Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead

I gave my husband a kiss that had to last for two weeks then wheeled my suitcase through the gate. At exactly 2:03 pm, right on schedule, the tiny 50-passenger plane pulled itself lightly from the ground, the day hot, clear and cloudless. I am blessed with a window seat and a surly silent companion wearing really cute shoes and reading a fashion magazine. Even if I flew every day I would never tire of seeing the world spread out below me like a map, the interstates for boundary lines, the lakes and rivers bright ribbons laced through green and brown. I want to share the joy of Maymont from the air, the James River snaking into the distance on its tireless trip to the ocean but there is no one else interested. I try to turn from the beautiful panorama of farms and fields and become absorbed in my book. The air soon grows rocky and restless tossing us like voyagers on an invisible ocean. I press my face to the window again intrigued by even squares of corn and wheat sliced thoughtlessly by diagonal lines of interstates. My eyes are drawn to a wrongness in the pattern near the top of the picture, as if the artist had erased a section and smudged it a uniform gray brown or perhaps an area the cartographers left blank with the caption, “there be dragons here”. I stare at the void for several minutes before I realize the tiny white dots I notice at the edge of the emptiness are boats on the vast inland sea of Lake Michigan. To my eyes it is a fearsome thing from the air. As it rises up to meet the horizon it seems to loom, as if threatening to fall and overtake the peaceful cottages perched so fragile and small along the shore. The plane dips to the left and for long minutes water is all I can see out my porthole. Then with a quick turn to the right the towers of Chicago rise like a three dimensional bar graph from the level page of the Great Plains. I think poetry as it shines beneath me, Sandberg’s city with the big shoulders, stackers of wheat, hog butcher to the world, player with railroads. It is easy to be poetic from this distance.

We land as lightly and effortlessly as we departed and I want to go thank Captain Schultz, our pilot for his expertise. The thought is gone by the time I arrive at the cabin door and walk down the steps to the tarmac. Everything is jumbled, hot, inconvenient, poorly marked. We move in some dreamscape up and down endless steps, smells of discordant food assault my nose. Finally we are counted and herded in groups of 16 to waiting buses for an uncomfortable 5 minute trip to a place that looked identical to where we were before. My coworker and traveling companion, his knees jammed and legs bent unnaturally in the miniscule space allotted, observes that there are actually 20 people on the bus and that there are 15 empty places. I want to tell him that dreams like this rarely make sense, but he is a counter of things like people, money, minutes, and miles, so I merely nod and agree. More steps, more walking, and finally we stand in the designated gate. He snorts derisively at my “rabbit food” when I offer to get him a salad from the vendor across the way. When I return he informs me there are 150 people on standby for our flight, a number that seems to cause him concern. He calls his wife again to tell her the minute details of our journey so far. He hangs up forlorn when she asks him not to call again until we arrive at the hotel.

Soon we trudge soullessly into the waiting jet and I find myself in the exact center of the plane, no window, no aisle, and squeezed between a 20 something and a elderly woman who grabs the ass of the passing male flight attendant to complain about the cabin temperature. I give her my blanket, and bereft of a window I concentrate on my salad and my book. Like a ride in an elevator the flight is over before I have finished three chapters. The Denver airport is sleek and modern, the ride to the outside made seamlessly easy, the buses and vans waiting for deplaning passengers non-polluting. Our driver is of the New York persuasion with the gas pedal, lurching forward and letting off the gas alternately as we drive along the almost empty four lane road to town. The hotel is luxurious, my two room suite complete with two televisions I will never turn on, a microwave and fridge. We are not in time for the manager’s nightly reception, free booze and snacks in an oddly family atmosphere, but I head for the bar to catch up with my coworkers and get a briefing for tomorrow. I chat with Rich, the barkeep over a couple of drafts after she heads off too bed. He complains that he has just been asked to supply a birthday cake with candles along with hot chocolate and martinis. I agree with him that it is indeed a strange place to work.

I awaken at 4 am to a blackened sky and curse my unfailing internal clock, the one that is too stupid to know that I have had only three hours sleep. At five I am alone in the gym doing time on the elliptical. By 7:30 I have joined my coworkers for breakfast in the atrium, pushed the free breakfast around on my plate, and tasted the very disappointing coffee. By eight we are all on the job; the meet and greet starts at 10:30, then down to business. By Wednesday I have fallen into the grinding routine, twelve hour days, hurried lunches, nervous new hires to reassure. My favorite trainee takes me to lunch, but I insist on paying per protocol. He is relatively fundless and I have a corporate expense account. In return he shares his life story with me. I will not betray his trust, but let us say he is interesting. I especially like the fact that he tells me he is older than me when I am actually 10 years his senior. My other trainee, only 25, is more direct. After he listens to me turn a customer around from skeptical to enrolled, he looks at me with the greatest respect and pronounces me “the bomb”. We settle into a comfortable working relationship after the first day.

It is now Thursday morning and life on the road has already grown old. I miss my husband more than I realized I would. I miss my son, my sweet red car, even the loving annoyance of my cats. The hotel is jammed with other business travelers eating breakfast alone or with companions they did not choose. All of us have other places we’d prefer to be, things we’d rather do, and we all have the blurry-eyed look of the chronically tired. I’m working on a delicate balance between caffeine and beer, legal uppers and downers, in order to get through the long days. As I look around at my fellow voyagers gathered in the atrium for breakfast, and at the bar after hours, I have a feeling I’m not the only one.