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  “You’re putting us on.”

  “No, I’m not. And you know who I think it is? I think it’s that man who delivers meat to the cafeteria.”

  “Gruel with the meatman?”

  “I think so.”

  “He’s kinda good lookin’,” Betty recalled.

  “He’s not,” I said.

  “Ah wanna see,” Betty insisted.

  “I don’t think we should,” Sally Lu protested.

  “Come on. You’ve got to see it to believe it.”

  It was a ridiculous thing to do. All Gruel had to do was catch us and we could kiss our wings good-bye. But then again, and the thought ran through all our minds, Gruel would be hard-pressed to make any fuss. We were within ten feet when we heard Gruel’s voice. It had taken on a little girl quality, a far cry from the studied tones she used in the classroom.

  “Alan,” she squealed, “don’t do that.”

  “Shhhhhhhhh, Louisa,” a gravel voice replied. “It’s dark and I’m reading your lovely figure in . . . whatta ya call it? Braille.”

  I wanted to throw up. The whole world must use that cornball line. And I almost spent a lifetime hearing it.

  “Ah wonder if he’s wearing his apron,” Betty muttered.

  We stood there in the darkness, barely breathing. Then we circled the car and reached the front door. When the doorman called in our late arrival we received a stern scolding from the dorm adviser.

  “You’ll have to answer to Gruel in the morning.”

  The thought was almost appealing. We got into bed and Betty said, “Ah was last in line when we sneaked past the car. Ah saw them climbin’ into the backseat.”

  Miss Gruel looked tired the next morning as she lectured us on the terrible thing we’d done in breaking curfew. Our broken car story didn’t hold much weight with her, but it probably did save us from being kicked out of school.

  We didn’t see Gruel again until the final class on conduct and personal habits. This was, by reputation, Big Momma’s favorite class. She always taught it herself.

  Her lecture was brutal. It ran on for an hour in wall-to-wall words about the importance of living a life worthy of the stewardess image.

  “Perhaps you take offense at what you might construe as meddling into your personal lives. But your personal lives will be mirrored in your conduct as a stewardess. It is my wish that each of you always give deep thought before giving yourself . . . how shall I say it . . . giving yourself to other than the man you marry, if marriage shall be your wish. It was stated so nicely years ago by some unknown scholar who said, ‘Is an hour of pleasure worth a lifetime of hell?’ ”

  We sat there trying to look deep in thought at this profound message. Betty Big Boobs broke the silence. “Mah only question is, how do y’all make it last an hour?”

  Gruel didn’t understand the question at first. Then she did. Class was over and Betty became a stewardess against the better judgment of everyone.

  The next to the last night before graduation I couldn’t take it any longer and I said, “Rachel, let’s go. Let’s get out of here and go into town.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “It’s only a couple of days more—let’s not get into any big trouble.”

  “You’re not going to let me go alone?”

  “Of course not.”

  We sneaked out the balcony window at the end of the corridor, right next to our room, and got down by hanging onto a downspout and some heavy grapevines. Before we left we fixed our beds to look as if they had bodies in them—we knew there was a bed check at midnight. Well, it worked fine. We went to the bar where the airline people hung out and we danced and kidded and had a fine time and I met Chuck.

  Chuck was a first officer and had already been with the airline for a year. He was very tall with a marvelous smile, a great blond crew cut and crazy blue eyes under huge eyebrows. I’d never seen such blue eyes in a man. He started getting me drinks and paying attention to me and finally I said, “Come on, handsome, we’re going to dance.”

  He said, “You’ve got to be unreal. You must be from the South.”

  I said, “You’ve got it—I’m from Texas and we love everybody.”

  He was from way up in Minnesota where it’s so cold you can practically ice-skate in the summer. We talked and kidded as if we’d known each other forever. I hated to leave, but Rachel’s saner head prevailed. We got a lift back to school about midnight. We scampered across the front yard, crouching low to escape the beam of the searchlight and scrambled up our vine and pipe to safety.

  The next night, the eve of graduation, there was no holding me. I had to see Chuck again. Rachel and I would be leaving for New York over the weekend. I wanted to find out where he was going to be. He looked too good for me to let him disappear just like that and leave it to chance that we might meet someday on a flight. Or maybe our paths would never again cross. I couldn’t bear that thought.

  Rachel protested—it was too dangerous to take a chance only hours before graduation. Word had gotten around that any last-minute infraction would bring last-minute expulsion. Then the whole six weeks would go for nothing. But there was no holding me. So Rachel took super precautions. I don’t know how that kid did it, but she had someone smuggle in two department store mannequins. We tucked them into our beds and pulled the covers up to their shiny chins. We swore our roommates to secrecy. Much as we bickered with them from time to time, we knew none of them would turn us in, not even the lofty Cynthia.

  We got down our vine and reached the bar and did we have a ball. We had the greatest time of our lives. Chuck and I danced for hours, all those crazy wild dances where you never touch, but even at arm’s length you get on the same beam and move with the frantic beat as intimately as if you were twined together. All the fellows from the airline knew Rachel and I were about to be graduated and they insisted on toasting us, so of course we had to toast back. They really shouldn’t have let us do all that drinking, but we were flying and no one could stop us.

  “He’s going to be based in California for the next three months,” I told Rachel sadly during a lull in the racket from the jukebox. “I won’t be able to see him unless I get a California flight.”

  “My money’s on you, kid,” Rachel said. “I bet you’ll make it in a week.”

  Then the party closed in on us again, the drinking and the dancing and suddenly it was 3 A.M. and we were bombed. Well, they got us back to the school grounds and we made it to the wall of our dormitory and I looked up and said, “God, how am I ever going to get up there?” I went first and I kept calling to Rachel, “Come on honey, you can do it.”

  Rachel just stood there at the bottom and said, “I want to die. I want to die.” The next thing I knew, she got sick.

  I tapped on the window and called Betty and Sally Lu to help us. I slid down again and tried to pass Rachel up to the others. She was completely limp by then. I shoved her up and they almost had her and then she twisted her foot in that blasted vine and there she was back on the ground with an aching ankle.

  Now we’ve had it, I thought. We’ll never get her back up and how’ll we explain it and we’ll be busted in the morning. And this time I wanted to die. But I wasn’t going to give up without a fight. Somehow the three of us tugged and hauled Rachel up, pulled her clothes off and stood her up in the shower.

  “I want to die,” she wailed.

  “Listen to me,” I told her. “You’re going to die if you don’t listen. You can yell now. Yell all you want. And when the supervisor comes, tell her you slipped in the shower and twisted your ankle. Got it?”

  I guess she got it because the supervisor came running and Rachel was bawling and the rest of us were shrieking.

  “How did this happen?” she demanded.

  “Well, it’s graduation day,” I explained, “and we just couldn’t sleep we were so excited, so Rachel decided to take a shower and I guess she slipped.”

  Rachel graduated with a cast on her ankle. “I could just ki
ll you,” she hissed to me when they pinned her wings on.

  Graduation was very solemn and impressive. Our parents came for the occasion and everyone cried a little as we marched down the main stairs in the dorm in uniform singing our class song, a silly set of words put to the melody of Liza. The vice president of sales, who we later discovered was having an affair of long standing with Miss Gruel, pinned our wings on us after making a little speech. Miss Gruel told us we were the best class the school had ever had. We knew she told that to all the classes. But we liked hearing it anyway because we all felt the past six weeks had been a turning point in our lives. Even the giddiest of us had gained assurance and knowledge. We were ready for the outside world and all the challenges it would bring. We were stewardesses.

  There was a parting benediction from Miss Gruel. She sent a memo to the airline brass: “Don’t let Trudy and Rachel fly together.” I guess it got filed in a wastebasket.

  CHAPTER IV

  “You’re Nothing but a Stew-Bum, George”

  Our first flight together, as already chronicled, was less than perfect. But despite its many hazards, we did take away something of tangible worth—George Kelman.

  George represented our first experience in accepting dates with passengers. Like every other girl seeking a career as a stewardess, we were fully aware of the reputation the corps had acquired. Our last days at home in Amarillo and Louisville had been filled with stern parental warnings. You had to be promiscuous to want to be a stewardess, was the consensus of family and friends. We would have to spend our days and nights warding off rape attempts of captains, passengers, and all those love-’em-and-leave-’em guys. Our folks harped on the dangers so much we almost found them appealing.

  But George Kelman, our first passenger date, proved everyone wrong. He was, if there is such a thing, the perfect gentleman.

  That night in Cleveland George took us to one of the city’s better restaurants. The more we ate and drank, the more George seemed to enjoy himself. We worried, of course, about sitting there drinking when we probably would have to work a trip back to New York in the morning. Stewardesses aren’t allowed to drink within twenty-four hours of a flight, and although our return schedule was unknown, it would most likely fall within the next twenty-four. But George was very convincing on this subject.

  “Don’t worry about that drinking rule, girls,” he said as he poured us another glass of Beaujolais. “I’ve got plenty of Clorets. No one will ever know alcohol has passed your pretty lips. The only thing you have to worry about is a stew-spy. I’ve looked around the place and I’m sure there isn’t one here.”

  “Stew-spy?” The thought was incredible, too much so to be believed.

  “Yes. Stew-spy,” he confirmed. “You’ll find out all about them when you go to your first union meeting. In the meantime, just take my word for it and watch your step. You can’t trust any girl you fly with, unless you really know her. Even then, don’t be too sure.”

  Rachel and I looked at each other with suspicion. Then we laughed and drank more wine.

  We checked back at the hotel before leaving the restaurant and there had been no calls. We then proceeded to a nightclub on Cleveland’s outskirts, a barnlike place with a rock-and-roll band on a raised platform over the bar and two go-go dancers on the bar itself (much to the discomfort of a few hardfisted drinkers). It looked like a pick-up joint.

  The music was terrible, its din jarring the brain with every rimshot and twang. We ordered drinks from a mousy little girl in a sequined bunny costume, and settled back to watch the action. Stray fellows and girls were everywhere, each trying to outguess the other. One of the girls, a muscular blonde with smeared eye shadow and dirty fingernails, leaned against the wall next to our table. Every so often, a young man with long sideburns and starched dungarees would come over to her, offer to buy a drink, and ask, “How’s about makin’ it outta here with me?”

  She always replied, “Git me a Wild Turkey ’n Seven-Up and I’ll think ’bout it.” He’d trudge off to the bar and she’d wait, nursing the previous drink and scratching her nose.

  One hulk of a guy, obviously not heavy in the mental department, came over to her and said, “Hey, sweets, whatta ya say we run ’cross town and do a couple lines a’ bowlin’?”

  “Bowlin’?” the girl repeated. “Git me a Wild Turkey ’n Seven-Up and I’ll see.”

  “OK, sweets,” the hulk replied and went back to the bar to fight the crowd for his order.

  “I wonder if she’d go with me if I suggested weight lifting?” George kidded.

  “Give her a try,” we suggested.

  He did.

  “Maybe,” she answered him with a straight face. Then she realized what he’d said. “You say weight liftin’?”

  “Yup.”

  “Buy me a Wild Turkey ’n Seven-Up and I’ll see.”

  “Let me think about that,” George countered, keeping a straight face as he sat down.

  The girl muttered, “Weight liftin’?” again, and called to the hulk who had offered bowling. “Hey Billy, come on over here.”

  He gave up his spot at the bar and came back growling, “Now I lost my place in line.”

  “This here guy wants to take me weight liftin’,” she told him.

  He wasn’t sure he understood. But he felt safe in saying, “You some kinda wise guy?” George flinched.

  The hulk became bolder. “Come on, fella, you bein’ a wise guy to this here girl?”

  George looked gravely concerned. He fished a ten-dollar bill from his pocket and threw it on the table, and with firm pressure on our elbows made us stand up. He got up with us.

  The hulk came close to George, their proximity emphasizing the difference in height and brawn.

  “Look, no trouble intended,” George said weakly as he tried to slide past his adversary. “Just a little joke, you know. El joke-o, huh?”

  “Where was you gonna go weight liftin’?”

  “Nowhere, nowhere. Honest. Just a simple jest.”

  “You don’t look like no weight lifter to me.”

  “And you sure do. Look, I’m sorry. Buy yourselves drinks out of the ten on the table. OK?”

  George’s generosity stymied the hulk for a moment, enough time for us to take large strides for the door. We heard him muttering, “Weight liftin’?” as we pushed past the bar crowd and onto the exit. A sweaty go-go girl waved good-bye without breaking stride in her jerking and frugging.

  The air outside, and the quiet it offered, was welcome. “Someday I’ll learn to keep my mouth shut in these joints,” George sighed. “I should have known every guy in there was probably a weight lifter. Bad news, these places. Come on, we’ll go back to the hotel and have a nightcap. Better yet, we’ll find a bar near the hotel.”

  We found a cocktail lounge near the hotel and went in. We were barely inside when a table of girls, definitely stewardess types, spotted George and gave him a big Hello.

  “Hi, girls,” he beamed. We wondered how he knew them but didn’t ask. Why shouldn’t he know girls? But why stewardesses? Spies? Silly!

  We each had a stinger, weak ones, and George insisted he walk us back to our room in the hotel. We expected the inevitable pitch to come in for a drink or, considering there were two of us, an invitation for one of us to go back to his room. But nothing like that happened.

  “Girls, I really enjoyed it.” He fished in his pocket and came out with a half-used roll of Clorets. “Here, for the morning. Your supervisor will never know you’ve had a drop. Sleep tight.”

  “Good night.”

  “See you tomorrow on the flight, girls.”

  “You’re going back with us?”

  “Sure. I’m anxious to see how you do with your second flight. Should be interesting.”

  “But we don’t even know what flight we’re working,”

  “They’ll probably call you sometime tonight. They always manage to call when you’re asleep. They’ll call you and I’ll know, too.
See you then.” He turned and walked back to the bank of elevators. We went into our room, very much up in the air about this whole George Kelman thing.

  “He knows so much about being a stewardess,” Rachel mused as she struggled out of her girdle. Neither of us had been girdle-wearers until becoming stewardesses. The manual said you always had to wear one while working, and slipping into one had become habit.

  “Maybe he’s some kind of spy,” I suggested.

  “I don’t think so, Trudy, but maybe he’s with the airline in another capacity. No, that doesn’t seem logical. But he’s rich. That’s for sure. Imagine flying back with us just to see how we do.”

  “I think it’s a big line.”

  “Probably, but he’s kind of cute, though.”

  “Uh huh. I wonder what he does for a living.”

  “Me too. What about those other girls in the bar? They all seemed to know him.”

  “Well, I suppose he meets a lot of stewardesses with all his travel and everything. He really is cute.”

  Rachel had her pajama bottoms on and was slipping into her top when she noticed her bare bosom in a full-length mirror on the wall. Rachel was nicely built although on the small side.

  “I wonder if he knows Betty Big Boobs,” she asked her mirror image.

  “Who knows?” I answered. “He wouldn’t like her anyway. He doesn’t look like he has a breast fixation.”

  We climbed under the covers.

  “I like him,” Rachel giggled. “I really do.”

  “I think he likes you, Rachel.”

  “I don’t think so, Trudy. It’s you he likes.”

  “Anyway, I’m glad we went out with him. He’s up for grabs. OK? No hard feelings when one of us runs off and marries him.”

  “You don’t need him, you have Chuck.”

  “Sure—in California. Good night.”

  Everything was silent for a minute.

  “Gee, Trudy, I hope he isn’t a spy.”

  “Don’t be silly. Good night.”

  “Good night.” (pause) “Trudy?”