I walked in, kicked off my shoes, and was just about to untie my dress when I noticed Lisette’s hairy, married captain dozing on my couch/bed, clad in nothing more than some ill-fitting tighty whities and a pair of black dress socks.
“What’re you doing?” I asked, dropping my purse and narrowing my eyes. I mean, two visual assaults in one night was truly cruel and unusual.
But he just grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.
“Where’s Lisette?” I asked, approaching him, determined to get an answer.
“Paris,” he mumbled, still not looking at me.
But I was looking at him. And was growing increasingly agitated at the sight of his half-naked body enjoying such close proximity to my bed. “This is not your apartment,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. “You don’t live here, you don’t pay rent, and you’re not allowed to stay here without Lisette.”
“She knows I’m here. So if you have a problem, you can take it up with her,” he said, giving me a smug look.
I glanced at his ring finger, noticing that the simple gold band had yet to be replaced, and suddenly I was so completely over this sloppy loser who made over ten times my salary yet insisted on parking his flabby ass on my bed. “For your information, I pay nine
hundred dollars a month to sleep on that couch. So unless you want to reimburse me for the portion you’re currently occupying, I suggest you move it to the bedroom. Or better yet, take it home to your wife and kids.’
?
And I stood there glaring at him, arms crossed and face burning, as he unplugged the TV, carried it into Lisette’s room, and locked the door behind him.
When I woke the next morning, the first thing I noticed was that the TV was back in its usual spot and the captain was long gone. And after crawling out of bed, I headed straight for Jonathan Franzen’s tank, tapping on the glass in a desperate attempt to get him to notice me. “Who’s the one that feeds you? Who’s the one that rescued you from that overly slick downtown hotel?” I asked. But he just hovered in the corner, bulging eyes staring off to either side, completely ignoring me. I continued tapping on the glass, hell-bent on getting just a crumb of acknowledgment for all of my efforts, when suddenly it occurred to me that as far as pets go, he was turning out to be pretty aloof and unsatisfying.
I headed to the kitchen and poured some cereal into a bowl, realizing I’d have to eat it in dry fistfuls since
someone
had taken liberties with my milk, polishing off all but the last two drops and leaving the empty carton in the fridge to avoid suspicion. And as I carried my dry goods back to bed, I knew that this phase in my life had definitely run its course, and it was time to start socking away some money so I could find a new place to live.
“I wish we could just skip the flight and go straight to the layover,” I told Clay, gazing at a completely stripped car on the side of the Van Wyck Expressway that’d been there for over a week now.
“Sing it, sister.” He nodded, inspecting his cuticles.
We were on the New York Airport bus, making our slow, traffic-clogged way toward JFK, where by some stroke of unprecedented luck (not to mention a whole lot of schedule swapping), we would be working a seven-hour-and-forty-five-minute flight to France. To be immediately followed by a nice, long layover in Paris.
“So what are you gonna do about your author friend?” Clay asked, glancing at me briefly, then back at his nails.
“Uh, nothing?” I shrugged, not interested in any further discussion on this particular topic.
“You want my opinion?” he asked.
“Not really,” I said, still looking out the window.
“I think you should take him up on his offer.”
“That’s because you’re not the one who suffered the full frontal assault. ’Cause I guarantee you would not be singing that tune if you saw what I saw. I’m telling you it was bad. Very, very bad.” I cringed at the memory.
“My point exactly,” he said, giving up on his nails and focusing on me. “Critiquing your manuscript is the least he can do after subjecting you to that.”
“Forget it,” I said, shaking my head. “I saw the price of admission, and I’m not paying the cover charge. No such thing as a free lunch, my friend.”
“But see, that’s the whole point. You’ve already
paid
the tab, so now it’s time to head for the counter and pick up your happy meal,” he insisted.
“No cover charge, no lunches, no happy meals, no critiques, and no more metaphors.” I unzipped my bag and retrieved my manuscript, along with the red pen I use for corrections. “Harrison
Mann is like a literary casting couch. And I’m not auditioning,” I said, settling into chapter fifteen.
The second we walked into the flight attendant lounge I knew something was up. Normally the room was full of navy-clad people hurrying into briefing rooms, gossiping with friends, cursing at the computers and their forever-malfunctioning printers, or heading for the “sleep room” to catch a quick nap before the long day ahead. But today seemed quieter, less busy. Or at least on the surface. Because if you looked closer, you’d notice a whole lot of whispering and eye darting going on.
“Did you hear?” I looked up to see Kat striding toward us. “Over eight thousand employees are being furloughed. Pilots, flight attendants, gate agents, mechanics, ground crew.” She shook her head.
“What about the supervisors?” Clay asked, eyeing one of the laziest ones eating the last few pieces of popcorn from the machine they’d bought us a few months back, in an attempt to boost morale. So far I’d yet to get a single kernel. Now I know why.
“The OOs stay,” Kat said, directing a withering glance at the corpulent popcorn stealer. “Apparently shuffling papers and sniffing out uniform infractions is what keeps this airline afloat.”
Well, that explains it,
I thought, looking at all the worried, angry faces. Our last CEO had just been awarded over twenty million dollars for bringing us to the verge of bankruptcy before saying his final “Buh-bye.” And now the rest of us would be taking the heat for the declining revenue in the form of threatening memos and pink slips.
If I thought I had it bad now, sleeping on an overpriced couch with only an antisocial fish for company, I couldn’t begin to imagine how I’d feel if I lost my job. Because even though I didn’t really like working for Atlas anymore, that didn’t mean I was ready to stop.
And now, with a possible layoff approaching, I had good reason to panic, since I’d spent the last few years cruising through life in an extended holding pattern, going around and around in circles but getting nowhere. And now, like it or not, I was being forced to land. And I wasn’t so sure I could bring it in safely.
“I think it’s time to retire,” Kat said, nodding her head firmly, as though she’d already put some thought into this and it wasn’t just some random statement.
“Are you serious?” I asked, waking from my own private thoughts, and looking at her in shock.
“Who am I kidding? The fun died years ago.” She shrugged.
Clay and I just stared at her, speechless. She was right about the fun—it
had
died years ago. Although Clay and I had never experienced the kind of fun she was referring to. Kat had flown in the days when air travel was considered a privilege, when people actually dressed up to get on a plane and being a stewardess was a much-sought-after, highly glamorous career choice.
By the time Clay and I came along, the entire industry had morphed into nothing more than a flying bus service—just a necessary evil to get from point A to point B. The glamour was gone, and the party was over—making me feel like that last, annoying guest who ignores the blinking lights and refuses to move on.
But before either of us could respond, the PA squawked, “Hailey Lane and Clay Stevens, please report to room number four immediately. You are late for briefing.”
“Where you off to?” I asked, grabbing my bags and following Clay.
“Athens,” Kat said, smiling as she took her place in the computer line.
I hadn’t flown to Europe in over six months, and hadn’t dated a passenger during the last six years. But the cute guy in 2B was about to become the exception.
“So what’s going on?” Clay asked.
We were working in the “Business Select” galley, with Clay plating the meals as I delivered them to passengers. “Nothing,” I said, watching as he plucked a curled-up, overcooked piece of meat from its tinfoil container and carefully placed it on a plate of navy-edged Atlas china, then added a flourish of limp parsley for garnish. “Do you think they’ll ever catch on that we’re serving them TV dinners?” I asked, setting it on my linen-lined tray for delivery.
“Don’t change the subject,” he said, wiping his hands on a towel and looking at me.
“He’s cute.” I shrugged. “But you and I already made plans, remember?”
“You have my full permission to ditch me if he asks you out.”
“Seriously?” I asked, balancing the tray with one hand while reaching for the bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape with the other.
“Yup. Now go dazzle him with your home-cooked meal,” he said, pushing me out of the galley.
As I approached Mr. 2B, I thought about what I might say if he really did ask me out. Over the years, I’d kept to a strict policy of never dating a passenger. Which in light of the fact that four of those years were tied up with Michael, not to mention the fact that the majority of men I served weren’t exactly datable, really hadn’t been all that hard to keep.
But now, everything was different. And clearly the old rules no longer applied, as I was out of a boyfriend, and soon maybe even out of a job. So who was I to turn down an interesting diversion?
“You ordered the steak?” I placed it in front of him and tried not to cringe at how awful it looked. “Would you like more wine?” I offered, trying to distract him with the label.
He stared at the curled-up piece of meat, flanked by soggy, yellowish baby carrots and some kind of crispy beige starch that was either rice, potatoes, or cream of wheat. Then he looked at me and smiled. “Please tell me you’re not the chef,” he said, lifting his glass for a refill.
“Sorry, I can’t take credit for that. Though I have to admit, I probably couldn’t do much better,” I said, twisting the bottle at the finish, just like I’d learned in the Atlas-sponsored wine course I’d taken several years ago.
“So what are you doing for dinner?” he asked, still gazing at me with his gorgeous brown eyes.
“Hanging in the galley, fighting the crew for leftovers.” I shrugged.
“No.” He laughed. “I meant in Paris. How long will you be there?”
“Twenty-seven hours and thirty-two minutes,” I said, noticing how his sweater was cashmere, his dark hair was freshly cut, and his teeth were very white, but most likely real.
“Would you like to have dinner with me? I’m staying at the Ritz, over on the Place Vendome. But I have a car and driver, so I can pick you up anywhere.” He smiled.
The Ritz? A car and driver? I was beginning to feel like Cinderella. “Sounds great,” I said casually, trying not to skip on my way back to the galley.
“What took?” Clay asked, glancing at me briefly. “These plates are getting all backed up.”
I looked at the cart, piled precariously high with plated meals that I no longer cared about serving.
I mean, why am I still working in the galley when I’ve just been invited to the ball?
“He asked me to dinner!” I smiled, struggling to balance the tray that now held three plates. “Hey, this is getting heavy,” I whined as he added a fourth.
“You’re way behind. In case you haven’t noticed, the other aisle is two rows ahead, which means we’re losing.” He shook his head and retrieved another meal from the oven, lifting the paper lid and watching the steam escape. Clay took his galley duties very seriously.
“Oh, I didn’t know we were racing,” I told him, feeling awful about being the weakest link.
“We’re
always
racing.”
“Well just wait till we get on the ice cream carts,” I told him. “I really kick ass on the sundaes.”
But by the time we were on final approach, passing out the coats and preparing to land, most, if not all, of my excitement had died. Mr. 2B had spent the last six hours in a deep, nearly comatose sleep, which meant our dinner plans were never finalized. And as I flipped down my jump seat, buckled my seat belt, and gazed out the tiny porthole at the early-morning Parisian landscape, I suppressed my disappointment, stifled a yawn, and fought to stay awake during landing.
“So what’s going on with dinner?” Clay asked, retrieving his bag from the closet and slipping into his coat.
“You wanna go to that little quiche place in Saint-Germain?” I asked, heading down the aisle, dragging my bag behind me.
“What’re you talking about? I thought the prince was sending his carriage?”
“No prince, no carriage.” I shook my head sadly. “It all turned into a big fat pumpkin.”
“But I thought you liked him?” he said, rushing alongside me.
“I did. He was the perfect passenger. Cute but didn’t act like he knew it, nice but not overly ingratiating, witty but not obnoxiously jokey. And he never rang his call light, never took his socks off, never attended to any highly personal grooming needs, never stuck his foot in the aisle for me to trip over, and sadly, never woke up in time to get my name and number.” I shrugged. “But it was good while it lasted.”