“Early Departure”

First published in the Potomac Review. Nominate for a Pushcart Prize.

I wind the plastic tubing of the oxygen mask around my hand and let it drop from above 5B. I tug it to demonstrate initiating the flow of oxygen then pull the mask over my nose and mouth, adjusting the straps as necessary. Any other day, I would hold the little yellow mask in front of my face to avoid germs. But this morning, they’re all watching me, unfolding safety cards instead of newspapers. No rustling, no conversations, just hundreds of eyes staring straight at me. Besides our purser Annabelle’s voice on the P.A., the only noise is the hum of the air conditioning and the tap tap of the wheels over cracks in the taxiway. I sway back and forth as we turn toward the runway. “Don’t cry.” I tell myself. “Don’t You Dare Cry.”

I take comfort in the demo’s ritual, keeping in sync with Siobhan in the right aisle and Khurram up ahead at row fourteen. At training, we’d practiced this dozens of times until we could all make our seatbelts click in unison.

Still they stare — almost as intently as I stared at each of them as they boarded, my “How are you today?” more than a rhetorical question this time. I analyzed each answer for any hint of threat.

It’s September 18, 2001, exactly one week after we lost two of our aircraft and 16 of our crew, and I am back in the air for the first time. International flights bound for U.S. airspace only just resumed the day before yesterday. 

I check my watch. 8:05. Twelve and a half hours to go. It will be a long, long, flight. We’re on the 767, and its slow cruising speed mean it’ll take almost two hours longer than on a 777 or 747. Most days on this flight, United 975 — London to San Francisco — we sarcastically note during the initial beverage service, “Oh, the triple seven just took off.” Then when we set up the pre-landing snack somewhere over Colorado, about the time when we run completely out of water and only air comes out of the taps, we point out, “The triple seven just landed.”

Twelve and a-half hours to go and I can barely keep my eyes open. I got up at 3:30 a.m. to take a cab to Trafalgar Square where I caught the night bus because the tube doesn’t run early enough to make a 6 a.m. check-in. But it’s not as if I was sleeping anyway. Since it happened, I’ve been fighting nightmares.

***

Maybe it’s fitting that my first post-apocalyptic flight is heading to San Francisco, the scene of my awakening and my undoing.  I prepare myself to face our layover hotel with its familiar faux Victorian lobby, the worn floral carpet, pink brocade wallpaper, and Kinkade-inspired prints. On my final visits, I memorized the nicked nightstands and peach bathroom tiles with the same fervor I used to capture the contour of his high cheekbones, the warmth of his skin, the haphazard pattern of his eyebrows, and the scent of the vanilla shampoo that lingered in his thick black head of hair.

Today I expect to be greeted by a doorman who probably still knows my name and the illicit reason I was always there.

Last year, at 23 years old, I divorced my abusive high school sweetheart, abandoned my history PhD program, and became a newly-minted flygirl based in San Francisco.  I was on call 24 hours a day, my hand glued to suitcase packed for anywhere, spending as many as 20 nights a month in 20 different hotels.

We met on opposite ends of a beverage cart. When our crew went out drinking that night, the former band geek in me felt safest sitting quietly in the corner with the old married dad. There was no spark of attraction or pitter pat of the heart to warn me of danger. Yet I hadn’t felt such instant kinship since first grade when Hope Staddler and I became best friends only seconds into our first game of hopscotch.

I ran into Tien in briefing rooms, on moving walkways. I thought it was fate in a system where 26,000 flight attendants rushed in and out of each other’s space, rarely crossing paths twice. He knew how this life worked. With 15 years seniority, he was able to choose his schedule a month at a time. He began bidding Friday and Sunday night layovers at the Hotel Richelieu, a few miles away from the revolving door of a crashpad I shared with six other on-call flight attendants.

I clung to his stability. No matter where in the world United flung me, if I could just get one weekend night off, I was home.

It took me too long to understand that I was his escape.

Like any couple, we had our rituals — mornings in the hotel lobby, where he’d dip a complimentary croissant into his coffee; long walks through the foggy streets of Nob Hill and Chinatown. We were regulars at Queen Thai, where I would order coconut soup and mild noodle dishes while he asked for the tiny jar of hot red peppers the owner kept in the back, the ones only a native of Southeast Asia could handle.

I ended things every time my conscience, or self-respect, grew stronger than my yearning, only to pick up the phone after a few weeks of pinging around a world drained of warmth and color.

And then we had our ultimate ending when my phone number popped up on his bill too many times.

I transferred to London, and tried to move on at supersonic speed, jet setting across the world on my days on and off, throwing back shots of absinthe in Paris, tequila in Tokyo, or an Aeroflot pilot’s homemade vodka in New Delhi.

 ***

When I found out what happened last Tuesday, September Eleventh, I was at home in London, the last flight attendant on call. My flatmates had been called out for the early Chicagos and a D.C., leaving me next in line for a trip. The phone finally rang, but it was Miles Stuart, the cocksure Scottish guy I’d dated for a couple of months in summer. He was as unreliable as he was adorable and had a six-pint-a day-habit, but I’d convinced myself that if I just dated someone else, anyone else, I would forget. 

“A United flight’s been hijacked,” he said.

“Yeah, right.”

“Darlin’ I’m not kidding.” 

I met 20 other flight attendants at a flat that had a TV. By the time I got there, the BBC was airing footage of a “small plane” crashing into the north tower.

The flat became a boiler room, all 20 of us simultaneously punching redial on our cell phones and taking shifts on the landline. “All circuits are busy. All circuits are busy.”

Newscasters updated their reports to say the tower had been hit by an American Airlines 737. We already knew beyond doubt that it was a wide-body ’67 with twice the capacity for passengers, crew, and fuel. We had all done the flashcard drills at training and could instantly name any Boeing or Airbus by its exterior characteristics

We manned the phones, desperately trying to find our flatmates, friends, lovers.

Unimatic, the United scheduling software, was shut down, so we couldn’t check our friends’ trips. I wished I hadn’t had so much will power. I wished I hadn’t quit checking his schedule. I didn’t have his phone number, she’d changed it. So I just kept redialing the Richelieu, hoping he still bid San Francisco layovers.

“All circuits are busy. All circuits are busy.”

Phones in hand, jaws slack, we watched live as United flight 175 hit the south tower. We saw what the rest of the world saw, but to us it wasn’t just an airplane. That fuselage carried our company’s livery, our coat of arms, our mascot, our country’s flag. That same United logo was plastered to our uniforms, our handbooks, our badges, our luggage. It was the only constant in our lives.

The BBC said United officials were “deeply concerned” about another flight, United flight 93, Newark to San Francisco.

He had been working that route for a month straight last time I checked.

“All circuits are busy. All circuits are busy.”

When the towers collapsed, we did too. But at that moment, we didn’t yet care about the buildings. There was still another plane out there. And then United confirmed two planes down. 

Hours later, a ring. The Richelieu’s operator thanked me for calling. I spelled out Tien’s last name, and she said, “I’ll connect you.” 

He said hello quickly, almost a whisper. He was alive.

“Hi, it’s me.”

Silence.

“Hello? Are you there?”

He took a deep breath. “Thank God.”

 ***

“Liqueur? After-dinner drink? Liqueur? After-dinner drink?” I ask while pushing a cart through the aisles of a 767, an identical twin to the one that left Boston a week ago and barreled at maximum cruise speed into a one-hundred and ten story building.

When I reach the galley, the phone is ringing. It’s the captain — he needs a bathroom break. Brand new cockpit security measures mean they can no longer do their business in private. The rest of the crew must be notified, all first-class passengers must be seated, a 200-pound beverage cart must be set up as a barrier between the cabin and the aisle leading to the cockpit, and two flight attendants must stand guard.

The captain opens the door and apologizes. He says he’ll try to make it to San Francisco without pissing again. But before heading back to the cockpit he admits he needs another cup of coffee. He hasn’t been sleeping.

We’ve got six more hours until landing. I’m dying for a nap, but we’ve agreed not to take rest breaks. Haunted by visions of colleagues being murdered with box cutters, no one can stomach the thought of pulling a curtain, donning a sleeping mask, and leaving the rest of the crew alone in the cabin.

I keep moving, handing out blankets and mini Toblerone bars, bloody marys and ginger ales. Four more hours. How will I make it to the end of this flight? How will I survive this job?

On the ground in San Francisco, I doze while the crew van brings us to the city. All four lanes of the 101 are packed with cars flying American flags.

The door to the Richelieu opens and I am accosted by the familiar smell of the lobby, a curious mixture of Pine Sol and lavender. I slide my key into door 210 and with an electronic click and release, I enter a room as familiar as my own.

No one on my crew had the energy to go out, so still in uniform, I flop onto the shiny quilted bedspread and flick on the TV. Law and Order, Murder She Wrote, Kron 4 News “reporting live from San Francisco International Airport where United Airlines has just announced the layoff of 20,000 employees. Only one week after the World Trade Center attacks, the economic fallout has begun. Once again, we are live from SFO where United Airlines has just announced the impending layoff of 5,000 flight attendants.”

Five thousand flight attendants? The hit is so strong it knocks my organs loose. I am in the junior-most 1,000. There were 26,000 of us this morning. Now there are 21,000 of them. We find out on the news? To United, I’m already gone, blown out of existence, as if I never was.

My impulse is to call Tien, but after three days of impassioned phone calls last week while he was stuck at this same hotel, maybe even this same room, we said goodbye. For good. Again. 

I call the crew desk. Bad Patty, the combative scheduler who I suspect inspired the epithet “screw desk,” warmly says, “I’m so sorry. We had no idea either.”

I can hear her long acrylic fingernails frantically typing, matching flights with crew members. “Am I already laid off?” I ask. “Am I working my flight home tomorrow?”

“I told you. I don’t know,” she says, with a mild whiff of her customary crankiness. “Report to your briefing. I’ve still got tonight’s flights to deal with.”

This is my first — and now also my last — post-apocalyptic layover. If I could, I would cocoon myself in the hotel and eat room service in bed. Unfortunately, the Richelieu doesn’t serve food. If this is my last time here, my final night in one of these overly floral rooms, I’m going to do it right. I change into jeans and walk two blocks to Queen Thai. I order the sour Tom Yum soup, his favorite, even though I prefer the coconut-flavored Tom Kha, then cry over the bowl.

Without this job, I will lose the only thread of connection I have with him.

The next morning, I go to my briefing as scheduled. Before the passengers board, my crew gathers in the first class cabin with our pilots. Captain Bob says, “If a terrorist takes one of you hostage and demands we open the cockpit door, we will have to let you die.”

The first officer, also named Bob, nods along.

Captain Bob says, “If I have reason to believe that terrorists have taken over the cabin and might breach the cockpit, I’ll drive the plane into the ground.”

Although I understand that this is the new game plan, I tremble as he performs his cruel sermon. His voice grows stronger and as he quickens his pace, he almost cracks a smile. It occurs to me that this may be his long-awaited chance to play hero. Many of our pilots earned their wings while flying over Vietnam, returning home only to be spit on.

A supervisor I’ve never seen before moves to the front of the cabin. He takes over where Captain Bob left off and informs us that we will all work this flight home to London. The three most junior of us will not work again.

We will land this flight to become untethered balloons. Our visas will be voided, we’ll be sent home from London. Immigration will be waiting for us to board our flights home.

I will lose my job, everyone I know will scatter throughout the world back to where they came from, or someplace entirely new, I will move out of my flat, and the country I’m living in. I will lose my last connection to him.

“Ladies and Gentleman,” the captain announces. “Flight time to London today will be approximately nine-and-a-half hours.”

The 777, it’s fast, too fast.

I wind the plastic tubing of the oxygen mask around my hand then let it drop from above 5B. They’re all watching me as I’m watching them. “Don’t cry, don’t you dare cry,” I tell myself. I still have nine-and a-half hours to go. Only nine-and-a-half hours to go.