I glanced quickly at Aimee, who was giving me a strange, hurt look; and then over at Clay, who was silently pleading with me to stop; and then over at Jennifer, who was softly shaking her head. And by the time I focused back on Michael, I was not only losing steam, but I was beginning to feel a little clammy, self-conscious, and sad.
I mean, what the hell was I doing, anyway? Everyone was just trying to enjoy a nice dinner in Puerto Rico, and with one stupid comment I’d turned the whole night into my own personal vendetta.
So Michael had a date with a dude and broke my heart. Had I really wanted to marry him anyway? Because the ever-present stomach pings and nausea that accompanied every matrimonial moment in my head pretty much told me otherwise.
It was like, maybe in some weird way Michael had actually done me a favor, by forcing me out of my lazy, comfortable, complacent world so I could finally confront my life head-on. Because even though I hated to admit it, if he hadn’t gone and pushed me into the deep end, I’d still be sitting on the edge of the pool, dipping in just a toe or two and telling myself that the water didn’t really look all that refreshing anyway.
Besides, hadn’t I been there for Clay when he came out to his family five years ago? Hadn’t I supported him when they refused to take his calls for a full year and a half after that? And hadn’t I seen, firsthand, the pain it caused him? So how could I act so cavalier now? How could I be so vindictive?
Yes, Michael had hurt me, by cheating on me and calling me too old to marry. But the fact is, I was getting over it, while he was still compelled to prove his shaky manhood by dating a cheerleader, throwing his Visa card around, and behaving like a thirty-eight-year-old frat boy.
It was like I’d dodged a bullet.
But now I had to find a way out. I mean, everyone was staring at me, Clay was slowly cutting off all circulation to my leg, and Michael was obsessively fondling his wineglass. And since it was all my fault to begin with, I knew I had to do something. Quick.
“So, um, do you know why women fake orgasms?” I asked, looking right at Michael, willing him to make eye contact so he could see that I wasn’t taking this where he assumed I was. That I
wasn’t going to spill his secret. That I wasn’t as small and spiteful as he thought.
And when he finally lifted his head, his brown eyes looked directly into mine. “Yeah, because men fake foreplay,” he said, smiling as he hijacked my punch line.
During the beverage service, while I was sitting on the jump seat, I realized I’d lost my manuscript.
Great, as if I don’t have enough to be freaked about,
I thought, going through my small carry-on bag for the third time and rechecking every single nook and cranny.
Thanks to that major tropical storm, I’d spent the last five days in rainy Puerto Rico, holed up in the hotel, watching pay-per-view with Clay and Jennifer, winning then losing fifty dollars in blackjack at the hotel casino, acting friendly toward Michael and Aimee when I inadvertently ran into them in the lobby, and watching the red portions of my face peel and fade to a nice, raw pink.
And it wasn’t until we got to the airport that I realized I’d only left out enough kitty chow to cover the three days I thought I’d be gone and not the five that I actually was.
“Kat is going to kill me!” I’d told Clay while helping him set up the galley.
Due to the recent spate of weather-related flight cancellations, all the seats were full. So if I wanted to get home I had no choice but to sit on the jump seat. And if I was going to ride in the galley.
well then, I felt like I had to help out, if only a little.
“You didn’t leave out an extra bowl, just in case?” he asked, slamming a bag of ice onto the galley floor over and over again until it broke into smaller, more serviceable chunks.
“It didn’t even occur to me,” I admitted. “Believe me, animals and children are not safe with me. I don’t even possess the minimum amount of nurturing skills required to take care of others.” I opened a bag of napkins that advertised a software company (yet another sign of how Atlas was totally selling out), and shoved them into a caddy.
“What are you talking about? Of course you’re nurturing; you’re a flight attendant! Which also makes you a nurse, a psychologist, a babysitter, a janitor, a dietician, a bartender, a cocktail waitress, a veterinarian, a life coach, a bomb stopper, a crime fighter, a cockpit protector, a luggage lifter, a hash slinger, a magician, a mind reader, a global positioning system, a weather controller, and a human shield. It’s like we have superpowers! Think about it: We transport thousands of people a day, feeding and watering them while we’re at it!” he said, getting up from the floor and carefully pouring the newly broken ice chunks into a plastic serving drawer.
“Believe me, the only reason I feed and water anyone is because it’s my job, and I’ll get fired if I don’t. And now Kat’s gonna fire me as her friend, when she gets home from Greece and finds three starved kitties in her kitchen. Besides,” I whispered, shutting the door of the beverage cart and peeking down the aisle, “after six years of this, I don’t even like most people anymore.”
“Hailey, please.” He’d rolled his eyes. “None of us do.” Then, shaking his head, he’d charged down the aisle intent on stopping someone from cracking the overhead bin with their oversized bag.
And now, with the contents of my carry-on spilled across the galley floor, the fact of my missing manuscript was something I could no longer deny. And it wasn’t just that it was my only copy that had
me so upset (sure I’d backed it up to disk, years ago, but I no longer knew where that was either), but more the idea of where it might be and who might be reading it that had me all bothered.
Let’s see, if I retrace my steps, then the last time I saw it was . . . Think, Hailey! When I was sitting in first class, drinking champagne . . . right before that awful gate agent made me move . . . then there was that really cute guy . . . Oh my God, what if
he
read it! If he read it, I will
die!
Seriously. But wait. Wouldn’t he just hand it over to the crew? And since I’d just spent the last five days with them, I know that didn’t happen, so it must have fallen between the seat cushions. “Which means it would have been found during the security check in Puerto Rico and then promptly thrown out after scanning it for terrorist threats, of course). So that means it’s probably resting on a trash barge, enjoying a long, leisurely cruise toward, its final destination, a landfill. . . .
“Um, excuse me, miss?”
Oh, God, this was the worst part of riding the jump seat. People always assumed you were being lazy by not serving them, when clearly my beige linen pants, cream-colored camisole, and beige wrap sweater were a far cry from the ugly polyester uniform Atlas made us wear.
I remained sitting there, bent over my stuff, hoping she’d go away.
“Miss? I’m sorry to bother you, but I think something’s wrong with my dad.”
I looked up to find a terrified teenage girl standing before me, hands shaking, eyes wide with panic, and I was out of my seat, in the aisle, and checking her dad for vital signs before I’d even had a chance to think. “Go get those flight attendants on the cart up there and tell them to call for help,” I told her. But when I reached for the first aid kit I saw that she was still standing behind me, completely frozen. “It’s gonna be okay,” I said softly. “But please go now!”
The guy sitting at the window helped me lay the sick passenger
in the aisle, and as I bent over him, lowering my ear to his nose and mouth, I was filled with dread when I realized he wasn’t breathing. Ripping into the first aid kit, I grabbed the pocket mask, slapped it on his face, and immediately breathed two slow breaths into his mouth, watching his chest softly rise and fall. Then I pressed two fingers to his neck, desperately searching for his carotid pulse, but there wasn’t any.
Oh God, oh God.
I looked frantically up the aisle. The young girl was just now telling Clay, and I knew there wasn’t enough time to wait for him to arrive with the defibrillator. I had to start CPR now! But was it still trace, space, and place? No, that was outdated. Now it was something like, imagine a line across the nipples, estimate the middle, and start pushing. But what if I broke a rib?
I glanced down at him, noticing his face had gone completely white and his lips were taking on a bluish tinge. And knowing it was probably already too late, I took a deep breath, and let everything I’d learned about first aid instinctively take over until Clay and Jennifer arrived.
Since I was already on the floor, I stayed put when Clay got there, helping him cut open the man’s shirt, shave his chest, and attach those sticky pads to the designated spots while Jennifer ran to page for a doctor and tried to calm the terrified young girl.
Over the years I’d had plenty of onboard minor medical emergencies, but there always seemed to be a doctor, nurse, EMT, or paramedic on board. But now that it was a life-or-death matter, it was just Clay and me. And we remained crouched in the aisle, desperately trying to breathe air into his lungs and shock him back to consciousness, until we returned to the San Juan airport and the emergency medical team stormed on board and rushed him away on a stretcher.
We stood in the aisle, dazed and sweaty, and I looked at the girl just as the Atlas reps were taking her away. “My dad!” she cried. But I had nothing for her. It was already too late when I’d found him.
When we finally landed at Kennedy Airport, there was the usual gaggle of supervisors waiting to meet us.
“Are y’all okay?” asked Dotty, a Southerner with bleached blond curly bangs and a tight, purple suit that hadn’t fit since 1987.
“I need you to fill out some paperwork,” said Shannon, our overanxious and underqualified base manager.
“You haven’t talked to any media, have you?” This one came from Lawrence, my very own supervisor, whom, quite frankly, I could not stand.
I rolled my eyes and kept walking. There was no way I was even going to answer that. What was he thinking? That I’d called CNN from the in-flight phone? That my agent was fielding bids on an exclusive story? I mean, some kid’s dad had died right in front of me, and that was the best this bozo could come up with?
I glanced over at Clay, who was surrounded by suits. But he was part of the working crew, which meant he had no choice but to stick around and answer questions. Whereas I, on the other hand, was on my own time. And right or wrong, to me, that little fact made all the difference.
I dragged my bag up the jetway, determined to shake Lawrence.
“Hailey, I know you’ve had a traumatic flight, but you
cannot
walk away,” he said, tailgating me. “We
must
debrief.”
“I’m going home. I’ll e-mail a report tomorrow,” I called over my shoulder as I entered the terminal and beelined for the exit.
There was no way I was “debriefing” with him. This was the same overzealous clown who wrote me up for wearing Ugg boots from my apartment to the airport during one of the worst blizzards the city had ever seen. Never mind that I’d promptly changed into my airline-approved pumps before I signed in. Apparently I’d done great harm to the Atlas image by allowing the crackheads loitering
at the bus stop on the corner of 125th and Lex to peek at my non-regulation snow boots at four o’clock in the morning.
But Lawrence didn’t just limit himself to footwear infractions. Oh no. During the last several years he’d busted me for:
1. Wearing earrings bigger than a quarter.
2. Recklessly allowing my hair to fall past my collar.
3. Sporting opaque hose instead of silky sheer during foul weather.
4. Wearing two silver rings on the same hand and on different fingers.
5. Using a nonapproved piece of luggage when my roll-aboard suffered a severe blowout during a three-day trip. (Apparently I was supposed to have a backup bag on hand. Never mind that this went against the strict two-bag policy that even we were forced to adhere to.)
6. Not wearing the blazer during boarding. (Uh, let’s not even mention that it was 105 degrees outside and 110 in the cabin, as the Atlas suits, intent on saving money, forbade us from using the air conditioner.)
7. Chewing gum in uniform.
8. Using a “designer” lanyard to hold my ID rather than the Atlas-issued chain/clip one. (Even though it wasn’t really designer, but a Burberry plaid knockoff.)
He’d even gone so far as to drag me over to the mirror early one morning, directing me to gaze at my reflection while contemplating the sign overhead that read, “Image is everything” and “This is what your customers see.”
Well, if that’s what they were forced to look at, then I was truly sorry for them. Because not only was there an overworked and underpaid flight attendant with early-morning eye bags, an ugly uniform, and frizzy hair fighting to break free from its company approved
French twist, but next to her stood a vertically challenged imbecile with a bad attitude, overplucked brows, sketchy man makeup, and a textbook case of Napoleon complex the likes of which I’d never seen.