The Woman in 3B - Eliza Lentzski Page 0,2

closer to the two and they perceptively straightened in their seats.

“A tip for the future?” I offered, lilting my voice. “Wait until the drink trolley goes by before you try that little stunt again. The flight attendants will be too busy to notice you’re both gone.”

+ + +

The bingo card was waiting for me in my mailbox in the flight attendant lounge. It was the end of the work day, but Kent, Gemma, and I routinely stopped one more time in the lounge to see if we’d received anything from the airline before we’d catch a shuttle that would take us to the employee parking lot.

“Purser alert,” I heard Kent’s quiet warning. Kent was technically a purser himself, but he also wasn’t a narc.

I discretely slipped the bingo card into my purse without looking at it. The competition was an open secret, but the higher ups at the airline probably wouldn’t have been happy to acknowledge its existence. I’d have to look over my seat assignment and monthly challenges later.

Every month a new bingo card was anonymously delivered to the mailbox of every flight attendant across the company who paid their twenty dollar entrance fee. Twenty-five different challenges, at various levels of difficulty, had to be accomplished and confirmed within a month’s time. Some of the challenges could be fulfilled at the airport, but most occurred in-flight. At the end of the month—like the lottery—if no one had filled out their card entirely, the pot of money continued to grow.

I didn’t recognize the woman whom Kent had alerted me about. I’d been with the same airline for nearly eight years, but it wasn’t unusual not to know the other flight attendants with whom I worked. You could work really intimately with your assigned crew for a three-day trip and then you might never see them again.

She was an older woman with silver hair—a senior mama—a term used by flight attendants, but not unkindly. Her kind were a rarity in my line of work. There were no longer age restrictions for flight crew, but you still needed to be strong enough to help passengers stow their carry-on luggage in the overhead compartments. She didn’t greet either Kent, Gemma, or myself, but went about her business of checking her mailbox before leaving the lounge.

I waited to be sure the older woman had exited the lounge for good before I pulled the bingo card from my purse.

My eyes fell first to the number and letter printed at the top of the card. “Damn it,” I mumbled.

Gemma and Kent crowded around me and the cardboard bingo card.

“What’s wrong? Did you get a shitty card this month?” Kent asked.

I curled my lip. “I’m not going be able to complete the seat-specific squares. They gave me 3B.”

I thought the most difficult squares were those that were seat specific. Those were the challenges that could only be accomplished through the passenger sitting in that specific seat. 3B was in the First Class section of the plane. I wasn’t a rookie at my airline, but I also didn’t have enough time in to be the senior flight attendant—the purser—on my flights. I typically worked the Economy section on a three-person flight crew.

Kent sighed loudly. “Fine,” he huffed. “I’ll let you work First Class on our flights this month. But don’t make a habit out of this,” he warned with a shake of his finger. “Seniority should count for something.”

“You’re such a martyr,” I teased. “But thank you.”

“I don’t know why you waste your time. It’s a total racket,” Kent opined. “You might as well spend your entrance fee on scratch-off Lotto tickets. It’s less work, too.”

“It’s harmless,” I stubbornly defended. “And it keeps me entertained. I’d probably hang myself during beverage service without it.”

“I think it’s kind of mean,” Gemma spoke up. “Spilling a drink on someone on purpose?”

“It’s not like it’s hot coffee, Gemma,” I continued to defend myself and the game. “It’s just a little innocent fun.”

I didn’t particularly like the idea of the bingo card either, but the financial incentives were enough to make me momentarily forget the questionable ethics of it all. The winnings would be enough to pay off my two years of ill-advised college attendance. The only thing I’d really learned in those years of extra schooling was that not everyone was cut out for college. I wished my high school guidance counselors would have told me that; it would have saved me about forty thousand dollars.

“I still don’t like it,” she