NEWARK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT: I disembark at Gate C85, with my two daughters, from Continental Flight 488 at 5:55 am. We've just arrived from Puerto Rico, our skin tight with sunburn and salt. I navigate the terminal at the minimal level of consciousness required to find the baggage claim, collect our suitcases, and get into the taxi line.

Tempted to buy coffee from the kiosk between Baggage Carousels 2 and 3, I discover I don't have my wallet. I must have left it on or around my seat, 23B, where I paused to rifle through my carry-on to be sure I wasn't leaving any of my younger daughter's toys or games behind.

Jolted by adrenaline, I instruct my daughters, ages 16 and 6, to remain at the baggage claim while I try to retrieve my wallet. Carrying only my passport, I run upstairs to find someone who can issue me a gate pass allowing my return through security to Concourse C.

Impressing the validity of my request on one distracted airline employee after another takes a discouragingly long time, I am referred to and from and back again to the agent at Desk 72.

By the time I pass through the gantlet of uniformed security personnel busy separating travelers from their toothpaste and emollients, I've lost 30 minutes, more than long enough for a cleaning crew to straighten, vacuum and de-wallet the airplane. I run, my shoes in one hand, passport in the other, to Gate C85, at the end of the abandoned concourse. Gates 85, 84, 83 - all gates in sight - are bereft of both airline and airport personnel, but my plane's still there; I can see it through the window.

I stand at the closed metal door that separates Gate 85 from its jetway. Hello, I call, idiotically, and I knock, as loudly as possible, using the heel of my shoe. Surprisingly, when I turn the handle of the door to the jetway, I find it unlocked. Unsurprisingly, when I push it open, an alarm goes off. I stand there, holding the handle, waiting for someone official to come, expecting to be chastised and confident that, as I am holding a valid US passport and making no attempt to flee, I can explain my predicament.

But no one answers the alarm, which is shatteringly loud and still ringing. The handful of travelers in the waiting area, rumpled middle-age men, watch without expression as I prop the door open with my little black shoe - in case it's locked from the other side - and disappear down the jetway toward the plane. Am I a federal criminal now? Does anyone care?

The airplane's front hatch is open, and I enter, disappointed to see that each seat already holds a tidy white pillow and plastic-wrapped blanket. The cleaning crew has come and gone. I search under and around Seat 23B. My wallet is nowhere to be found.

Back at the gate, my little black shoe still holds the door open, the alarm still rings, and the rumpled middle-age men in the waiting area continue to read their Sunday papers. I retrieve my shoe; the door closes; the alarm stops.

You what! says the woman at Continental's customer service desk after I've told her what I've just done. You can't, you cannot, do that. You cannot. I know, I tell her, but my wallet is missing, I've left my children at the baggage claim, and there's no one at Gate 85 or any of the adjacent gates. Anyway, I say, I waited for security but no one came.

It's your own fault you lost your wallet, she says when I ask her to contact the cleaning crew. She gives me a sharp look I interpret as her judgment that violators of federal airline security regulations deserve no special courtesies.

Back at the baggage claim area, I file a lost item report, collect my children and our luggage, and use my cell phone to wake my husband. Does he have enough cash to pay our cab fare from Newark, Jew Jersey to Brooklyn? I'll explain when we get home, I tell him.

When I do, he shakes his head. Let me get this straight, he says. Unauthorized, you open the gate door to the airplane. You set off a very loud security alarm. You wait a few minutes, and then take it upon yourself to enter the empty aircraft. You spend some time moving around its interior.

No one sees you there. You leave of your own accord. You exit the way you came and you stop the alarm from ringing. And you confessed this, chapter and verse, to airline personnel and nothing happened?

Yes, I say. Exactly so.

The New York Times Syndicate

(China Daily 01/16/2007 page11)