Chapter 2

“You’ve got all your teeth, don’t you?” the statuesque woman asked me. I showed her that I did.

“And you don’t talk like some kind of a backwoods moron, do you?” the excessively slender man queried. I told him I didn’t think I did. Apparently I passed their test, because that same afternoon—barely twenty-four hours after learning that World Wind Airways even existed—I was sipping champagne in First Class, my first time on an airplane, heading for their corporate headquarters in Seattle, where I was promptly offered a spot in one of their very first training classes of flight attendants.

Enter Jeremy Nakamura; half Japanese, half Swedish, with eyes like a starry, starry night and a smile so dazzling it seemed safest to view it indirectly. Multi-cultural, multi-lingual, and every kind of gorgeous, he was crowned the king of our training class in Minute One, before he had even finished scanning the classroom and choosing the seat next to mine. The temperature in the room dropped almost imperceptibly and you could see our classmates turn just those few degrees against each other. Sure, we said to each other, simultaneously and telepathically, we can be friends and all, but he’s mine, and you’re gonna want to stay out of my way. Male, female—even the straight guys wanted a piece of Jeremy Nakamura and Jeremy knew it. He wasn’t ashamed to exploit it either, when conditions warranted, and there were a few overly-soap opera romantic flare-ups during six weeks of training, but he staked me out on that first day and—for better or worse—we’ve been together ever since.

Teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, if not collapse, World Wind isn’t what it used to be. We’d have never been able to afford our condo if we were just starting out today, for example. But Jeremy and my flying career, coming into my life when they did, combined to bring me not simply everything I had ever wished for, but more than I ever dared to dream of. I had a spectacular man and was proud of who he was and what we were together, a jet-setting career that’s taken me to every corner of the world and introduced me to every kind of person, a world view so big that my small town and small-minded family are barely even visible on the fringes. Bring it down a level and I love the superficial stuff, too; all of Seattle and Puget Sound at our feet out the floor-to-ceiling windows of our twenty-second story penthouse, a closet full of clothes and shoes handmade by the finest tailors in Seoul, Mumbai, and Milan, all the same size as I wore in high school. My gut’s flat as a pancake and solid as a plank and I get carded when I order a glass of wine. This is what wishing had gotten me so far in my life, so you can see why I chucked pennies into every fountain and well I passed by.

I was even wishing for a way to surprise Jeremy on one of his Miami layovers when this gorgeous trip appeared on the pick-up board as if by magic. One easy leg on one of our First Class-only 767s to Miami, nice long layover that corresponded to his almost exactly, and then, when he would still have two more days of Caracas flying to mess with, all I’d have to do was one leisurely leg home to Seattle. Common in the early days at World Wind, this was what we now called a Unicorn Trip; so rare and lovely that nobody ever saw one, and it was entirely possible that they didn’t exist. I jumped on it, yanking it off the computerized trade board before anybody else had a chance.

I wished for an opportunity to surprise Jeremy in Miami and I got it. It’s the stuff you don’t think to wish against, the stuff you never even see coming, that you really have to watch out for. But I’m getting ahead of myself. 2

As awesome as the trip looked on paper, it started out even better than that. Light passenger load, strong tailwind, and a fun crew—every trip should kick off like this one did. Looking back, I would have to describe the first night of the trip as completely devoid of warning signs.

World Wind Airways had come into the world in the early 1990s to fill what the company’s billionaire founder saw as a void in commercial air travel. Pan Am had been out of business for years, and most U.S. carriers were starting to reduce service in every way possible to compete with low cost, upstart airlines. World Wind was created as a high-profile luxury alternative with the express goal of restoring excitement and glamour to the skies. The all-wide body fleet, while not necessarily right off the factory floor, was lushly appointed, with cushy leather seats, flattering lighting, and tinkling in-flight music in each airplane’s neon-retro lounge area. The flight attendants were hired specifically to enhance the exclusive atmosphere–for their looks, their language skills, or their all-around class–and we were pampered from check-in on Day One right through arrival on the last day of the trip; the better to happily indulge our passengers when called upon to do so. We strode through the world’s most highly polished airports like we owned them, in tasteful, figure-flattering uniforms appropriate to local climate and customs. We never handled our own luggage, and we were strictly forbidden from carrying food or drink in the terminal. Not to worry. Once aboard the airplane, we were plied with gourmet coffee, fresh-squeezed juices, and every manner of local gustatory delight. Our crew meals, like those we served our passengers, were prepared fresh in local kitchens with traditional, regional ingredients, and if we wanted to take classes on our layovers—language classes, dance classes, cooking or crafting classes—the company paid for them and threw in a stipend for our efforts. At the peak of our success, we flew to 137 cities on six continents and had not one but two round-the-world routings.