THE LAYOVER

Title: The Layover (1/1)

Author: Plausible Deniability

Address: pdeniability@hotmail.com

Archive: freely

Category: V

Rated: PG

Spoilers: None

Keywords: Spender, Fowley

Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the television program "The X Files" are the creations and property of Chris Carter, Fox Broadcasting, and Ten-Thirteen Productions, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.

Summary: Spender and Fowley deal with the unexpected.

Note: This is sort of a riff on a Hemingway story called "Hills Like White Elephants." I've always hated the main character in that story. Spender makes a much better hero.

THANKS to Becky and to Dasha, the best of betas.

****

The tarmac outside was gray and drizzly, and the jets that went past the window seemed blurred around the edges. The cramped airport cafe smelled of musty cigarette smoke. The man and the dark-haired woman with him sat at a little table, watching the travelers streaming up and down the concourse. It was still forty minutes until the flight to Dulles boarded.

"Do you want to eat something?" the man asked.

"They'll feed us on the plane," the woman said. Under the table, she had slipped her feet out of her shoes.

"Just pretzels and Coke."

"I'm not really hungry."

The man turned in his seat. "Can we get a couple of hot dogs?" he called to the boy working behind the counter.

The boy opened the case where hot dogs rolled on metal bars and reached inside. "Ketchup and mustard?"

"Yes. That's fine."

The boy put the hot dogs in little cardboard trays. He set them on the counter and the man got up, paid, and brought them back to the table. The dark-haired woman was looking back toward the top of the concourse. The man followed her gaze to the security gate, where passengers were unburdening themselves of coats and carry-ons to shuffle through the metal detectors.

"I wonder if people with nipple and genital piercings ever set off the alarm," he said.

"I've never heard of that happening."

"I haven't either, but it would be funny, don't you think?"

He picked up his hot dog. The woman looked over at the bill of fare written in chalk behind the counter. "I'd really like a beer."

"I don't think we should."

"I never said you had to drink one."

The man sighed, but got up and went to the counter. The boy looked up.

"We'd like two beers."

"Coors?"

The man turned back to the woman. "Is Coors all right?"

"It's okay," she said. "If it's all they have."

"So you want Coors?" asked the boy.

"Yes, two of them."

The man handed his money to the boy and carried the beers back to the table. "They're warm," he said, sitting down again.

"That's airport bars for you."

"Great," said the man. "I enjoy paying eight dollars for warm beer."

"Knock it off about the beer, would you?"

"It was your idea," the man said. "I was happy making conversation. I was talking about body piercings."

"Well, let's just drop it."

"Fine by me. I wasn't trying to pick a fight."

"Neither was I."

"I just wish you wouldn't drink beer right now. I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but it bothers me."

"Don't worry so much."

The man looked off in the direction of their gate.

"It will be good to get back to D.C.," he said. "I think we'll both do better when we're back in the office. It's hard for me to relax in all these strange hotels and diners and airports."

"Your beer is getting cold," she said, and wrung a smile from him.

Another plane went by the wall of glass behind them, the enormous wings looming up and then sliding silently past in the drizzle. The man picked up his beer.

"At least the hot dog wasn't bad, for a hot dog," he said.

"It was good."

"You don't have to decide just yet, Diana," the man said. "You still have time before you have to make up your mind."

The woman looked away.

"I know it's up to you but I wish you would just think it over first. You don't have to rush into anything."

The woman sipped her beer, and did not answer.

"I would never stick you with all the responsibility. You know me, you know I wouldn't do that."

"So," she said, "you're just ready to hand over the next eighteen years of your life?"

"You make it sound like a prison sentence."

"You make it sound like one big party."

"Other people have done it. My mother did it. Your parents did it."

The woman took her airline tickets from the side pocket of her purse, and shuffled the boarding pass to the top.

"You think we'd both just go on," she said after a moment, "with our lives heading in the same direction as before."

"Of course we would, if that's what you wanted. I'd help in every way I could. Most people with careers have children. Louis Freeh has six kids, for god's sake, and he's the Director of the FBI."

"I don't remember ever seeing Louis Freeh waddling the halls looking like a beached whale. Or doing field work that way, either."

"Well," the man said, "I'm not trying to pressure you. It's your decision and I know that. But I would be there right beside you if you decided to keep it."

"And that's what you want, to keep it?"

"I'd like that. But I know it's your decision."

"And if I kept it you'd be changing diapers and rocking it and staying home with it when it was sick?"

"Yes."

"And getting up in the middle of the night and breastfeeding it, too."

"Diana, I'd do everything I could."

"But you couldn't do everything. You see that, don't you?"

"Of course I see that."

"Because people who make these ideological objections never seem to realize that there's a lot more involved than just lofty principles."

"It's not an ideological objection," he said. "It's a -- a different objection. It's mine, too, you know."

"I thought you just said this was my decision."

"It is, but -- I mean, I just don't want you to do anything that you'll regret."

"You're three and a half weeks too late for that," she said.

He got up and walked to the window. In the distance, a 747 was landing, the mist streaming off the wings in great white trails. The sky was gray and leaden. Closer in, just beneath the window, luggage trucks and meal service carts went back and forth, their drivers cloaked in plastic ponchos.

"It's just hard, you know," he said. "It's hard not to think about it, about what it would look like and how it might grow up."

"You think too much."

"Is that possible -- to think too much?"

"Of course it is. If you considered every angle of every move you ever made, you'd go insane."

"But this is so important," he said. "Doesn't it feel important to you?"

"Not really," she said. "It just feels odd, and I want it to be over with."

"I wish you wouldn't say it in that tone of voice. Maybe it wouldn't be so hard if you didn't sound so detached."

"You're making it hard," she said. "It's really not that complicated."

"Then why rush into it?"

"It's my decision, remember?"

"I know, but you just don't understand -- "

"I understand," the woman said. "Can we please talk about something else?"

He bit his lip, and sat down again. The man looked at his watch. "Twenty-five minutes until boarding time," he said.

"Next time maybe we can get a non-stop."

"You just don't understand," he said, "that even if it wasn't planned it isn't necessarily something that's totally unwelcome. Maybe some things in life are just meant to be. Maybe it's fate's way of settling the question for us."

"It has nothing to do with fate, it has to do with both of us having too much to drink and your saying, 'Come on, how risky can just one time this way really be?'"

"If it's all my fault, then admit that I have a stake in this, too."

"I know you have a stake in it. You have fifteen minutes' worth of stake, and I have nine months. My stake outweighs yours by a factor of" -- she did a quick mental calculation -- "four hundred and three thousand, two hundred times."

"I took high school biology, and I don't remember human genetics working quite that way."

"I thought you said it was my decision."

"It is."

"Then let me make it, would you?"

He stared at the empty hot dog trays, at the ketchup staining the white cardboard. His beer was standing almost untouched, although she had long since finished hers.

"But it should be my decision, too," he said. "At least partly."

"Is this the only thing you know how to talk about any more?"

"Yes," he said. "Yes, it is."

She sighed. "So what do you want, Jeff, to put it to a vote?"

"Something like that."

She picked up the cardboard and the beer bottles, and turned in her seat to toss them in the trash can by the wall. "Well, my vote outnumbers yours."

They sat in silence for a while.

He checked his watch. "Maybe we can go sit at the gate."

"If you want," she said. She reached for the handle of her carry-on.

He walked with her out of the café, out into the busy concourse. Ahead a beeping golf cart ferried the infirm to a distant jetway. Despite the rain, very few of the flights listed on the overhead monitors had been delayed. Other passengers bustled past them. Everything seemed normal and efficient. He wanted to scream.

Instead he asked, "Is that suitcase heavy?"

"No," she said. "Just take care of your own, Jeff. I can manage mine myself."

****

END