Emergency Exit (The Irish Lottery Series Book 6)

by Gerald Hansen

  Gretchen had initially resisted this desperate free-for-all, had been scandalized by it, couldn't in good Christian conscience condone it, let alone join in it—the poor passengers! Nickeled and dimed from every angle as they sat in their tiny, uncushioned seats with negligible pitch and stared glumly at the grimy, tattered safety cards in the pockets before them as their in-flight entertainment. Personal electronics were forbidden, but for $25, they could get headphones to watch the movies; there weren't many takers. But as her weeks of employment turned into months, and her finances were increasingly stretched to breaking point, in no small part due to her roommates, Mags and Shirl, losing their jobs as strippers, she had joined in the melee, meekly, tentatively at first, but with an increasing hunger for that extra ten percent commission, which, when she added it all up, might be the difference between the electricity bill being paid or not.

  Now she was almost a pro, and it gave her sleepless nights. Two years in, she still felt compassion for most of these passengers, these travelers-on-a-budget. They wanted to see the world. Wasn't that why she herself had joined Nickel and Dime? Didn't she want to do the same thing? Though what splendors could be found and Instagrammed from Litzinger, OH, or Waterloo, IA or Tucumcari, AZ, Nickel and Dime's 'Cincinatti,' 'DesMoines' and 'Albuquerque' destinations, and their flight path today, she wasn't sure. She especially felt for those going to 'DesMoines' today, as Waterloo was 137 miles away! Though, when she took off her rose-colored spectacles, by the looks and behavior of some if not many she had had the misfortune to smile down at in the rows, vacation spots, hot or not, weren't on their minds. More likely, fleeing jurisdictions, seeking new territories to deal drugs, or escaping sex offenders' lists.

  Passenger 12C had plumped for the breakfast soup, and though the photo in the menu showed it was two meaty balls lodged in a field of yellow slime, Gretchen couldn't stop her stomach from rumbling. And no wonder. At the beginning of the flight, after she had come back from vetting the passengers in the emergency row, she had gone to her jump seat and seen that someone had stolen her Sausage McMuffin from it. She suspected Dennis, the bane of her existence at Nickel and Dime, and the head of the crew almost every flight she took. But it wasn't outside the realm of possibility that a regular rider, knowing how insidious N&D's policies were, what contempt it had for its customers, had taken it just out of spite. And hunger. And financial necessity.

  There were few people in the world Gretchen disliked, but everything about Dennis Ishmahim irked her. He was a decade older than the rest of the crews, nearing 40, and he took it out on the world in general and the crews, her, in particular: his steadfastly insolent manner, his constant barking at her and whatever other crew members had the displeasure of working under him, that same barking at the beleaguered passengers, the smirk of his fat lips when he passed the poor, in every sense, passengers who had scrimped and saved for who knew how long for one of the bargain-bin priced steats, the one-third-filled glasses of wine he handed through the rows with an air of bestowing a chalice of myrrh upon them, and the arch of those over-plucked eyebrows that warned against complaints about the measure, his knobbly, misshapen bald head, his scruffy, too long beard that looked vaguely Al-Qaida like, and didn't instill confidence on a plane filled with citizens of a nation terrified of terrorists.

  That beard always had Gretchen wondering if David were part of the 70 percent of Nickel and Dime flight attendants who were still awaiting a full security clearance, who were on a temporary security pass, mainly because to complete the background and criminal checks was expensive. She suspected that a security check would out Dennis, like many of her co-workers, as an ex-con, a drug addict or worse.

  Gretchen felt her knees buckle slightly under her. She would have to eat something. What would the airline think if she passed out atop the halon fire extinguisher in flight? How quickly would they shove a pink slip into her palm and kick her out? She, of course, was given no staff discount for food eaten during a shift, and most days the shifts were 10 hours long. So she would have to break down and help fill the airline's coffers. Invest in a celery and parsley sandwich. That was the cheapest item on the menu. $15. Slipping one into her pocket wouldn't be possible, due to N&D's stringent independent stocktaking procedures, and the security cameras they had installed in the galleys of their entire fleet. And her own Catholic upbringing. What would her mother, Ursula, think? Gretchen had always suspected how the passengers felt, shelling out so much for crap, but now she was about to find out first hand. The knowledge that taste buds were numbed at high altitudes gave her some comfort.

  Oh, Dennis! Damn you and your greedy mouth!

  She wished he would turn around so she could inspect his beard for sausage crumbs and have it out with him then and there. But then...she might feel better, but she'd still be hungry.

  What on earth is he doing at that coffee machine, anyway? And how long is this oven going to take to heat this ridiculous soup up? No! Think nice thoughts, Gretchen. Think of Maximus.

  And, though her face was wan with hunger, inwardly she smiled. Maximus. What would she do without him? They had been going out for six months now, and she couldn't conceive of life without him. How she had existed without his humor, his charm, his excitement about everything, she didn't know. His love of life was infectious. He had woken her up. Life before him, as breathless and exciting as she had thought it had been, paled, stretched back like the path of a forest she had been happily strolling down, ignorant in her bliss. But when she looked back on that path now, the forest had actually been cloaked in darkness and brambled branches and terrifying creatures scurrying just beyond her sight.

  Her and Maximus's dates rolled past in her mind like a film: the swing dancing, the planetarium, the solve-the-murder-in-the-locked room thing, the pretzel tasting, the paragliding over the Statue of Liberty. And, just as thrilling as all these dates had been, more thrilling was the fact that he had paid for every one! She had always wanted to be a contestant on the Amazing Race, waking up in an exciting new land, having to do things you never dared to do, but now there was no need. Life with Maximus was the Amazing Race!

  Images of his happy face popped into her head, grinning, mugging, singing, eyes bright with excitement. True, that annoying soul patch of his was now a goatee, but she chose to overlook it. And that snazzy suit that had so impressed her must have belonged to a friend, because she never saw it again. His own dress sense was proving particularly odd, and some dates she had to breathe through her mouth, so filthy were his jeans. And it was strange that, although he had met Mags and Shirl and others Gretchen considered friends, she had met none of his. And as friendly as he was, he surely must have friends. Mustn't he?

  She reached into the tiny upper pocket of her mini-skirt. She felt her key chain. It gave her strength. It calmed her down. She had taken the fortune cookie fortune, the one that said IT IS RIGHT, to a little boutique in the West Village owned by her friend Roz, had it encased in heart-shaped acrylic resin. Now it hung from the key chain. Roz had given her a discount on it. Gretchen liked to feel Maximus close to her, especially at 30,000 feet. It was corny, but that's how he made her feel: happy to be corny. Proud, even. Goatee notwithstanding, it was right.

  Just as the oven timer pinged, Dennis spun around like a finalist on Dancing With The Stars. The tray of breakfast soup in her hand, Gretchen ran her eyes up and down his beard. Yes! There was a string of yellow cheese hanging from one of his beard stalactites on the left.

  “Dennis! I can't believe it! You stole my—”

  They were thrown together, the carts screeching, spoons and forks flying, as the plane careened to the right. Yellow slop erupted from the foil in Gretchen's hand and spurted through the air. The throbbing of the engines was drowned by a tsunami of shrieking from every row of the cabin beyond.

  “Help! Help!”

  “We're going to die!”

  “Lord Jesus, save us!”

  Gretchen threw down the empty tray and ran from th
e galley. She was right on Dennis' heels. She cracked her hip on the drinks cart and sent it slamming into the lavatory door. She yowled in pain, clawed at the curtain which hid them from the passengers, missed and landed head first on the cheap carpeting, cracking her nose on the floor. She hauled herself up, floundered as pain shot through her hip and the cartilage of her nose, then staggered past the fluttering curtain into the screaming masses.

  She didn't know where to look first. Every oxygen mask had deployed, They were bouncing from the ceiling, fingers snatching at them, fists punching for two of them, hands yanking on them, snapping their hoses. Heads and chests lunged over seats, bodies spilled out into the aisle, scuffling and clawing their way towards the front. The plane was back upright, but wails and yells of terror continued to ring out, peppered by barks of anger from those who wanted two oxygen masks. Dennis and the other two crew members were yelling out, their hands straight up in a calming gesture, as they had been trained. Not well, but trained.

  “Calm down!”

  “We're fine!”

  “Stop that fighting!”

  They were answered, “We're suffocating!” “We're going to crash!” “Gimme my goddamn mask!”

  And suddenly, those in the front rows were pointing at Gretchen, and shrieking in terror as if she were Kim Kardashian. She ran her hand across her face and felt something slick. She looked down. She must have a bloody nose.

  “She's the first! We're going to be next!”

  She hurried, hobbling and wincing, back past the gallery and rapped on the door of the flight deck. After a moment, it clicked open.

  The pilot and the co-pilot sat there before their twinkling control board, calm as you like. The co-pilot was sipping a Diet Dr. Pepper. They turned around and looks of shock crossed their faces.

  “Good Lord...” The pilot looked down at her name tag. “Gretchen! What happened to you?!”

  “I...I fell on my nose.”

  “What's going on out there?”

  “Mayhem! If we can't...can't contain them, we might have to make an emergency landing.”

  “But it was just a little turbulence.”

  “That's what I wanted to check. The oxygen masks malfunctioned, and it's scared them. They've watched too many movies. They think we're crashing. They're going crazy out there.”

  “Well. Contain it. Now. That's your job. Mine is flying this plane.”

  He turned back to his controls. Gretchen inched backwards out of the cockpit and turned to face the madness. She took what she hoped were confident hobbles past the curtain and forward into the shrieking masses, her hands up as if in surrender.

  “Calm down! Calm down, guys!”

  No, she would have to be louder. She would have to get angry. She thought of Sam, her old boyfriend. And how they had gone out to celebrate his birthday the night before her final exam for acceptance to globe-spanning, state of the industry Oceanic Airways with their sparkling new fleet of luxury planes that gave Emirates a run for their money. And how he had guzzled down a near keg of beer. And crawled over her in the middle of the night and turned off her alarm so that he could sleep in late. And how she had missed her exam. And how she had to wait five years to apply again. And how that was what led to her being here, now, in this crappy rusting tub of nuts and bolts clunking through the air with a bunch of lunatics. And how there were four more years and many months still to wait.

  “SHUT THE FUCK UP NOW!” Heads whipped around. “BEHAVE YOURSEVES! HOW OLD ARE YOU ALL? THEY'VE ALREADY TOLD YOU,” she nodded at the shocked Dennis and the other two flight attendants, jaws slack, “THAT NOTHING'S THE FUCK WRONG! SIT THE FUCK BACK DOWN! NOW! AND DON'T BE SO GODDAMN GREEDY! YOU ONLY NEED ONE OXYGEN MASK! IF YOU NEEDED ONE! WHICH YOU DON'T!”

  “Gutter mouth!” yelled out 16F.

  “Disgraceful!” sniffed 8B.

  “Wash your mouth out, slattern!” 6D.

  “I needed the extra one for my child.” 23C's child, Gretchen saw, looked 35 and was already clutching one.

  “If this flight was on TripAdvisor, I'd give it one star! For vulgar language!” 36A.

  But the hands slowly released the oxygen masks—not one of them had figured out how to put them around their heads, she had time to notice—and bodies moved back into seats. The masks bobbled in the air like a grove of bizarre rainforest fruit.

  “But what happened to you?” 2A called out. “Did the pilot hit you?”

  “I wouldn't blame him!” 14C. “Language like that! What must her parents think?”

  Gretchen cleared her throat, her face now burning with shame, and said clearly and calmly, “It was just an...an unfortunate oxygen mask incident, that's all. An inadvertent oxygen mask incident.”

  “What's—”

  “Accidental!”

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, with Dennis hovering behind her like a nobbly-headed, strangely-bearded malaria-carrying mosquito, Gretchen, contrite about her choice of words during her tirade, pressed the button of the public address system and readied herself for her penance.

  Or was she contrite? One part of her brain, the Irish part, thought the American abhorrence of expletives slightly ridiculous. All throughout the halls of her grammar school, when she had been growing up in Derry, it had been feck this and feck that, and everyone called everyone else a c***. In an all girls' Catholic school! Gretchen had been called a Yankee c***, a jammy c***, a soft c***, a daft c***, a flimmin c***, a flippin c***, a sarky c***, and, of course, many times a fecking wee c***, and all were terms of endearment and affection (or so she hoped). These, of course, were what her fellow classmates and cousins and aunts and uncles had called her, not the teachers or the nuns, and she had been going to school in the 'rough' part of town, the Moorside. She knew, looking back now, there were 'posh' parts of town, mainly the Protestant ones, and perhaps people didn't speak like that there. But she was now not in Northern Ireland. She wasn't even in America, actually. Though, she supposed, this was American airspace. If she didn't want to be fired by Nickel and Dime, she had to appear to be contrite for what some or maybe even most of these Americans might consider offensive language.

  She spoke softly into the microphone: “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Gretchen, the crew member who had the, er, outburst earlier on. I wanted to apologize for my foul language and unprofessional behavior. It was unacceptable. But, like you, I was scared as well. And, as some of you pointed out, I had been injured. I know that's no excuse because, really, my behavior, and especially my choice of language, was unfortunate and inexcusable.”

  “Crazy bitch!” someone called out. If Gretchen was correct, it was the one who had been sitting in the emergency exit row and, because he was clearly intoxicated, she had moved to 17E. Where he had five inches less leg room.

  “I hope you accept my apology because it truly is heartfelt.” And it was. Mostly. “We know you have many choices of airlines to choose, and I'm happy you chose Nickel and Dime.”

  “I'm gonna choose...to sue the goddamn lot of y'all!”

  “I promise there will be no more outbursts. Please enjoy the rest of your flight.”

  She clicked off the PA. She turned to Dennis, tears welling in her eyes. She was mortified. The rest of the cabin crew had joined him and were in an accusatory semi-circle around her.

  “Oh, Dennis! Oh,” she glanced at their name tags, “Jenny and Tom! I-I don't know what overcame me! I was hungry and...it's this schedule, the low pay, the angry customers...I really was hungry, I-I...” She appealed to them all, a wet tissue clutched in her fist. “You know what I'm talking about, don't you? Haven't you felt as frustrated as I am, working for this company?” She spat out the last word.

  Jenny and Tom looked at her as if their fathers owned Nickel and Dime. Dennis rubbed his hateful hands with glee.

  “This will be one report I can't wait to write up!” His beady eyes glistened. “Your days with Nickel and Dime are numbered, girl.”

  Gretchen felt her heart clench with fear. But she als
o felt...relief?

  After a horrible night at the campsite the crew was put up in, Dennis sniping, then snoring, Gretchen had flown back the next day on the opposite route, from Arizona to Iowa to Ohio and back to New Jersey. Nose swollen, eyes drooping, she had taken the bus to the train station, and the train from Linden to Penn Station in Manhattan. On the train, she had tried to call Maximus, but there was no answer. She hadn't left a message. She was too tired to speak to a machine, or whatever voicemail was.

  She was now standing on a drafty, grimy subway platform, waiting for the second of the trains that would take her home. A Jamaican man was playing “Edelweiss” on steel drums. As usual, Gretchen had stripped her uniform off in the airport bathroom the moment the plane landed and changed into jeans and a light sweater. She wouldn't be caught dead outside an airplane in the Nickel and Dime getup.

  A rat sniffed at the scuffed toe of her left Sketcher's Shape Up, squeaked, then scuttered away. Her hair hung like damp red dishrags around her face. Her wheelie case stood on the platform, battered from the many months of high-altitude abuse it had been put through, criss-crossing the continental United States like a homeless person with an unlimited bus ticket. A gang of youths with baggy jeans exposing half their dingy underwear—why wouldn't that ever go out of style?! —surrounded an overflowing garbage can to her left, roaring with laughter that sounded to her like jibes directed at her. She shivered and wrapped her arms around her sweater.

  She was thinking about how Nickel and Dime might respond to Dennis' report about her outburst. They might all get a dressing down because they hadn't checked the oxygen masks between flights. It was part of their responsibilities to check the safety of emergency equipment, like the halon fire extinguishers, solid state oxygen units, cold weather survival equipment, automatic external defibrillators, the first aid kit, the pocket mask for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, life rafts, and the emergency locator transmitter, but how was there time for that in a 25-minute turn around when they had to clean the plane? When, their four minds screaming as each precious second flew by and the fuselage shuddered under their feet from the emptying of the toilet tanks into the waste truck on the runway below, they shoved the old-school roller sweeper down the aisle's tatty carpet, snatched the garbage from the seats, wiped up the vomit and occasional baby feces and even worse from the arm rests and, breathless, pink and parched, greeted the new passengers while clutching massive see-through bags of refuse. Rules hadn't been followed, procedures which would have alerted the entire crew to the fact the oxygen masks were set to 'ultra-sensitive.' But Gretchen had yelled obscenities at panicking passengers. What would her punishment be? How egregious would the airline view her behavior? Would they fire her? Suspend her? Cut her pay for a month? The latter seemed the likeliest, which scared Gretchen. How would she pay Mags and Shirl her share of the rent?