The Ghost Pattern

…5

Lila Wallace straightened her flight attendant uniform, getting ready for departure. The same uniform she wore almost every day for work without even noticing suffocated her now. She had tossed and turned for the most part of the night, thinking she’d be stuck on the same flight with Mr. Flying Asshole, the first officer and copilot.

She forced herself to take a deep breath and swallow her tears. Even if he’d been a cheating bastard, fucking anyone in range who registered any life signs, she had to behave at her best, or risk being put on report by the flight’s commander, Captain Gene Gibson.

Captain Gibson is a real gentleman, she thought. Too bad they don’t make them like that anymore. Gibson had tried to warn her, discreetly of course, but she didn’t listen. She dismissed the advice for caution expressed by Gibson, who had encouraged her to give the relationship some thought, and she’d fallen hard, head over heels, for the moronic first officer Andrew Klapov. Andy, as she had once loved to call him, had been her very own Prince Charming for about two weeks, which happened to coincide with the exact time it took him to get her in bed.

She thought they had something real, and had never been so happy in her life. That lasted until their next flight together, when she’d assumed she had an open invite for Andy’s hotel room, and stumbled onto naked Andy performing cunnilingus on her colleague, Corinne. From between Corinne’s legs, Andy had looked her in the eye and smiled, licking his lips and winking at her. Heartbroken and disillusioned, she’d run out of there in tears, without being able to say a single word.

Corinne never learned of Lila’s personal tragedy; she’d been carried away on the wings of mindless bliss at that dramatic moment, and hadn’t even noticed her coming into the room.

From the scene of that crime, Lila ran all the way to the hotel’s business center, where she submitted a request for crew transfer, filled with typos and making little sense. Probably having seen such correspondence before, and understanding implicitly what had caused the request, the airline management had approved it, but it was to go into effect at the first of the following month. One more trip, that’s all she had left to endure. One more trip with Mr. Flying Fuck.

On top of it all, their typical route, which was San Fran to London and back, had changed at the last minute, and that last trip had to be to Tokyo and back. Four days instead of three. Great… just great.

She brushed her chestnut hair back and tied it neatly in a ponytail, then applied fresh lipstick and touched up her nose with the powder puff. She gently tapped, without smudging her makeup, the corners of her eyes with a tissue, to absorb the tears that had been welling there. No way was she going to look heartbroken over that prick.

“Fucking bastard…” she muttered. “I so deserve better than this.”

Then she grabbed her wheelie and walked out of the restroom, watching her reflection in the mirror, noticing in passing how strong, professional, and beautiful she looked. Not bad for a girl from Fayetteville, Arkansas. Not bad at all.

Before stepping onto the jetway, she stopped for a moment to grab the flight’s manifest from the gate attendant, and gave it a quick look, hoping for a miracle. Nope, none to be found. Flight XA233, nonstop service from Tokyo to San Francisco, had 423 passengers checked in and ready to board.

Well, it could have been worse, she thought, considering the plane’s capacity was 496. But an almost full cabin might be a blessing in disguise, keeping her busy, and making the fourteen hours go by faster.

She trotted with confidence on the jetway, boarded the plane, and tucked her wheelie in the staff closet. She popped her head briefly into the cockpit, greeting Captain Gibson and completely ignoring the dick in the first-officer seat.

Then she signaled the gate crew to start boarding, and took her spot in the first-class cabin, ready to greet the passengers.

They started boarding quickly, first class followed closely by the rest of the passengers, some chatting excitedly about a conference or something like that. The conference travelers were scattered throughout the plane, but they seemed to know one another fairly well.

As soon as a third or so of the passengers had made their way on board, she picked up the microphone and made her announcement.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard Universal Air flight XA233, with nonstop service to San Francisco. Today’s flight will be almost full, so please be considerate when stowing your carryon luggage. Your smaller bag should fit under the seat in front of you. From the flight deck, Captain Gibson and First Officer Klap welcome you aboard Flight XA233. Thank you for flying Universal Air; we appreciate your business.”

She hung up with a wicked smile, happy with the pun she’d made by calling the bastard Klap instead of Klapov, in reference to the sexually transmitted disease. She couldn’t resist turning her head to see his reaction.

The bastard didn’t seem to care, but Gibson frowned gently in her direction, like a disappointed parent. It made her sad. She pulled shit like that and it felt great for a second, then it ruined her life. Reckless, that’s what she was. Reckless in her choice of men, and reckless again in how she dealt with the consequences of her own mistakes.

She stood and filled a few glasses with champagne, the traditional welcome for the first-class passengers.

The woman in 1A had already taken her seat, tucked everything out of sight, and was reading a magazine. She accepted the champagne with a smile and a whispered thank you.

“You’re welcome, Ms. Bernard,” she replied.

Lila, like all flight attendants who worked the first-class cabin, was required to know the names of their passengers and greet them by name. She only had four on this trip, so it wasn’t that hard. This passenger’s name seemed strangely familiar, but she couldn’t place it. Adeline Bernard… an actress, maybe? She definitely looked like one.

She moved on to 2B, where one Darrell Maldonado was loud on his cell phone. She offered him the champagne and he took it without skipping a beat in his heated phone conversation. She touched his arm gently to get his attention, and said, “You will need to end that call in a minute, sir, and switch your phone to airplane mode.”

He dismissed her with a hand gesture, as if she was a bother of sorts, a mosquito buzzing him, or some other form of pest. In his dialogue with the other party on the phone, he inserted casually, “Oh, no, I’m still here, I got time. I just got irritated by something, that’s all.”

Asshole. Maybe there should be an airline just for them. They already had the right pilots for that.

She heard her colleague announcing roll call and crosscheck, and then she started demonstrating the safety features of the Boeing 747–400. She did one more quick round in the first-class cabin, ensuring 2B was off his phone, then sat on the jump seat and prepared for takeoff.