The breakfast bar that they gave us was okay, nothing like the banquet room at the Delta Club where I’d eaten pancakes with honey, but oh, well. I was dining in the sky. That was pretty amazing in itself.
The aluminum-covered bar held scrambled eggs and cheese, covered by a pastry crust. There was also a small bowl — a plastic beige bowl, like we’d had the night before. It contained fruit salad, none of it fresh, but the canned, syrupy kind, although not as sweet as the can Grandma used to open on special occasions. She used the contents in gelatin salads, on pancakes, over white cakes, and once over my cereal, which I asked her not to do again.
The coffee was the best part of our breakfast in flight, although Bob had told me not to drink any. He said that airlines used unsafe water, but Terry piped up that that story was only a myth. He said the water was perfectly safe and that everyone drank it and no one got sick.
I looked around at the people in the seats nearby us, and Terry was absolutely correct. Almost everyone was drinking cups of coffee, except those who were tea-drinkers. And didn’t the hot water come from the same place whether it was tea or coffee the passenger was drinking?
Timothy drank all his coffee and asked for more, although he was not usually the coffee enthusiast that I was. I held my cup out for seconds, too. Dying by coffee was a good way to go, I supposed. (Thankfully, Terry was right. No one perished mid-drink or even later as we exited the plane, people looked just fine.)
After we finished our egg and cheese pastry with fruit, we also had a yogurt cup. Mine was strawberry. Timothy got blueberry, which was one of my favorites, so we traded. He offered and said he didn’t care which one he ate.
The stewardess was just about to take our trays away when the steward from the night before came by with a platter of pastries. I think they were bear claws. My stomach was full, but I noticed that Terry and Bob grabbed a couple of the goodies. I wish I’d known the attendants were going to be offering bear claws. I’d have traded the yogurt for that. But yogurt was better for me, I thought to myself as I inwardly sighed.
Breakfast over, coffee drained, bear claws no longer walking the aisles, it was time to prepare for departure. The airline had given us a toothbrush and toothpaste. The latter was the cutest miniature tube you’ve ever seen. I wanted to keep mine as a souvenir, but, instead, I stood up, ready to attempt to brush my teeth in a phonebooth-sized bathroom. (Yes, I remember phonebooths. Superman changed in them, right?)
“Let’s wait until we land, darling. The hotel will have an elegant bathroom all properly readied for your face washing and toothbrushing. Okay?”
“What about morning breath?” I asked, but I’d barely gotten the words out before Timothy was kissing me.
Guess what I learned. Pookas, absolutely, do not have morning breath. Ever.