Cruising Attitude

believe it either if I hadn’t read the company email discussing the incident myself.

Before long, the beauty queen I’d met on day 1 of training reappeared, better than ever.

“When a gay man calls you fierce, you know you’ve got it goin’ on!” she confessed over a container of sweet and sour pork after returning from a trip. I had to agree.

The only thing that made me nervous was that, even though Georgia and The Cheater had broken up, she continued to stay in touch. Whenever something weird happened on a flight, Georgia would call him right away. Most of these calls also ended with her hanging up on him or slamming down the phone and, on at least one occasion, ripping his letters to shreds. But despite everything, Georgia still wanted to make it work. I couldn’t figure out why. Before long she started questioning herself, wondering if maybe he was right, maybe if she hadn’t taken the job to begin with, none of this would have happened.

“I can’t blame him. He’s a man. Men get lonely,” she sighed.

Nothing annoyed me more than the lonely-man card. “Don’t take the blame for his stupidity. You didn’t do anything wrong! He’s the one who—”

Georgia held up her left hand and there on her ring finger I saw a simple silver band.

“He proposed?”

She blushed. “Actually he promised to propose when the bar starts doing better. It’s a promise ring.”

Thank God I still had time to make her come to her senses and see the light.

Well, the light never came. Two days later the airline canceled service to the city in North Carolina where Georgia’s soon-to-be fiance lived. While I figured this was bad news, I didn’t realize just how bad until I came home from a trip and spotted Georgia sitting outside on the stoop in the freezing cold smiling ear to ear. I hadn’t seen Georgia smile like that since, well, ever. As much as I hated to admit it, the girl was glowing with happiness. I knew my worst fear was about to come true. I could feel it. In fact I didn’t even want to get out of the cab, but when the driver who always seemed overly appreciative of his $2 tip—“Oh thank you, miss, thank you! That is very kind of you!”—got another call I quickly grabbed my belongings and began walking up the sidewalk very slowly.

Four months after graduation, two months shy of getting off probation, I sighed the longest sigh known to humanity. “Please tell me you didn’t do it.”

“I did. I quit. I turned in my manual and cockpit keys today.”

Chapter 8 LOVE IS IN THE AIR. SORT OF.

IN THE 1970S, when flight attendants were stewardesses and traveling was glamorous and only for the wealthy, the average time spent on the job was eighteen months. Stewardesses were required to remain single and childless, which ensured that the position remained a job, not a career, and enabled the airlines to use their young, attractive, and somewhat mysterious workforce as a marketing tool. Today most flight attendants either last just a couple of months or hang in for a whole lifetime. It’s that extreme. In that first few months the drastic lifestyle change coupled with the difficulties of juggling a home life from 35,000 feet almost always results in pressure from loved ones to make a choice—them or the job. Flight attendants fresh out of training will either quit or watch their relationships crash and burn.

The day Georgia greeted me with the bad news outside on the front stoop, I had a phone number written on a beverage napkin for a new crash pad crumpled up inside my blazer pocket, and I didn’t believe in fate. I thought the idea of fate was for the weak of heart, the kind of person who sat around waiting for life to happen, which is how I came to the conclusion that this thing with Georgia was just a bad move on her part, something that could be rectified. That is, if I got involved. Certainly she wouldn’t have quit if I’d been home that day. While I knew she was under a lot of pressure from Jack, Jake, Jason, whatever his name was, I refused to sit back and allow her to throw in the towel so easily. I honestly believed if she’d just give it a little time in order to accrue more seniority, things would get better. They had to! Why else would anyone keep the job? It was up to me to make her see that.

Easy enough, I thought, picking up the phone and dialing our supervisor’s number at LaGuardia Airport. When I heard it ring, I handed the phone to Georgia.

“Just tell him you made a mistake,” I said.

Gently she placed the receiver back in its cradle. “I didn’t make a mistake, Heather. This is what I want. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I know it’s hard for you to believe this, but the job isn’t for everyone. I want to go home. I signed paperwork. It’s over.”

I took one look at Georgia’s giddy, ruby red smile and knew she needed help, the professional kind. “You’re delirious. You’re not thinking straight.” Quickly I dialed our supervisor’s number again. “Tell him you were depressed, that you didn’t know what you were doing. Do it now before it’s too late and he leaves the office.”

Without any sense of urgency, Georgia started tossing a few pairs of jeans and a couple of sweaters into an opened suitcase on the floor. “You don’t understand. You’ve never been in love before.”

“Excuse me!” I hung up the phone. Never been in love? I’d told her everything about Brent! Well, almost everything …

What I had accidentally-on-purpose forgotten to share was, well, Brent and I kinda-sorta hooked up last week. When crew scheduling assigned me my first trip to Austin, Texas, my heart dropped. That’s where Brent, my ex-ex-boyfriend lived. You see we hadn’t broken up once, but twice—both times on or around Valentine’s Day. The significance of the day didn’t matter to me. At least that’s what I’d been telling myself every day for a year and a half now. Which might be why as soon as I stepped off the airplane in Texas and found myself in familiar territory, feelings from the past came flooding back. It was torturous being there without him by my side. Looking out the window of the crew van on our way downtown to the hotel, I spotted all the same places I used to see while driving around with him in the passenger’s seat of his beat-up Corolla. I couldn’t stop myself from going down memory lane as Everything But The Girl blasted through my headphones. When the song “Missing” came to an end, I hit replay, quite a few times, until we pulled up to a hotel not too far from Sixth Street and I, too, could not move on, because I, too, missed him, Brent, like the deserts miss the rain. Hidden inside a drawer beside the bed in my hotel room, I found a phone book. All I initially wanted to do was see if his name was listed. That’s it. I just wanted to know if he lived in the same apartment we once shared. He did. Without thinking it over, I decided to call and hang up. Just to hear his voice. Nothing more. What could be the harm?

When I heard his familiar voice say hello, I froze. I may have swallowed, I might have even said hi, and before I knew it we were sitting across from each other on bar stools at a chain hotel in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday. It almost felt like I’d taken a ride in a time machine. I kept telling myself not to fall for him again, that Mr. Wrong would not turn into Mr. Right, but one thing led to another and, well… let’s just say I should have known better. But at the same time, when he leaned in for a kiss, I thought, A little bit of something had to be better than a whole lot of nothing. That’s when I remembered something wise I overheard a first-class passenger say to her seatmate: “He’s good enough for right now.” Except the reality was Brent was more than good enough for right now. Six feet tall, tan, muscular, and unbelievably gorgeous in a Fabio kind of way (but better), Brent was an almost Olympic athlete who’d broken records in the pole vault and played in a band on Sixth Street on weekends. Women came from afar to see him rocking out with a red guitar on stage in a dimly lit bar. He was everything most women in Texas dreamed about in a one-night stand, which is why so many panties were always being tossed up on stage. And to think he’d been my boyfriend for two years. The boyfriend I never expected to have. The boyfriend I couldn’t believe I’d lost.

After dating through both my junior and senior years of college, Brent and I broke up not long after I graduated—around the time I moved back in with my parents, who lived four hours away and were supporting me while I searched for a job. For three or four months we took turns making the long drive to visit each other, which is why I thought things were okay between us. But long-distance dating is not easy on anyone, including me. It’s especially hard on a man, particularly one who has a hot little thing wearing shorty-shorts chasing after him at work. When he wasn’t jumping over eighteen-foot high bars with a single pole or playing guitar, he was a personal trainer. Yeah, he had it going on. In a way, I’m kind of surprised it lasted as long as it did. Even so, I never thought I’d get over the guy. The job helped. That is, until crew schedule called me out to cover that trip to Austin last week. So for Georgia to say I didn’t know about love and loss and loving someone who should probably get lost, well, that was absurd. I knew exactly what she was going through and I didn’t like it, not one little bit!