LITMIR.BIZ

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see her face. She withdrew back into the galley. “So?” she asked Bea.

      “She said the copilot is her husband.”

      “I reckon that could be Branch’s wife. They have two teenagers. They haven’t lived together for a long time, like a couple of years, and I think they’re just waitin’ on another Christmas before they—”

      Bea was shaking her head. “She says it’s her husband’s birthday and she’s flying to New York to surprise him. She told me she has reservations at the Four Seasons for nine o’clock and wanted to know if we’d get there in plenty of time.”

      Dixie was very well trained at staying cool and in control, no matter what. She had won beauty pageants, after all. And unfortunately, this was not the first time something like this had happened to her. But inside she was dying. No! This isn’t happening! Not again!

      But very calmly she said to Bea, “Oh, the poor thing.”

      “She says she has a negligee in her suitcase and left his mother in charge of the kids. If it weren’t for all the charity boards she sits on, she’d like to stay in New York a couple of—”

      “Oh, God, Branch warned me something like this might happen. She doesn’t want the divorce even though she was the one who originally asked him to leave a couple of years ago. This is just so sad.” If she didn’t hurt so much inside, Dixie might marvel at how quickly she could make up a cover story. Who said she was a dumb blonde?

      “What are you going to do?” Bea asked.

      “I’d hate if there was a scene. The best thing would be if Branch took her off somewhere quiet and let her down easily.”

      “She still loves him, then?”

      Dixie shrugged. “Or maybe it just didn’t work out with the other man, but whatever, Branch has moved on. I should warn him so he doesn’t humiliate her…or himself…or me, for that matter. Can you, um, trade places with me? Tell the girls in the back that I’m lookin’ over your paperwork as a favor or something? And when we’re taxiing in, I’ll give Branch fair warnin’. The less anyone knows about this, the better for everyone.”

      “I guess so,” she said. “You going to be all right?”

      “Me?” she asked with a laugh. “This doesn’t really have anything to do with me. Just another one of those difficult divorces. When have you ever seen an easy one?”

      But she didn’t warn him. She served the first-class cabin coffee and thought about striking up a conversation with Mrs. Darnell, but in the end stuck to the professional courtesies. It wasn’t necessary to gather any more information—the truth was obvious. Mrs. Darnell was very confident about her birthday surprise.

      They weren’t separated. Branch was just getting a little on the side.

      The passengers poured out of the plane, but Mrs. Darnell lingered. When the pilots came out of the cockpit, Branch second, he saw Dixie in the forward galley alone. “Well, angel, you have a good flight?”

      “I did, cowboy. And there’s a little birthday surprise for you in 4A.”

      He grinned stupidly, confused, and looked down the aisle. Dixie couldn’t see his face, but she heard him. “Darlin’, what in thunder you doin’ here?”

      Dixie peeked out. Mrs. Darnell was so happy, grinning from ear to ear, eyes sparkling, arms outstretched as she embraced her husband and kissed him. And he returned the favor.

      Except for a sheepish glance over his shoulder to see if Dixie had drawn a bead on the back of his head, Branch made no attempt to communicate with her. First Officer and Mrs. Darnell took a cab to the hotel rather than ride with the rest of the crew in the hotel van. F.O. Darnell must have been a tish nervous about the prospect of his wife and girlfriend getting to know each other better.

      The captain and five flight attendants stood curbside, waiting for the van, when Dixie came up behind them. She heard Karen say, “Well, what the hell does she expect? God, she’s such a ditz.”

      “Karen!” Bea warned, looking over her shoulder at Dixie, who stood there frozen.

      “Oh. Sorry, Dixie. But, you know…” She shrugged lamely.

      Dixie said nothing. She did know.

      Unwilling to face her coworkers’ curiosity and censure, Dixie skipped dinner, which she shouldn’t have done. She opened the very good bottle of wine she’d brought with her and sat cross-legged on the bed and drank. She couldn’t afford to have a good cry; her eyes would be all puffy and everyone would know the extent of her misery, including Branch, who would be on tomorrow’s flight. She’d be damned if he would find out she’d cried over him.

      It was about eleven when a knock sounded at her door. Discreet tapping. No surprise there. Empty bottle in hand and wearing only navy blue panty hose and her striped uniform shirt, she opened the door. There he stood, pilot shirt open at the neck, ice bucket in hand—his obvious excuse to leave his wife in their room—and a lame expression on his stupid face. He lifted his arms in helplessness. “Well, darlin’,” he drawled. “You coulda knocked me over with a feather. What can I say?”

      She stared at him for a minute, stricken by the fact that even under these circumstances, she was tempted to embrace him, draw him to her and love every long, tall inch of him. How humiliating! Before she could reconsider, she rammed the empty wine bottle bottom first into his gut. “Ugh,” he grunted, bending over in pain and grabbing the bottle as he did so. She backed into her room and slammed the door on him. There was a loud thud, which, she acknowledged with a wince, must have been his head.

      Well, she thought, you could’ve knocked him over with a feather…or whatever.

      Three

      Dixie sat in the airport with the rest of her crew. She lazily filed one of her perfect red nails when her cell phone chirped from inside her purse. She pulled it out, identified Nikki’s number on the caller ID, and answered, “Yes, Captain.”

      “Hey. Where are you?”

      “We’re sitting in Kennedy. How about you?”

      “Chicago. About to push back. I heard the craziest thing. Did you guys have a pilot fall down the stairs and crack his head open?”

      “We did hear that,” Dixie said, “but I don’t think anyone’s talked to him. It was supposedly the first officer—Darnell. Do you know him?”

      There was a moment of stunned silence. “Oh, shit, Dixie.”

      “I guess he was after a bucket of ice, slipped on the stairs and whacked his head. He couldn’t remember exactly what happened so his wife called a cab and took him to the emergency room. We hear he has a slight concussion. Nothing bad, but he spent the night in the hospital for observation and can’t fly until his flight surgeon clears him.”

      “His wife?”

      “Yeah, poor thing. She got on in Denver and was gonna surprise him for his birthday with a special night in New York City. I just can’t imagine their disappointment.”

      Dixie could feel the eyes of her fellow crew members on her. They might not know what had really happened, but from their looks and whispers, they knew there was more to the story. So, screw ’em. Dixie was beyond caring. Karen had called it the evening before at the curb—Dixie had been a stupid fool. About a hundred times.

      “Dixie…”

      “Hmm?”

      “Are you sure someone didn’t…push him down the stairs?”

      “For heaven’s sake, what a thought,” she replied with the blandness of a yawn.

      “When do you get back to Phoenix?” Nikki asked.

      “Our flight was canceled because of the first officer’s injury, which screwed up the rest of the segment.

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