"The funny thing about airports, Mr. Jarrow," Hector said, as he pulled away from the office on Madison Avenue, "is that nobody notices the patterns. I s'pose that's because it never occurs to people that there be any patterns."

This was my first encounter with Hector, on the Thursday after Labor Day, and already I didn't like him. My name is Yarrow, dammit, not Jarrow, and I've grown increasingly annoyed over the years with the infinite ways in which people can mis-pronounce and misspell such a simple name. Of course, the Hispanic replacement of a "Y" with a "J" is common, and I would normally have been a little more tolerant. But I had had a miserable day at the office, and I was late for my flight.

None of this mattered to Hector. "Why, once I had this client -- the Fat Man, I called him -- and he was always in a big hurry, too, just like you. Fat lot of good it did him," he chuckled.

I paid little attention to Hector's yammering as he made a right turn on Madison and headed toward the Queensboro Bridge. I was annoyed by the route: the road was bumpy, the bridge was crowded, and the industrial squalor on the other side was depressing. But Hector said there had been an accident on the Triboro, and the only way I would get to LaGuardia in time for my flight would be to take the back streets through Queens. "Patterns, Mr. Jarrow," he repeated. "Ya gotta know the patterns."

This trip was the beginning of a pattern for me. I had just landed the Janklow account a month ago, a coup which had led to a promotion and a raise. I planned to visit Janklow headquarters in Orlando on a weekly basis; this was the first visit, and I had a one-hour presentation to the Board the next morning to pitch the most expensive TV ad campaign in the company's history. We had been working on it up to the last minute; I would be re-working some figures on the plane and would pick up another pile of documents that were being faxed to my hotel while I was en route. I would be lucky if I got any sleep at all tonight.

On top of everything else, Fiona had told me in no uncertain terms not to bother coming home unless I brought the presents demanded by the children. Jeremy required a t-shirt from the Orlando basketball team, whoever they were; Lisa ordered a stuffed Donald Duck doll -- "this big!" she said, holding both arms straight out from her sides -- from Disney World. Four-year old Sonia was too young to understand what Disney World meant, but she would throw a hysterical fit if she didn't receive a present as big as her two siblings. As for Fiona: well, no toys would do, and I hadn't yet decided how to mollify her. The Orlando trip effectively meant two nights away from home, as it would be close to midnight Friday night before I returned. On top of the late evenings I was already spending at the office, the Janklow trip didn't sit well with her. I suggested bringing everyone along for a long weekend at Disney World, once things had settled down, but Fiona shrugged and muttered something beneath her breath.

And while my stomach rumbled over the pressure of all this, Hector continued talking about patterns -- and everything else. He was one of those limo drivers who believes that his passenger-clients want him to talk. By the time he dropped me off at LaGuardia, I had learned the name of his wife, his daughter, and his new grand-daughter. I learned that he had played basketball in the old days, when the players really knew what a zone defense meant. I had learned the names of obscure players from Yale and St. Louis who did know the zone defense, unlike all these modern players. Hector was still talking as I jumped out of the car and ran helter-skelter down the hallway to catch my flight just before they closed the door.

And so the pattern began: every Thursday afternoon, I dashed for the airport to catch the last non-stop to Orlando. And every time, it was Hector who picked me up in his Lincoln Town Car outside the office. I thought briefly of asking the travel agency to get someone other than Hector, but gradually I got used to him. And I guess he got used to me, too, for after the third pick-up, he stopped scolding me about being late. But he did continue lecturing me on a variety of things, mostly in the form of lessons from his own life -- and most of them revolved around patterns.

It was about the fourth trip to Orlando that I began to notice the patterns at the airport. As Hector had said, most people don't notice any patterns, because they don't look for them. Most trips to the airport are once-only events: a winter vacation, a trip to see the grandparents, or the isolated business trip to see a client in Duluth. But when you take the same flight, on the same day of the week, week after week, you begin to notice some things: the same baggage handlers and ticket agents, the same stale food in the coffee-shops, the same swirling ebbs and flows of the crowds through the metal detectors.

One of the passengers became part of this pattern. I was usually late reaching the airport, but "late" meant only that the boarding process was underway and half the passengers had found their seats. There were usually a dozen people lined up on the ramp-way when I arrived, waiting to get on the plane, and inevitably two or three people arrived after me.

But there was one guy who was always later than me; if he wasn't the very last person, he was second-to-last. He came rushing up to the gate, gasping and wheezing, tie askew and shirt soaked with perspiration. His face had a sickly white pallor and was beaded with sweat; he looked as if he would have a heart attack at any moment. Aside from that, I couldn't have told you anything else about the man. He was one of those middle-age, middle-height, middle-class, nondescript businessmen who seem to fill all the seats on every business flight. He wore a rumpled, khaki-colored raincoat, and a suit of nondescript color, with a striped shirt that matched neither the suit nor the tie; that much I remember, because we Madison Avenue types are always pretty careful about how we dress. But I didn't notice the color of his hair or eyes; his only distinguishing feature was his size. He must have been 300 pounds, with a torso that looked like the Michelin Man, and eyes that bulged out.

Even if you didn't see him, you would know he was coming: the ticket agents and ground crew for the Orlando flight knew him by the desperation of his dash to catch the plane, made evident by the sound of his wheezing and gasping as he waddled down the hall to our departure gate. Once would have been a funny incident. Twice made it noticeable. Three times confirmed the pattern; after a while, we all got used to it.

As the weeks rolled by, the patterns continued. Hector picked me up every Thursday afternoon, and gradually I came to know more and more details of his life. He had driven Ross Perot's wife around New York City a few months earlier; a nice lady, Hector noted, much nicer than many of the celebrities he had ferried back and forth to the airport. He had grown up in Latin America, had been a rabid soccer fan, and blessed the day when the Cosmos brought Pelé to New York. But then they changed the rules, Hector said, and began allowing shootouts in regular games. I had no idea what shootouts were, and had visions of soccer players running around the field brandishing pistols; in any case, Hector said he refused to watch a soccer game for a full year after that.

Hector also made me more and more aware of the patterns at the airport. He noticed the patterns, he said, because he was an auto insurance claims adjuster before he retired. "You hear all the same stories, over and over again," he said. "It got to be a pattern, and so then I started looking for the patterns, even before people told me their stories." He launched into another story, as he pulled up to the terminal for my Thursday evening flight, about the tow truck drivers he had dealt with; there was such competition to be the first on the scene of an accident, Hector said, that the drivers wielded tire irons and baseball bats to fight off the competition and win the right to tow the mangled wreck to their garage for expensive repair work.

There were no bat-wielding tow-truck drivers in the airport, but there were other patterns to watch. The same baggage handlers were always hovering at the entrance to the terminal while passengers swarmed around them, with a distinct pecking order from the older men, who moved slowly and deliberately as they typed awkwardly with fat fingers on the fancy new computer terminals that produced personalized baggage stickers, to the young, surly kids who threw the bags on the conveyor belts that disappeared into the maw of the terminal. The same bored teenagers manned the cash registers inside the terminal at the news stands, insurance counters, and gift shops selling dried fruits and expensive chocolates that nobody buys; the kids were always on the phone, chewing gum, popping bubbles, and staring vacantly into space. The same cleaning crew had staked out the men's room between gates 6 and 8 and decided that it would be a jolly good idea to spend a few hours hosing it down during the busiest part of the afternoon; God help the passengers who had to pee on the way to their flight. The same clustered knot of passengers were always standing with their long-lost relatives and screaming kids in the worst possible place to block the flow of traffic getting off the planes. And it was always the same passengers -- I began to recognize them by face -- who shouldered their way in front of me at the baggage carousel, desperate for the chance to grab their suitcase a millisecond before me. It was an alien civilization that existed entirely independently of the world outside; it ebbed and flowed with its own synchronicity, according to its own patterns. It occurred to me, as I dashed onto the plane one evening, that the patterns must be even more intense at the Washington shuttle, which departed from another terminal in the LaGuardia complex; the scene there must be like Grand Central Station at the height of the afternoon commuter rush.

And the most dependable pattern of all was the tubby fellow who made the last-second dash to catch the plane each week. The routine got so predictable that I began asking the ticket agents who collected our boarding passes at the door if he had beaten me onto the plane each week. "Not yet, Mr. Yarrow," they would smile at me, "but he'll make it. He always does."

Once, when I actually got to the gate with ten minutes to spare, I asked a tall red-headed ticket agent named Josephine how long this character had been making the weekly flight to Orlando. I normally wouldn't have asked an airline employee about the habits of a stranger, but after three months of this routine, I had become part of the airline's family; I knew all of the ticket agents on a first-name basis, and they greeted me more with a smile than a snarl when I appeared each week.

"Forever," the red-head shrugged. "At least, as long as I've been working here -- maybe five, maybe six years."

She handed my boarding pass to me and said, "I don't know what it is about some people. I mean, I can see being late once or twice, but when he keeps doing it over and over again ..."

"It's a pattern," I concluded for her. "By the way, do people ever call you Yosephine?" She frowned, unsure of whether I was insulting her -- so I just smiled and found a seat by the gate, waiting for the boarding call and the inevitable wheezing appearance of this strange man who could never manage to arrive on time, but who somehow never managed to actually miss the plane.

Of course, it was inevitable that, sooner or later, we would end up sitting next to one another on the flight -- although that never did develop into a pattern. But on a flight in mid-December, when bad weather had already begun to snarl the traffic patterns all around the city, he managed to stagger onto the plane just as they were closing the door, and flopped down in the last available seat on the plane -- a window seat, next to me.

He sat with clenched teeth as we taxied down the runway in the midst of a bitter, freezing rain. I glanced at him briefly and decided that he must be one of those people who gets particularly nervous when taking off in bad weather; I hoped he wouldn't do something gross like throwing up. When we finally took off, he sighed and his body relaxed; a whimsical look crossed his face.

I generally don't talk to people on airplane flights, and the heavyset, rumpled figure left me alone. But when the flight attendants came by to offer cocktails and snacks, a chance coincidence caused us to strike up a conversation. "Mr. Jolanski," the flight attendant said to him in a mock-polite voice, looking at her passenger list, "Would you like chicken or fish for dinner?"

"Yolanski," he said, with emphasis. "Yo-lanski. Skip the dinner, but I'll have another drink and some more peanuts."

Without acknowledging him, the flight attendant turned to me. She was short and plump, with jet-black hair and bushy eyebrows and a name badge on her lapel that said Carmen. It occurred to me that our flight went on to Miami, and probably from there on to South America. Chances were that the flight crew spoke more Spanish than English; so I wasn't surprised when she asked me, "And you, Mr. Jarrow? Chicken or fish?"

"Yarrow," I replied instinctively. "Chicken."

Carmen moved on to the next row, having butchered two names without so much as a shrug of her shoulders. Mr. Yolanski turned to me and smiled. "Jou have the same problem, too, jes?"

"Jes, I do," I chuckled. "I don't know why I'm so sensitive about it. I'm sure she meant no harm."

"Happens every time," he said, "no matter how many times I tell them my name. It's predictable."

We commiserated as the flight bumped its way down the East Coast, agreeing that it would have been easier to simply change our surnames to something beginning with a "J." Mr. Yolanski (I felt foolish thinking of him in these terms, but I certainly didn't know him on a first-name basis) asked if such a solution would be acceptable to my family, and I responded that my wife never liked my surname anyway; and my children had an annoying habit of pretending they were named after TV stars, football players, and rock singers.

He sighed, and the smile faded from his face. "They can be a nuisance sometimes. But don't ever leave them behind," he said softly. "Not for anything."

It was such a non-sequitur that I began to ask him what he meant; but he had turned away and was looking out the window at the darkness. I shrugged: I had no desire to get any chummier with Mr. Yolanski, and the conversation had gone far enough. He sighed loudly as the wheels touched down, but he remained in his seat, staring out the window, as I retrieved my briefcase from beneath my seat and began the long, clumsy shuffle up the aisle.

The weather grew worse the next day, as the first winter storm dumped six inches of snow in New York and a foot in Washington; even cities as far south as Atlanta got a mixture of snow and sleet. Flights were delayed for hours during the afternoon, and by evening LaGuardia, Kennedy, and Newark were closed; the delays and cancellations rippled outward to other East Coast and Midwest cities, and thousands of passengers were delayed for as long as three days. Including me, naturally: I was lucky to make it home by Sunday night, and I was so frazzled that I completely forgot my normal pattern of bringing souvenirs and presents for the children.

I didn't expect everyone to come rushing to the door to greet me, but I suppose I did expect some sympathy. I got none: the storm had kept the children indoors all weekend, and they were bored and crabby. For Fiona, my unexpected delay was the last straw: she demanded that I find someone else in the firm to take over the Janklow account. That's what Vice Presidents were supposed to be able to do, she said; a more lowly account manager should be the one to be stuck in the Orlando airport for two days.

She was probably right, but it's not as easy as it sounds -- and it's not the sort of thing I could arrange with the office or the client instantaneously. But to mollify Fiona and the kids, I decided that it would be politic to take them along on the next trip; after all, the children's Christmas school break was coming, and we could spend a four-day weekend at Disney World. The children were thrilled; Fiona agreed, but only on the condition that I promised to begin the process of transferring the Janklow account to someone else in the office.

Which I did. But in the meantime, there were a hundred minor crises to deal with in the office during the next week. Thursday afternoon arrived with phone calls and faxes that absolutely had to be answered, proposals that had to be finished, reports that demanded completion before I could leave for the airport. To make matters worse, another storm was moving into the city; this one promised to be worse than last week's, though the airlines reported that they expected schedules to operate fairly normally until the snowfall began accumulating in the evening.

But I knew that traffic would be snarled and there would be no way for me to swing past the apartment on the way to the airport. I called Fiona at lunch-time and told her to go ahead with the children as soon as they got home from school; I would meet her at the airport. In the worst case, I told her, she could go on ahead of me if I missed the flight; I would find some way of catching up with her, even if it meant taking an overnight train.

I explained all this to Hector when he picked me up for his customary weekly trip. Though he was accustomed to my being late, and thus in a hurry to reach the airport, he seemed quite cross with me on this occasion as I explained the situation to him. And it seemed to be associated with my decision to send Fiona ahead of me. "It's not right, Mr. Jarrow," he said. "You shoulda made sure they were with you. You shouldna left them behind."

"I didn't leave them behind, Hector," I protested. "I sent them ahead. That way, they'll be there, even if I'm late."

"Yeah," muttered Hector. "That's what the Fat Man said, too."

"What?"

"I told you once or twice, maybe you weren't listening. I used to have a customer, the Fat Man, he used to rush to the airport all the time -- just like you, always late, always in a big hurry."

"Yeah? So?"

So, Hector went on to explain, the Fat Man had also scheduled a trip where he was supposed to meet his family at the airport. And he was late when Hector dropped him at the airport-- so late that he missed the flight and his family went on ahead of him. And, in one of those freak coincidences, that was the one time in a million when the plane had crashed, with no survivors. It had all happened five or six years ago, but I didn't remember it. Hector seemed to think I should be intimately familiar with every plane crash that had occurred in my lifetime, but this one must not have achieved the notoriety of, say, Pan Am 103 over Locherbie.

Common sense told me to accept the moral of Hector's story and simply shut up. But I couldn't help asking: "What was this guy's name?"

"Who? The Fat Man?"

"Yeah."

"Jolanski. Arnold Jolanski. He was a big-time lawyer in one of those Wall Street firms. Lived up on Park Avenue, fancy apartment. Lotsa ..."

"Yo-lanski," I interrupted suddenly. "His name is Yolanski, Hector." Whatever pattern I was suddenly seeing was not one that I wanted to contemplate. I told Hector to drive as if his life depended on it; I had a feeling that mine suddenly did.

But all of my shouting and all of Hector's knowledge of the back roads through Queens, were of no avail: I dashed into the airport five minutes after the Orlando flight was scheduled to leave. I bolted down the hallway, dashed through the metal detector without bothering to retrieve my suitcase and briefcase, and arrived at the gate gasping and wheezing, tie askew and shirt soaked with perspiration. My face had a sickly pallor and was beaded with sweat; I felt as if I would have a heart attack at any moment.

Fiona rose from a seat in the waiting area; Jeremy, Lisa, and Sonia jumped up with squeals of joy and ran to wrap themselves around me. They had been instructed not to board the plane, Fiona told me, and the flight had left without them. They were confused, and the children were annoyed -- but I could tell that Fiona was relieved not to be stuck alone with three children on a four-hour flight.

"Who was it that told you to wait?" I asked.

"A man," shrugged Fiona. "I didn't recognize him."

"A man?"

"He said he knew you. He did know your name, said you hated being called Jarrow. He went on ahead of us -- I guess he was going to take care of whatever business you had in Orlando."

"He was a big man," Jeremy yelped. "As big as George Forman!"

"A fat man!" sang Sonia, as she snuffled her nose against my pants leg.

"The funny thing," Fiona said, as we began walking arm in arm back to the main terminal, the children running ahead of us, "is what he said after he had settled us all down to wait for you."

"What's that?" I asked.

"He said that now he wouldn't have to rush to the airport any more. He could go in peace."

It was no surprise, of course, to hear a few hours later that our flight had gone down in the storm, with no survivors. I tried to warn the airport authorities, but they didn't want to listen to my story. I'm not sure it would have helped anyway; it may have been inevitable. After all, some things happen once and then once again. That's what makes them patterns.