Chapter One

The man was upset. Harv Meldon could see the irritation facing him at the Lost Luggage counter of Express Air. The customer was elderly, his finger raised and eyebrows pointed.

“What do I have to do to get help?” the man shouted.

“I understand, sir,” Harv replied. “Just let me get my pad.”

“Pad, huh? My bags are on the way to Canada and I’m due in Newark–with NOTHING.”

“That is upsetting.”

“Easy for you to say.” The man’s mouth hung open, his gray hair stood up at the sides, eyes bloodshot.

Harv looked down at a Styrofoam cup of coffee next to his mouse pad. It was half-empty and cold, but he reached for it. There was always someone upset across his counter. They were always frustrated and sometimes abusive. Harv felt a pain in his gut as he reached for the cup and took a quick sip.

“WHAT THE….!” The older man raised both hands in disgust. “You’re going for milk and cookies while my luggage heads north?”

“Not so.” Harv reached with his other hand to wiggle the mouse and activate Form 3096–the reporting document attached to every “misplaced asset” claim.

“Just getting ready to–solve your problem.” He smiled at the phrase that his supervisors had coached him to say. It was all part of the staging that took complaints and turned them into “customers on a mission”.

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to wear the same clothes for days?” The man leaned across the counter as if to pull Harv over it and into a “situation 16”, as coworkers called it.

Harv moved his fingers to the keyboard on field number 11 and looked up.

“Name?”

“It’s on the TICKET.”

Harv looked down at the wrinkled paper in front of him. Larry Downs. His fingers moved quickly to the flight code on the screen. “And you were heading to…”

“Who designed this form? You got all the information you need right in front of you.”

It was true. Harv felt his white shirt tighten at the beltline. His stomach pressed outward as his breathing increased.

It was the same feeling he got back in middle school when bullies pushed his head into a plate of pork-n-beans, the same feeling when his father came home from Animal Control with complaints about cats and dogs that scratched and bit, the same feeling he got when his girlfriend, Ileen, snapped at him for bumping into her collection of figurines on the table.

“We can’t sell them at the craft show if you destroy them,” she’d whine. “I’m so tired of watching every penny. If you had a real job, I could live in a real house instead of this dump by the airport.”

Harv could reenact it word for word. It was always the same. Always unhappiness, always directed at him as if, by choice, he ruined her life and caused her to gain 82 pounds in the four years they dated.

“Why don’t you go to work?” he would ask.

“Oh yeah?” She’d countered. “With this problem? Who’s gonna hire me? If you really cared, you’d…”

The list was endless. Harv would take it in just like he did as a child. Just like he did in his first job back at the Buick agency where he handled customer service. He’d sit at his desk and pick up the phone when voices would shout:

“THEY replaced my muffler and there was nothing WRONG!”

Bad talk. That’s all that came his way. Never “how are you Harv? How’s life?”

All this was going through Harv’s head at the Lost Luggage counter as Larry looked down at him on the computer.

“Here my flight’s about to take off and you are playing around like you got all day.”

“I understand your concern,” Harv continued to type.

“No you don’t. Otherwise you’d do something about it.”

Harv paused–his eyes shifting from the screen to the upset customer. There was always some jerk to deal with, some urgent request for a mistake Harv had no control over. Some voice yelling at him from across a counter was an echo into his sleep. Even dreams filled with faces in contorted shapes. But he would press on, even in his dream world, to fix the problem, appease the anger and look for answers. That’s why he didn’t notice the sound now as his fingers moved across the keyboard and his eyes scanned the monitor.

“Your flight was on the way to…” Harv was talking to himself as he typed–but Larry still responded.

“Hell.”

“And your bags are heading to…”

“The abyss.”

“So we need to fill out a tracer and…”

Footsteps approached from behind. “What’s up, Big Harv? I’m ready to take over.”

It was Johnny Jones, evening shift specialist for the Lost Luggage Desk. Harv looked up with a weak smile and glanced over at Larry.

“My bags,” said Larry, “are somewhere in the universe and I’m heading to Newark.”

“Wait a minute,” Johnny held up his hands. “How do you know this?”

“I just changed planes. I’m supposed to leave from Concourse B in…” He held up his watch. “20 minutes.”

Johnny blinked several times. “Sure. But you won’t get your bags until you get to your destination. We take care of all that.”

He pushed by Harv and moved to the counter. “Let me see the ticket.”

Larry pushed it toward him across the counter. Johnny began to move his eyes across the lines on each page. “Sir—you will get your bags in Newark. You don’t pick them up on the way when you change flights.”

He reached for the phone and pushed two numbers. “Get me a courtesy cart to Lost Luggage.”

Larry began to fumble with his ticket. “Oh– I see. No one told me.”

Johnny looked over at Harv. “Why didn’t you catch that?”

The question burned. He had no answer.

“Guess I missed it.”

Johnny looked on with disgust. Harv felt his anger but could only add one sentence as he turned away.

“I’m sorry.”

It was the same feeling Harv felt repeatedly as he moved his flat feet across the floor and down the dark hall.

“You don’t measure up. You screwed up again. You never get it right.”

He felt that when he would take his old car in for repairs, Ileen would yell at him for “getting ripped off again”. He felt it on the road when he didn’t start off fast enough from a stop light, and those behind would honk and shout:

“WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?”

He felt it when he would get up in the morning in the small studio apartment near the railroad tracks and dread another day at the Lost Luggage Desk. Surely there was a better way to make a living. But where and how with all the blame that hit with every move, decision and choice?

Where was the comfort? The encouragement? The support when life fell apart? Harv didn’t see it and would turn inward with the same tone Ileen had.

“What were you thinking?”

“Can’t you get anything right?”

“Wake up. You don’t have all day.”

Harv continued that thought as he made his way through the airport to his car. Jet sounds. Traffic and horns. It blended into a type of confusion that seemed to close in with a type of pain that was sound-based and outward.

Much of his life had been like that. There was little time to think with all the clatter and chaos around. Bullies. Bad teachers. Family members with an undiagnosed mental illness.

“Harv–what is wrong with you?” They’d say. “You should….”

The list was endless and always tied to their own value system. He maneuvered around them by the moment with one step away and towards safety. He was by nature a coward and he knew it. Peace was always just beyond his reach.

“Where are you going?” the others would ask. “You can’t run forever.”

He wanted to. It was a type of inward wish or unspoken desire to end the pain, silence the evil and find relief. He couldn’t admit that, though. It was too painful and would have pushed him into despair.

Words had power. To name the evil meant facing it, and he wasn’t ready for that.

His car was gray and rusted. The day was overcast as he went through the parking lot. His steps felt tired as he shuffled toward the car with jet sounds overhead and the emptiness pushing him onward.

He was heading to the small apartment but would stop off at Ileen’s house on the way, although he didn’t feel like it. The response he would get there was unfeeling, bitter, even snide.

He would walk through the door with the jet sounds overhead, since she lived near the runway, and Ileen would be sitting with her “knick-knacks” while she poured out some emotional poison like:

“Where have you been?”

“Why can’t you pay more for me to live better?”

“If you really cared, you’d find a real job that would support a family. How can you expect me to be serious in this relationship if you can’t even do YOUR PART?”

It would happen just as Harv imagined but with more anger and sarcasm. Meanwhile, back at the airport in the Lost Luggage Desk, night supervisor Johnny Jones was on the phone with Human Resources (HR).

“We’re gonna have to do something about Ole Harv,” Johnny was telling Joyce, the HR director.

“What is it this time?” Joyce snapped. “Did he forget where he worked?”

“Almost.” Johnny opened an envelope from H.R. It was a list of staff members and Harv’s name was at the top.

“I’m looking at Form Number 2240-B? Just came in the office mail. What’s it about?”

“Our efforts to improve.” Joyce had an official sound in her voice.

“Why is Harv’s name at the top?”

“Yeah. I need to explain all this in a meeting. But there’s no time with all the other meetings to attend.”

“I see. So what is the plan? How will these people improve?” Johnny studied the names.

“In other jobs.”

“Oh, really. How’s that?” Johnny asked.

“The list is about OUR improvement, not theirs.” Joyce sounded final. “They’re going somewhere else.”

“You got to talk plain with me, Joyce.” Johnny squinted. “What’s going to happen with these people?”

“We call it right-sizing. They’re being advanced from the company.”

“Fired?”

“We don’t use that word.”

“I know Harv can be a pain at times. But isn’t this kind of harsh? Just cut him loose?”

“We don’t like to think in those terms.” Joyce paused. “They face new opportunities. Who knows. Maybe Harv will end up in medical school or something more fitting to his skill set.”

“So when are you going to tell them? When does this happen?”

“Now. They’re not coming back.”

“Do they know this? Does Harv have any idea?” Johnny asked as his eyes scanned the page again to look for names. “Who will tell them?”

“You will.” Joyce took a deep breath. “That’s why you got the form. That’s why you’re a supervisor.”

“So I just call these people up and say don’t come back?”

“We don’t frame it that way,” Joyce added. “They’re being placed into something better.”

“I see.” Johnny began to sweat. He tried to imagine that conversation with coworkers.

“We’re always looking to improve,” Joyce explained. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“Well….” Johnny had a pointed face and sweat began to form on his brow. “We still have a schedule to keep. What happens now? Will we get someone new to fill those spots? Harv worked the day shift. Who will take that?”

“Those left, of course.” Her voice had an edge. “It’s their opportunity to add value. Isn’t that why we’re here, John?”

“We were already stretched thin with all the shifts,” he argued. “Will my team have to work more than one shift at a time?”

Joyce took a deep breath and let it out slowly. There was silence. Johnny was ex-military and he started wondering about his chances of going back into the service.

“We’re in business,” Joyce said. “This is not pre-school where everyone gets a nap and a snack.”

“I see.” Johnny took the form and wadded it up. He then threw it in the trash and started to leave the counter. In his mind was a plan to go back to the military recruiters in the morning. Why wait for more “opportunities” when the company didn’t care about you anyway?