Jenny lets him share the table with her. There’s a table in the far corner, but she hates to be rude.

Someone behind her bumps her elbow. She looks, but then they’re gone. Just another body in the throng.

The man – golden hair, a dimpled chin, a white button-down shirt with the fabric pilling on the collar – licks his teeth and lifts a finger for a waitress.

“What are you drinking?” he asks over the noise.

Jenny holds aloft her own glass – a mostly drained Merlot. She says it aloud, just in case.

Waitress comes. Takes the orders. He asks for a gin-and-tonic. All around, the crowds thicken and tighten like a belt, like a pair of hands. She hates this place. Airports smell like airplanes. Ozone and cleaning spray and old perfume and coffee stains. Here, the added bonus of the tang of wine and gin and slushie nuclear neon margaritas (which she knows aren’t margaritas, but she loves them just the same).

“Where you flying?” he asks.

“Dallas,” she says.

He nods, like he knows. “Me too, me too.”

He’s got a dark blot on his blue tie. Looks purple.

“You’re very handsome,” he says, an odd choice of words, but there it is. “Pretty eyes.”

The waitress brings their drinks, hurries off. Jenny hoists the glass and takes a sip, and decides right away to stick the needle in his balloon. “I’m married.”

“No kidding.” He says it like he knew it. He already saw her ring, she figures. Just in case, she waggles that finger around her glass. The ring tinks against it.

She shrugs. “Sorry to disappoint.”

He waves it off. “I’m married, too.”

“Oh. Oh, good. I just thought — congrats.”

“What’s your name?”

“Jenny. Jenny Slater.”

The man’s mouth opens, agape. “Hey, Jenny Slater. That’s crazy. My name’s Paul Slater.”

“That’s my husband’s name.” Something feels off, now. Something she can’t identify. Like a knick-knack on a shelf moved away from the others, like a painting replaced in the night.

“I know,” he says, and smiles, and licks his teeth again. “I’m your husband, silly girl.”

“That’s not funny.” Already she’s looking around. Is this a joke? Where’s Paul? Is he here? She looks for police. An air marshal. Somebody. Anybody.

He raises his voice to match the volume of the crowd. “I don’t mean it to be funny, babe.”

The man slides across the table a driver’s license, and taps it against the bottom of her glass. It’s her husband’s license. She’d know it anywhere, because the corner was chewed up – teeth marks from their unruly terrier.

But two things, two things were different.

First, the picture. It wasn’t her husband. It was this man. With the golden hair and the dimple chin.

Second, on the corner opposite of the teeth marks – a rusty spot. A dried circle of weathered red.

Jenny feels dizzy. Her world, whirling. Her guts drop, like she’s already on the flight taking off, ascending, leaving an old place and going to a new one. A destination she didn’t choose. She’s motion sick. Again she looks around, she raises a hand, but nobody sees it. The ground is gone beneath her.

“We’re going to Dallas together,” the man says, chuckling. “A couple’s time away. From the kids! From little Becky and littler Melissa. It sounds so nice.”

He puts his hand over hers. His fingers are callused. The nails, chewed and ragged.

“The kids,” she says, the words barely loud enough. “My children.”

“They’re fine.” He tightens his hand. The calluses bite. Hangnails scratch. “And they’ll continue to be fine, because Daddy loves them very much, and Mommy loves Daddy. And that makes it all okay.”

Outside the bar, the announcement: flight’s boarding. Her flight. Their flight. To Dallas.

“Ready?” he asks.

“I don’t – what’s happening –“ She feels tears moving down her cheeks.

“Time to fly, babe.”

She’s taken away. She leaves the table, leaves the airport bar. With him. Her mouth is dry. Her nose filled with the airport stink. Everything feels loose, unmoored, flying high and getting higher.

The man winks. Smiles. Licks his teeth. And pulls her toward the gate, ticket in hand.

…

For the Crash And Burn Steve Weddle Memorial Airport Flash Fiction.

Thus, I may never finish my first novel.

It’s tricky, because your debut novel has to be something bold and wave-making, but it’s also bound to suck a little bit if it’s actually your first, because what the hell kind of experience do you have writing a novel, right? (But novels don’t work like that, do they?) Your debut should be brilliant, shining like sterling, so the world sits up and takes note. Then you should top it with your sophomore effort, which should benefit from all the lessons you learned on your first. That buys you the luxury of slipping into something smaller and more indulgent your third time out, at which point your bibliography is varied enough that anything is possible, in any genre. You’ve become a writer of literature.

As a would-be full-time novelist, this is what career planning looks like. I sit on my couch in the middle of the night, pretending I’m awake instead of asleep, drinking vodka from a glass skull, and I plan (excuse me, I “plan”) my choice of first novel to maximize the effect of my debut. I consider which novel is better to write first, for the sake of impressing potential agents and publishers. Two things define novelists, after all: the oeuvre and the debut.I believe it, because I’ve told it to myself a whole damn lot.

(I love that word, debut. I would love to debut sometime. I’ve got a couple or four dozen books in the world and yet I’ve never debuted anything. They just got released. Sometimes they streeted. But not one of them ever debuted.)

Out of procrastination — which is a kind of fear — I convince myself that I am somehow being productive when I break yet another story for a novel without having even finished a first one yet. I have a half-dozen novels in various stages of outlining and research, any of which could be my first. I’m strategizing, see? It’s a business plan! I’m putting my would-be novels in order, considering whether it’s best for my career to be the guy who wrote this fantasy thing or that sci-fi thing or that speculative thing first, and which should come next to best add breadth and surprise to my bibliography. The part of my career where I get around to actually finishing a novel? That will come later. I believe it, because I’ve told it to myself a whole damn lot.

How do you decide which of six novels should be your first? They all have stories that want to be told. They all have things that make them topical and things that suggest they’ve missed their window. They all suck, right now, and they all might be great if you fulfill the potential they said you had in school — if your first novel is a breathtaking debut from a bold new talent.

Which is it? Is it the authentic character-driven tale of your own turmoil and pain, disguised in an urban fantasy that’ll pigeonhole you forever? What about the was-topical-four-years-ago speculative thriller with possible value for its movie rights? Don’t forget the adventure yarn you cooked up as a potential movie idea but were convinced to write as a novel because the market’s better for those. Is there a whole novel in that comic-book outline you did? Maybe you should start with your sci-fi heist story or a sword-and-sorcery yarn.Whichever you do first has to be spectacular, because you’ve theoretically been working on it for thirty years. (You haven’t.)

Whichever you do first has to be spectacular, because you’ve theoretically been working on it for thirty years. (You haven’t.) But whichever it is, it better not be your best work, or else you’ll be a hack or a laughingstock before long. You can aim at whatever the market is buying right now, or you can be so good that fads don’t matter. You can trust that some agent will see your potential beyond the single manuscript, or you can be realistic and accept that it won’t be good or sold or beloved, but will at least exist.

Trouble is, the novel that doesn’t exist is perfect. It is everything at once. It is printed on fine imaginary paper in the matte black ink of infinite possibility. Why diminish it by writing it?

Simply put, fuck all that. The novel that exists trumps those that don’t. These are all excuses for not writing. You can muck around, prioritizing novels that don’t exist, but that’s a kind of lying to yourself.

Write it. Everything else comes after.

Now let’s see if I can put my novel where my mouth is.

In case you somehow haven’t been told to listen to it yet, here’s Merlin Mann on getting creative work done, from MaximumFun.org:

The Sound of Young America