Madeira Island, Funchal, the governing city for an autonomous archipelago to Portugal. An hour and a half southwest on a connecting flight from Lisbon, the Portugal TAP A320 Airbus swung low in the night over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and settled on a downwind approach to the island's coastal airport.
To the right of the airplane's nose, a bed of lights lay across a dark seaside escarpment, which passed to the right side as the plane leveled out along the island's shoreline.
Directly at the water's edge, below the bed of city lights, the luminous pinpoints of the airport's elevated runway, which sat on landfill, ran to the right of the plane.
The airport had a notable distinction: the runway extended behind the jet on nearly a half mile of glowing shoreline pylons, each pylon some 200 feet tall, lighted underneath like some divine Roman forum.
A few minutes later, having passed the airport, the plane circled back around, following a line of sea-level strobe lights, which curved in from the ocean, running across the dark water in rapid sequence to the shoreline and along the night-time sea cliff back to the runway.
As the plane descended on final approach, the dark cliff turned into light-laced hillside, which in turn became individual lamps and windows going by on the left, behind the airplane's running lights, each item in the landscape shifting in parallax with the clear definition of an image cut in Lucite.
A highway along the base of the city rose vertiginously up at the left wing tip, followed by a steep airport embankment covered by rows of otherworldly, yucca-like plants, showing dimly in the removed glow of the opposing terminal lights.
The plane coasted and thumped down in the forward flare of landing lights, with a spoiler lift in silhouette and the boom of the reversers.
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The traveler from Frankfurt stepped off the A320 and walked his bags under lofty painted tails of giant planes, the planes sitting like Carnaval balloons beneath the glare of the high tarmac lamps.
The homes and the local highway burned silently above the embankment behind him, past the local whine and turn of turbine generators.
The tower and terminal windows sat at the edge of the night sea in front of him.To his right was the way he flew in.
To his left were the airport taxi lights, glimmering through the surface airwaves over the half-mile extension of hidden pylons.
Indoors, the terminal dropped more levels through a two-story open space to a shiny floor and counters under rows of high ceiling lamps. All was clear light, steel and glass. And quiet.
No one was there waiting for him.
There should have been.
After waiting and checking around, he stood outside for a while in the summer night, looking at the ground level parking lot and watching the infrequent comings and goings.
