Around the World in a Bad Mood! by Rene Foss Read Free Book Online Page B

geographically on the other side of the world) the very next day cannot be conducive to good mental or physical health. Not to mention the trip is fourteen hours in the air, if everything goes accordingly. Sometimes there is a fuel stop in Anchorage, making it even longer. I wanted to scream and claw my face. Fortunately, I resisted the urge and took a cold shower instead. Yes, I flew the trip, and I think it was at that point that I came up with the phrase “Around the world in a bad mood.”
    Looking back, I guess the only good thing was that I met Bitsy Heatherton on that trip. Who in the hell is Bitsy Heatherton, you may be asking yourself? She is another flight attendant, and she had recently transferred to the New York base. She was looking for a roommate to share a studio apartment with her in Manhattan. Maybe things were turning around. God knows, they couldn’t get any worse.

Manhattan
Capital of Reality
    T HANKS TO B ITSY H EATHERTON I was able to finally make the long-awaited move from Queens to Manhattan. She was desperately looking for a roommate to replace her last one, who could no longer handle the glamorous excitement of the airline industry. While on an Athens layover her roommate had called the company and said, “I quit!” She had a Greek lover who apparently offered her a brighter future than did a career as an international airline hostess. Anyway, she was gone and Bitsy needed someone right away. It was my golden opportunity to move to Manhattan.
    Getting there was not easy, figuratively or literally. I did not have a car, but I did have a lot of stuff, some of which I never even got around to unpacking. My dilemma: how to get all my boxes, stereo, cross-country skis, and the little furniture I had acquired in Queens into Manhattan. I began by putting a few of my boxes on my luggage cart and some of my clothes into a garment bag, which rested on top of the cart. From there I proceeded out the front door, dragging the entire ensemble behind me to the local subway station, where I caught the F train into Manhattan. Then I took a bus up to the new place. After about three round-trips I was exhausted, and it seemed that I had not made much of a dent in getting things moved out of there. Also, there were a number of things I needed to move that could not be taken on public transportation. I began throwing things away, and finally decided to move the rest of it in a cab. Fortunately for me I met up with a delightful cab driver. His name was Victor and he fell in love with me as he helped me load the Panasonic stereo into the trunk of his gypsy cab. Now, I’m not sure if Victor had car insurance, or even a license for that matter, but without his help I don’t think I would have been able to get everything to my new home. His English was limited, but we were able to communicate enough for him to ask if he could take Bitsy and me out for dinner. We accepted. And so the first official night at my new home in Manhattan was spent having pizza and a cheap bottle of Chianti at a dive on Second Avenue with my new roommate and my new friend, Victor the Albanian gypsy-cab driver.
    It may not have been a palace, but Bitsy and I loved living in our little studio on the Upper East Side. The rent was $750 a month, which isn’t a lot—especially when you divide it by two—but we weren’t making the big bucks yet. And we were living in Manhattan, so every time we walked out the door we spent $20 on something. We decided to take a few more girls in on a temporary basis in order to reduce the rent. We weren’t concerned about crowding because we would all be on different schedules. It was unlikely that we would all be there at the same time, so we bought a futon and plastic shelf unit and Bitsy and I decided to share the closet. We didn’t have any intention of hanging around the apartment that much anyway; I was going to be a big star and she was out to meet a rich man and be