“Maybe he wanted to surprise you,” Evelyn said, though her drawl lacked its usual easy warmth. She looked at me, her eyes lingering on the tiny silver wings pinned to my navy blue vest. “But a premium ticket on an eight-hour flight is not something you buy on a whim, not with the summer prices they are charging this year.”
“He does not have the money for first class,” I said, my voice barely a whisper as the ground crew began unloading the baggage carts on the tarmac below, the dull thudding vibration rising through the cabin floor. “Not since his consulting firm took that financial hit back in July. He told me they were restructuring their entire portfolio.”
“People find money when they want something badly enough,” Evelyn said. She reached down and adjusted the seatbelt on two-B, pulling the heavy metal buckle straight. “Especially when they are traveling with company.”
She moved down the aisle toward the main cabin, leaving me standing alone in the empty aisle, the blue lights casting long shadows across the empty leather seats.
The narrow galley computer terminal flickered with blue columns of passenger data as I typed in my employee bypass code, my fingers clumsy on the small plastic keys. The screen was warm, radiating the faint smell of hot circuit boards that always filled the forward galley during pre-flight preparation.
“Search by the passenger profile,” Evelyn whispered, leaning over my shoulder as she pretended to inventory the dry-store beverage canisters. Her shoulder pressed against mine, a quiet shield against the gaze of the other crew members moving through the cabin.
I pulled up the credit card authorization screen for the two premium tickets, my breath shallow as the system processed the query. The digital receipt loaded line by line, displaying the billing details.
The billing screen showed my own personal Visa card ending in four-nine-two-one, the card I kept in the top drawer of my oak dresser at home, the one linked to my late mother’s small inheritance.
“That is my card,” I said, my finger freezing on the plastic bezel of the monitor. “He does not even have the physical card for this account. I keep it in the leather pouch with my passport.”
