Celia puffed away until ignition was accomplished and then took a slow, steady drag, enjoying the harsh flavor of the Cuban tobacco.
“Very nice,” she said after blowing the smoke out over the balcony ledge. “How did you get your hands on Cuban cigars in Minneapolis?”
“It’s not too hard to do,” she said. “They sell them in Canada and we’re not very far from Canada.”
“You flew into Canada and bought some?” Celia asked.
“No, they’re black market, of course,” she said. “I have my connections here in the twin cities. I was based out of Chicago a couple of years ago and MSP was a regular stop.”
“I see,” she said, taking another puff while Suzie fired up her own cylinder.
They sat and puffed and sipped and talked of inconsequential things for a few minutes before the talk turned to tour gossip. This was a favorite thing for them to discuss since there was a considerable amount of it.
“What’s the deal with Little Stevie and Liz?” Suzie asked. “Word in the cockpit is that the two of them are bonding on more than a musical level.”
Celia nodded her head. “It certainly seems like something is going on there,” she said. “They seem to be very close to each other, and neither one of them ever puts in any requests with Dan anymore.”
Suzie chuckled a little, shaking her head. “I still can’t get over that whole request thing. It really is interesting flying you people around.”
“I can’t say that I approve of the request ritual,” Celia told her, “but it is tradition. In any case, Stevie and Liz were regular requesters when we started out, but the last three weeks ... nothing.”
“She’s like twice his age, isn’t she?”
“Pretty close,” Celia confirmed. “She is certainly biologically old enough to be his mother.”
“Hmm,” Suzie said. “Does Little Stevie have mommy issues, maybe?”
“Maybe. And maybe Liz has some nurturing urges. It really sounds like her ex-husband was kind of a cabron.”
“But he was at least her age?”
“That’s my understanding,” Celia said.
“Very interesting dynamic,” the pilot said, taking a sip from her tea.
“And speaking of interesting dynamics, it looks like Mark and Natalie are breaking some ground on international relations?”
“Yeah,” Suzie said, “he’s boning her all right. In fact, they’re probably doing it as we speak.”
“She is pretty,” Celia said. “And he’s not a bad looking guy himself—seems a little square though.”
“He’s a nice kid,” she said. “And a good pilot too. He’ll go far in his career. Pretty soon he’ll be working for Southwest or United or one of the other carriers.”
“Is there any ... you know ... ethical issues with him getting it on with one of his passengers?” she asked, her voice casual, off-handed, but her mind acutely interested in the answer.
Suzie shook her head. “Not as far as I’m concerned,” she said. “As long as they maintain the proper relationship with each other once we step aboard the aircraft, they can lube each other’s parts all they want when we’re off duty. I don’t imagine that the whiteshirts in management would particularly care for their relationship, but I’m not going to tell them about it. What happens on the mission stays on the mission, as long as nothing is compromising the mission.”
Celia smiled. “We have a similar saying in our business,” she said.
“I would think you would have to,” Suzie told her, dipping her ash into the ashtray.
“And what about you, Ms. Fly Girl?” Celia asked her next. “Any romantic entanglements you’d like to confess to? Are there such things as pilot groupies?”
“No entanglements currently,” Suzie told her. “We move around too much for me to get into any. And while there are pilot groupies out there—we call them buckle bunnies, or crew-pie—it’s not necessarily easy for someone of my sexual orientation to hook up with one. Most of them are looking to score with the boys, not the girls.”
“That’s a shame,” Celia said. “How do you handle the pressure when you’re on assignments like this?”
She laughed a little. “The same way you’re handling it, I imagine,” she said. “By performing my own maintenance at regular intervals.”
Celia chuckled. “Yes, I’m familiar with that technique—depressingly so. There does come a point where even that fails to relieve the pressure.”
“True,” Suzie said. “I guess the hope is that I’ll stumble across a little crew-pie who is into the softer things in life before I get to that point.” She shrugged. “It can happen. It has before.”
“Interesting,” Celia said with a smile as she pictured a soft, feminine groupie putting her face between Suzie’s naked legs on a hotel room bed.
“And what about you?” Suzie asked her, her eyes showing keen interest. “What do you do when the pressure gets to be too much and the old self-maintenance routine isn’t doing it for you anymore? Do you put in a request?”
“I’m a married woman,” she said. “I just have to wait until Greg finally gets on a plane and flies out to take care of his marital obligations.”
“And when will that be?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” she said sourly. “He’s still working on film promos for So Others May Live.”
“That was a good flick,” Suzie said. “I really enjoyed it. Most of the flying scenes were actually pretty accurate.”
“I’ll let him know you liked it,” Celia promised. “Anyway, he’s also starting to get offers for roles in other projects now. He’s got two auditions this week and one the next. He’s also got about six scripts to review for interest. I was hoping he would be able to meet me in Chicago since it’s a two-night engagement followed by two days off, but ... well, it’s not going to happen.”
“That’s too bad,” Suzie commiserated. She even sounded sincere.
“That it is,” Celia agreed. “That it is.”
Their talk turned to other things as they sipped their drinks and smoked their cigars. When the stogies were down to the nubs, they went back inside and closed the door to let the air conditioner do its work.
“Well, I guess I’ll head back to my room now,” Suzie said. “Thanks for letting me share your balcony.”
“Absolutely,” Celia said. “Thanks for the smoke.”
“Anytime. See you at the airport.”
“I’ll be there,” Celia told her.
The pilot went out the door and it closed behind her. Celia continued to stare at it for a few moments and then sighed. She then turned off all the lights and made her way to the suite’s bedroom. She took off all her clothes and piled them into the hamper bag. Now naked, she went to the bathroom and urinated then brushed her teeth to get the cigar taste out of her mouth.
Once these tasks were complete, she climbed under the covers and turned out the bedroom light.
Her sex was wet and she knew that she would not be able to get to sleep until she ‘performed some self-maintenance’, as Suzie had termed it.
She went to work on herself. Usually when she performed this act, it was Jake she thought of, of the things they had done to each other in that Portland hotel room that one fateful night, of the things she’d like to do to him if they ever ended up naked in bed together again. She had long since ceased feeling guilty for these fantasies (though the guilt from the actual act itself was still a very real thing).
Tonight, however, a different image popped into her mind as she started to play. She started thinking about Laura, and about the bartender in La Paz she had told her about, and about the other nameless lesbian smooth jazz groupies that had followed. It was a blackly exciting, deliciously naughty image—a female face between those feminine legs, a girly tongue licking girly parts. How would it feel to have a woman eat her out? Would she be better at it than a man? Better than Greg, who was pretty good at the act? Better than Jake, who was outstanding at it?