Getting off the island, part III (Denouement)

The very sympathetic Northwest Airlines flight attendant, who found a little ground-level space for the cat, squatted down next to me in the aisle as we started to taxi, and explained what happened.

The Delta manager had contacted them about a clueless passenger trying to take a cat on board. He knew, he assured them, that NWA didn't allow cats in business class, but perhaps I could be crammed into economy? She told me they tried to tell him that they did take cats, no problem, but he was insistent. So they held a business class seat for me anyway, but when it looked as though I was going to be a no-show -- right about the time, no doubt, that security was rummaging through my knickers -- they released it to someone else.

"But if someone dies...?" I asked.
"It's all yours," she promised.

I held on to that hope over the next 12 hours. It was supposed to be a much shorter flight, but one of the first things the pilot announced was that we'd be expecting some of the strongest headwinds he'd ever seen. I felt bad for involving the rest of the plane in this personal grudge match between India and me, and considered advising them to sweep the cabin for snakes before we took off, to save time.

The mother two seats down evidently thought it cute that her progeny kept falling asleep and drooling on my shoulder. I didn't, but it was better than having her awake and systematically kicking the cat carrier. When remonstrating repeatedly with the child didn't work, I tried the mother, and they grumpily switched seats with the father, whose girth spilled over across half my space. I focused on falling asleep, which I succeeded in doing repeatedly. Each time I awoke, I eagerly checked the time, only to discover that about forty seconds had elapsed. I did this for the next ten hours.

We landed in Amsterdam, which is really not at all a bad place to end up when you're taking a global crapshoot. Schiphol was sparkling clean, mysteriously empty and silent, and, to my eyes, as tranquil as a chapel. I was so dazed that it did take me quite a bit of airport crisscrossing to find which of the identical scattered booths could help me make sense out of my remaining flight chits, but that was entirely due to my own temporary cognitive disability.

There was no one else in line at the fully-staffed desk. I launched into an impassioned plea to the Delta agent, who looked more than a little like Legolas Greenleaf, as to why I ought to be upgraded even though Delta Mumbai had obviously consigned me to economy hell and were nasty liars to boot. Legolas listened attentively to my tirade without interrupting me, and then did some rapid clicking at his workstation. "Of course you should be," he said soothingly, trading in the forlorn little scraps of my exodus for a computerized boarding card and a business class lounge pass. His colleague at the next computer looked over at his screen. Speaking in the gentle, fluty tones of Arwen Evenstar, she asked "Why were you even denied boarding on the NY flight?"
I explained.
"There's no embargo for inside the cabin," the Elf Queen intoned. "And anyway, you were booked. It's Delta's mistake."
"You guys are so much nicer than Delta Mumbai!" I blurted out, immediately aware of how loud my voice was, how disheveled I must look in these glowing halls. I sensed that garam masala and patchouli were expressing through my grimy pores.

Arwen and Legolas exchanged glances at the mention of Mumbai, and then gazed at me with the kind of pity usually reserved for legless African orphans.

The business class lounge had a sign prohibiting pets, but I decided I'd stay silent if the cat would, and for the next few hours I dozed and luxuriated in European comfort, and gorged myself, to the extent my troubled stomach would allow, on the free gourmet cheese plate. When no one was looking, the cat did, too.

The flight from Amsterdam to NY was a thoroughly civilized affair, and as brief as the first leg was unending. I chatted with a marketing professor about globalization, and played SimCity (which I am perfectly capable of doing for a six-hour stretch, whether stuck on a plane or no). When the flight attendant seemed put out that I was declining all the food she was offering every five minutes, I explained my ailment. Through trial and error, we discovered I could stomach warmed chocolate-chip cookies, and, for the next five hours, she kept 'em coming.

I was giddy by the time we landed in NY; the affront of the security cattle pen and the rudeness of the guards offset by the kibitzing solidarity of those waiting behind me; the annoyance of having to pay $3 in quarters, no foreign currency accepted, and no ATMs or change machines in sight, for a cart to move my luggage less than 100 feet between pick-up and re-check offset by my having remembered this quirk of JFK and come prepared with a baggie of the last of our American coinage. I took the cat through screening one final time. Unlike every single other airport everywhere else in the world, in which the screeners commented, laughed, or otherwise took interest when I opened an ordinary-looking bag and extracted a live (but barely) cat, the NY screeners' faces remained completely impassive. I'm entirely convinced this would have been the case had I extracted a little green alien, too. It filled my heart with a certain kind of pride. Re-checking my bags, I heard the unmistakable New York nasality of one passenger catching up with another: "BAR-bra, whaaat did you think of the MOO-vie?"
The movie, let me just briefly state, had been some instantly forgettable cut-to-shreds suitable-for-all-ages confection. I paused, curious to hear the answer. And then it began:
"We-ell, visually..."
I didn't hear the rest. My heart, already swollen, burst and overflowed with joy.
Lansmen.

The rest was truly anticlimactic. My flight to DC was delayed, then delayed again, and yet again, and I got increasingly nervous as flights to an airport less then 50 miles away were canceled due to "weather." Meanwhile, a kind of imperative exhaustion gripped my brain stem, klaxons sounded inside my skull -- my body giving me fair warning that all systems were to be imminently shut down.

When we finally were allowed to board the tiny prop plane at around 7:30 PM, no one asked about the cat, and, again, I decided not to tell. Except this time, once I was seated and before the plane started up, my precious little kitty, who had spent the entire preceding 20-plus hours angelically quiet and still, decided he'd really had just about all he could take (or perhaps it was the effects of all that Edam), and started moaning. As I frantically and uselessly tried to jiggle his bag with my feet, I attempted to cover. "Mee-YOW, I'm tired!" I exclaimed to no one in particular, stretching, and surreptitiously leaning down to try to wiggle my fingers distractingly in his bag. He began a full-throated yowl.

The flight attendant frowned and began rifling through a stack of passenger information papers. But it was too late -- the engines started, almost drowning out the cat, and then we were suddenly in the air one last time. The golden, pulsing grid of Manhattan filled my window. Coming from two years in a land without right angles, I had trouble perceiving it as a city; it looked more like a graphic out of Tron, more perfect and glorious than humanly possible.

K had, fortunately, been able to contact my friend who was meeting me at Dulles about my delay; and now this friend likewise informed me that K, caught by the same headwinds as me, would be overnighting in Istanbul. He dropped me off at the borrowed Dupont Circle apartment of another friend. I released the cat, and we both sank gratefully into the most comfortable, inviting bed that ever existed.