Fifteen years. Wow. It doesn’t seem like it’s been that long, does it?"
“Nope, it doesn’t."
“And my parents were just so sure that we wouldn’t last a month. I guess we showed them, didn’t we?"
“Yep, we sure did."
The countryside swept by the car in a green blur, the sunlight flickering across both of their faces. Doug had worn sunglasses, but Tracy had forgotten hers at home. She lowered the visor and closed her eyes, feeling the warmth against her lids.
“Can you turn down the air? I’m freezing," Tracy said, rubbing her hands up and down over her arms, smattered with goose bumps.
“You’re always cold. Why didn’t you bring a sweater like I told you to?"
“Because it’s summer, Doug! I shouldn’t need a sweater."
“Yes, but you could have brought it for the ride up."
“Can’t you just turn down the air? I’m asking nicely."
Doug pulled into the grass of the big open field, being careful to avoid any holes or mounds. The hot air balloon was tied down in the distance, its dusky pink color contrasted against the shrill blue of the sky.
“Isn’t it beautiful?" Tracy breathed, sliding out of the car and slamming the door behind her.
Doug followed suit, locking the car with a click on his key fob. He looked down into Tracy’s expectant face.
He had once found her attractive. God, that was so many years ago. He had once been drawn to her curiously vibrant violet eyes, set deep and wide into her small, heart shaped face. As she grew older, she looked more and more like an aging extraterrestrial, one from one of those classic black and white science fiction films.
“Well?" Tracy prompted.
“Well, what?"
“I asked you a question."
Doug rolled his eyes behind his dark glasses. Even though he knew she couldn’t see his impatience, he was certain she could sense it with her invisible antennae.
“What was the question?"
“I asked, isn’t it 'beautiful?’"
“I thought that was a rhetorical question."
Doug began walking towards the hot air balloon, taking deliberately big strides so Tracy had to take twice as many of her mincing steps to keep up.
“No."
“Then, yes. It is beautiful."
Doug’s loping gait had put him several feet ahead of his wife. In college, they used to take walks in the woods behind Doug’s fraternity, their hands laced together. The air was heavy on their walks and almost sleepy with the perfume of wildflowers opening their buds to be pollinated by fat, indolent bees. Tracy would frequently stop to pick and arrange a small bouquet to carry with her, held demurely at her waist as if practicing for the aisle. Sometimes Doug would weave flowers into Tracy’s auburn hair.
“Slow down, Doug!" Tracy snapped.
Tracy struggled to pull her heel free from the soft earth, her flimsy arms flailing madly. Doug smirked. “Don’t laugh at me! Help me."
“What do you want me to do? Carry you?"
“No! Just, I don’t know, give me your arm and don’t walk so damn fast."
With just a millisecond of reluctance, Doug offered the crook of his elbow to his wife who grasped it a bit too tightly.
“Why did you think it would be a good idea to wear heels to a hot air balloon ride, anyway?"
“Because I wanted to feel pretty on our anniversary, that’s why! God. Why do you have to pick
apart everything I do?"
The attention to her appearance had once driven Doug wild. He’d show up at her door to pick her up for a date. She would open the door, looking absolutely perfect. Her hair was curled softly around her face and her makeup was exquisite. Her cheeks were rosy and flushed as if she was feeling just as much passion and yearning as he was beneath her otherwise porcelain exterior. She framed her luminous eyes with crisp liner and mascara. Her lashes seemed to stretch for miles.
Now her attention to her appearance seemed frivolous and vain, or perhaps it just seemed that way because she was older. Doug would try not to look at her too closely when he’d catch her seated at her vanity putting on her face. It was grotesque and clinical, now, a doctor preparing a hunk of flesh for surgery or a mortician painstakingly primping a corpse for the ground.
“I guess we just wait here for the guide," Doug said more to himself as they both came up on the balloon. It was much more massive than Doug had expected, its girth casting a large shadow across the rippling grass. The balloon strained against its ropes like a caught animal.
“Wow, look at it!" Tracy breathed, circling the balloon. “It looks even bigger up close."
“Yup, it sure does."
“You don’t sound that enthusiastic."
Tracy crossed her arms in front of her chest and continued on with her perimeter of the balloon.
“Tracy, it was my idea to come here. I’m plenty enthusiastic."
It was hard for Doug to remember the last time he’d felt excited around Tracy. Two years ago?
Five years ago? Their honeymoon? Their wedding day?
Tracy gave her husband a hard look. “You’ve changed, Doug."
“Jesus. Let’s not do this here, Tracy."
Doug came home one evening months prior to find his wife with an empty wine bottle, her mascara running down her face and her cheeks splotchy. She pushed her hair out of her eyes with a slow and disjointed gesture, her eyes following Doug as he hung up his coat at the door and set his briefcase down.
“What’s wrong with me, Doug?" she asked, slipping on her words.
“You’re going to have to be more specific, dear," Doug spat.
He stalked into the kitchen and threw open the freezer door so he could extract a frozen meal.
Grabbing a fork, he stabbed the prescribed holes into the film.
“Why don’t you love me anymore?" Tracy clarified, pushing her chair back and grasping the table with quaking hands.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you do this shit all the time? I come home from working a ten-hour day to find that you’ve done nothing but sit around and get sloshed. I know this isn’t the fifties anymore, Tracy, but, goddamn it, is it too much to ask for you to cook dinner? You don’t even have a job! You do nothing."
Doug didn’t have to look at Tracy to see her scrunching up her face, her eyes welling up with more hot tears. He’d seen that so many times before. Anyone who’s ever told a woman she didn’t look ugly when she cried was a liar, he thought.
It was hard to articulate why he no longer loved his wife. He supposed it was running out of both conversations and sex positions at the same time so that there was nothing to fall back on. When they did spend time together, Tracy wasted it by relaying the drama and gossip of the neighboring apartments to Doug.
That was why he liked Tina, he had decided. Tina was a shy girl at the office, just out of college and trying to get her bearings in the working world. She did her work quickly and near silently, pausing now and then to offer Doug a slight smile, her fully red lips parting to reveal young, white teeth in a pristine row.
First they champ, then they stamp, then they stand still.
At night, when he made reluctant love to his wife, Doug pictured himself bending Tina over her own desk and doing unspeakable things to her as she cried out in ecstasy, something Tracy never did.
During the daytime, he told himself he’d never do those things even if he had the chance to do them. At night, though, he knew he would.
“You never want to talk about us," Tracy said, reaching out to touch the basket they’d be riding in.
“I just don’t want to talk about it when we’re supposed to be celebrating our anniversary. This
is supposed to be a good day."
“Oh, and talking about us as a couple would make it a bad day?"
Tracy pressed down on the basket and watched as the balloon sagged and then lifted again, straining against the ropes.
“Tracy, don’t mess around with the balloon."
She tipped back her head and let out a mirthless laugh. He could see her veins bulging out slightly in her neck.
“I forgot. No fun allowed when Doug’s around."
She smiled at her own rhyme. Her husband narrowed his eyes and then looked away.
They had met what felt like ages ago on a sleeting winter night in the city outside a little Italian restaurant where they had both been on dates with other people.
Her hair was down in gentle waves and steam furled out of her red mouth as she reached into her jacket for her pack of cigarettes.
“Got a light?" she said to the man next to her, looking up at him through a fan of thick dark lashes.
Doug reached into his pocket and took out his lighter, flicking it until a successful flame rose up against the wind. She leaned into the flame, the yellow light casting shadows across her delicate face. She pulled back and took a drag, blowing the smoke up into the black sky.
“Thanks."
It was silly now, Doug thought, that he had thought he had fell in love with her at first sight. He should have just let her go, he thought now, let her be the perfect girl who got away. Instead, he had taken her and watched her morph into what she was now. Old and sad.
“Give me a lift," Tracy said. “What?"
“Into the basket. Give me a lift."
“Ok, stop screw around, Tracy."
“Ha! Fifteen years ago, you would have been in the basket with me, fingering me. But now you’re boring."
Doug let out an exaggerated sigh and grabbed his wife around the waist. Without ceremony, he dumped her into the basket.
“Jesus, Doug!"
Doug didn’t respond. He folded his arms and leaned his back against the basket, feeling it sway slightly from the weight of his body.
His face hot, he focused on the series of intricate knots tethering the balloon in place.
Tentatively, Doug reached out and followed the ins and outs of the rope with his finger.
It would really only take a couple seconds to untie them. He could have them undone before she even noticed what he was doing. By then, she’d be flying high above the ground, too high to jump down.
Doug leaned his head back and looked up into the great blue abyss above. He imagined the balloon taking his wife far, far away, so far away that he couldn’t even hear her when she screamed down at him. He imagined her floating up and over the countryside. Eventually she’d grow hungry and dehydrated, curling up on the floor of the basket to die quietly. Or maybe she’d get caught in a storm and come crashing down to the earth or into the sea where the waves would swallow her up.
On earth, Doug would wander back to his car and call the police, doing his best to sound breathless with fear. He’d appear on local news channels pleading with the public to keep an eye open for his poor, frightened wife. When they finally found her broken body weeks, months, or years later, he’d shed a tear and arrange a touching memorial service. He’d go home afterward and rail Tina until they were both sweaty and sore.
Shaking his head, Doug returned to reality, to Tracy’s jabbering as she bobbed up and down in the balloon. He supposed he should feel the sharp sting of guilt for fantasizing about such a horrible thing. But he didn’t. The idea itself was intoxicating, freeing, filling his chest up with a prickly excitement. He stroked the knots more vigorously, the rough fibers scraping against his callouses.
“Oh!" Tracy exclaimed. She paused their one-sided conversation, whatever it was about, to wave frantically to a figure approaching from across the field. “That must be the instructor."
Doug dropped his hand from the knots. With the other, he slowly raised it in greeting.