The French Cosmos
I was sitting on a stool in Terminal D at LaGuardia Airport. It was 10:00 p.m., and because of thunderstorms in the area, I was still waiting for an 8:50 flight to Detroit. I was staring at the iPad bolted into the table in front of me, watching one 15-second video after another. Each video awarded me 200 coins to gamble in video blackjack. I play every time I’m at LaGuardia, and I’m hoping I can rack up enough reward tokens to one day redeem them for something impressive.
Next to me, four Canadian people were talking across the table. Two were from Ontario: you’d never have known they were Canadian if they hadn’t said so. They were a husband and wife, probably 40 or so. Their son, 14, had his first girlfriend, and the husband flew a lot, and they were very excited to let everyone know about it. They were flying to Detroit too. Across the table were two French-Canadian women, heavy on the French. Their flight to Toronto had already been delayed by several hours. They were drinking Cosmopolitans. The two pairings didn’t know each other, but during the delay, they were becoming friends.
“Oh!” one of the women said, in heavily accented English. “Look at this! I tell my father I am at the airport, but I forget that my boyfriend is in the conversation!”
“Oh!” said the other woman, as if she was translating. “She tell her father she at the airport, but she forget her boyfriend in the conversation!”
The husband said something in bad French. I looked over at him discretely. He was bald, but had a beard.
“And then,” the first woman said, “I tell my father, we’re at the airport with flights delayed, drinking cosmos.”
“She tell her father we’re at the airport during delay, drinking cosmos,” the second woman said.
The first woman giggled. “My boyfriend says, good, sounds like you’re having a good time, you could probably get a hotel for that price!” The second woman was laughing too hard to translate.
“Didn’t you mention this earlier?” asked the woman without the accent. “Weren’t we talking about how expensive things are?”
“He’s right,” the French woman said. “Sixteen dollars for a cosmo, I was thinking, maybe we just get a hotel room.”
“You know,” said the woman without the accent, “we went to the Marriot for dinner and drinks the other day, and they charge eight dollars just to be there? An eight-dollar cover. Goes right on your bill.”
“Each,” said her husband.
“Each!” she said.
After that they started talking about tipping, and how some deceptive businesses would try to make you tip twice, and how none of them liked tipping when service was bad, even though it always earned them dirty looks. “This wouldn’t be an issue if they’d just pay them a living wage,” said the husband, as if he was reading off a teleprompter. “Pay them a living wage! You know, you go to Europe, you never tip! The price is the price!” They all nodded vigorously. One of the French women, the one who hadn’t accidentally texted her boyfriend, left and came back with two more cosmos.
My 8:50 flight was pushed back to 9:45, then 10:14, then 11:17, then 11:51, then 12:37, then 12:56. Around 11:00, our gate changed from D4, in the middle of the terminal, to D2, tucked into some back room somewhere, out of sight of everyone else. I gathered my things and wandered to the new gate, and kept watching advertisements and earning coins. The couple from Ontario followed me, and we left the French women from Toronto behind.
The iPads at LaGuardia are old, so old that they still have that square-shape on the home button. They often break down. When our gate attendant announced that boarding would start soon, I pressed the prize button. First I looked at “gift cards,” then “ship to home,” then all the other categories. The only prizes available were bags of potato chips and individual chocolates. So I saved my reward tokens, and watched advertisements furiously until my boarding group was called, and now, the next time I’m at LaGuardia, I’ve got 20,000 coins to spend on Blackjack.
Finally, around 1:15, we took off. I saw the couple from Ontario as I dragged my bag to my seat, but I didn’t say anything. We took off, flew an evasive, stomach-churning pattern around the thunderstorm activity still in the area, and set out for Detroit, where my girlfriend was waiting for me with a ride and a cold turkey sandwich.
Funny enough, I have a friend who can’t stand the taste of beer, or really, any alcohol that’s not diluted so much it might as well not be there. He loves drinking cosmos, but he’s always complaining that they’re too strong. I think I’ll remember those French women the next time we’re at some bar in the middle of nowhere in rural Maine, and he gets annoyed that his cosmo isn’t perfect. “Life is good!” I’ll say. “At least it didn’t cost $16! At least you didn’t accidentally text your boyfriend! At least you’re not in the middle of a four-hour delay! At least you’re not Canadian!”
