The flight was full. Call lights had been dinging since take-off. The forty-five minute delay out of Orlando had been just enough to push a long duty day into the “grueling” category, and the slender young flight attendant—sassy on a good day—was in no mood. When “Flight attendants prepare for landing” at last echoed over the tinny public address, he flitted into the aisle to eyeball seatbelts and tray tables, but his mind was already on the frosty gin and tonic he planned to sip by the hotel’s rooftop pool provided these pilots put ‘er down in Vegas in time to hit the last minute of happy hour. He didn’t even look at the passenger—it was certainly nothing personal; he saw a seat belt dangling into the aisle, delivered the FAA-required request that it be buckled, and made to move on, stopping only because the scoff had been purposely pitched at a volume that dared him to do so.
Still, he was all business. “Please fasten your seat belt.”
“I won’t.”
“We’re landing,” he said. Not everyone, he knew, was as attuned to phases of flight as the cabin crew, who started counting the seconds to Prepare for landingas soon as the pilot said Prepare for take-off
“I don’t care if we’re crashing. I won’t be told what to do.”
He rolled his eyes. “Okay, well, we’re not crashing, but the fasten seat belt sign is on. Please just fasten your seat belt.”
“You clearly have no idea who you’re talking to.” Was her accent supposed to sound phony?
The flight attendant took stock of the passenger and of her situation. She was sitting in coach, dripping in cheap costume jewelry, and he knew a fake fur when he saw one. “Why? Are you like a famous stripper?” he ventured.
“How dare you?” The mascara-spackled, middle-aged miscreant clutched at her throat with a faux-bejeweled hand. “I won’t be spoken to in this manner. Do you realize, where I come from, I am considered a princess?” She raised her eyebrows to imply a capital P.
If she expected obsequious back-pedaling, or even widened eyes, from the flight attendant, she was to be disappointed. “Big deal,” he said. “Where I come from, they consider me a Queen. Which means I outrank you. So drop the act and fasten your seat belt, honey.”
Maybe she fastened it and maybe she didn’t—the flight attendant denied the Princess the satisfaction of refusing his request again. Instead, he turned on his polished heel and swished back to the galley, his slender hips unimpeded by even the brawniest shoulder.
* * * *
“You know that never happened, right?” Jesse Cisneros had just tried to pawn this dustiest of chestnuts off as his own inflight triumph to the juicy young new hire they were working with, and Tanner Bradac, Jesse’s best friend and favorite flying partner, was having none of it.
The new hire chuckled. “You mean it’s like an urban legend?”
“Oh no,” Tanner clarified. “That whole ‘queen’ thing is a true story. I just mean Jesse hasn’t ever had ‘slender hips.’”
The new hire laughed and Jesse stuck out his tongue to establish that he was unimpressed by Tanner’s teasing. “Fuck you, Tanner.”
“You guys, my mom was a flight attendant for Eastern,” the young pup, whose name was Clark, said between chuckles. “That joke’s at least as old as her day.”
“As old as her day?” Tanner mimicked. “The Wright Brothers told each other that joke.”
“Yeah, well, you would know,” Jesse said.
“Oh right.” Tanner rolled his eyes. “Because I’m so old? I’m thirty-three. I’m four years older than you.”
“I forget that,” Jesse said. “What with how gray you’ve gotten.”
Tanner laughed. He had like one outcropping of five gray hairs in an otherwise luxuriantly chocolate thatch. “Go back to your cabin,” he directed his friend, unfurling one of his ridiculous arms to point toward First Class at the front of the airplane.
“Fine.” Jesse turned to go. “Don’t forget to do the second service. And just for that hip crack, I’m not helping you pick up.”
Tanner rolled his eyes again. “We’ll manage.”
Whatever. Jesse’s feelings were mostly pretend-hurt as he sailed back up the admittedly more-narrow-than-it-used-to-be aisle of the Airbus A320 to check on his passengers. He and Tanner were always razzing each other about one thing or another, and Jesse was pretty certain the recent addition of a more plush upholstery to his backside was not what stood between him and Tanner on a romantic level, seeing as how he had indeed been very slender when they’d met eight years ago and Tanner hadn’t made anything like a move in those days, either. And Tanner always got like this when there was fresh blood in the water. More sarcastic, more of the eye rolling, Mister Funny Guy. While he supposed he’d be willing to make an exception for Tanner Bradac, generally when it came to dating other flight attendants, Jesse thought of himself as someone who’d just as soon not shit where he eats; he had plenty of Mile High Airlines in his life as it was, thank you very much. But Tanner had not shown himself to be especially fastidious in this regard, and this buttery blond bumpkin they’d been working with the last four days was right up his alley. Let him have his fun.
