Mafia flights

A month later I was assigned to work a flight from New York to Las Vegas. We called them mafia flights. They were Italian gamblers who ordered first-class services. These flights occurred on a regular basis during the sixties.

As our limousine driver drove the crew from the Statler Hilton in Manhattan to the airport, the navigator flicked a cigarette butt out his window.

“That’s littering,” I said, surprised by my audacity.

“This is New York, they don’t care,” he said, gesturing to the window. “Look around. Garbage everywhere.”

“It’s a good thing you didn’t have my mother as your parent. She would have stopped the car and make you go back and pick it up. She did that to me once when I tossed out a gum wrapper.”

He turned his back to me and the conversation ended. However, he never threw anything else from the limo. I had made my point.

Before we pushed away from the terminal, the flight attendants gave out candy and five-cigarette packs to the passengers. The men wore suits with open-collared shirts, flaunting their gold chains. We folded fur coats and placed them in the overhead compartments.

Once we were airborne, we passed out steaming towels perfumed with lemon. Next we served two miniature bottles of liquor and hot hors d’oeuvres. Nothing was missing from these first-class flights. They had the best service and souvenirs our airline could offer.

The men pulled out cigars and settled in. They played cards, using our airline’s monogrammed decks, and formed clouds of smelly smoke. While the passengers relaxed, I worked the rear galley and began organizing meal trays.

Once the services were completed, Gail and Nancy visited with the New Yorkers. I rearranged the galley compartments and cleaned the stainless steel counters. Everything was put away and I began to set up for the next meal.

When Nancy came back, she reported that one of the gamblers said she was beautiful and offered her a mink coat “but only if he wins at poker.”

“Did he ask for your telephone number?” I asked.

“No.”

“Then how is he going to contact you? You’ll never see him again.”

I burst her bubble, but she didn’t care and flirted with him anyway.

“He’s old but cute,” she added. “And I like his musky cologne.”

All the passengers were in their forties and fifties, at least twenty years older than we were. The men teased and their wives glared. The few married men without their wives had removed their wedding bands. You could see the obvious white marks on their ring fingers.

Ginny, working in the front galley, responded to a passenger’s call button. While she walked up the aisle, the group leader asked Ann Marie, the senior flight attendant, to join him behind the galley curtain.

Mr. Bianchi gave her a hundred dollars as a tip to share among the cabin crew. We rarely received tips; it was against our airline’s policies. But temptation interfered. And twenty dollars each was a lot of money, one-third my monthly rent.

Mr. Bianchi told her to meet him at the hotel barbershop that evening. He wanted the flight attendants to be his guests for a dinner show.

After the flight, Gail, Nancy, Ginny, and I showered and dressed for dinner. Ann Marie met the group leader at the barbershop, located in the basement of the hotel. She noticed two intimidating men standing on each side of the doorway as she approached the shop.

“Mr. Bianchi paid his barber’s bill from a briefcase filled with stacks of money,” Ann Marie told us, her eyes wide with excitement. “This will be a great evening.”

We gathered an hour later in the hotel lobby. All five flight attendants were dressed in their best and sexiest attire. I wore spiked heels, a string of pearls, and put on a simple black knee-length dress. From the front, I looked matronly. But in the back the dress was cut so low that it fell to my waist and I had to go braless.

Ginny was a blond who wore a teal mini-dress, showing off her long slender legs. Ann Marie had on a striped outfit, low cut in the front; Nancy let down her thick, brown hair; and Gail wore a dress of candy-apple red that emphasized her tiny waist. We looked fabulous.

Mr. Bianchi greeted us enthusiastically, kissing our cheeks. He flashed his diamond pinky ring and puffed out his chest as we accompanied him to the dinner show. A few of his friends joined the entourage and asked to be our escorts, offering their elbows for us to take.

Heads turned as we walked from the gold-embossed lobby to the show entrance, passing glittering chandeliers and regal columns. It seemed as if we were a parade of celebrities.

A special table for ten had been arranged at the center, right in front of the stage. The show began with beautiful women descending a wide staircase. They wore enormous headdresses with three-foot feathers protruding from them.

And they were topless. All the breasts one ever wanted to see were on full display. Abundant, high, and firm.

In the sixties, America was just beginning to overcome its prudish attitudes. As flight attendants, we seemed to be on the cusp of this change.

At midnight the men were still gambling. Nancy and Ann Marie joined them. Ginny, Gail, and I thanked Mr. Bianchi for a wonderful evening but declined to stay any longer. We were tired from working the flight and decided to go to our rooms.

“We’re leaving tomorrow and have to get ready,” Ginny said. “We’re flying to Japan in the afternoon.”

Before long, Nancy and Ann Marie gathered in our room and told us of their gambling bouts. Ann Marie won a few dollars, but Nancy lost her money. So did her escort. She wasn’t going to receive a mink coat after all. We laughed at the outcome and encouraged her to start saving.

Дата добавления: 2015-08-27