The foam had gone yellow at the hinge, the color of old newspaper. I pinched the split seam together out of habit, which did nothing. It was the same pillow from the Portland trip, or maybe the one before that - I couldn't remember anymore which bad sleep belonged to which city. I tucked it under my arm next to the carry-on and the carry-on made a sound like a held breath.
The Pillow That Promised Nothing
The bin swung open on its own and a gray wool coat slid forward like it had been waiting to do exactly that. I watched my carry-on disappear under it. The seatbelt sign made a sound like a small bone cracking and the light went red and the flight attendant in the galley put both hands flat on the counter without turning around. Somewhere under that coat was the Burt's Bees, the two Advil loose in the foil - the charger with the frayed end I'd been meaning to replace since March. The plane dropped maybe six feet and I sat back down and put my hands in my lap and the overhead bin stayed open, yawning at me, the coat sleeve hanging out like an arm.
The customs hall was the length of a football field and every light in it was pointed straight down at my skull. I shuffled through the zigzag of nylon ropes with my left heel riding on the back of my shoe and my chin angled toward my right shoulder like I was listening for something far away. At the bench near the exit I sat down and dug two fingers into the rope of muscle between my neck and my shoulder blade and pressed until my vision went slightly white, then held it there, then let go - and nothing changed. A child in a yellow raincoat rolled a hard-sided suitcase over my foot and apologized in Japanese and I nodded and the nod sent a bright line of pain down to my second rib. The departures board above me listed trains in green letters I couldn't read without tilting my head back, which I did once, and then didn't do again.
The pouch had a velcro strip I'd cut from an old camera bag and it stuck to the tray-table arm with a sound like tape pulling off a wall. Advil in the front pocket, Burt's Bees in the back, the charger coiled around itself like it finally had somewhere to be. My right ankle stayed the size of a right ankle. The pillow is in the shallow drawer with the dead pens - the foam gone the color of a nicotine stain, and I've moved it twice without throwing it out. It doesn't remind me of anything I'd frame.
What Tokyo's Customs Hall Charged Me
The headphones were in the bin at the gate, the good ones, the ones with the rubber seal that fit the whole ear, and I'd left them there because the flight was only nine hours and I thought that meant something. By hour four the woman behind me was watching a cooking show with the volume at whatever cooking shows sound like through a seat-back at thirty-five thousand feet - and the child across the aisle had a toy that beeped, and the engine had moved from under my back teeth into the soft place behind my eyes, and I pressed my temple against the cold window and the cold window pressed back. I found the foam earplugs in the bottom of my jacket pocket, loose, the color of old salmon - and I put them in anyway. They turned the engine into a slightly quieter engine. At the hotel I lay on top of the covers with my shoes on and the blackout curtains open and the afternoon light coming in flat and yellow, and I thought about eating something, and then it was dark.
I found the good headphones three weeks later in the front pocket of a jacket I hadn't worn since, tags still on the case, the rubber seal intact. I held them for a minute over the sink. The next flight was six hours to Lisbon and I put them on before the door even closed - and somewhere over the Atlantic a baby screamed for forty minutes and I watched its mouth moving and felt nothing, just the low hum of the cabin like a held note, and I slept with my chin on my chest and woke up with a crick I could live with. At baggage claim I stood on both feet like a person. The headphones are in the front pocket now, always, and the jacket hangs by the door where I'll see it.
The neck pillow from the drugstore in Schiphol had a clasp that promised to lock - a little plastic toggle the color of a tooth, and I fiddled with it for twenty minutes over Denmark before I gave up and wedged the whole thing between my cheek and the window frame at an angle that felt, briefly, like a solution. I woke up somewhere over Canada with my head torqued left and a sound in my neck like a knuckle cracking in slow motion. Oslo was four days and I spent the first two of them holding my chin with my hand when I looked right, which is the direction the Munch museum was - and the harbor, and everything I'd come to see. A woman at the information desk watched me turn my whole body like a lighthouse to follow her pointing finger and said something in Norwegian to her colleague that I didn't need translated. The toggle is still on my keyring, clipped to nothing.
Disclaimer
This article is for general informational purposes only and doesn't constitute professional, financial, medical - or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.
