Chapter 1

Sensibly shod grandmas bundled in heavy cardigan sweaters direct handsome bearded youths in turbans and Polo shirts in the care and wrangling of hard-sided suitcases. Sons swath boxes of DVD players and peanut butter in rolls of shiny packing tape while grandsons run and tumble up the down escalator. Moms keep a collective watchful eye, but reprimand only the most rambunctious behavior, hoping the kiddos will wear themselves out and maybe everybody can get some sleep on the long trek home—to Hong Kong, to the Philippines, to Poland and to points beyond.

The Vancouver airport is carefully and cleverly designed to echo its Pacific surroundings: wood floors evoke trees, stone walls evoke mountains, skylights are washed by sun and storms alike. Rivers of blue and green—tiles swirling in the floor, banners fluttering from the ceiling—swoop past totem poles and Tlingit art, and Henry Kavalauskas resents the triteness of the analogy even as he pushes against the current of preoccupied people, swimming upstream through the International Departures lobby in an effort to distance himself from the A&W. Which is fine as jobs go, but not an especially lush breeding ground. Shooting the rapids between luggage carts and self-check-in kiosks, sleeping backpackers and sleek business travelers, heavy-bottomed young men in sweat pants on cell phones and heavily made-up older women in fur coats and little else, he scarcely notices the burble and splash of languages. Nobody in his apartment block speaks English to their parents, and in fact Henry’s not sure he knows anyone who’s notbilingual. Besides the vaguest impression of the smell of a bakery or the clackety-clack of his grandmother’s bracelets, Henry has no memories of Lithuania, but it was his world until he was four; he’s just as foreign as any of these families that swirl past. And every bit as Canadian, for that matter, if you overlook the fact that he doesn’t give a shit about hockey.

He falls in behind a high-heeled cabin crew from one of the Asian airlines—distinguished as such less by their appearance than by the unity of their movement through the mob—and rides their wake through the edge of the check-in chaos until he washes up in the relative calm of the pre-security clearing of gift shops and coffee carts. Okay, so maybe “breeding ground” is an exaggeration, but the boy-watching is way better on this side of the airport. The International terminal is too hit-or-miss, for one thing—too hectic to leisurely cruise the promising guys when departure time draws nigh; crickets chirping in an empty hall the rest of the time. Canadian Departures is okay for comings and goings, but there’s nowhere really to sit, and it’s too close to work. He likes the people he works with fine, but he doesn’t consider any of them friends, and they seem completely unable to get their heads around why anyone would hang around the airport before or after work. Henry likes watching the world go by, but he finds constantly explaining to the world why he hasn’t gone home yet tiresome, so he changes his shirt and makes for USA Departures at the opposite end of the airport.

He’s not a hustler; he’s certainly not a predator. But he’s got nothing to rush home to. The people at the airport are a lot more interesting than the people roaming around the mall, and if he’s going to be looking at people, you can be sure he’s going to be looking at guys. Sometimes Henry’s imagination snags on a particular guy, and in the time it takes him to roll his suitcase by or change his money, Henry’s mentally inserted himself next to him, bags packed, and is ready to jet off into the fabulous life he does not yet inhabit.

But he is certain it awaits. Perhaps in the swank Mumbai penthouse he might share with this gorgeous, caramel-colored cricketer rollicking along with his team, all biceps and eyelashes. Perhaps galloping across the Argentine pampas with Tall, Dark, and Handsome over at the ATM, racing for the barn at the end of an afternoon spent tending the vineyard. Perhaps part-time in Toronto, part-time in L.A. with the very famous sitcom star that he recognizes behind the sunglasses, but whose name eludes him. Henry’s not especially choosy about who whisks him away, nor about where he gallivants off to, he just wants to get on a plane and go. Henry was raised by immigrants—hell, he is an immigrant, not that he made any choices around that at age four. He supposes it’s in his nature to look towards the Unknown for relief from the Usual.

And while the hours he spends at his uninspiring job fit snugly into the Usual category, the rest of the airport fairly sings of the Unknown. The Departures board reads like a geography textbook, studded with the tour bus highlights of Asia or Europe or the USA according to the time of day. He’s never been to Seoul or Stockholm or Lihue—wherever that is—but being amongst people who are from these places or on their way to these places makes the notion that the world might be bigger than his parents’ Richmond apartment and his grease-trap job feel less like a pipe dream. These giant airplanes have just brought hundreds of people thousands of miles so that they might refill and return home. To the tightly tailored crews crisscrossing the terminal, Vancouver is just a stopover. A dot on the map. Another box to check on the list of ‘Places I’ve Been.’

He figures these cabin crews have it made. Get paid to see the world, test-drive a few of the cities in which he knows he’d be right at home; spend his life in hotel rooms and not on the fold-out couch. He’s tried twice. He was even willing to cut his hair. Air Canada was looking for qualified applicants with fluency in more than one language, but regretted to inform Henry that Lithuanian was not among them. The West Jet recruiters had handed out crisp yellow folders to all the candidates who had passed the group interview and were invited to continue on to the next phase of the application process, then thanked Henry—along with about five hundred other people—for his interest and wished him the best. Henry doesn’t suppose that the A&W in the food court in the domestic terminal adds much to the cosmopolitan luster of the airport—or of Vancouver in general—but if it doesn’t make him a part of the Big Adventure, at least it gives him a front row seat to more than another episode of the live-action living room drama It’s All Your Fault, which plays on something of a constant loop at home, and is a crappy guest star gig.