The Flight Attendant(20)

She shared with him her encounter with the rock star who purchased the entire first-class cabin for himself and his entourage: “I wasn’t allowed to speak to him. I had to whisper the drink and menu options into his bodyguard’s ear. I wasn’t even allowed to make eye contact with him. The flight was an overnight to Berlin and he didn’t sleep a wink. Even though the lights were dimmed and his party was sound asleep—his bodyguard, too—he went into the lavatory and changed his clothes three times, each outfit more outrageous than the one before it. For about an hour and a half he was in a gold sequin jumpsuit and platform heels, and his only audience was me.”

She told him the different locales on the plane where they tended to stow the tough cuffs, and the different occasions when she had needed them to restrain a passenger.

And then she told him about Hugo Fournier. She wasn’t sure he would know the name, but he would know the story. He probably presumed it was an urban legend. But it wasn’t. She’d been there. She’d been on the flight.

“So, we’re flying from Paris to JFK. It’s a route I bid on a lot. I was younger then and so I got it less often. This was eight years ago. And when I got it, I usually had business class.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

“No, it’s just that sometimes it can be a difficult cabin. On some aircraft, in first everyone has a flat bed and is out like a light pretty soon into the flight. In coach, there’s really not a whole lot you ever have to do. But business has thirty-two seats and there’s almost the same cabin service as first. And they sleep less. So, some flight attendants feel it’s a little less desirable, which means that whoever’s working in it might have less seniority.”

“Okay.”

“So, this particular flight is packed. Not a single empty seat. Maybe an hour west of Ireland, when we’re on dessert in business, this guy who has been flying with the airline forever pushes past me to get to the chief purser, who is working in first. He is oozing adrenaline, and the idea crosses my mind that there is some mechanical disaster. I literally think, an engine is on fire. No more than thirty seconds later, I hear the chief purser on the intercom asking if there is a doctor or nurse on board. She sounds pretty cool, but I hear just a quiver of desperation. Of course, I’m also relieved that we’re not about to ditch in the ocean.”

“Of course.”

“There is a doctor. There are, in fact, two. One in coach and one in business, and they both rush to seat twenty-four E, where Hugo Fournier, old and diabetic and obese, has just had a massive heart attack. The doctors, one female and one male, and the flight attendants lay him out on the floor in front of the galley and emergency exit row, because that’s where they can find the most room. They get out the defib and work on the guy, and they work him hard. The doctors try everything, and they don’t call it for at least forty minutes. Everyone in the cabin knows what’s going on. His wife is freaking out. She is shrieking and pleading and crying. Can you blame her? It’s not a dignified performance, but it’s a real one.”

“God…”

“Yup. But now we—you know, the crew—have to do something with the body. We can’t put him back where he was. He’s in the middle of economy and while those are the cheap seats, people still don’t expect to sit next to a corpse. Plus, he’s covered in vomit, and while we could clean that off his shirt and pants, we couldn’t clean off the stench. And the body did what bodies do when they die. Poor Hugo Fournier had crapped his pants.”

Buckley put his hands on his face and shook his head. “I do know this story.”

“Of course you do.”

“You put him in the bathroom for the rest of the flight.”

“Well, I didn’t. But, yes, the crew did. I actually lobbied that we try and get one of the people in first to give up their flat bed, but our chief purser wouldn’t have it. I suggested we put him in one A or one L, so almost no one would see him or smell him. But she wouldn’t even ask. So, yes, one of the doctors and two of the male flight attendants wedged him into the starboard, midcabin lavatory. The doctor—a pretty judgmental guy, in hindsight—said it was like getting a size ten foot into a size eight shoe.”

“And you didn’t turn around.”

“The plane? No. We were already over the mid-Atlantic. We didn’t want to inconvenience two hundred and fifty-eight people. And so instead we inconvenienced one. She just happened to be a widow. A loud widow.”

“Amazing.”

“Or appalling.”

“You got that Scheherazade thing down,” he said.

“Most of us are pretty good storytellers,” she agreed. “We are the kings and queens of the degrading.”

“Where did you say you just flew in from? I can’t remember.”

“I didn’t say.”

“Okay, then: where?”

Such a simple question. It demanded but a one-word answer. Two syllables. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to say it right now: it would be like waking in the middle of the night in a dark room and switching on klieg lights. “Berlin,” she lied. She was prepared to embellish the trip, if she had to. If it came to that. But it didn’t.

“And you still like the job?” he asked.

She rolled back her head, lolling in the heaviness that came with the fourth shot. Perhaps because she’d just lied, she felt an acute need to admit something—to give him something real. The need to confess was irresistible. “When you start as young as I did—right out of college—it’s usually because you’re running from something. You just have to get out. To get away. It wasn’t a career change for me. It wasn’t even a choice, in some ways. It was just a road somewhere.”