Crazy Like Fox

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

As awesome as the trip looked on paper, it started out even better than that. Light passenger load, strong tailwind, and a fun crew—every trip should kick off like this one did. Looking back, I would have to describe the first night of the trip as completely devoid of warning signs.

World Wind Airways had come into the world in the early 1990s to fill what the company’s billionaire founder saw as a void in commercial air travel. Pan Am had been out of business for years, and most U.S. carriers were starting to reduce service in every way possible to compete with low cost, upstart airlines. World Wind was created as a high-profile luxury alternative with the express goal of restoring excitement and glamour to the skies. The all-wide body fleet, while not necessarily right off the factory floor, was lushly appointed, with cushy leather seats, flattering lighting, and tinkling in-flight music in each airplane’s neon-retro lounge area. The flight attendants were hired specifically to enhance the exclusive atmosphere–for their looks, their language skills, or their all-around class–and we were pampered from check-in on Day One right through arrival on the last day of the trip; the better to happily indulge our passengers when called upon to do so. We strode through the world’s most highly polished airports like we owned them, in tasteful, figure-flattering uniforms appropriate to local climate and customs. We never handled our own luggage, and we were strictly forbidden from carrying food or drink in the terminal. Not to worry. Once aboard the airplane, we were plied with gourmet coffee, fresh-squeezed juices, and every manner of local gustatory delight. Our crew meals, like those we served our passengers, were prepared fresh in local kitchens with traditional, regional ingredients, and if we wanted to take classes on our layovers—language classes, dance classes, cooking or crafting classes—the company paid for them and threw in a stipend for our efforts. At the peak of our success, we flew to 137 cities on six continents and had not one but two round-the-world routings.

Which went a long way towards explaining why now, almost twenty years into my career, the company was, depending on who you talked to, days, weeks, or—if we were lucky—months away from total financial collapse. The airline industry in general suffered mightily during the mid-decade economic downturn, and demand for our luxury product dropped to nearly nil. Our airplanes didn’t literally fly empty, but there were many occasions when we wondered if it wouldn’t have been smarter for them to do so. Jeremy and I worked an eleven-day Around The World pairing together in 2008 where our heaviest load (from Perth to Nairobi) was a family of six, and where we flew two legs with one passenger and a crew of eight.

In an effort to stay afloat, World Wind started selling off routes and airplanes in 2005, starting with much (and eventually all) of our European flying. The less exotic routes sold like hot cakes, and soon we had pulled completely out of China, Japan, and the Middle East. Eventually, with the exception of our twice-weekly Seattle to Singapore, we had unloaded all of our long-haul flying and, while we maintained our corporate headquarters and our crew base in Seattle, Miami became our de facto operational hub. We still covered almost every gravel airstrip in the Caribbean and Central America, and every trip began and ended with the only domestic segment in our system, Seattle to Miami.

Jeremy and I knew that we needed to put together a plan for our hitherto unimagined Life After World Wind, but we were still in the planning stages. Did one of us want to look for another airline job to hang onto the all-important travel benefits? Did one of us want to go back to school? Did we want to go into business for ourselves? And if so, pray tell, doing what? It wasn’t that we couldn’t read the writing on the wall. It was more a question of us hoping that the wall would stay standing long enough for us to make a plan so we wouldn’t be pinned under it when it came crumbling down.

One thing that we considered a positive sign was the fact that World Wind kept hiring flight attendants. On the flight to Miami, only the captain had been with the company longer than me, and him for only by a couple of months. Of the other six flight attendants, I knew three from The Good Old Days, and the other three had each been flying for less than two years. The most junior, an adorably plump little blond, hadn’t yet been flying six months, and in fact it wasn’t immediately apparent that he was even old enough to drive himself to the airport.

He and I were to work together in the aft galley, I as the chef and he as my assistant. It was a cushy gig that I was surprised had gone so junior, since the all-nighter departed at 11:50pm and required virtually nothing in the way of galley prep, but I loved flying with new-hires, and especially with cute ones, so I was just as happy that he pulled the assignment.

Through nothing more than a happy accident of good timing, Jeremy and I had started with World Wind in the company’s infancy, and had been among the most senior flight attendants for the whole of our careers. We didn’t always fly together by any means. For the day-to-day bill-paying flying we took whatever came our way, and often flew on alternating days in favor of flying with friends. But let a special occasion come along, and Jeremy and I were always the first two to put our names on the list. Together, we had inaugurated the airline’s service into Johannesburg, Hyderabad, and Kuala Lumpur. We had worked charters for presidents and popes, kings, queens, and movie stars. Besides maybe the Maharincess of Franistan, you’d be hard-pressed to name a celebrity or international luminary to whom I hadn’t at least handed a china ramekin of warmed nuts. We airlifted people away from the devastation wrought by forest fires in Australia, tsunami waves in Thailand and Sri Lanka, and a hurricane in New Orleans. Between us we’d put out an in-flight fire, saved a guy’s life with chest compressions and the defibrillator, and evacuated two burning airplanes. Hell, when we were just starting out, I even assisted at the birth of a litter of kittens in a First Class seat. In terms of the World Wind Airways operation, we had been everywhere but the electric chair and seen everything but the wind. I could do even the most elaborate service with my eyes closed, and unless the airplane was just going to fall out the sky, nothing was going to happen that I hadn’t seen before.

So I loved the energy of working with a junior crew. Things are still exciting. There are still so many places to see, so many things to try. It’s a fun job that they know they were lucky to get, especially these days, so they try hard to get it right, and when we get where we’re going and the work’s behind us, they’re ready to party. To try new restaurants, to sight-see—it’s all new for many of them, and they’re up for whatever. And as long as World Wind is paying to interview, hire, and train them, how broke could we really be?

And so I offered my new flying partner a hearty handshake and a warm hello when we boarded the airplane. “Hiya,” I told him. “I’m Fox.”

“That’s a funny name for a redhead,” he cracked, then said with a completely straight face, “I’m Thumper.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Thumper,” he repeated.

“That’s a funny name for anybody,” I felt permitted to observe. “Is that your real name?”

He smiled. “No,” he said. “My real name’s Thjxogfrwlk.” Or so he might as well have said for all that I was able to understand him. How did he get his mouth around that mess?

“I’m sorry?” I said again.

He laughed. “See? I grew up speaking Afrikaans and I can barely pronounce my own name. You’d probably swallow your tongue trying to say it right. So I go by Thumper.”

He grinned. Eager, cute, little, and cuddly—bless him, it fit him perfectly.

If I’m in the galley directing the service, flight attendants find that things go much more smoothly when I get my way, and Thumper turned out to be my favorite kind of new flight attendant. He was eager to please, he was smart, and he took direction well. The service didn’t take but thirty minutes, and we were barely at our cruising altitude when the crew began tucking themselves into their favorite spots to ride out the night.

Barring a major medical or mechanical emergency, this all-nighter was typically no more demanding than fetching the occasional glass of water and pouring one or two cups of coffee before landing, and I like to come prepared. I had a stack of magazines, a couple of crossword puzzles, and Yahtzee! in my bag, but we had settled on the dollar-store mini pack of Go Fish cards that Thumper found in a seat back pocket, and were slouched against the back counter with Schatzie Pasternack, shootin’ the s**t and asking for threes.

We weren’t necessarily friends—she lived in the suburbs of Olympia with her uber-macho husband and three activity-obsessed kids, as I recalled, and attended few of the Gay Boy Rooftop Barbecues that were such a staple in my life with Jeremy—but I knew Schatzie from Once Upon A Time, and we gossiped and traded stories about the old days of flying just for something to do. The third time she shoe-horned the name Rodrigo oh-so-casually into the conversation, I took the bait.

“Who’s this ‘Rodrigo’?” I asked. “Do I know him?”

“Oh, he’s not a flight attendant,” she hastened to specify.

“A pilot?”

She shook her head. “No. You got any nines?”

“Go fish. What do you mean ‘No’? If he’s not a pilot or a flight attendant, how does he end up on all these Miami layovers with you?”

“Um…well…” she hedged, concentrating way too carefully on fishing a card out of the pile on the counter between us.

“He lives in Miami, huh?” Thumper proposed.

I had my mouth open to fill him in. Schatzie was married, I was about to tell him. She didn’t have some boy toy in Miami.

At least, I wouldn’t have pegged her as the type to have some boy toy in Miami, but she sure did nod when Thumper figured it out.

“Schatzie!” I gasped.

Now she was grinning. “I met him a couple of months ago.”

“On a layover?”

“On the airplane. Coming from Cartagena. He’s from Colombia, but he lives in Miami. We just, you know…hang out, like when I’m in town and stuff.” The way her face lit up when she said “hang out,” I knew they weren’t meeting for coffee or “hanging out” at the mall.

“Schatzie!” I exclaimed again.

“What about eights?” Thumper piped up. “Ya got any eights?”

“Oh, Fox, calm down,” she scolded, sparing a head shake for Thumper. “We’re just having fun. Go fish, darlin’. I’ve been with Bill for seventeen years, and he’s been a stick in the mud for sixteen and a half. He’s a good dad and I love him, but Jesus. I almost had to hire a houseboy to clean out all the cobwebs before I met Rodrigo, and I’m not talking about in my living room.”

Thumper and I laughed. I guess I didn’t know Schatzie all that well. She’d always just struck me as a soccer-mom type who liked the occasional fruity drink by the pool.

“We’re just fooling around. It’s not like I’m going anywhere. He’s only twenty-six, for Heaven’s sake.”

“Twenty-six!”

“Go on, girl,” Thumper chimed in.

“Come on, Fox,” Schatzie chided. “How long have you guys been together?”

“Almost nineteen years.”

Thumper looked shocked. “What, since pre-school?”

“Aren’t you sweet. You got any eights?”

“Schiesse.” he muttered, handing me two.

Schatzie went on, “Like you two have never fooled around.”

“We don’t!” I insisted. “We’re totally monogamous. We’re very explicit about that.”

They both raised skeptical eyebrows at me, which always annoyed me. “What? Because we’re gay we can’t possibly be monogamous? Like we can’t help ourselves? Like on layovers the temptation is just too great? In case you haven’t noticed,” I teased, “these World Wind flight attendants aren’t what they used to be. I think I can control myself.”

Schatzie merely raised her eyebrow higher, but I held my ground as best I could. “Okay, ‘never’ is a big word. We might have fooled around once or twice in the very beginning. But we’ve talked about it a few times. Do we want an open relationship? Are we satisfied? We always decide to stick with it. If it ain’t broke and all that. Of course,” I couldn’t help but gloat as I laid my cards on the counter in Go Fish triumph, “it helps that the s*x is still fantastic.”

“After nineteen years?” Thumper lifted his eyebrow.

“Honey,” I elaborated, “he’s an animal. Why do you think I picked up this trip? To surprise him? Hell, he’s been gone five days and I’ve had enough me time.”

Schatzie laughed. “We better not get rooms next to each other,” she said, pouring herself another cup of coffee. “I would like to get some rest on this trip.”

“That’s between you and Rodrigo,” I teased.

She pretended to reflect. “Screw it, I’ll sleep when I get home.” She grabbed a bottle of water off the counter and sailed off into the aisle.

Still laughing, I shrugged at Thumper. “You wanna play again?”

“Why not?” he asked. “Deal ‘em up.”

As I did, he remarked, “Wow, nineteen years. So your boyfriend’s a flight attendant?”

“Yeah.”

He blushed just the lightest shade of pink when he said, “Mine, too.”

“Oh yeah?”

He nibbled his lower lip and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Cool,” I said. “You got any fours?”

“Go fish. I mean, he’s not really my ‘boyfriend,’ we just met. But I’d like to be his boyfriend. He’s amazing!”

“Aww,” I encouraged. “Young love. That’s great. You meet on the plane?”

“Yeah, we just flew together a couple weeks ago. He’s much older than me—he’s like your age—but he’s so handsome, and so nice. Got any sixes?”

“My age?!? Go fish. I’m old enough to be your father. How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Well, okay, maybe not father. But I could certainly be your favorite uncle.”

“I never had any uncles that looked like this,” he laughed.

“You got any twos?”

He handed me a card and carried on in a slightly confessional tone, “I’m hoping to meet him in Miami, too.”

I chuckled. “It’s a good thing we have a long layover. Sounds like everybody’s got pretty big plans.”

“Right?”

“Maybe he’s flying with my boyfriend,” I said. “What trip is he on?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know he’s flying, so you know he’ll be passing through Miami one way or another. Sevens?”

“That would be funny if they’re flying together,” I said, handing him three cards. “They’re probably talking about us right now.”

He smiled, blushing again. “I hope he’s talking about me. I mean, so far it’s only been fooling around and stuff, but fooling around has been amazing. Talk about an animal! Trust me, I’ve been with plenty of guys my age, and I’m learning…they don’t know anything. I didn’t know I could get into some of these positions.”

“You got any nines?” I laughed. “I was gonna say we should go out or something, little double date. Sounds like you might not leave the room, though.”

“If he’s in town,” he said, leering the best he could with that little boy moon face, “it is my sincere hope that we won’t. Go fish.”