Coffee, Tea or Me? (12 page)

“She is a little overbearing,” she agreed.

“The others are a good bunch.”

“Yeh. They seem great. Gee, I wish there were some way to help Jane out. All that drinking, I mean.”

“She sure puts it away. I like her, though. And underneath all Joan’s veneer, she does seem to stick by Jane. That’s pretty nice.”

Another month went by in the penthouse without serious incident. We were spared any more meetings, too. And we began to know our roommates in this housing venture.

Sally, a pretty but shy little brunette, was as sweet as could be. The delightful thing about her was her habit of telling little white lies. She couldn’t help embellishing the stories she told, usually with the story improved by her embroidery.

Helen, tending to be overweight, was on a perpetual diet. She’d been on one for six years in a never-ending battle to satisfy the airline’s rigid weight checks that came often and unannounced. Yogurt was her staple food, her portion of the refrigerator a virtual supermarket display of the world’s yogurt varieties.

Marie was a darling, in her own way. She loved animals. Any animals. In her room, which she shared with Sally, were six birds of varying origins and species, a live mink in a cage and a baby alligator in a large fish tank. His name was Nelson. He was frightening even in his infancy.

Helen roomed with Sarah. Sarah loved to borrow things. Sometimes she returned them. Most of the time she didn’t.

That was our group. The diversity of interests and problems seldom posed any serious threat to the penthouse’s tranquillity. Not until the fourth month of residence when all the individual quirks meshed together to create a night from
The Twilight Zone.

 

That night Rachel and I watched Johnny Carson until we’d fallen asleep. We’d been asleep for maybe an hour when the sound of our bedroom door being thrown open brought us both up to a sitting position.

Standing in the open doorway was Jane. She was drunk. Stoned. Her head was going from side to side as if getting up steam to say something. She finally did.

“Where is it?” she muttered, her voice with that slurred quality whiskey in abundance will bring about.

“What in the name of . . .” I was cut off.

“Where is it, I said?” She stepped into the room now, almost falling over the threshold.

“Where is what?” Rachel yelled.

Jane flipped on the overhead light.

“My bottle. My bottle. Where is it? You stole it.”

Rachel laid back on her pillow. “Will you please go to bed, Jane,” she requested softly.

Jane let out an ear-piercing scream. Then, she leaped on Rachel’s bed and pulled the blanket off. “Gimme my bottle,” she yelled, trying to punch Rachel as she said it. Rachel rolled out of bed quickly and ran around in back.

Jane’s scream had awakened the entire apartment. Joan was the first to arrive, closely followed by Helen.

“What’s going on in here?” Joan snapped.

Jane was leaping up and down on Rachel’s bed.

“She stole my bottle,” she said.

“Who stole your bottle?” was Joan’s reaction.

“She did,” Jane yelled, pointing to the both of us.

“We didn’t steal anything,” I protested.

“Yes, you did,” Jane continued. “Sally said you did.”

“Sally?” we said in unison.

Marie now came rushing into the scene.

“Shhhhhhhhh,” she said with exaggerated facial and hand gestures, “you’ve woken up the animals. The birds are all chirping and Nelson is restless.”

Once the visions of Marie’s menagerie in flight passed, thoughts came back to the original problem: Who took Jane’s bottle? Did someone take Jane’s bottle? Did Sally say we took her bottle?

“Where’s Sally?”

“Sleeping.”

“How can she sleep when an alligator can’t sleep?”

“She’s always been a sound sleeper.”

Jane had tolerated this aimless chitchat for as long as she could. She went to Rachel’s dresser and began digging through lingerie for the elusive bottle.

Marie left the room and reappeared with a sleepy Sally.

“What’s the matter?” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes and stretching.

“They woke up Nelson,” Marie told her.

“Oh.” (Yawn)

“Nelson is not the problem,” Joan said sternly.

“The birds, too?” Sally asked. (Yawn)

“Everybody, except you, Sally.”

“Oh.” (Yawn)

“Did you tell Jane that Rachel and Trudy stole her bottle. Did you, Sally?” Joan could be a hard quizmaster.

Sally performed two quick yawns and scratched her stomach.

“No, I didn’t say that.”

That set Jane off. “You did, you did, you did,” she yelled at Sally.

“No I didn’t. I just said maybe they did. Jane said her bottle was missing and I said maybe Rachel and Trudy took it.” (Yawn)

Rachel and I smiled smugly. “See?” we said. “It’s simply a case of mistaken identity.”

“Do you know anything about this, Sarah?” Joan asked her. Sarah was sitting on the floor in the corner. She jumped up when Joan spoke.

“Not me. Not me. No, sir. Not me.”

“Well,
somebody
took my bottle, that’s for sure,” Jane lamented.

“Sarah?” I said with a strong upward inflection. Sarah avoided our eyes. She did one of those little toe-in-the-sand movements and cleared her throat.

“Sarah?”

“Why would I take someone’s Scotch?”

I stood there feeling like Sherlock Holmes in the last reel of
The Late Show.

“Ah hah,” I said pouncing. “No one ever said it was Scotch that was stolen.”

“Oh,” was Sarah’s reply.

“Is that all you can say, Sarah?
Oh?
After we’ve caught you with a slip of the tongue that proves you took Jane’s bottle? You’re always borrowing things. You must have borrowed Jane’s bottle.” I was pressing my discovery to the hilt.

Sarah stifled a yawn and said calmly, “Well, Jane always drinks Scotch. That’s how I knew.”

Jane tottered unsteadily in the corner while all the cross-examining was going on. “That’s not at all true,” she said with a strange annoyed tone to her voice. “I’m especially fond of bourbon.”

“What did you do with the bottle?” Joan asked Sarah.

Sarah stood firm. “I didn’t take any bottle.”

Everyone seemed to accept Sarah’s finality. They turned to us again.

I started to giggle. Rachel joined me. Joan got mad.

“This is a very serious matter,” she intoned with all the piety of a lay reader on Christmas. Joan could do this quite nicely. She seemed forever preaching about something, her actions seldom matching her words.

“We know it is.” But we couldn’t stop laughing.

The night ended with nothing solved and everyone mad at everyone else. Rachel and I chuckled ourselves to sleep.

We were about to leave the penthouse the next morning for our flight when Marie came flying out of her bedroom, tears running down her cheeks. In her hand was the lifeless form of Nelson, the alligator. It’s hard to tell when an alligator is dead, especially from a distance. But Marie confirmed it.

“He’s dead,” she shouted.

“How?”

“I don’t know.” She was heartbroken. The little reptile didn’t move in her hands.

We went into Marie’s room. Sally sat sleepily on her bed. The birds were all chirping happily, a thing birds probably always do when an alligator dies.

We went over to the fish tank where Nelson drew his last breath and looked into the water. The water was never especially clean, but that morning it had a definite bronze tone to it.

“What’s in the water?” Rachel asked Marie, now calmed down just a little.

“I don’t know. Is anything in the water?”

“Sure.” Rachel dipped her finger into the tank and sniffed it.

“Smells like Scotch.”

“Scotch?” Marie said with horror.

“Yeh, Scotch. Take a sniff.”

Marie did.

Then she dipped her own finger into the tank and licked the water on its tip. “It
is
Scotch,” she moaned.

“Maybe he died of cirrhosis,” Sally said from the bed.

“Who did this?” Marie shrieked at the top of her voice.

That scream did it. Everyone came running into the room.

Everyone chattered away at once.

“A little respect for the deceased, please.” Rachel suggested.

The chattering was still going on when we left for our flight. We returned that night to a grim penthouse. Jane was drunk, bless her heart.

“Well, who did Nelson in?” I asked Joan, who sat quietly reading a book.

“Sally said maybe you two did.”

“Here we go again.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so. Jane and I have solved the problem, though.” (The rules committee, remember?)

“How did you do that?”

“Marie will be leaving in the morning.”

“Marie? Did she poison Nelson, her own alligator?”

“No, of course not. But those animals all over the place were just too much for anyone to bear. She’s leaving with her zoo.” Joan went back to reading.

Marie did leave the penthouse. The mysteries of the missing bottle and the dead alligator were never solved, although Rachel and I came up with a solution we felt was plausible. We figured Sarah borrowed the bottle and Sally knew it. She accused us to protect Sarah. Then, Sarah got scared and dumped the bottle in Nelson’s tank to get rid of the evidence. We gave up trying to figure out what she did with the actual bottle. You can’t solve everything.

So Marie moved out and Libby moved in. Libby was a friend of Helen’s, their particular closeness bonded by a mutual need to diet constantly. Libby was a discothèque dancer in Greenwich Village. Sally moved in with Sarah, and Helen roomed with Libby. Together, they cornered the market on yogurt. They also turned the penthouse into a gymnasium for their numerous exercises for figure improvement. Things went along for a month until Libby, or Helen, we’re not sure which, accused somebody of eating her yogurt.

Sarah admitted borrowing “a little teeny bit,” but Sally said she thought Sarah had borrowed a lot. The only one in the clear was Jane who often said yogurt and whiskey just didn’t mix.

And so it went. Our chic, glamorous penthouse soon fell into a long shadow of bickering, a human inevitability where girls are concerned, especially eight of them. Rachel and I departed for an apartment in Greenwich Village where we stayed in relative bliss.

 

It’s true that our experience in New York is probably not at all typical of most stewardesses. Those who remain seem to find some sort of fun out of living there. Certainly the penthouse hadn’t contributed a great fondness for fun city. But it’s also true that New York is a tough place to live for any stewardess.

For instance: The telephone company, that great symbol of everything bad about a monopoly, is very reluctant to give a telephone to a stewardess. We understand they’re reluctant to give a telephone to anyone, but the fact that a stewardess works for an airline, and, by virtue of that simple employment circumstances, has easy access to airplanes, thrusts a dagger of deep mistrust into the hearts of the telephone company’s employees.

It’s the same with department stores. These moneymaking giants of commerce seem certain we’ll spend a day in their store with our new charge card, buy at least fifty thousand dollars worth of goods, and immediately wing off to Saudi Arabia to avoid payment of the bill. What amazes you is when you receive one of those form letters stating you are a preferred customer and a credit card is waiting for you at the Preferred Customer, Gold Plated, A-1 First Class, Chosen-by-God credit desk. Just try and get it.

We’ve since found these problems to be common to other cities besides New York. But it just doesn’t seem as bad. Everything is magnified in New York.

If you, stymied in becoming the world’s greatest Wall Street broker, concert pianist, or most famous actor on Broadway, should decide to pursue the career of a stew-bum, knowing where we live in the cities of this nation will be helpful. The following listing is published for your use.

Also, there are definite places where we have fun. As a stewardess working a flight, we aren’t able to serve more than two drinks per person. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have more than two drinks when off-duty and in any one of our favorite bars. If you ever feel in the mood to have more than two drinks with a stewardess, give these places a try, each a known hangout for sisters of the skies.