I took a long last drag from my cigarette and doused it in the receptacle by the front of the doors. It would be at least ten hours till the next one. I had two hours till takeoff, but I figured I better check in now considering what happened on my last flight out of Frankfurt in 2019. Orage had dropped me off at the airport at about one in the morning. The flight was at nine, so I made my way upstairs through the deserted airport and drank overpriced beer in front of an all-night McDonalds at a table in a German café across from it. At first it was just the barmaid, an attractive young fräulein who spoke little English, and I. But we were soon joined by a very strange man who hovered at the periphery of the cafe playing peekaboo behind the copious artificial plants demarcating its perimeter. Even though the temperature was in the mid-fifties outside, inside he was wearing a heavy winter snorkel coat with the hood pulled over his face. He had a shopping bag presumably to transport the days treasures he had found while foraging the airport. When I tried to take […]
