In the Departures terminal at Miami International Airport, Meriweather waited near a water fountain, apart from a crowd of travelers jostling for position at an airline check-in counter. Beside her on the floor, at the end of a rhinestone-covered leash, sat a white rabbit as big as a microwave oven. [3]
Lou entered the terminal, carrying her own bags (no money to tip a porter, naturally), and moved toward the end of the check-in line. As she dropped her luggage on the floor beside her, she spied the rabbit.
"Taking him on a trip?" Lou asked the woman holding the leash.
Meriweather returned Lou's friendly smile and said, "Sadly, no. She and I are not traveling, we're seeing someone off. I'm bunnysitting for my boss. Just another dazzlingly glamorous aspect of my incredibly diverse and rewarding career."
Lou chuckled and dug into her backpack, saying, "Yeah, seems like any job you get comes down to shoveling poop sooner or later, doesn't it? She's adorable."
"She's a shameless hussy," said Meriweather with mock severity. "Waggles her little cotton tail at anything that hops."
Lou produced a bag of carrot sticks from within her backpack while laughing at the dignified-looking lady who said such odd things. "Well, if she does that, she's being good. By which I mean, being a good rabbit. You can't expect her to act like a Sunday school teacher. Can she have a carrot?"
Meriweather nodded and looked at Lou with new interest.
Lou fed the white rabbit a carrot, and then another.
As Lou was walking away, returning to her place in the check-in line, Meriweather said, "Is your name Rebekah?"
But Lou didn't hear the question over the rumbling of voices, porters' wagons, and shifting luggage amplified by the tiled walls and floor of the crowded terminal.
By the time Lou had progressed to the front of the check-in line, Randall was turning away from checking in at another section of the same counter, and they crossed paths without a second's awareness of one another.
Randall trudged to the place where Meriweather and the rabbit waited. He adjusted his single, leather carry-on bag over his shoulder and waved his boarding pass at Meriweather. "See? I'm getting on. I'm going. On the airplane. Right now. Satisfied? This is goodbye."
Meriweather picked up the rabbit. "We'll just walk you to the gate."
"You can't! Uh, I mean, ... they won't let you through Security[4] and onto the concourse if you don't have a ticket. Would you like my ticket?"
"Very funny. No, you keep that ticket, and don't worry about Security. It's all arranged. You see, I telephoned the Security supervisor, and it seems they remember you and what happened last time you were here. They don't want you on the concourse unsupervised. Ever again. Helga and I shall supervise you."
"Traitor," he told the rabbit.
Moments later they walked down Concourse D, passing gates 17, 18, 19. Randall said, unnecessarily as far as his companions were concerned, "Geez, I hate airplanes."
Meriweather smiled. "I am reassured to see you experience genuine terror, for a change. I was growing bored with the little dramas you enact for me over the telephone during your travels."
"You're a hard woman," he said.
Her smile grew even broader. "Galen," she said after a short lull, "I've been thinking about the Bible story you ... ah ... performed for me yesterday. There really are parallels between that story and your own life, after all, I think."
"Pains you to admit I was right about something, doesn't it."
She flicked a wrist as if to say his statement was irrelevant. "You will, no doubt, recall how often I have said this city is a cultural desert? Not unlike the desert dwelling place in your Abraham story."
They arrived at gate 35, where Randall would be forced onto a flying machine (if he failed to escape). When they stopped walking outside the boarding lounge, Randall turned to face his bunny-sitting secretary. Outrage joined the terror on his face.
"Meriweather! I am getting on an airplane. This may be the last time you see me alive! Don't you think you should say something pertinent to the occasion, please!"
She was unmoved. "I only wondered whether the story's ending would be the same if the woman who came to the servant at the well, came to his servant near a water fountain, instead. And if the woman, say, fed his rabbit — which he owned outright — as opposed to watering his camel — which he only rented."
"You are completely incoherent," he said, shaking his head. "I should be the one getting drunk at this point, not you."
"Well, I am merely a servant, so I probably don't know what I'm talking about."
"Then that makes two of us, because I definitely don't know what you're talking about."
Galen sighed and turned slowly in a full circle, as if memorizing the scene around them. "Here we are," he said with finality. "Gate thirty-five. The beginning of the end."
He leaned toward his secretary and kissed her lightly on the cheek. "Goodbye, Meriweather. You've been a snooty friend and a tyrannical secretary, but I loved you in my own way. Remember that."
Then he leaned toward the rabbit and kissed her lightly on the ear. "Goodbye, Helga baby. Remember Daddy when Auntie Meriweather gives you Ritz crackers like Daddy used to do."
He adjusted his bag on his shoulder and walked away as if he were climbing the last steps of the gallows.
"Rubbish," said Meriweather to his departing back. "It's not even round trip. Fritz is already in California with the car, and you can take as long as you wish to drive back. But you may not miss this awards dinner a second time; it would be a professional disaster as well as a personal scandal. Just get on the airplane and try to behave like an adult."
When she was certain he was in the boarding queue, outnumbered and hemmed in by airline employees, she placed the leashed rabbit on the ground and together they hopped/strolled toward the concourse exit.
~o~~o~~o~
End Notes
[In this and preceding chapters, you have encountered End Notes 1, 2, and 3. Here are the explanatory notes that accompany each of those references.]
[1] Styrofoam. Amazingly, Styrofoam has been around since 1950. (Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/styrofoam, accessed 06/05/17.)
[2] Mace. Invented around 1965; a nonlethal spray containing purified teargas and chemical solvents that temporarily incapacitate a person by causing eye and skin irritations. Ladies may carry Mace in their handbags.
[3] Microwave ovens were common in 1995, the term having first been used as early as 1961. (Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/microwave, accessed 06/05/17.)