The Flight Attendant

by Chris Bohjalian

  “Do you know what time Miranda said good night? Perhaps they could find her on the security camera.”

  “Eleven? Eleven thirty? Midnight?”

  “That helps. So you would have left when?”

  Cassie shrugged. “Twelve thirty? One? An hour later, I guess.”

  “Okay.”

  “But they didn’t see me at that time—or, at least, they didn’t publish any photos from the lobby security cameras of me leaving in the middle of the night. That would suggest I didn’t leave until the morning.”

  “Or, at least, that you didn’t get as far as the lobby.”

  “Yes,” she said, and an idea, fuzzy and inchoate, began to form. She tried to gather it in, to mold it: to imagine where else she might have gone. She focused on the corridor. She saw so many hotel corridors, but few as elegant as the one at the Royal Phoenician. There were the long, endless hallways, which was typical, but the Oriental carpets had been beautiful and the elevator doors—when you got there—were black and gold; there had been the sconces along the walls, at once Aladdin-like and futuristic, as if the genie had instead been a Martian, and there had been the exquisite guest-room doors with their Moorish cross-hatching bordering the panels. There were the divans with the ornate blue and gold upholstery by the elevators and by the windows and in the nooks at the corners. She had stood beside one when she first exited onto Alex’s floor with the key he had given her at dinner, enjoying the view out the window on the way to his room. No, it had been beyond his room. She had walked to the end of the corridor to see the city from there.

  “Sometimes I make a wrong turn when I leave a hotel room—even when I’m sober,” Cassie said. “I am just in so many hotels. We all make that mistake. Pilots, flight attendants. The elevator was to the left and around the corner in Berlin, for instance, but then it’s to the right and straight ahead in Istanbul. It happens all the time.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know. This might sound pathetic, but I have a vague memory of panicking in the hallway after leaving his room.”

  “Because someone was after you?” Ani asked, clearly a little stunned.

  “No. Because I was lost. It was the middle of the night and I couldn’t find the elevator and I couldn’t find his room. I couldn’t even remember his room number. I mean, now five-eleven is branded into my brain. But it wasn’t then. Think of all the room numbers I see every month of my life. Anyway, I didn’t know what to do. I think…”

  “You think what?”

  “I think I collapsed on a divan in one of the corners of the corridor. I think it was by a window that overlooked the city.”

  “This was after Miranda left.”

  “Yes. This was after she left. And so there I was alone in the corridor. But I was so drunk—so very, very drunk. Maybe I got lost and gave up. Maybe I just sat down on the thing and tried to figure out what the hell to do. And maybe there I passed out. In other words, I never made it to the lobby. I got lost in the hallway and crashed on the couch for, I don’t know, half an hour. An hour. Maybe less, maybe more. But I woke up before anyone from hotel security or room service happened down the hallway.”

  “And then you found your way back to his room?”

  “That’s right. I had a key. Maybe the catnap helped me to focus. Or sobered me up just enough that his room number came back to me.”

  “You wouldn’t have to have been gone all that long. I’m guessing even ten minutes would have been enough for someone else to enter his room and kill him.”

  “Oh, it’s very possible I was gone at least ten minutes. Those hotel couches and divans looked really, really comfortable.”

  “And when you return the room is dark?”

  “At least the bedroom is,” she answered. “Maybe there was a light on in the living room.” She had to believe that even she wasn’t ever so drunk that she would knowingly crawl into bed with a corpse. Still, the reality of what she was suggesting was beginning to become clear.

  “God, Cassie. What if Alex was killed at one or two in the morning? That’s why you take the Fifth.” Ani’s frustration was evident as she paused to take another long, last swallow of her drink. “I wish I knew more about how precise an autopsy could be at pinpointing a time of death.”

  “Aren’t you glad I told them about Miranda? At least now they have a suspect other than me.”

  The lawyer stared at her but said nothing.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Cassie said. “I am. I’m just built…weird.”

  “Irresponsible would be a more precise word. So would insane.”

  “Will we know what happens before I fly to Rome?”

  Ani put both of her hands on Cassie’s knees. “You are assuming that the next time I see you isn’t after you’ve been arrested—at, let’s see, a bail hearing. You are assuming that you haven’t turned over your passport by then. You are assuming you still have a job.”

  Cassie picked up her margarita and ran her tongue along the very last of the salt on the rim. The glass was otherwise empty. “I’m taking my niece and nephew to the zoo tomorrow,” she said, her voice a little numb in her ears. It was as if she had headphones on. Then: “Will I be fired?”

  “The zoo. Your job. Really? Are you hearing a word I’m saying?”

  She nodded. “I am.”

  “The union will have your back. My uncle will have your back. Call him tonight and let him know what’s going on. I’ll call him, too. I rather doubt the airline can fire you. Presumption of innocence and all. But at some point they may put you on a leave of absence. There is a whole branch of law that studies precisely when you can fire an employee for off-duty conduct—and when you can’t.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m not sure you do. I’m really not.”

  “You know what’s the damnedest thing?”

  “Right now? After you decided to just drop by Unisphere yesterday afternoon? After your performance with the FBI today? That’s one hell of a high bar. I don’t know. Tell me.”

  “It’s this, that expression you just used. Presumption of innocence. Who knows what I’m capable of when I’m that blotto and the memory’s collateral damage. But I really do know in my heart that I didn’t kill Alex. I do stupid things when I’m drunk and I do irresponsible things, but I don’t do…that. I don’t cut people’s throats. And so if the hammer comes down hard on me this time, it will be a kind of awful irony.”

  “Cassie?”

  She waited.

  The waves of Ani’s anger were receding now, and in their wake was only sadness and worry. “I promise you: you’ve done nothing so bad that you deserve what might be coming.”

  * * *

  « «

  Cassandra, Troy-born daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba, knew the future, and no one believed her. At least most of the time that was what occurred. Apollo gave her the great gift of prophecy because he was confident that she was going to sleep with him; when, in the end, she refused, the god spat in her mouth, leaving behind the curse that no one would ever believe a word that she said. And so she lived with frustration and dread.

  Cassandra, Kentucky-born daughter of no one who would ever be construed for royalty, pondered the disbelief that she, too, left in her wake and the apprehension and fear that now marked her every step. The reality of what she had done (and what she had not done) had become incontestable fact in her mind, but she rather doubted the FBI ever would believe it if she were to volunteer the chronological truth: she said good night to Alex Sokolov and left the palatial digs that existed behind the door to room 511 sometime around twelve thirty or one in the morning and then wandered the hallways in search of an elevator. He was most definitely still alive at that point. But she never made it to the elevator. She just never found it. And so she collapsed, an appalling, drunken, boneless marionette on an ornate Middle
Eastern divan, and dozed. When she awoke, she still didn’t reach the elevator, either because once more she couldn’t find it or because she hadn’t even remembered that it had been her original destination. Either way, she returned to Alex’s suite, stripped naked, and climbed into his bed…utterly oblivious to the fact that he was dead. Or almost dead.

  No, in the morning she had seen his neck. He had bled out quickly. He was dead.

  And she had slept the rest of the night beside his corpse. In the same sheets. Her head on the pillow beside his pillow. His blood clinging to her hair.

  This was a spectacular, revolting fail even by her standards for indignity and mortification. She guessed if she weren’t already such a lush, the revelation would have driven her to drink.

  * * *

  « «

  And yet, for whatever the reason, despite her performance at the FBI office that afternoon, the authorities did not come for her that night. She and Ani shared a cab uptown, Cassie exiting on Twenty-Seventh Street, and she was back in her apartment by a quarter to six. She called Derek Mayes, Ani’s uncle at the union, and he actually seemed considerably less shocked by the story she shared—beginning with the body in the bed and building to her confessing to the FBI that she had spent the night with Sokolov—than she might have expected. She attributed this more to his rather low expectations of her as a person than to his experience with flight attendants generally. He assured her that he and Ani would talk and together they would look out for her. He was comforting. He reminded her that she hadn’t definitely killed anyone, though he did add, a dig that was more ominous than funny, “at least that’s your story this week.”

  And then, buoyed by Mayes’s generally can-do attitude and the Washington State Riesling she opened and poured over ice, she called Buckley. Didn’t even text him. The actor suggested they meet for a drink later that evening, after he’d seen a friend’s show at the Barrow, and since it was rare for her ever to say no to a drink, she said yes. They picked a bar in the West Village this time, one near the theater.

  Then she collapsed onto her couch and stared up at the Empire State Building. She pulled the paperback Tolstoy from her purse and sipped her wine and read, hoping to lose herself in the narrative and escape the reality of her life—and yet somehow also to glean insights into Alex Sokolov’s. It was an impossible balancing act: if she was reading to learn more about the man who had died on the sheets on which they’d made love, then certainly she wasn’t reading to take her mind off the utter precariousness of her future. Before returning to “Happy Ever After,” she paused on one particular paragraph about Ivan Ilyich that had stayed with her: “He had an affair with a lady who threw herself at the elegant young lawyer.” But the relationship meant nothing to him, “it all came under the heading of the French saying, ‘Il faut que la jeunesse se passé.’ ” Translation? Youth must have its fling.

  It made her feel old. She reminded herself that she had viewed Alex as but a harmless romp, too.

  Eventually she phoned her sister, who was already at her hotel in Westchester, and they picked a time to meet tomorrow morning at the zoo. They’d rendezvous at ten thirty at the fountain near the sea lions, just inside the Fordham Road entrance. She was grateful that she wasn’t going to be alone with the kids. She was actually relieved. It would be such a disaster if she were alone with her nephew and niece when she was arrested.

  * * *

  « «

  Buckley took her hand as they walked from the bar to his apartment. It was only a few minutes after midnight, and so the West Village was still vital and vibrant, the narrow streets crowded, the bistro tables along the sidewalks full.

  “You were checking your phone a lot,” he murmured. She had told him nothing, nothing at all. Either he hadn’t seen the photos in the newspapers that day or he had looked at them so quickly that the fact they were her hadn’t registered.

  “I haven’t been reserve in years, but the airline asked me to be available,” she lied.

  “Didn’t you say that you’re flying to Rome on Sunday night?”

  “They might want me for another route tomorrow instead.” The air was cool, and she wished that she had brought more than a sleeveless blouse. She felt the hair on her arms rising.

  “Would you still get to go to the zoo tomorrow? I’d hate to see you miss the sea lions—and your family.”

  “We’ll see,” she said, though in her mind, she imagined herself replying, If I’m not at the zoo, it’s probably because (best case) I’m meeting my lawyer and getting my cheek swabbed for DNA. Worst case? I’m being arrested for murder. But she didn’t say any of that. “Tell me more about your audition,” she said. “Tell me more about the pilot. You said it’s a drama.”

  “Sort of. Based on the script, there’s also a lot of very dark humor. It’s about a Staten Island drug family. Apparently there will be a lot of scenes on the ferry and a lot of nighttime shooting—and shooting during the shooting. It looks crazy violent. I’d be one of the brothers. Think Edmund in King Lear. I’d be the younger brother and a bastard—literally and figuratively.”

  “Do you think you have a chance?”

  “Yes, but only because it’s a small role. It’s a recurring character, but not one of the four major leads.” He pointed at a squirrel clinging to a second-story screen window and peering into the apartment. “Peeping Tom,” he murmured.

  Looking up at the squirrel from the sidewalk was a huge orange tomcat, his fur so thick that Cassie could see only a bit of the collar. His tail was thwapping back and forth, sweeping the concrete. She thought about her cats at the shelter—and so many of them were her cats in her mind, at least until they found permanent homes—and wondered what they would do without her. Oh, there were other volunteers, but she didn’t know how diligent they were about sneaking in catnip and treats and toys, and brushing the poor things for hours and hours on end.

  “When will you know?” she asked.

  “If I got the part? Next week, I guess.” Then: “There’s lots of great sibling stuff in the script, too. That’s the kind of material that fuels my jets. My relationship with my brother and sister in real life is pretty complicated.”

  “Yeah. Mine, too.”

  “Are you and your sister close?”

  “Not really.”

  “You wouldn’t be friends if you weren’t related?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Even after all you two endured together growing up?”

  “Even after that.”

  He asked her what her sister did for a living and then what her brother-in-law did. He found her brother-in-law’s work far more interesting. Everyone did. No one asked follow-up questions when you said your sister was an accountant. But an engineer at an army base that disposed of poison gas and nerve agents? People were fascinated—especially men.

  “I’ll bet he doesn’t talk about it much,” he said.

  “Because it’s all so classified?” she asked.

  “Because it’s all just so dark. Chemical weapons? That’s crazy. We’ve all seen the pictures from Syria.”

  “I think he’s in charge of getting rid of them. Or one of the people in charge, anyway. But, yes, it is classified.”

  “And not exactly Thanksgiving dinner table conversation, in any case.”

  “Nope.” Then, feeling uncharacteristically defensive of her family, she continued. “He’s really not a dark person at all. He’s pretty chill. He’s very sweet. I get along better with him than I do with Rosemary.”

  “Well, you and Rosemary have a lot more history together.”

  “Yeah, we do. And most of it’s kind of dark,” she said. She asked him to tell her about his family, and he laughed a little bit, but then he started to talk, making jokes about Westport and WASPs and how his family’s Thanksgivings would have rivaled Martha Stewart’s when it came to d
etail and production values.

  She leaned into him as he regaled her with tales of the crested blazers he would wear as a boy and his mother’s impeccable Christmas trees. She was tipsy, and she liked herself best when she was tipsy. She thought she was prettiest when she was just on the cusp of drunk. She’d spied herself (or studied herself) in enough mirrors—at parties, on airplanes, in her compact—to know that her eyes looked a little more wanton and her lips a little more inviting when she was just starting to leave the sadness of sobriety behind. When she was working, when she’d snuck a drink or two on the flight, she knew that men watched her differently, their own eyes more rapacious. She could feel their gaze on her hips, her ass, as she worked her way up and down the thin aisle. And so she stopped walking, which led Buckley to stop. She had to take her mind off this kind man’s childhood and the shelter cats and the travel and the liquor—all that she might be about to lose.

  She felt no one was following her now. No one.

  He stared at her for a long moment, regarding her.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s you,” she said. “It’s a starry night in the city.” Then, for reasons that she didn’t precisely understand, she brought his fingers to her lips and kissed them.

  * * *

  « «

  And in the morning, it seemed, they still weren’t looking for her. Or, at least, they hadn’t come for her. The only text she had was a brief one from Ani asking if she had heard anything. She texted back that she hadn’t, and watched Buckley sleep for another moment more. It crossed her mind that she might never see him again after today. She just didn’t know what awaited her in the coming hours. The coming days. The indignities. The accusations. The public and private pain.

  He was still asleep when she climbed from beneath the sheet and sat for a moment on the side of his bed. The shade was down, but she could tell it was sunny outside. It would be a delightful day at the zoo.