Gate B14

The delay was announced as ninety minutes and everyone at gate B14 knew what that meant. Simone had a window seat at the gate, the kind with a plug, which she'd got by being early and was now defending by not moving, not even to get coffee. The man who sat down next to her was maybe sixty, in a suit that had been good once, with a carry-on that was mostly a laptop bag and a paper bag from the bakery in the terminal that smelled, frankly, incredible. "Ninety minutes," he said. Not to her. To the air. "Three hours," she said. "Minimum." He looked at her. "You've done this before." "Every other week. Where are you going?" "Home. Eventually. Zurich." He opened the paper bag, took out a pretzel, considered it, and then tore it in half and held one half out to her without a word. She took it. You don't refuse a pretzel at gate B14 in hour one of a three-hour delay. That's just manners. They didn't talk much. He was reading something on paper, actual paper, with a pen in his hand. She was answering emails and pretending not to. At one point the screen changed from ninety minutes to "see agent" and there was a collective sound from the gate, not quite a groan, more of a sigh from a building. "Three hours," he said. "Told you." "What do you do, on the every other week?" "Software. Boring. You?" "I was a surgeon. Now I lecture, mostly. Also boring." He folded the paper. "The plane is in Frankfurt with a door light on. I asked." "How did you find that out?" "I asked the man at the desk if he'd eaten. Then I asked about the plane." She looked at him. "Everyone asks about the plane," he said. "Nobody asks if he's eaten." Around the three-hour mark, exactly as she'd said, they boarded. He was in the front, she was in the back. He nodded to her at the door, once, like they'd finished something. She never saw him again and thought about him more or less every time she passed a bakery.