Free Life and Other Near-Death Experiences by Camille Pagán Page A

stuff. While I wasn’t sure I liked it, I had a feeling it might come in handy as I prepared to meet my maker. Historically, I had no strong feelings toward alcohol one way or the other, but aside from the occasional beer or celebratory glass of champagne, I’d largely avoided it because Tom’s father was an alcoholic, and not the jolly, highly functioning type. Even mild inebriation made Tom uncomfortable.
    But his concerns were no longer my own, so after learning I had two whole hours to kill before my flight, I pulled a move that was decidedly un-Libby-like: I walked into an airport bar, sat down, and told the bartender to serve me what he would have if he were making a drink for himself. (In hindsight, perhaps this was not the best idea, as the bartender’s capillary-spidered cheeks said he’d spent the better part of his life downing highly flammable spirits.) “Dirty martini,” he said, pouring the contents of a silver shaker into a deceptively small cocktail glass with a flourish. I didn’t know what to do with myself, so as bitter and medicinal as the martini was, I set about drinking it as though each sip would make it more appetizing. Which proved to be true.
    Five minutes later, it was gone, so I ordered another one, which I drank slower as the room began to tilt ever so slightly. Gin seemed to supply a gentler buzz than Tom’s sleeping pills (though I brought those with me, too, just in case). On the other hand, I knew that if I finished the second martini, my carry-on would never make it with me to the gate, so I left half the murky liquid in the glass, paid my bill, and went wandering through the terminal.
    Many believe O’Hare International Airport to be the very inferno Dante spoke of, but I don’t mind it. The bookstores are good, the food isn’t half-bad, and while you encounter the occasional screaming traveler, most people who pass through are distantly friendly in that Midwestern way. Also, there’s a Brookstone, which I located roughly four and a half miles from my gate. The store was fresh out of self-hypnosis CDs, and much to the saleswoman’s frustration, I didn’t see the point of buying soothing ocean sounds when I would be on the beach the following morning. So I plopped down in a massage chair and treated the contents of my stomach to a reenactment of the bartender’s martini mixing.
    I’d just closed my eyes when I heard someone squeal my name. “Lib by ?! Libby Ross Miller, is that you ?”
    No, no it most certainly is not, I thought, sinking lower into the leather seat and pushing my feet against the floor in a desperate attempt to make the chair swivel. Alas, it was nailed firmly to the floor, so I opened my eyes and confirmed what I already knew to be true. It’s funny, isn’t it, how a person can gain or lose a ton of weight, get her nose done, or do any number of things that would make it difficult to recognize her across a crowded room—but she says one word and you can immediately identify her? So although I had not seen Maxine Gaines in a good fifteen years, all I needed to hear was the first syllable of my name to know exactly who was calling it from behind a stack of self-massage tools.
    As she rushed at me, I reluctantly stood to greet her. “Libby, OMG! How crazy to run into you after all these years!” she screeched.
    While I trusted plenty of humans who didn’t deserve it, those who eschewed full words in favor of spoken acronyms did not make the cut. “Yeah, crazy,” I said.
    Maxine and I were friends in high school, probably because I was one of the few people who would tolerate her insufferability; her hyper-achieving goody-goody act made my church girl seem like a delinquent who was just a few bad decisions away from becoming an after-school special. I wasn’t sad when I stopped hearing from Maxine once she went to college out east , as she coyly and constantly referred to Princeton, although I accepted her friend request a few years ago, largely