“It is amazing what people don’t notice,” thought Alex Bedell, as he sipped on a little plastic glass of water from the back of a crowded plane. Take, for instance, the young man in question. Crammed in between an elderly woman pretending she understood how to use her tablet and a large man sleeping on the window, you might not notice Alex at all. If your gaze did happen to glance at him, you would hardly remember him.
Slightly below average in height and build, his long and messy black hair shaded his hazel eyes. The only memorable feature on him would be the two bright blue tattoos on his upper arms, the lower edges of which just poked out from his dark grey t-shirt. At present, this altogether nondescript character was just that, nondescript and unremarkable. And that is precisely how he wanted to look.
As the plane suddenly gave a light lurch, Alex’s eyes darted down to his backpack tucked away underneath the seat in front of him. “Don’t draw attention to it” Alex mentally scolded himself, although the slight movement of his eyes would have been unnoticeable to anyone not staring straight into his pupils. Alex knew this, but a bad habit starts innocently enough. “Never give away what is important, especially over something as stupid as turbulence,” Alex mused, turning his head to look out the window that his sleeping neighbor had slightly drooled on.
Below the clouds lay Savannah, Georgia, and the whole reason Alex was crammed in the back of a Spirit Airways plane. That backpack was his ticket into something exciting, something big. “Well, it's my ticket if this damn plane doesn’t fall out of the sky first,” thought Alex as the plane gave another lurch and he resisted looking down at his backpack once more. Flying isn’t always good for keeping your nerve.
Shuffling out of the plane forty minutes later, Alex headed straight for the taxi stand, his only luggage thrown over his shoulder. As he made his way past the hundreds of travelers, his eyes constantly moved from one face to another, reading their intentions. “Do they know who I am, what I have? Am I being followed?” Paranoia, ever the side effect of having something to hide, began to creep into Alex’s brain.
Taking a deep breath, Alex kept his mind on the task at hand; getting out of the airport without having a mental breakdown. “Best to get out of here before someone notices I’m sweating buckets.” Just then, a voice came over the loudspeakers. “Attention passengers” the voice crackled “would the passenger who left a brown backpack please return to gate E-5 to collect your lost item”.
In an instant, Alex whirled around to double-check his backpack was still there. Never mind he was in an entirely different concourse and that his backpack was blue, or that he could feel it on his shoulders. After replacing the backpack on his shoulders, Alex looked around as nonchalantly as possible to see if anyone had noticed his antics. “Thank God everyone is so self-absorbed, otherwise they might have noticed me,” Alex thought to himself, just as he spied a bar tucked away into the terminal. “A quick drink to calm down, I have some time” Alex decided, checking his watch and wiping the nervous sweat off his brow.
The bar was small and, besides one man who looked like he had been travelling drunk for three days, was empty. Alex grabbed a stool at the bar counter and sat down. As Alex reached for his wallet, the young woman from behind the bar came over to him. “A little early to be drinking, isn’t it” she joked, her light brown skin crinkling as she smiled. She wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t even noon yet.
As Alex handed her his I.D., he smiled back and pointed to the drunk.
“Only if I was drinking alone, and I have that fine fella to keep me company”. The bartender laughed, a short little laugh that told just how much respect she had for the drunk, who at that moment was dangerously close to passing out into a bowl of peanuts. “If you are drinking with him then I hope you can hold your booze, or you’ll be stumbling out of here. He’s nearly cleared me out of the domestic stuff. Although,” she added, her smile turning into a slight frown, “you look a little pale already sweetie, are you feeling ok?”
Alex gave her a nod and pointed to one of the tap beers before replying. “I’m fine, I just don’t like flying is all.” It wasn’t a total lie, he did hate flying, at least when he had something to hide. “Besides, I’m always pale.” Another part-truth. Alex had always been pale, even by his family’s standards. It was a miracle he didn’t get sunburned through a window. Still, today he was paler than usual. As the bartender grabbed his beer, Alex checked his watch again. A little less than two hours to go until his meeting took place. Less than two hours until he found out if this trip, and what was in his backpack, had been worth it. “On second thought, a shot of whiskey as well. Something tells me I’m going to need it.”
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