Chapter 7 #2
“It’s an experimental short fiction workshop,” said her husband, further enraging his wife by remaining calm. “And I’m not fucking her, even if she wants to. As usual, you’re imagining things.”
“I’m imagining you fucking her in our bed!” the wife fumed, “because I don’t use that cheap lavender and lemongrass drugstore shampoo that soaked into the goddamn pillow!”
The woman tried to step over her husband to reach the aisle, but fell onto him, pummeling him and then lurching onto another passenger’s lap. She stood up, swayed, and declared, “What is everybody looking at? You’re all probably fucking him!”
She started throwing half-hearted punches, connecting with the foreign dad’s neck and then pulling on the teenage kid’s longish, elaborately unkempt curls.
The rabbi stood up and yelled, “Flight attendant! This is what happens when women are allowed to fly!” The drunk wife grabbed the spiteful passenger’s security bunny and announced, “I’m gonna kill this fucking thing! ”
As the wife and the bunny’s owner began tussling, other passengers swarmed the pair, pinning the drunken woman’s arms to her sides. Since the pandemic, fliers had become accustomed to subduing unruly passengers. I got the bunny away from the wrathful wife and passed it to its owner.
Brock and Timothy appeared, with a shopping bag filled with rolls of duct tape.
As the passengers kept the sputtering, flailing woman still, Brock and Timothy deftly wrapped her, again and again, with the strong, wide silver tape, until she resembled a large turkey that someone was FedExing.
Her husband was apologizing and claiming, “She’s not a bad person, she’s just batshit jealous and she shouldn’t drink,” and I felt sorry for both of them, because they’d probably loved each other early on and had a rent-controlled apartment, so splitting up wasn’t in the cards.
As we lowered the trussed-up wife into an empty seat in the last row, she was breathing more evenly.
Throughout the fracas, I’d kept an eye on the senior citizen in the tracksuit, who’d been strangely disengaged, resolutely looking out the window.
For a woman with a grandchild bracelet, she wasn’t overly compassionate.
The lights were dimmed as most of the passengers dozed (the supreme mark of caste in air travel is how far back your seat reclines).
As I visited the upper classes, Brock affirmed that the finance bro was most likely not the courier, because he’d taken out a laptop and was clicking through high-end watches, photos of himself at the finish lines of corporate-sponsored Central Park marathons, and wedding venues, all indicating he was a guy who’d started earning real money, thought he was in better physical shape than he was, and had begun emailing his fiancée on planning a ceremony that would outdo their friends’ events.
Timothy crossed off his Frenchwoman because he’d chatted with her, and she’d brought up the Hamptons estate she was decorating for “zese awful Americans who like carpeting.” She’d assumed that Timothy would be sympathetic to her elegant angst because “you are ze gay, no?” Timothy reasoned, “She’s way too self-involved to smuggle anything, and I bet she thinks diamonds are cheesy. ”
Speaking of the diamond, I’d walked slowly past the Miami-matron passenger, who, as she napped, had let her blanket fall partway off, for a view of her bracelet, jangling with charms of golden-toned profiles engraved with the names of grandchildren.
These tributes alternated with garishly colored, jumbo plastic gems, except for a remarkably well-cut diamond.
I’m no expert, but something caught my eye, a hard-edged dazzle (not unlike my cousin Jenn’s engagement rock).
Could this cozy mah-jongg champion be the courier, hiding her priceless cargo in plain sight? Was this the artifact Reata was after?
I notified Reggie, while also inquiring if he wanted a warm chocolate chip cookie before we landed in Paris.
He had a pistol tucked in his belt, so the plan was this: I’d delay Grandma’s exiting the plane for as long as I could, so Reggie could quietly corral her, reveal his weapon, and guide her away from the aircraft and into a holding room.
Brock and Timothy would block other passengers from getting an eyeful of what was happening, and the detention would go smoothly.
The lights came up, and the passengers in Economy began to rearrange their clothes and stow their tray tables (they didn’t get warm chocolate cookies, to punish them for flying cheaply).
I strapped myself into a mini-seat for our descent, and once we had landed and taxied to the gate, everyone was, as instructed by Brock via the PA system, “free to move around the cabin.” I helped folks retrieve items from the overheads, and smiled as the woman with the security bunny grumbled about a class action lawsuit.
I cut the duct tape from the troubled wife with a pair of scissors (one of the few sharpened implements permitted on board).
She was now sober and embarrassed, but freeing her also slowed the grandma from leaving the plane, which was handy.
Finally everyone had left my section and I’d taken my time getting the grandma’s matching pink wheelie out of the bin, placing it in the aisle, and extending the handle. But where was Reggie?
“Young man?” the grandma said. “May I get past you?”
“In just a sec,” I said, and then, with a hint of desperation, “Tell me about your grandkids.”
“Tell me about your boyfriend,” she countered. “Or don’t you have one?”
I was obstructing her. Things were getting ugly.
“There’s still a bottleneck in Business,” I said. “It’ll only be a minute.”
“Get out of my way. Or I’ll ask you about not getting into grad school.”
“I was wait-listed.”
“But you still didn’t get in. I’ll bet I can see it on your parents’ faces. The shame. The disappointment.”
“Shut up. That’s not true.”
“Out of my way, you little pisher.”
She wasn’t just grandma-shaming me. She was Jewish grandma–shaming me. We were standing face-to-face, but I had a height and weight advantage. She wasn’t getting past me.
“So you’re a flight attendant. On Delta. And you still don’t have abs.”
“I have abs!”
“Let’s see.” She punched me in the stomach with surprising force. She stomped on one of my feet.
“You want more of this? Are you gonna hit an old lady? With your little toothpick arms? From what—Jazzercise?”
She shoved me with both hands so I’d move backward, getting us both closer to the exit. Why wasn’t Reggie here? Or Brock and Timothy?
“Yeah, I’ve got grandkids. A podiatrist, a creative project manager at , and a probate attorney. Gee, no flight attendants. What does your bubbe tell people—that you’re still finding yourself? Or does she lie and say you’re a psychologist in a group practice? With a husband?”
My grandparents do ask me if I’m still doing “those little acting things,” with the implication “as a hobby.” This woman was getting to me, but could I throttle or at least restrain a woman three times my age?
I’d put my uniform jacket on a hanger and was wearing just my vest. She reached through the arm holes and began twisting my nipples.
“I’m sorry, is the baby crying?”
Now she’d done it. This was the phrase my older brother Ben had sneered when we’d wrestle (Ben is now a pediatric surgeon). And the grandma was slapping me, again and again, right across my face. I grabbed her right arm and heaved her into an empty row of seats.
“Oooh, look who’s fighting back. The boy who uses the five-pound weights for his chest workout.”
“I’m still getting results!”
“I don’t see ’em!” She kneed me, right in the crotch, and my back rammed into a seat. I lifted her ankle and twisted it, and she screamed.
“I’m an old lady! That’s my bad ankle, with the arthritis! But I’ve got another one!”
She kicked me right under the chin, so I crumpled onto the floor.
I clutched one of her oversized sneakers, with the Dr. Scholl’s insoles, but it came off in my hand, as the woman steadied herself by gripping two armrests, hoisting herself a few feet into the air, and landing both feet right onto my chest.
“Maybe next time I’ll get a warm cookie!” she crowed, stepping onto my head.
“Not so fast,” said Reggie, charging in from Business with his pistol pointed at Grandma, who was raising her palms, seemingly in defeat, but she wasn’t done yet.
“And who’s this? Pointing a gun at a helpless woman on Medicare, which barely covers my blood thinner?”
“She’s not helpless,” I warned Reggie. “She’s a nasty bitch.”
“With an IRA,” she said, “and a niece who owns three Cold Stone Creameries in Connecticut alone. You gonna shoot me?”
“If I have to,” said Reggie. “Hand over the bracelet.”
I’d used an armrest to get to my feet, but I was staying clear of Grandma, to give Reggie a clean shot.
“Fuck both of you.” She unzipped her fanny pack and took out a small gun of her own, painted pink with sparkles. “I got the separate parts through Customs and then put them together in the bathroom—isn’t it adorable?”
She pointed her gun at Reggie and then at me, in a standoff. But she didn’t see the open overhead just behind her, with a fire extinguisher in it.
“Nobody really likes your potato pancakes,” I told her. “Your friend Estelle is right—they’re dry.”
“You shut your filthy mouth!” the woman yowled, but it was too late. She was distracted—I went for the fire extinguisher and slammed it onto her head, while Reggie grabbed the gun out of her hand. As she went down she said, “Oy vey iz mir! You little fucking shonda!”
A shonda, my mom had told me, is a Jew who’s disgraced his people, maybe by marrying a shiksa or knocking a Jewish grandmother unconscious.
Except I wasn’t a shonda, because I was about to unhook Grandma’s bracelet as she lay on the floor moaning further curses.
I was going to bring Reata a gift. I was a Tux.
Three uniformed gendarmes marched down the aisle, with guns drawn, shouting in French. Reggie identified himself, also in French, and I think he asked to see a warrant, which was produced. One of the gendarmes thanked him, as his companions got Grandma to her feet and started dragging her away.
She was strangely unflustered, as if she’d seen this coming. She told me, “Good luck with that zit on your chin. Or did you think if you slathered it with concealer no one would notice?”
She’d gone too far. As she was led off, Reggie’s fury doubled, so I asked him, “What’s going on? Are they doing our job for us? Will they confiscate the diamond?”
“Those aren’t real officers,” he said. “They’re working for Parnassus. They’re counting on us not firing our weapons with so many civilians around. Someone tipped them off. Fuck.”
Reggie wasn’t having a meltdown but his response was more intimidating.
He was pulsing with contained ire, since he hated any kind of helplessness.
He was most likely plotting our next move, but I didn’t want to question him or start blathering.
The diamond was gone, Grandma had escaped on my watch, and I’d do anything to set things right.