The noise in the airport could have been worse, but it wasn’t. The schedule could have been running more behind, but thankfully was not. And Kenneth Laurence could have been more uncomfortable, but, by the grace of some powerful benevolent being, felt relatively alright.
“Things can always be worse,” he muttered to himself.
It always amazed him how deeply his father’s little sayings had planted themselves in his mind. He could practically hear him offering his superfluous pearls of wisdom even after all these years: “To catch a cat, you hafta know where its tail is. Time flies, so make sure you clip its wings. A good tornado don’t do any less damage than an earthquake. If you’re gonna catch a leprechaun, you better damn like rainbows.
“Things can always be worse.”
He did occasionally make sense.
As his father’s long list of mantras rattled through his brain for what was certainly not the first time that day, Kenneth looked around the crowded airport, watching the people bustle to their destinations. Most people walked very quickly, avoiding eye contact with as many people as possible. Occasionally, there was a person or two running to catch their connecting flight or realizing that that was their plane taking off out the window, but in general people milled about or sat waiting like he was.
Then there was the foreigner.
He had no distinguishing features either in face or in clothing to suggest where he was from. In fact, at first glance, most people would have never picked him out as a foreigner. However, since Kenneth had been waiting for his delayed flight for several hours, he had had time to take in his surroundings, including this foreigner. When Kenneth’s plane had first been delayed, he had taken an initial survey of his new environment: where were there open seats, who was already sitting and waiting, where was the bathroom, et cetera. The foreigner had stuck out in this initial search because his behavior was so very different from everyone else in the room. While everyone else was doing something, he did nothing. All of the other people sitting in the room were reading a magazine, doing a puzzle, working on their computer or phone, or talking to a travel companion. Even Kenneth had pulled his book out as soon as he sat down, so he would look like he was doing something while he people-watched. The foreigner, on the other hand, seemed to do nothing. He sat, looking at the room and the people around him.
Smiling.
This was probably the surest sign he was a foreigner. It wasn’t a happy smile or a cynical smile or even the smile of a crazy person. It simply seemed to be the way his face settled. The smile made him stick out not because of any particular quality it held, but the simple fact that he was smiling. Everyone else was very obviously unhappy with their situation, and who could blame them? What sane person enjoys sitting in a crowded airport, running late for their appointments and lives? Yet here this man sat, simply smiling.
Weird.
By this point, Kenneth had been sitting in the same seat in the airport pretending to read his book for nearly four hours. The foreigner had been sitting since before Kenneth had even found out his flight was delayed, and Kenneth had been watching him for much of the time since. However, the foreigner had not once during that entire time looked at the boards to check the status of his flight. After watching for about an hour, Kenneth had figured out his odd routine, and it had not changed in pace or form the entire time. After looking at various places in the room for about ten minutes, the foreigner would pick up his bag and look through it. He started with the pocket on the outside, then opened the main compartment and dug around inside for a couple minutes before zipping it shut, setting it back on the floor, and picking up a notebook from his lap. He would then make a mark and return the notebook to his lap. Then, after ten minutes of looking around, the foreigner would repeat this process.
Kenneth had been spending the last hour imagining the possibilities of what the man was writing in the book. Each time, he would only make a small mark. It wasn’t enough to be any kind of notes, so that ruled out the possibility of him writing something. Then again, he could have been writing one stroke of a letter at a time. That made as much sense as some of his other theories including that he was drawing a self portrait and had to think about each line and freckle on his face before drawing it. He also considered the possibility that he was simply testing to make sure his pen still had ink.
Kenneth smiled as he reconsidered these theories. He had finally decided that the most likely scenario was that the foreigner was simply keeping a tally of something. Kenneth then decided he would spend the next inevitable hour of waiting thinking about what this man could be tallying. If he could get a look at that notebook, he would have a better idea of how long the man had been sitting there and hopefully what he was waiting for.
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