by Donald Bain
Rachel and I were in Room 356C. Sandy was in 365C. It was about eight o’clock. I was settling down for the next juicy chapter of a motion picture actress’s best-selling autobiography, while Rachel was doing sitting-up exercises on the floor. The phone rang.
“I’ll get it,” I said. I picked up the receiver and heard, “Is this Sandy?”
“No, it’s not. You have the wrong room.”
“Sorry!” He hung up quickly.
“Who was that?” Rachel queried.
“Some guy for Sandy. What room is she in, anyway?”
“Forget. Hey, maybe it’s some rich oil man and he’s keeping Sandy. Yeh, that’s it.”
“Oh.”
I read further in the book and Rachel turned to push-ups. “It’s good for the breasts, you know,” she grunted from the floor.
“Tell Betty Big Boobs.”
“Up . . . down . . . up . . . down . . .”
The phone rang.
“Hello.”
“Sandy?”
“This isn’t Sandy’s room. You’ve got the wrong one. Check the desk.”
He hung up without another word.
Rachel was now on deep breathing exercises.
“In . . . out . . . in . . . out . . .”
“I’ll get it,” she said when the phone rang again. She picked the receiver up quickly. “Hello . . . No, she’s taking a shower. Who’s calling?”
The man’s voice on the other end hesitated. “Uh, when do you think she’ll be finished?”
“Pretty soon,” Rachel replied, her voice a strange cooing, sexy sound.
“Oh,” the guy said. “Would you tell her Larry called?”
“Sure. But can’t I help you?” I was listening closely now, my book relegated to the floor.
“You help me? . . . Well, . . . I didn’t know if you . . . I don’t think so. Good-bye.”
“He hung up,” Rachel said, still holding the phone to her ear.
“What was that routine?” I asked. “She’s not taking a shower.”
“I know. But I wanted him to talk a little. Who are all these guys calling her?”
“Rachel, you are truly jealous. And a busybody to boot.”
Rachel turned and looked me straight in the eye. “Aren’t you interested, too, Trudy?”
“Yup. Let’s figure out what to say to the next call. OK?”
We plotted our action. Rachel would answer and say Sandy had left for an appointment but asked that Rachel substitute for her. The phone rang ten minutes later and our plan was in effect. Only Rachel, as so often happened when I egged her on, became even bolder than we had planned.
“I’m sure you’d like me,” I heard her saying and couldn’t believe my ears.
“Are you a . . . a stewardess, too?” the man asked.
“Yes, I am. Sandy and I have . . . well, sort of our own private little thing going. Are you coming up?”
“Rachel, you idiot, that’s our room. It’s one thing to find out about Sandy, but not to have the guy come up here.” I wanted to kill her.
“Why not?” Rachel hurried around the apartment picking up clothing and other personal items. “Might be fun. Ever been on call?”
“Of course not.”
“Me either. But I bet we could act like one. I mean two. Now don’t get upset. I don’t mean we’re really going to do what a prostitute does. We can just talk to him and maybe find out more about Sandy.”
“But how are we going to get rid of him?” I wanted to know.
Rachel hadn’t thought about that. She suddenly paled. “Gee, let’s see . . .”
Now it was my turn to improvise. “Suppose we tell him we charge two hundred dollars.”
“You’re a genius,” Rachel assured me. “That’ll do it.”
But the whole thing had me worried. “You know, Rachel, Sandy will find out about this. She’s bound to. He’ll tell her about the high price and all.”
“He will not. He’ll never mention a word. And if he does, we just deny anything. Don’t worry about it.”
Within minutes, we had our hotel room looking good enough to rival anything Sadie Thompson could have dreamed up on such short notice. One light illuminated the room. The drapes were drawn. We wore our bathrobes (with Bermuda shorts and sweaters underneath). We were beginning to feel the part, and that was a little frightening. We waited for what seemed an eternity before there came a feeble knock on the door.
“Go ahead,” I whispered to Rachel.
“You,” she countered.
“You started it,” I retorted.
“I’m scared,” she quavered.
I ran over to her. He knocked again. “Evens,” I said. “OK. Odds for me.”
“Once, twice, three . . . shoot.” I put out one finger and she put out two. Rachel would answer the door. He was knocking louder now.
She slowly opened it and there stood our caller—our first customer. He looked awful.
“Howdy,” he said with a broad grin. “Here I am.”
“Hi,” Rachel managed to say, her voice having obvious trouble getting past her Adam’s apple.
“Can I come in? This is the place, isn’t it.”
Rachel hesitated for a moment. “Sure. Come in.”
He walked through the door and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me.
“Two of you?”
“Yup.”
“I’ll be damned. Didn’t know there was two of you.”
“Yup. Two of us,” I said, trying to appear at home with the situation.
He rocked back and forth, from one foot to another, as he made up his mind what to say next. He seemed as nervous as we were.
“Sit down,” I said to break the silence.
“Name’s Bert. What’s yours?”
“Roberta,” I said, not knowing why that name came into my head.
“I’m Zelda,” Rachel threw in.
“Zelda?”
“Zelda.”
“Nice name.”
“Thanks.”
He fidgeted in his chair. He twirled his tie in his fingers and kept blowing his cheeks out.
“Well,” he finally managed to say, “I guess we’d better iron things out right now. I mean, about the two of you and all. I mean, about the money. You know?”
Rachel took the initiative. “Sure. The money. We can get to that in a minute. Uh, why don’t you take off your shoes. That’s a good idea. And loosen your tie.”
I was afraid she was overdoing it. Fortunately he didn’t want to take his shoes off. He did loosen his tie.
“You from Dallas?” I asked.
“Yup.”
“Where’d you meet Sandy?”
“Never did meet her. Another fella told me ’bout her. Didn’t know there were others.”
“Other what?”
“Well, you know what I mean. Gals like yourselves making a little extra in your spare time.”
We evidently looked hurt, or shocked, because he came right back with, “Not that I blame you. Guess you don’t make that much workin’ for the airline. And guess you figure there’s nothin’ wrong with it ’cause you’re gonna do it anyway. Am I right?”
“Well, yes.”
“How’d you get started?” he asked, leaning forward to indicate sincere and deep interest in the subject. This was crazy. He wasn’t supposed to interview us.
“Well, it’s a long story.”
He looked at his watch. “Look, I gotta get home. What do I do. Choose?”
“I guess so,” I answered.
“Well, no hard feelings I hope. I’ll take you.” He pointed directly at me.
For once I was speechless, all my Texas bravado fled. What now?
“You got another room up here?” he asked.
“No. No other room. Just this one.”
His eyes began to light up. “Boy, you gonna watch?” he asked Rachel.
“Guess so.”
Bert got up and came over to me. He put his arm around me and kisse
d me on the neck.
“Wait a minute,” I said in a panic, pushing him away at the same time.
“Oh, yeh. About that money. My friend said it was thirty-five. OK by me.”
Rachel jumped into the discussion. “Thirty-five? You must be kidding.”
“Well, that’s what he told me. How much is it?”
“Two hundred.”
“Two hundred?”
“Sure. We’re clean, nice girls. Not like the others who do this. Two hundred.”
“Boy, he sure was wrong.”
“Sorry. You’d better leave. There are others waiting.”
Bert walked out under a cloud of gloom. We’d never talked about what we’d do if our customer became violent, or if he had the two hundred. Lucky for us, Bert was just sad and poor.
“Well, how about Miss Sandy Sims?” Rachel said with pride that she’d uncovered the plot.
“We know where she gets the money but so what? What do you think we’re supposed to do about it?”
“Nothing. I just feel better now that my curiosity can be put to rest.”
We decided the evening had been fun. But what a strange feeling to be talking to that strange man about going to bed with him, especially when the money question came up.
“What did you do last night?” we asked Sandy the next morning on the plane.
“Not much. Had a good night’s sleep. Say, by the way, the desk clerk had our room numbers mixed up. I got a couple of calls from friends of mine who said they got your room instead. At least I think it was your room. Thanks for setting them straight. I have a lot of relatives in Dallas and it was good to hear from them. You didn’t get any other calls for me, did you?”
“No, no, Sandy. Not a one.”
“Good. I hate to miss a phone call.”
Sandy Sims is the only stewardess we’ve ever met who made extra money this way. There are a few others we’ve heard about. But we’ve never met them. We understand they try to work the charter flights that take a group of men to a convention. That seems sensible to us.
CHAPTER XIX
“What’s a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Plane Like This?”
We talked a little earlier about how a stewardess learns to recognize a married man from the moment he walks on board the aircraft. This developed perception, coupled with the aid of a tell-tale, pale imprint of a hastily removed wedding band, proves extremely valuable in a very practical sense.
But sizing up a male passenger’s marital status isn’t all we do when things are slow. We also play the game of guessing where he’s from and what he does. As stewardesses on the receiving end of perhaps more direct passes than any other group of working girls, we’ve been able to compare notes on the pitches different men make and how these pitches relate to their nationality and profession. After long and careful study of countless stories by our fellow stewardesses, together with a normal amount of firsthand experiences, we’ve been able to come up with our own handbook on the subject. If a given profession or nationality isn’t listed, we can only offer the probability that men in that category don’t fly, or don’t like girls, or both.
GERMANS
German men always do things by the numbers. They seem to base their amorous advances on pages from a strange and misplaced book, a book that will never make the best-seller charts here in America. They try to give you the impression that to accompany them from the airplane and share their bed would be a contribution toward some better, super-world. They usually attack the larger species of stewardesses—the flight’s flying Brunhildes.
It is our considered and combined judgment that Germans and actors share honors for being the cheapest dates a stew can accept. Thus, since accepting a date with a German man isn’t about to pay off in an evening in the better restaurants, clubs, or theaters, you’ve got to justify your acceptances as accomplishing something for the State. Very few stewardesses accept dates with German passengers.
ITALIANS
Italian men don’t pinch stewardesses. True, they use their hands a great deal when talking, but they aren’t the grabby kind. What they do is look at you long and hard with eyes that catch hold of a loose thread and unravel all your clothes. They have the ability to look your clothes off, a state of affairs possessing almost a hypnotic effect. You want to take your clothes off once that spell has been cast.
Rachel was once approached by a rather famous member of Italy’s motion picture industry. He cornered her in the galley on a half-empty flight to Los Angeles. He stood with his eyes riveted on the V of her blouse as she poured a cup of coffee for herself. Most of the other passengers were asleep.
“You have a lovely figure, Miss Jones,” he purred, never straying his eyes from her bosom.
“I’ve noticed you’ve noticed,” she answered.
“What is wrong with appreciating the lovely body of a woman?”
“Nothing, now that you mention it.”
“I would like to ask you something and feel that you will not take offense, if I may?”
She looked him square in the eye. “Go ahead. I figure I’ve still got the right to say No.” She poured cream in her coffee. “And, I’ve been asked a lot of silly things before.”
He seemed crushed by her use of the word silly. “No, no, no, no, my dear young lady. There is nothing silly about what I am going to ask. My thoughts are beautiful, pure, and on the highest plane of appreciation for what is fine in life. I simply wondered if you would accompany me to my rented villa in Beverly Hills. If you will accept, and I am so confident that you will, I make a solemn oath to you on all that I hold sacred not to even touch your exquisite body with my most unworthy hands. I only wish to look at you as nature intended me to view you, without the harsh cloak of that uniform and those horrible underthings you are forced to wear. I simply wish to fill my eyes with your charm.”
Rachel just looked at him. “You’re putting me on.”
The Italian put his hand to his brow in a supreme gesture of deep and bitter hurt. “Oh, to take such a beautiful and natural wish in so light a vein . . . To think I . . . what is it you say? . . . put you on? Oh, no, no, no, no . . . I am simply a lover of living sculpture . . . flesh instead of cold hard marble.”
As Rachel tells it, she almost pulled his curly head to her bosom to comfort him, he looked so hurt. She didn’t, and left the galley to check on the passengers. She glanced back up the aisle to see him hunched against the wall, his eyes squinting in obvious artistic appreciation of her hip movement, his hand still to his head to help the hurt she had inflicted. He never said another word the rest of the trip.
“I kept passing his seat,” she told us over drinks that night. “and I swore each time I was stark naked. I mean, my clothes were gone.”
AMERICANS
American men always manage to include a hint of humor in their advances to a stewardess. This has to do, I suppose, with the fact that American men never really take sex seriously. They know it’s fun, love the obvious pleasures it brings, but just can’t make themselves romance a woman. We feel it’s the fear of being rebuffed. They seem afraid of attempting too serious an advance. The humiliation of being told No would be too great a blow to their egos.
Maybe it has to do with the need to preserve that rosy-cheeked, Jack Armstrong image American men are stuck with. Whatever it stems from, they manage to come up with the most awkward, clumsy, and least effective approaches of all male passengers. It’s a shame, really, because of all the potential playmates on a flight, those very same rosy-cheeked Jack Armstrongs are the most appealing. After all, we were brought up sexually with American boys. But—as women, we like and need a little bit of the chase, the romancing, the wooing, and the intrigue, if only to help us justify to ourselves the final surrender. Of course, we don’t want to give the impression that American men never score. We love them. And most of our flings are with them. It’s just that they could do a hell of a lot better.
FRENCHMEN
Frenchmen suffer from t
oo lofty a reputation. It’s hard to be known as the world’s greatest salesman and try to convince someone who’s read your clippings that you’re not always selling. But despite this knowledge of the French reputation, the aura created still lingers on, especially when a Frenchman can corner you long enough to slide those beautiful sounding syllables off his tongue.
What’s fun about accepting an after-flight date with a Frenchman is knowing you won’t be rushed. No, the French manner, according to those who have experienced it, is for a lingering, easy evening. Not that we’re naïve enough to ignore the eventual goal of our French date. I suppose it’s just a matter of enjoying the flight before actually reaching your destination.
We were working a flight with your friend and ours, Betty Big Boobs, when a handsome Frenchman, an architect from Bordeaux, stepped on board for the trip from New York to San Francisco. With all Betty’s boasting of the legion of men hot after her body and soul, she never included a Frenchman among her conquests. Maybe she felt she needed a Frenchman for her lineup. Anyway, she clamped onto him from the first minute. She rubbed that chest of hers all over him when serving, managed to stretch herself in search of more damned unnamed objects in the overhead rack immediately above him, and, in general, really put on a show.
He, of course, knew it immediately. And he played it beautifully. He played hard to get. The more indifferent he became, the bigger and more overt were the advances Betty made to him.
As they left the airplane in San Francisco, Betty whispered to us, “Ah wonder if they’re as good as they say—Y’all know, long fuse—short explosion.”
You really can’t believe anything Betty tells you where men are concerned. She did show up for the next morning’s flight, exhausted and beat-looking. Her eyes drooped low and dark and her neck showed a series of blotchy, irregular marks. She told us about it in the galley.
“It was so beautiful,” she sighed as she counted off the booze lockers. “We danced and he cooed in my ear all those pretty, dirty li’l French words, and he bit my neck and we drank and rubbed noses and all like that. And then when we finally ended up in his room, ah was so damned tired ah didn’t know if he was French or Eskimo. Ah guess he enjoyed it, though. He made a lotta noise.”