Eight minutes later, there was no train in sight, and the board now offered an entirely different update:
Annulé
The collective groan was even louder than the previous one, and even though Mira wasn’t an expert in French, she could translate the word that spelled the kiss of death.
“How could they just cancel it?” She inadvertently locked eyes with a balding man in glasses. “Do you know why they would cancel it?”
“It’s a strike,” he explained, in a nonchalant tone that was deeply disturbing.
She scoffed. “You can’t just go on strike without telling anyone.”
The bespectacled man considered her argument. “There was some discussion on the news last week; we were wondering if it might happen soon.”
“Some? Might?” Mira crossed her arms. “That’s not how it works. You need to officially announce that there will be a strike, and then you need to schedule it for one minute after midnight.”
“This is France,” he said simply, before leaving her there in a stunned silence.
Jake came forward and steered her away from the platform. “My internet isn’t good here; we need to get back upstairs to call the car.”
Mira glanced at the clock on the train board. With a quick calculation, the panic set in. “Oh my god, we could actually miss this flight.”
#
As the traffic crawled to a stop for the fifth time on Jake and Mira’s way out of Paris, she felt the cold grip of reality.
If Mira missed her flight, she would need to book another one for later in the day at a price that was sure to be unsettling. She also knew that despite the strike being out of her control, there was every chance Shirley would reject the surge pricing if she felt like being evil, which, she usually did. Whether or not she’d support the overpriced flight cost was a whole other matter.
Normally, Mira wouldn’t have been too stressed by unexpected costs, but after losing the deposit amounts on the banquet hall, the decor, and the catering after canceling the wedding, she wasn’t exactly in a good financial situation.
“We’re going to make it,” Jake said, as if he’d somehow managed to read all her worried thoughts.
She gave him a long look. “Time is not a flat circle; you know that, right?”
His smile exuded a level of confidence that was somehow compelling. “We’ve got this.”
#
When Mira and Jake finally arrived at the airport, she headed for the self-serve check-in kiosks, her mind flashing back to the night before when the online process hadn’t worked. But the kiosks weren’t working either.
“Goddammit.”
Somehow, though, that wasn’t even the worst of it.
“The check-in counter’s closed,” Jake said, all that earlier confidence now drained from his voice.
They were up against it, but Mira wasn’t ready to give in.
She rushed over to the first uniformed human she could find. She fought. She pleaded. She insulted the entire country of France. But to no avail. Apparently, it wasn’t possible to check in new passengers when the flight in question had already begun boarding.