15. Airport Drinking
Gigi always feels liberated strolling through airports in her civilian clothes, and for this trip she’s traded her work luggage—tight, stacked black bags—
for her personal luggage.
This trip is personal.
She flies first class from Hartsfield to Logan, cruising altitude of thirty- five thousand feet, not a single bump. The left chair, Bruce, and the right chair, Craig, are known to be the smoothest fliers in the company; rumor has it that Bruce grows very annoyed when his coffee spills. They arrive eighteen minutes early. When this happens, it can be challenging to find a gate, but A7 is magically free and Gigi is the first one off the plane. It’s almost too easy.
She makes her way to Terminal C, where she checks in for her Cape Air flight aboard a nine-seater Cessna (it’s essentially, she thinks, a toy plane).
She’s booked on the 3:25, which lands at 4:15. She still has an hour to kill so she goes to Legal Sea Foods, orders a lobster roll and a bloody mary, and asks herself for the three thousandth time what she’s doing.
She’s going to meet her dead lover’s wife.
With the first sip of her bloody, Gigi is transported back to the horrible evening of December 15.
Against Gigi’s better judgment, she goes to the Hungry with Hollis website.
After her conversation with Matthew that morning, she vowed never to visit the website again, but with the weekend in front of her now unexpectedly free, she stares at the Kitchen Lights map. There are bright spots across the U.S. and Canada—and even in Australia, Brazil, Guam. Gigi imagines people standing in front of their cutting boards with half a stick of butter, an onion, a pile of button mushrooms, their kitchens bright and warm.
Gigi zooms in on the Boston area looking for Hollis’s house. Hollis is, no doubt, preparing for the annual Shaw–Madden holiday party. Gigi has heard all about it.
There’s a dense concentration of lights on in and around Boston, and as Gigi is zooming in, trying to figure out which light, if any, belongs to Hollis, a message appears on the Corkboard. It’s from Hollis herself.
To the Hungry with Hollis community:
My husband, Matthew, passed away this morning unexpectedly. I need to ask for privacy as I grapple with this devastating tragedy. I’ll be stepping away from the website for a while, as I’m sure you’ll all understand. I hope to return at some point, though right now, I can’t imagine when.
Hold your loved ones close.
With gratitude, Hollis
Gigi’s mouth drops open. She screams. She snatches up her phone, calls Matthew, and is shuttled straight to voice mail. This is wrong, she thinks.
Matthew has not “passed away”; Gigi spoke to him that very morning. She calls his cell phone again. Again, voice mail—but this makes sense. After their conversation, he must have blocked her. But he’s not dead—how can he be dead? Gigi rereads the post on Hollis’s website, thinking there must be a mistake, Hungry with Hollis has been hacked. Passed away this morning unexpectedly… grapple with this devastating… The condolences are starting to roll in. Is this real, then? Gigi scoops up Mabel and squeezes her too tight; Mabel shrieks and leaps to the ground. Gigi googles Matthew’s name but all that comes up is the link for Mass General, for Harvard Medical School, for the paper he delivered in San Francisco that past November. Gigi had met him there; they’d gone to the symphony together, then ordered room service at their suite at the Four Seasons. The next day they rented a convertible and drove to Napa. The autumn colors were breathtaking, the lunch at Bouchon sublime.
Gigi paces her house, thinking, What do I do? Who do I call? The only people in the world who know about Gigi’s affair are Tim and Santi. Should she run down the street and tell them? No, not yet, she’ll wait until she knows for sure. When will that be? Nobody in Matthew’s life is going to call her. No
one knows she exists. And also, who is she kidding—Hollis wouldn’t lie to two million people about her husband passing away. Matthew is dead. But how? What happened?
She lies on her sofa and drifts in and out of sleep until the sun comes up.
For a moment, Gigi isn’t sure why she’s not in her bed. Then it lands with a sickening thud: Hollis’s message. In the morning light, the idea of Matthew passing away unexpectedly is newly heinous and also newly inconceivable.
Gigi doesn’t believe it. But when she goes to her computer, she sees the obituaries. Killed in a one-car crash on the morning of December 15.
No, Gigi thinks.
Then she recalls the start of their conversation: Matthew had told her it
was snowing.
He crashed. He’s dead.
After listing all Dr. Madden’s honors and accolades, the papers report that he is survived by a wife and daughter.
A text comes in from Hollis: Hi, just checking in. What’s your ETA?
Gigi promptly orders a second bloody mary. She has always been fascinated by airport drinkers. It’s as though the rules of polite society fly out the window when people see an airport bar. Six o’clock in the morning?
Great time for a beer and a shot. The woman sitting next to Gigi has ordered a plate of French fries and an entire bottle of champagne just for herself. Not all superheroes wear capes, Gigi thinks. She finishes her drink and pays the check. By the time she gets back to the Cape Air gate, there’s a second text from Hollis with the address of the house. Call me if the cabdriver can’t find it! Hollis adds.
In the days following Matthew’s death, Gigi waited for an e-mail or a phone call. She pictured Hollis going through Matthew’s desk drawers and finding something that gave her pause—the strip of pictures from the photo booth at the wedding Gigi and Matthew crashed in Baltimore when Matthew was lecturing at Johns Hopkins or the handwritten menu they saved from lunch at Bouchon. Matthew had assured Gigi he was careful; as a surgeon, he knew how to keep things sterile.
A week after Matthew’s passing, when Gigi’s sadness was festering like something infected, she had an epiphany: The only person who understood
how she was feeling was Hollis. There were thousands upon thousands of condolences posted on the Hungry with Hollis Corkboard, so Gigi went straight to Hollis’s DMs. I’m here to listen, she wrote, and she added her cell phone number. That very night, there was a text: Hi, Gigi, it’s Hollis. I’m sorry to bother you.
Gigi responds immediately: Not a bother. I’m here. How are you
doing?
In this way, a friendship was born.
But, Gigi thinks now as they call the 3:25 flight, it’s a friendship built on a massive deception. Gigi stays in her seat as the other eight passengers line up to board, then as her name is called over the loudspeaker. She whips out her phone and checks flights back to Atlanta—there’s a direct at eight o’clock. She thinks about just staying in Boston; she loves the hotel Fifteen Beacon. Or she could hop over to Martha’s Vineyard.
A third text comes in from Hollis. Is everything okay?
Gigi’s fingers hover over her screen. She types, but doesn’t send, Sorry, something came up. My conscience, as it turns out, she thinks. She should never have agreed to come in the first place; it was positively psychotic.
Except, Gigi thinks, she wants to go. She wants to meet Hollis in real life; she wants to see the house; she wants to hear the stories (does she want to hear the stories?). If it gets weird or uncomfortable, she can leave.
She approaches the desk. So sorry, she missed the 3:25, is it possible to get the next flight, the 4:40?
The 4:40 is sold out, the gate agent, Bonnie, tells her in a tone that’s on the corner of unfriendly and impatient (but Gigi has sympathy; a gate agent’s job is frustrating). Ditto the 5:15, Bonnie adds, and ditto the 6:05. “I’m sorry,” Bonnie says. “It’s a Friday in July.”
Gigi’s heart sinks. Back to Atlanta, then?
“I do have one seat left on the six-fifty flight, arriving Nantucket at seven
forty,” Bonnie says.
“Yes,” Gigi says. “I’ll take it.”
“Are you sure you’re not going to ‘miss’ it again?” Bonnie says, using air quotes. “I saw you sit through our announcement, you know.”
Oops, Gigi thinks. Busted. “If I told you why I didn’t get on the three- twenty-five, you wouldn’t believe it. But yes, I’m sure.”
Bonnie lets a fraction of a smile slip. “That’s all I need to know.”
