'stove'

we were done with the job and done with the city. we had all worked so hard and even though we loved each other and had spent part of every day laughing to the point of tears, we were all exhausted and ready to sleep in our own beds. of course the airport 'experience' was a dystopian nightmare; invasive searches, personal questions, endless lines- but we endured it all without complaint because it meant that we were going to be home soon. one by one we inched through the process. one by one we climbed onto the plane and found our seats. when my turn came to snake through the isle and settle in, i was pleased to see that i had the good fortune to land a spot with extra leg room and no immediate neighbors. i shoved my bag overhead and settled in. my friends were laughing and teasing each other and even accompanied by the sterile whir of the planes' basic systems, i found the sound of it homey. i smiled to myself as i dug through my purse. suddenly myriam and malin were kneeling over the seats in front of me with worried faces and said  'they stopped steve!'. 'why?' i asked not quite believing it could even be true. 'on his paperwork his name is spelled stove!' i laughed with a hard edge and said surely 'they' couldn't be THAT stupid. the three of us backed-tracked out of the plane until we saw poor steve trying to explain the obvious silliness of the error to an 'agent' who indeed looked dim enough not to understand the simple typo. when it became apparent that the issue would not be quickly resolved, we spread the word among our crew members and all of us grabbed our things and left the plane standing nearly empty. steve tried to protest as he saw us exiting the plane and encouraged us all to go on without him, but he was close to tears (and our friend...) and not one of us wanted to leave him there alone. immediately 200 of us flooded our company with detailed calls and soon an army of interns 2000 miles away were waking up their bosses- who in turn generated angry calls (filled with hard numbers and threats to take the companies business to a different airline) to the officials at the airport. within minutes an 'official' walked up to us and said. 'okay, so this looks like a simple mistake. as soon as we log in the complaints and get them okay'd by our chain of supervisors, steve is free to board.' we all sighed in relief. 'great! how long will that be?' i asked. 'oh, give or take, about 6 hours.' he said. he also made it clear that any 'interference' from us would elongate that estimate significantly. we looked at each other with narrowed eyes and told steve we were going to go out and have dinner, bring back a doggie bag for him and would return to board WITH him. he looked at us all with total love and gratitude and managed a weak little smile.

as we were slowly rolling our carry-ons down the sidewalk we looked like a small, tired cavalcade of expats. myriam and malin started to tease me but i couldn't really hear what they were saying over the sound of all the wheels rolling on the pavement, but enough of the others did that it started a cascade of laughter. it made me happy again and i started to laugh too just because. soon we found a row of cute little cafes and filled them all one by one. malin, myriam and i got lucky and landed in the very last cafe. it served amazing gourmet pizza and had an excellent wine list. we laughed and laughed, drank until we were tipsy and ordered the most delicious pizza (of the 6 we tried...) to bring back to 'stove'.