Circus Tent is a series of short stories and rock and roll vignettes about Skye Wright’s band The Dynamite Chicks going on a cross-country tour.

In this episode, Miranda makes her way around an airport at the tail end of their cross country tour.

    Airport

     “Fuuuuuuck.”
     Miranda stood up after having tried to relax in a row of plastic seats. She knew there was no point in trying to unfurl herself at the airport gate, and napping was out of the question.
     She resigned herself to looking through the airport minimart, browsing a few magazines before she grabbed some more snacks.
     Standing in line, a thin woman with short gray curls turned around and looked her up and down.
     “Are you some sort of musician?” asked the woman. “Or an artist?”
     “I’m a bass player for a punk band.”
     The woman nodded knowingly. “I had a feeling. I can always pick ‘em out.”
     Miranda wished she had more time to chat with the elder who gave her a much welcome interlude to the pale drudgery of yet another airport.
     Getting back to their gate with her new cache of snacks, she only saw a sleeping Roach and a clearly irritated Colleen who was furiously typing away on her phone.
     “Where is everybody?” asked Miranda.
     “Our plane has been delayed by three hours,” answered Colleen, not looking away from her phone.
     “What the fuck?”
     “That’s what everybody else said,” remarked Colleen as she put her phone down.
     Miranda turned on her heel, not wanting to further harangue an already clearly irritated Colleen. She took out her phone, which she only glanced at for a moment before shoving it back into her pocket.
     She double-checked to see if anyone was watching their luggage. She spotted a texting Annie and a texting Gust on either side of their pile of collected carry-ons and backpacks.
     Miranda felt her skin crawl at the idea of spending an extra three hours killing time in yet another airport. She made a beeline for the nearest bathroom.
     She walked past a couple of gawking grandmas as she walked into the women’s room and stopped at the first sink she found.
     Leaning on the counter, she caught a glance of a short and thin woman with frazzled hair and dark circles under her eyes. She was wearing a frayed blue jean jacket covered with patches, as well as sayings and symbols made with a sharpie. She was wearing a beige wool cap that covered her faded dyed-red frazzle hair.
     She was going through a large purse, rummaging through it with her spindly fingers. She was looking through it with wide and glassy eyes, trying to be methodical, but the sinews of her forearms were tense. Miranda could tell she was made of strings that were too tight.
     Miranda knew her place well. The frazzle hair was there for a flight, but she was trapped in a space where up or down were the only two choices, and it was not a choice that she could make on her own. There were other forces at work on her, pressures that were going to take her one way or another against her will.
     Then Miranda saw it.
     Not just from the look in her eyes, the lines in her face, or the pallor of her skin, but from the shudder.
     It was almost imperceptible… the slightest tremor that split through her body for a half-second, but Miranda’s old junky senses caught it.
     Miranda leaned on the sink and held in her own shudder.
     Frazzle hair turned towards the wall, showing the rest of the bathroom her back as she kept digging around her purse.
     She threw down her purse in frustration.
     Miranda turned away. She didn’t want to nudge someone who might be too close.
     Miranda washed her hands and then ran her damp hands over her face, the water burning against her skin.
     She grabbed a paper towel that was hanging from the dispenser. She waved and kept waving her hands under the automatic towel dispenser, trying to get it to spit out another paper towel.
     After a few moments of gesticulating like a demented magician, she tried another paper towel dispenser and finally got half a piece of paper. She tore it off and finished drying her face.
     “Fuck!” shouted frazzle hair as she kicked her purse.
     Miranda looked over at frazzle hair who shot her a poisonous look from over her shoulder.
     “What the fuck are you looking at?” she spat.
     Miranda said nothing. She just quietly observed her and raised an eyebrow.
     Frazzle hair got down on the floor and collected her purse before quickly walking out of the bathroom.
     Miranda turned to the mirror…
     … and stared.
     She looked at the lines on her face, the furrows that had been deepening. She also looked at how full her cheeks were.
     She saw the bags under her eyes, and the beginnings of crow’s feet.
     She was only in her early thirties, yet when she looked at her round cheeks and full hair that belied the deepening lines in her face and the dark circle under her eyes she saw someone behind all of it who might as well have been a hundred years away.
     She leaned on the bathroom counter and dropped her head.
     She turned on her heel and walked back out into the wide airport corridor.
     Her mind turned to the task of killing time as she eyed the newsstand and contemplated buying a magazine or a book.
     Looking through the newsstand, the science magazines were too much for her tour-fogged mind. The news magazines were too depressing. She kept looking around for a music magazine.
     “Looking for reading material?”
     Sussy had walked up to the magazine stand.
     “Tryin’ to find somethin’ to look at besides my phone,” said Miranda.
     “I think there’s a bookstore farther down the gates.”
     “That’s probably a better shot.”
     Sussy tossed her head. “Let’s go!”
     Sussy led Miranda to a bookstore situated on a corner of the wide airport corridors. It was larger than most of the shops in the airport.
     Miranda felt herself breathing easier, wandering among the bookshelves. She casually eyed the featured table before looking through the biography section, continuing on to the fiction section after her biography browse.
     Her eyes ran through the first few rows of books before she found it.
     “Holy shit!” exclaimed Miranda, loud enough to have several book browsers look in her direction.
     “What?” asked Sussy who was on the other side of the bookcase.
     “They’ve got PR!”
     “What?” asked Sussy as she came around to inspect Miranda’s discovery.
     “PR by Dani Dassler. I had no idea this place was so down with the street.”
     “Right. Gust told me I should read that.”
     Miranda gave Sussy a pointed glance. “You haven’t read it yet?”
     “Nah. Haven’t gotten around to it.”
     Miranda held up a hand in front of Sussy. “I hereby revoke all of your street cred. You are now officially a poser until you’ve read it!”
     “Psh!” said Sussy as she gave Miranda a playful shove.
     “I’m buying this,” said Miranda as she admired the cover.
     “Ain’t you already read it?”
     “Gonna read it again.”
     “Must be a really good book then.”
     Miranda did not spend much more time looking around the bookstore, grabbing two more books off of a bargain table just to make her spontaneous book buying spree worthwhile.
     Miranda left Sussy in the bookstore since Sussy still wanted to browse. Miranda needed to get a large coffee to fuel her new book find.
     Walking back to her gate, she tried to remember where the nearest coffee stand was located.
     As soon as she spotted a Peet’s coffee stand, Miranda’s eye caught her, sitting in a far corner of a nearly empty gate, scrunched up in a seat against a wall, her legs curled against her as if she were trying to shrink into her space.
     Miranda slowly walked up to her, books in hand. The frazzle hair never even glanced at her once as she approached.
     “I know what you’re going through,” stated Miranda in a clear yet quiet voice.
     “What?” asked frazzle hair as if she had only just noticed Miranda.
     “DTs,” said Miranda flatly.
     Frazzle hair scowled and scrunched herself further into her plastic airport seat. “What the fuck would you know about it?”
     Miranda raised her arms, holding them out so that all of her tattoos and scars were on display.
     The young woman’s face softened. “Right.”
     “On meds?”
     The woman’s face twisted up. “Didn’t get my last two shots. Hadda come out here ‘cause my aunt died, an’…”
     She simply stopped talking and turned towards the wide airport windows, looking out to the tarmac.
     “I didn’t kick with any a’ that,” said Miranda.
     “Then how did you?” she asked, slowly turning towards Miranda.
     “I sealed myself up in my bedroom, drew all the shades, and just read, for weeks.”
     The woman winced. “Read? What, books?”
     “Yeah.”
     Frazzle hair looked away and became quiet.
     “Here,” said Miranda as she held out her fresh Dani Dassler book.
     The young woman looked at the book curiously. “What the fuck is that?”
     “Somethin’ to help you deal,” said Miranda.
     Frazzle hair took hold of the book, as if she was suspicious of it, and started looking through it.
     “My name’s Miranda. I’m the bass player for The Dynamite Chicks. You can find me on Facebook.”
     Frazzle hair looked up from the book.
     “Miranda Scholl.” Miranda pointed at the book. “If I can do it, so can you.”
     Frazzle hair looked down into the book and started reading the first page.
     “What’s your name?” asked Miranda.
     “Carla,” she said blankly as she kept reading.
     “Get in touch. Let me know how you’re doing.”
     “Sure,” she said, still not looking up from the book.
     Miranda turned and made her way to the coffee stand.
     Coming back to their gate, Gust walked up to her. “Hey, I heard you found a copy of PR.”
     “I did.”
     “Hand it over! I wanna show Sussy the fucked up club scene with all the jocks.”
     Miranda let out a long sigh. “I gave the book to a friend.”
     “What friend?”
     “Carla.”
     “Who the fuck is Carla? You just happen to run into a friend in this airport?”
     “Yeah.”