The $2 hamburger was cold, the potato chips stale, the Coke flat and mostly ice. Jon looked out the window. The sky was overcast. Right in front of him, some men in coveralls were stuffing the belly of a 727 with luggage; behind them stretched an endless concrete sea of runway, planes taxiing around as if wandering aimlessly. It was a gray day. Jon’s was a gray mood. The Detroit airport was a cold, monolithic assemblage that didn’t exactly cheer Jon up, its overall design a vaguely modernistic absence of personality, heavy on dreary, neutral-color stone, and its infinite intersecting halls converging on a toweringly high-ceilinged lobby in what might have been intended as a tribute to confusion. The only thing he liked about the place was that, compared to Chicago’s O’Hare, there were fewer people and, consequently, not as much frantic rushing around. But the less hectic pace didn’t do Jon any good, really; it only gave him time to reflect on things that were better left alone.
