It’s funny how New York transforms into a kinder, gentler place after a 14-hour flight. All my usual social barriers are demolished, all the unconscious defense mechanisms rendered impossible as I lurch off the plane, my face pure jet-lagged anemia tinged with airsick green. The customs and immigration official, a beefy man with a shiny face and eyes trained to see everyone who passes him as a potential suicide bomber, gives me a wry smile.

“You ok, honey? You don’t look so hot.”

“Fourteen-hour flight,” I wheeze. “I feel pretty sick.”

After a few seconds of scanning and scrutinizing my passport to determine that my name has no FBI flags (not yet, anyway), he turns on the sympathy full-blast. “Poor thing. You need some tea, no lemon. That should help. I can see if we have any in the Homeland Security office-”

“Uh, no thank you. Just want to get home.”

Giving me worried looks, two white-haired men grab my bags off the conveyor belt and help me wheel them through customs, waving off my feeble attempts at thanks. The cab driver loses his surly expression as I stumble towards the side door. He leaps from the car and shoos me into the back seat, insisting that he’ll take care of my luggage. “Let’s just get you home,” he says in a thick accent that I’m too fried to place.

In my apartment at last, my stomach is still doing triple lutz combinations. The thought of food brings near-convulsions, but I can still register the need for fluids. Ginger ale. That’s what my parents always told me to drink when I felt like this.

“You feeling ok?” says the woman at the coffee shop across the street. She’s tall with long hair too black to be natural, thick eye makeup and a low-cut black bustier. In eight months of coming to buy drinks, she’s never given me anything but a scowl.

“Just got off a 14-hour flight,” I gasp. “Need some ginger ale for my stomach.”

“Oh man, poor thing. Here, take this.” She brushes off my attempt to pay. “Don’t worry about it.”

Trying to muster the closest thing I can to a grateful smile, I take the drink. Maybe it’s the vulnerability that inspires all this altruism; we’re so accustomed to manufactured displays of bravado that visible weakness takes us off guard. Or then again, maybe everyone’s just afraid I’ll throw up all over them.