Hendrix - Satan Loves You

To Amanda

I owe you everything.

Including an apology.

But I still dont think that life raft

Would have supported both of us.

SATAN LOVES YOU

Terminal C of the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport at 8AM on a Monday morning was no ones idea of a good time. And right now, with the fruits of a freak snowstorm clumping on the skylights and whipping past the windows; right now, crammed with domestic passengers going nowhere and growing angrier by the minute; right now, with planes jamming up the gates and sliding gently off the runways and into sudden snowbanks, it was a little slice of hell on earth.

A long line snaked away from the Starbucks register where a frazzled US Airways Express passenger, who until then had worshipped exclusively at Dunkin Donuts, was trying to order.

A large? the register jockey said. We dont sell large.

Im begging you, the woman said. what do you sell?

Short, Tall, Grande and Venti.

Which ones the large?

There is no large. Theres Short, Tall, Grande and Venti.

Give me the biggest one.

The Venti?

Yes! The Venti!

You have to order it.

Ill have a Venti coffee.

Im sorry, were all out of Venti cups, the register jockey said. He carefully kept his face blank and expressionless, but inside he was smirking.

Over at the Tie Hut, a wooden stand with decorative wagon wheels specializing in ties, scarves, cuff links and seated massage, an iPod was blaring out some of the worst country music ever written. This was, in turn, irritating five-month-old Ariella Kipling who was strapped down in her lightweight Gracco Travel System. At five months old, infants enjoy and respond to music and Ariella was responding to Lee Ann Womacks There is a God by screaming her lungs out.

Its okay, her mother cooed.Its okay, good girl. Its okay. Its only Lee Ann Womack. She cant hurt you.

Just pick her up, Paul Kipling snapped.

Thatll make it worse, Nancy Kipling snapped back.

Paul rolled his eyes and tried to pick his daughter up but his wife was right. It was worse.

At the Carolina Sports Bar, Carl Willers couldnt enjoy his Hearty Style Southern Breakfast because he couldnt stop coughing. With every hack, his throat felt like it was being gouged from the inside by a giant ice pick.

Jesus Christ, he thought to himself, as he hacked up chunks of gray phlegm. Ive got some kind of infection. Holy God, this is painful. I need Cipro or some kind of antibiotic. Oh, Sweet Jesus...

Seated nearby, a young man in a navy blue suit, with a non-descript haircut and a forgettable face, sat drawing on the cheap Carolina Sports Bar napkins. Every time Carl Willers coughed, the young man winced reflexively, but it was clear that his mind was a million miles away. Something was eating at him. Something was inside of him and he had to get it out onto these paper napkins. He scratched his pen against the crummy wood pulp paper.

Scratch, scratch scratch, scratch scratch scratch...

Trying to strike up some neighborly good cheer amongst the mob of seething, short-tempered, indefinitely stranded passengers, the New Light Fellowship Tour Group broke into a spontaneous line dance to Jake Owens Eight Second Ride now blaring from the Tie Hut.

What was that other size you said? the woman in the Starbucks line begged. The one below Venti?

Her hands were shaking. Every day for the past year she had started her mornings with an enormous Dunkaccino and it really took the edge off. She worked in the HR department of a company that sold a complicated financial product she didnt quite understand, and her job mostly consisted of laying off people she had only recently hired. The Dunkaccino was the chocolate-infused, caffeine-saturated treat that got her out of bed in the morning, the wonder drug in a cup that soothed her seething brain, the liquid injection of love that settled her shaky synapses for the hateful day that lay ahead. And here she was, stuck in an airport far from home having to make do with Starbucks, trembling like a junkie trapped in the drunk tank over Fourth of July weekend, getting sicker by the minute and trying to treat her shakes with jailhouse hooch.

The sizes are on the wall, maam, the register demon said.

Hey, could you step on it? the man behind her said.

Im sorry, I dont have my glasses with me, the woman said.

A Grande, the man behind her said. You want a fucking Grande.

The woman recoiled. Without her protective coating of caffeine his profanity chafed her brain like sandpaper.

Theres no need to be rude, she said.

Im sorry, he said. Let me try that again: please, bitch, order a fucking Grande. Is that better?

The womans last frayed nerve snapped, and she turned around and slapped the man in the face.

Everyone heard it.

Everyone except the people sitting within a ten yard radius of five-month-old Ariella Kipling whose screams had managed to climb to a higher pitch than scientists had previously assumed possible. Her bickering parents were, however, unable to appreciate this miracle of physics taking place in their midst.

You dont know anything about children, Paul Kipling said. Youre so out of touch with your own body that youre already giving our daughter an eating disorder.

Shes still breast feeding, Nancy Kipling snarled. I am her primary food source. She cant have an eating disorder! She eats me!

Your negative body image is contaminating your breast milk like a carcinogen, Paul snapped back. Thats why shes unhappy. Shed rather starve than keep drinking your hate milk!

The toxic emotional spill gushing from the Kipling marriage was oozing over the passengers around them, whose defenses were already down thanks to Ariellas aural attack. Their fight was a noxious cloud contaminating all of the relationships and marriages within earshot, causing conversations to curdle into arguments, tender gazes to harden into icy stares and cuddling to morph into stiff-armed rejection.

Over at the Carolina Sports Bar, customers felt their gorges rise as Carl Willers was seized anew by a series of wet, gloopy hacks so powerful that he rocked helplessly back and forth in his chair. Some of them stared at him murderously, while others pointedly picked up their trays of eggs and grits and moved to the counter.

The nondescript man sitting near Carl kept scratching away on his paper napkins, only dimly aware of Carls coughing. And far up in the pipes and girders, a heavy glass High Bay light fixture suddenly began to show alarming signs of metal fatigue in the clamps and screws that secured it.

The New Light Fellowship reached the end of Eight Second Ride, struck a pose and a few confused travelers gave them a spattering of desultory applause. But one middle-aged passenger, grossly overweight and deeply unhappy, threw a half-empty cup of Mountain Dew in their general direction and yelled, Country music is for queers! The New Light Fellowship believed in turning the other cheek, but everyone has a limit and insulting country music was theirs. They surrounded the heckler and began shoving him back and forth. They pinched his fat arms. They kicked his sagging butt. One of them spat in his face.