Toby and Eleanor sat at Gate B44 waiting for their flight to Cancun. Toby held coffee in a beige paper cup. Eleanor read The New York Times<\/em>, pen in one hand, folded magazine section in the other.<\/p>\n \u201cGuppies,\u201d Toby said. \u201c27 Down.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThanks,\u201d Eleanor answered. She recrossed her legs and bit the bottom of her lip. It was six-fifteen on a Sunday morning.<\/p>\n Toby lifted the cup\u2019s lid and blew away the steam. \u201cEinstein,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d Eleanor studied the black and white page.<\/p>\n \u201c7 Across. Einstein.\u201d<\/p>\n Their flight was at seven. The terminal was empty save for one sleeping man and an old couple sharing a donut, hunched over and picking at the frosting like birds.<\/p>\n \u201cOh,\u201d Eleanor said.<\/p>\n \u201cE-I-N\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI know how to spell Einstein.\u201d She brushed a strand of dark hair away from her eyes.<\/p>\n \u201cYou didn\u2019t fill it in,\u201d Toby said.<\/p>\n Eleanor worked her pen across the paper. The ballpoint made small holes.<\/p>\n Toby sniffled. \u201cDo you have a kleenex?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d Eleanor could see pale blue\u2014her faded jeans\u2014on the other side of the pinpricks.<\/p>\n \u201cMy nose is running.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLook in my purse.\u201d<\/p>\n Toby plucked the purse from behind her sneakered feet. Her black bag in his lap, he peered over her shoulder.<\/p>\n \u201cCanada,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cStop,\u201d Eleanor said, chin tucked, the end of the pen between her teeth.<\/p>\n \u201c8 Across,\u201d he said. He watched two planes: one taxied to the gate, one rolled to a runway. The sky was gray.<\/p>\n \u201cStop,\u201d she repeated.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just trying to help.\u201d Toby rummaged. Her keys jingled.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t need your help.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFine.\u201d He took out a mint. He wiped dust off the clear wrapper. \u201cYou don\u2019t have any kleenex. But I\u2019m stealing this.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGood,\u201d he said. He dropped the wrapper back in her purse. He sucked the candy. He put her purse on the empty seat beside him and picked up his coffee. He blew over the rim. He cleared his throat.<\/p>\n \u201cCrepes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n She turned to him. \u201cOne more word and you\u2019re flying alone.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m hungry,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s not an answer?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, it\u2019s not an answer. It\u2019s a suggestion.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThen good.\u201d<\/p>\n She looked back at the page. Toby sipped his coffee.<\/p>\n She poked her pen through the paper and jabbed her thigh. \u201cOuch,\u201d she said.\u00a0 Then: \u201cFuck.\u201d\u00a0 She rubbed her leg. \u201cScrew you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201c21 down. Crepes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh? Really?\u201d<\/p>\n Eleanor stood and dropped the magazine in Toby\u2019s lap.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d He held his arms open.<\/p>\n \u201cNo. I can\u2019t.\u201d She shook her head. \u201cI mean, I won\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n Steam rose from the open cup. \u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s my answer,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n Eleanor crossed to his other side, hoisted her heavy purse.<\/p>\n There was nothing to slide off her finger. No reason to reach out to Toby\u2019s empty hand, turn it up, and set something in the middle of his warm palm. Nothing gleamed in the dim winter light. The ring was on a baggage cart, on the tarmac beyond the window, packed in Toby\u2019s suitcase. But she knew it was coming, knew from the moment he\u2019d told her he\u2019d booked the flight, the hotel, the restaurant on the beach for tomorrow night, knew the minute he told her he\u2019d arranged everything and all she had to do was go along. She had waffled at first: sun sounded fun, an escape. But now she knew the correct response.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d Eleanor said again.<\/p>\n She walked the carpeted corridor. She passed an attendant heading Toby\u2019s way. She paused, spoke to the uniformed woman, and kept going. Maybe Toby tried to guess what she\u2019d said: Excuse me or Watch out for him or Seems I won\u2019t be flying after all or, again, to everyone this time, I\u2019m sorry. Or none of those at all. Maybe he finally came up blank and he couldn\u2019t imagine what she had to say to some stranger, maybe he couldn\u2019t explain the situation or offer an answer, his take. Maybe he was, finally, silent.<\/p>\n Eleanor sensed but didn\u2019t need to turn around to know: he was still sitting, staring at the puzzle in his lap, a man accustomed to supplying all the answers, but now with half the boxes empty, half of them complete.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n And there the man sits in the Chevy\u2019s driver\u2019s seat reading a month\u2019s old Rolling Stone<\/em> and scowling at the four-starred review of Nicki Minaj or an auto-tuned teen-age blonde he\u2019s never heard of but wouldn\u2019t mind screwing if she just promised not to sing or dance or say his name, not once, not aloud. But this is unlikely.<\/p>\n Maybe he scowls over his application to the chicken \u201cprocessing plant\u201d\u2014oh, hell, call it\u00a0what it is\u2014a slaughterhouse, please, for chrissakes\u2014a place for killing\u2014and it disgusts him, and yet, and yet he needs the work, the dollar more than minimum wage hardly a wage at all, his last gig three states west of Nacogdoches, this college town which once seemed a logical place to crash, so many guys he knew here in school, but suddenly, they\u2019re all gone.<\/p>\n They\u2019re gone, graduated, married, maybe they\u2019re in other cars, not like his, better, mini-vans and SUVs, plush seats higher off the ground, and they are waiting for little boys in baseball and littler girls at ballet, not reading about pop bilge and wondering about THC levels, the unwise burning of that joint two nights ago, even then fully aware of this requirement, this urine hurdle he ignored, or pretended wasn\u2019t there.<\/p>\n Now, his window down, its scratched glass possibly stuck for good under the lip of rubber like an eyelid on the sill, he missed the days of cranks. Uh-oh, they broke but it didn\u2019t cost three hundred dollars to fix a freaking door motor dedicated to doing one stupid thing which it then failed to do it.<\/p>\n He missed cranks. He missed his buddies, he missed Bud, and he missed bud in brownies and he missed the warm cup of piss he rested on the magic window ledge of the little bathroom in that clinic right there, the clinic across this short parking lot, that window with the lazy susan for the nurse to spin and take that cup of him and test it. Of course, he didn\u2019t want to work drunk or stoned, though killing that much for eight hours a day has got to be easier done high, easier than sober, it\u2019s gotta be, but he knows there might be sharp blades involved, or maybe he\u2019ll just work the hose, washing out the stuff nobody wants, a steady shower over all those pale corpses, and he wants a shower, yes, a shower. The car stinks with heavy Texas heat and car exhaust and his poor attitude, that\u2019s what everyone who was anyone in his life has called it, has always called it, poor attitude, and this music sucks, and radio everywhere sucks, and this magazine sucks.<\/p>\n He pulls on his cigarette and, oh, that\u2019s good, so good and thank God or Whatever\u2019s there, there\u2019s still one thing in his world that isn\u2019t messed up.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There was nothing to slide off her finger. No reason to reach out to Toby\u2019s empty hand, turn it up, and set something in the middle of his warm palm. Nothing gleamed in the dim winter light. The ring was on a baggage cart, on the tarmac beyond the window, packed in Toby\u2019s suitcase. But she knew it was coming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18897,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2941,1376,140,719,2942,13,506],"class_list":["post-18099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-couples","tag-despair","tag-love","tag-marriage","tag-puzzle","tag-work","tag-working-class","writer-john-a-mcdermott"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18099"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18899,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18099\/revisions\/18899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}One Hour Drug Tests While U Wait<\/h5>\n