THIS IS RIGHT, the fortune reminded her. But it wasn't. It was all wrong. How was this love? Working her fingers to the bone, paying all the bills for a layabout, a liar with a permanent smirk on his face. Directed at her. How was this life? With each step towards the plane of her discontent, certain to be packed with repellent passengers, where every hour was sure to be torture, her irritation at where she found herself at life clawed at her; the rain attacking her face like tiny whips didn't help matters.
She heard Dennis' voice before she even stepped onto the plane.
“And what time do you call this?” He seemed to be yodeling through the rain, but it was an evil yodel. He was glaring down at her, eyebrows arched, tapping his watch.
“It's only,” she looked at her own watch as she hauled herself through the door into the greeting-galley area, “it's 6:45 exactly. That's when the shift starts.”
Two new crew members, who looked like they were 16, knobby knees and blank slates for faces, stood behind Dennis, staring in hero worship. Gretchen understood. Dennis wanted to impress upon them the strictness of Nickel & Dime's procedures. From their name tags, Gretchen supposed they were called Molly and Aidan. Inwardly she groaned, as it meant in-flight training for the newbies added to their already Herculean workload. Which side would Molly and Aidan be on, Nickel and Dime's or humanity's?
“You are well aware that regulations state if you arrive on time for your shift, you are technically late. You still have to prepare yourself, take off your coat, place your bag in the appropriate compartment, enjoy a bowel movement, whatever.”
“Speaking of which, I have to visit the ladies'.”
Dennis slammed his hand on the lavatory door, barring her entrance. Molly and Aidan looked on, eyes wide.
“No time for a comfort break,” Dennis sniped. “You will have to wait until your first allotted slot. Which on today's flight is,” he checked the schedule, “9:35.” They were allowed two 3-minute comfort breaks a shift.
“This is inhumane.”
“No. Inhumane is tardiness, constant surliness with the passengers, a lackadaisical work ethic, not being a team player, coupled with a slovenly appearance.”
“Slovenly!?”
“You see, Aidan and Molly,” Dennis spun around and, palm extended, motioned to Gretchen, “this is exactly the type of employee Nickel and Dime doesn't want you to become. Someone who has given up. Now I hope I can trust her to show you the correct opening procedures of the aircraft. Her name is Gretchen. You would have been able to see that on her name tag had she arrived appropriately attired on time.”
Gretchen was still shrugging out of her sopping coat, but pointed at the name tag surrounded by jangling nickels and dimes above the right pocket the moment it was revealed.
“She will now show you how to check the safety equipment, and then run through everything that needs to be done in the galley. The many things that need to be done. She's already on her first written warning, so let's just hope she doesn't add 'insubordination' to the long list of what we call the Nickel and Dime Don't-Dos.” He eyed her meaningfully. “Chop chop! Let's go!” He clapped his hands quickly twice, then disappeared into the flight deck. What he was doing there, as the pilots hadn't even shown up yet, she couldn't fathom.
A little while later, Gretchen was showing them the life vests. They had a different company supplying the life vests, and these new ones were wrapped in plastic that had to be torn open before they could be worn, something to do with America's aversion to germs, she supposed. With an American father, an Irish mother, and a childhood spent around the world, Gretchen was only quasi-American. Strange, Gretchen thought. Unwrapping the plastic gave the passengers another obstacle to their safety. When you were about to drown, bits of the fuselage flaming and plunging into the ocean around you, time of the essence, the last thing she'd be thinking of would be germs from her life vest. Aidan's head suddenly swiveled around to ensure the three of them were alone in the aisle.
“That Dennis guy,” he whispered. “What an asshole!”
Molly nodded in solemn agreement. “Yes, indeed. Please don't tell him we think so, though. I don't want to lose my job. I've got three children to support.” At her age?!
An hour later, Molly and Aidan trained as much as possible, Gretchen braced herself, as usual, to vet the passengers in the emergency row. There were certain restrictions on who could sit there. Yes, there was a no-reserved seats policy on Nickel and Dime, but federal regulations here overruled their corporate madness; not just anybody willing to put themselves in harm's way for those few extra inches of leg room, between 5 and 8, depending on the plane, could sit there. Children under 15, for example, and passengers traveling with a service animal, and those who requested additional assistance from the airline getting on the plane, those who don't speak a language of any of the cabin crew, infants, those who don't feel comfortable with the idea of performing the necessary duties during an emergency, and those with physical or, the most difficult for Gretchen to gauge, mental limitations. She had seconds to discover the mental limitations of the passengers while making it look like she were just asking a few simple questions.
Feeling self-conscious in her ludicrous outfit, Gretchen looked down the emergency row on the left side. A throbbing pulsed in her temple. There sat a fat wino, a skinhead and someone chatting on the phone and gazing out the window.
H-A-T-E said the tattoo on the wino's left hand, K-I-L-L on his right. Don't judge Gretchen scolded herself, grinning brightly down at them.
“Hi, guys. As you know, Nickel and Dime has no seating policy. You are always free to choose your seats yourselves when you board, which you have done, but I need to inform you you're sitting in an exit row. An emergency exit row.” She pointed at the sign over the lever, where Push Lever To Open In An Emergency was printed in several languages, together with a variety of user-friendly red arrows and EMERGENCY EXIT in massive letters so there would be no doubt. “Because of this, I need to know if you'd be willing and able in the event of an emergency. You will have to pull up this lever. And assist people getting onto the slide that will inflate upon impact. Are you physically able to do that? I need to hear a verbal 'yes.'”
“Depends,” the skinhead said. Gretchen hadn't known they still existed, outside of gay sex videos.
“On what?”
“What's 'assist' mean?” he asked, showing the few teeth he had.
“Help.”
There was a shifting of their bodies on the seats. They exchanged glances, as if unfamiliar with the concept of help, or, rather, it seemed, helping others than themselves. In the wino's case, helping himself to another portion of food didn't seem an alien concept.
“And impact?”
“Crashing.” She said it with as bright a smile as she could muster.
“I ain't giving up my extra leg room nohow.”
“Yeah, we can assess.”
“Assist.”
“Yeah, we can do that.”
“Um, excuse me, excuse me!” Gretchen said to the window passenger. The phone disappeared and the passenger turned around.
It was an apparent streetwalker with a teardrop tattoo, no, two teardrop tattoos, and whose gender Gretchen couldn't divine, a pre-op transexual still vaguely between the sexes; they were notoriously difficult to tell the gender of, and when confronted with one on a seat of the plane (which happened more often than one might imagine), Gretchen usually had to mumble something that sounded like a mixture of Mr. and Ms., a Mrz. But from the eye shadow and lipstick, the sparkling drop earrings, the exaggerated, if a bit lopsided, Amy-Winehouse 50s housewife beehive, Gretchen could deduce which direction this passenger was heading.
“Excuse me, ma'am, you are sitting—”
“Did you just call me man?!” she roared.
She was fuming, eyes glaring up at Gretchen with hatred, manicured fists balled. Her Adam's apple jiggled with fury.
Gretchen was bewildered. Who would even say 'Excuse me
, man'?” “Hey, man,” “What's up, man,” maybe. But “Excuse me, man?” Defensive much? she longed to ask, and, anyway, what big-boned, 6'2” person, regardless of sex, wouldn't understand an initial momentary confusion? But she bit her tongue. She was on a first warning, after all.
“I-I didn't!” Gretchen said, hand to chest. “I called you 'ma'am.”
“The hell you did!”
Gretchen appealed to the wino and the skinhead.
“You heard me, didn't you?”
They looked away. It wasn't their problem. Gretchen's scalp tightened, and she felt she were sinking into a hole. The six eyes of those in the row behind peered over the headrests.
“Please pardon me, but I—”
“This is discrimination! No! It's racist! Homophobic! Gender insensitive! I am a woman!” she roared, struggling to lift her massive form from the seat, but she had her seat belt on. “A woman! Look at these!”
She thrust her faux breasts up at Gretchen, silicone that strained the frilly satin tank top she was wearing oozing over either side of the seat belt. The drunk leered hungrily at the breasts. The row opposite was now gaping. Gretchen felt Molly and Aidan sidling over to her. But they kept their distance.
“And you call me 'man!' Would you call your mother a man? Would you call Diana Ross a man? Brigitte Bardot? Lady Gaga?”
“Well, but I—”
She heard behind her a hissed, “Defuse, defuse, defuse the situation!” Gretchen's heart fell as Dennis materialized at her side, flashing his daggers at her.
“Does there seem to be a problem, miss?” he asked the sputtering passenger.
“Miss! Someone with eyes, at last! Yes, there is a problem!”
She pointed a trembling finger and three boxer knuckles at Gretchen. And to Gretchen's further horror, the woman's angry voice was now shuddering. She was on the verge of tears. A tissue appeared out of nowhere and she clutched it in her massive fist.
“Years, I've had to spend,” she sobbed, “waste, years of abuse and therapy and treatment, to be accepted by society, to be myself and live my life and this...this snide bitch with her perfect hourglass figure and luxurious red locks...the woman I've longed to be...!” She honked into the tissue. “She, she, she has the gall to undo all of that, has to go and sneer into my face that I was born a man. I didn't ask to be! All that work, all those years, for nothing!”
“She's a new recruit,” Dennis said. “She hasn't been given the proper sensitivity train—”
“Ohhh!!! I want to end it all! What's the use?”
And before you could say 'drama queen,' she was tugging at the handle of the emergency exit door.
“Sir! Let go of the handle!” Aidan, apparently confused, yelled.
“Nooooooo!!” bellowed the woman, a mournful howl that seemed to reverberated throughout the length of the cabin.
Gretchen and Dennis clambered over the knees of the wino and the skin, grappling the brightly painted fingernails that clutched at the handle and were trying to tug it up, then shove it down, then tug it back up again.
“How the fucking hell do you open this son of a bitch anyway?!” the transsexual wailed. “Can't I even kill myself in peace?”
She banged on the door as the tears flowed. The window shuddered. The wino laughed. The skinhead smacked Gretchen's bobbing ass.
“Aidan!” Dennis roared. “Call security! We need to get her off the plane!”
And they did, with the woman roaring down the aisle at Gretchen as they dragged her off, kicking and screaming, “You're a bitch! I'm more of a woman than you'll ever be! No, wearing that skirt, you're not a bitch. You're a slut! A whorrre!!”
“But it's the uniform of—” Gretchen protested.
“Shut it!” David warned.
She was sure to get a second warning. Without doubt the 'woman' would complain. Gretchen might even lose her job. The Nickel and Dime staff were at the mercy of lunatics, the lunatic public in a world gone mad with political correctness, terrified of offending anyone. Gretchen recalled once in college, US college, of course, how she had called a Korean student an Oriental, because that's what they called them in Ireland and Gretchen didn't know any better. Small bursts of the Irish Gretchen could surface without her realizing, at times. The guy sitting next to her had jumped and stared at her as if she had gone crazy. “They're not Orientals. They are Asians. Asian-Americans. How can you be so insensitive?”
Though her accent was pure American, the blood of her motherland, her mother's land, the Flood blood, coursed through Gretchen's veins. Or, at least, through half her veins. Sometimes she was exasperated at how some Americans thought they had a bad life when their Internet was running slowly, when they had to deal with a waft of second hand smoke from someone passing on the sidewalk fifteen feet away from them, when they couldn't flush a public toilet without first sanitizing the flusher with one of the wide array of products designed for germaphobes that lined the shelves of American stores. Gretchen didn't bother with any of this. She didn't see the point. People had lived without the Internet, with cigarette smoke and with germs for centuries. She flushed confidently without any sanitizing aid. Flushed with confidence.
She had clambered over barricades of burnt out cars as an eight year old, dodged rubber bullets flying though the air in one direction, rocks sailing past in the other, young lungs burning with tear gas, slept in a frigid bed with nothing but a lukewarm hot water bottle to warm her toes ever so slightly, watching plumes of hot air exit her mouth until the fire would be lit in the sitting room the next morning and she'd be given a bowl of milky porridge to tide her over until she lined up for a dinner of watery fish sauce dumped over a quarter of a badly-peeled potato. Sure, nowadays, and especially after the booming economic years of the Celtic Tiger, Northern Ireland had central heating and Thai food and sanitary wipes, though not quite such a wide array as the US, and there were no bombs or barricades. But that hadn't been Gretchen's childhood. The people of today didn't know they were born.
Perched on the jumpseat next to the ovens of the galley after her second comfort break, Gretchen did nothing but sit. She was shattered. She thought back to her training. She still remembered verbatim the bit that had always chilled her. It was before the open-book exam during the Safety and Security of Passengers block, which had taken an afternoon. Their trainer, an older woman with lopsided bleached hair from the 80s and a yellow smile had informed them, “As you assess the passengers and where they choose to sit, always be on the lookout for able-bodied ones that can assist in emergencies, for example, help open doors for you, or who might have to open doors on their own if you yourself die on impact. Please ensure that no able-bodied passengers sit in 2A. This is our so-called Death Seat. The reason you don't want to have them sit there is because, tests have shown, they will probably die on impact. The way the plane is constructed, there is a piece of metal overhead, where you attach the handrail for the air stairs, and if the plane is going down, the head of the passenger in 2A will most likely go straight into the metal, which will crush it fatally. Please don't tell this to the customers, though. It must remain our little secret.”
That's how Gretchen felt now. Like a passenger in 2A. And the plane was going down.
Yes, of course Gretchen had bought a roll of toilet paper on the way home, but as she was dragging her limbs up the stairs, suitcase clunking behind, she realized she had used her last chamomile teabag that morning. She had no willpower left to turn around, go back down the stairs, cross the street, walk into the bodega again, smile once more at the man behind the counter who always greeted her with “Hola, Peliroja!” (hello, redhead), grab a box, stand in the line behind seven people buying lottery tickets in Spanish, pay for the tea, exit the store, smile at the drunk who always held the door open for her, recross the street, unlock the door and walk back up the stairs. The two smiles she'd have to give would be the worst bits. She was sick of smiling. And she was just too drained, physically and especially emotionally, to bot
her with the damn tea.
She dreaded what Nickel and Dime might do to her. That damn transsexual! She would never watch RuPaul's Drag Race reruns again, and yes, she knew drag queens were different, but to her they were still the same.
The apartment was eerily silent. There were no noises from the Room of Dreams, games- or porn-wise. Her case clattered to the floor.
Maybe she was mistaken, and there was still a teabag left? Chamomile calmed her, soothed her nerves, and that was what she needed right now. Either that or a pint of whiskey. It was emotionally draining to work under constant threat of termination.
Hope sprang eternal at the sight of the box on top of the fridge. She lifted it down, but, no. She could tell the moment she had picked it up. Empty. She threw it on the floor and stomped on it, “Damn you! Damn you!” and was surprised to see she was bawling like an infant. Her legs were like water. She sank to the floor, sliding down the cabinet under the sink, and languished there, wracked by wave after wave of grief. She brought a trembling hand to her eyes to wipe away the tears that rolled down her face.
“What's wrong with my life? What's wrong?” she moaned to herself, words barely able to pass her jittering lips.
She moaned and cried for a few moments, then decided that was enough. She wiped the little driblets from her nose and struggled upright, gripping the edge of the garbage can for support. She stared at the garbage can as she stood there over it. Something was different about it. But what? Then she realized, and a little chill ran up her spine. It was empty. Usually, Mike shoved more and more into an already overflowing garbage bag until there was an almost equal amount of trash balanced on top of the can itself, a precariously teetering mound of cans and cartons and butts and beer bottles. She hadn't emptied the can that morning before she left (she had had her case to cart behind her, after all, and she had only so many hands). Could Mike have actually...?!
Emergency Exit (The Irish Lottery Series Book 6) Page 17