She bends down, knees together, and quietly decrees, “I heave at the smell of barbecue, and the only time I rode a horse it made my little Lady so sore I had to cancel all my dates for a week, and the only star I want to catch is Richard Gere. Capiche, Bubba?”
“Hey, I’m just jealous,” I stammer, laughing it off, “because they’ll never pick me.”
“You’re one of us a flight attendant?”
“Yep.”
“That’s great!” Grite.t She says it as if she has just won a hundred dollars. Not a thousand or a million, but a hundred. It is the perfect amount of enthusiasm to bestow upon a stranger. “Jacqueline,” she calls to her coworker. “Jackie!”
Jacqueline looks up the aisle like a giraffe scouting the horizon. She’s so tall she nearly has to slump from hitting her head on the low ceiling of the DC-9 jet.
“He’s a flight attendant for us,” Amity happily explains. Jacqueline approaches us, a model sauntering down a catwalk, neither smiling nor frowning. Just vacant. Like a wall somebody forgot to paint. Her face is long, angular, odd. Her copper hair is beautiful, and she has freckles on her face and hands. “Oh, that’s good, I guess. Do you
like it?” Her Texas accent is almost Califor “Sure,” I crow, trying to look confident. I’ll like it a lot more now that I won’t be commuting from Kansas, where men are men, and sheep are women.”
Amity runs her unclad ring finger over her bottom lip. “Kansas boys are cute. Those sheep ought to consider themselves lucky.”
“My boyfriend just dumped me,” I say, envisioning a voodoo doll of Matthew with pins stuck in its eyes. “Kansas guys aren’t that cute.”
She smiles, as if we’re old friends. “It’s his loss. Don’t worry. There are plenty of men in this world, and you’ve picked the perfect career to meet them all.”
I return the smile. Offer a handshake. “I’m Harry.”
She shakes. “I’m hairy too, but I drop into the spa for a bikini wax.”
‘
“Harry Ford.” I laugh.
“My mom drove a Ford,” Jacqueline says, coming to life. “For a long time. She drove a Ford that was green. It was this big old green station wagon thing. I’m pretty sure it was a Ford. Green. Yeah, I think it was a green Ford.” She flips her hair with her hand, turns, and heads back up the aisle, shutting the overhead bins as she goes.
“Green Ford,” I chant mystically.
Amity smiles with Southern sarcasm. “She just got out of an institution.” We hear the thud of the front door being shut, and the engines begin to spool. “I’m Amity Stone, but I guess you know that, because I’m the Slut of the Month! It’s such a pleasure meeting you, Harry.” Hay-ree. “I hope we get to fly together sometime.” Some Tom. She follows Jacqueline to the front of the plane, leaving behind her perfume, heavy and full of spice, to soak my face.
Does she really hope we fly together sometime? God, I’d like to latch on to her right now. This is just what I need to get my life started, a girl f-rend who can make me laugh. My training classmates and I were schooled in the fine art of stewardessing in Dallas, but
after graduating we were supposed to scatter across the country to fulfill our initial one-year assignments. My domicile choices in order of preference were New York, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Bos ton, Chicago, and Dallas. I was one of only three class members assigned to Dallas. But I have no one there to call a friend, since I immediately moved back to Kansas to live with Matthew. But now I’m bound for Big D, where people eat fried vegetables, wear snakeskin boots, and diphthongize the word couch. And treat Northerners like enemies in the Civil War.
Could Amity be one of those rare Southerners who would want to hang out with a Yankee? I can’t believe I told her, “I’m just jealous …” How losery. Matthew crushed my confidence when he told me I’d become stagnant, shallow, not interested in personal growth. Considering I lacked the funds for a higher education, I thought my choice to become a flight attendant was an acceptable diversion, even if passing out oily little pillows to people who sleep upright isn’t what I intend to do for the rest of my life. I thought being a flight attendant gave a certain working-class cachet to a gay guy in his early twenties, but Matthew likened it to becoming a hairdresser or an interior decorator. And of course, my brother, Winston, gave me all kinds of shit. When I pointed out that, unlike him, Mom and Dad had cut me off, and that by working for an airline I could still afford to fly to Paris, he said, “Yes, but it’s standby.”
As the plane taxis out for takeoff, I watch Amity and Jacqueline in the aisle demonstrating the emergency equipment while the other flight attendant dishes out all that industry speak: “At this time …” and “In the unlikely event of …” and “For your own comfort and safety…” It didn’t take me long to realize that it’s all a crock that won’t help you in any way when the plane slams into a mountain at five hundred miles an hour. But Jacqueline looks as if she’s hearing it for the first time and it actually means something. She concentrates on every word, straining to follow along. When she
/IIU y drops her demonstration oxygen mask from the ceiling a little too early, she lets it dangle there awhile, while the speaking flight attendant catches up.
Amity, on the other hand, looks like one of those models on The Price Is Right, all smiles and perfect timing as she demonstrates the seat belt, safety card, and oxygen mask as if they’re exciting prizes won by all.
During the flight, I study Amity further, watch her movements.
