Crystal wanted to knock the hat right off his head. In her fifteen years as an airline stewardess, she’d never had a more obnoxious passenger.
As she’d attended to the other travelers, she stole quick glances of him out of the corner of her eye. She would’ve thought he’d be too bleary-eyed to notice her, but he seemed to catch her every time during the past half hour, glancing over the back of his seat each time she looked over at him. And each time he did, he made a point of tapping his watch. Not to indicate it was luxurious. To let her know he was still keeping time, counting down the “time out” she had essentially given him before she would serve him another drink.
Crystal wished the U.S. Marshal aboard the flight would intervene, but what could they do. He was just being loud. He may’ve been bothering the other passengers, but he was staying in his seat. He wasn’t breaking any rules.
She was handing a blanket to a woman when he began pressing the service button. Only he wasn’t so much pressing it repeatedly as he was stabbing it with his finger.
“Yes?” she asked, testily, as she approached his seat, even though she already knew what he was after.
“It’s been thirty minutes,” he answered with a sly grin, once again showing her his watch.
“I still think you’ve had enough for one flight,” she said through gritted teeth.
“I only had one,” he started to bark before he caught himself and lowered his voice to a quieter tone. She saw some of the passengers sitting behind him in first class spring awake, then glare at the back of his ridiculous hat as they tried desperately to fall back to sleep.
In retrospect, she probably shouldn’t have even served him the one. She had an inkling he’d already had a few at some of the airport bars before boarding, and hadn’t seen the harm in him having one more, possibly needing to take the edge off while flying. She’d thought it would help knock him out, and that he’d sleep across most of the Atlantic. But the whisky sour only seemed to bolster his vitality.
And the volume of his slurred speech.
“Maybe it’d be better if you got some rest,” she suggested, and made a move to fetch him a pillow and a blanket. Then he couldn’t accuse her of being rude to him.
“I ain’t tired,” he said, his voice rising. The passenger next to him flickered their eyelids, and tossed unpleasantly in their sleep.
“Shh!” she hissed at him. “You’ll wake the other passengers.”
“They’ll be the least of yer troubles if you don’t wrassle me up another sour,” he spat back. “Now, I’ll be good and quiet fer ya, if ya do that – make it a double –” he blared this last part, causing some of the nearby passengers to bolt wide awake, only to sneer at him as they fought to drift back to sleep again. He took no notice, continuing in a softer tone. “But if you refuse me, I swear, within an hour – maybe thirty minutes –” he blared again, “you’ll be getting a personal phone call from Mr. Harvey Winthrop. You know who Mr. Winthrop is, don’cha?”
She nodded. And gulped. Mr. Winthrop was the CEO of the airline. He flashed her a serpent’s smile as he tipped his cowboy hat at her. “And he knows me,” he said before he hooted with glee. “Oh, just try me if you don’t believe he knows Axel Forsberg.”