Fantabaires convention, part 1

Originally published December 3, 1999, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1359

November 4-5: Fantabaires is a convention that’s been held for the past several years in beautiful Buenos Aires in Argentina. The convention has generally run for about five days and drawn around 40,000 people. This year it’s scheduled for a mammoth ten day run, and the organizers are hoping to draw somewhere in the neighborhood of 75,000 people. The convention has offered to bring down Kathleen and me, and although a two-week absence from home is out of the question, I agree to come down for five days.

As departure day approaches, however, I get increasingly apprehensive since the airline tickets are nowhere to be seen. Finally, on Monday—three days before departure—I receive an e-mail informing me that the reservation has been made and I simply have to show up and get the tickets. The airline is Argentine Airlines. I endeavor to call Argentine Air to confirm the reservations and find out if there’s anything I should know about. I get a number for them from information, but the recording is almost entirely in Spanish. At the end, the voice switches to English and offers another number to call for more information, but the accent is so thick that all I can make out is “333.” I try twice more and pick up an additional “6,” and then give up. Best to keep my fingers crossed.

We arrive at the airport. Mark Waid and Devin Grayson, two other guests of the convention, are already there. They are hunched over a counter with several concerned/annoyed-looking Argentine Airline employees. It does not look good. We quickly discover the reason it doesn’t look good is that it isn’t good. Mark and Devin’s tickets have been canceled. No one at the convention mentioned to us that we were supposed to pick up the tickets no later than twenty-four hours before departure. When the tickets weren’t picked up, the airline canceled the reservation. Kathleen and I look at each other, aware of the fact that if Mark and Devin’s tickets are gone, the chances are sensational that ours are missing as well.

We have arrived at the terminal an hour and a half early, and that seems rather fortunate since it’s apparently going to take every minute of available time to sort things out. The ticket agents engage in much head shaking, scanning of screens, repetition of the word “nada” and talking of how it’s going to be difficult to achieve the same seat price again. This last is incomprehensible to me: The tickets were purchased at full fare in the first place because the convention waited for some reason until the last minute. It’s not as if a savings is being made.

With forty-five minutes before the plane is supposed to depart, Mark and Devin finally get their tickets. Then we step up with the exact same problem. The ticket woman looks like that guy from the poster for the movie Scanners. You know the one: The guy with the stricken look whose skull is about to explode. More gazing at screens as if they’re crystal balls, more head shaking, more nada. Despite the fact that I’ve no reason to, I feel intensely guilty. There’s no one in the world that feels more reflexively guilty for anything and everything than a divorced Jewish male. This time, however, the tickets are produced with more alacrity than Devin’s and Mark’s, probably because they’ve had practice in doing so.

Kyle Baker and his family are supposed to be on the flight as well, but they’re nowhere to be seen. Mark, Devin, Kathleen and I stand in the departure lounge, taking bets as to whether Kyle will make it or not. We envision him showing up ten minutes before departure and getting the same ticket clerk who will discover the same problem and this time her head really will erupt in a shower of blood and gore. We listen carefully for ambulances and screaming and loud Spanish profanity, but nothing reaches our ears, and then the plane is boarding.

Kathleen and I get to our seats. A woman who speaks no English is sitting in them. She produces a boarding pass that has the same seat number on it. We find the stewardess, who speaks slightly more English. She goes to the woman who pulls out the boarding pass again. By startling coincidence, the seat number hasn’t changed in the thirty seconds since she showed it last. The stewardess tells us to wait in the back of the plane. That the plane isn’t full, but we should wait there until she tells us to take a seat. We wait. We block people no matter where we stand. Finally another stewardess, looking irritated, asks us what we’re doing. We tell her. “Sit down somewhere now!” she says as if we’re recalcitrant kindergartners.

We find a couple of seats, window and aisle, on the side. Then a nice guy who has a row of four in the middle of the plane all to himself offers to switch with us. Between the tickets and the stewardesses, I’m now so paranoid that I say, “Why?” suspiciously.

“Well, you two look like you’re off on a romantic trip, and I thought you’d be more comfortable and happy spreading out in four seats than two,” he says. Immediately, because of my reaction, I feel guilty again, but since that’s my normal state of mind, I’m okay with that. We switch.

I’m more than a little worried about the flight, because of the recent crash of Egyptian Air Flight #990. Those people were just as comfortable, as carefree as us, and then, boom. I try to tell myself that the odds are in our favor: How often do you hear of two jumbo jets going down within a week of one another? It’s Garp reasoning, and not terribly morale-boosting. Over two hundred souls, gone, just like that. I’m beginning to develop a genuine antipathy for air travel.

The plane takes off without incident. At 35,000 feet, disaster strikes: We’re told that the inflight movies are Big Daddy and Wing Commander. I try to flee the airplane, but the seat belt holds me tight. Trapped with a lousy SF film and Adam Sandler. At least it’s not as bad as last time. Last time, I had a bulkhead seat with a screen not more than six inches away from me, and Happy Gilmore was the movie. There was nowhere else to look. (Okay, okay, I liked The Wedding Singer, but other than that…)

Since I can pretty much sleep in any position known to man, I remain sitting up while Kathleen stretches her Xena-height body across three seats and uses my lap as a pillow. I fall asleep during the first half hour of Wing Commander (as did many critics) and wake up for the last ten minutes of Big Daddy, before fading out once more. I feel as if I dodged a bullet. Perhaps the flight will be problem free after all.

The screaming wakes everyone at 5 AM.

It is the high pitched howling of a child, about eight years old, a little boy. At first I think the child is throwing a tantrum, but there’s something more in his voice than petulance. I realize, belatedly, that it’s stark terror.

Cabin crewmembers are running at high speed to the site. I crane around in my seat. Mark Waid is standing right where the screaming is originating from, a little off to the side. For a moment I think that maybe the kid just really, really hated Kingdom Come. But then I see that they appear to be ignoring Mark, focusing on someone that I can’t see in the seats nearby him. They appear to be shouting, “Mexico! Mexico!” For a delirious moment I think that the kid’s on the wrong flight and was supposed to be heading to Mexico, and we’re going to have to turn around and go back to JFK or something.

They’re not shouting “Mexico.” They’re shouting “Medico,” calling for medical help. Mark, making his way back to his seat, had just emerged from the bathroom when the chaos struck and consequently happened to be in a position to tell us exactly what had happened.

A little boy, traveling with his mother and grandfather, had endeavored to awaken his grandpa for some reason. His grandfather had not woken up. The kid tried, kept trying, shook him, pounded on his chest. No response. Suddenly fearing that his grandfather had died right there in the seat, it had been the child’s terrified scream of “Grandpapa!” that had startled the entire cabin to wakefulness. The cabin crew grouped around the old man, doing everything they could to get a reaction out of the old man. The child’s reaction was not misplaced; the guy wasn’t waking up. For long minutes they worked on him, giving him oxygen and the like, and then finally he stirred, his eyes opening and looking around, confused.

“A guy almost dying on the plane. That can’t be a good omen,” muttered Mark.

It got us wondering what they do with a body if someone does die on a plane. I naturally figured that they just stuffed it in the overhead compartments. But maybe, I reasoned, they just leave the body there. Put a pair of dark glasses, a hat on it, maybe toss a blanket in its lap. Since passengers would probably be upset, maybe they’d even have fun with it to try and lighten the mood. You know, like, “In preparation for landing, all passengers must have their tray tables in the full and upright locked position… except for Mr. Fedelman over in seat 32H, because, y’know, he’s dead, so what’s the worst that can happen to him? If he gets hit by a falling tray table, what’s he gonna do? Sue?”

We arrive at Buenos Aires airport. There is a gargantuan line at customs. To our left, we spot the kid, his mom… and the grandfather. He’s standing there on line, not even in a wheelchair or anything, as if nothing had happened. Tough old guy. In America they’d probably have him on a stretcher. Devin and Kathleen, meantime, are discussing excitedly about going to see cemeteries in Buenos Aires. Apparently, I am told, death is a popular part of the culture. Things are looking cheerier every minute.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)