While waiting for our flight at the airport in Rome, Rachelle decided to do a little bit of wandering while I hunkered down at a coffee shop. I actually love airports, not for the climate of excitement and apprehension but for the crush of people, all from different corners of the globe and all inhabiting different times zones, who for a period of time are all thrown together in the comforting anonymity of transit.
Four teenagers wearing blue track suits with Team ASCAM and some mysterious Asian script written on it, sit together like an unlikely collection of martial arts experts from a Wes Anderson film. One of them bears an unfortunate and likely intentional resemblance to Steven Seagal. Wearing wrap-around sunglasses, he’s pulled his jet black hair back into a Samurai knot and has an air of self-importance about him that he’s mistaken for self-confidence. The other three– two awkward looking girls and a guy– all look shy, a little bit embarrassed by this club they belong to and their strutting leader.
Beside me a young Italian couple, exhausted, fight in bitter silence. She punches angrily away on her laptop while he scrolls through his phone, as if searching for that vindicating text that would prove him right all along, “See, you said the flight was at 2:00!”
A German couple, joyless and efficient, take nutrition and hydrate in the cafe. The man stretches while the woman feeds him a piece of a sandwich and hands him a bottle of water. They nod at one another, like the couple destined to win The Amazing Race, before quickly heading off to their next task.
A middle-aged man in an airport-bought Italia baseball hat, replete in shorts, sandals and burned nose, returns to his wife bearing an espresso and a pastry. The woman starts to laugh, “You meant to get a bigger coffee, didn’t you?” And the man smiles back, also laughing, “Yes! I had no idea it would be so tiny!”
A woman wearing an orange jumper with reflective tape on it– like she works on the airstrip refuelling or directing planes– sits alone. Quietly bent over her coffee, enjoying her small moment of solitude, she dips her croissant in her cappuccino and then lets it slowly dissolve in her mouth.
Rachelle appears back in the cafe shortly before our flight is to leave. Excited, relieved and exasperated, she tells me the story of getting lost in the airport, how each terminal kept repeating itself with the exact same stores and restaurants until she had to ask for security for help.
“I’ve lost my husband,” she said.
The security agent looked at her, “Oh, well this is very good news! Perhaps we could enjoy a drink?” And then he laughed, walking her back to the cafe where I sat with all our luggage, all the while chatting confidently, seductively.