Cruising Attitude

by Heather Poole

We never did make it back to Vegas that night. I drove to my parents’ house and sat around catching up for two, there, four hours—however long it takes to play a basketball game—until it was time to head back. When I got back to the airport, Mark called to tell us he’d changed his mind about going back that night. The flight was canceled. I assumed it had something to do with his team losing the game. Both pilots were thrilled—they both lived in Dallas. I overheard them telling their wives they’d be home for the night, but then they’d have to head out again the next day to pick up the rest of the gang.

  “But what about all the catering I ordered for the flight?” You can take a girl off of a commercial airline, but you can’t take the commercial airline out of the girl.

  “Take it with you,” said the first officer. I’m pretty sure my eyes gleamed with joy. While the captain loosened his tie and rolled his eyes (okay, so I may have imagined that last part), the FO actually helped me load it all into the backseat of my car. And that’s how my family came to eat Mark Cuban’s dinner. My mother and father thought it was delicious. My sister couldn’t believe I had brought it home!

  At first it might seem like flying private is the way to go, especially when you’re a flight attendant and you board a flight early in the morning to find a pilot vacuuming the floor with a full-size Hoover. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. He seemed to be doing a really good job, too. I’d never seen anything like it.

  Note to self: Marry a corporate pilot.

  After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I came to realize the pilots really do it all, from ordering fuel and loading bags to stocking magazines and hiring flight attendants. I’ve heard of some pilots even acting as flight attendants on some corporate flights. I’d love to see that! I have no idea what their pay is like compared to other pilots, but I do know that corporate flight attendants are paid a whole heck of a lot more per trip than most flight attendants who work commercial. The thing is, most are not guaranteed a certain number of hours each month, whereas commercial flight attendants can count on a monthly average base salary of seventy-five hours. I’d choose security over salary any day. And many corporate flight attendants don’t even have health insurance unless they pay for it on their own. The worst part about working corporate for both pilots and flight attendants is that it’s like they’re on reserve without the hope of ever holding off. When Mark says it’s time to go, his pilots have to go, even if that means taking Mark and his friends on a joy ride at three in the morning. It doesn’t matter what might be going on at home. Birthdays, anniversaries, recitals, all must be pushed aside. Might be why I sensed a little tension when I called one of the pilots on his cell to confirm the departure time of our trip the next day.

  “Twelve o’clock!” he snapped. Then he whispered, “Don’t call me at home!” and hung up.

  Guess who didn’t eat. For the record, I didn’t eat, either. I made the executive decision to not order catering for the crew.

  Note to self: Do not marry a corporate pilot.

  Originally I was only supposed to work the one trip to Vegas, but when Mark’s usual flight attendant couldn’t make the trip to D.C., and the pilots couldn’t find anyone in Dallas to use as a backup, the pilot who told me not to call him at home called me at home and asked if I could fill in.

  “Let me check my schedule . . .” I held my breath as I sat on the phone pretending to look at a calendar. I figured I’d make him sweat a little before letting him know, hell, yeah, I could do it! I already had the days off.

  The best part? They offered to fly to New York to pick me up!

  Some airlines do not allow flight attendants to work second jobs, regardless of what that job may be. Mine, thankfully, is not one of them. But flight attendants at my airline, as well as most other airlines, are not permitted to work for another carrier. I figured if push came to shove I could argue that Mark Cuban couldn’t be classified as a carrier, being he was a man—who happened to have a plane.

  After I prepared the plane for our trip to D.C., I saw four of the tallest men I’d ever seen walking toward it. Years ago I had Magic Johnson on a commercial flight. He’s one of the nicest passengers on Earth. I watched him sign hundreds of autographs at the Long Beach airport baggage claim after our flight to Los Angeles made an unscheduled landing there. He was the very last person to collect his bags and leave. But even though I’m one of Magic’s biggest fans, I’m not that into basketball. So I had no idea what the Final Four was all about or who any of the really tall men were that were now walking up the stairs. I later learned their names were Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash, Michael Finley, and I forget who the fourth one was (sorry!). For a quick second I thought about setting my sister up with the short one. At six feet, Nash looked little compared to the other two guys. Thank goodness I never felt comfortable enough to suggest it because while my sister is pretty, she’s not Elizabeth Hurley! Which is who I saw cuddled up next to him at a basketball game on television a few weeks later. When I greeted Dirk, the youngest and tallest of the men, the top of my head came to his . . . hips. Not every flight attendant can say they’ve spoken to a passenger’s crotch. Talk about awkward. It was either that or risk getting a crick in my neck, which could have interfered with my real job, and I wasn’t about to risk that! And all of the guys had humongous feet. Their shoes looked like they weighed twenty pounds each. In a way they reminded me of those circus clowns that drive the tiny cars, except instead of cars, we were on the Barbie jet and I was the tiny flight attendant. It’s nice feeling petite.

  What surprised me the most about these four gigantic men were their manners. They really impressed me! Seriously, it goes down in the books as the most polite flight I’ve ever worked in fifteen years. I’ve never been treated with so much respect. They were all “please” and “thank you,” “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am,” which kind of took me by surprise considering I was only about three years older than them. Perhaps it was being called “ma’am” that made me feel maternal toward them, because when they fell asleep during the flight I turned out the lights and covered them with blankets, extra long blankets. I kind of wish I’d taken one of them home as a souvenir—a blanket, I mean, not a player!

  I only worked two flights for Mark. That’s it. But it was the most memorable time of my flying career. Would you believe that those two amazing trips to Vegas and D.C. totaled to six individual legs over the course of just two months? By far my favorite flight was the first trip, second leg—the one from Dallas to Vegas, without any passengers. We had to go there to pick up his brother Brian and friends and bring them back. On that flight it felt like I owned the plane. I lay across the sofa and flipped through a few magazines. After I caught up on my basketball reading, I sat in Mark’s favorite chair, watched TV, and drank a Diet Coke. It’s really nice being Mark Cuban. I even peeked inside his extremely organized snack drawer and wondered if he would notice a missing candy bar. (FYI, the candy bar was still there after I left!) Now I know most of you probably already know that Mark lives a good life. But that day, my life didn’t feel too shabby, either, thanks to him! It wouldn’t be right to thank Mark without also thanking Brian for being single in Dallas at the same time as me. On that note I should also thank Match.com, and my sister who went behind my back and signed me up for the online service in the first place. Just goes to show anything can happen if you just take a chance!

  Meanwhile, back in the real world of commercial aviation, life was getting better. I now had five years seniority under my belt and because the airline had been on a hiring craze for the last three years I was officially off reserve and able to hold a pretty decent line—757 transcontinental flights. Once a flight attendant can hold a trip like that, it’s the only flight we’re going to work until a senior mama retires and we can hold something even better, like a 767 transcontinental flight or a trip to Europe. Doesn’t matter how long it takes, or how many times we fly to the same city month after month, year after year: a good trip is
a good trip until we can hold a better trip. For me that route was New York–Vancouver.

  I’d been flying to Vancouver pretty much every month for a year and a half. I didn’t care that our layover hotel was located an hour away from Vancouver by public bus because there was plenty to do and see in Richmond, British Columbia. A lot of flight attendants who can hold a regular line establish routines at layover hotels frequented often. In Vancouver, mine included a workout at a gym that had allowed me to purchase a half-priced, monthly membership. That’s where I had met the Mongolian guy who looked just like Ricky Martin, except cuter. He worked for a Canadian airline, but on the ground. We went out a few times and things started getting hot and heavy until we decided to go to Whistler for a romantic weekend away. That’s where we realized we had absolutely nothing in common and actually kind of hated each other. I always say if you’re not sure how you feel about someone, go on vacation together. It will make or break a relationship. I didn’t kick the Mongolian down the mountain, no matter how tempting it may have been. Instead we drove back to the airport in silence. Still, the scenery was so beautiful it was worth every miserable minute spent sitting next to him.

  When a coworker asked me to trade trips with her, I agreed. Not because I wanted to fly to Seattle, but because she was a friend and she wanted to work with her husband who was also a flight attendant on my crew to Vancouver. Seattle is worth the same amount of hours as Vancouver, so I wouldn’t lose any flight pay. It also departed at the same exact time, the crack of dawn, so it would be an easy trip to work. Morning flights are a piece of cake. Passengers are too tired to stir up any real trouble. Most fall asleep on takeoff and don’t wake up until an hour before landing. Afternoon flights are a little more difficult because passengers bring on board the stress of their day. Dinner flights are the worst because they drink like fish and then spend a good amount of time getting up and down to use the lav. This makes the job more difficult because when the seat belt sign comes on, nobody wants to return to his or her seat. Worse is when we’re in the aisle working and they ask if they can “squeeze by real quick.” Very few people can physically fit between a cart and a row of passengers. Luckily, I’m pretty darn quick when it comes to steadying hot pots of coffee. If I ask passengers to wait a few seconds so I can finish serving a row, they’ll stand right behind me, and I mean right behind me, as in on top of me, so that each time I reach down to take something out of the cart, my butt rubs up against them. After the third time I’ll ask them to take a few steps back. They never look happy at this request.

  The first passenger to preboard our flight to Seattle that morning was wearing dark, wraparound, Stevie Wonder glasses. “She’s going to need help getting to her seat,” said the agent standing next to her for support. “She’s blind.”

  “Color-blind,” the woman corrected.

  I’m not a touchy-feely person, so when I go to help a passenger who needs assistance I’ll grab a bag instead of a baby or an elbow instead of a hand. Something came over me that day, because I placed her Louis Vuitton purse over my shoulder and took five warm wrinkled fingers in mine.

  “My name is Heather and I’ll be one of your flight attendants in first class. You’re sitting in 6B. It’s the last row in first class, an aisle seat.”

  “I was supposed to fly to Vancouver today but the flight was oversold, so now I’m being rerouted through Seattle,” she told me, giving my hand a good squeeze for someone so frail. I was just about to tell her that I was supposed to be on that flight, too, but then thought better of it. She wouldn’t care. And at the rate we were moving, we wouldn’t get to her seat for another five minutes, so I didn’t want to distract her from the task at hand.

  “Only two more rows to go,” I said coaxing her on.

  “You’re sensitive. You go out of your way to do what’s right. You’ve surrounded yourself with a good circle of friends. Be careful, darling, you trust too easily. Someone you know will betray you.”

  I stumbled on a snag in the carpet, but quickly regained my footing before falling face first and taking my new friend along with me. I made a mental note to write it up later. “Are you some sort of psychic?”

  “No, not a psychic, but I do have the gift and I enjoy giving it away.”

  At row 6, I placed her designer bag under the seat for her and then moved the seat belts out of the way so she could sit down. “What else can you tell me?”

  “Let’s see. You completely changed your life. Ten years ago you were going down one path and then, out of nowhere, you chose a completely different path, a whole other life. You left someone behind, someone you cared for deeply.”

  Brent! My on-off (mostly off) college boyfriend. I hadn’t seen him since we got stuck our Costa Rica fiasco. We were traveling on my passes, but the flight was full so we couldn’t get on. I was freaking out because I had flight attendant recurrent training the following morning, so without thinking twice I purchased two last-minute, one-way tickets to Panama for $150 each. There we would have enough time (forty-five minutes) to connect to a flight back to Miami using my passes. I should have known something was up when I spotted the armed military guys following us around the airport terminal in Panama. They even waited outside the chocolate shop for us before trailing behind us to the gate. But it wasn’t until we were safe and sound on U.S. soil going through customs and immigration that I realized someone might be in trouble. Red lights began to blink as a siren went off. An officer yelled, “Up against the wall!” I remember turning around and looking for the guilty party, only to find out that someone was me.

  “Me?” I asked just to make sure, because surely it couldn’t be me. I was a flight attendant! I showed him my crew ID to prove it. We were detained while they checked our luggage with a fine-toothed comb. That was three years ago. There wasn’t a day that went by when I didn’t think about him.

  The old lady with the Stevie Wonder glasses patted my hand reassuringly. “Oh darling, he wasn’t worth your time. You’re much better off without him.”

  I nodded, even though she couldn’t see me—in color. I believed her. “Thank you,” I said, trying to hold back the tears. My mascara wasn’t waterproof and I didn’t want to have to redo my makeup before takeoff.

  “You about ready to board?” asked the agent standing between the cockpit and first class.

  “Almost!” I called out, wedging myself between the bulkhead wall and the last row of first class and reaching between the seats for the woman’s hand before it was too late. “Tell me more. What about my future? Can you tell me about that?”

  “That, my dear, is rather interesting.” Leaning toward me she whispered, “Most people are afraid of the truth. Of what lies ahead. I don’t know why. The truth is all we have.” I could see my distorted reflection in the black frames vigorously nodding back at me. “Now, listen closely. I’ve been fortunate enough to hold the hands of many famous people. The thing that sets them apart from everyone else is their powerful life force. I can honestly say that I feel the same thing when I hold your hand. You’re very creative. You’re going to do great things.” She patted my hand twice. “You have a message. Your name will be well known.”

  “I’m going to send them down now!” said the agent, who hadn’t bothered to wait for my reply.

  I called back, “Okay!”

  Now I was confused. I had no idea what the heck the psychic passenger was talking about. Maybe she really was just a regular old crazy lady dripping in jewels and carrying very expensive luggage. But then it came to me. I could feel my heart beating wildly.

  “I’m an actress! Well, really, I’ve only been doing extra work, but—”

  “No. That’s not it.”

  The first few passengers began walking on board. I tried to squat down so they couldn’t see me. “That’s got to be it. I’ve been taking acting lessons.”

  “I said, that’s not it.”

  “But I’ve been getting really lucky. Last week I got a line in a movie and�
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  “You’re a writer. Tic Tac?” she asked, shaking the little plastic box at me.

  A writer? I held my hand out and let a few green mints drop into my palm. “I don’t know about that. I’m not a good writer.”

  Pointing a crooked finger at me, she stated, “That is not for you to decide. It is not your business to determine how good you are. That is for the world to decide!”

  There was one more thing I needed to know about before the rest of the passengers made it on board. One really important thing. “What about love? Will I ever find it?”

  “You’ll know soon enough.”

  A passenger seated a few rows up turned around in his seat and asked, “Can you take my jacket, miss?”

  I smiled at the man and said, “Oh, sure. I’ll be there in just a minute.” When he turned all the way back around, I whispered between the seats, “How soon? This month? This year?”

  She took my hand in hers and squeezed. “I predict a proposal three months after the New Year.”

  Three months after the New Year? But that was soon! The sooner the better, I told myself. Quickly I did the math in my head and gasped. Eight months! I did the math again, just to make sure I got that right. It was still eight months away. The UN guy. It had to be the guy who worked at the United Nations. I’d just met him online. We’d already had two dates and I really liked him a lot.

  “Darling, take a deep breath. All great loves come from friendship. You must remain patient. Let it grow. Your life is about to completely change.” She yawned and closed her eyes, and didn’t open them again until we landed in Seattle.

  I didn’t really believe in psychics, or even nonpsychics who just had the gift, but on my layover I could not get our conversation out of my head. I took a brisk walk down to Pike Place Market to wander around and get a little fresh air. I ordered a latte and then found a place to sit outside the coffee shop. Normally I enjoy people watching, but that day, pen over paper, I decided that if I was supposed to be a writer I should probably start writing. Problem was, I didn’t have anything to write about! For a split second I thought about writing about my job, but that would be boring. Who would want to read about that? That’s when the idea hit me: a dark comedy about a serial killer flight attendant. I decided to call it Stewardeath.