"Could you turn that on please?" It wasn't a Pakistani accent that drove him mad, it was the fact that he'd just done all of this an hour before in Rochester. You wouldn't think that some little two terminal airport in small town Massachusetts would have TSA Nazis, but the woman who had inspected Tony's Powerbook as if it were some sort of explosive devise must have worked for the DMV. No, she must have gotten fired from the DMV for being too surly. This screener was genial by comparison. He opened the computer, his cellphone, and pager. He watched Lisa on the other side of the security gauntlet talking on her phone. She didn't have every sort of electronic gizmo that had to be poked and prodded by every security dweeb in Boston Logan. Maybe they searched her checked baggage. They'd probably get off like Ralph Cramdon in an intimates factory.
"That took long enough," she said as he finally got through and slung his bag on his shoulder.
"Yeah, well. It would not be good if my computer ended up at DIA rather than in the amber waves of grain." Tony said. They only had a few minutes to get over to their terminal. Murphy must work in flight scheduling. Why was it that connecting flights were always on the other side of the airport. They trucked along quickly.
"The amber waves are under about 4 inches of snow," Lisa said, pocketing her phone. "Canvassing in a blizzard. What genius put the early primaries in the north?"
Tony said nothing. Maybe they'd all get snowed in and he'd actually get some time with Brenda. He doubted it, but he could hope. Doubtless if such a thing looked possibly Lisa would scare up some snowmobiles and a satellite truck to show Higgs taking chicken soup to snowbound nuns or something. Their gate wasn't boarding yet when they did arrive.
"I'll be right back, watch me carry-on?" Lisa asked.
"Yeah, sure." her carry-on looked big enough to smuggle Verne Troyer aboard in. He never had understood people that brought carry-on luggage that was large enough to need an RV license. Then again he didn't much mind wearing the same clothes he traveled in should things become lost, something that was on a decided decline thanks to all this extra security. He settled down into a bench and stared off onto the tarmac.
He was already tired. He hadn't actually been up much earlier than usual, but riding in a car for the few minutes it took to get to the airport in Rochester, then the half hour they'd been in the tiny airport had been enough to wear on him. She just didn't stop talking. Thankfully it wasn't to him, but someone, usually Mitch McConnell, on the other end of her cell phone. McConnell was Higgs' campaign manager and someone that Tony was glad to say he'd never had to deal with. McConnell was legendary for his blow ups, well, not as legendary as Higgs himself, but McConnell had a much sharper tongue than Higgs. The current crisis seemed to be something to do with some reporter. Balz, Balls, something like that. He'd managed to block most of it.
Tony's attention shifted ever so slowly to the monitors in their gate area. CNN, he hated it. Not because it was so slanted against their guy. Tony hardly ever watched the tube, so he didn't particularly care about that. The interface drove him nuts though. Talking head here, scrolling text here, dull graphic that made PowerPoint look good here. Whoever designed the look of Headline News seemed bent on making Jef Raskin spin in his grave, and Raskin wasn't even dead yet. It was captivating though. The scroll at the bottom hooked you. You couldn't take your eyes off of it. It didn't matter what was scrolling, it could be listing scores in the pee-wee hockey league.
"Back." Lisa said, snapping Tony out of his scroll induced coma.
"Huh? Oh." He said, looking at her. It took him a moment to realize that she'd become captivated. "Yeah, that scroll does that 'eh?" he asked. She swatted at him and shusshed.
He looked back to the monitor. There was some breaking news, which was obvious from the graphic.
"We'll be boarding TWA Flight 243 to Minneapolis in 10 minutes. Those of you..." the gate PA announced calling for handicapped, small children and first class clients. It completely drowned out whatever was playing on CNN. Tony couldn't make anything out from th talking head he couldn't hear on the screen. Then the graphic changed to display Gerald Higgs' name and he knew that his day was not going to be enjoyable. Lisa's phone started ringing as if on que.