Page 11 of Excitable Boy
Mike groaned. “Motherfucker!”
“Yeah, that’s what I said. Let’s grab breakfast, then we can check out.”
They headed downstairs, ate, grabbed their luggage, loaded it into the rental car, and Tony checked out while Mike waited in the car.
At the airport, they waited in line to check in, a line that was longer than Tony knew it might normally be. That was probably due to their flight being delayed, if the dark muttered grumblings he overheard from fellow passengers were any indication. By the time they reached the desk and the clerk started checking them in, he knew from her tight smile that there was a problem.
“What?” he asked.
“Well, your flight is delayed—”
“I know.”
“Would you like to fly stand-by tomorrow instead and earn—”
“No,” Tony and Mike said together. “Not to be rude,” Tony continued, “but I haven’t seen my wife in nearly two fricking months, he hasn’t seen his in nearly a month, and we want to go home. We’renotflying stand-by. We’re not taking an alternate flight. We want seats onthatflight, direct to Tampa, do not pass go, do not route us through Atlanta or any other fricking hub.”
She nodded, her fingers flying over the keyboard. “I can’t seat you together—”
“We don’tcare,” they said in unison.
She nodded again, then her computer finally started spitting out boarding passes and luggage tags.
It was with no small measure of relief that they were standing in a TSA checkpoint line ten minutes later.
“Man,” Mike said. “I was about to start crying if she was going to tell us we weren’t flying.”
“You aren’t the only one,” Tony muttered.
He was starting to get a little antsy about how long it was taking to get through the checkpoint when they finally made it forty minutes before their flight was scheduled to start boarding. They checked in at the gate just to make sure, then sat down to await the call to board.
Mike held a fist out to him, and Tony bumped with him. “Home free,” Mike said.
“Dude! Are youcrazy? You didnotjust fucking say that! Do you want to jinx—”
“Attention all passengers and employees,” the PA system announced. “Due to a security breech, all passengers must exit the terminal immediately and be rescreened by TSA agents—”
“Motherfucker!” the men said.
Mike and Tony stood, Tony glaring at his friend even though he knew it wasn’t Mike’s fault.
“Sorry,” Mike said.
“Come on,” Tony griped as they and everyone else began trudging toward the exit.
