Edge Case

JANUARY 2018

After the four-hour layover in Hong Kong, we got on a plane for New York. Marlin seemed cold toward me during the flight, but I didn’t think much of it. The funeral had been just a few days ago, after all. Now I wonder: Is it possible to give someone too much space to grieve?

We disembarked into a humid tunnel in JFK, and despite our quick-stepping, we found ourselves as always in an interminably long line for noncitizens by the time we reached the border checkpoint. Our stream of aliens fed into about half a dozen booths, each with a computer terminal and a nonalien uniformed officer perched inside, visible from the waist up. As we got closer to the head of the line, I played this silly mental game where I tried to predict which officer would call on us, and then to hazard whether that was a good or bad thing. From our experience, the border agents varied widely in their attitude toward the aliens they processed. Admittedly my game relied upon judging by appearances, equating deep scowls with mild xenophobia or a tinge of alcoholic rosacea with a haughty impatience. But on that day, I won the game. I’d immediately picked my last choice out of the six non-options arrayed before us. This worst-case officer might have been in his early forties, his hair dark enough to approach the black of our own and spiked into a formation that looked like he wanted to erect fences on his head. He had a baby face, which should have endeared him to me, but there was something churlish about the curl of his mouth that put me on guard.

He waved us forward. It was clear from his first words that we were in trouble.

“What is the purpose of your visit?” he asked, when we had not even proffered up our passports,