Somewhere Near the Los Angeles International Airport

CSU Channel Islands' Literary Journal

by Megan Mimiaga


The BBQ chicken flatbread pizza at the Four Points Sheraton bar isn’t half bad. Their recipe includes pineapple, which I realize is controversial, but the sweetness is a good compliment to the bold kick of spice.

I was actually here only two weeks ago. Well, not here here at a bar, but landing at LAX after a 42-minute flight out of Las Vegas. I’m proud to say I still had time to finish a Bloody Mary at 39,000 feet. I guess I was at a bar in that case.

The time before that was a redeye flight departing at 4:00AM. Luckily for me, I got to experience the worst food poisoning of my life at 3:00AM. But this was our Griswold-style Hawaiian Christmas and I wasn’t going to miss it. I have something important to say about airline barf bags and it’s this: they are not, and will never be thick enough to hold barf. My lap however, held barf pretty spectacularly.

My brother eats the last piece of BBQ chicken pizza. Did I mention my brother? He’s been here the whole time. Next to me in the hotel bar, losing at Blackjack, laughing at my vomit-soaked jeans. I remember as kids we’d tie blankets around our necks as capes like royalty. But I always carried the bottom edge of his like a squire so it wouldn’t drag on the unsacred ground. Tomorrow he will board a plane to the opposite end of the nation to be stationed for a while, and I don’t know how long a while is.

“This is FUBAR,” I joke.

“Thanks for the ride,” he says. We don’t speak much. We don’t hug or take a last photo together because that’s not who we are. We just share pizza.

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