TWA: The Red Eye

A Memoir, by C.J. Heck

Saying goodbye to the last of the first class passengers had become methodical. It was the middle of the night, my feet hurt, I was exhausted and trying my best not to sound the way I felt.

It was the last night of my nonstop coast-to-coast for the month. This flight had been long and difficult. We'd been forced to take a two-hour layover at O’Hare for the ground crew to repair an engine problem.

To apologize for the delay, the captain ordered us to open the bar, once we were back in the air. As expected, the passengers drank too much and were overly rowdy, but now my thoughts were centered elsewhere.

I was looking forward to my four days off before the next cycle, when it began again for another month. At least next month’s flights would get me home at a decent hour. No more 2:00 a.m. arrivals, feeling used up and washed out.

I had plans to join my three roommates for a bike ride on Angel Island on my first day off. We did it before and it fast became a favorite weekend haunt ...

I’m bringing the sourdough bread. The girls are bringing wine, cheese, and a blanket for the picnic.

I loved San Francisco. It was the beginning of the 70s and hippies still hung out on downtown corners with their beads and music, wearing flower garlands in their hair.

I loved the cable cars that clacked up and down the busy, steeply-angled streets. Local custom called for each conductor to compose a signature beat to play on the bell of his cable car. Each was then known by their unique beat, and the more complicated, the better.

My favorite was the cable car to The Cannery and Ghirardelli Square. That conductor rang an awesome beat and his cable car was always tightly packed with regulars as well as tourists.

Sunday, we’re going to Half Moon Bay to soak up some rays on the warm sand. There’s never a lack of things to do in San Francisco, only a lack of time to do them

Finally, the coach section and we’re through.

More smiles, more good-byes and I was aware I had lost the battle to sounding robotic halfway through first class. My smile felt like it bordered on a grimace, but soon I was heading home.

Icy tendrils of fear prickled the nape of my neck as I walked through the deserted parking lot. I chose to ignore it, blaming it on the hour and being drag-my-ass tired from the difficult flight.

The engine problem at O'Hare had added two hours and it was now 4:30 in the morning -- no wonder I felt hinky.

Walking through the lot, I marveled at how the dew crystallized on the hoods of the few remaining cars. It created a twinkling diamond field under the bright lights of the parking lot.

Odd, this feeling. It was no different from any other late night red eye. I was always tired after, but I usually felt rejuvenated being on the ground and heading home —especially now, facing my four days off.

To fill the walk to my car, I thought about tonight’s red eye — long grueling hours on my feet babysitting bored passengers who were also anxious to be home.

I loved my job with TWA. It’s what I wanted to do for as long as I could remember. Like most jobs, there were parts of it I hated, like the wandering hands of the crew for instance, but easy to fend off, if you knew how.

I grinned, thinking about their arrogance and well-used line, “So, sweetie, what did YOU do before joining us in the air?” I smiled at my latest comeback. “I was a stock car driver, a damned good one, too.” Another favorite, "I was a lady wrestler, sir, in mud or jello."

Usually, a knife-sharp reply, a smile, and the ever-popular batted eyelashes were all you needed to deflate the most amorous jerk, mid-grope.

Passengers could be worse. I wish I had a dollar for every time I asked, “And you, sir? What can I get you? Coffee, tea, beer, a cocktail?” only to hear the way too familiar response:

“I’ll take you, little lady! Har-de-har-har.”

I tried not to dignify them with an answer. Instead, I gave them a well-practiced smile which said, ”Oh, you clever man.” After flying awhile, you discovered ways to even the score with these big-shots. Devious? Maybe. Necessary? Abso-friggin-lutely.

“Oops! I’m sooo sorry, sir! It must have been the turbulence. Let me get you a few napkins so you can wipe that wine (cola, tomato juice, hot coffee) off your trousers.”

Or like tonight, when I picked up the dinner tray from a playboy. I found a room key to a local Hotel and a one-hundred dollar bill tucked under his used napkin. (As if I would ever be so stupid). Thankfully, that sort of passenger was the exception, rather than the rule.

In those days, hijackings to Cuba were big worries. At the first sign of a problem, the bad apples were the first to bombard the flight attendants with pleas for help. We were suddenly promoted to angels of the skies, when moments before, we were treated like flying call girls.

So much for the glamorous life of a flight attendant ...

It was so different from the Brady Bunch sort of family I was raised in. San Francisco seemed the perfect place to live and heal, after burying my new husband (and rose-colored glasses) two years before. Doug had been an army combat medic and a casualty of the war in Vietnam. I was only twenty and totally devastated.

With love and the best of intentions, my family felt the best thing for me was to get back into some semblance of life. So, with their encouragement, I wrote a letter to TWA who then flew me to Kansas City for interviews.

Two weeks later, I was on another plane to their training academy in Kansas City. Graduation found me living in San Francisco.

Walking through the lot, I shivered. Strange, feeling this ice-cold terror. "This is nuts," I thought, as panic snaked up my spine and sunk its teeth in. Again I ignored my inner voice. It was more than a whisper, but not yet at Defcon One.

From that distance, I couldn’t see the broken glass on the pavement below the driver’s window of my car. I would have been horrified at the long thin slice cut through the rag top of my most prized possession, a little red Alfa Romeo. "Alfie" was a much older model, but I treated her like a long-awaited child.

I also couldn’t sense HIM from that distance, but my little voice inside had, and it warned me. Then a second time, and a third, but I still failed to listen. But he was there, hidey-holed and waiting like a spider, his mind filled with who knows what thoughts, his crotch bulging in sick anticipation.

He watched the comings and goings in the lot under the comforting cover of night, his trusted friend. He didn’t care whose thighs he got to part. He looked for a TWA parking sticker, entered the car, watched and waited, a sick smile playing across his face

Suddenly, the fear was overwhelming, like static in the air when lightning is about to strike. This time, just as I opened my car door, I heard my little voice inside booming like God’s own thunder.

He came at me with a punch to the face. He held a knife between us like an amulet for good luck. His rage for all women let loose and he demanded “Put out, stew, you fuckin' bitch!” There were more punches, more yelling. "Shuddup, bitch, or I'm gonna fuck you up real good!"

I never really heard the rest of his words, nor felt the punches, because that’s when my mind took flight. Mind curdling screams, one after another. I didn’t realize, they were mine.

”The screaming is what saved her ass”, the officer said later at the station. That and the elderly couple who found her walking down the center of a busy four-lane, screaming, cars whizzing by in both directions."

Thank God, they stopped and convinced me to get in their car for a ride to the police station. The couple was still there, too. I saw them sitting on a bench by the wall in the hallway, wringing their hands, waiting to see if there was anything else they could do. I remember hugging them and wishing my mom and dad were there.

As for me, when anyone asked, I only remembered having feet like lead and being unable to move, completely frozen to the pavement.

It had been like a bizarre one-act play. One actor screaming like a concert fan. The other, a boxer punching a dummy in the ring —a weird Mexican standoff. Which one would break first and run?

Thank God, it was the bad guy. He lost all interest in the screaming woman. He ran, his legs like pistons pumping, propelling him towards whatever hell hole he called home that night.

They never did catch him --I really didn’t think they would. I wasn’t able to tell the authorities much.

I walked into the airline terminal the next day and quit, wearing my cuts and bruises like my husband’s medals from Nam. I felt the punches that day, and somehow, I knew it would never be the same.

The girl-next-door life I tried so hard for disappeared out there in a nearly deserted parking lot, between the dewy diamond fields and all the twinkles on the pavement.

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