Frank Miller, "Elektra: Assassin"
(This is part 5 of an 18-part story, which begins here. And here is where you find part 10. Part 15? Right here. And the end of this entirely too long story is located here. After that, you�re on your own.)
(9:15 p.m. � Oakland Airport � 15th hour.)
The three people in line turn out to be a little hippie family consisting of a guy and a girl who are probably no older than 24, along with their little hippie daughter who can�t be older than two-years-old. I�m surprisingly amiable, figuring that I�m going to be sitting next to these people, but they turn out to be pretty goddamn standoffish. At first I wondered if it was due to some sort of base instinct like cats and dogs or rats and mongooses (mongoosi? Whatever.) � the hippies see the punk rocker and automatically prepare to run off into the brush.
Fine by me.
After a smattering of conversation, I realize that I can�t complain to these people about my predicament, for they had arrived at 11 p.m. the night before to camp out for a standby seat and weren�t able to get a flight. They�ve been in this god-forsaken airport six hours longer than I have.
I almost feel sorry for them, but the fact that they�re so snotty prevents me from doing so. Then I figure out why I�m getting such an attitude from them. Since my ticket is officially a date change, I get priority over them when and if they issue seats, and whoever managed to be first in line doesn�t matter at all. They probably figured that if I had gotten on the plane that I was supposed to be on, they would have less competition.
Still though, This entire ordeal isn�t my fault, even if my dumb ass couldn�t get to the airport three hours before take off, since the people at Sunny Excursions wouldn�t give me my ticket due to the misspelling.
The hippies lie out on a sleeping bag, the black soles of their unwashed feet sticking out of the bottom of their makeshift mattress. I don�t have anything to lie on, and there�s nothing but cold hard tile on the ground in this section of the airport, so I prop myself up against a machine selling wilted flowers for $20 dollars a pop and open up this graphic novel.
It was good that I was reading a graphic novel, because the lack of sleep is already making me feel punch drunk. Frank Miller�s work on Daredevil was pretty realistic (realistic for a comic book anyway), but this extension of some of the side characters is totally surreal, unlike any of the Miller books that I�ve read before.
Worse, the art is by Bill Sienkiewicz, a man whose drawings are even stranger than the spelling of his name. The sleep deprivation is already threatening to start hallucinations, and this book isn�t helping. I actually had to stop at a few moments, shake my head, and look at the art again to make sure I wasn�t tripping.
On a few occasions, I was.
I noticed the eatery was preparing to close down for the night, and I could feel the fatigue starting up again. At one point I started to pick up my bags to walk over and get more coffee, but a group of people walked into the waiting area who all looked suspiciously like they wanted to go to Hawaii. They walked away after a moment, and I contemplated what to do.
Okay, I thought, I have priority over the sleeping hippies, but what if the next group that comes along, and could possibly take my place while I�m buying coffee, has date changes on their tickets as well?
Deciding that after spending nearly 15 hours sucking up exhaust fumes in the airport parking lot, I probably looked as dirty as these hippies. I could easily look like I was in the same group. So I did what you are never � EVER � supposed to do in an airport. I left my bags unattended. Piling the bags near their head as quietly as I could, I slipped away and bought two cups of coffee at $2.75 each and a Red Bull that cost me $3.50.
And when I got back, there were two more people in line who didn�t even blink when I walked past them to sit down again.
