THE LOST LETTER
Night before last, carbon payback for daring this kind of air voyage: after a five hour drive and a five hour connecting flight, a two hour layover, and three immobile hours on the tarmac we're informed something doesn't work, and at 2 a.m. we're off the plane, wandering aimless in an empty San Francisco airport, sleeping rough on the floors, curled in against the aircon cold of the place. Turns out a big airport takes about three hours off during the haunting time of the night, where the line marking night from dawn is smudged and gone. Then, as if a gate somewhere opens wide, and the steady stream of luggage-dragging moderns shuffles and strides, and the whole things groans up again to make the machine move on down the line. It's a haunted vision only the workers here - the grab and go clerks, the shoe shiners, the...