Matt Malloy

All those sentences that I'd thought up and hadn't said yet, it just kept flowing.

He stepped it up, changing the intonation, like a drowning man struggling desperately to stay afloat.

People began getting off.

He got up, still talking, scooped up his laptop in the other hand and headed for the exit.

I could see him forgetting it behind.

The bag he had put in the overhead compartment, I could see him forgetting it.

I didn't say anything.

I just stayed put.

Gradually, everyone walked out until the only ones still there were an overweight religious woman with a million children and me.

I got up and opened the overhead compartment above me.

As if nothing, I took out the duty-free bag like it had always been mine.

Inside were the receipt and the bottle of Guerlain Mystique.

My wife goes crazy for that perfume.

She's positively addicted.

If I come back from a trip without a bottle of Mystique from the duty-free, she says I don't love her anymore.