It was midnight when I sat down in the departure lounge. I didn't notice the girl sat next to me, I was tired and looked at the newspaper without reading it. She was young, Chinese, eyes so dark you couldn’t see the pupils. She had a short black dress and porcelain-white legs, one of those traditional Chinese collars that made her look handsome. We started talking and I noticed she was pretty, she laughed at my jokes and kept slapping my arm.
She was also flying to Jakarta, on a different flight, and now had to leave as it was boarding. When she stood to leave up I asked for her number and she was happy I'd finally asked. Sitting there by myself I took a long shot: would she like to wait at the airport in Jakarta until I arrive and spend the night with me? The company I was going to work for had booked a double room at the hotel. I told her I wanted to see her again and didn't know when we'd next get the chance. Inexplicably, without hesitation, she said she would. So I gave her my flight number and, a vision of beautiful innocence, when I arrived at the hotel, she knocked at my door and came in. I remember we stood at the window with all the lights off, watching the planes take off from the runway outside. I put my arm around her and she lent in towards me. I made love to her gently and slept for a few hours before saying goodbye before dawn, with tired hearts and heavy eyes, our bodies still warm with each other. She was a picture of innocence when we spoke but, in the darkness, when we were there alone, the devil came out of her. The sweetest little surrendering cries I’d ever heard, the sweetest sound on earth and in fact the single best thing there is, or has been, or ever will be in life amen. We would have given anything to stay there that morning, to stay warm and close, like Kerouac with his Mexican girl, like "two tired angels of some kind, hung up forlornly... having found the closest and most delicious thing in life together... fell asleep and slept till late afternoon.” But we had to take separate taxis to opposite sides of the city and maybe never meet again. But I can still feel her now as I remember it and recount it and, for better or for worse, doing so somehow feel as though she really was mine and always will be though I miss her now. I like to remember best standing beside her, almost touching, watching the runway lit up in the dark with the planes taking off, the warmth of her body, quiet enough when the engines faded to hear the pounding my heart. I don't know how long we stood there like that, looking out the window without seeing what was there. We were tired and full of desire, feeling completely alive for those few hours alone together, in a little room in a foreign town, looking out the window at the runway in the dark. And I remember thinking to myself that sometimes it's as though the whole word is one big departure lounge...
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AuthorEnglish teacher from the UK. Living in Granada. Currently working in Doha. Archives
February 2022
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