In the wee small hours

An airport sign reads “Watch Your Valuables,” but someone crossed out the “abl” and now it faces the Homeland Security checkpoint, warning, “Watch Your Valu es.”

I am here at 2 a.m, on an immovable orange plastic seat of such ungiving hardness that it will never break down in a landfill. Ever.
A janitor pushes a floor-polisher down a walkway the same anonymous color as his uniform. I am so weary, here in this Pacific Rim puddle-jumper terminal, that my eyes pull sleights-of-hand on my brain, and I see embers in the glossy linoleum.
 The air at this hour is devoid of jet exhaust, but in a few hours it will reek, proving what a cop once told me: “There's no such thing as a hermetically sealed public building. Fallout shelters are bullshit.”

If you're in an airport in the predawn hours, you are by definition a failure. You failed to make your flight; nobody cared enough to pick you up; the airline gave you motel money but you are hoarding it; you're spending the night in a space the visual and spiritual equivalent of tinny instrumental Muzak.  

I walk outside the terminal to smoke, and the Seattle chill tries to get inside my coat. The city twinkles distantly. Floor polisher guy comes outside, too, and begs a light.  He smells like lemons and Pine-Sol and something else, both animal and mineral.
He says, “I got fresh coffee in the locker room, if you like.”

Indoors, I walk two steps behind him, like a good Saudi Arabian wife, grateful for the offer, for real, brewed coffee, not instant, and for the small, surprising comfort of  a human voice.