Zone 3

After about 20 minutes in line at "Best Burger", Dan and his duffle came back to the row of seats I was stationed at. He plopped down next to me this time, tossing his duffle to the other side. He sighed and dug into the floppy bag of burgers like it was a gift on Christmas morning. He handed me my strawberry shake and said "here you go - enjoy." Then he proceeded to devour about 3 cheeseburgers, shuffling fries into his mouth where they would fit... and sipping on coke to wash it all down. He seemed to be in fast-food heaven.

Finally I said, "hungry?" He looked over at me with his mouth full and just nodded, then put his finger up to signal that he needed a minute to chew before he could talk. I sipped my shake while I waited for him to swallow 2 cheeks full of food. Then Dan looked over at me and said "I haven't had fast-food in 6 months, I've been overseas, this is my first day of R&R." Dan could tell I didn't know what R&R was so explained, "R&R is my halfway point in my deployment... I get 2 weeks then have to go back to Afghanistan after that." "I see," I said..."so you have family in Houston?"

We were interrupted with a "BING! BING!" signaling the flight representative's monotonous announcement "attention passengers flight 240 to Houston, we are now boarding zone 1." Dan crinkled up his burger wrappers and stuffed them back into the empty bag. He said "yeah, my parents live in Houston" as he rolled the bag of trash down. Then he glanced over to me and said "what zone are you Dee?" I paused a minute... and then - DUH - realized I needed my ticket to answer him. So I spent a short forever riffling through my giant hobo purse to find my ticket, peaked at it and said "Zone 3." I looked up at Dan, blushing now... he smirked and kinda chuckled "me too."