on luggage should be. He shoved a little too hard on one corner of the bag, and the opposite corner swung out of the overhead compartment and struck Lou squarely....

...in the nose.

Cashew let out a yelp and covered his nose with his free paw, struggling to get to his seat. Fresh trickles of blood ran down the front of his muzzle. He could taste it with darting little flicks of his tongue.

Row 15...16...17. Finally.

His seat was taken.

He looked up at the seating diagram, then down at his ticket. Yes, seat F was the window seat. Yes, this was row 17. No, it was not an empty seat.

"Um, sir?" Lou leaned over to the young man in the window seat. "Um, yeah, hi." Smiling, he continued. "See...you are in my seat. 17F?" He held up his ticket, helpfully backing up his claim.

"Aaaaeaugh!" The young man's face seemed to turn seven shades paler, instantaneously. With wide, horrified eyes, he leaped up out of the seat, bashing his head soundly on the light and fan switches above him. "Ow! Hey, look, sorry, okay? I was just sitting here, I sat here from Orlando and was just waiting to take off again, and nobody told me it was the wrong seat...." Frantically and clumsily, he scrambled to get out of the seat, out of the path of the wrath of the tall wolf with blood dripping from his muzzle.

Lou's confusion turned to understanding when he realized how he must look. "Oh, this is just a nosebleed. It's not like I just ate a deer raw or something."

That did NOT help.

"Uhhhhhmmmm...yeah! Okay! Nosebleed! Here ya go!" The young gentleman spilled out into the narrow aisle, into a flustered heap at Lou's hindpaws. He scrambled like a trapped mouse, people standing on one side, waiting to get to their seats, the big wolf standing on the other. "There's your seat. Hey, sorry, really, okay?"

"It's okay, really," Lou said softly, as comfortingly as he could muster, extending a paw to help his fellow passenger up. When the man cowered from the offered paw, the wolf shrugged a little and quietly slid into his seat.

He quietly considered the irony--the one time things clearly went right for him today wound up leaving a man terrified for no good reason. Lou lifted his paw up and hit the attendant call button. Once he had gotten a pawful of tissues and had made himself presentable, he tried to take a little nap.

The takeoff gave him a mild sinus headache. And the platoon of screaming children was two rows away.

Nonetheless, the flight was uneventful. The children posing as a pack of banshees had quieted down, the airline aspirin did its trick, and Lou was even able to calm down his excessively nervous neighbor.

The Yukon wolf was working himself into a positive frame of mind. He had made it, he was HERE; Philadelphia sprawled out just beneath him as the jet coasted in for a comfortable, smooth landing. This would, by Jove, be the best con ever. He would make it a point that he and everyone around him would enjoy themselves and leave the con with nothing but positive, happy memories forever and ever, amen.

By the time he stepped off the hotel shuttle and to the doors of the hotel, there was a marked spring in Cashew's step. Almost cockily, he sauntered up to the registration desk. "One room for Cashew Lou, I have a reservation, please. His million-watt smile beamed as the clerk tapped a few keys at her computer.

"Um...sir..."

Lou blinked. "PLEASE don't tell me the reservations aren't there."

"Well, no," the clerk shifted on her feet, acting as though she were somewhat uncomfortable, "they are there, all right."

"So is there a problem? Is the room underwater or something?"

The registration clerk gave a nervous little giggle. "Well, Mister, um, Mister Lou, this is July 5th...." she seemed hard pressed as to how to continue.

A tiny and very stupid voice in the back of Lou's head said, "What's the problem? Anthrocon is ALWAYS held on the weekend closest to the Fourth of July!"

Another more rational voice, silent until this moment, went to club the other voice to a pulp.

"Oh," Lou said, his shoulders slumping. "Oh. Oh, yeah."

A tall, grey wolf stood outside the hotel, surveying the view. Three weeks to the con. Surely he could find some mischief to get into between now and then, right? This is the home of American democracy, full of history, sites to see, right? Certainly there were three weeks worth of things to do in Philadelphia.

Certainly there was a way to avoid an airport for three weeks.

That thought alone returned the spring to Cashew Lou's step as he padded out to see what he could see. He grinned, with a tiny pang of envy, as a bird flew overhead. Now THAT was the way to fly.