1

The big man at the end of the bar is sweating. He holds his head low over his double scotch and every few minutes he glances up and out behind him toward the door, and a fine sheen of perspiration glistens under the strip lights. He lets out a long, shaky breath disguised as a sigh and turns back to his drink.

“Hey. Excuse me?”

I look up from polishing glasses.

“Can I get another one here?”

I want to tell him that it’s really not a good idea, that it won’t help. That it might even put him over the limit. But he’s a big guy and it’s fifteen minutes till closing time and according to company guidelines, I have no reason to tell him no. So I walk over and take his glass and hold it up to the optic. He nods at the bottle.

“Double,” he says, and slides a fat hand down his damp face.

“That’ll be seven pounds twenty, please.”

It is a quarter to eleven on a Tuesday night, and the Shamrock and Clover, East City Airport’s Irish-themed pub that is as Irish as Mahatma Gandhi, is winding down for the night. The bar closes ten minutes after the last plane takes off, and right now it is just me, the intense young man with the laptop, the two cackling women at table 2, and the man nursing a double Jameson’s waiting on SC107 to Stockholm and DB224 to Munich, the latter of which has been delayed for forty minutes.

I have been on since midday, as Carly had a stomachache and went home. I didn’t mind. I never mind staying late. Humming softly to the sounds of Celtic Pipes of the Emerald Isle Vol. III, I walk over and collect the glasses from the two women, who are peering intently at some video footage on a phone. They laugh the easy laughs of the well lubricated.

“My granddaughter. Five days old,” says the blond woman, as I reach over the table for her glass.

“Lovely.” I smile. All babies look like currant buns to me.

“She lives in Sweden. I’ve never been. But I have to go see my first grandchild, don’t I?”

“We’re wetting the baby’s head.” They burst out laughing again. “Join us in a toast? Go on, take a load off for five minutes. We’ll never finish this bottle in time.”

“Oops! Here we go. Come on, Dor.” Alerted by a screen, they gather up their belongings, and perhaps it’s only me who notices a slight stagger as they brace themselves for the walk toward security. I place their glasses on the bar, scan the room for anything else that needs washing.

“You never tempted then?” The smaller woman has turned back for her scarf.

“I’m sorry?”

“To just walk down there, at the end of a shift. Hop on a plane. I would.” She laughs again. “Every bloody day.”

I smile, the kind of professional smile that might convey anything at all, and turn back toward the bar.

 • • • 

Around me the concession stores are closing up for the night, steel shutters clattering down over the overpriced handbags and emergency-gift Toblerones. The lights flicker off at gates 3, 5, and 11, the last of the day’s travelers winking their way into the night sky. Violet, the Congolese cleaner, pushes her trolley toward me, her walk a slow sway, her rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the shiny Marmoleum.

“Evening, darling.”

“Evening, Violet.”

“You shouldn’t be here this late, sweetheart. You should be home with your loved ones.”

She says...