That day, the captain steered the plane westward through a clear blue sky. The sardined public, pressed in rows, waited with tapping fingers for drinks and snacks. Due to moderate turbulence the service had been delayed for most of the flight, so now in only an hour, the Airbus 320 would touchdown in Los Angeles and end the four-hour journey.
When we finally appeared in the aisles, some folks painted on polite expressions. Others wore the starved-skinny dog look edging in on fresh kill. A few lucky souls slept through the bumps and wait. With a loaded cart, I trolleyed down the aisle, front-to-back, offering Pepsi and pretzels like any other flight, on any other day.
A couple rows beyond where I served, a young woman with bookish glasses, along with her companion, squeezed past the knees of their seatmate and moved into the aisle. This couple––he with the height of a basketball great and she, curvy-figured, grabbed hands, and joined a few passengers already queued outside the working rear lavatory. The only other bathroom for main cabin passenger use sported a mess of yellow caution tape slapped on prior to the flight because an airline mechanic couldn’t locate the part needed in time for takeoff.
Like sheepdogs who snooze guarding their flock until a distressed lamb mews, flight attendants monitor passengers, ready to act when needed. So there I was, out in the aisle, feeding and watering the masses. Eyeing the happy, He-tall and She-curvy, couple whose hands found the other’s pockets. They kissed. Whispered. Giggled. I made a mental note of the duo, kicked off the cart brake, and rolled up a few rows.
“Drink or pretzels?” I asked a mother who had the frayed look of someone who could use a glass of wine, or maybe something stronger. On her lap, she rocked a baby who wailed. Her toddler twins, seated at her sides, squirmed, whined and kicked the backs of the seat row in front of them. After I poured her some water––that’s all she wanted––I placed a mountain of pretzels and enough apple juice for a week on her tray table.
“Drink or pretzels?” I asked the next row of passengers. This batch was the undecided type. The “what do you have to drink” question popped from a mouth. I rattled off the list: Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Sierra Mist, Diet Sierra Mist, Club Soda, Tonic, Orange Juice, Apple Juice, Beer, Wine, Mixed Drinks, Water, Coffee, and Tea.
“Do you have Coke?” I bristled, then settled. How many times had I badgered some poor waiter at a restaurant with a similar question? Too many to respond to this passenger with, “did I say I had Coke?” I smiled instead. Then I apologized for not having Coke onboard.
“I guess I’ll take a tea with cream and sugar,” the passenger said.
Tea. Of course, the Coke passenger required a tea. The only beverage we didn’t keep on the beverage cart was tea. Had the airline crew schedulers had enough staff available for the trip, a fourth flight attendant might have run to the back galley to fiddle around with the hot water spigot. But today’s flight carried the minimum number of crew required; only three flight attendants worked the leg. I’d have to get the tea myself. Brake set in park, I sucked in and scooted around the cart. I excused myself to the crowd lined up for the bathroom––now eight passengers deep––and noted He-tall and She-curvy, were the next two.
When I emerged from the galley, He-tall and She-curvy, had disappeared. The next up, a middle-ager wearing a suit with a pinstripe tie, raised his eyebrows in a “what are you going to do about it” challenge. I smiled in an “absolutely nothing” kind of way and walked the tea up the aisle to the passenger who’d requested it.
I kicked off the cart brake and rolled forward. “Drink or pretzels?” In this row, only one passenger paid attention to my question. A window-seat woman kept her eyes glued on a book. The Time Traveler’s Wife. I made a mental note to buy it. The middle seat slept. The aisle guy nodded but asked only for pretzels since he needed to use the bathroom. I backed up my cart to let him out into the aisle, noting the baker’s dozen now lined for the lav, and bumped up to the next row.
“Drink or pretzels?” This trio had the hungry-wolf look. Three pairs of red-lined eyes, either from lack of sleep or too much booze, shot in my direction. When they ordered, each used the magical “please.” I handed off cans of tonic and extra pretzels to complement the liquor mini collection I deposited on their tray tables.
Before I could address the next row, a sour stench filled the air. Someone from behind tapped my shoulder. I turned to find the mom with the twins and infant wailer. She had the baby––now covered in puke––in a strapped-on carrier and grasped the hand of each toddler.
“Can I get by you to use the bathroom?” she asked. I wasn’t a mom. But I knew the face of desperation when I saw it. This mom was near crumble.
I contemplated three choices, all bad.
One, steer the woman to the first-class cabin where two passengers hovered outside of the only bathroom. This was a major no-no since strict rules prohibited a crowd outside the flight deck.
Two, let the mom with children squeeze by my cart and wait in the impossible, not-moving-forward-any-time-in-this-century line.
Or three, march the woman to the head of the frozen queue that hadn’t moved since He-tall and She-curvy had taken up residence, and bang on the bathroom door.
Like any other compassionate human, I chose option three and paraded the mama and her ducklings down the aisle. I excused us around the other agitated bathroom waiters, begging forgiveness with verbal apologies and a smile.
As my fist balled to knock, the lav door handle jiggled. Laughter from within lifted above the hum of the engine and the door pushed wide.
He-tall emerged first. Sweat beaded on his brow as he puffed to catch his breath, reminding me of someone who’d sprinted through an entire 5K. He shrugged. No apologies. A proud look on his face. Next, She-curvy spilled into the aisle. I couldn’t decide at first what shade of red best described her face when she scanned the line for the lav. Not crimson. Or scarlet––though that shade described the rouge lipstick smeared around her lips. As She-curvy muttered something about her man helping while she got sick in the bathroom, I nailed her cheek color: corvette red.
I nodded. Smiled. I didn’t ask her what kind of sick had been going down for the past fifteen minutes. The details of her mile high extravaganza were for the ears of her closest friends. Neither I, nor the dozen folks listening in, needed a blow-by-blow report.
The line for the lav cleared in under five minutes. Even the mom with the puked-up kids was quick. With beverage service complete, I trotted down the aisle to collect trash and check on the passengers. He-tall and She-curvy, had settled into each other, spent from their mid-air adventure.
As I passed by, I considered offering congratulatory drinks, suddenly wishing for the first time that smoking on flights was still a thing––I’d have given them both a cigarette. But then a better thought formed. I could give them each a set of plastic kiddie wings. This would be the perfect souvenir for their firsts. Or perhaps a sticker might mark their accomplishment. Something similar to I VOTED with the check mark, but more in the flavor of a Red Bull ad, like a sketch of a winged toilet with a grin.
In the end, I skipped offering any fanfare to highlight the lovebird’s moment and continued to pick up the cabin. Before long, I said my “have a great days’’ to the passengers. When He-tall and She-curvy stepped from the plane into a sunny-sky day, I gave my farewell extra gusto and grew my smile into a grin. This brought the corvette red shade back to She-curvy’s cheeks. Even He-tall pinked up a little.
I didn’t know what lay ahead for the duo––maybe a baby later in the year christened “Skye” ––or who I might shepherd on the return ride to the Midwest. Each flight carries its own unique set of passengers. But what I did know is I’d witnessed a twist on a popular quote. At 30,000 feet, “love is in the air” is much more than just an expression.