Page 8 of The Woman in 3B
Her hazel eyes locked with mine. The color of her irises looked almost gold. She wore natural-tone lipstick on a full, wide mouth. My gaze swept over her meticulously sculpted eyebrows. Her high cheek bones. Her flawless copper skin. Her heart-shaped face and how her thick, dark hair tumbled in glossy waves past her round shoulders. It was like if a person had been photoshopped.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
Hers was the first acknowledgment I’d received from a passenger since starting the preliminary beverage service.
Gemma’s censuring words from breakfast resurfaced in the back of my mind. I had always justified that it was only water; but I started to consider the inconvenience, the annoyance, and even the embarrassment that a seemingly insignificant cup of water might cause. What if this woman was on her way to a big job interview and had nothing to change into? Or maybe she was meeting her significant other’s family for the first time and wanted to make a good—not soggy—first impression. The flight might have been long enough to cosmetically fix the damage, but what I was about to do could potentially ruin this woman’s entire day.
I couldn’t do it.
My conscience said one thing, but my hand had other plans. The glass had already begun to slip. My fingers tensed and clenched around the cup before it could drop any farther. But in my panic to stop the glass’s fall, I over-corrected. My entire right arm twitched and jerked up, just enough to change the water’s momentum. And instead of the plastic cup and its contents dropping onto the beautiful woman’s lap, I splashed the entire glass of water across my chest. The water wasn’t particularly cold, but I hissed in surprise at the sudden dampness that soaked into my white blouse and bra.
The woman’s golden eyes widened in surprise. “Are you okay?”
“Sorry,” I grit out between clenched teeth.
The fabric of my button-up shirt stuck uncomfortably against my chest. I grabbed another plastic cup from my tray—which I mercifully hadn’t tipped over during my spastic flailing—and handed it to the woman in 3B.
Her plush lips tilted down in sympathy and she returned the cocktail napkin I had handed her with the water glass. The cheap paper napkin would be useless in soaking up the liquid that had saturated the front of my blouse, but it was a kind gesture nonetheless.
I accepted the returned napkin with a pained smile frozen on my features and finished the remainder of my beverage service to the rest of the First Class cabin. When my tray was finally empty, I rushed back to the rear galley with my arms covering my chest. Thankfully I had an extra uniform shirt in my carry-on luggage even though that day’s schedule didn’t have me staying anywhere overnight. It hadn’t been the first time I’d spilled on myself during a flight, and my airline required we look neat and professional at all times.
“What happened to you?” Kent eyeballed me.
“Karma,” I grumbled. I wiped uselessly at the front of my saturated shirt. “I don’t suppose either of you has an extra bra.”
Kent and Gemma slowly, almost comically, shook their heads.
“Do you want me to make an announcement to the rest of the plane? I’m sure we could wrangle up an extra bra or two,” Kent offered with a teasing smile.
“You’re a big help,” I rolled my eyes.
There was just enough time for me to change shirts in the onboard bathroom before takeoff. Luckily our plane was newer; an automated video went through the pre-flight safety procedures so I didn’t have to stand in the aisle in my see-through shirt and show passengers how to buckle their seatbelts. Unluckily, I hadn’t packed an extra bra. I tried to soak up as much water from the padded cups with paper towels in the claustrophobic airplane bathroom, but I could already anticipate the symmetric wet spots that would eventually appear on my clean uniform shirt.
I suffered through the rest of the flight with a cold, wet bra sticking to my chest. The plane couldn’t have landed soon enough with me practically shoving the final passengers from the plane. I hustled to the closest women’s bathroom in the Philadelphia terminal and heaved a sigh of relief that there wasn’t a long line outside.
I slipped into a vacant stall and peeled off my still-damp bra. I was amazed at the amount of water the slightly padded cups had retained; it was like a modern engineering miracle. I rung out the padding as much as I could and used handfuls of rapidly disintegrating toilet paper to dry off my naked back and chest.
I put my uniform shirt back on, but my bra remained in my hands. The women’s bathroom wasn’t empty, but I didn’t have time to be embarrassed. My next flight would be leaving in two hours, and I couldn’t go the rest of the day with a wet bra. The bathroom hand dryers would have to become my bra dryer.
I exited my bathroom stall and slinked to the nearest hand dryer. The mounted machine roared to life when I held the twin cups of my bra underneath its silver spout. I shook the bra around as if the movement might precipitate the process. I tried to ignore the curious stares of passengers and airport employees as I openly used a hand dryer to blow dry my beige bra.
“Wow,” I heard a feminine voice over the noise of the blower. “You really got yourself.”
I looked away from my hurried task to see the passenger from my flight who had been the original target of my glass of water—the woman from seat 3B. She stepped out of a bathroom stall, heels clicking on the tile floor, and thoroughly washed her hands. She appraised herself in the horizontal mirror that hung above the multiple bathroom sinks as she lathered up her hands. I watched her reflection with interest, my task momentarily forgotten.
The automatic faucet turned off and she shook out her hands over the sink. There were several vacant hand dryers scattered around the public bathroom, but she walked towards the machine I’d been recently monopolizing. I instinctively stepped back to give her free use of the dryer, equal parts mesmerized and robotic. Her lips quirked up in a small smile of thanks.
I watched her olive-complexioned hands move beneath the warm air. Her fingers were long and graceful, with manicured but short nails. She wore several gold bands on various fingers. I knew from experience that women who traveled extensively for their jobs sometimes wore fake wedding bands to ward off unwanted attention. Their male counterparts often did the opposite and conveniently forgot their ring at home.
My brain desperately churned to come up with something clever to say, but I only managed to stand awkwardly close with my still-damp bra clutched in both hands.
The dryer shut off, and I became acutely aware of how quiet it was in the bathroom. I also still wasn’t wearing a bra.
“I hope the rest of your day goes better,” the woman said with a quick wave of her hand.
I stared after her exiting form.
“Thanks. You, too,” I dumbly returned.
