Gold Horizon, Broken Wheel

The scent of kerosene and exhaust choked the Addis Ababa airport.

Eyasu tasted it at the back of his throat as he moved through the arrivals crowd, one hand closed around his phone, the other guarding the folder pressed beneath his arm. Voices collided around him - English, Amharic, hurried calls into phones, the shriek of a child who had lost sight of his mother. Suitcase wheels rattled over the polished floor. A porter shouted for space. Somewhere beyond the glass, engines growled beneath the pale morning sky.

Then a chrome wheel flashed between two bodies.

It had caught on the edge of the arrivals carpet, twisted sideways so sharply that the chair had stopped while the woman in it leaned forward, both hands gripping the rims. A man with a suitcase clipped her shoulder and kept going. Another passenger stepped over the wheel without looking down.

Eyasu stopped.

The woman’s jaw tightened. Her black hair had been gathered at the nape of her neck, though several strands had escaped and curled against her cheek. She tried again. The chair shuddered. The trapped wheel scraped against the carpet with a thin, humiliating squeal.

“Please,” she said to the crowd, not loudly. “Give me room.”

No one did.

Eyasu set his folder against his hip and pushed through the bodies. “Your wheel is caught on the carpet.”

She looked up at him.

Her eyes were dark and bright, polished obsidian beneath the airport’s hard white lights. The irritation in them struck him first. Then the steadiness beneath it.

“I noticed,” she said.

He crouched beside the chair. “Let me lift it.”

“I can manage.”

A suitcase rolled toward her ankle. Eyasu caught its handle before it struck her and shoved it aside. “You can manage after I get this loose.”

Her mouth curved, not quite a smile. “That sounds suspiciously like an order.”

“It is a request dressed badly.”

That earned him a real smile, quick as sunlight on glass. It vanished when the crowd pressed closer.

Eyasu placed one hand on the chair’s metal frame and looked at her. “May I?”

For a moment, she studied his face as if searching for the hidden price. Then she nodded.

“Lift from the front,” she said. “Not the wheel.”

“You know what you’re doing.”

“I have had practice.”

He slipped his fingers beneath the frame. The chrome was cold against his skin. “On this carpet?”

“On every kind of obstacle people pretend is too small to matter.”

The words landed harder than they should have.

He lifted. She pulled the free wheel backward with a practiced motion, her shoulders tightening beneath the thin fabric of her blouse. The carpet released it with a soft pop. The chair rolled clear.

“There,” Eyasu said.

But a porter hurried past, his cart clipping the rear wheel. The chair veered toward a column.

Eyasu caught the handle behind her.

Selam’s hands snapped onto the rims. “Don’t push.”

“I’m stopping you from hitting the column.”

“I said don’t push.”

He released the handle immediately. The chair rocked once, then steadied beneath her control.

The apology rose to his lips, but she was already looking at him over her shoulder.

“You see?” she said. “I fought tougher battles than a piece of polyester.”

“Polyester nearly won.”

“It had numbers on its side.”

He laughed before he could stop himself. The sound felt strange in the sterile concourse, too warm for the fluorescent light. Her gaze lingered on him, and the noise around them seemed to thin.

A flight announcement cracked through the speakers. Passengers shifted toward the exit. The crowd opened and closed like water around them.

Eyasu straightened. “Are you headed out?”

“That depends. Are you planning to keep rescuing me?”

“I have only attempted it once.”

“And already you’re developing a reputation.”

He should have returned to his folder, to the meeting waiting beyond the security doors, to the ordinary shape of the morning. Instead, he looked at the path ahead of her. A line of baggage carts blocked the nearest exit, and a loose cable lay across the floor.

“Your path is terrible,” he said.

“So is your timing.”

“Then we have something in common.”

Her eyes narrowed, amused despite herself. “I’m Selam.”

“Eyasu.”

She repeated his name softly, testing its sound. Something in his chest answered before he could reason with it.

“Eyasu,” she said, “if you’re going to stand there, stand somewhere useful.”

He moved beside her. “Where are you going?”

“Outside.”

“That is not a direction.”

“It is today.”

He guided no longer than necessary. He walked ahead, clearing the cable with his shoe and signaling a porter to move the cart. When the path narrowed, he stepped to her side, close enough to catch the sharp scent of citrus beneath the exhaust. Selam propelled herself forward with powerful, measured strokes. Her arms were slim, but there was nothing fragile in them.

At the automatic doors, sunlight poured across the floor. It showed every mark on the chrome, every faint scratch in the metal....