Pan Am Girl
By Sean Winn
Evelyn opened her eyes to see one of the passengers lifting a banana out of a tray in the business class galley.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said.
“No, I wasn’t asleep.” She stood up and smoothed down her American Airlines skirt. “Just daydreaming.”
He smiled and began peeling the banana. “So, where were you?”
“Sorry?”
“On the beach, curled up in front of a fire? Where were you just now?”
“Oh. On a plane, actually. Can I get you anything else?”
“You’re on a plane daydreaming that you were on a plane?” He took a bite of the banana.
“Yes. I was younger, though.” She assumed that he would shuffle off back to his seat, but he leaned against the cabinet and chewed. Sometimes the passengers were tired of just sitting. Occasionally they would chit-chat, but rarely seemed genuinely interested in the conversation. This one waited and smiled, his smile lopsided from a bulge of banana. It seemed like he was going to hang out.
“Flying was different back then. I missed the real heydays of the 1960’s,” she said, “but there was still a bit of the glamour left when I started in the 70’s. Didn’t last that long, though.” She shouldn’t be complaining, and really, it wasn’t a complaint, but she worried it might come off that way. “I’m sorry, it’s been a difficult week.”
“Difficult passengers or tough flight schedules?”
“Neither. Maybe I’m just getting old.” At 64, she wasn’t the oldest flight attendant at American Airlines, but she certainly wasn’t the youngest.
Earlier that morning, she had to deal with a hung-over junior flight attendant. That was not such a big thing, but as the Flight Service Manager, it was her job to see that everything went smoothly. And that included having chipper, alert flight attendants. It had been an overnight turnaround in Paris. They had landed near 10:00 at night and took off again at 9:00 in the morning, AA49 back to Dallas. Eleven hours, poor room service, and a night in a drab airport hotel was all Evelyn experienced of the City of Light. Not so for one of her staff, though. When gathering in the lobby to head back to the airport the next morning, Evelyn doubted that the girl had been in her room long enough to do much more than change her clothes and freshen up. She couldn’t really blame her, though. Fortunately, Evelyn had had the opportunity to experience Paris on more leisurely terms. When she first started in the industry, they often had a couple days on the ground before the return trip. On one trip, she spent a day in the Louvre; on others she wandered cobblestoned streets, went to the flea market. The ‘see the world’ pitch to potential recruits was a real thing back then. Now you had to shoehorn it in to see anything other than airports.
Evelyn moved to take the banana peel from him, but he motioned her away and found the trash bin himself. “I bet you really saw some things. Back in the day, I mean.”
“Well, it wasn’t the grind that it is now.” At around forty, he was too young to have experienced the golden age of air travel. She guessed that maybe he had read an article, or possibly seen a movie where a group of stewardesses strode through an airport turning heads with an air of Marilyn Monroe about them. She smiled. “Back in the day, this might have been the point where you would have given me your business card, hinting that you were a Hollywood big shot, and invited me out tonight.”
“That common?” He shifted his weight and stretched his shoulders.
“Sure. Air travel was an event, back then. Everybody dressed up for it, the booze flowed freely. People introduced themselves and moved around the plane. Special flights might even have had a jazz band playing. Staff turnover was high, partly because so many of the girls were getting married — to passengers, pilots, people they met at the parties. I was stationed out of JFK with Pan Am at the time. The atmosphere didn’t last long, though. By the end of the 70s, there were budget fares, more efficiency. The men passing their business cards usually just wanted a quick shag, not to court you.” Evelyn changed her posture, becoming more formal. “I’m sorry, I should have more decorum than that.”
But her passenger seemed amused, gesturing for her to continue.
She relaxed, leaning back on the counter. “By that time, when you told someone that you were a stewardess, they looked at you differently. ‘Waitress in the air,’ you could see them thinking. But at least these days no one gets their fanny pinched in the aisles, nor do they get fired for gaining a little weight.”
“That would really happen?”
“Oh, yes. There were strict policies on our bodies — but not on customer behavior. I suppose some of what I would find offensive now I wrote off as cute back then — a bit of flirting. But even then, there were things we found dead wrong — viewing us as sex objects, for example; passengers running their hands up our legs. Those things are mostly gone now, overtly at least. We’re more respected in some ways, less in others. She wanted to change the subject. “How about you — in Paris on business?”
“Sort of. London on business, then I took the chance to hop over to Paris to visit a relative. My aunt, actually.” He looked glum.
Evelyn waited, not wanting to pry.
“Hadn’t seen her in years. I really should have stayed in touch more. When I was a boy, she kept me for a year when my parents were going through a rough patch. You remind me of her, actually. After Uncle Wendell passed away, she announced that Boston was too cold and that she was moving. We assumed it would be someplace like Florida, but she packed up and left for Paris. Said she had always wanted to live there, so that’s what she did. Just like that.” He was quiet, then perked up. “I’m Marty, by the way.”
“Evelyn.” She pointed to her nametag. They shook hands. Evelyn wondered if in another life that could have been her: moving off to a new place after a long marriage. One of her early dalliances turned into a serious relationship, but that eventually fizzled out. Difficult to make things work when you are in a different city every couple days. Later, there had been Daniel. He took her erratic schedule in stride, making the long drive in from Fort Smith to see her whenever she had some time off. But it was on one of those trips that the crash happened, on a bleak stretch of highway between Durant and Sherman. She hadn’t felt up to dating much since his death.
“There must have been something that kept you at it for so long. Being a flight attendant, I mean.” He smiled like there must be something great about it.
Evelyn thought he was choosing to picture one of those early flights with martinis and well-dressed people rather than the subsequent slide into polyester and compact seats. “It’s a job.” She shrugged. She had wondered what life would have been like if she had left the airline to live with Daniel. Fort Smith was big enough to have both a Dillard’s and a J.C. Penny’s. Maybe it wouldn’t have been too bad to work there, but she didn’t think she could bear ending up at a Wal Mart or answering phones at a trucking company. Daniel’s ten acres outside of town were peaceful, though. There was a wooded area behind the house that sloped down to a creek, and a field in front that erupted with wildflowers in the spring. She had imagined adding some cute animals — chickens, maybe, or a pair of donkeys.
“I guess I’m also a travel junky. Siem Reap is what got me started. I didn’t know anything about Cambodia. I had been hanging out with some Australian backpackers who gushed about it so much I felt like I had to go — after I managed to locate it on a map.” She pursed her lips, her wrinkles moving into a crooked wave.
“Nice. Just like Aunt Sally.”
“I thought I wanted to see the world: I mean, the cathedrals would be big and pretty, classic architecture, that sort of thing. But I had no idea with Siem Reap. Angkor Wat was —”
The curtain snapped open. “Evelyn. Come quick.” It was Jenny, her favorite attendant on the shift, and she was clearly flustered.
Jenny was already rushing off when Evelyn caught her elbow. “Breathe. That’s it. Now give me the ten-second version.”
“Girl with dog. Switched her neighbor when the guy’s allergies flared up. New neighbor got a nip on the hand. Wants her old seat back, but the guy’s not having it.” Jenny’s green eyes pleaded as she bounced up and down with nervous energy.
Evelyn turned to Marty. “I’m sorry,” she said as she headed into the economy section. There was no need to locate the seat: the center of commotion was clear. A young woman in a Baylor sweatshirt was holding a fake service dog, a dachshund vamping pink painted toenails, a sweater, and an attitude.
“I’ve got papers.” She pulled a card out of her back pocket, flaunting it more than showing it. “See.”
Reading lights were being turned on. The circus was about to come to town.
“Your mother would be ashamed of you,” said the woman. Her voice was starting to rise. “Real service dogs and the genuinely disabled suffer due to this sort of selfishness.” She wagged a finger, but the girl wasn’t giving ground. Across the aisle, a skinny guy in his thirties pulled out a cell phone and started recording; he grinned like he was hoping for bloodshed.
Evelyn had to get control of the situation quickly. “Everyone please remain calm and respectful.” She knew that comfort animal certificates could be obtained for $20 from any number of shady websites, making it hard to tell the real ones from fakes. Check-in counter staff were limited in what they were even allowed to ask; as a result, almost any paperwork would usually get the person through the gates.
As she spoke, Evelyn stepped in front of the man trying to video the situation so that her back was to him. She explained the rules according to the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Air Carrier Access Act, adding that people should not judge the young lady without having all the facts. The issue was really for the politicians to sort out, and anyway, now that they were in the air everyone should just make the most of it. A burly man with an elaborate tattoo featuring an old-fashioned pocket watch, roses, and a cross was sitting two rows up, paying only marginal attention to her speech.
“Sir, would you mind changing seats?” she asked him.
“I’ll squash that little thing if it snaps at me.”
“Ma’am, please restrain your animal.”
The passengers changed places, free drinks were handed out, and the phone went back in the would-be vlogger’s pocket, much to his disappointment.
“Oh, you’re still here.”
“Couldn’t miss the show. You, ah, didn’t draw the curtain all the way shut behind you. Well done, by the way.”
“Harrumph.” She arched her neck, rubbing a shoulder with her eyes closed tightly. “A drink would hit the spot about now. Can’t, of course.”
“That sort of thing happen often?”
“More often than you would think. Last thing I need is some video going viral.”
“Take your mind off of it — take me to Angkor Wat. You were just starting to tell me when we were interrupted.”
“Oh.” She was embarrassed that he had seen the whole thing. “Well, ahem. It was — well,” She straightened up and composed herself. “It was stunning, but, you know, there were twenty other amazing temples scattered around, some half overgrown by the jungle. Real Indiana Jones stuff.” Evelyn recalled the howling monkeys, hidden in the trees as she sat atop an ancient temple that protruded well above the canopy. The three or four other tourists at the site crawled like ants over the ruins far below her. When was the last time that she had just sat like that, contemplating life? “On the third day, I bought a book from a kid hawking them outside another temple. This sparse and impoverished place may have been the largest city on the planet in the 1300s! Bigger than Paris, London, Rome – the seat of an empire. And I hadn’t even heard of it.”
Marty chuckled. “Not many can finger it on a globe even now.”
She thought back to before she joined Pan Am, her first real job. Just a wide-eyed girl from southern Illinois, so proud to be getting fitted for her uniform. As she saw it back then, it was her ticket out. What if she had stayed? “Grounded” was a term that often came to mind — literally grounded compared to life in the air, but also more rooted in community, with a network of decades-long relationships rather than encounters lasting the duration of a flight. She would know her locality well, but less of the world.
“Well, I was hooked,” she said. “I started picking random places on maps — ones that didn’t have the masses of tourists. It’s just not the same vibe when a place is overrun and commercialized, you know.”
“No, I get it. And anyway, you’ve already seen a million photos of those places — photoshopped or taken from the perfect angle on that one day of the year when the light is just perfect, or whatever. Hard to live up to sometimes.”
“Right. I got more into travel as my fear of not speaking the language subsided. Most everywhere I’ve been, people were helpful.” She made a downward motion with her hands, palms out like for push-ups, then one hand out showing “halt,” followed by the other pointing over her shoulder three times.
“And that is …?”
“The universal sign for ‘wait here, I go get friend.’ And then someone shows up who knows at least a little English.” She shrugged. “I still get to fly standby pretty much anywhere American has a flight for hardly more than the airport tax.” She peeked around the corner to make sure everything was all right in the cabin. Evelyn was glad to be working the business class section. She didn’t often work the back of the bus these days, but when she did, interaction with customers was usually centered on some kind of complaint from a sleep-deprived individual whose body had been crammed into a shoe box sized space for several hours. On a long-haul like this one, each business class seat was its own little insulated pod. The camaraderie of flying was dead. If economy was a struggle, then luxury was all about isolation, paying to be in a bubble.
“So where next?” he asked.
“You mean —”
“Your next vacation. Where are you off to next?”
“Bali. One month, if I can swing it.” She sighed and examined her shoes.
She thought about her drive home from the airport once they landed. She would have to locate her aging Civic in a vast parking lot, then drive to her nondescript condo in a nondescript suburb, a former town of its own that had long since been swallowed up by the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, crisscrossed by faceless highways dotted with the same chain stores and restaurants as everywhere else. She longed to get away from it to someplace that had its own character; its own heartbeat. Someplace where you knew the people who sold you your produce. But there were at least two years left to go before she could afford to retire — if she wasn’t downsized before then. She guessed that Marty’s annual bonus alone was probably five years’ worth of what she scraped together in savings. Maybe more.
She had been planning the Bali trip for six months, but still wasn’t sure when she would get to go. Only a couple of days of beaches, then the rest in Ubud, the spiritual and artistic heart of the island. She would be up in the hills, its volcanic core cut by rivers, dotted by temples — the rump end of a Hindu empire as it fell back from Java against encroaching armies. Co-living it was called. You had a small room, then shared open kitchen, dining, and living facilities with the others in the building. The idea was to connect, to do things together. To be open to the unexpected. There would be yoga classes.
“I might know a guy.”
“In Bali?”
“Yeah. I knew him in college. After a couple of years in finance, when the rest of us were going back to get our MBAs, he decided to drop out of the scene and backpack for a year. He rolled up in Bali, decided that it connected with him and stayed. That was, what, twenty years ago now?” Marty sighed. “Seems like a world away. And I guess it is.”
He tapped his fingers on the cabinet behind him, arching his back one way, then the other. “Anyway, my friend landed on a lucky square somewhere along the way, and now has a small hotel. I haven’t seen him in years, but we’ve kept in touch. As far as I can tell, he seems to have enough time on his hands that he would enjoy showing you around.” He handed her a business card, formally, as a gentleman from that bygone age, then gave her an exaggerated wink. “Who knows, he might even have a party invitation for you.”
“You’re sweet.” Evelyn held his card delicately with both hands, thumbs at the bottom edge, index fingers at the top edge: Martin Hensley, Management Consultant; Bain and Company. She couldn’t remember the last time a passenger handed her a business card. How far back would that have been? Passengers were anonymous these days, staring at their screens, headphones on or earbuds in. “Just getting there” was no longer half the fun.
“Drop me a note when your plans are fixed up, and I’ll introduce the two of you. Then you can take it from there.”
“Well, Mr. Hensley, I might just do that.”
“Please, call me Marty.”
They chatted a while longer until a bong came over the speakers, followed by the Captain announcing that they were starting their descent and for the crew to prepare the cabin for arrival.
“Well, I best be getting back to my seat.”
“It was nice getting to know you, Marty.” They shook hands.
The business class passengers had already exited, and now the economy class passengers were hobbling past, bleary-eyed and in need of hair brushes. She nodded to each one as they passed. “Thank you for flying with American.” But she was nodding to herself as much as to them, reflecting after her chat with Marty. Changes were coming. I’m moving up my trip to Bali. “Thank you for flying with American.” If I like it there, I’m staying. “We hope you enjoyed your flight.” I’m selling my condo. “Thank you for flying with American.” If I come back, it won’t be to the forsaken outskirts of a city anywhere near an airport. Feet together, hands folded in front, nodding as people passed, just as she had been trained.
*
Sean Winn came to writing only late in life, but his poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in a wide range of literary magazines over the past year. He is also forthcoming in the San Antonio Review, Blood and Bourbon, and Belmont Story Review, among others. After living in Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia, he now calls Austin, Texas, USA home.