The Biggest Lie: A Short Story
My flight leaves in two hours from gate six. Out in the wide open of the circular airport terminal, I’m looking up to the departures screen, all of the information just flying. The screen, it’s a hundred feet high but you can still see the tiniest dot up at the top. The detail is so intricate, and it might mean something if there was anything to it. I look at my watch. I look at the screen. People of all shapes, sizes, all with luggage and screaming children and tickets, they’re all around me. In an instant, they’re all gone, all in lines or the hallway to the bar or out catching taxis. In an airport terminal, it’s the busiest place one minute and the loneliest the next. Out in the wide open, I’m looking up at the departures screen. I look at my watch. I look at the screen.
Everyone who’s ever been to an airport will tell you to go early. The lines—they’ll tell you—take forever. They wind back and forth until there’s this mile long snake of baggage. And then there’s finding your gate, and getting through the metal detectors and assuring security that you are indeed not a terrorist. When the guy with the stun gun attached to his waist asks you if you need anything, you’ve got to have an answer ready. What they don’t tell you is that when you arrive two and a half hours early—when there is no line, and the gate is in plain view of just about everywhere—well, what they don’t tell you about is the waiting game.
I’m worrying about stun gun guy asking me just what I was doing standing out in the middle of this gigantic C shaped building, so I walk down the hallway to the bar. I pass all the novelty shops, all the paraphernalia and useless crap you get your distant cousins as a last minute oh-I-almost-forgot kind of gesture. I’ve got two hours before my flight takes off, and since I’m not planning any terrorist activity, a bar is exactly the place I should be. The bartender, he cleans a glass, takes one look at me, and grimaces. He sees it. I don’t know how anyone wouldn’t. The driver of the car didn’t see me, but ever since the accident, it seems like I’m just the most obvious thing around. “Do you want some ice?” He asks sincerely. I shake my head, and order a ginger ale. He doesn’t ask “what happened?” as he cleans a glass and pours.
This bar, it’s an insert off this long hallway going who knows where. There are two dozen tables, all dark maple with gold trim. You can see this exact same pattern on all the chairs, all the floors, all the walls. Outside the bar, it’s totally white, clean, and personality free. It’s so sanitary it stings the eyes. Another thing they don’t tell you about airports is that if your looking for anything to do with the real world, forget about it.
There are a few people in the bar with me. I can’t see the faces of the people over at the far tables, but I know they’re smoking and laughing together. I’m the only one not using a table, the only one without company.
In two hours, I go home. In one hour, 59 minutes, everything goes back to being normal, small, manageable.
In one hour, 58 minutes, I get my life again. Get it back on track.
Welcome to the waiting game.
I wasn’t looking, but with an hour and 57 minutes before I get my life back on track, this girl came and sat down right next to me.
I didn’t say “Hi”, but she still looked my way and, as best to be under her breath, said “Oh Jesus Christ!”
Ever since last night, I’ve been getting these kind of reactions. This girl, she has golden blonde hair, reaching halfway down her back in loose curls. There were no hair clips. It was long and thick. You could lose your hand in that hair. She wore a grey poor-boy hat on top. She wore thin black glasses. The bartender has his eye on her. Under her feet is a blue duffel bag with a tag on it. The look on her face when she looked at me is something I’ve been getting used to. You know, shock and awe.
I say, “Hi.”
“I’m sorry,” She says, suddenly flushed. She took off her glasses and wiped them on her t-shirt. “I didn’t mean to, you know, freak out.” She put them back on and I could still see her wince, “Are you okay?”
I smile a crooked smile because that’s really the only thing I can muster and say, “I’m fine. Really. Thanks for the, you know, concern. I’m okay.”
The bartender, he comes over and asks if she would like a drink. She orders a ginger ale. She looks over at my drink, and says “We’ve got something in common. I’m Sarah.”
I shake her hand. “I’m Rick.”
“Pleased to meet you, Rick,” she says, still not really looking me in the eye.
“If you don’t mind me asking…” she begins. I cut her off before she had a chance to embarrass me.
“Don’t. I don’t really want to talk about it. It’s fine. I’m not in any pain. Except for when I try to look really excited about something.”
She looks like she understands. She sips her ginger ale and asks me, “So, where you headed?”
“Home,” I say. “I was here, for…I guess you could call it a vacation. I mean, it was a business trip, really, but I didn’t get much work done. There was only one meeting, actually. I spent most of the time in my hotel room.”
“That doesn’t sound like much fun,” she replies. “What kind of business was it?”
This becomes a conversation, just like that. One minute, there is desolate loneliness, the next there’s this pretty girl asking me about my life. I thought about the workings of an airport, and how because they make you wait forever, you just start making things up to amuse yourself. You begin to make yourself up. You lie to complete strangers because here you can get away with it.
In an hour and a half, it’s back to the same old, same old.
I tell her, through the good side of my lip, “I’m a writer. Novelist, actually. My editor lives here.”
“A writer?” She says it with such surprise. I used to get that a lot too. I’d tell people in passing conversations that I’d written a few books, and all of a sudden I’m a celebrity. I used to make jokes about someday making it all the way to the bottom-right slot in celebrity squares.
“It’s nothing, really,” I say, “It’s nothing like in the movies.”
She looks at me queerly, “What’s it like in the movies?”
“I suppose it’s a lot of things.” I didn’t want to talk about me, or my life, or what happened last night. I ask, “Where are you going?”
She sips her ginger ale, “I’m going on an adventure.”
“Oh really?” I ask, pretending to be intrigued. This girl, she couldn’t be a day over twenty. Her eyes did this sparkly thing where you just knew she’s been dreaming huge.
“To Hawaii,” she says. “The plane I’m waiting for now takes me to Anaheim, and then I’m off.”
“To your adventure,” I reply coyly. I try to raise an eyebrow. She could probably sense my struggle.
“To my adventure,” she holds her glass up, toasts herself, and smiles. She’s clearly excited. She laughs a little when I try to smile back. She takes one look at my face again and she drops back into her seat. She gives a nervous smirk. She doesn’t want to offend me, or to make me feel left out. It’s hardly the case.
She asks me, “What do you write?”
“I don’t really know,” I say, “I’m not really a genre writer. I suppose, it’s too early to tell. I’ve only written three books. It’s not much of anything, really. At least according to descriptions from critics’ reviews, and I usually just use those. Some people, they call my stuff poignant, depressing, but others call it heartfelt and uplifting. It gets so much more confusing when other people begin describing your work for you. There aren’t really plots, you know, not much happens. But there’s people. I try and depict real people, doing real things and getting through them, going through those little struggles that we all go through. I try and make that mean something.”
I glance over at the bartender and he’s pretending not to eavesdrop. “The hard part is,” I say, “it’s not really popular, the whole idea. People always ask me what it’s about, but it’s only about what people take away from it. My stuff isn’t really ‘advertisement ready’ you could say. I couldn’t get Mr. Movie phone or somebody to give a three-sentence description of it. Some people, they just call it boring and slow and Canadian.”
“Screw the critics,” she says, as if she hasn’t met a critic in her life. She asks me, “What do you think? Do you like it?”
I really don’t want to talk about me, or about my work. But because she asks and is being pretty good company, I explain; “I get out what I want to say, I guess. It’s a good stress reliever. I don’t really think I’m cut out to do much else, anyway. But enough about me, what’s this big adventure you have planned?”
“Well, you won’t like it,” she says, “because it’s big and a lot of stuff happens and there’s almost no conversation and a lot of people senselessly die.”
“You’re serious?” I know she isn’t, but that’s how it goes. When you get all this time to wait, you amuse yourself by being whoever you want to be. The great thing about airports is there’s no second date. You could be an international spy and nobody would know the wiser.
“Oh, yeah. Can I tell you a secret?” She says quietly, dipping her head a little.
“Sure?” I don’t know if it was writer’s instinct or cynicism, experience or bitterness, but I couldn’t smile at this girl. She’s having fun playing by the rules.
“I’m a secret agent in my fathers bureau. I’m on my way to Hawaii because we’ve received a tip about a potential activity going on, something that’s pretty huge and will have ramifications that’ll involve the whole world.”
“Let me guess,” I joke, “There’s someone fixing the shuffle-board matches.”
“No,” she says, “but I’ll keep an eye out for that while I’m there.” She taps her nose with her finger twice and continues. “See, at the top of a volcanic mountain, there’s a cave blocked off by fifteen tons of hardened lava from a bunch of previous eruption. Inside, there’s an unbelievable amount of treasure, and, at the deepest end of the cave, there’s this sought after Tiki idol worth over a billion dollars. See, our operative has pinpointed a drug cartel who has shown interest in retrieving the idol, selling it to the highest bidder, and using the money for…”
“…horrendous, unspeakable evil?” I ask.
“How did you guess?”
“Because it’s always unspeakable, and most of the time you can bet on it being horrendous.”
“Anyways, my job is to infiltrate the cave, stop them in their tracks, and get the idol back to the proper authorities.”
“You’re fathers’ agency you say?”
“Yeah, Dad’s finally trusting me to do something dangerous. I just hope that I won’t let him down. All I’ve thought about for the last eight weeks is this mission. I don’t know if I’m ready or not, but I can’t disappoint him, you know? My father, wow, you wouldn’t believe the amazing things he’s done. I’ll be lucky if I’m a footnote at this stage, but, I’m just beginning. Someday, I’ll be just as good. Maybe better.” She takes a deep breath and lets it all sink in. She says, “Can you imagine how important this is?”
I look at her with my good eye. “You’re making this up.”
She puts her hands on her hips, “Am not. In fact, I shouldn’t even be telling you. You could be one of them for all I know.” She squints her eyes, “Are you one of them?”
“One of who?”
“Them! You know, the guys who are so shrouded in mystery and evil intrigue. Those guys. All we know about them is that they’re probably completely evil and hell-bent on taking over the world.”
I’m tempted to play along, to be one of them. The entire idea though, of being one of them, some indiscernible ‘people’ who do nothing individual, pretty well completely turned me off. I’m just not that good of an actor, however, so I’m left saying, “No, I’m not one of them. I’m sorry.”
“A ha!” she exclaims, “denial is the first clue!”
“You’re trying to mess with me.”
“Am I doing a good job?”
“You had me up until the part where you said ‘can I tell you a secret?’”
“You’re no fun.”
She’s right. I’m not any fun. The whole point is to play along with anything you’re thrown. The point is to let people be whoever they want, because there is no second date, and there is no place you can get away with it like at an airport. It’s the epitome of anonymity. And here I am ruining everything because I had a bad night.
“Hey,” I reply. “I’m plenty fun. I’m just a little injured right now. Injured people aren’t much fun.”
She looks at my face with a hint of study for the first time. “So, now that we know each other, what happened?”
“Now that we know each other?” I repeat back. She’s right. I’d broken the rules and revealed that we were in fact real people, and now we’re stuck knowing that. Still, I don’t want to talk about it. Still, even when you’ve admitted that you’re a real person, there’s still no second date.
“Well,” I begin, “the story goes back a little, back to when I first started this book I’m writing. It’s almost finished, so there’s a lot to it. Like I said, I write about regular, normal people with nothing special to them. Well, there’s a small problem that comes with writing real people. Sometimes, real people don’t like that you’re writing about them.”
There’s a very concentrated look on Sarah’s face as I explain this, so I keep going. “In the very first chapter, a couple of the themes and one of the characters was a little too close to a girl I used to date. Any writer you will ever meet will have this problem at some point in time. Although she was completely out of my head, a few ideas still lingered and when I sat down to write, those ideas came to me and I thought they were just great. Well, I sent out the first chapter to a few of my friends to read, you know, to see if I had something or if it was just pure drivel. Somehow, the chapter made it into the hands of my old girlfriend, and she noticed a few of these similarities, and she wasn’t too happy about it.”
“Ooh, did she have someone beat you up? Is that why you look like that?”
“Worse,” I say, “She went to my editor and pointed this out. However, she didn’t seem to realize that it wasn’t as if I was plagiarizing anything, I was just using elements of her personality. We fought about it in his office, and I was pretty adamant that it was some stupid coincidence and I probably wouldn’t even include it in the book anyway, and she went home pissed off but really unable to do anything. So, for the next four months that it took me to finish the book, I figured she would be secretly planning her revenge the whole time, and would wait for the day I’d come back into town to finalize the editing process.
“So, I got here a few days ago, and she just somehow knew. Last night, I was at a bar, kind of like this one but with real lights on the ceiling so there wasn’t any artificial mood, and she was there too. When I saw her, I began to sweat. Literally, a chill ran down my back. The entire room just slowed down as she came toward me. She sat down at the bar, just like you are right now. She looked me in the eye, and can you believe what she asked me?”
I wait a second to see if Sarah would come up with something extravagant with that imagination of hers.
After a few seconds, she quips, “Let me guess, she asked ‘how are you Rick’ really sarcastically, and then threw you up against the wall, gave you an ultimatum to take the bit out of your story, or else she’d paint the entire bar with your blood?”There’s no doubt Sarah thinks I’m lying. For all intensive purposes, I may be. But she plays the game by the book. She exaggerates and calls a bluff without coming out and saying that I may have been crying wolf.
I say, “You got the first part right.”
“She didn’t threaten you?”
“No. It was the strangest thing. She began by apologizing for the freak out a few months before at my editors. She said that she had been immature about it, and it was a privilege to be characterized in a book. And then, guess what she did next.”
Sarah, her eyes wander as she searched for something. At this point, after the last few comments, I wouldn’t be surprised if she could think up some incredibly extravagant piece about what could have happened in the universe of surprises and big plot twists and…and…
“So, what happened?” She says with a serious, interested tone. There’s no elaborate prediction that would have nothing to do with the point. Her eyes don’t waver, her lips don’t shake. She is interested. It is mature and real. It is something I had not at all been used to as of late. It is something that shouldn’t happen at airports. The rules, which she clearly plays by better than I do, is that you remain passively interested, and you add to the big hoax best you could, but you never actually care.
“Well,” I say, coughing a little, “What happened was that we ended up having this really great conversation. We talked about all the stuff we had put each other through, all the crap, and we totally forgave each other. It was the best conversation I’d ever had with her, and I was really happy about it. By the end of it, the bar was closing and she offered to give me a ride. I politely waved it off and said that I’d walk home. We left at the same time went in opposite directions as soon as we left the bar. Exactly four minutes later, I was crossing a street, and the streetlight had been knocked out and it was really dark, and all of a sudden, I saw headlights coming at me. I don’t know what it was - the lateness, or the fear of, shit, I don’t know, but I couldn’t move. And it took absolutely no time to hit me. I tried my best to roll over it, but as soon as I hit the hood I lost control. That’s what I always thought, you know? Just roll into it and you’ll be okay. But it doesn’t really work like that. Nothing ever works the way it does in the movies. I whip-lashed against the antenna, which gave me this little number here, and then I hit the windshield, and was propelled over the top and then behind. The car must have had a fin or something because I felt a really hard scrape just before falling off the car. When I fell, I didn’t really have much of a choice, but I fell face-first on the pavement which pretty well did the rest of it.”
“Wow,” She exclaims. She looks over my face again, trying to picture it all happening.
“The thing I have a problem with,” I begin, “Was that it really had nothing to do with me. My ex-girlfriend, the bar, the conversation, the book—all that I was directly involved in—and up until I got hit with the car, everything about the story was very small and manageable and believable. It wasn’t boring, I don’t think. There were twists and turns; there were the elements of revenge, of trepidation. There was paranoia on my part definitely. At points I honestly thought something terrible was going to happen. But that’s the thing. In real life, in our everyday existence, nothing really happens. Our imaginations could run completely wild, but the result is just, you know, your everyday life. Wake up, eat breakfast, and read the news about all these terrible events that never happen anywhere near what we’d call reality. We’re a hundred thousand miles away from any war zone. We’d have to have plane tickets three times the price of these to go anywhere where there is something actually happening. You know, like a religious upbringing or a war or a real, true adventure with pirates or secret agents. Big stuff. This car accident, it was real enough, but it had nothing to do with me whatsoever. I didn’t see who was in the car – I think I saw long hair – but it could have been anyone. And it could have hit anyone that walked on that street that night. It had to do with the driver, definitely, but it’s not like there was a connection between him or her and me anyway.”
I look at Sarah with her long hair and her smile, a smile that really works. I say, “Nothing in my life had prepared me for this accident. And I don’t think it was karma or anything spiritual, because I think I’m a pretty good guy. I don’t think I deserved it. But who knows, right?”
I think of old romances, and how sometimes it’s just better not to say everything.
In one hour, 14 minutes, I’ll be getting my life back. There won’t be a second date. I won’t have to properly explain myself.
Sarah, she says, “You don’t think it was your ex-girlfriend?”
I think of old romances, where the question of ‘who did it’ wasn’t nearly as important as it is today. All those questions. Who dies? Who kills him? How far do they go? How many bullets or arrows rattle his frame before he finally falls, with all the bravery of a lion?
I think of the Guinness book of world records, all those crazy things that people achieve. You know, the guy with the longest motorcycle jump. The guy with all the swords going down his throat. The couple that kiss longer than anyone else in the entire world.
Is there a record for biggest lie?
“I don’t care, really,” I say. “I felt like I lost a bit of me, last night. I lost the individuality in my life. Something big happened, and because of that I feel like I’ve lost all the little things. I feel like I’ve lost control.”
I think of how I never really considered myself a control freak until I lost it.
Sarah, in whenever time it takes her flight to get ready, will be off on a huge adventure.
I ask, “When is your flight leaving?”
She looks at her watch, and then she bends down, unzips a pocket on the side of the duffel bag and looks at a ticket. She says, “It leaves in about a half hour.”
Sarah, in about a half hour, will be off on a huge adventure.
I ask, “about a half hour?”
“27 minutes,” she says with calculation and confidence and grace.
In 27 minutes she’s off and running.
I ask, “Do I look really that bad?”
And she laughs a little, maybe at the thought of me never looking in the mirror since the accident, or maybe something else. She studies my face, it’s many contours, the several that weren’t there the night before, and the few I’ve always been stuck with. She dips her head back and forth, as if analyzing a painting in a museum.
Sarah sits upright again, and says, “Have you ever seen the video for Thriller?”
I say, “Child of the 80’s. You poor thing.”
“Oh come on,” She said with a giggle, “Ninja turtles. Cindi Lauper! You know you love it.” I nod and she smile and it is all right. She is all right.
I finish my ginger ale. The bartender, he’s right there asking if I want a refill.
In one hour, 8 minutes, I get my life back, my little life where I’m in control. My little life where it matters why things happen and not what happens. I get back to writing about all the little things that mean so much more than some random fucking car accident.
I say to the bartender, “Make it two,” and he fills her glass, too.
Sarah says, “thanks.” She looks down when she said it.
Her eyes are blue behind those glasses and they sparkle. She doesn’t wear any jewelry.
I ask her, “So, why are you really going to Hawaii?”
She say, “I told you. It’s an adventure.”
“Yes, I know,” I say, “but you didn’t say what kind. Let me guess, it’s about a boy?”
Sarah raises one of those blonde eyebrows. That’s how you know the hair is real golden blonde. She looks like she might be offended if someone were to question it’s integrity. She raises one of those eyebrows and looks away.
I accuse her. “It’s about love, isn’t it?” The thing is, this is how so many romances end, with a tragedy and a journey. It’s also how so many of them begin.
She replies, “Not everything is about love, you know.” And she pauses for a few seconds. She looks as if she was angry or bitter. I can’t tell, but I believe I hit a nerve.
“No,” she says. “It’s about love. I’m sick of it. It’s not about any particular boy or anything. I’ve never had a boyfriend, and I’ve never fallen in love, but I don’t like it. I’m frustrated, I guess.”
She leans on the bar with her elbows and drops her head into her hands. She looks up to the rope lights and follows the trail with her eyes. “I remember when I was a kid, I didn’t think about it much, but I knew love was it. It was absolute. It was all I would ever need. I felt like I was only half a person, and that everyone started out that way, and would walk the earth half a person until they found their real true love. I know, fairy tale stuff, but I believed in that. And, in the last little while, I don’t know, it just hasn’t felt like that. I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. I feel like I can take on the world completely on my own. I don’t need anyone. Hence the reason for the adventure. I really don’t have a plan for what’s going to happen, but it’s going to be good. I had to work my ass off for a year to be able to afford it.”
“I’m guessing you were up at 5 in the morning packing for this.”
“God no,” she said, “Who the hell wakes up at 5, anyways?”
I think about hitting the snooze on my alarm 4 times this morning. The first time was at 430 and the last was at 550.
“But,” she says, “You’re right about the workaholic thing. I never have a moment to myself. When I’m not studying, or helping my friends study, I’m at work or in class or sleeping in because my mother comes into my room and shuts my alarm off.”
There’s one hour until my flight leaves. Hers leaves in 14 minutes.
Before I can tell her that her flight leaves in 14 minutes, she asks me “So, why are you really going home?”
No second dates. No real reason to ever tell the truth because you will always get away like that old villain with a twisty mustache that we all secretly cheered for.
I’ve been in this town for four days. I’ve reconciled with an ex-girlfriend. I’ve had my fourth book OK’d content wise, and all that was left was a few weeks of petty editing. I’d met this girl at the airport, this wide-eyed girl waiting for life to take her for a ride. I think about the Guinness book of world records. I think about telling this story. I think about telling the truth.
I tell her, “If it was my ex-girlfriend who hit me last night, then there’s an order to things. If you hit me, or if the bartender hit me, or my little brother or God, then there’s a reason and an explanation and everything is falling into place, the puzzle is working itself out, and there is nothing wrong with any of that. And I know that there’s just as much chance of something completely random and painful happening to me back home, but I suppose I just never thought of it before. I just figured that everything kind of worked, and I can’t figure this out. It’s not about love and it’s not about my book or the fact that my face looks like Michael Jackson from Thriller or that I’ve met you and you’re great, and really, just great. It’s not about love. It’s about finding something that fits, I guess. You could say we’re going in different directions. You’re looking for whatever could be out there. You’re looking for something big and exciting worth living for. I’m not saying that the little things aren’t worth it, because they totally are, but you’re not there right now. You need something big. You’re probably sick to death of the same old, same old. You’re looking for a smile and happiness and magic, wonder, amazement. And I don’t blame you one bit.”
I look at her blushing and curious as to where I was going with this. “…And you’ll find it. I have absolutely no doubt that you will find all the wonder you could ever dream of. Or, if I’m wrong, and you’re like me who enjoys the small things, who needs the small things, then you’ll find that too. The world’s a big enough place, I think. There’s more than enough to go around. I don’t think you have too much to worry about.”
“I’m not that great,” she says, “but I hope you’re right.”
I don’t know how to respond to that; it’s some sort of insecurity in her. I can’t say anything. I barely know her. Maybe she isn’t that great. I look at her with reassurance however, and sometimes it’s about what you don’t say.
I tell her, “You’re plane should be ready. There’s only 10 minutes.”
She looks at her watch and raises one of those pretty blonde eyebrows. She takes out her wallet and drops a ten on the table, something completely unnecessary for a single ginger ale. I thought about how she must have worked in a bar or club at some point, and how people who didn’t tip would have pissed her off so much.
Still, the ginger ale was two dollars.
I thought one more time about the Guinness book of world records.
“Well,” she said, getting off the stool and extending her hand, “It’s been nice talking to you.” She would get on that plane, get going on some huge adventure, and this little moment would be gone. No second dates.
I shake her hand and say, “It’s been a slice.”
She says, “When you get home, put some ice on that. Or, you know, see a doctor or something.” When I get home and put some ice on my forehead to quell the swelling, she’ll be off having the time of so many people’s lives.
So many people want the life she has.
As she walks away, out into the bright blinding light of the airport, the bartender asks if I want some ice. There’s 43 minutes left until my plane leaves, and I say “Please.”
All the people that scramble out through the airport, they’re all them to me, some kind of entity that was mysterious, complicated, and fake. If I never spoke to Sarah, she’d be one of them too, just like I would be with her. There would be nothing real about her if I hadn’t gotten to know her. There wouldn’t be any feeling if I’d seen her before. She’d be background. Wallpaper.
And then I think about how those people are all real people, who all have real lives who need and desire that life, and how at an airport, or anywhere where there is the perfect chance to be anyone else, how few of them take it. I took it. I’ll never know if Sarah did.
Even if I’m not completely sure, I think I’ve got something here. It’s nothing to write about, and it’s nothing to talk about, because it’s so completely abstract and subjective and judgmental. But it’s something to think about. It can always be about what you don’t say, too.
It’s different for all those people out there, but in not too much time at all, I’m getting back to what I think matters. There’s no wrong here, I don’t think, and I don’t see it making much sense if I’ve missed the point in all this. All it takes to throw it all off is one thing. I never hated big events until one happened to me. Sarah was nobody to me until we talked. A change can happen like that, and it’s okay if it’s not good, because it’s something. When there’s no second date, you can be anybody, but it’s nice when you’re somebody, too. Because there’s no second date, I’ll never know if Sarah was telling the truth, and she’ll never know the same about me. But she was somebody, and that’s what matters At an airport, with all the space and time and lukewarm reality, it’s much, much too fun to be the biggest lie.
