The Flight Attendant(7)

“You know, Cassie, I kind of expected you to look worse,” Megan said. “Can I ask where you were? Dare I ask? I was actually getting worried.”

Cassie shrugged, pulling off her scarf and wedging it into a pocket in her suitcase. She kicked off her heels. Lord, what did it say about her that she continued to wear heels, even when she was planning (or, at least, expecting) to get sloshed? How many times had the combination of sangria and slingbacks turned a flight of stairs into Everest’s Hillary Step? “Seriously?” she asked, trying to make light of Megan’s concern. She stepped out of her skirt and began to unbutton her blouse. “Why were you worried?”

Instead of answering, Megan asked, “Were you with that young guy from the flight here?” She noticed Megan’s use of the word young. He was young. At least he had been. Megan was fifty-one, twelve years older than she was and at least a decade and a half—and very likely two—older than Alex Sokolov. “You know who I mean,” she went on. “The guy in two C.”

Cassie couldn’t risk the transparency of eye contact. Instead she rolled her blouse into a tight tube on the bed, folding it in half and pressing the air out, and placed it in the section of her suitcase she reserved for her dirty clothes. “Two C? God, no. Didn’t he say he worked for some kind of hedge fund? Sounds kind of boring. Not exactly my type.”

“Rich isn’t your type?”

“I have no problem with rich. But aren’t those guys crazy alpha?”

“You two were chatting each other up pretty seriously—especially before we started our descent.”

She sat down on the bed she had napped in yesterday afternoon to climb into the airline’s requisite black pantyhose. “Not really,” she said casually.

“So you weren’t with him?”

“I told you: no.”

“You hungover?”

“I’d nod, but it would hurt too much. Yes.”

“You going to be okay?”

“Of course.” She stood, adjusted her pantyhose, and leaned over gingerly, reaching into her suitcase for her return uniform. When she stood up, she stood up slowly, hoping to avoid (or at least minimize) the wave of nausea that tended to accompany moving her head at moments like this.

“Want an aspirin?”

“I’m good. I had some with me.”

“Of course you did. Can I ask you something?”

“Who was I with if it wasn’t that guy from the plane?”

“No. I wasn’t going to ask that.”

She waited.

“Why?” Megan asked. “Why do you always do this to yourself? One of these days you’re going to get yourself killed. I know Dubai is safe. I get it. But we’re still in the Middle East. You’re still a woman. This isn’t Paris and this isn’t New York.” She sat down on the bed, watching as Cassie stepped into the black uniform dress with the slimming blue and red stripes. The word killed echoed inside Cassie in ways that made her shudder. When else, before this morning, had she seen a corpse? At funerals. Not her father’s, because the car crash had necessitated a closed casket. But at her mother’s. And at the pair of funerals for her grandparents who had died and chosen not to be cremated. She recalled Alex Sokolov’s neck. She thought his eyes had been shut, if only because she would have remembered if they had been open, but that did not diminish in her mind the violence of his death.

“I’m fine,” she lied. “I’m fine.” She hoped saying it twice might make it true. Walk the talk.

“You’re not fine,” Megan said, her eyes skeptical. “People who are fine don’t do—”

“Don’t do what?” she snapped, the three syllables lash-like and defensive. Her pique surprised her. “What precisely have I done wrong?”

Megan leaned forward, her hands on her knees, wondering what to say. Cassie couldn’t decide whether her friend—no, she was a work acquaintance really, friend would suggest they were much closer than they actually were—would begin with the drinking or the sex. When she remained silent, Cassie told her, “Don’t judge me. I mean that. You have a great husband and two sweet kids—”

“They’re sixteen and thirteen. They stopped being sweet years ago,” Megan said, a peace offering of sorts.

“But my life isn’t your life. My choices aren’t yours.”

“I know. I get it. Just reassure me: you’re completely sober?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Okay, then, I’ll bite. Who was it? Who were you with?”

“Just a guy I met at the bar.”

“I didn’t see you downstairs.”

Though Megan’s room was next to hers, Cassie was confident that the other flight attendant had still been dozing when she had left their hotel the previous evening. The slightest subterfuge would do. “We met quickly and we left quickly. We went back to his hotel. What did you do?” She reached into the suitcase for the airline’s neck scarf and belt.

“I had dinner with Shane and Victoria and Jada. We went to a Japanese restaurant Shane knows. It was nice. Then we all went back to our rooms and we slept. We rested,” Megan said.

Cassie had the sense that the woman hadn’t meant to sound sanctimonious, but that last, two-word sentence had rubbed her the wrong way. “Good,” she said simply. As she started to tie the scarf around her neck, she stopped. She couldn’t help but recall the horrific gash across Alex Sokolov’s throat. She shivered ever so slightly at the neck’s sheer vulnerability.