The Woman in 3B - Eliza Lentzski Page 0,82

with no way to exit unless she grabbed a parachute, but if she didn’t give me a chance to talk at the baggage carousel, I feared this might be my final opportunity. I’d been practicing my speech over the past few nights. I’d even had Gemma pretend to be Anissa for me. I felt prepared—rehearsed, but not robotic. I knew what I wanted to say; I only hoped she would humor me long enough for me to apologize and try to explain myself.

I positioned myself near the baggage carousel where her flight’s luggage would soon be appearing. A loud buzz alerted everyone in the area that the luggage belt would soon be moving. The crowd became significantly more dense as people jostled for position.

I walked a little closer, but maintained a safe distance. It didn’t really matter though. No one noticed a flight attendant in baggage claim. Like in the air, I was simply part of the atmosphere. The flight’s passengers all stared at the luggage belt, trying to identify their specific bag in a sea of identical black roller bags.

My eyes continued to scan the area surrounding the slowly moving luggage belt. My gaze paused at each dark-haired woman until I found the person I’d been waiting for. Anissa stood close to the conveyor belt. Like the other nearby passengers, her focus was singularly trained on the moving belt, anticipating when her own suitcase might appear. I watched her from a careful distance. I didn’t want her to notice me before she’d retrieved her bag, but I couldn’t wait much longer afterwards or she would leave the area before I ever had the chance to talk to her.

Anissa reached for a nondescript, black suitcase and attempted to tug it free from a tangle of duffle bags and backpacks. A man in a Detroit Lions t-shirt and cargo shorts interjected his body to assist her. He looked exactly like the kind of passenger I traditionally targeted for the bingo card game. My stomach tightened at the realization. He was only being helpful, and I’d been taking advantage of that kind of kindness for my own profit.

I continued to watch from a careful distance. Anissa’s appreciative smile took over her face. She and the obliging man exchanged a few words before she rolled her luggage a few yards away from the baggage carousel to check her cellphone. It was now or never.

I strode towards Anissa, wiping my sweaty palms on the sides of my uniform skirt. I’d come straight over to baggage claim after my last flight of the day. I didn’t feel as freshly pressed as I had at the start of the work day, but at least I hadn’t needed to stress out about what to wear. I had enough to overthink already without adding my wardrobe to the pile.

“Hey.”

At the sound of my voice, her head snapped up from her phone, and her golden irises trained themselves on me.

“Hey,” she flatly returned. Her eyes left me momentarily and inspected the space around us, as if expecting to be ambushed by hidden cameras. “Is this a coincidence or something else?”

“Something else,” I readily disclosed. “I had a friend look up your flight.”

Her eyebrows rose in a look more displeased than curious. “So you’re actually stalking me now? I already changed my flight schedule because of you; am I going to have to change airlines, too?”

Her visible frustration caused my carefully rehearsed apology to fly from my brain. Where there once had been carefully crafted syntax was only a blank space.

“I’m an idiot,” I blurted out.

“No lies detected so far,” she deadpanned.

“I can explain everything.”

Her lips thinned and the skin around her eyes tightened. “I’m not sure I’m interested.”

“Please, Anissa. Just hear me out.”

I watched her glance furtively at our surroundings. No one in baggage claim was interested in our conversation, and as long as we kept ourselves composed and spoke at a reasonable volume, it would stay that way. My skin itched at the alternative. She was the last person to want to draw attention to herself.

She didn’t reject my plea, so I took that as a sign to continue. “There’s a secret competition among the flight attendants at my airline. We get a bingo card with challenges to be completed within the month. Most of them are pretty dumb, like talk with a fake accent during your flight. Some of them are a little risqué,” I admitted, “but most are totally harmless.”

She wet her lips. “How many squares