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On a good day it reminds me of an abandoned rec room in an obscure psychiatric facil-
ity. On less felicitous days it begs comparison with a hospital emergency waiting room in a
third-world-country. And yet, in spite of its homeliness, we've grown to love it.
☼ ☼ ☼
The day of our first-ever flight out of Isla Grande Airport got off to an unusually smooth
start. The D.C. to San Juan leg was almost on time, give or take a couple of hours. And it
was populated by fewer bellowing toddlers than usual. Plus no one in our immediate vicin-
ity appeared to be afflicted by the plague. Or even a cold. Clearly the travel gods were with
us.
Our run of good luck continued in San Juan. The weather was so perfect it was almost
a cliché—azure skies punctuated by the occasional puffy cloud, a light breeze, eighty de-
grees—and our taxi driver greeted us with such unusual courtesy we couldn't help wonder-
ing if he had mistaken us for human beings. Admittedly, the actual taxi ride from San Juan
International to Isla Grande was a trifle hair-raising, but after we had peeled our nerve-
endings from the interior of the van and administered a few vertebral self-adjustments, we
were almost as good as new.
As I've already mentioned, Isla Grande Airport reminds me of the past—though not
necessarily in a grand way. Instead of evoking gauzy images of bygone elegance, it lands
you with a huge splat into the middle of the inelegant seventies, when fiberglass suspended
ceilings were all the rage and red plastic chairs ruled the land. Throw in a dollop of chalky
white paint and a shifty-eyed photo-portrait of a Puerto Rican military hero and you've
pretty much got the vibe.
Once we had checked in I suggested we grab a drink before our flight.
“A drink?” Michael all but sneered. “In this joint?”
There are those who might have been put off by his tone but I'm not so easily deterred,
particularly where alcohol is concerned.
“There's a little snack bar over there,” I suggested hopefully.
“Good luck,” he countered.
But just as I made a beeline for the snack bar's entrance, the proprietor sauntered out
and locked the door with a spiteful little flourish. And with a padlock, no less. I'm not kid-
ding.
Then he scuttled away, leaving us dry and not at all high. With the specter of sobriety
rearing its ugly head, we broke out our Kindles and attempted to distract ourselves for the
next hour or so with literature instead of liquor.
But just as we were beginning to immerse ourselves in our respective reading material
we noticed that the room was beginning to grow appreciably darker. What had happened to
our perfect day? A quick glance through the smudged airport window told the story. A big
thunderstorm was rolling in.
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