Page 9 of Flight of Fancy

There were several flight attendants and ground staff who sported the Royal Asia uniform. The flight attendants in their Southeast Asian kebayas and American half-suits loved to post their layover photos, shopping hauls, and makeup routines that were big hits with their followers. The ground staff occasionally posted photos from the gates, but so far, nobody had found something against the script. It's only a matter of time. Elle had no idea what she would do when that inevitably happened. Some things fell under mandatory reporting, but others might slip past her if she happened to look the other way.

That night, she perused through the Royal Asia tag on Instagram and discovered a familiar face posting the sights of a Los Angeles shopping mall.

Elle instantly recognized it, much like she recognized the woman posting a selfie of herself in front of a beauty store. The description in English said, “Buying my sister's favorite brand of eyeliner! Don't tell her! Shh!”

It had to be Arianna. Aside from the long skirt and blouse, it looked exactly like the First Class flight attendant who had taken Elle's complaint about the shoddy Wi-Fi. Something she had brought up to the tech team down in LA. “We can't have the Wi-Fi going down on any of our flights,” she had told the man in charge of such things. “Suffice to say, it definitely can't happen in Business and First Class. I don't think I have to tell you why.”

Wasn't it strange that Arianna wore her hair exactly the same way as she did at work? And the makeup wasn't that different either. It wasn't as bright and stark as the look she sported on the plane, but it was as immaculate as an airbrushed model on a magazine cover.

She's beautiful.

Elle caught herself staring at the Instagram profile for an awkwardly long time. She was stricken by the stark, put-together look of a woman out of uniform since most of the other flight attendants looked like bright and bubbly young women in their jeans and tracksuits. If there was one thing employees desired, it was to fly beneath the radar when they were off the clock. Nobody wanted to be recognized when shopping during their layover.

Others, however, were only one kebaya away from being ready to board a flight from LA to Singapore.

One would have thought that Arianna was the Head Manager of the whole cabin crew who thought she needed to maintain perfect decorum for her underlings. Yet when Elle looked closer, she recognized the youth still glistening behind those lovely eyes and the knowledge that life was not defined by where one flew that week.

Elle had such a soft spot for feminine women with so much confidence.

“I might be in trouble,” she said when stretching her arms above her head. “Pretty women will make me fly anywhere.”

She looked forward to seeing Arianna again.

Chapter 5

When a flight attendant flew the same route with any regularity, she saw some of the same faces in First Class and beyond.

She even recognized their names based on the passenger manifest she looked over before every flight. There was Dr. Tim Kuang of Singapore, who flew back and forth once a month to oversee a wing in a Los Angeles Catholic hospital. Then there was Mrs. Iris Applebottom who managed estates in Santa Monica and Jakarta. Other passengers, like Elaine Chen-Perez, were retired models or other celebrities who were paid by sponsors to “influence” in either country. When the championship ping-pong team was en route to Guangzhou from Anaheim, they were given almost every seat in Business Class.

But nobody stuck out more than Elizabeth Sparrow. She was an enigma with no discernable story attached.

If she kept to First or Business Class on her twice-monthly journeys between Singapore and LA, then Arianna would think almost nothing of it. Except there was the very occasional trip in which Arianna filled in for one of her coworkers in Economy and came across a familiar face sitting in the middle seat of Aisle 34.

“Ms. Sparrow!” she exclaimed the first time this happened. “What a surprise seeing you back here. Is everything all right?”

The Singaporean man asleep in the aisle seat and the college student with the heaviest headphones in the window seat ignored Arianna while Elizabeth jerked up from the book she had been reading. “Arianna, right? I'm doing great, thanks. Sometimes I get stuck in Coach. It happens.” She held a finger up to her mouth. “No sense telling Charmaine and the others. I'm assuming they're on board?”

Arianna was still taken aback, not that it stopped her from politely smiling. “Yes, the usual cabin crew is on board today. Your secret is safe with me, but I can't promise that nobody else will see you back here. Can I get you anything? One of your lime seltzers, perhaps?”

“Now, Arianna, don't treat me any differently from the other Economy passengers. Unless you're planning to give us all free seltzers back here.”

Arianna was still grinning. She would do no such thing, but when she assisted with dinner service, she gave Elizabeth an extra roll and a bag of pretzels. It's the least I can do for one of our most frequent First Class flyers.

When Elizabeth was back in the front of the plane, she pretended nothing had happened. She also remained nothing but polite when Arianna (or Charmaine) served her dinner and drinks.

“What do you make of that lady, huh?” Charmaine asked in the galley while she and Arianna prepped the next batch of coffee. “Flies on here every other week, sometimes in Economy, if you can believe it!”

“I've seen her there, yes,” was all Arianna said.

“Wonder what kind of cool job she has. How many American businesswomen are flying between the two places so often? Such nice clothes and her bags are expensive, too. Did you see her tablet? That thing is fancier than anything I own.”

“Miss Huang,” Arianna gently chastised, “we're not paid to gossip or make assumptions about any of our passengers. No matter how interesting they might be.”

“Maybe not paid, but I'm happy to do it for free.”

Arianna was so scandalized that she nervously laughed.

For the most part, the flights over the Pacific were smooth, outside of the occasional known quantity that caused some of the only turbulence they encountered. Everyone on the crew knew to anticipate the pockets of turbulence that were likely to send them to their jump seats and deal with passengers who might have panic attacks or get nauseated enough to vomit. At that point in her career, there wasn’t a single bodily excretion that Arianna didn’t know by sight. (Or smell, but that was another thing to slap on her résumé.)

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