A Preflight Snack

Short Fiction - From Fall 2021

By the time I arrived at the Austin-Bergstrom Airport, it seemed like every flight had been delayed by at least 2 hours. As this news, in waves, reached the attention of the terminal’s occupants, significant antsyness began to abound. Lots of folks lining up; others out to find some sort of diversion. Parents, none too pleased, scrambled to keep their young children from thinking too hard about their next few hours. Those with older kids, having played that game before, gave up right away. For some reason, every bar was open, every restaurant closed. The only place still selling food had only brisket plates remaining, for 23 dollars. Most everyone became drunk pretty soon and a few of us invested our attentions in a 6 goal shallacking the Vegas Golden Knights were putting on the Colorado Avalanche. Most tables for 4 were occupied by parties of 1 plus luggage, and a lot of negative space between tables was standing-room only. It was understood that asking to take an empty seat at a table was not proper etiquette tonight. In fact, the main thing was to not speak to anyone at all, if possible. Those who retained spots at the bar did not seem to have had their drinking plans altered one way or another by the new departure times.

I don’t recall whether or not I splurged for the brisket plate, but, whichever decision I made, I’m sure I ended up regretting it.

After spending 30-ought minutes stuffed up watching uncompetitive hockey, I was able to find an open bench to lie on across from my gate. It was hardly comfortable. I hadn’t been wild about squeezing in this stopover in Austin anyways and I felt returning at a reasonable hour for a decent night’s sleep before work the next morning was the least I could ask for.

Luckily, the newspaper vendor nearest my bench was wholly unattended and its various goods effectively up for the taking. I began to feel the itch to pop in and grab a small bag of peanut M&M’s. It really was the least I could hope for, considering the former least I had requested had been denied. As expected, the kiosk put up no resistance at all and I was out of there, M&M’s in hand, within the minute. All clear.

Although, come to think of it, not quite.

I was struck by some sort of pang of conscience. Not mine, surely - I had been way past that with stuff like this for long enough. No, more external than that. I took the occasion to glance around, possibly a paranoid move. Sure enough, I detected a pair of hawk eyes in my right periphery. In defiance, I met their glare.

“Do you work there?” the owner of the eyes asked.

Obviously not.

“No,” I said, not sheepish, exactly.

“Did you really need M&M’s that badly?”

I took a beat to consider the implications of an affirmative response to that one.

“I didn’t really need them at all.”

“But you decided to steal them anyways?”

I was beginning to see where this line of questions was heading. Good on her for gathering all the facts before jumping to conclusions. I’ve always respected methodical vigilante justice.

“Well, yes,” I said, truthfully.

“It’s a matter of honesty, you know? I’m just trying to help you,” she said.

I was eager to see how she would resolve these seemingly distinct statements, with their indefinite articles and unclear yet resounding insinuations. I was gearing up to be lectured, yelled at, ratted on. But these remarks seemed to serve as a satisfactory closing argument for her and, with a sad frown, she stepped away. Maybe like a step and a half away because, after all, we were both waiting at the same gate for the same heavily delayed flight.

I guess this was to be the end of the interaction. And any average, reasonable on-looker, I suppose, would say to themselves, “Well: he’s bad for stealing, and she’s good for telling him not to steal. Maybe she could have been nicer about it, but right is right and wrong is wrong.” 

Fine. And let them say that.

But here’s the thing: when, really, did she actually tell me not to steal? It seems to me all correction was done with sneers and pointed questions, assuming we were operating from the same set of ethical parameters. And even if she had come out and said it, was she really such a hero? This wasn’t the heist of the century.

It could be said that she showed mercy. Certainly, if she had it in her to stare me down and grill me for a couple minutes, she could easily have taken it a step further: got others to hop on the bandwagon and publicly chastise my lawlessness, smack me about a bit, or even tell on me, to someone. But she hadn’t.

Mercy schmercy. I knew, was certain, that this was all part of her game. Had she taken it over the top, she would have been exposed as a grouchy moralizer. As things stood, she was still in the right. “What a graceful move,” all the imaginary spectators agreed, “pointing out the error of his ways but taking it no further.” She left me feeling like garbage, but kept her own hands clean. I had no interest in looking like a bad guy; if redemption was possible, I’d take it. But if that was out of the question, if she wasn’t prepared to wipe my crime from the record, I’d have to go Mutually Assured Destruction on her ass. At least I’d come out of this with a settled score.

So, with chin up and stolen candy still in tow, I approached for round 2.

“Excuse me ma’am,” I said, real polite, “I was just wondering: What was your goal in that little conversation we just had?”

“I told you, I was trying to help you.”

“I didn’t find it very helpful.”

“Maybe right now you don’t. But someday, I hope, you’ll have the maturity to look back and-”

“Felt to me like you did it for yourself. Like you wanted to feel some sort of power over a stranger in the airport. Like you saw a young man and maybe parenting your own kids isn’t going too great so you jumped on a chance to teach me a lesson instead. Or you got scolded by someone recently and wanted to pay it forward. I don’t know who appointed you the guardian of airport snacks.”

A sloppier speech than I had intended, but it hardly mattered because before I could finish laying it on her, she had turned her nose up and was off again, leaving me with the parting threat, “We’ll just see what the authorities think about that, then.”

Despite feeling fairly confident that no one she could find would give much of a damn that I had stolen less than $2 worth of merchandise, I had no real need to stick around and play this one all the way out. Plus my flight was boarding, so I hopped on the plane and flew to Salt Lake City. The M&M’s tasted alright.