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Fiction, © Copyright 2002, Jim Loy
The flight from New York to L. A., with a stop in Denver, was uneventful, except that they lost my luggage. My luggage is a massive contraption on two plastic wheels. Over the course of the next two hours, my mood swung from anger (two or three times) to frustration to depression (just a little) to mildly hysterical humor (more or less?), from the thrill of victory (a false victory) to the increasingly familiar agony of defeat. They promised to call me. I filled out some forms, and went home.
The next day, "We found your luggage!"
"Great, be right there!" In the car my mood swung from mental high fives (as I had no one with whom I could exchange physical high fives) to quizzical pondering to mildly hysterical humor, no agony of defeat of course.
In answer to my questions, I was informed that my luggage had just arrived from Hawaii. Hawaii? How did it get to Hawaii? We examined the tags attached to the handle, and there was no clue how it had gotten to London England. London England? "Probably put on the wrong plane," I was informed. From London England, my luggage had gone to Moscow Russia. Moscow Russia? I got shrugs of shoulders in answer to that question. Then Tokyo Japan, then Hawaii, then LAX. My luggage had done a Ferdinand Magellan imitation, in the opposite direction, and at a few thousand feet greater altitude, and much faster, and without a stopover in the Philippines. How and why? More shrugs of shoulders in answer to those primal questions.
Later, I received a telegram from the London office:
We are appalled, as we are sure that you are. We are initiating an investigation. Please accept our sincerest apologies
Appalled? Had I missed that with my mood swings? They must really be appalled, if they used complete sentences in a telegram. Or maybe they don't charge by the word anymore.
Surprisingly, I received a follow-up letter a few days later. I saw that my luggage and I had been assigned a case number. "Please use this case number when making further enquiries." In the body of the letter, a Mr. Nigel Finch said this:
I am truly sorry for your distress and inconvenience. You seem to have been the victim of a rather cruel joke. We have not yet determined the perpetrator's identity. But we have three suspects, all of whom had the opportunity, and all of whom have blemishes in their employment records.
The perpetrator, whoever he or she may be, drew up the necessary paperwork to reroute your luggage to Los Angeles via Moscow and Tokyo, rather than merely returning it to New York (from whence one would hope that it would have been automatically sent on to Los Angeles). We sometimes reroute lost luggage when there is a more efficient path. Unfortunately, a less efficient path was chosen for your luggage.
My employers take this case very seriously. I will assume that you too take it seriously, unless you inform me otherwise. My email address is . . .
Hm. I supposed that they planned to fire the joker, perpetrator, hooligan, scalawag, . . . I informed Mr. Finch that I was no longer taking the case seriously. Later, he informed me that he had talked to the perpetrator, and had put the fear of being sacked to him.
And now my only regret is that I had not travelled around the world with my luggage.