The Flight Attendant(47)

The obituary was short and actually revealed very little. In the end, that didn’t surprise her, either.



* * *



? ?

She stared at the text from Buckley the actor. He said he had an audition on Friday for a pilot that was going to film in New York in the autumn, and had to get a haircut first thing in the morning. He wanted to know what country she was in, but hoped wherever she was, she was dancing barefoot. She recalled how her tale of the dead passenger in the coach bathroom had made him smile. She hadn’t answered his last text, but she decided to answer this one. She told him that she had just flown in from Rome, her feet were killing her, and the last thing she did before strapping in before landing was empty an airsickness bag full of some little boy’s pee into the lavatory. She added that the bag wasn’t full, because a lot of the urine had wound up on the passengers in the row ahead of the child, and he should take a moment and read the venom about the flight and the airline on Twitter. The hashtag, which already had a life of its own, was #WorstFlightThatDidntCrash. (It was actually a rather high bar, she thought, when she saw the hashtag gaining momentum.)

He suggested a late lunch the next day, after his audition, and she wondered what he would have thought if she had texted back that she was seeing her lawyer and then the FBI right about that time. She thought of the way they had parted the previous Sunday morning and sighed. She knew that most men desired her because she was attractive and she was smart, but also because she was a drunk and she was easy. This one? She hoped for his sake he wasn’t as different as he seemed, because she always disappointed those men quickly or broke their hearts over time.

She texted back that she was busy during the day tomorrow and going to the zoo on Saturday with her nephew and niece. She thought it made her seem wholesome—certainly more wholesome than she was. She suggested dinner tomorrow night and he agreed.

She couldn’t imagine what condition she’d be in after a second interview with the FBI and the print edition of the New York Post hitting the stands. She wondered if he would see the image and recognize her.

At some point she’d kicked off her shoes and pulled off her pantyhose, but she honestly couldn’t remember when. She had taken the bookend with Romulus and Remus from her suitcase and placed it on the glass coffee table. She couldn’t recall doing that either. It must have been when she was on the phone with the FBI. She stretched her toes; her feet really were killing her. She never had gotten that manicure, and now she needed a pedicure, too. That’s what she’d do this August evening. That would be her exciting Thursday night. She’d call neither Paula with her love for Drambuie nor Gillian with her willingness to pick up the pieces of the messes she left behind. (Momentarily she was struck by the ironically sobering revelation that all of her friends always expected the worst from her. But surrounded as she was by far more troubling and immediate realities, the insight passed.) She’d call no one. She’d steer clear of the bars and be level-headed and crisp tomorrow morning when she picked up the New York Post, when she met with Ani and Frank, and when—once more—she had to face the ghost of poor Alex Sokolov.



* * *



? ?

It was after five on a Thursday afternoon in the summer, but she reminded herself that people were still working. There might be people in the office.

And so that part of her that even sober cavalierly hopscotched across lines most adults had the common sense to respect led her now to the soaring atrium of an office building on the Avenue of the Americas. Here was where Unisphere housed its Manhattan employees and where, once upon a time, Alex Sokolov had worked. The idea had come to her when she had been stripping off her uniform, planning to change into a casual summer slip of a dress for a mani-pedi and then a quiet evening at home. Instead she put on a blouse and skirt and pantyhose, and took a cab to the building on Forty-Ninth Street. She simply had to know more than she was learning on the web, especially with another face-to-face meeting with the FBI tomorrow afternoon.

She told one of the two uniformed men behind the chest-high marble counter that she had a five-thirty appointment with Alex Sokolov, showed them her driver’s license, and signed in. But when they asked her to write her name in the book, she scribbled something that looked more like Alessandra than Cassandra and a last name that was indecipherable.

As she expected, after a few minutes a slim, statuesque woman in a black blazer emerged from the elevator bank. She had gray eyes and salt-and-pepper hair, and introduced herself as Jean Miller from Human Resources. “And your name is Cassandra?” she continued.

“Alessandra,” Cassie answered. She shrugged. “They sound the same.”

“Alessandra…what?”

“Ricci. Alessandra Ricci.”

The executive motioned toward a marble bench far from the elevators and led Cassie there. “Let’s sit down.”

“Is everything all right?” Cassie asked. “I thought at first you were Alex’s assistant and were going to escort me upstairs. But you said you’re with personnel. Has something happened?”

She nodded. “Yes. Something has. I’m so sorry you haven’t heard and I’m so sorry I’m the one who has to tell you.” She took a breath. Then: “Alex was killed last week in Dubai.”

Cassie wrapped her arms around her chest and stared at Jean, hoping that she wasn’t overacting. “My God. Killed? How?”