He decided to walk into the terminal shop to buy a bag of cough drops.  It was an irritating morning, because he had a fidgety sleep last night, which caused him to come to the airport and check in hours before the flight.  He figured that he can work in the VIP lounge and have a simple breakfast.

Somehow the flight was delayed for 30 minutes and his throat was hurting.  He never actually walked around the terminal as a shopper before.  The airport VIP lounge is like a home away from home office for him, on rare occasions when he gets to the airport before boarding.

Before he reached the newspaper stand, a young woman who stood in front of the counter caught his eye.  He felt that she was someone he had known, but of course he did not.  Any of the women he knew wouldn’t buy a candy bar in the airport shop.  Once he got close enough he realized, it was a mature woman not a young woman.  She was reading the snacks bar or bag descriptions with a manner of concentration that he felt she is absorbing every word on the package.  She had repeated the same concentration on a few candy packages, and then bought nothing.  What was she looking for on the description?   Curiosity rushed through him so that he picked up the candy bars and started to read the descriptions as well.  After a while, he caught himself with this peculiar behavior, and wondered what was he doing?  He paid for the cough drops and started walking back toward the VIP lounge.  There were a few things he should take care of before getting on the plane.

He saw her paying for a banana in the side stand.  So, she decided to be a health food eater rather than a junk food eater!   What had gotten into him?  Why does he even care about this and waste his time on nonsense?  He shakes off those thoughts and turned to the pending work that he needs to complete before getting on the flight.

He headed back to the comfort of the VIP lounge and started reading emails and executed actions through Blackberry.  Somehow the restlessness stayed with him, he couldn’t concentrate on the work.  What is going on with me?  He realized it was useless to try to work, because he couldn’t make any decisions with confidence that it was a right one.  He closed the Blackberry, which means closing the world he lives in. I am completely isolated now!  What should I do?

He felt that he was utterly out of place!  He felt uneasy without work.  Suddenly, he stood up and walked out of the VIP lounge.  He walked around the terminal aimlessly, but he knew he was not aimless.  He wanted to find that woman.  Finally, he saw her standing inside the book store.  She picked up a book and read it with the same intense concentration as the candy wrappers, then pulled out a pad and a pen copy something from the cover of book then put the book down.  She repeated the same action with a few other books.  Something about the gesture of picking up, reading, writing, and putting down, looks so familiar yet so foreign to him.  Her repeated actions attracted him.  He stood right outside the bookstore and fixed his eyes on her till she finally walked away.  He picked up those books she had been reading or glancing through and paid for them.

What was I doing?  Why had I bought these books? Now, I have to carry them on to the plane, I must be mad.   With annoyance, he carried the bag of books and started searching for the woman again.  At the far end of the terminal away from the boarding gate, he spotted her.  She was sitting by the “cell recharge station”, having an electronic pad on hand.  It was an e-reader.  He found a seat across from her, and took out the books.  Aha! What a special selection of books – a romance novel, a book of science theory, and a biography of a philosopher.  He was wondering which book she was buying through her e-book.

 What am I doing?  What should I talk to her about?  How to start a conversation?  My god, how absurd this is!  He realized that he never knew how to start a conversation with a woman.  He doesn’t need to.    He never needed to start a conversation with any of those women who threw themselves at him.   And he never really needs to have a conversation with any of them.  They are just a decoration on his arm when he has needs to have one.

Her reading posture, her appearance, and her whole persona seems to blend into the surrounding, it’s like he is the only one who can see her.  How odd is this?  He started to study her figure.   She is not young, but has a youthful look, or ageless look.  She is not beautiful in the sense of modern beauty standards, but her eyes are large and clear. 

Her outward physical appearance looks like the type of woman that his employee would have as a wife or a companion.  The images of her and one of his assistants sitting by the dining room table, standing in front of the kitchen sink making dinner and sitting on the sofa watching TV had emerged in his mind.  He definitely didn’t know her nor meet her before.  He finally came to that conclusion.  But, why was he so attracted to her?  It’s like there was gravity or magnet that keep pulling him toward her.  He tries to picture himself in front of a kitchen sink with her, having a conversation.  He tries to picture himself sitting around the dining table having a nice cozy dinner with her…..

All the things he was picturing were domestic scenes...

OH my god!  Is that what I actually want in my life? Is that why I have been feeling restless and uneasy for some time now!  This realization did not set well with him.  He got up and left since the boarding call was on now.

It was an uneventful flight, but it was an emotionally turbulent for him.  He kept staring at the three books.  Of which he would neither have come across nor buy, but now sat on his lap.  He wanted to walk around the plane to see her, but what would he say to her?  What excuses could he give to go to the main cabin?  Mostly, it was the self vexing about this situation that kept him seated and pretend that he was asleep.  How pathetic he had became!  

He took his sweet time to claim the luggage, kept wanting to see her again.  Finally he saw her walking toward him, then passed him and kept walking toward 2 pairs of open arms and two smiling faces, one big & one small!

The bag of books fell to the ground.  At that moment, he realized he was looking at his own life, in a different dimension, because he looked directly at a smiling face that was the exact image of his own stunned face! 

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I love to sit in the airport waiting room bench and watch others while I am en route to my next destination.

This well dressed man had caught my eye when I noticed that he was watching a woman in the book store.  Somehow my imagination took over and the thoughts just kept coming to me.  I wrote down as much as I could on the airplane, and then forgot all about it.

I picked this up a few days ago, and gave it an ending that just came to me.  I truly wish I was a writer (unfortunately, I am not), who could describe and write down what was so vivid in my mind.  It was 100 times better than what the black and white is, now on the paper.

Maybe one day, I will rewrite it, but this is all I am capable of putting down on paper right now. It’s kind of sad that my imagination is beyond my ability of expression.

Completed in Oct. 2012