the foiled terror plot

shes in a cab on her way to the atlanta airport, and shes angry because he was late picking her up. the cabbie, a middle aged middle eastern man with a yellow toothy grin, keeps trying to talk to her and normally she would reply in gently if not friendly setences, but today she is fragmented and tart. this morning there was a terror plot in london which was "foiled" involving liquids and gels and an explosive rigged to an MP3 player. all this means to her is that she can carry none of those things on board with her, though she keeps getting mixed messages about the MP3 player (her friends friend had to give up his blackberry at security but her brother was able to go on with his i-pod), and it also means that the lines will be horrible and her flight probaly delayed, and she'll get to new york that much later.
crazy whats happening, eh?
there is a talk radio station on in the cab, as there always seems to be in cabs in atlanta. right now there is a woman's voice saying they have stopped a second 9-11 from happening, and then a man interupting, saying that was a ludicrous thing to say given how little we know about what they were planning to do.
yeah, she replies, looking out the window.
five more minutes pass of the 400 freeway and impossibly green stretches of trees of both sides.
this a very american thing, started in america, he says.
she doesnt know what hes referring to- terrorism, liquids and gels, hysteria, traffic. she says nothing back.
limousines. started in america and then, spread all over the world. he laughs, gravel and phlegm.
she looks out of the right side of the cab and sees a sparkling black stretch limo floating silently beside them. out of all of the things that could be associated with america, she thinks, why would he say that?
its like, im from pakistan, ok? and we think of limousines and white faces. and gerber baby food, you know the kind?
she says, yes.
with that little baby face. that white little american baby, where is he now? dead probably. an old, old man. but we have that there, i grew up with little brothers and sisters, seven of them, and i used to look at that face and think, america seems so clean.
she likes to tell men at bars that her name is limousine. they either walk away, or are intruiged. she has no tolerance for small talk. she doesnt know if she should say this to the cab driver, if it would translate, if he would care.
you know what? he asks.
she really wants to know. no, she says. what?
america is supposed to be this place where money falls from the sky. open your hands and get it. think if you thought that about a place, think what you would think of the people living there. you would hate them, no? you would either hate them, and want to bring them all down, crush the empire or whatever they say, or you would be like me. a little brown boy staring at a fat babys face on a jar of mush and limousines and not caring what its like, just wanting to be there.
they are pulling up to the airport. there are hundreds of people in line outside.
oooohhh, he says. not a good day to fly.
i think its all a conspiracy, she says. i think the things they tell us arent real, and i think they arent telling us all of the real things.
huh, he says. i guess it doesnt really matter. you'll be fine either way.
she doesnt know what he means, doesnt want to. she pays him and gets out of the cab, and as soon as shes about to fight her way through the crowd she realizes hes driven away with her suitcase in his trunk. she runs down the sidewalk but its too crowded for her to go very fast, and there are too many cabs that looks just like his, and she needs to save her energy for the rest of the day, which she is assuming will only get worse.