Coffee, Tea or Me?

by Donald Bain

  “Damn, damn, damn,” Rachel muttered loudly as she settled in the far corner of the backseat and surveyed her light blue skirt, now blotched dark blue. “Damn!”

  “You goils ain’t gonna be flyin’ today.” Our cabdriver was Maxwell Solomon, Hack Number 30756M.

  We looked at each other briefly before crowing back at Mr. Solomon in unison. “Why?”

  “You kiddin’? You wouldn’t get me up in no airplane in this here weather. No, sir. Not me.”

  We told him we’d checked with operations before leaving and they’d told us flights were departing, although incoming flights had been canceled. We told him a big airliner never takes off unless everything is very safe and sure. We told him the weather was only local, probably, and that once you’re off the ground, you fly far above the rain and wind.

  “No, sir, not me. Anybody flies in this here weather is nuts or sick or somethin’.”

  We were sick. It started right then and there and never left us for the rest of the day. Mr. Solomon was right. Mr. Solomon also asked us for our telephone numbers because he’d kind of heard stewardesses were a real fun-loving bunch of girls and he knew a great place in Coney Island where there was this sensational rock-and-roll band.

  “Whatta ya say, goils? I’ll take the botha ya, only later, like, well, you know, like later onea ya can split and go home.”

  The natural inclination to tell him off was tempered by memories of recent lectures at stewardess school where we were told (a) everyone is a potential customer of the airline and (b) courtesy always pays off in sound public relations and future revenue.

  “Drop dead,” Rachel said with a smile.

  “OK, goils, just askin’. Can’t blame a guy for that. Right? Especially not witha coupla stews.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth, winked at us in the rearview mirror, and drove a little faster. The large overhead sign indicating one mile to Kennedy Airport passed at 12:01 P.M. We were already late reporting in for our first flight.

  We paid the big tab, tipped small, smiled graciously, and entered our terminal at JFK through the pneumatic doors. Inside the lobby was a mob of people milling around the ticket counters. Valiantly dragging our blue suitcases and handbags, we stumbled through the door leading to Flight Operations. There were as many people in ops as in the lobby. Or maybe it just seemed as many because of the solid wall of blue uniforms. We dropped our luggage and were heading for the sign-in book at Crew Scheduling when a female voice stopped us in our tracks.

  “Rachel! Trudy!” There was no doubt about that voice. We turned to see the flashing white teeth, flaming red hair, and remarkable upthrust bosom of Betty O’Riley, better known to her class-mates at stewardess college as Betty Big Boobs. Betty bounced and jiggled over to us, her smile as programmed and precise as a roadway neon sign. Suddenly she frowned and pouted her lips. “Y’all look so scared and lost, honeys.”

  Then she smiled. “Nothin’ to be scared of.”

  Then she frowned. “They probably canceled your flight, anyway.”

  Then she smiled bigger than ever, “Mine’s been canceled ’causa weather in Atlanta.” She kept smiling this time and whispered, looking around to ensure privacy, “But ah’m goin’ to dinner with the captain. He models for cigarette commercials, sometimes.”

  She giggled furiously, the bosom in violent action. “Ah’m gonna love it to death here.”

  She turned and hurried through the crowd toward a gray-templed pilot lounging against the wall, a cigarette professionally held between his lips. Her bosom made contact with at least a dozen male elbows on her short trip through the crowd, and her fanny, sufficiently oversize to counterbalance the excess weight in front, waved like a storm-tossed rudder.

  We signed in hurriedly with the stewardess dispatcher, a thin, quiet fellow with large glasses and eyes that never made contact with ours. He looked down at our trip number and said, “You girls are awful late. Better hurry down to the gate.”

  We took his advice and pushed back through the crowd toward the door. Betty O’Riley was leaning against the wall with her captain, both of them right off the back cover of Life. I don’t think he ever smoked that cigarette. He remained in perpetual rehearsal should J. Walter Thompson call. Betty, smiling at us, sort of flexed everything at once. We just passed by.

  Our flight was to depart from Gate 16. We hurried under the signs directing passengers to the higher numbered gates. Suddenly, Rachel stopped, beat her fists against her thighs: “Damn, damn, damn.” In our rush we’d left our luggage and purses back at operations. We spun around in formation and ran back up the endless corridor, people turning to watch as we passed. We grabbed the forgotten items, received another automatic smile from Betty, noticed her captain was now trying it with a cigar, and ran back through the door and up the corridor. It was now 12:30, just a half hour to flight time. We were twenty minutes late.

  The departure lounge at Gate 16 was from a De Mille epic. Two ramp agents stood firmly behind their fortress of the ticket counter, their faces mirroring their determination to keep things in order according to the book. (Why would all these people want to go to Cleveland, we wondered?)

  We walked up to the ramp agents and announced we were the stewardesses for the flight. One of them never bothered to look at us. The other, a chubby redhead with acne, just glanced, curled his lip, and went back to checking in the passengers. It was obvious we weren’t supposed to check in with the ramp agents. We remembered our keys, one of which was supposed to fit the steel door leading from the gate’s lounge area to the aircraft’s parking ramp. Unfortunately, the confusion at the terminal that day necessitated parking the 727 at a gate without the enclosed jetway tunnel. After some fumbling, we opened the door and went down the stairway. We reached the door at the bottom, threw it open, and were greeted with a blast of blowing rain.

  “Damn, damn, damn.”

  We ran across the parking ramp and tripped up the portable stairs to the front entrance of the airplane. At the top, safely inside from the rain, stood another stewardess. She partially blocked the entrance, and we had to push past her to reach the dry cabin. We splattered her pretty good.

  “Sorry about that,” I said with a friendly smile.

  “Where have you been?” she countered.

  Both of us began chattering about our cabdriver, the rain, the baggage in operations, and any other reason we could think of.

  She cut us off in mid-sentence. “Forget it. Just do a fast job of picking up this cruddy bird. The passengers will be boarding any minute.”

  We followed her orders without hesitation. After a minute of picking up cigarette butts, paper cups, magazines, and Kleenex, I made the mistake of asking, “How come the cabin cleaners didn’t work on this airplane?”

  I was glad I asked. It brought forth from our senior stew an actual chuckle.

  “Boy, oh boy, oh boy,” she said with a resigned shaking of her head. “Cabin cleaners? They have worked on this bird. Don’t you know you’ve always got to clean up after the cleaners? What they don’t teach you in school these days.”

  We were taught about the cabin cleaners in stewardess school. We were taught that this dedicated group of men worked hard to provide our passengers with the cleanest, neatest, and most pleasant airplanes anywhere in the free world.

  “Buncha pigs,” Rachel muttered under her breath as she retracted a crushed cigarette package from between the cushions of a seat. “Damn pigs.”

  And then the passengers started coming aboard. First came two ramp agents carrying a wheelchair between them. In the chair was a little old lady covered with a large sheet of plastic to keep the rain off. When the chair was safely inside, we removed the plastic and helped her into a seat by the window.

  “I don’t want to be by the window,” she said.

  We moved her to the aisle seat.

  “I think it would be safer in the front,” she said.

  We moved her to the front.

  “Is this a really safe plac
e?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good.” Always treat a first-class passenger right.

  Next was a disheveled young mother with four children, the youngest about one and the oldest about four. She carried two of the kids, a ramp agent carried another, and the eldest ran ahead of everyone and jumped into a seat by the window in the first-class section.

  “Billy,” the mother bellowed. “Back here.”

  He didn’t move. She deposited her two human packages in seats, ran past the ramp agent who valiantly tried to ward off his parcel’s attempts to tear off his glasses, and grabbed Billy by the collar.

  “I told you to be good. I told you you wouldn’t have ice cream, candy, toys, soda, cake, or cookies for a year if you weren’t good on the airplane.”

  He started crying and I felt a strange face and voice, mine, might help. I leaned over the seat and said, “I’ll give you a pilot’s ring if you do what your mother says.”

  “He’ll do what he’s told without bribes,” his mother snapped. She pulled harder on his collar and he finally capitulated, crying all the way back to the others. The ramp agent had placed his ward down in a seat, but she was now in the process of getting up for a romp down the aisle.

  Rachel smiled at the mother. “They sure are cute kids,” she said with a surprising note of sincerity. “I love kids.”

  The pre-boards in place, the rest of the passengers started filing on, each soaked despite the big black umbrellas supplied by the agents at the terminal door. Our senior stew was up front in the cockpit with the crew, and we stationed ourselves near the door to greet the passengers as they came on board. We asked to see each ticket until some man yelled from the steps that he was getting soaked. Obviously, we ought to let them come aboard before checking tickets. We finally just waved them through with a smile and cheery “hello.”

  We also threw in little quips like, “Welcome aboard.” “Glad you could come today.” “Some weather, huh?” “My, you’re wet.” “Watch out for that umbrella.” “Please close the umbrella before entering the aircraft.” “Aaaaaaaaaaah,” as an umbrella spoke gouged Rachel’s arm.

  One young man, much too collegiate for his thirty years, came through the door with a large package under his arm. He handed it to me.

  “Here, tiger, take good care of it, will you. I’ve got a lot of money tied up in that piece of hi-fi equipment. You should see my rig . . . tiger.”

  The next man, shaking the water from his head like a dog in from the rain, asked, “Is this the Rochester flight?”

  “No, sir, it isn’t. This goes to Cleveland.”

  “Cleveland?” he shouted with rage. “Cleveland? I don’t want to go to Cleveland. I’m going to Rochester!’

  “We’re sorry, sir, but this is the Cleveland flight.”

  “Preposterous. I want to talk to your manager. Where is he?”

  “Sir, please stand aside until all the passengers have boarded. We’ll get you back to your Rochester flight.”

  “I’ll raise hell with someone about this. You just see.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Everyone finally seated, and our Rochester-bound man back in the terminal demanding the president, we closed the heavy door, looked at each other, and walked to the front of the tourist section, the section always awarded the junior stewardesses. Our senior stew came out of the cockpit and headed to the buffet situated between the tourist and first-class sections. We followed her into the tiny galley. This seemed to annoy her. She pulled the drape across and glared at us.

  “Get out there and check for heavy items in the overhead racks. And check their seat belts. Make sure no one is smoking. Ask that mother if you can do something for her. And get everyone’s name on the chart. And please get off my back. I’m not going to take your hand every step of the way.”

  We twisted around to leave the cramped quarters when she asked, “Which one of you got the razor?”

  “The what?”

  “The razor. The razor for the passengers to use. You’re supposed to get it from operations before coming aboard. I suppose you forgot to sign the briefing book, too. And to get the en route weather. What the deuce have I ended up with today? Six years of flying for this cruddy airline and I end up with inefficient virgins. You’d better get with it, girls. Or you won’t be with it . . . much longer.”

  We went out in the aisle and surveyed the long columns of faces. We walked to the rear section and looked again.

  “I’ve never seen so many occiputs1 in my life,” I whispered to Rachel.

  The three jet engines in the tail started whining as we went back up the aisle. We looked in everyone’s lap to check seat belts but some passengers had coats in their laps and we couldn’t be sure. It just would have been too personal to peek.

  One man stopped Rachel and admitted his seat belt wasn’t fastened.

  “I don’t know how,” he confessed.

  Rachel leaped at the chance to be of service.

  “Let me show you,” she said. She reached down under his legs to find the ends, found them, and started fumbling with the mechanism. He loved it. She began to realize that any idiot could fasten a seat belt.

  She completed the job. “How’s that, sir?”

  “Beautiful,” he answered. “Thank you, Miss . . . ?”

  “Don’t take that belt off, sir. Have a pleasant flight.”

  I found an attaché case in the overhead rack.

  “Sorry, sir, but you’ll have to take that briefcase down,” I said in a friendly tone.

  “Where will I put it?” he grunted.

  “Under your seat, sir.”

  “It won’t fit.”

  “Oh, I think it will, sir. You just try.”

  “All right. Get it for me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It was heavy. I stretched on my toes to reach it and managed to slide it over the lip of the rack. It was soaking wet, and a tiny rivulet of water ran onto the head of a soldier sitting directly beneath.

  “Sorry, sir,” I told the soldier. He enjoyed being called “sir.”

  “Careful of that,” the owner of the briefcase barked.

  “Yes, sir.” The stretching pulled my blouse, supposedly pull-proof, from my skirt, and my bare belly stood an inch from the soldier’s nose. He actually touched his nose to my belly button. It tickled.

  I managed to bring the case down to safety just as the plane began pulling away from the ramp. I lost my balance and dropped the heavy case into its owner’s lap.

  “You idiot,” he snarled. I apologized.

  I apologized to the soldier, too, but he didn’t seem to want one.

  Rachel was beginning to take names on the other side of the cabin, and I took the second sheet and started on my side. The first man I went to sat rigidly in his seat, his knuckles white as he grasped the sides of the chair.

  “Your name and destination, sir?”

  He panicked. “I thought we were going to Cleveland.”

  “That’s right, sir. Only Cleveland. Just give me your name, sir.”

  “Carlson. C-a-r-l-s-o-n.”

  “Thank you, sir.” I went on to the next.

  “Your name, sir.”

  He quickly slurred off what sounded like Icklensale.

  “Would you spell that for me, sir?”

  He didn’t like being asked to spell his name. He just said it again, only faster.

  “I-c-k-l-e-n-sale?” I tried.

  “E-k-l-o-s-h-a-l-e,” he corrected with a deep sigh.

  “Thank you, sir.” His look was mean.

  We were halfway through taking names when the captain’s voice came over the PA system.

  “Ah, ladies and gentlemen, ah welcome aboard Flight 81 to Cleveland. Ah, due to the, ah, bad weather conditions that I guess you’ve all noticed (chuckle), ah, we’re going to have to, ah, wait a little while in line for takeoff position . . . ah . . .”

  He seemed to want to say something else but didn’t . . . o
r couldn’t. The senior stew took up where he left off from her microphone in the buffet area.

  “Welcome aboard Flight 81 to Cleveland, Ohio. My name is Miss Lewis. Working with me for your comfort today will be Miss Baker and Miss Jones. We’re sorry for the delay in leaving Kennedy today, but weather conditions have canceled incoming flights and slowed up the departure of other flights. Once off the ground, we expect our flying time to Cleveland to be one hour and eight minutes. We’ll be cruising at an altitude of 26,000 feet. If there’s anything we can do to make your flight more comfortable, please don’t hesitate to call on us. Thank you, and have a pleasant flight.”

  We went through the oxygen mask routine and resumed taking names. I was almost finished with my side of the airplane when I felt a tap on my rear end. I turned to see Mr. George Kelman, whose name I had just taken. He was an attractive young man with neat brown hair, an expensive suit, and an outgoing smile. He beckoned me with his index finger. I leaned closer as he started to talk, the whine of the jet engines making hearing difficult. All that airline advertising talk about their super-quiet jets ran through my mind.

  “Yes, sir?”

  He leaned closer, too. “This is your first flight, isn’t it?”

  How did he know?

  “Yes sir, it is.”

  “I know. What I wanted to ask you was whether you’d have dinner with me in Cleveland tonight?”

  I was stunned. We’d been told many times, of course, that many men would ask us for dates. In fact, we hoped many men would ask us for dates. Why else be a flying waitress? But so soon? With the rain and all? I thought quickly, trying to remember what the manual said about dating passengers. It didn’t say anything that I could remember.

  “Sorry sir, but we’re not allowed to accept dates with male passengers.”

  “How about females?” He laughed easily and with warmth.

  I giggled. “Oh sir, that’s silly.”

  “Seriously, how about it?”

  “I can’t. We don’t even stay in Cleveland overnight. Well, unless we’re weathered in there.”