The plane skims down the runway faster and faster, fighting the tie of gravity and straining to lift off the ground. The front wheel goes and after a bump and a jolt the bottom drops out of your stomach and you're up. You think fleetingly of your boy and how much easier it is when there's no long goodbye, just your name being paged two terminals away and a frantic race to get to the gate in time. A last kiss and a wave before you walk the final steps on the tarmac, but he's busy being charming to the overworked gate attendants and you don't know if he sees that last wave or not. The cars on the busy tollway are toys, then shiny chitinous bugs, then just specks. Antiseptic suburbia is laid out in such precise lines and curves that only the architect who designed them must look down and be pleased. Once the crowded bustle of the city ends abruptly at the brownish lake, the texture from above makes you feel you could step outside the door and glide across on a sheet of glassy ice. And as you eventually land and find your car in the lot, you at once relish being home again dredged in familiarity and hate the thought of the next two weeks without him.