Blue Skies (10 page)

She racked her brain. She hadn't called in sick, been late or cuffed a passenger. Supervisors didn't call you in for a chat unless there was trouble, and she couldn't imagine what she might have done.

“Hit him in the gut with a wine bottle?” Sonny asked her a few hours later. The director of Inflight Services was a perfectly nice woman whose job managing hundreds of flight attendants must be gruesome. “Gave him a concussion by slamming the door on his head? That ring any bells? Besides his, that is?”

This time Dixie had no chance to call on her beauty-queen training. Her face went scarlet. But the flush was as much from the shock of surprise as guilt. That was well over a month ago! She'd flown with Branch since then—and he'd had the gall to actually flirt with her.

“Remember?” Sonny prodded.

“Why, didn't he fall down the hotel stairs and crack his noggin?” she asked, feeling the heat burn her face and tingle her scalp. She hoped her hair wasn't standing straight up.

“He admits he was in a pickle,” Sonny said.

“Pickle? That isn't what it's called in Temple, Texas.”

“I'm not saying what he did to you was all right. But telling a lie in a relationship is certainly less dangerous than inflicting bodily harm.”

“I guess that would depend on the lie,” Dixie said sanguinely.

“Well, you're lucky he didn't call the police.”

“Hah! He couldn't call the police!” she exclaimed, her voice rising a little wildly. “He would have had to tell his wife what he was up to!”

“So you did do that? Slam the hotel-room door on his head? Oh, Dixie, that's very—”

“I didn't say I did it. I said that if he said I did, and wanted to pursue that story by pressing some kind of charges, he would have had to tell his wife what would compel this single woman alone in a hotel room on a layover to slam the door on him. Could it be
unwelcome advances?
” Sonny was shaking her head. “When did he come to you with this complaint, Sonny? I've flown with him since his…
alleged
injury. And he came on to me like a bull. The slimeball.”

“I'm not sure when the complaint was written. The chief pilot brought it to me a couple of days ago. I could have pulled you off your last trip, but…Well, I think we can handle this now without involving the chief pilot any further. Don't you?”

“Can I read it? His complaint?”

Sonny passed the sheet of paper to Dixie. She read slowly, carefully. Branch was completely shameless—it was all there. He admitted they were seeing each other, that he was married.
Ms. McPherson knew of my marriage, but it was a surprise to both of us that my wife showed up on our flight to New York. Thinking Ms. Mc
Pherson might be upset, I went to her hotel room to make sure she was all right, maybe to apologize or try to console her, but we did not exchange any words at all. She answered the door in her underwear and hit me in the gut with an empty wine bottle, which caused me to double over. She then slammed the door on me, striking my head, causing a laceration and slight concussion. I assume she had drunk all the wine.

“Oh, he is such a pig,” Dixie said. “He told me he was going through a divorce. That he and his wife hadn't lived together in a long time.”

“I believe you,” Sonny said. “But that's not at issue.”

“He put in here that I answered the door in my underwear and drank all the wine. A gentleman does
not
do that.”

“That really doesn't concern me at all.”

“I apologized to him. I thought this was behind us.”

Sonny, a spindly woman in her fifties with fire-engine-red hair, folded her hands on top of her desk and looked at Dixie over the rims of her reading glasses. “Dixie, this is over the top. You could have killed him.”

“Pffttt,” she pooh-poohed. “He's a Texan. His head is made of lead.”

“Seriously. I think it wouldn't hurt for you to talk to someone. Just in case there is a deeper issue going on here.”

“I'll consider it,” she said dismissively. But inside she was thinking perhaps she should see a shrink, because for the first time in all the years of bad breakups, she felt as though this once she'd gotten even. And it felt pretty good. It would feel a whole lot better if she wasn't being reprimanded for it.

“Well, you're going to have plenty of time to think
about it, Dixie. Thirty days on the beach,” she said, meaning Dixie was being suspended. “Without pay.”

“Sonny! Wait a minute—”

“I'm serious, kiddo. I know you were pissed off, and I don't really blame you, but we can't have one employee attacking another with a blunt object. Thirty days will encourage you to think of alternative solutions to your…uh…relationship problems. Of which, if you don't mind me saying so, you seem to have many.”

Dixie stood abruptly. “I mind you saying so! You don't have to add insult to injury. You think I want it this way?”

“Can I make a suggestion, Dixie?”

“Can I stop you?”

“It might be time to take a break from men. Seriously. A significant break. Get some counseling. Work out some things. You're a beautiful girl—”

“A thirty-five-year-old girl!”

“Okay, woman, forgive me. But it's true—you're beautiful, bright, dedicated, loyal…You deserve better than this. It wouldn't hurt to try to figure out what it is that sets you on such a self-destructive path.”

Despite Dixie's efforts, tears began to gather in her eyes. Did the fact that she was so often lied to automatically suggest she pursued liars? How in the world was this
her
fault?

“Perhaps you fall in love too easily, too naively….”

Okay, there was that little problem. But she was trying to quit!

“Because you really are far too wonderful a person to end up in so many of these situations, Dixie,” Sonny said. And there was no question she was sincere.

“Thanks,” Dixie replied weakly, feeling her nose grow pink and her eyes turn liquid. “Is that all?”

“I'm sorry, Dixie. It's what I have to do.”

“Can I have a copy of this?” she said, holding the report written by F.O. Darnell.

“It's yours.”

“Thanks. See you in a month, I guess.”

A significant break from men? she asked herself as she left the Aries employee parking lot. Oh, yeah.

 

The flying time from Phoenix to Las Vegas was just under an hour. Nikki got a cockpit jump seat on Aries in the busy early-morning bank. She saw the captain in dispatch and he brought her on the airplane from the ramp rather than through the gate. She boarded right behind two air marshals who would ride in first class from Phoenix to Las Vegas to D.C.

Nikki was greeted by flight attendants she had worked with before. They gave her a freshly brewed cup of coffee and informed her there was plenty of room left in first class if she preferred that to the tight squeeze in the cockpit jump seat. Even though it was a short flight, the choice was an easy one. She let some of the passengers get settled before taking an aisle seat across from one of the marshals. These guys were not known to be chatty—she could probably count on a quiet ride—so she settled herself with a crossword puzzle from the inflight magazine and her coffee.

Not long before they pushed off the gate, a latecomer dashed into the cabin, stowed his bag overhead and squished past Nikki to take the window seat beside her, even though there were several empty seats to choose from. She knew immediately that he wasn't going to be a quiet seatmate. He might be having trouble slowing down after a mad rush to the airport…or else he had a lot of nervous energy. When he turned to her, he looked
her over, and his smile had the hint of a leer to it. “How you doin'?” he asked with an accent laced heavily with Brooklyn Italian.

“Great,” she said, going back to the crossword puzzle.

The flight attendant approached him. “We have just a few minutes, sir, but if you—”

“Yeah. Bloody Mary. Thanks.” Then to Nikki he added, “Long night. Whoa, know what I mean. Name's Rocky.”

Nikki just smiled briefly, then turned her head back to the puzzle. She wasn't going to ask about the long night.

“You got a name?” he asked her.

“Joan,” she lied.

“Well, how do you do, Joan.” He held out his hand to her and she gave it a brief shake. “You fly much?”

Apparently he wasn't going to make it easy to ignore him. “Pretty much, actually,” she said.

“Me, too. Just part of the job.” His drink arrived and he made fast work of it. “So, what do you do?” he asked her.

“I'm just going up to Las Vegas to spend the day with a friend who's starting a new business there. I haven't seen him in quite a while, so we have a lot of catching up to do.” She was well aware that she hadn't answered his question. “And you?” she asked, turning his attention away from her. “What do you do?”

He gave a low and provocative chuckle and glanced around for eavesdroppers. “I fly for a living.” He chuckled again, as though he'd let some cat out of the bag. “You're not married?”

“Ah, no. Not yet, anyway.”

“And this guy in Las Vegas…?”

“We go way back,” she said, already very annoyed. This one-hour flight was going to feel like a week.

The flight attendant came by to pick up glasses and cups as the jetway pulled back, the door was closed and the 767 jerked into motion. Mr. Chatterbox, aka Rocky, instructed the flight attendant to bring him another drink when they were airborne, then rattled on about the runway traffic, how long it was going to take to get clearance, the inefficiency of Air Traffic Control. Then he was on to different carriers and how they processed passengers, luggage and food.

The plane lifted off and rose, and once his second drink arrived, he went on to extol Aries Airline, which was one of his favorites. They were still young enough, he said, not to have old, jaded flight attendants who had forgotten how to smile. And they kept to their schedule more than some of the older and larger carriers.

Breakfast was a simple affair on a one-hour flight—a beverage, bagel, fruit and yogurt—but Rocky just drank his breakfast. Drank and talked. Finally she asked him, “Who do you fly for, then?”

He got that smirk again and glanced around before replying. “Well, I'm not supposed to mention this, but you seem pretty trustworthy. I fly for the government.”

“Military?” she asked.

“TSA—that's Transportation Security Administration,” he answered. “I'm…ah…an air marshal.” He looked around furtively again.

“I see,” she said. “How interesting. Do you have to carry a weapon at all times, then?”

“Well, that's the idea. But I'm not officially on duty at the moment.”

“So that means you're not armed now?” she asked.

“Well, not
officially.
But believe me, if I were needed
in some official capacity, I wouldn't let you down.” He patted her hand and she wanted to go wash it. Then he laughed. “Know what I mean, babe?”

Babe? Oh, he was going to so regret this behavior. “You must have a badge or something. Huh?”

“I wouldn't want to get that out…draw attention to myself…Y'know? Because I'm not working at the moment.”

She wasn't sure if he was an idiot or a criminal. First of all, a person with a firearm was never served alcohol on a commercial flight, and this guy was getting loaded. Second, on duty or off, an undercover federal cop never identified himself to passengers—not even women he was trying to pick up.

This guy could be a fed doing things he shouldn't be doing, or he could be an impostor with fake ID. If the latter were true, he might have a weapon with him. And if he had a weapon, he might have plans for it.

So she made small talk. About how much flying he must do. About all the cities he must visit regularly. Did he have a family? Did he get tired of living out of a suitcase? Did he know the answer to one of her crossword clues? Would he like a magazine? Until finally she said, “You'll have to excuse me—all that coffee, you know.”

“Sure thing, babe.”

Babe again. Oh, he was going to be sorry.

She found the flight attendant cleaning up in the galley, whispered in her ear, then stepped into the bathroom. The flight attendant wrote notes on two napkins and took them with glasses of water to two men in the first-class cabin.

The flight was only about fifteen minutes out of Las Vegas. One marshal was across the aisle from where
Nikki had been seated and the other was a couple of rows up.

Nikki stepped out of the bathroom just as one of the marshals, an innocuous-looking middle-aged man with thinning gray hair and a cardigan sweater in a terrible pattern moved back to where Rocky sat. The one across the aisle was about thirty-five, had a ponytail and a leather vest, obviously playing the part of yuppie trash. But their choreography was delightful, and she ducked quickly into the galley, out of sight, to watch from behind the drawn curtain.