Los Gatos Weekly-Times

A coming together--and parting--of perfect strangers

By Carl Heintze

'Pardon me," I said, "I think you're sitting in my seat. Do you have seat 22H?"

"Oh, excuse me," he said. He unclipped his seat belt and slid over to the window seat of the 747. There he stared out the window at the sights of Honolulu International Airport.

I sat down, buckled my seat belt and looked over at him. He was young, maybe 20, with black tousled hair, a black beard and mustache, and he was wearing shorts and a shirt not tucked in at the waist. He looked as if he had not washed in a while.

He bobbed his knees up and down nervously. Then he turned to me and said, "This is the first time I've ever been on a plane this big."

"Oh," I said, noncommittally. "Where are you from?"

"East Lansing, Michigan."

"A long way from home."

"Yeah."

He stared out the window again.

"You on your way back home?"

"I'm going to San Diego."

I nodded again.

"By way of San Francisco."

"Yeah."

"How long have you been in Hawaii?"

"Three days."

"That's not very long."

"No."

There was silence for a while and then he said, "I broke up with my girlfriend, see?"

I didn't really, but I said, "So you came to Hawaii to forget?"

"Yeah."

His knees bobbed up and down again, and he hugged himself as if he were cold. The usual announcements began over the cabin's public address system about seat belts, oxygen masks and so on; we backed out, turned and taxied the long way to the runway and then roared off into the blue Pacific skies, and I turned my attention to the in-flight magazine crossword puzzle.

But he caught my eye again.

"Do you know any hotels in San Francisco?" he said.

"Well, not really," I said. "I don't live very far away so I never stay in hotels there."

"Oh," he said, and lapsed back into silence. Then he put on his headphones. His cassette deck was loud enough so I could tell it was rock music, or what passes for music.

When the flight attendant came around with headphones for the movie, he rented a pair and watched and listened to the in-flight move: Home Alone III, a film not much different than Home Alone and Home Alone II except that the hero, villains and stunts had changed slightly.

The young man laughed, listened and continued to bob his knees up and down energetically all the way across the Pacific.

When the movie was over, I said, "Are you going to visit friends in San Diego?"

"No," he said, "I'm just going there."

After that we lapsed into silence, a silence that remained unbroken even when we reached the vicinity of San Francisco International and had to circle because only one runway was open--El Niño again.

The young man stared out the window as we descended through clouds until we emerged over The City, dropped slowly and landed north-south instead of using the usual south-north route over Coyote Point.

We emerged into the airport, hiked the long way to the baggage claim and stood by its carousel waiting for our bags.

Again he asked, "You don't know any hotels in San Francisco? I could pay as much as $60."

"There's the YMCA," I said. "It's not right downtown."

He didn't say anything so I added, "Why don't you ask a cab driver?"

He nodded without speaking. Just then his bag came up from wherever luggage arrives.

He picked it off the carousel and walked through the automatic doors into the darkness and the rain.

Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Los Gatos Weekly-Times.

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