Andrew Roe
There wasn’t much to say. We’d reached that soggy impasse where we were running out of material and dialogue, our script letting us down. Tired of each other after only a month—and god, what did that say about our capacity, or rather incapacity, for intimacy, about our shallowness, which, sure, was no doubt reflective of a larger cultural shallowness, but still, you had to wonder if we were in fact epic failures or merely honestly acknowledging the reality that this wasn’t right and we should then therefore move on, and move on sooner rather than later, respectfully, adultly? I mean, why drag things on? We’d seen the movies, sampled the gamut of ethnic restaurants, spoke of jazz and John Cassavetes, consoled and cuddled when appropriate, gone through that initial—and mind you, not to be underestimated—elation of exploring someone new (figuratively, literally). Continuing any further would prolong the inevitable. We both knew that it wasn’t working, that it was like we were trying to remember the words to a song just beyond the orbit of memory, that except for the comfort sex and at-least-I’m-not-alone relief of dating someone and not being a social exile among one’s coupled peers (particularly acute on Friday and Saturday nights) there wasn’t a true future here. Despite sharing a certain much-coveted youthful demographic. Despite the compelling “P” factor—that is our professional, personal and political similarities. Despite coming to the city at more or less the same time and making our respective marks in a relatively short time, both of us vesting nicely and earning good money (and how I’ve always wanted to say that—“I’m making good money”—aloud in a restaurant or crowded elevator, and now that I could I realized I hadn’t done so yet). In short, our existence as a couple, whether spoken or unspoken, was doomed. What else can I say? We’d peaked.
…..So. One of us was going to have to do something. That would be me.
***
As a general rule, I prefer public breakups. That way, there’s less of a chance of tears and embarrassing theatrics and saying things you don’t really mean—well, all right, deep down you probably do mean them, otherwise you wouldn’t be saying them, goes the reasoning—not to mention the potential for the rash throwing of conveniently located sharp-pointed domestic objects (CD cases, for example; buried within the lushness of my left eyebrow, I still bear the faint scar of Yo La Tengo’s May I Sing With Me). And so, for this particular severance, after spending an extended lunch hour debating the possibilities (the upcoming “Taste of the City” street fair, the newly opened revolving restaurant where you can also bungee jump and get a henna tattoo), I finally chose a much more daring venue: a hot air balloon ride.
…..And how had I arrived at such an inspired choice? That morning someone had handed me a flyer when I stepped out of the subway first thing. Sick of the city? it proclaimed. Then why not venture out into the country and treat yourself to a good old-fashioned hot air balloon ride! Incredible views! Fresh air! Idyllically pastoral! Romantic! Memorable! And more! Bring this flyer and get a 20-25 percent discount. Something like that. I had my stage.
…..Back in the office I speed-dialed but got voice mail, the eternal promise of I can’t take your call right now please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. But I didn’t leave a message. Instead I decided to go with e-mail, crafting a buoyant Trojan horse message that featured my usual witty e-mail style and plenty of : )s and abbreviations and exclamation points/question marks for emphasis, as in: “Can you believe that Byron is stepping in and taking over the redesign like he’s Stalin or something when he’s not even technically my boss and just a glorified code jockey???!!! I mean WTF?! Arrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhh… You work for a company for one year+ and you think you run the g.d. place. Well, some people. BTW, bring a sweater. It gets a little chilly 1,000 ft. in the air:)”
…..Late in the afternoon I received a brief pronoun-less response. “Sorry couldn’t write back sooner. Busy busy. Wow. Was just thinking about you. Synergy or what? Ha ha. Balloon ride. Sounds like fun. Never been. Probably be home late. Will call then. Don’t wait up though. Crazy here. Biz dev breaking down. Traffic tanking. Much talk about the bubble. Don’t even get me started on the click-throughs.”
…..Whatever happened to the “I,” I wondered.
***
We left early in the morning, a seemingly aimless Sunday (ah, secrets! the power of knowledge, those who know what’s about to come and those who don’t), driving out of the city and into the country. The sun reluctantly grew more elaborate in the sky, a rinsing light. Signs announced historical landmarks, but none ever seemed to materialize. We passed abandoned barns and dusty antique shops and roadside fruit stands, where little barefoot children (at least I imagined them as barefoot) wagged about, waving at us like we were celebrities. Five minutes early, we pulled into the empty church parking lot. There was the balloon spread across the concrete, sadly limp and inert and deflated. There, too, was the basket thingy that would serve as our carriage, the circumscribed setting for the drama to come. (Thoughts, thoughts: maybe I should have gone with the revolving restaurant/bungee jump idea after all.) Our balloonist was Todd, proprietor of Icarus Balloon Adventures (an odd choice for a namesake, I thought, considering the haughty Greek’s famous plummet into the ocean), who soon began readying the antiquated-looking device along with the assistance of two teenage boys, brothers maybe, both bored and sleepy, wearing the same baggy urban attire and wispy little mustaches they bravely hadn’t given up on yet. As we spread sun block on our noses and ear lobes, our delicate and vulnerable parts, Todd approached us (“Make sure that fan keeps going—and no smoking,” he instructed the boys, who were inflating what I later learned was called the envelope) and offered an enthusiastic hand, introducing himself, making a point of repeating our names out loud to help him remember them. He wore acid-washed jeans and an untucked flannel shirt with a black T-shirt underneath, his hair longish, whiskey-colored, practically to his wide linebacker’s shoulders. Around thirty, thirty-five, that regrettable age—it’s coming, I know—where you’re somehow both too young and too old. His face in the early stages of decline. I pegged him as a listener of classic rock, a devotee of Deep Purple, Traffic, Led Zeppelin, as well as some of the more obscure bands my brother used to listen to—April Wine, Foghat. This was his weekend gig, Todd told us. During the week he delivered auto parts. “Most people around here have to work two, three jobs,” he said. “You’re not just a farmer. You’re a farmer and a cable installer.”
…..I handed Todd the flyer.
…..“Cool,” he said. “How about 23 percent on the discount?”
…..“Sure,” I said. Then I mentioned the deserted parking lot.
…..“Shouldn’t there be people here?” I asked.
…..“Why?”
…..“It’s Sunday. This is a church. This is the country.”
…..“People aren’t as religious out here as everyone seems to think. We’ve got our secular preoccupations like everyone else, believe you me.”
…..After watching an instructional video inside the church, signing some papers that we feigned to read thoroughly and getting a few last-minute dos and don’ts out of the way (do not make any sudden movements, do not look directly down if you are prone, or even slightly prone, to a fear of heights, do enjoy yourself…), we stepped aboard the basket-the balloon, the envelope, now erect and looming above us—and started our ascent. And just like that we were weightless, no longer of the earth, gravity-free. Below us the teenagers were lighting up, growing smaller and smaller until they were blurry purposeless specks. I felt an unsettling surge in my stomach. Swallowing became problematic. Come to think of it, the basket hardly seemed suitable for such a miraculous thing as flight. Wicker was, after all, wicker. Basically glorified straw, right? Hard to feel comfortable when you’re floating in the air in a large picnic basket—and plus I had a speech to deliver, a heart to puree. As for the other passengers, Todd was diligently working the controls, checking the various instruments, releasing periodic bursts of hot air or whatever it was, while—well, what does it matter anyway. Let’s just say the other person of concern here gazed as if unaware, a tourist who cannot fathom any harm coming their way, their traveler status shielding them from the unknown and the world’s random rush.
***
“First time?” Todd asked.
…..“What?”
…..“This your first time?”
…..“Yes,” we chorused.
…..Climbing higher, we looked at each other, acknowledging our mounting mutual uneasiness. For a while I even forgot my ulterior motives, the monologue brewing in my brain. The wind whipped psychotically. My hair went crazy, fluttering like the wind machine-blown locks of an androgynous rock star in a music video. Water filled my eyes.
…..“Yep, this here’s your standard issue AX-7,” Todd said, or rather yelled, because that’s what you had to do if you wanted to be heard. “And the fuel here we’re using is just your plain old liquid propane gas, plus you’ve got your two backup burners thereabouts. Propane. Same gas used in your basic backyard barbecue grill, if you’re so inclined. Damn. Just look.”
…..We looked. Gridded fields. Vague greenery. What maybe was a lake.
…..“You can see everything from up here,” Todd continued. He was wistful, wise, sea captain-like. “Unless of course you get the clouds rolling in. But I think we’ll be all right today. You’re in luck. We’ll probably be able to see all the way to Freeman County, maybe the mountains. Once we get high enough. Perspective. That’s what this is all about. Perspective. You city folks are always going on and on about the perspective.”
…..We were still rising, faster now. No longer could we make out the teens. They’d been consumed by the vastness. The earth lay below, fuzzed, pillow-soft, incredibly docile, incredibly forgiving, somehow. I don’t know why, because I wasn’t so sure about dangling in the air unmoored like that, but for a moment it strangely seemed that if you accidentally fell out, or even if you were violently pushed, you’d land without a sound, without damage. Intact. Then the moment passed. And I knew again what a tumble from this altitude would entail: obliteration, a lethal freefall, your body no longer you.
…..“You’d be surprised how many people puke,” said Todd. “They never seem to make it over the side though.”
***
The trip was supposed to last for an hour, that’s what you pay for, an hour, but I didn’t think I could hold out that long. Too much was percolating in my head, my chest. You know how it is: Once you’ve decided to do something you want to do it, get it over with. You start jonesing for closure when you know what you’re about to say or do will have an impact—immediate, emphatic, life-altering. So I explained the situation, which of course didn’t really need explaining, but I did so regardless, for the sake of the record and general breakup etiquette and so that our affable balloonist—he’d actually referred to himself at one point as a “balloonatic”—could have a little context. Todd made a face, retracting his jaw like ouch, like harsh. After I’d finished, there was no sound except the wind, just the fierce tearing against the sky, which was incredibly blue, the blue of TV commercials and old westerns. Then my cell went off, the hopeful chirpiness of the ring stabbing us, implicating us. Or me. Either way, I didn’t answer. There was Chardonnay in a mini cooler. Three kinds of imported cheese. Part of the package. Maybe we could get it to go.
…..“You’re telling me this now? Here? Here? Up in the fucking sky? In a fucking balloon?”
…..I tried to recall if any of our previous conversations had included the word fuck before, but I couldn’t think of any other instances. And now: twice. Twice in two sentences. Although not mine.
…..Of course there would be embellishments for the benefit of friends and coworkers, a fictionalizing of my shortcomings, an unfair overemphasis on my alleged fear of commitment, because of my undeniable guilt as the instigator, as the bald, cat-loving villain of James Bond lore, because I’d been the one, I’d sought the prime mover advantage, the first to market, even though we both knew we’d already scorched through our first round of funding and there was no capital with which to continue on. Our burn rate terminal. But had I waited another week, another month, it might have been different. Our roles reversed. I’ll take autonomy over sympathy any day.
…..More was said, eventually. The other party pissed. And rightfully so. After all, how would I feel if someone gave me the boot while on a balloon ride, perched thousands of feet in the air, nowhere to go, nothing to throw, nothing to focus on but our inadequacies?
***
Todd was right. You really could see everything from up here: the scatter of toy houses and farms, the rolling hills, the mountain range whose name I didn’t know, the occasional smear of cloud, the nonstop sky, the highway tonguing its way back to civilization. And the city, where we’d come from and where we’d return, which was nothing but a remote glimmer to the eye, a trick of light, blink enough times and it would be gone. Everything so far away, so distant. From here you could reach out to touch something, reach as much and as hard and as far as you’d like, and it wouldn’t be there. Space. The space between us—between you—and the rest of the world. Other people, I guess.
…..I soothed as best I could. I was a veteran soother, and I was more than willing to further hone my skills. One thing I’ve learned about the art of breaking up: do whatever it takes to make the other person feel better. It’s worth it for the uncomfortable short term, especially if you’re in an environment where there’s no opportunity for fleeing, such as a hot air balloon ride. But really, the protestations, though expected, though seeming impressively heartfelt and genuine, were just for show. More for Todd than us. Having an audience helped, I think. That, too, was part of the overall strategy here. Still, the part of the shocked, unsuspecting significant other had to be played out. It didn’t take long. Within minutes, I sensed a mellowing out, an acceptance of the truth, only a lingering bitterness that I’d been the one with the foresight and courage to call it off.
…..The drive home would be better. By then, the initial traces of any hurt would fully dissipate. Maybe we’d even get nostalgic. Talk about the good times, the early days. Perhaps turn on the classic rock station in honor of Todd. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bad Company, the Doors. We’d know all the words at last.
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Andrew Roe’s fiction has appeared in Tin House, One Story, Glimmer Train, The Cincinnati Review and other publications. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he lives in Oceanside, California. Predictably, he has a blog.
