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E-Yah!

/ PilotKay / Leave a comment

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Goddamn, I’m tired.

Lijuan ‘Alice’ Fung shook herself awake with a start, and wondered if she’d actually missed the ferry home to Kowloon while she snored away some of the long night of office cleaning at the Peng Building in Sheung Wan.

In Mandarin, Li-Juan Fung meant ‘beautiful and graceful bird’.  But with all due respect to the honored, long-dead parents who named her, right now Alice felt a lot more like an old goat.  No imminent, glorious flight here, she thought; just a lot of bone-ache and back spasms.

‘E-yah’, she said to no one in particular, as she noticed that the Star Ferry she’d meant to be on was, in fact, already docked across the bay.  At least the next one’d be along in twenty minutes and she wouldn’t be too late.

I’ll still have time to shower, make a bowl of congee with that leftover chicken, and maybe even watch half of my TV soap before taking the #23 bus to the early afternoon pai-gow game with my useless cousins.

Gotta keep sharp.  The only way to have another good weekend in Macau was to keep playing, keep learning, and keep figuring out the angles.  All that, plus a whole lot of joss, and maybe, just maybe, her winning streak in the glittery casinos would keep rolling.  Fortune had certainly been with her.  More or less.

Work wasn’t nearly so glorious, and lately it’d been even worse.  The Pengs were cold, ungrateful bosses, who hadn’t given her a raise in who knows how many years.  She was fairly certain she was heading to an early grave because of the cheap cleaning products they made her use as she went from floor to floor six nights a week. 

Recently, the Pengs were even more irritable, as they negotiated the sale of the building to a Kowloon holding company, which was surprising given it had been the cornerstone of their very profitable Hong Kong real estate empire.  It was, after all, a very solid building – well-built, good location, with fairly reliable, established white-collar tenants.  It even had decent congee downstairs in the restaurant, although their lai wang bao were disgusting.

Alice looked back across the landing, and noticed that the ferry was about to dock.  It was the Meridian Star, which meant nothing to her other than she knew all the classic Star Ferry ships had ‘Star’ in their name.  How much this city has changed, she mused.  The Star Ferry was once the only reliable, affordable way to cross the bay between Hong Kong and Kowloon.  But with multiple (expensive) underground tunnels for traffic and the MTR, and all the land reclamation projects, the Ferry was being relegated to nothing more than a tourist must-do.  Still, she thought, she’d used it her whole life.  No sense switching now.

She climbed aboard the green, black and white ferry, and took her favorite wooden bench seat on the sunny side of the ship.  As she did, the first smile of the daylight hours crept across her face.

She couldn’t wait for her purchase of the Peng building to close next week, so she could finally tell those pig-fuckers what she thought of them.  Thank you, Macau. E-yah!

Sir, did you ring your call button?

/ PilotKay / Leave a comment
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Copyright Pax-International

“Yes, I did.”

“What can I get you?”

“May I please have a dinner roll, two butters and a glass of Chivas?”

“Of course.  I’ll be back shortly”

“Thank you.”

Celeste turned off the call light of row 44GHJ, and walked back to the mid-section galley of the Air France Boeing 777-300ER.  She also did two other things on her stroll back to her station. 

First, she habitually eyeballed the passengers as she passed each row, noting which ones were already asleep, and which ones were engrossed in some kind of entertainment. 

So far, about a third were already passed out from that soporific cocktail of travel fatigue, altitude, mediocre airplane food and alcohol.  About par for the course for this point in their ten-hour journey from Chicago to Paris, she thought.  Within two hours, that percentage would creep to nearly three-quarters, and that’s when life would get nice and quiet for her and her flight attendant colleagues.

The second action was a little more frontal lobe and frankly a lot more imaginative. 

She wondered if the gentleman in 44G loved his wife.

That thought wasn’t really based on the man’s request for the extra dinner roll or the Chivas Regal twelve-year.  It actually was born out of a look Celeste had seen so many times on these transatlantic flights.  She’d long ago learned that such flights opened portals to what often ailed passengers’ souls.

These portals presented themselves in so many ways, some more subtle than others.  Some passengers engaged her and their fellow passengers in almost rabid penetrating conversation, preferring the direct approach to filling their ongoing emptiness.   Others enjoyed the equally unsubtle wink and physical clues that they hoped at least gave them some kind of out in the event the recipient summarily rejected their overtures.

And some simply asked for an extra dinner roll, two butters and a glass of Chivas.

Well, she thought, the request could be almost anything.  She’d heard it all – a stick of gum, a magazine, a pillow.  Hell, she’d even seen a man ask to try on a woman’s dress once.  On a trip over the pond, anything could happen.  The rules of engagement were as open as could be.

As she moved into the galley and began pouring the whisky for Mr. 44G, she nodded to Beatrice, who smiled briefly and then went back to reading her Oui! Magazine while she took her post-dinner service break.

Beatrice was several years junior to Celeste, and to her, the opportunities for a little mile-high interaction were still shiny and interesting.  Usually within the first 30 minutes, Beatrice had the economy cabin pegged.

“32A broke up with someone, and I’m pretty sure it was her girlfriend.  God, a distraught lesbian can be so hot.  I’d almost give it a shot.”

“56B would prefer to be anywhere than with his wife in 56A, and I’m sure he’d join me in the left-aft bathroom if I gave him the nod.”

“64D hopes a few weeks of pastry-eating and some bistros will save her from a life of uselessness.  She’d be wrong.  And what’s with that ‘Wives of the O.C.’ haircut?  Jesus!”

This was Beatrice’s game, as it was for each of the crew.  For all of them knew that the key to surviving years of working at 36,000 feet was imagination.  And the combined game of ‘what-if’ and role-playing were core to that skill.

All of which led Celeste back to the stranger, whose current address was the middle hamlet of row 44G.

Every once in a while, did he search the horizon for something more?  When he went to his Parisian hotel, would he immediately dial someone he cared about, or would his mistress, Ms. Email, dominate his first hours on the ground?

Did he enjoy long talks in wool-knit sweaters by a roaring fire?  Did the extra dinner roll, the two butters and the Chivas underlie a hunger for an attractive, 40-something Air France flight attendant, one who actually did like long talks in wool-knit sweaters by roaring fires?

OK, stop that, she mused.  You’re getting creepy.  If someone asked you that, you’d be totally skeeved out.

Celeste cleared her head just about the time she reached row 44, roll, butters and drink in hand.  The mysterious passenger was waiting expectantly for his request, and gratefully accepted the food and drink.

And as he did, he turned to her with stormy-sea grey eyes she’d not noticed before, locked her gaze and said:

“Thank you.  I find these settle the stomach.”