A Real Hoot | Mile High Scrub | 6

Coffee, Tea, or Me?

The perfect moment

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Carrielle savoured the moment. She may have admitted that her First ticket only cost a couple of hundred dollars, but that was the fees and taxes that went along with booking an award flight using Frequent Flyer points.

She had saved up a stockpile of points, from travel and routine spending, and a few promotions here and there. Gaining a sign-up bonus for swapping to a new credit card had given her half the points, and there were loopholes you could exploit.

For 280 000 points she could fly right around the world in Business, but finding the seats and the flights to string together was almost impossible. This trip hadn’t really been on the cards at all. Australia to Dubai was a popular route, and Business reward seats got snapped up early.

On a whim, she had broadened her search to First class, and a seat on the exact right day had popped up, surprisingly enough for not a great deal more. She booked it on the spot.

She’d have to fly Business on the way back, and the timings weren’t quite what she wanted, but that was fine. She was getting too old — in her mid-thirties — for long haul flights in Economy.

As a student, as a young woman, sure, it was part of the adventure. The cramped seats, the queues for the toilets, the horrid food, the noisy, smelly, rude neighbours.

And the occasional adventure under an airline blanket, or with people banging on the washroom door while she was banging inside.

Oh, but the look on Brad’s face! Perhaps she should have been upfront with him, let him know she was travelling First as well.

But she had been unable to resist demolishing the smug assumption that only men of a professional class might travel in the best seats, and young women deserved something less. These moments came rarely in her life, and each one something to cherish.

They entered the empty First cabin. Fourteen spacious suites, each containing a generous seat that converted to a bed, a wide-screen entertainment unit, and perhaps most useful of all, shoulder-high screens, complete with sliding doors that could be closed for privacy. At the touch of a button, naturally.

There were four singles along each side of the cabin, and three pairs of seats in the middle. The pairs had dividing screens which could be lowered or raised. If you didn’t get along with your seat-mate, just press a button and they vanished. How useful that feature would have been on some of her earlier flights, she thought.

An immaculately presented attendant led her to her seat — 2F in one of the centre pairs — and began explaining some of the features of the suite.

If she peeped over the top of the screen, she could see and hear Brad explaining that his idiot office manager must have made some mistake and naturally he should be beside his partner in 2E.

“Of course, Sir. There’s only the two of you in the cabin tonight. You may sit anywhere you want. Enjoy!”

Carrie was more interested in learning about the seat. In her limited experience, complicated airline seats turned into noisy monsters that did unexpected things with lights and beeps when drowsy passengers tried to make simple adjustments in the dark. Or when a body part accidentally hit something it shouldn’t while the mind was aimed elsewhere.

And this one had so many bells and whistles. There was a massive entertainment screen with a remote control because it was way out of reach even with the seat in the upright position. Two remote controls, as it turned out. A little lighted vanity mirror that popped up from a compartment that held some freebie lotions. Another compartment that opened to reveal an assortment of juices, water, soft drinks in a cold blue light.

“Don’t bother with that one,” Brad said, poking his head in from the seat beside. “It’s not refrigerated. You want a drink, there’s a private bar at the front of the cabin, or just call the attendant.”

“Where do I put my cameras?” Carrie asked. “There’s no overhead locker.”

The attendant — a Scandinavian beauty queen, judging by her appearance — indicated an area at the front of the suite. A little door opened up a private wardrobe and compartment for carryon luggage. No battles for space here! Two seatbelts snapped across to hold her bag secure.

If there was one thing about Emirates First Carrie found hard to swallow, it was the gold and grey colour scheme. Soft surfaces were grey, and everything else was either gold trim or faux-burl wood in an unlikely shade of gold. Bling was definitely the thing.

“Look at this place,” she said to Brad. “A quarter of the plane for just two passengers?”

He shrugged. “You haven’t seen the most decadent part yet. Sit down. Enjoy. We’ve got four flight crew all to ourselves, and they need to say hello and give us presents.”

First there was coffee. A tall dark woman — every atom of her body and uniform in perfect alignment — poured coffee from a golden jug with graceful Arabian curves and offered her a tray of dates as a snack.

“Take two,” Brad said, leaning over from his suite, “they are like toffee.”

And they were. Sweet and chewy and dark and delicious. The coffee was much the same. As Carrie sipped from the tiny cup, more offerings arrived. A leather bag full of creams and perfume and a dainty toothbrush. A tote bag containing slippers and grey pyjamas. “Self-moisturising to keep your skin fresh. Let me know if they are too large, please, and we’ll find some that are more snug, but most people like them a little loose for comfort.”

A menu. Carrie looked at the offerings and began to regret enjoying her dinner and drinks in the Flounge. This looked like more fine dining, and there was only so much her tummy could hold.

And the flight manager, a tall man with a dapper moustache and neatly-trimmed beard who squatted down in the aisle to assure Carrie that he and his staff were there for her comfort and to let him know if there was anything, anything at all the could do.

“Here is the call button,” he pointed at one out of the many that graced her suite. “Press it for service, and we will be there like that!”

He snapped his fingers and one of the beauty princess flight attendants materialised at his elbow.

“Champagne,” called Brad through the gap in the central divider. “Dom Perignon, one each!”

Carrie groaned. “Oh, I don’t know, darling…”

“This is the two hundred dollars a bottle champagne, dear. Don’t tell me you are so jaded you can’t stand a taste.”

Carrie looked at the flight manager, who smiled at her. “Trust me, it is very good, and it would be our absolute delight to have you try some.”

She nodded yes. What could she do? Pamper me and see if I hate it, she thought.

There was the sound of a soft pop from the galley two rows behind. Only two rows of seats but about as distant as one end of Carrie’s lounge room was from the other. This was definitely a different way of flying!

Brad and Carrie clinked their glasses.

The lights and the mirrors and the gold of the cabin sparkled into the glass as she held it up to admire the streams of fine bubbles rising through the clear straw-coloured wine.

A sip, and it tickled her tongue, the bubbles fizzing. Not the zingey, crisp, boisterous bubbles of the champagne she had enjoyed in the Flounge, this was more refined, more mellow, more subtle. She could grow into this.

Brad smiled at her before he turned to the flight manager, chatting about the food and the facilities, so far as Carrie could tell. Men. Always interested in the nuts and bolts of how things worked.

Carrie leaned back, opened the menu and tried to imagine how the various dishes would taste. Caviar. That was a certainty. What was “beef estouffade”, she wondered. It certainly sounded good on the menu, but then again, so did all the other choices.

Not to mention the desserts. They might have to wheel her out at Dubai, stuffed full of every good thing they had on board.

Then again, food wasn’t what she wanted to be stuffed full of. She put the menu down, took another sip of her Dom, and looked at Brad, letting the champagne tickle and tease her as she imagined slowly and deliciously undoing each button, savouring the salty man-smell, the man-taste of him, gliding her fingers over that chest, tracing his abs on that flat tummy she had had far too short a glimpse of.

Look at him breathing in the fragrance of fine wine. She wanted him bending over her with the same glow on his face. Carrie’s hand sought out the seat controls, aiming to recline it enough for a relax and maybe let one hand drift down to her thigh, just, you know, resting there casually and innocently.

Best not. They’d be taking off soon, and if there was one thing she had learnt from her years of flying, it was that everything had to be tucked away and upright.

Brad had finished talking to the flight manager and she glanced over to see him looking hungrily, not at the menu, but at her.

The sheer over the top decadence of Emirates First is overwhelming. There are countless blog posts and YouTube videos of the experience, and they all go through the long list of goodies and services. I look on Economy as discomfort, Business as a pleasant way to fly, and First as more than one really needs. With Emirates, it is way more than anyone needs!

A fresh episode every day. Based on a true story.

Britni

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