He got the box into his trunk by tilting it sideways and sitting on the lid until the latch caught. The cardboard left a grey damp square on the back of his khakis. Inside the store he'd passed a black hardshell Samsonite on a display riser, $340, and he'd looked at it the way you look at something you've already decided against.
He pressed the shirts down flatter and ran the zipper back six inches and tried again, slower this time, and it caught. He laid his good navy blazer on top - the one with the pocket square still folded in from his cousin's wedding, and closed the whole thing up. He set the alarm for four-fifteen and left the bag standing by the door with his belt looped through the handle the way he always did, a habit from some trip he couldn't remember anymore.
The zipper had pulled clean away from the fabric at the corner, and the white dress shirt - the good one, the one he'd pressed the night before on the bathroom counter - was draped halfway out - one sleeve moving in the air conditioning like it was waving. A woman in a red coat stepped around the bag without looking at him. He stood there holding his boarding pass, still folded from his jacket pocket, and the carousel kept turning.
The Spirit kiosk screen showed $115. 00 in white digits on a blue field, and below it the itemized line that read CHECKED BAG FEE $75. 00 and below that GIFT SHOP DUFFEL $40. 00, the hotel's gold crest already peeling at one corner where the nylon had folded in his cab door.
The legal pad had a coffee ring near the top - and inside the ring, without meaning to, he'd written $340. He crossed it out. Then he uncrossed it, so the number was still there under the line. The pocket square had been his father's.
He'd folded the tag back once along the perforation, the crease gone soft and pale - and left it there. The carry-on stood flush against the baseboard, four wheels flat on the hardwood, the boarding pass face-down on the lid with his gate number showing through the paper. Somewhere in the front pocket, behind his passport sleeve, the $49. 99 tag flapped once when the heat came on - and then was still.
He checked the bag at the counter and watched the handler swing it by the top grab handle onto the belt, one-handed, the way you'd swing a gym bag, not a piece of luggage with a blazer inside it. At the gate he bought a coffee he didn't want and stood at the window watching the tarmac crew stack bags in the rain, and he thought he saw the burgundy color of it going up the loader but couldn't be sure. When the carousel stopped in Denver and the last bag came around and around and his wasn't among them - the agent slid a form across the counter with a pen attached by a plastic coil, and the top of the form said PROPERTY IRREGULARITY REPORT, and she said it like she'd said it a thousand times before, which she had.
He filled the form out standing at the counter because there was nowhere to sit, printing his name in the boxes the way you do when you're trying to look like someone who has everything under control - and when he got to the field that said ESTIMATED VALUE he wrote $49 and then added . 99 because it seemed important to be accurate. The agent stapled a yellow copy to nothing and handed him the white one, and he folded it into his jacket pocket where the pocket square used to be. In the rental car he called the number on the white form and got a hold recording that said his wait time was approximately forty minutes, and he set the phone on the passenger seat on speaker and drove toward the hotel in the dark, the rental car smelling like someone else's air freshener, the recorded voice telling him his call was very important every ninety seconds - the wipers going.
The hotel bathroom had one of those luggage racks with the canvas straps, and he set the gift shop duffel on it and the whole thing tipped sideways and he caught it before it hit the tile. He'd bought a shirt from a pharmacy two blocks over, a white one still pinned to its cardboard with eight pins he counted out into the soap dish, and he pressed it with the iron bolted to the wall on its cord too short to reach the desk. At nine-fifteen the airline's app pushed a notification that said YOUR BAG IS ON ITS WAY and showed a little suitcase icon moving across a map, somewhere over Kansas - and he looked at it for a long time in the bathroom mirror, the iron still hissing on the board behind him, the meeting already twenty minutes out.
He sat in the meeting in the pharmacy shirt with the collar half a size too big, and every time he turned his head it moved independently, like a door on a loose hinge - and he kept his chin down and his hand on the table and nodded at things he was only partially hearing.
The man across from him had a navy blazer on, similar shade, a white pocket square folded to three points, and at some point he slid a pen across to him and their hands almost touched and he said, good to finally do this in person - and he said, yes, it really is.
On the way back through the lobby he passed a gift shop rack of clear plastic bags holding single-use items - a razor, a comb, a folded white undershirt in a cellophane envelope - and the price sticker on the undershirt said $18. 00 and he stood there for a second and then kept walking - the too-big collar shifting, the gift shop duffel pulling at his shoulder by one intact strap.
Further reading
Disclaimer
This article is a personal reflection shared for general informational purposes only. It is not legal advice. For your own situation, please consult a qualified attorney.
