some of this is true

I am pulling into the airport in a cab for a mid-morning flight, which when I booked it I thought would lend itself to a more relaxed pace, a later morning and more sleep. But 10 o’clock, while better than my usual habit of leaving at 7 a.m., is still early when you add up the morning rush to finish packing, the cab ride, time for security, to take my shoes off for the inspection guards, time to grab a newspaper, and a buffer for my typical lateness, and then consider that I stayed up late packing because I didn’t start that task until well past midnight. I am tired, and I am pulling into the airport terminal and the morning sun is again blocked by an even layer of clouds that have been hanging over the city for weeks. The cab driver tells me, as many others have, that this is not normal, that the weather will improve soon and it will be sunny, for once. I tell him I’ve decided they’re all liars, and he laughs and takes my credit card to ring it through.

My cellphone vibrates and then chimes a subtle ring that means, “Hurray! You have an e-mail!” A news alert from a local radio station that you may have heard of:

Hazmat Incident at YVR: Emergency workers are investigating a yellow powder found on board an Air Canada Jazz plane.

Oh great, I think. I’m never getting off the ground. I picture a team of a half-dozen people who look like astronauts in their bulky white suits running around, clearing the terminal as sirens of some kind or another fill the airport and reverberate off its windows and high ceilings. There will be chaos and panic, witnesses will be screaming as scores of people are affected by this mysterious yellow power. Will they choke and gasp and bounce around the floor in the throes of death? Will their skin bubble like in that movie? Will they even see it coming?

But as I walk in to check my baggage, destined for a Major Canadian City, where I am headed for a work-related trip, everything is calm and the airport is nearly empty. No one here even knows, I think, which seems more ominous somehow.

I follow the line to the security screening point, where they give me a thorough examination. There is much metal detecting and removing things, lest there be something nefarious hidden inside. My laptop is swabbed, I assume for explosives. They find nothing and wave me on.

I look out the terminal windows for the plane, for the helicopters, for the military probably, for the plastic bubble that they will no doubt have erected over the plane to establish a quarantine, which is the term they would use. I see one plane off in the distance, separated from everything else on the tarmac, which even under the clouds is probably hot like a clay oven.

There are a few cars beside it, but otherwise little activity. The small propeller plane is just sitting there, revealing nothing about what could possibly be happening inside.

A large truck pulls up, lights flashing. Someone in a white suit walks out and enters the plane. I watch, take pictures, waiting for the aircraft to explode, or for the white-suit man to run out screaming, “Get back! Get back!” as he collapses in that step-by-step way people do when they’re running, one foot at a time.

“What’s out there worth taking a picture of?” an old man in a suit asks me.

“There’s a hazmat team looking at that plane. They found some sort of powder,” I reply.

“Hazmat?”

“Hazardous materials,” I say, waiting for his eyes to light up with interest.

He shrugs, turns back to his newspaper and couldn’t look more bored.

Eventually the man in the white suit emerges, and walks back to the truck, which pulls away slowly, without urgency. They never say what the yellow powder actually is, but later describe it as “non-toxic,” which doesn’t mean much.

When they call my flight, I show them my new B.C. driver’s licence and walk onto the plane. We take off and fly away from this place and head east to a Major Canadian City, where I will spend the next three days training and working and seeing some friends. I will end up in a pub that night, and head to a baseball game the next. It will be hot and humid, and I will remember how big this city is and how gray the skies become filled with smog. On the third night I will head out with co-workers I will have only just met, and eventually end up at an all-night diner called Fran’s where drunk beefcakes strut around like some kind of celebrities speaking French and hitting on everyone there, at this hour, eating breakfast food trying to shake off the night. And then, a few days later (yesterday, in fact), I will catch an evening flight back to my newly adopted coast, sleep most of the way there, catch a cab back to the city, put on a movie, lie down and fall asleep until morning.

A short story told through camera-phone pictures of two probably unrelated posters neatly stapled to the same telephone pole on a street near my house.

We are about to head downtown, to some bar I’ve never heard of to have drinks with people I’ve never met, when there’s a change of plans, and as the bus rolls up to the stop we decide, on second thought, let’s not go downtown, not yet anyway. Let’s go to the beach. And we should probably pick up some wine or beer before we go.

We walk to the upscale liquor store up the road and mull over the wine choices, looking for a twist-off top because we don’t, in our lack of planning, have a corkscrew. Then we look at the beers, those big bottles that, we figure, two people could probably share, and we pick up a Popular Mexican Beer before heading out onto the dark street and on towards the beach.

The beach is just a few minutes away by foot, a few blocks north on quiet streets lined with trees and low-rise apartment buildings, not quite residential and not quite downtown-urban. Everyone seems to be out walking their dogs.

We get to the beach and it is dark and largely empty, but I can see people dotting the logs scattered across the sand, and I think they probably had the same idea we did.

I pull out the Popular Mexican Beer, and I try to twist it off, except it’s not a twist-off. And me without a bottle opener.

We try to pry it open with keys, by dragging my metal keychain up the spout like I’ve seen people do before with knives, by trying to catch the cap against the log, anything we can think of. But nothing works. We are stuck here on this beach with a thin piece of aluminum between us and refreshing cerveza.

We make sure to find the humour in this situation and our failure to think ahead, and I imagine we are the only ones on this small beach, sitting here watching the lights from container ships sparkle in the distance, who forgot something so basic. The waves gently lap against the sand, that swoosh … swoosh … swoosh, a whisper broken up by distant laughter.

There are flashlights flickering across the beach, darting back and forth between logs and sand and grass.

Three officers walk up to us, and we try to act casual. I pull out my camera so they’ll think that’s why we’re here, taking pictures of complete darkness, which is absurd, obviously.

They say good evening, and we say good evening. This is good, this pleasant exchange, I think. Everything will be fine.

“Do you have any alcohol with you tonight?”

Anita says no. I don’t say anything. His flashlight points to my bag.

“How about in there? — Be honest.”

I pause for a second and imagine the chase, a sweeping search and police dogs and me running down the beach in complete fear tripping over the sand as a Taser sticks into my back and sends me tumbling to the ground.

The jig, I realize, is up.

I pull open my bag and reveal the Popular Mexican Beer.

“We tried,” I begin, pausing for effect, “but we forgot a bottle opener.”

The officer who is talking to us is young-looking but still too old, I think, to be given the beach patrol assignment, which I’m sure isn’t what he thought he’d be doing when he signed up to the force years ago. He wanted to save lives, make the world a better, safer place, but instead here he is, on this beach, looking for high school kids drinking their parents’ beer. He lets out a roaring laugh, and the others join in.

They shake their heads in amusement, give us a token lecture about open alcohol and carry on their way. They are still laughing and we are still laughing and then I manage to use my key ring to pry open the cap and we drink up the Popular Mexican Beer like it’s water and we’ve been thirsty for years.