ISSUE VI

            The future announces itself first as geometry—a six-pointed golden organism sprawled across the Beijing flatlands, its glass ribs catching the late sun like the exoskeleton of some celestial insect. James’s breath fogs the oval window as the plane tilts, granting him a god’s-eye view of Daxing International. The Chinese call it hǎixīng, “the starfish.” He counts the concourses: five spindles radiating from a glowing central disc. A trapdoor spider’s lair. A frozen firework.

            Seventeen hours. He’d booked the layover blind, a knee-jerk stab at the flight map after Michael said the thing about space, that slippery euphemism covering everything from I’m suffocating to I’ve met someone. Now here he is, marooned in the world’s largest airport with nothing but a carry-on and a boarding pass to Bali he doesn’t remember choosing.

 

            The terminal swallows him whole. Light bends through parabolic arches, painting the marble floors in liquid gold. Footsteps echo in the vaulted nave, a chorus of wheeled suitcases and murmured Mandarin. James drifts, unmoored. He touches nothing, buys nothing. The shops hawk silk and jade, their clerks eyeing him with the bored vigilance of museum guards. He pauses at a bonsai exhibit—twisted pines trapped in terrariums, roots clawing at miniature landscapes. We’re all potted plants here, he thinks.

            At hour six, he eats dumplings from a stall with no English signage, pointing like a toddler at steam baskets. The cashier giggles. He doesn’t care. The anonymity thrills him. In this non-place, he is not the man who left Boston mid-blizzard with a half-packed bag. Not the man who forgot to water Michael’s orchids. Just another ghost in the machine.

 

            The Starbucks is a familiar island. He stakes a table by the departures board, watching cities flicker: PVG | ICN | SYD. Each a possibility. Each a reprieve. He sips burnt coffee and imagines the lives attached to those codes—lovers reuniting, deals closing, funerals missed.

            A man slides into the chair opposite. Early thirties. Slim-cut blazer. A rainbow pin on his laptop bag, small as a freckle.

            “Lin,” he says, extending a hand. Crisp BBC English.
            “James.”
            “Running to something or from?”

            The question lingers. James traces the lip of his cup. “My partner. Ex-partner. Needed space.”
            “Ah.” Lin stirs his latte. “And you’re giving him the Pacific?”
            James laughs, sharp and sudden. “Seemed proportional.”

            Lin’s smile is a crack in the façade. They talk in the shorthand of the unrooted. Lin teaches Milton in Beijing. Has a partner back in Shandong. Parents who pretend not to notice the framed photo on his desk.                  “They ask when I’ll marry,” he says. “I tell them I already have.”

            A boarding call slices the air. Lin stands, adjusts his bag. “Advice from a transient?”
            “Please.”
            “Airports are liminal spaces. They exist to move us through. Don’t mistake the hallway for the room.”

He leaves his cup—a half-moon of lipstick on the rim—and vanishes into the crowd.

 

            Dusk bleeds into the observation deck windows. James watches a China Southern A380 climb, its belly lights winking like a string of pearls. Behind him, the terminal thrums—a perpetual motion machine of duty-free perfume and boarding passes. He thumbs his phone awake. Eleven missed calls. All from Michael.

            The message he types is raw, unpolished:

            In Beijing. This place—it’s all angles and light. You’d hate it. I’m going to Bali. Not running. Just… orbiting. You have the coordinates.

            He sends it, kills the screen. For the first time in days, his chest doesn’t ache.

            At Gate C27, the Bali flight queues. James takes his aisle seat, buckles in. The engines whine. As the starfish shrinks below, he pictures Michael in their Brookline kitchen, orchid petals crisp on the windowsill.  Thinks of Lin grading papers in some fluorescent-lit office. Thinks of the bonsai pines, their gnarled trunks straining skyward.

            The plane banks south. James closes his eyes.

            Somewhere, a door stays open.