Free The Devil's Playground by Stav Sherez Page A

more he tried to
    focus the more they resisted. He wanted to say something
    but that would have meant waking the man, causing a disturbance
    and really, all he wanted was a quiet, uneventful flight
    and so he tried to shrink into his seat, ignore it, look out
    of the window, think about something else, but it wasn’t
    working.
    He’d been feeling like that all day, an unpredictable mixture
    of sadness and annoyance with an underlying grind of unresolved
    tension. Even the previous night’s drunken drive
    hadn’t helped much. The police hadn’t stopped him. The
    world hadn’t collapsed. He’d limped to bed, not even bothering
    to undress, hiding himself beneath the dark slumberous
    canopy of the duvet until everything went black.
    It had happened while he was making coffee that morning.
    He’d woken up feeling happy and energized though he didn’t
    know why. He’d got out of bed and immediately a spear of
    pain had shot up from his ankle, flooding his chest. He
    cursed himself for the stupidity of it, falling down like that.
    One unfocused moment was all it took, in that moment a
    man could lose a leg, a life, so much more.
    A couple of painkillers later and he felt ready to face the
    day. And then, watching the coffee drip slowly out of the
    filter and dribble down the sides of his cup, he saw Jake’s
    face reflected in the cold chrome and felt as if he were going
    to suffocate. He went to the bathroom and splashed cold
    water over his face and wrists, staring at himself in the mirror,
    thinking about that night, how he’d opened the door as if he
    were still the sole occupant, and the tissues, the crumpled
    tissues on the floor, and his unintentional intrusion seemed
    the kind of deep, dark betrayal that was so elliptical it required sustained and repeated meditation, a perfect smooth pebble
    to be rubbed for ever. He came back to find the cup overflowing
    and dark brown liquid spreading across the worktop.
    He didn’t even bother to wipe it up.
    Instead he rebooted the computer, spent ten mindless
    minutes waiting for pages to download, punched in his card
    number and was told that he’d successfully reserved a seat
    on the afternoon flight to Amsterdam. He thought about
    sending Dave an email. Thought about it, then shut down
    the computer.
     
    He’d felt better at the airport. Slowly smoking cigarettes and
    watching the screens flicker and flash above him, the endless
    shuffle and bustle, nervous last-minute gate dashes so filled
    with purposeful movement. There was something about the
    way people behaved in airports, he thought, waiting for his
    gate number to come up on-screen, the way they took on
    different characteristics more in line with their transient
    positions. Men sat silently smoking and drinking black coffee
    while the women prepared themselves for the violence to
    come, as if the airport were the last vestige of a person you
    might never return to, as if the act of flight changed something
    fundamental in the genetic make-up. Perhaps that’s
    why there is so little talk at airports, why glances are rarely
    exchanged along the long, flowing expressways — themselves
    rooms drained of dimension — reduced to the skeletal presence
    of pure perspective. Leaving creates its own space and
    its own moods. All the unnecessary junk of life is forgotten
    for a few hours as you stare at the possibilities on the
    computer screen, the list of departures, of places you could
    escape to — the past conveniently obscured behind the dream
    of forward movement, of the new and unimagined landscapes
    to come.
    He could stay here all day, he knew, just watching the
    people moving, saying goodbyes, crying, smiling, whispering
    secret words that bring a blush to a lover’s cheeks. He felt
    better here. All that rock and scrape of tension easing, his
    body melting into the seat. But when the call for his flight
    came, he took it, knowing that even airports close for the
     
    night, leaving you to go back to