Got Baggage?

Cameron scans the conveyer, looking for his green duffel. It should be easy to spot among the gray and black suitcases, but after a couple of minutes he takes a seat on a nearby bench. Figures his would be the last one out.

With one eye on the carousel, he grabs his phone and reviews the list of hostels. There’s one a few miles from Sowell Bay. And that’s where he’ll start his search, of course. According to the sleuthing of county property records he did while waiting to board, Simon Brinks owns three properties in the area. He zooms in on a photo of one of the hostel’s rooms. It’s not exactly a brand-new apartment with fluffy carpet and a flat-screen, not even a shitty apartment above a bar, but it looks reasonably clean, and it’s cheap enough that he should be able to stay there for a few weeks on the cash he’ll get from pawning the jewelry.

Speaking of which, where is his bag? The class ring is in his pocket, but the rest of the jewelry is tucked in his duffel. The conveyer is still spitting out suitcases but sporadically now. He pictures the workers in their orange vests piling the last of the luggage from the plane’s hold onto one of those carts to be driven across the tarmac. What a terrible system. A million inefficiencies, too many handling points. A zillion opportunities for shit to go sideways.

“Figures, right?”

A guy about his age wearing rimless glasses plops down the other end of the bench and unwraps a sub sandwich, jamming one end in his mouth, which he doesn’t bother to close as he chews. The steady release of spiced pastrami turns Cameron’s stomach. Who eats pastrami at eight in the morning?

“I’m sure they’ll come out,” Cameron says.

“Not a frequent JoyJet flier, are you?” Spiced Pastrami barks out a laugh. Pickles and lettuce tumble around in his mouth. “Trust me, they’re notorious for it. We’ve got better odds in Vegas than of our suitcases coming down that belt right now.”

Cameron inhales, preparing to explain that a top-tier equity firm just bought in at a multibillion-dollar valuation for JoyJet and investors are giddy at rumors of an IPO, and even when you’re an ultra-budget airline you don’t get there by habitually losing customer property. But then the carousel grinds to a halt.

“Shit,” Cameron mutters.

That bag of jewelry. Why hadn’t he kept it on him? Now it’s somewhere between Sacramento and Seattle, or, more likely, shoved away in some baggage worker’s locker. He drops his head into his hands and groans.

“See? I called it,” Spiced Pastrami says with a nod at the conveyer, which is still as a dead snake. “Well, let’s go file claims.”

Cameron eyes the line forming outside of a tiny office on the far side of the baggage area. Of course, the fine print on the back of the baggage ticket states that they won’t pay for valuables in checked luggage. He’d skimmed it as they hauled off his duffel after the agent insisted it wouldn’t fit in the overhead bin. But he’d shrugged off any possibility these disclaimers could apply to him. They’re meant for other people. Cameron Cassmore doesn’t have valuables.

By the time he gets to the baggage office, the line is twenty people deep. Spiced Pastrami leans on the wall beside him, still gnawing on his sandwich. It just keeps coming.

“I’m Elliot, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you.” Cameron tries to look like he’s concentrating hard on his phone, as if there’s some Very Important Business happening there.

“Well, we didn’t meet, technically. I told you my name, but you didn’t tell me yours.”

Doesn’t this guy have anything better to do? “Cameron.”

“Cameron. Nice to meet you.” He holds up his insufferable sandwich. “Hungry? Happy to share.”

“No thanks. Not really a pastrami fan.”

Elliot’s eyes widen. “Oh, this isn’t pastrami! It’s a Yamwich.”

“A what?

“A Yamwich! You know, vegan? From that one place on Capitol Hill? They opened a kiosk here at the airport last year.”

Cameron stares at the oily hoagie, loaded with thinly shaved slices of . . . something. “You’re telling me that’s made from yam?”

“Yep! Their reuben kicks ass. You sure you don’t want some?”

“Pass.” Cameron suppresses a scoff. Seattle hipsters, living up to their stereotype.

“Are you sure? I’ve got a whole ’nother half here, haven’t touched it . . .”

“Fine,” Cameron agrees, mostly to end the conversation, but also to appease the nagging voice in the back of his brain reminding him he’s in no position to turn down free meals.

Elliot grins. “You’ll love it.”

As Cameron bites into the sandwich, he returns to scrolling his phone. Katie has posted a selfie with her dog. Hashtag SingleDogLady. He scowls, but it’s softened by the pleasant crunch happening in his mouth. Yam? Really? It’s actually . . . not bad.

He nods at Elliot. “Thanks, bro. This is decent.”

“Wait until you try their French dip.”

The line moves at a creep. Finally, Elliot wads up the greasy wrapper and tosses it at a nearby trash can, landing the shot without even hitting the rim, which annoys Cameron more than it should.

Elliot turns to him. “So, seems like you’re not from around here? Here for work? Vacation?”

“Family visit.”

“Oh, nice. Me, I’m coming home. Was down in Cali for my grandmother’s funeral.”

A dead grandma. Figures. Cameron mutters, “Sorry for your loss.”

“To tell the truth, she was kind of mean, but she loved us grandkids,” Elliot says, his voice surprisingly soft. “Spoiled us rotten in only the way a grandparent can, you know?”

“Yeah, for sure,” Cameron says, tossing his own wrapper into the trash. Of course, he never had a grandparent of his own. Elizabeth’s grandfather used to pinch his cheeks and give him caramel candies when he happened to drop by Elizabeth’s house while Cameron was over. The candies were too sticky, too sweet, and the pinching kind of hurt, and he always smelled like weird old man, like stale pee mixed with arthritis cream. Elizabeth said the old folks’ home where he lived was practically a morgue.

“Anyway, I guess she’s at peace now.” A sad smile spreads over Elliot’s face. Cameron drops his gaze, feeling yet again like an intruder spying on the typical human experience, an outsider looking in on the normal, which is always just out of his grasp. Losing grandparents, worrying about valuables in your suitcase: these experiences belong to other people.

Elliot pulls off his glasses and wipes them on his shirt as they shuffle forward in the queue. “Your family must be excited to see you! Are they in Seattle?”

“No, Sowell Bay. My dad.” The word feels dry and sticky on Cameron’s tongue, like one of those old-man candies.

“Awesome. Bonding time with the old man, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Sowell Bay’s nice. Really pretty up there.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Elliot’s head tilts. “You’ve never been?”

“No. I mean, my dad just moved there recently, so.” Cameron allows himself a tiny smile, surprised at how easily this lie slips out.

“Right on,” Elliot says. “Sowell Bay. Used to be super touristy, but now it’s kind of run-down. There’s an aquarium that’s still open, I think. You should check it out.”

“Sure, thanks,” says Cameron, though obviously he has no plans to waste time looking at fish when he needs to track down Simon Brinks. The line creeps forward. The JoyJet baggage office must be run by a team of sloths and snails. He turns to Elliot. “You’ve gone through this before, huh? How long are we gonna be waiting here?”

Elliot shrugs. “Oh, they’re usually pretty quick. Two, three hours, maybe?”

“Three hours? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“Well, you get what you pay for, right?”

AUNT JEANNE ANSWERS on the third ring. “Hello?” she huffs into the phone, out of breath.

“Are you okay?” Cameron plugs a finger in his other ear to block out the loud babbling of a tour group, which has for some reason decided they need to congregate three inches away from him in this far corner of the baggage area.

“Cammy? Is that you?”

“Yeah.” He nudges away from the tourists. “What are you doing? Why are you breathing so hard?” An unwelcome image of Wally Perkins smacks into Cameron’s brain. He shudders, ready to hang up the phone.

“I’m clearing out the second bedroom,” his aunt answers.

“That’s a project.”

“Well, I figured you might need a place to stay.” A long pause. “I heard about you and Katie.”

“Word travels fast.” Cameron bites a nail. He and Aunt Jeanne need to have a major conversation about why she never told him that his mom lived in a goddamn different state when he was conceived. Here in baggage claim isn’t an ideal setting for that, and now she’s putting herself out for him . . . well, he’ll have to tell her where he is, at least. No choice.

“Aunt Jeanne, I could never stay . . .” He cuts himself off before the thought can finish itself. Could never stay in that tiny trailer full of junk. Through all of his screwups, this is one thing he’s always managed to avoid.

If only that were the only thing he needed.

On the other end of the line, a trickling sound followed by a tiny steaming sizzle tells him Aunt Jeanne is pouring coffee, then sliding the pot back onto its hot plate. “I know, I know. You could never live here with me,” she says. “But, Cammy, you don’t exactly have another plan.”

“I do, actually!” For a moment, Cameron considers telling her the whole master plan. But not here, at the airport. “I do have a plan. But the thing is . . .”

“What is it?”

“I need help. A very small amount of help,” Cameron says, grimacing.

Aunt Jeanne’s sigh stretches all the way up the West Coast. “What happened now?”

Where to even start? It’s a new low, running away like this, then calling home to beg for money. He’s no better than his loser mother. But what choice does he have? From across the corridor, Elliot emerges from the baggage office, then strides toward him, waving cheerily with one hand and dragging a gray suitcase with the other. Lucky asshole.

“Cammy, what happened?” Aunt Jeanne presses.

From a speaker on the low ceiling, a woman’s recorded voice bleats an announcement about attending luggage and personal belongings at all times. How obnoxiously ironic.

He hauls in a breath, then explains, as succinctly as he can, his discovery of the ring and photo, the impromptu plane ticket, the hostel plan.

After a loaded silence, Aunt Jeanne says softly, “Oh, Cammy. I should’ve told you.”

“It’s okay. But here’s the cherry on the shit sundae,” he says, borrowing one of her pet metaphors. “The airline lost my bag.”

The announcement voice blares over him again.

“Will you speak up? I can’t hear you!”

“They lost my bag!” He doesn’t mean to shout it so loud. Several of the tourists pop their heads up at him, and the group edges away, scandalized.

Aunt Jeanne clicks her tongue. “So what? You need socks and underwear?”

“More than that. I have, like, four dollars total.”

“What happened to the jewelry I gave you? I thought for sure you’d have pawned that by now.”

“The jewelry was in the bag.”

The line is quiet for several long moments, and then Aunt Jeanne sighs again. “For someone so smart, you’re a real bonehead sometimes.”

ELLIOT STILL SMELLS faintly of pepper and mustard, and he trails Cameron across the skybridge toward the parking lot asking endless questions, undeterred by Cameron’s one-word answers. Did JoyJet really have no idea where his bag ended up? Nope. Where was he gonna go, then? Somewhere. How was he gonna get there? Bus. Thankfully, Elliot didn’t broach the subject of how Cameron was going to pay for any of this, because he didn’t have a good way to distill the two-thousand-dollar loan from his aunt into a single word.

Aunt Jeanne had insisted it wasn’t really a loan, and Cameron took this to mean that he couldn’t be counted on to pay it back. Ouch. But JoyJet can’t keep his duffel in limbo forever. He’ll pawn the bling and send the money right back to Aunt Jeanne’s savings account, well in advance of the deadline for her cruise deposit. She hadn’t said so, explicitly, but Cameron knew that’s where the money had come from. Aunt Jeanne has been saving up for an Alaskan cruise, her dream vacation, for years. The final payment is due in late August, sailing in September. Cameron will sell his organs to pay her back before he’ll let it be his fault she can’t go.

“You need a ride? I can give you a ride,” Elliot offers for the hundredth time.

“Nah, I’m good.”

“Sowell Bay’s pretty far. You’ll be on buses all day and night.”

“I’ll camp on the side of the road,” says Cameron dryly.

“Hey!” Elliot jogs to catch up. “I’ve got a wild idea.”

Wilder than fake pastrami made from yams? Cameron glances back over his shoulder. “What?”

“My buddy has this camper he’s trying to sell. It’s pretty old, but runs great. You buy it off him and then you’ve got a way to get around and a place to crash.”

Cameron frowns. Actually, it’s not a terrible idea. But . . . a camper? Probably more than he can afford. He slips his phone from his pocket and checks the money-transfer app: there it is, two thousand dollars. In the notes, there’s a smiley-face emoji, followed by a warning: Don’t spend this on stupid

When did Aunt Jeanne learn to use emojis? And does a camper qualify as stupid crap? Probably. Mostly to satisfy his curiosity, Cameron asks, “How much does he want for it?”

“Not sure, exactly. A couple grand?”

“You think he’d take fifteen hundred?”

Elliot grins. “I can probably talk him into that.”