Fly Me Page 12

  “Ugh, so weird. I’m already stressed about this trip.”

  “So many questions,” Suzy says.

  “Get ready to answer for all of your life choices.”

  “Man,” Suzy says, “I just need to figure my shit out.”

  “How’s that?” It’s J.P. Suzy thought he’d drifted off.

  “I just need to maybe start figuring out what else I want to do.”

  J.P., oblivious to the fact that she doesn’t expect to find the answer on the beach today, begins to list a number of activities he supposes Suzy might be interested in. For J.P., as with Billy and so many others who grew up here, the web of connections is robust. He knows some great girls who just started a bakery. And these roommates who used to be his neighbors who got certified last year to teach kindergarten. Plus, obviously, he knows bands in need of better musicians—does she play anything? She doesn’t, but Suzy says things like “Really?” and “Interesting” as the list ticks on and on.

  “Or how ’bout taking flight lessons with me?” he says eventually.

  “What?” Suzy says. It jolts her in a manner she’s not prepared for.

  “You used to race cars, right? That was your thing? There’s at least some things in common. A couple months in the classroom, a couple months up in the air, fifty hours of logged flight, and then they give you a pilot’s license. I just started, but so far so good.”

  “You just sign up and they give you a pilot’s license?” Suzy says.

  “I mean, after you do the course work and put in the hours. It takes a little wad of cash, but think of what you get for it.”

  “You don’t need to be military?”

  “Nah, but it’s interesting you mention that part. So: I got super lucky in the draft—I was three eleven. I didn’t want any part of it, and so I was obviously relieved. But the more time goes by, I feel like I’m really missing something, you know? Just the feeling of having been a part of a big thing. The band’s not getting any more popular. But I figured here’s some skill I might’ve picked up if I’d served. Some skill I might’ve been able to put to good use down the road.”

  Suzy’s heard a version of this all her life. Their father only ever wanted one thing and that was to fly planes. At the outset of the war Wayne enlisted with the navy, but his physical revealed his eyes were too poor to fly jets. He became an engineer on a navy carrier in the Pacific, a charge that ultimately led to the career in glass at Schuyler Glen. But there was nothing that ever softened the sting of that initial rejection. All their lives he’d told the girls there was nothing he could do about it, nothing but buy Airfix models for the garage. But here, on a deserted beach in Southern California, a rhythm guitarist whom Suzy perceived until this moment to have no further ambition beyond nailing a thirty-bar harmony is telling her the only hurdle she faces in flying airplanes is some pay-to-play training.

  “Okay,” Suzy says.

  “Okay?” J.P. says.

  “I’m in. I’ll do it.”

  “Okay!” J.P. says.

  “Wait, what are you doing?” Grace says, returning from wherever her head’s been.

  “Suzy’s gonna do flight school, too.”

  “What?” Grace says.

  “I’ll give Grace the number,” J.P. says, “so you can see when it makes sense to start.”

  Grace gets this look in her face—a sharp edge of competitiveness, but one that’s dulled by the high. She’s in a place beyond jealousy, and so it comes out mellow and round: “All right, then. Just do it, Suz. Just be so, so good.”

  “Okay,” Suzy says, smiling at the pride she perceives in her sister’s voice. “Cool. Cool cool cool cool…”

  Everything on board is as ever, with the exception of the POG juice. By the time they’re taxiing, cartons are in the hands of not just the first-class passengers, but all one hundred and fifty aboard the 707 back from Honolulu.

  This trip has been filled with the most straightforward enjoyments yet, the greatest quotient of pleasure to effort. Suzy had simply stepped off the plane and into the three-dimensional heat, and there was this van that had the look and smell of a plumeria lei on wheels, at the ready to whisk them directly to the water, no stop at the room even, hope you wore a bikini beneath your uniform. It was late afternoon when she and the others arrived, but peak humidity, and the finite hours of sun suited Suzy fine. They were stuffed into doubles at the Royal Hawaiian, and it was not till well after dark—after the little island boy lit the trail of torches—that the luau got under way and Suzy made a move to her room for the first time. When Suzy walked across the lawn in the fading light, it occurred to her that nothing in her life had ever felt quite so right as the grass on her feet did then, the grass of the grounds of a Hawaiian hotel.

  Just after noon the next day they’re up and out of sight of Diamond Head and Pearl Harbor and the last look at land, embroidered at its edge by the chalky swirl of a shallow reef—nothing, for six hours, but that flat face of the tanzanite Pacific and the occasional black shadow of an orphan cloud. They work the aisles collecting the empty four-ounce pop-top cartons, and when they’re back in the galley, Suzy puts on a pot of coffee (special request from 17D) and pulls her book from her bag. Three of the four girls are back there now, all except Marion, who’s on her way. But there’s something uncomprehending about the way Marion moves. Her eyes hum and her body seems to trail her legs. She looks like a boxer who’s been jabbed in the nose after the bell.

  “There’s a man,” Marion says to the compartment. “There’s a man with a note asking to speak with the captain.”

  They know what this is, the four of them—Marion, Belle, Ruth, and Suzy—and they look at one another with unchanging expressions. In the seven weeks since Suzy started, there have been six hijackings. It has been going on for years, to no great resolution, and after slowing some, things have begun to sizzle again. Grand Pacific provides a weekly update of hijackings in a black box in the airline newsletter. There’s probably been a hundred attempts in the last few years—dozens of flights to Cuba, demands for millions in cash. The skyjackings were covered feverishly, and the feverish coverage inspired copycats. It is a rarer and rarer thing to have a flight staffed with stews who haven’t experienced one firsthand, but such is the case here with these four.

  “I didn’t want to bother Captain Mulaney,” Marion finally says, “if it’s, you know, not that big—”

  “Do you have the note?” Ruth says. Ruth is the senior stew, the head of the crew.

  Marion pulls the note from the pocket of her uniform. It’s a bar napkin, still damp. Circumscribed by the wet ring of a cocktail glass is the logo for the Aloha Grill, a hula dancer in silhouette. In full-cap black ink:

  ID LIKE TO SPEAK TO THE CAPTAIN PLEASE. TELL HIM THIS IS AN IMPORTENT MATTER OF SAFETEY AND FREEDOM. I HAVE A GUN AND I DONT WANT TO KILL PEOPLE BUT IF I HAVE TO I WILL, EVERYONE, IF MY SIMPL DEMANDS ARENT MET. ALL I WANT IS TO HAVE A CONVERSASION GO TELL HIM NOW IN 10 MINUTES OR I PRECEED TO SHOOT ONE PERSON.

  Added to the back side:

  (DONT TALK TO ME JUST GO AND COME GET ME WHEN THE CAPTAIN IS AMENNABLE TO MY DEMANDS)

  “Oh God,” Ruth says, “which one is he?”

  “22B. There on the aisle with the black hair.” All Suzy sees is the back of his head and the bright line of a red-and-tan Hawaiian shirt peeking around the edge of the seat. Short sleeves, a hairy forearm. Everything about him is still.

  “Did he seem serious?” Suzy says.

  “Gosh, I don’t know. He was like anyone else. He didn’t smile or nothing, but he didn’t seem overly this way or that. He was like every other passenger. He said, ‘Take this and give it to the captain.’”

  “We can’t risk it,” Ruth says. “I’ll take it up if you want.”

  “Do you think he’ll get mad?” Marion says. “Since he gave it to me.”

  The girls look at one another again.

  “You go,” Ruth says. “I’ll take another pass to collect trash, just
to be up there with you, without making more suspicions.”

  “Okay,” Marion says, smiling feebly and rolling the note over into the cup of her hand.

  “We can keep watch over him,” Suzy says. “In case he gets up or something. Just to have, you know, extra eyes or whatever.”

  “I knew this would happen,” Belle says, speaking up for the first time, her face squinching toward tears. “It said so this morning in the paper at the hotel. ‘An unsettling surprise at work’ is what it said.”

  “C’mon, sweetheart,” Ruth says. “Nothing’s happened, and we just need to be helpful now.”

  “You’d better go,” Suzy says to Marion. “I’ll take the coffee with me, just in case I need to use it or whatever.” Belle shows Suzy a morbid face. “Stay here,” Suzy says to her, “and maybe get lunch going, ’kay?”

  They roll out in sequence—Marion, Ruth, and then Suzy. Suzy takes the aisle slowly, as though she’s making a standard pass, but without offering anyone anything. She watches Marion knock at the door to the cockpit, and though she can’t hear the exchange, she can see Captain Mulaney’s hat and the handover of the note. After reading the napkin, Captain Mulaney holds still in his seat. Suzy sees him turn toward Marion, imagines his eyes moving quietly over Marion’s shoulder, twenty-two rows aft, and quickly sizing up B on the aisle. Marion steps back out of the cockpit and the captain shuts the door. She passes Ruth and then stops short of where Suzy’s standing with the coffee to communicate a message to the man.

  “Sir, if you’ll please follow me…,” she says softly. The man unclips his seat belt and stands. He’s no taller than Marion. Looks Hawaiian. Tropical shirt and corduroy shorts, Reebok tennis shoes, striped tube socks that stretch halfway up his brambled legs. As he shuffles behind Marion, Suzy notices he’s got a fanny pack on his hip and a hand buried inside. Suzy finds herself swallowing hard, not out of fear but as an involuntary response to a flush of envy—impressed, even, with the man’s conviction, the single-mindedness of the pursuit, the hunger and willingness and ability to steer a moment belonging not just to himself but to a hundred and fifty others. It is a shameful lump, and she shoves it back down her throat.

  Ruth asks loudly for empty cartons of POG juice, insisting that passengers not shove them into the backs of the seats. Marion passes Ruth, followed by 22B. Ruth resists glancing up to look at his face and makes another call for garbage instead. Marion knocks lightly at the captain’s door and then steps aside.

  In less time than eats up a frame of film, the man in the Hawaiian shirt crumples to the floor of the airplane, his two hands gripping his face.

  Captain Mulaney is through the door and on top of him, pinning the man’s wrists beneath his knees while searching for a gun. The man is bucking his body, kicking the doors to the cockpit and the bathroom. A woman in first class screams, cueing the rest of the plane to unbuckle and peer toward the tussle.

  “Everybody stay seated,” Suzy shouts as she rushes forward with Ruth. Marion stands near the boarding door with her hands over her face, and nearly backpedals into the laps of the passengers in the first row. The man is shouting and gargling, resisting the frisk of the captain, who suddenly, exhausted by the inconvenience, lands a hook that quiets the man’s body.

  The woman up front screams again. The captain slides off and unzips the fanny pack. He removes a handgun, a Colt sidearm.

  “You dumb, dumb bastard,” the captain mutters as he rolls onto his heels and up to his feet. Mulaney’s hat has fallen to the floor, revealing the standard-issue gray crew cut of former military. He has a retiree’s tan, Phoenix by way of Fort Collins by way of somewhere else. He has long legs and high-hitched trousers and the arms and chest of a man who does his hundreds—push-ups, sit-ups, chin-ups—every day still. He looks less boiled by adrenaline than just personally offended by the situation. “God damn, what were you thinking?”

  “Jack?” It’s the copilot through the crack in the door.

  “He’s out. I got his gun.”

  “What should I tell the tower?”

  “Tell ’em we’ll keep him up here, keep on going.”

  “You sure you don’t want to turn around?” the copilot says.

  “Ladies,” Mulaney says. “How many extra seats do we have?”

  “Six, Captain,” Ruth says.

  “Perfect, let’s shift some folks around and clear out that last row, if you don’t mind.”

  “Jack,” the copilot says, “they just want to confirm that we’re okay to proceed as planned. If not, they’re ready for us in Honolulu.”

  “We’re not inconveniencing a hundred and fifty passengers because of this asshole.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ladies, would you please make sure everyone knows we’ve just opened the bar.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Ruth says.

  “Bill, will you let folks know what’s goin’ on?” The copilot clicks into the PA.

  The captain rummages through a compartment behind his seat. He emerges with a pair of bungee cords, cords that might typically be used to strap down a service cart. He asks a suited man with sun-bleached hair to lend a hand, and together they carry 22B to the last row, where Belle kindly asks passengers to gather their belongings and stand by for relocation to new seats. Captain Mulaney and the blond businessman unload 22B into the last row, and Mulaney fixes him to the aisle seat, double-wrapping the bungee cords around his chest. The man’s head, masked by a soft brown face, lolls forward. Mulaney unthreads the shoelaces from the man’s trainers and ties each wrist to the armrest. He binds the man’s ankles together with a third cord and fixes them to the seat.

  Mulaney gathers up the four stews.

  “I am so goddamned fed up with this shit,” he says, glancing back at the man. “This is my third this year.”

  “Oh my God,” Belle says, hot in the cheeks.

  “Sorry, ladies, pardon my French. It’s just, they see it on TV, think they can do it themselves, and all the airlines do is give in to the demands—making it a more attractive proposition than ever.”

  “What happened with the other two?” Suzy says.

  “First time there were three guys. Said they had a bomb in a briefcase. Denver to Miami, they wanted to go to Cuba. It was on our way, we had enough fuel, had no reason to believe they were bluffing.”

  “They didn’t want any money?” Suzy says.

  “Didn’t say. Just said they wanted to get to Cuba.”

  “And so you went.”

  “We let Havana know we were coming, got cleared to land, and handed them over. Let Castro deal with them. Took off and had everyone else at the gate in Miami an hour after they were due in.…”

  The captain trails off as the body of 22B begins listing toward the window seat, only to be caught in suspension by the cords.

  “Then, a couple weeks ago,” he says, turning back, “there was a guy who said he had a whole crew on board. Chicago to Seattle, started making demands over Montana. Asked for half a million from the Treasury, plus a helicopter. Said he was military, recent discharge from ’Nam, wanted it delivered upon arrival and that he was going to divvy it out among the families of the guys in his platoon who were killed. Had dynamite strapped to his chest and a detonator in his hand. The guy was calm enough, said he’d been planning things for a year. So the airline and the FBI are scrambling—I mean, there’s been so many they’re starting to get tapped out on these ransoms.

  “As we get closer, the guy’s gettin’ a little edgy. Asks to talk to our folks on the ground directly. Starts saying ‘I’ instead of ‘we’—makes me think he’s lying about there being others. Makes me wonder what else he’s lying about. People on board aren’t terribly wise to what’s up. We’re still landing where we’re meant to and he’s not making a big scene. We actually get on the ground. That’s when the feds say they were only able to scrounge up forty-two grand. I mean, fuck them, right? No mention of it the entire time. The guy coulda ended us right there.


  “So he starts freaking out, says he wants us to take off again. I don’t really have much of a choice, so I tell ground control what’s gonna happen. We start to taxi and the SOBs shoot our goddamned tires out. Can you believe that? There’s this big lurch. We drop. People are screaming, oxygen masks are flying around, and a couple sticks of the kid’s dynamite fall to the ground. And wouldn’t you know? They’re road flares. Road flares with little fake fuses on the ends. Before I can tell anyone what’s even going on, a couple of the passengers sitting up front, they somehow get the boarding door open and—get this—push the kid out the door. These guys must’ve been listening in the whole time. Saw the same thing I did with the flares. After the fact, we learned that they’d been going through his carry-on, found the packaging for the flares, figured he was full of it and didn’t really know what he was doing. Turns out they were coming back from a hunting trip in Wisconsin and still had their blood runnin’ a little red.

  “Anyway,” the captain says, “the guy broke a leg falling out of the plane, and the feds were right there to pick him up.”

  “That’s the craziest story I’ve ever heard,” Belle says.

  “How’d you know our guy didn’t have a bomb?” Suzy says.

  “He would’ve said so in the note.”

  “And what if he’d shot you first?”

  “I was just gonna make sure he didn’t. Besides, nobody wants to be pilotless over the ocean. He wasn’t gonna be that dumb.”

  “But seriously,” Belle says, “you’re a hero.”

  Mulaney watches for the man’s movement, impervious to the heat radiating from beneath Belle’s uniform. “I’m just sick of these guys. I’m sick of the way the airlines deal with them. I’m sick of the way the papers and TV news are always talking about it. These guys are not original thinkers, they’re not creators. They’re imitators, they’re pathetic little copycats. One flight: nobody to somebody—that’s what they’ve got in their heads. And I’m tired of this idea that we’re supposed to give in to them. I don’t know, I’m gonna deal with it my own way from here on out.”