SLIPSTREAM

The lives of five lonely people converge as a creepy ex-employee plots revenge at LAX.

An airport, with its steady stream of strangers and sterile cavernous spaces, often feels like a cold place where everything is transient. Conversations are brief, and cabin doors are shut emphatically on quickly forged relationships. But for those who work there, “fleeting” is just another word for the daily grind. When Rudy is fired from his job cleaning airplanes, he doesn’t tell wife Inez. Quite the opposite: The chubby oddball informs her that he’s been promoted. Rudy starts spending his days shoplifting, hiding out at the mall and sneaking around the garage with a paranoid mind and a master plan. Little does he know that Inez, tired of his verbal and emotional abuse, has her own secret. She has been working as an Avon lady in order to save enough money to run away with her daughter. One of Inez’s regular customers is Celeste, who is cheating on Jewell, her devastated live-in girlfriend. Jewell’s father has just been released from prison and is hoping his brother Wylie, a bartender at the airport, will help him out. Wylie, however, has enough on his mind already, since his lover has just dropped a bombshell. As these characters sort out the ruin of their lives and make plans, it becomes increasingly clear that Rudy’s scheme may trump all of their intentions, good and bad.

A gripping debut that successfully builds upon post-9/11 fears while feverishly mining the depths of human desire.