The Champagne designed to be sipped at twenty-thousand feet is different from the stuff mere mortals slurp at sea-level. Less gas. Drink it on the ground and it tastes flat, like day-old Cola left tepid in the glass. But let it flow over your tongue while you watch the clouds scatter beyond the plexiglass windows, and it is once more, pure heaven.Atm is the trade abbreviation for an atmosphere, which in the wine world is the measurement for the working pressure used to produce sparkling wines. Technically, it's the normal air pressure at sea level: about fifteen pounds per square inch. In the production of a standard sparkling wine such as champagne or spumante the pressure should be six atm. Which means, that the green, dew-speckled bottle sitting on your table top, contains a liquid that is pushing out at a pressure of ninety pounds per square inch.
Ninety pounds is a skinny guy, standing shoulder to bony shoulder with a whole bunch of his friends, all trying to get out of that bottle. Now, if you should happen to fly that bottle up to the top of the troposphere, where the air is thin, and the pressure low... Suddenly those skinny guys beef up. And a bottle becomes a bomb. A case becomes a disaster.
"Excuse me stewardess..?"
"Yes Sir, how may I be of service..?"
"This Champagne tastes funny - does this stuff ever go off..?"
"I don't know - we've never had any complaints before... May I..?"
"Of course, be my guest."
He watches her mouth studiously as she lifts his glass and puts it to her lips. Rich, red lipstick leaves a smear on the rim as she sips the very smallest of sips. Then her perfect retroussé nose crinkles as bubbles of carbon-dioxide irritate the delicate membranes inside. She says:
"Uuuh - You're right - it's like drinking straight Alka-Sletzer. Please, accept the airline's apologies, I'll get you another bottle right away."
"Don't worry about it - I shouldn't be drinking anyway - All this turbulence has gone straight to my stomach."
"I'm sorry sir, the captain is doing his best. Rough weather out there."
He watches her retreating back up the aisle to the cubby-hole behind the curtain, his puffy eyes tracking the lines of her sheer-stockinged calves up to her trim thighs, following the cut of her pencil skirt, the liquid geometry of her buttocks as they move under the starched material.
He slumps back into the padding of the seat and inhales - the dry, over-conditioned air rasping over his teeth and into his lungs, leaving his pallete arid. He wishes now he hadn't complained. He closes his eyes and hears the clink of expensive bottles being sorted and examined, hears his stewardess say:
"These aren't the ones we usually stock, are they..?"
Then he feels a sudden draught. Thinks nothing of it. Then he remembers he turned the blower off about a hour ago. Which is strange. Then he remembers he's on a plane. And suddenly he jerks upright, his face batting against the yellow cup of the oxygen mask that's just fallen from a concealed flap between the nozzles of the twin fans. Becomes aware of his heart hammering in his chest. The intercom is saying something, a man's voice, with an edge just below the professional calm:
"Please do not be alarmed, we are experiencing a temporary failure of cabin pressure due to extreme weather conditions outside. Normal pressure will be restored presently, if you feel light-headed, please use the masks which should have deployed right over your heads, if you have trouble in using them, please call your flight attendent. We apologise for your incoven-"
His stewardess emerges from behind the curtain and takes a single step - one perfect leg lifting; skirt hemline riding up slightly over toned and silk-sheathed skin; a patent leather stilleto arcing down toward the close-packed weave of airline carpet.
The sound is not unlike an exhaust backfiring on a scooter - a rapid high-pitched popping, rude and unexpected - a staccato ripple of breaking glass.
The stewardess stops, simple surprise chasing sudden pain on her face. She shudders. A halo of green glass shards sparkle in the sudden sunlight and ricochet off the bulkheads all around her, wreathing her body like some medaeval stained-glass angel weeping in a cathedral window.
She staggers, grace gone, to collapse at his feet. The back of her head is flayed right down to the bones of her skull. The jagged ivory path of her vertebrae glints like a row of broken teeth in a punched mouth. Her pelvis is bared: both buttocks ground away to bloody gristle. Her legs are carved-up like cheap meat on a butcher's block; tendons and ligaments glowing obscenely white amid a morass of purple and ruby-red.
On his knees now, he heaves her over onto her good side and sits smoothing her hair as the plane lurches, and begins its descent.
No comments:
Post a Comment