Cruising Attitude

colleagues will walk three miles uphill in a foot of snow to save a buck. That’s how much I liked Brent. Plus, I didn’t want to spend a second longer than absolutely necessary at an airport when I could be on the couch with him. And Hulk Hogan.

Jane had a killer figure that disappeared under the polyester tent she wore to work. Like me, Jane was still on probation, so her dress had yet to be altered. Since she was just two weeks behind me in seniority, we made a pact to do it together and then go out and celebrate our short hemlines, which, believe it or not, we looked forward to more than using our passes for the first time. That’s how dowdy we looked compared to our more senior coworkers. Imagine our excitement when that day finally came, followed by shock when Jane showed the seamstress exactly where she wanted her hem to fall and the seamstress barked in broken English, “No— uniform!”

Unfazed, Jane said, matter-of-fact as can be, “Do it.”

The woman shook her head violently. “Uniform—too short!”

After a good ten minutes of this we finally got our way, but we never did hear the end of it. Whenever we’d walk by the dry cleaning shop where the seamstress worked behind a sewing machine in the front window, she’d stop working on what she had in her hands and slowly shake her head at us. And every time, Jane would yell out, “Not too short!”

Turns out, we didn’t go short enough, because one day while jogging the famous Venice boardwalk on a layover in California, Jane spotted the captain from her flight, a real ladies’ man with Robert Redford hair and a reputation for dating flight attendants. He was headed her way on rollerblades.

“Hey!” Jane called out to him as he passed her by.

He came to a stop immediately, smiling at the brown-haired beauty wearing short shorts and a jog bra. “Well, hello, little lady. I’m Brad.” He held out a hand.

She just looked at him. “I know who you are. I’m on your trip!”

Later on, she complained, “It’s like they have no idea we have butts and boobs under those dresses!”

Even so, pilots loved Jane. This is because Jane believed in treating everyone fairly, which meant she always offered the cockpit food even if they weren’t scheduled to eat on a leg. This is not the norm. It’s an unwritten rule that flight attendants get first dibs on any leftovers from their cabin before offering anything to other members of the crew. Then, after every flight attendant has had an opportunity to eat, we might call the pilots to see if they’re hungry. If they are, we’ll offer an entree. That’s it. No extras. But Jane treated pilots like first-class passengers, offering up hot towels, appetizers, two different kinds of bread, and both dessert choices if she had them, which is why it came as no surprise when she broke up with a mountain climber from Denver and started dating a pilot she met on a flight from San Diego. Whenever she’d get an earful from another flight attendant for giving pilots “our” food, Jane would just say, “It’s not their fault our union’s negotiating skills suck.” She had a point. On domestic routes crew meals were not in our contract.

At my airline before 9/11, flight attendants working domestic routes were catered “snack packs” instead of crew meals. These snack packs consisted of a cat-sized portion of canned tuna, a couple of crackers, a packet of mayo, a brownie, and the smallest apple ever grown on U.S. soil, all thrown inside a plastic drawstring bag. After 9/11, the not-so-filling snack packs were replaced with zilch, while pilots continued receiving the same crew meals they always had. Imagine working a twelve-hour day sustained only by white dinner rolls and soda while having to serve the cockpit a steak with veggies and a baked potato with all the accoutrements, and a slice of cheesecake on the side. Who wouldn’t be resentful? Now, flight attendants have no choice but to bring food from home, which isn’t always easy to do on a multiple-day trip, and which is why Jane’s attitude toward pilots’ food was so rare.

Jane was definitely unique, kind of like the house we lived in. It was in desperate need of a paint job and stood out from the other immaculate homes on the quiet tree-lined street in more ways than one. A cracked walkway led up to three lopsided steps and an aggressively overgrown bush blocked what otherwise would have been a lovely view into Jane’s bedroom window, which would have been the sunroom if the house had not been illegally converted to add more rooms. All the homes in the neighborhood possessed the same floor plan, which might be why our elderly neighbor across the street spent the better part of his days staring at that very bush, which was all that stood between him and knowing what was really going on inside a house full of attractive women, an odd Russian cab driver, and a frequently barking border collie. Some days our dear neighbor would walk outside and pretend to collect the newspaper (his neighbor’s), or take out the garbage (on noncollection days), or water the grass (that had already been watered), all in an effort to get a better look at us. We’d smile and wave. He’d turn around and walk inside. All the navy blue polyester and rolling bags in the world didn’t seem to tip him off, and eventually he reported “the whorehouse” to police. When a couple of cops stopped by the house to check out the situation, it didn’t escape my attention when a buff bald police officer placed a business card on our kitchen table and said, making direct eye contact with Tricia, a petite blonde with double Ds from Mississippi, “Feel free to call if the neighbor continues to harass you. Or if you need anything else.”

The neighbor wasn’t the only one who was confused. The cable guy’s eyes about popped out of his head when I answered the front door wearing a short black silk robe with pink fuzzy slippers, my hair a tangled mess, and asked him to please, please, please try and be quiet because my roommates were still sleeping.

“We were working all night last night,” I added. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. That’s when Tricia came stumbling down the stairs wearing a silk eye mask on top of her head and a short, somewhat see-through nightie. I noticed a look of confusion followed by outright fear sweep across the repairman’s face.

“No, no, no, we’re flight attendants!” I exclaimed. The cable guy and I laughed.

Tricia, completely oblivious to the strange man standing in the middle of our living room with a bundle of cable wrapped over a shoulder, called out on her way to the kitchen, “After I grab a cup of coffee remind me to tell ya about the guy who tried to hide a gigantic package between his legs last night.”

I swallowed hard, looked at the repairman and smiled innocently. “She’s talking about luggage.”

At least I hoped so, because out of all my roommates in the house, if anyone was going to talk about sex it was Tricia. Tricia went through men like most flight attendants go through first-class bottled water. Some she met at bars in Manhattan, others she either met on the airplane or through fellow coworkers whose boyfriends took one look and immediately wanted to set her up with their friends. Tricia was the kind of flight attendant that guys specifically looking to hook up with a flight attendant dreamed about. The kind of girl who wouldn’t think twice about changing out of uniform in the lav after a flight to put on sexy lingerie and nothing else under a buttoned-up company-issued trench coat. She’d walk through the airport terminal greeting everyone who passed with a friendly hello, before exiting baggage claim and hopping into an expensive sports car with an attractive man behind the wheel. Not shy about discussing the details of these short-lived but hot and heavy romances, she’d frequently declare, “Y’all are not gonna believe what I did this weekend!” The only thing we truly wouldn’t believe would be something that sounded believable. That’s how crazy her life was. But it wasn’t all good.

Whenever Tricia would utter the words “Oh my God, y’all,” Jane would take a deep breath, roll her eyes, and quickly disappear. The tales were always elaborate and interesting, and in the beginning I loved listening to them. Take for instance the time she got into a car wreck and woke up in the street, her shoes stolen right off her feet. “Those were expensive shoes, too!” she cried, tears streaming. Never mind what had happened to whoever had been traveling in the car with her. Another time she left three large Nordstrom shopping bags on board a flight she’d worked from San Francisco. While waiting with a group of others for the employee bus she realized what she’d done and quickly ran back to the gate as fast as she could only to find the bags were missing. A handful of cabin cleaners denied ever having seen them. Two days later the bags were anonymously returned, but Tricia refused to ride the bus to the employee parking lot because she thought that ground personnel were talking about her. She may have been right because she began receiving death threats. It started happening around the same time she had to take out a restraining order on an old boyfriend who kept driving by our house.

“He’s stalking me!” she screamed, running into the house late one night and waking up everyone. This sort of thing happened so often it got to the point where Tricia’s very presence became overwhelming. The mere sight of her car parked in the drive was equivalent to a dark cloud looming over the house. It didn’t matter if I’d had a layover in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or Bakersfield, California, as soon as I’d see that used silver Mercedes behind Yakov’s yellow cab, I’d instantly want to fly back to wherever I’d just come from to avoid the stress.

Luckily each new man took Tricia away for a good two to three months at a time. They’d spend some time together at his apartment in the city or house in the Hamptons and life at the house would become peaceful once again. But like clockwork a big blowup would occur and Tricia would come storming back, dragging the ab machine