Coffee, Tea or Me? (10 page)

The flight this time was uneventful. We felt a little more confident about our chores, although we still managed to spill a few drinks and to misplace a passenger’s raincoat. (We finally found it on the floor of the coatrack under Rachel’s overnight case.) George didn’t say anything as we left the airplane. But he did wink at Miss Lewis, who stood by the cabin door as he passed. She just looked away and bid farewell to the man behind him.

We went through the sign-out procedures in operations and headed for the taxi line. We were exhausted. The trip, the weather, Miss Lewis, and George Kelman had proven too much to handle in such a short span of time. We should have conserved money and taken the Carey bus back into Manhattan, but a cab was faster, easier, and more comfortable. And comfort was highest on the immediate list of priorities.

We collapsed once we hit the apartment. If we didn’t have to buy our own uniforms, we wouldn’t have even bothered to take them off. Our apartment was furnished with only a couch, two beds, a director’s chair, and a camel saddle from Arabia. I never got past the couch. Rachel fell instantly asleep on her bed. Then the telephone rang.

“Hi. This is George.”

“Please, no,” Rachel pleaded. “Call tomorrow, when we’ve had twenty hours sleep. Not now.”

“Sorry to bother you, Rachel, but you’ve got to eat dinner. Right? It’s on me. You name the place.”

“George Kelman, whoever you may be, dinner is the last thing on our minds at this moment.”

“By midnight you’ll be hungry. How about a few pizzas? At your place. Or mine. Or the pizza place. You name it and I’ll be there with the mushrooms. That’s my favorite kind of pizza. What’s yours?”

The fatigue had brought out an unusual testiness in Rachel. “No! No pizza, no eggs, no steak, no oysters, no soup, not even a candy bar. We’re tired and we’re going to sleep without George Kelman. I mean we’re . . . Oh, the hell with it.” She hung up with a bang.

We slept until ten the next morning and made it out to JFK for a one o’clock Cleveland trip. Yes, George Kelman was standing there when we arrived, just outside operations. It was beginning to take on a nightmarish quality, this whole George Kelman thing. Or shades of sophomoric romance with the jilted suitor spending seven days and nights following you around.

When we saw him standing there, we started giggling.

“Hi,” he said happily.

“Are you going to Cleveland again?” we asked.

“Nope. Not today.”

“Why?” Rachel pressed our sudden good luck.

“I’m going to Los Angeles.”

“Just what business are you in that takes you to all these places?”

He thought that over for a moment. “Well, none, really. I’m what you could call independently wealthy.”

“Sure,” I said with sarcasm, “and I’m Doris Duke.”

“I knew you didn’t look like a stewardess,” he quipped.

We looked around for any snooping eyes and ears and put what we felt was the crusher on him. “Look, just what is it with you?”

He was hurt. “Well, I’ll be damned. Here I am, a regular guy who’s sorry he woke you up last night and comes all the way out to the airport to apologize. Do I have to take a loyalty oath, too?”

“We’re sorry, George. Guess we’re a little on edge after the first flight and all. How long will you be in LA?”

“Overnight. Be back tomorrow.”

“Oh. Well, have a great trip. See you again.”

“Gee, I hope so. How about dinner tomorrow night?”

“Can’t. Besides, just which one of us are you asking?”

“Both of you. Honest. I’ll call you.”

“OK. Bye.”

“Bye.”

We had dinner with George four more times during the following six weeks. He flew with us again to Cleveland, once to Cincinnati, and treated us twice in New York. It was all weird; totally weird. In fact, it was downright frustrating that he never asked one of us out. It always was the two of us together. There was never a pass, never a pinch, or subtle brush of the hand—nothing. Just a free-spending guy with good manners and a happy way about him. We actually came to the point of no longer wondering about George and what he was. To be candid, he had become a great meal ticket, one without the usual strings attached.

 

We did find out a little more about George a week after our fourth dinner date. We had gone to the theater the night before, sixth-row center seats, compliments of Mr. Kelman, who couldn’t join us because of an out-of-town trip. Rachel, who was flying reserve that month, had pulled a Seattle trip for the following day, and it was on that flight that some of the mystery was solved.

Rachel was surprised when she saw him board the 707 for Seattle. He seemed a little taken back at seeing her, but recovered quickly and gave her a hearty greeting. The other three stewardesses didn’t seem to know him, or notice him.

The flight was an hour out of New York when Rachel, doing a head count against the one the senior stew had performed, discovered there was one too many heads. She mentioned it to the senior stew, a chesty little California girl with bangs, and a hustle-bustle way of doing everything.

“I know, I know,” she said when Rachel mentioned the problem. “I’ve got a dummy aboard.”

“A what?”

“A dummy. Dummy. A friend. Forget it. Just drop it.”

“I don’t understand,” Rachel persisted out of sheer curiosity. “What’s a dummy?”

“Look, sweetie, there’s a guy on board I happen to do a few favors for once in a while. That’s all there is to it. It’s done all the time. You know when a flight is going to be light so you slip him on board. Just cool it and start serving the food.”

Rachel went about her chores, looking into every male passenger’s face for a sign, a clue. Which one was the dummy? George Kelman was an obvious choice, with his stewardess connections and all, but that didn’t seem to make any sense to Rachel. George was wealthy. Or at least he said he was. Besides, if a stewardess wanted to do him a favor, why risk her job slipping him on the airplane? Why not sleep with him? Then she remembered the possibility of his being gay. Or maybe he was a gigolo, his trips were his payoff. She looked at him again. No. Impossible. Too sweet.

It had to be another man, a boyfriend of the senior stew. And which one that was certainly wasn’t any of Rachel’s business. She tried to forget about it, content with her new knowledge that it was possible to sneak a friend on board an airplane.

Rachel was the first stewardess off the plane in Seattle. She hurried across the lobby, did her checking out quickly, and stationed herself behind a concrete pillar by the hack stand. “I ought to have my head examined,” she muttered to herself as she tried not to look too much like a private eye behind the proverbial potted palm.

What she was waiting for soon materialized. The little senior stew with the bangs came from the terminal with George Kelman. They entered a cab and headed for downtown.

Rachel, devil that she can be at times, thought quickly. She raced for a phone booth and dialed the hotel where the crews stayed.

“Hello. This is Rachel Jones, a stewardess. I just got in on Flight 61 with Miss Crowly and Miss Ramkin, and Miss Ramkin and I would like a room adjacent to Miss Crowly’s. We have homework to do together.”

“Yes, ma’m. I’ll put you and Miss Ramkin in Room 1131.”

“Thank you.”

That night, Rachel stayed close to the room. Miss Ramkin had a date, and Rachel sat alone, her ear straining for signs of activity next door.

She dozed off about midnight and was awakened at two by laughter in the hall. It was George’s laugh.

Rachel got mad at herself for being such a busybody, but that didn’t deter her from pressing a water glass against the wall. “This is terrible,” she scolded herself.

All she’d heard about a water glass being a good conductor of sound was proven wrong that night. Only snatches of the conversation could be heard, a tribute, we suppose, to the hotel’s substantial walls.

But she did hear the senior stewardess say, “You can stay if you’d like to, George.”

And he answered, “No, thanks. Got to run.”

And that’s exactly what he did.

Was George Kelman really queer? Or was he simply a pleasant guy with a fetish for stewardesses? We were baffled.

I was the one who found out about George, quite by accident through a friend of his. I started dating Bill, a New York psychology student, about a month after Rachel’s ear-to-the-wall report from Seattle. Bill was an interesting type of young man; bright, moody, subject to long lapses into introverted discussions on matters that concerned him deeply. He went into one of these spells one night in his fourth-floor walk-up apartment in Greenwich Village. He lit a cigarette and started talking about sex, how everyone has an individual need for specific sexual satisfaction, and about some cases he knew that were unusual.

“I know this guy, George. Really strange. He has an unbelievable fixation on stewardesses. It’s so strong, he’ll spend every dime he has just to hang around them. It’s lucky he’s loaded.”

I was all attention. I accepted Bill’s romantic gesture of lighting another cigarette for me, and asked, “This wouldn’t be a George named Kelman, would it? You don’t have to answer, if you don’t want to. But you’d better.”

“Oh, you’ve joined Kelman Airlines, have you? I didn’t know you were one of the flock George can claim victory over.”

“No, Bill, honest, he’s never even tried to touch me. Or Rachel. But he’s always asking us to dinner and even used to fly with us. Frankly, we just wrote him off as a good-natured queer.”

Bill laughed and lit another cigarette.

“I don’t doubt he never tried to touch you. But, George Kelman is no fag. He’s just different. He only makes it with pros. Hustlers. Call girls. Plenty of money for any girl he wants, anytime. But the stewardess thing is another matter entirely. He loves being thought of as a big brother to the girls. Of course, he gives the guys the impression that he’s in bed with every one. But he’s never even tried. He likes to be the trusted guy with the girls. He actually considers stewardesses the ultimate in chaste, sweet American womanhood.”

“We are.”

“You’re not.”

“They told us we were at stewardess school.”

“They must all be sick down there.”

“But it all sounds so ridiculous about George. Why?”

“Who knows? Maybe I should, being a psych student and everything. It’s just that some guys need this kind of relationship with clean-cut girls. Maybe it’s his personal retribution for always sleeping with prostitutes. But one thing is for sure. Every stewardess who’s given him a chance to hang around has found him to be a charming and delightful guy. No strain, no fuss. No passes after every date. Just good company. Funny.”

I tried to digest it all for a minute and then asked, “Why does he sneak on board airplanes? If he’s got so much money, why doesn’t he just pay for his trips?”

“He usually does. But getting an occasional free ride is sort of a game. It’s like stepping on the grass when the sign says you shouldn’t. Some of the girls just do it because they feel a large debt to him for all the dinners, gifts, and even loans. You girls are strange. You don’t want to
have
to sleep with a guy who spent something on you, but after a while, you start to feel guilty. He should be getting
something.
Right? So, they give George a free trip.”

“I can’t wait to tell Rachel. We’ve been avoiding him lately. Now we’ll be more tolerant.”

“Marvelous. Another poor soul saved by my expert analysis.”

“What would you call George, then. A stew-bum?”

“Good a term as any. Don’t push me away.” I had been exerting counterpressure on Bill’s straying hand.

I got back to the apartment very late and told Rachel the whole story. She was fascinated, disbelieving, but bowed to Bill’s academic credentials. I was going over it with her again when the phone rang. Rachel answered.

“Hello? George Kelman. How are you?”

“Great, Rachel. How about some dinner tonight? The two of you.”

“George, you have a date, even if you are nothing but a stew-bum.”

“Ahhhhh, where did you hear that?”

“It makes no difference. It’s just our little term of affection for you. Pick us up at seven.”

“Right.”

We see George Kelman often. His stable of stewardesses has grown, and he has less time for us old-timers. We’ve met other stew-bums besides George, but be remains unique among the airport Johnnies or hostess hoppers—other terms used to designate the type. The others, while having a similar fixation on stewardesses, also take normal male actions with the girls they go out with. George remains to this day a paragon of virtue with the stewardess corps. His place in aviation history as big-brother-in-residence seems secure.