Unbeknownst

Always a Little Something Somewhere in the Purse

25 Always a Little Something Somewhere in the Purse She was tall and blonde, although seated and plain. I couldn’t determine her age. She was trying not to look me in the face. I was approaching a bank of blue seating at Gate B-8, her bank of seating, and I sat next to her. I got out my glasses and reading. I put them back in my bag. How could I read when the woman seated next to me and trying not to cry was only mostly succeeding? I rustled through the inner pockets of my purse until I found the travel packet of tissue, crumpled from the years, flecked with leather dust. But as I offered it up, I saw that she,Thanks, anyway, had already produced her own. Isn’t that just like us?—always a little something somewhere in the purse which can’t alter reality in the large sense but might help us along in the small. Her phone rang. She wiped her nose and answered with her name. No, she couldn’t show the split foyer this afternoon, but Cindy in the office could. Some kind of confidence had happened in her shoulders. And her voice: genuine, helpful. She specified the freeways to avoid and better ways to take. It sounded like L.A. Her voice played the notes of continual possibility. There was one more door at the end of disappointment, and this might be it, it just might. Hearing her speak, there isn’t a client who wouldn’t have straightened a bit, 26 curiosity increased. She slipped her phone into her bag and rearranged her legs. I glanced obliquely to our right and said, “You handled that awfully well, Karen, under the circumstances.” Then she told me everything. O’Hare International Airport ...