“This is a non-smoking airline. Federal Law prohibits disabling or tampering with lavatory smoke detectors. We now invite you to sit back, relax and enjoy your 5 hour and 20 minute flight to Los Angeles,” Jane said, finishing her preflight announcements and hanging the PA receiver back in its mount in her jumpseat.
Sit back and relax. Yeah right. She was a smoker and it was more like 6 hours and 20 minutes of work during which she definitely wouldn’t have a smoke break. She sighed. She typically didn’t bid these cross-country lines. It was too long between cigarettes and the customers who flew between New York City and L.A. were as high maintenance as they come. There wasn’t enough liquor or coffee on the plane to keep them happy. They were mostly B-list actors, directors, or New York hotshots who had enough money that laws didn’t apply to them on the ground.
“Flight attendants, prepare for take off,” the captain said over the PA. Jane reached for the buckles of her harness. It was getting harder to reach around her growing hips with every trip. These jumpseats were designed for the 120-pound flight attendants. She had been one of those years ago. Thank God the unions got those restrictions taken away, the 190-pound Jane thought.
A call button rang in the 24 seat first class cabin of the 757. There was still a minute or so before the plane was actually going to take off so Jane got up to answer it. It may have been a nervous flyer. In Jane’s 27 years of flying she had become very good at calming peoples nerves quickly.
The call button was illuminated above the seats of a young, and irritatingly attractive couple. “Is everything alright?” Jane asked them. Without bothering to look up the young woman, a surgically enhanced blonde in a red shirt and black mini-skirt, handed Jane an empty plastic cup from her pre-departure drink and said, “I’ll have a Bacardi and Diet Coke.”
Jane snatched the cup. “I’m sure you will,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll have a few of them. You’ll just have to wait until we’re in the air.” The young woman shot Jane a ‘how-rude’ look as she strutted away. The words ‘young punks’ were echoing in her head as Jane strapped herself, with some difficulty, into her jumpseat.
“Ladies and Gentlemen. Double check your seat-belts,” The captain said as he turned onto the runway. “These things go really, really, really fast.”
The flight had gone as Jane expected it to so far. “More coffee, more coffee, more coffee, my reading light doesn’t work- it just dings, That’s the call light, the reading light is the other one, Oh, thanks, more coffee with Baileys.”
Jane answered three more call lights after the dinner service was over and then plopped into her jumpseat just as the seat belt sign came on. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” the captain said. “We’re expecting a little bit of turbulence up ahead. Please return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts.” Jane smiled. She had a few minutes with an excuse to lounge out in her jumpseat.
The half plastic blonde, however, thought that this would be a good time to visit the bathroom. Jane didn’t really care that the woman was up but company policy dictated that she had to remind the woman that the seat belt sign was on.
“Ma’am, the seat-belt sign is on,” Jane said.
“So?” the woman asked.
“So?” Jane repeated. “If you remember the announcements that I made earlier, you’d know that you should return to your seat and fasten your seatbelt. I said it. The captain said it. The little picture of a seatbelt being fastened says it.”
“Oh,” the blonde said as she slid her purse the rest of the way up her arm and opened the bathroom door. “When you gotta go, you gotta go.”
Jane sighed. She wanted to grab the woman by the ear and march her back to her seat but she wasn’t a police officer. She could only tell people what they had to do, not make them do it. It wasn’t often that Jane wished there was an FAA officer on board but she would have enjoyed seeing this woman get the $1000 ticket for ignoring crew instructions.
But nothing happened. No one stood up to writer her a ticket and Jane just slouched back into her seat. A few minutes passed and the woman still hadn’t emerged from the bathroom. No one else had gotten up which was a relief but Jane started to wonder about the woman in the bathroom. After all, 10 minutes is a long time to be in an airplane bathroom.
Then she smelled it. Nicotine. She recognized it before she comprehended it. She stood up and checked the ovens. They were both off. Then she looked at the bathroom door. Aha! The blonde was smoking in the bathroom.
Jane was both jealous and angry. The woman was as rude as it gets and then wanted to rub it in her face. Under normal circumstances Jane would have knocked on the door and politely asked the woman to extinguish the cigarette. But not this time.
There are two kinds of fire extinguishers on the airplane. There’s the Halon extinguisher for electrical and chemical fires and the water extinguisher for material fires. The Halon sprays a wide burst of foam and gas to smother fires while the water extinguisher shoots a concentrated, high power beam of water and antifreeze.
Jane picked up the Water extinguisher and knocked on the door. “Are you alright ma’am?” she asked.
“Go away,” the woman said, irritated.
Not that easy, Jane thought. She lifted the metal flap covering the locking mechanism and slid it to unlock as she jerked the door open. The woman was leaning against the sink with a lit cigarette in hand. She cocked her head, took another puff and blew the smoke at Jane. “What?” she said.
Jane smiled at her. The woman didn’t see the fire extinguisher until it was too late. Jane twisted the knob and pulled the trigger aiming the beam of water at the woman’s hand. The blonde screamed as the beam of water hit her knuckles and the cigarette went flying, landing in a puddle of water in the corner.
“You,” the woman said wiping the splashed water out of her face, “are going to pay for this you fat…”
“Oh no,” Jane said cutting her off with a big, calm smile. “Your shirt is on fire, too.”
“What? No it’s… aahhhh.”
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