But they tend to hurry and are about as anonymous as their standard gray suitcases. It s just sitting off to the side, between Gate C9 and a row of pay phones. A couple of women walk up to it, and one of them plays a few bars of Lean on Me. Her companion dances a bit, they laugh and walk off to pick up their boarding passes. Anyway, as I continue to struggle through the hamburger, the fire alarm goes off.
Nobody knows how to react.
The customers in the burger line are torn between abandoning their grilled cows and getting grilled themselves. Passengers sit at the gates, anxiously. A few get up, look around, and sit down again. Everyone, it seems, has no idea which to choose and appears to be holding out for the former. The alarm continues screaming at us, and rather that growing more apprehensive, people calm down.