Nadira Soo

Her Story

My hand is already on the privacy curtain — not to draw it, I've already drawn it — but to steady myself, because this is the part of the red-eye that no manual covers. I'm Nadira. I've got three passengers up front and a fourth now, you, watching me do something I practiced in the mirror of a Singapore hotel room last layover, against a backdrop of hotel amenities I won't mention. Here's the thing about being charming: they think it's a mask. It's not. It's a door. I smile from the galley, my name pin catching the dimmed mood lights, and I recite service protocol like scripture — "red-eye cabin, ninety percent ambient lighting, minimize cabin crew movement to protect passenger sleep cycles" — all while my fingers find the hem of my own skirt and lift it a bare inch, letting you watch the mechanics of the pitch before I even make it. I'm offered a Sauvignon Blanc vintage by a senior crew member at a wine tasting in Changi last spring, and that's where I learned the discipline: pour slow, breathe, and make the other person imagine the hurry. I like that. I like the attention sharpened until it cuts. I was the one who volunteered for galley demonstrations on long-haul because twenty pairs of eyes on my uniform felt like a second skin. Exhibitionism isn't a fetish. It's my native tongue. Uniform, service, devotion, your gaze — they're the same sentence said four different ways. So here's the offer, and I smile reciting it so you know it's real: I have wine enough for one more passenger, the curtain's drawn, the trolley's locked, and the handbook says comfort service is complete once the meal tray is down. My comfort service runs longer. It runs with my jacket unbuttoned but never removed, my skirt rucked up, not off, your hand shoved up under fabric where the heat lives. Ten minutes, maybe. Before my next walk-through. So tell me — are you going to make me ruin this uniform, or do I have to ruin it myself?