Unaccompanied Minor (12 page)

Malcolm and I were in row 44 next to the window on the pilot’s side of the aircraft. This was the D section of the plane, which is the area all the way back by the lavatories. I swore I could still smell the cigarettes people used to smoke back there before they banned smoking on domestic flights in the early nineties. Malcolm gathered Captain Beefheart from his crate and handed him to me.

“There won’t be any private planes in our path today,” he said, “because the legacy of that crash set a precedent for tower-to-pilot protocol. A crash like that can never happen again.”

“I know that,” I guffawed. I kissed Captain Beefheart on his eyelids. He had the kind of eyes that look like they are rimmed in eyeliner, incongruously feminine against the rest of his crocodile exterior. “What about Swissair flight 111?”

“An MD-11 en route to Geneva, Switzerland. It crashed off the coast of Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1998. An electrical fire on board grew out of control.”

“And….”

“And what?” he asked.

“And if the pilot hadn’t tried to circle to dump fuel before landing, they would have made it safely to the emergency landing.”

“I wouldn’t call it ‘safely,’” he countered.

“Still, you know, that last attempt to circle cost them the vessel,” I went on, my success at flirting losing air like a punctured life raft.

“We see things differently,” Malcolm said, nudging me. It was an inside joke, and it made me smile. He knew I was right, though. The electrical fire of Swissair flight 111 was not the pilot’s fault, but the decision to circle was. But who can blame the pilot? That is what the rules required of him—dump the fuel before an emergency landing. Pilots are rule followers. But flight attendants are different. Even in my flight attendant manual, it says expressly that when the rules don’t apply… you are free to improvise.

It was because of my lively discussion with Malcolm about plane wrecks that the flight attendant approached us before takeoff. Another passenger had complained to him about our conversation, so he made his way to our row to admonish us.

“Zip it, kids,” he said curtly. “Nobody wants to hear a play-by-play of past plane wrecks. And what’s with the dog?”

“He’s an emotional support animal,” Malcolm said. “He’s registered on the manifest. Look, I have his papers.”

“Well, put him away or something,” the flight attendant said, which was totally against procedure. Didn’t he know the point of emotional support dogs is that they
be held
? I looked at his badge to tell Flo about him, and I saw that his badge identified him as Brighton McPherson, qualified as a German interpreter.

It would not have caught my attention except that I’d met Brighton McPherson once. He jumpseated next to me across the Midwest a week ago. He spent the entire taxi complaining to me about his boyfriend, who had taken to placing his beloved ancient cat in the storage compartment under the apartment complex while Brighton was away on his trips. I counseled him as best I could, giving him the advice I’d heard my mother dole out on occasion. I’ve found it works as a universal response to almost all relationship complaints.

“Kick him in the crotch, the bastard,” I suggested.

Brighton laughed. “Honey, I will have to try that.”

We sat in the rear galley of a 767, and I helped him study for his German-language requalification exam. I love helping flight attendants study for their qualification tests. There are tons of different kinds, be it a foreign-language designation or, my favorite, the annual recurrent training. In Brighton’s case, he had key cards with the pertinent airline phrases/questions written on one side and their German translations/answers on the other.

“Why can’t passengers use their cell phones while the plane is on the tarmac or during takeoff?” I read from the stack of cards. Brighton responded with a slew of guttural-sounding words that I assumed translated to “because the radio waves can interfere with the cockpit communication,” since that is the official answer to that question. I say “official” as opposed to “correct,” because I think the correct answer is actually that it’s best to pay the hell attention during takeoffs and landings, because that is when crashes are most likely to occur.

Anyway, the Brighton McPherson I knew had blond hair and brown eyes, and this one, while matching the general characteristics of the picture on his badge, had blue eyes. I could tell because when his pupils constricted like they were right now, I saw the real color of his irises rimming the interior of his dark contacts. I guess it was possible for two people in the same department of the same company the size of WorldAir to have the same exact name—in fact there are three (
three!
) flight attendants named Kate Hicks in the trip bidding system alone—but usually the names were common.

I found it pretty doubtful there would be two Brighton McPhersons in the same department, and even more doubtful they would have the exact same employment date and foreign-language designation. Also, there was the matter of Jalyce Sanders, whose true fate had yet to make itself known as far as I could ascertain from Google searches, so this guy would not be the first WorldAir imposter I’d encountered recently, and I say that as one myself.

“
Fuessgelenke umklammern
,” I said to him. I don’t really speak German, but I can shout crash commands in three languages. What I actually told this imposter translated to “grab your ankles.” It’s what the crew is supposed to yell at the passengers in the event of an “unanticipated landing,” which is just a euphemistic way to say “crash.” Again, I really hate euphemisms. They should just say it like it is. “We’re crashing, put your heads down!” or something. Not just “grab your ankles!”

“
Schnauze, Dumkopf
,” he responded.
Hmm
, I thought.
I think he just told me to shut up
. So he either really spoke German, or, like me, he simply memorized some airline phrases to make it appear like he could.

“
Es ist eine Bombe an Bord
,” I countered. It was another foreign-language phrase commonly memorized by rote by those in the industry. It means there’s a bomb on board. Its very utterance should strike panic in a flight attendant.

Technically it was the second bomb threat of my career, and it should have elicited mayhem, which I planned to diffuse by deflecting blame and claiming my words were merely misunderstood. Malcolm would have totally backed me up. Oddly, though, this flight attendant simply eyed me levelly and walked away. And the weirdest part is that I could have sworn he understood me.

“What was that about?” Malcolm inquired, returning Captain Beefheart to my arms.

I didn’t answer him. I had a decision to make. Should I bring the imposter to the attention of the rest of the crew? Often these charades are carried out with the full knowledge of the parties involved. For all I knew, this guy wearing Brighton’s badge was Brighton’s coworker or gay lover and he was here to work a shift for him. I didn’t want to get a fellow flight attendant in trouble. And I counted myself among them because I did feel a camaraderie to the profession. I had been impersonating my own mother on and off for months, but only as a nonrevenue or jumpseating passenger. You didn’t see me walking the aisles and bossing unaccompanied minors around. Not unless it was something Flo expressly asked me to do, which was hardly ever.

Flo was in the lower galley checking the catering supplies as the ground crew boarded them on the plane. Or, more likely, she was chugging a Bloody Mary and signing off on everything with a toast of her thermos. The imposter should have been down there with her as a galley assist, but Flo had probably sent him back up. She liked to work alone on account of how she routinely broke about a dozen federal regulations per flight leg, and you never knew if a coworker would react favorably to that or not.

So I finally decided the best course of action was to quickly sneak down to the lower galley to get Flo’s opinion on the event unfolding above her. We had ten minutes before departure, and I had handed Beefheart back to Malcolm and was halfway out of my seat when suddenly the captain announced they were ready to close the forward door and push back from the gate, so could the last trickle of passengers please move their butts and buckle up? Not in those words, but definitely in that spirit.

Dang!
I thought. They were departing early because all the passengers were on board and accounted for, though obviously not all were in their seats. A jumble of them were stuck behind a large Hawaiian lady with her hair in a bun almost as big as Flo’s. This flight was a through-flight from Grand Cayman as well as a popular East-Coast connection to Honolulu through Los Angeles, so it attracted a lot of vacationers, many of whom had already begun their revelry in the concourse bar before departure. In fact, one of the reasons the Hawaiian lady was having trouble situating herself was because a guy appeared to have passed out, a state which caused him to hog not only his middle seat, but her aisle seat as well.

“Check out the drunk,” I snickered, nudging Malcolm.

“What a douche,” he said derisively. Malcolm does not take kindly to drinkers, seeing as how his mother is a “volcanic alcoholic,” as he put it. I’ve met her only once myself, and I wisely never bring it up to Malcolm. She reminded me of that training video flight attendants are supposed to watch in order to learn about hypoxia, which is what happens to you when the oxygen masks drop during a decompression and you take your sweet time securing one over your nose and mouth. In short, your brain gets deprived of oxygen and you start acting like you’ve been exposed to a nerve-gas experiment or something. But the interesting thing about hypoxia is that, evidently, you think you’re perfectly fine. You have no idea that your brain is undergoing total decline. As far as you know everything is hunky-dang-dory.

The training video I’m talking about is an old black-and-white reel that depicts an experiment in which a woman is asked to enter an airtight chamber where scientists observe her through a window. Then they slowly deplete the oxygen from inside the chamber while asking her via intercom to perform a litany of mundane tasks. She gamely complies, thinking she’s passing everything with flying colors, when actually she looks like she’s swatting at invisible insects the whole time.

Then the scientists ask her to apply a fresh coat of lipstick. She’s happy to do it, and commences smearing the stuff all over her face like a toddler with a jar of jam. When she’s released from the chamber it takes probably a second for her to revert to normal, and the scientists ask her how she thought she did. She replies that she thinks she did really well. Then they direct her to a mirror where she gets to see her crazy clown face, and everybody laughs and slaps their knees, it’s so funny. Har.

The moral of the story is that hypoxia creeps up on you super-fast,
and you have no idea
. That is why, during the in-flight safety demonstrations, the flight attendants always tell you to put the oxygen mask over yourself before helping a child. Because you’re not really gonna be all that useful to anyone if you’re thinking everything’s hunky-dang-dory when really you’re just smearing lipstick on your face like a crazy clown.

Regarding Malcolm’s mom, it happened some months ago in the WorldAir Flight Club lounge in the F Concourse of the Atlanta airport. The Flight Club lounge is like a giant velvet-rope room for WorldAir’s rich zillion-milers. It turns out to be a great place to hang out when you are on the run, especially the one at the Atlanta airport because it has a locker room where you can shower. My ability to sneak into the lounge came about unexpectedly. First, I found that if I hung out directly outside the lounge I could use their free WiFi signal to schedule myself on flights with my iPad. So that was my habit until one day one of the specialty agents inside the lounge came out to tell me my big brother was looking for me, so I’d better get myself inside ASAP.

I had no idea what he was talking about because, for one, I don’t have a brother, big or otherwise. And any way you look at it, every family member I have is a WorldAir employee, and WorldAir employees are seriously not allowed to go into the ritzy Flight Club lounges for fear we’d sully the atmosphere with our blue-collaredness. But this agent was certain someone inside was demanding my presence, so I meekly followed him through the door. He led me straight to the back of a plush egg-shaped chair, the kind that evil supervillains sit in, and just like almost all famous scenes with the evil supervillain, the chair swiveled around to face me.

“Malcolm!” I squealed. As ever, I was immensely happy to see him.

“Yes, my dear,” he said in his best evil supervillain voice. He held Beefheart in his lap and stroked his head. “Mwaaa ha ha!”

He had seen me sitting on the concourse through the lounge’s glass door and instructed the agent to summon me. (He actually used that word, “summon.” He cracks me up.) It turned out (of course) that we were scheduled on the same flight to LAX that day, which didn’t leave for, like,
hours
.

“Why are you at the airport so early?” I asked. I knew why I was there, as I pretty much lived at airports by that point.

“My mom loves the Flight Club—free booze,” he responded, indicating a woman sitting at the bar. She wore her hair like Lucille Ball: flaming red and fluffed like a forties pinup. Her outfit was a bedazzled leopardskin caftan over black leggings. Her shoes were ballet flats encrusted with sharp silver and gold studs at the toes. To be fair, her shoes looked comfortable, and they were in style, if you were to believe the magazines I’d pilfered from people’s seat pockets on occasion. But still, you know… wow. She looked to be a Botoxed forty-five years old and about five cocktails to the wind, judging from how she kept resting her head in the crook of her elbow as she raised her empty glass to signal a refill.

“Oh. ’Kay,” I said, trying to sound totally accepting. Because I was not one to throw stones,
at all
. Case in point: My mom was in a nut house, my real dad was dead, and my stepdad was a sociopath. Add to that the fact that my best friend in the world was a sixty-seven-year-old cigarette-addicted, booze-addled, old-school stewardess named Flo, and what you have is someone who was living in the most major of glass houses. Seriously.