The Woman in 3B - Eliza Lentzski Page 0,5

missing out on family time.”

“I’m not doing it on purpose,” I insisted. “It’s just not going to work out this time.”

“It never works out,” she grumbled.

My voice pitched up. “Because your kids insist on doing stuff on the days that I’m working!”

“Can’t you switch with someone?” she demanded. “Or pretend to come down with a cold?”

I tugged at my hair in frustration. “You know it doesn’t work that way,” I growled into my phone. “I can’t flake on my work. I’ve got responsibilities.”

“I don’t know why you can’t just skip,” she openly complained. “It’s not like you’re curing cancer.”

“I know. I’m just a flight attendant,” I bit out as my frustration mounted. “Nothing special or important about that.”

“You know I didn’t mean it like that, Alice.”

“I’ve gotta go,” I said, my voice suddenly flat. Even a brief conversation with my older sister had drained me of all energy. “My dinner’s getting cold.”

I ended the call without waiting for my sister’s goodbye. I knew she would only continue to text me the rest of the night, waffling between apologetic and passive aggressive, so I turned off my phone entirely.

I swirled my fork aggressively through my spaghetti noodles and took a bite. I’d lost my appetite, but I had to eat. And my already thin pocketbook wouldn’t forgive me for letting good food go to waste.

CHAPTER TWO

In the mornings when I first arrived at the airport, I checked my mailbox in the flight attendant lounge to see if I had received anything. Then, like a regular passenger, I consulted the airport screens to find the gate where my airplane was located. If I had time before my first flight of the day, I liked to grab coffee and a pastry from one of the terminal’s cafes.

I enjoyed my job partly because of the routine. Each day was different, depending on the destination and the number of flights I worked, but there was also a predictable rhythm to each flight. The passengers arrive and we help them to their seats and with their bags. We close the boarding door and walk through the cabin, getting ready for taxi. While in taxi we make a departure announcement and walk through the cabin again. Once the plane is ready, we buckle into our respective jump-seats for takeoff.

When the plane reaches 10,000 feet, we prepare for beverage service. After serving snacks and drinks, we pick up cups and other trash. Thirty minutes out from our final destination, the purser makes the initial approach announcement and we clean and prepare the cabin for arrival. A catering form is filled out for anything the next flight will need. We check our landing lips before landing—apply a fresh layer of lipstick and lacquer before the big passenger buh-byes.

I liked the routine, but sometimes it could feel like that movie Groundhog’s Day with the day restarting every morning. The only thing that differed was the passengers, but even they started to look alike after a while.

Luckily I had my hostile older sister to keep things interesting. I hadn’t turned my cellphone back on from the previous evening until I was seated at a café table with a coffee and blueberry muffin. My sister hadn’t left any voicemails, but she’d composed a string of text messages all echoing the same sentiment: I was being a crappy sister and aunt.

I loved my niece and nephew, June, age 7, and Peter, age 5. And I honestly wasn’t ignoring my family or making up excuses to not see them. But that was the nature of my job. It allowed for little flexibility or last-minute changes unless I wanted my paycheck to take a hit. Technically, I could fly as little or as much as I wanted to, within reason, but the debt collectors weren’t going to be forgiving if I defaulted on my student loans because I’d attended a ballet recital or t-ball game instead of working.

My sister perpetually nagged me about how much I worked and how little I saw them, but she didn’t have tens of thousands of dollars in student debt. She didn’t even have to work anymore; she’d lucked out by marrying an anesthesiologist. Because of her, I felt a metaphorical cloud hovering over my day before it had even really begun.

“What’s wrong, Sunshine?” My friend, Gemma, slipped into the empty chair across the table where we sat most mornings when our flight schedules overlapped.

I darkened the screen on my cellphone and tucked it back into my work bag. “Nothing.