CHAPTER 2 THE COMPOUND

Training was tough, long and not without stress. There was a lot to learn. Turns out I didn’t just learn how to be a flight attendant. I learned a lot about living in close proximity to others who I normally wouldn’t sit next to. Note, many names in this book have been changed to protect the innocent. Or at least me.

The rest of training was not free from stress. Part of that was due to being surrounded by some of the same people for six weeks. Many of us had not had to share a room with three other people since college. And that was a really long time ago for some of these folks. Things were still a little stressed in our room between Drew and the rest of us, even though I continued to put on a friendly front.

At the end of week four, one of my classmates, Terri, was having her birthday. A group of us decided to head downtown to celebrate with her. We found a few bars to enjoy; when one got boring we would move to another. By the end of the evening we had been to a few bars and were feeling quite comfortable. One of the girls in our group, Aura, had gone to the bar for another drink. Terri followed her and they wound up spending a lot of time at the bar, just the two of them.

When they came back to the table, it was clear that Aura had been crying. Someone else at the table asked what the problem was and she spilled it all.

“Last week in the mockup, Drew made a demeaning sexual comment to me and slapped my ass. He knows I am married and I didn’t do anything to provoke him.” Did she tell anyone about it? “No. He’s got a family. I’ve got a family. I don’t want this to get all blown out of proportion. But I made it quite clear to him that I didn’t appreciate his advances and that if it happened again, I would kick him in the nuts.”

Apparently, Aura was not the only one at the table to feel uncomfortable with my roommate. Others had overheard him making questionable comments and felt a bit uneasy around him. The conversation turned to him for a while but as all conversations do, eventually evolved into other things. I felt badly for Aura but really thought nothing else about it. The night moved on and we eventually made our way back to the compound. My roommates were already asleep when I got back.

The next morning I went down for breakfast in the cafeteria. The room was almost empty but there were a few of my classmates sitting at one table with Drew. I started to pass them by for a table with more room, but was beckoned to join them. I hesitated, but sat down reluctantly, giving into peer pressure. I never did feel much better about Drew since that first impression, and now I felt even more distanced from him.

As soon as I sat down, I realized that everyone was leaning in towards Drew and that his eyes were red. In an instant I knew what was happening. And it would drag the entire class into an abyss for the remainder of our time at the training center.

“Aura is going around telling people that I sexually harassed her and it’s all a lie,” he said. I acted somewhat surprised. I actually was. First of all, I knew she was not going around making that false accusation. Aura was a very attractive woman. Her complexion was flawless, and her body was in perfect condition. She did not need the attention and it was quite clear to us the night before that she had dealt with it and only wanted it to go away. The only reason we knew about it was that we practically drug it out of her at the bar. And she certainly wasn’t lying.

I searched the faces at the table. There was one who was at that bar last night and I knew it was her who told him about it. I’m not going to mention names. I never have to anyone I confided in while I was in training. At this point it’s all water under the bridge and I don’t need any aggravation to come back and haunt me from training.

Drew stewed about it some more and I finally admitted that the subject had come up the night before, but I didn’t believe it was her telling people. He got up and stormed away exclaiming he was going to find her and talk to her right now.

It does nothing but get messier from here. Word got to the supervisor on duty who called the two of them up to the office. They each gave their side of the story and then were told that more would be done on Monday by our supervisor. In the meantime, neither of them was to discuss it with anyone else. I only know all of this because the first thing Drew did was to come to our room and tell me everything that happened in the supervisor’s office. The funny thing was that when he told me her side of the story, as she told it to him, it matched exactly what she had told me at the table in the bar.

What he did next would seal our fate as roommates. He asked if I was near them when the incident occurred in the mock up. I was not. I was in the other mock up on the other side of the room.

“If you get called up tomorrow and questioned, I want you to tell them that you were there and that you never saw it happen. Tell them I wasn’t even seated near her,” he told me.

I was floored. “I can’t do that, Drew. I’m not going to do that and I won’t be brought in the middle of this.” I lied. After he left the room I knocked on Aura’s door and told her what had just happened and that if I got called upstairs, I would let them know as well. This situation was getting serious and I was not going to let Drew manipulate the situation to his favor for something I felt he was, indeed, guilty of.

Drew spent the rest of that day going around telling everyone about what happened and by the time class resumed on Monday, I felt as if half of us were on his side, and the other half was on hers. The tension was noticeable and different fractions were in different corners whispering and looking around like they were guilty of talking about someone. And they were.

At one point in the afternoon I was watching planes approach ORD with my binoculars. I went to the laundry room on the other side of the building, affording me a better view of the planes. But this was also the same side of the building that the pool was on. There were quite a few people out there and I could make out Drew, surrounded by a group of people, some from our class, others were not. I looked at them through the binoculars when Christine entered the room. ‘Oh, shit,’ I thought. ‘She probably thinks I’m some pervert watching the girls at the pool.’ She didn’t say much to me and I decided to return to my room.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, Christine knocked and asked to speak to me. I let her in.

“Scott,” she started. “I just wanted to tell you that I am very bothered by what you were doing just now in the laundry room.”

“Christine, I know you think I was watching people at the pool. I did see Drew down there and did look to see whom he was talking to. But the reason I was in there with my binoculars was to watch planes come in to land.”

She seemed to not quite believe me. I pointed to a model airplane sitting on my windowsill and picked up a magazine on airplanes.

“You see, I like to see what kind of plane they are. I’m totally obsessed.”

I could see that she now understood. She smiled and said she was relieved. She was thinking I was a perv. I told her that I was glad she came to see me about it instead of going around thinking that. We still laugh about it today.

The next day, my other roommate, Restie, came to me and told me that things were getting bad. He had come in late Sunday night, after I went to bed. He closed the door quietly and was slinking around the room getting ready for bed, trying not to wake us up. Drew got out of bed and said he needed to talk to him so they went to the spacious closet and turned on the light. And just as he had done with me, he asked him to lie for him about what happened in the mock up. And just as I had done, he told Drew that he would not do that. I let Restie know that the same thing happened to me and thanked him for not going along with it.

I never was called upstairs and no one ever asked me about what happened in the mock up that day. The case was dropped, which angered Aura, but she was glad to have it behind her. She never did want it brought up in the first place. She would be going to a different base and hopefully would not have to see him again. She only hoped her husband would never find out. He was the jealous type and would not take it well; he might even make her quite this job.

Things were a little tense in my room after that. Restie and I became closer and he would often tell me that he didn’t understand why Drew disliked me so much.

“You are always so nice to him, nicer than I am to him,” he would tell me with his thick accent, “even though he treats you so badly. And he’s always talking bad about you to me. I can’t stand it.”

But my being nice to him ended on the first night of our last week, week six. This was the night before we were to leave for our international training flight. One third of the class was to go to Paris, one third to London, and the rest of us to Frankfurt. Being of German heritage, this was exciting news to me. I’d never been anywhere that required me to have a passport before, so this trip was huge.

As usual, we would be paired up and would stay in a hotel with a roommate. Mine would be Drew, of course. That was just my luck. My flying partner was a girl from the other half of the class, Sarah. Everyone was very excited about going overseas the next day. All of our flights were very early in the morning. The three of us were getting ready for bed after having packed our suitcases. Drew was in bed when the phone rang. It was a friend of Restie’s from California, two time zones back. They spoke briefly and hung up.

The phone rang again and it was another call for Restie. He told the person at the other end that he was going to leave the room and call him right back. Very nice thing to do since the lights were out and we were trying to get some sleep. A short while later he returned and got in bed. The phone rang a third time. It was Sarah calling me to find out what time I was going to be in the lobby for our taxi to the airport. I gave her the information, hung the phone up and walked back over to my bed.

Drew rolled over and took the phone off the hook. At first I thought I would ignore it, but then I decided I couldn’t handle the phone being off the hook. What if someone calls? What if there is an emergency? What if his daughter was in an accident? He assured me that wouldn’t happen, that they would call on his cell phone.

“You’re not the only one in this room and I don’t think Restie wants the phone off the hook either,” I told him.

Restie didn’t say a thing. I went back to his side of the room, where the phone was, and put the hand piece back on the cradle. He tried to take it off again as I walked back to bed, so I placed the phone on the floor, out of his reach.

His reach was better than I thought and I didn’t hear him take it off again. I settled into bed and after a minute the phone started to beep obnoxiously, telling us it was off the cradle.

“Well that was a smart thing to do,” I said crossly as I got up once more to fix the problem. This time I moved the phone further away from Drew’s reach.

“Now leave the flipping phone alone.” Except I’m pretty sure I used a stronger word than flipping, but it also started with the letter F.

I got back in bed and there was silence. It lasted about three minutes. Drew started moving around. He put his leg on and got dressed and left, slamming the door behind him.

Across the room, the light went on and Restie was sitting up. “Oh, my goodness!” he said. “What was that about?”

“I don’t know. He’s just being an ass.”

“I know he is. I was so afraid for you. I thought he was going to get up and attack you! I thought he would hit you with his leg.” Restie’s amazement at what was happening was prominent in his voice. And his wry humor was timeless. “I don’t know why he has to be so rude. There are other people in here besides him.”

I simply agreed, still not sure what had set him off that way.

After about twenty minutes Drew slipped quietly back into the room and we all managed to fall asleep without hitting one another.