Fletch, Too

Fletch handed Barbara a one-hundred-dollar bill. “Would you please go to the exchange booth and get some local currency?”

Immediately when they came out of the controlled area five small boys had grabbed the skis and carried them on their shoulders out to the sidewalk. A man had grabbed the rest of the luggage. Others had just shouted Taxi! at them.

“Where are you going?”

“Men’s room. We need taxi fare.”

“What’s the exchange rate?”

“Tit for tat. Roughly.”

“Thanks.”

There was only one other man in the men’s room. Slim, he wore a full-length safari suit. Thinning hair was stretched across his pate. He had a pencil-thin moustache. He was washing at a basin.

Sitting in the cabinet, Fletch watched the man’s brown boots make the little movements on the floor a person makes while thinking he is standing still. The water was splashing into the basin.

The main door to the men’s room opened. Heavy black shoes beneath dark trousers came into view beneath the cabinet door. The brown boots turned. The two men spoke a language Fletch didn’t understand. He could barely hear it over the sound of the running water. Then one man shouted. The other man shouted. They both were shouting. The feet began moving, agitated. Forward, back, sideways, some sort of crazy dance. The brown boots became nearer the men’s room door. One of the black shoes landed on the floor on its side, on the man’s ankle. The black shoes pulled backward to the right. The brown boots turned and sprinted for the door. The water was still running.

Fletch came out of the cabinet, pulling up his jeans. He pressed the flat of his hand against his stomach. His other hand covered his mouth.

Blood was on the mirror, the white washbasins, the floor.

A man’s body was in the corner, his neck twisted against the wall. His white shirt was soaked with blood, from just below the chest down. Some blood was on his dark trousers, as far down as his knees. His jaw was slack. His eyes, glassy as a stuffed animal’s, stared toward the men’s room door. On the side of the sink above his head was his bloody, streaked hand print.

Water was still running in the basin. A knife had been dropped into it. Water swirling around the knife was still bloody.

Fletch’s two hands could not stop what was about to happen. He went to a basin nearer the door. He vomited. He rinsed out the basin. He vomited again.

After rinsing the sink a second time he stood against the basin a moment to steady himself. Then he rubbed cold water on his face, the back of his neck.

Using the bottom of his shirt around his hand, he opened the men’s room door.

Eyes stinging, temples throbbing, knees shaking, Fletch tried to walk straight across the airport terminal while he tucked in his shirt.