Two Feet Off The Ground Page 12

  * *

  A few minutes later, I found the group huddled in front of the ropes to the simulator entrance. Amber hung onto Chuck’s arm like he was mink coat she was showing off. She snubbed my smile, looking out over my shoulder at the wall behind me.

  I decided I could never really like her.

  “Ride with me?” Paula asked.

  I examined the series of simulators lined up against the wall. Suddenly Owen pulled me down to his level and whispered, “Jake said if you close your eyes you won’t feel like you’re flying.”

  I craned my neck out to swallow more freely. I smiled weakly at Paula ready to tell her that unless she had a little magic pill in her pocket that would knock me unconscious, she’d be flying solo. But before I could dig up my voice, Paula ran off to the ticket counter to buy our tickets. Chuck followed.

  Amber stood there looking like a broken teacup.

  “You’re going to really get on it, Mom?”

  “Hell no. You can go in my place,” I said to him.

  A mocking smile crept on Amber’s face. “You’re afraid to fly, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I said. “I just don’t feel like it.”

  Paula came back before I could answer.

  “Ready to ride?” Paula asked me.

  A playful flicker sparked in Amber’s eyes. “I think she’s too scared.”

  “Scared?” Paula asked me.

  “Of course not,” I said, flicking Amber anything but a playful spark. I’d just close my eyes through the whole ride. My feet would only be twelve inches off the ground. How bad could it be? “I’m ready when you are.”

  * *

  Some people craved alcohol, others pasta and bread. I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d wind up craving a woman who craved thrills. But, yep, there I was kicking my pace into high gear to keep up with her as we headed up to this simulator thingy that would soon toss me backwards forwards, sideways, and from the looks of the one all the way to the far corner, upside down.

  My stomach dropped, and I hadn’t even stepped foot onto the ride’s platform.

  Paula stepped up the stairs first to have a look around our new home for the next five minutes of my tortured life. Anything for love right?

  I hated this.

  I looked back at Owen before reaching up for Paula’s hand and he shrugged and pointed his mouth into a funny lopsided wave. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them fast and nodded at me. That was his last piece of advice to me before the simulator door shut and swallowed me up whole.

  I had spent years trying to avoid this very, vulnerable state I now so easily, and stupidly, put myself in. I’d flown only a couple of times and became the first person in the history of the planet to ever nearly drive my nails through the arms of an airplane seat. The first time, my trip to Disney World with my favorite Aunt Lou and cousin Vinny, didn’t go so well. Vinny tried his best to prepare me. But, he left out the all important part about when the landing gear receded back inside the belly of the plane. There we were, a few thousand feet hovering mysteriously above Providence and this loud, grumbling noise shook the floor below me like an angry tummy churning out some bad beans. My first attack was born literally out of thin air.

  My friend Lilly from fourth grade tried to explain what it felt like to have the air sucked out of my lungs and to feel like I was about to die, but until my world turned upside down that day thirty-thousand feet in the air, Lilly might as well have been telling me a fairytale. My first attack was much more gruesome, sort of like The Shining on steroids.

  We took the train back from Florida.

  Two more times after that nightmare, I somehow ended up back in the air. My grandmother insisted I mount that bird one more time to ruffle up the feathers of fear and shake them for good. Yeah, right. That didn’t go so well. The plane hit what Gran had called “a pocket of air” and I immediately hit the bathroom and locked myself in there for the remainder of the three-hour flight to Fort Myers. Clinging to the miniature sink, and under fire from the pounding of fists against the door from the flight crew, I braced for death and screamed with every “bit of air” they bumped into that very bad day.

  I had warned my Gran.

  I rode a bus home that time.

  Then, finally, when I was ten, my parents tricked me into flying again. On the morning of the family trip to Bar Harbor, my mom gave me one of the little blue pills that she took every morning with her coffee along with another mysterious pill. They told me we were driving to Maine and that the pills would help me sleep on the ride.

  Well, they lied.

  I woke up strapped to an airplane seat and floating by a group of clouds.

  “See, it’s no big deal, sweetheart,” my mom said to me with a smile more fake than Joan Rivers plastic face.

  Yeah, “no big deal” if I was hanging out poolside showing off my new bikini, not suspended in mid-air gasping for my last breath. The flight attendant actually had to radio the captain to tell him a passenger needed immediate emergency assistance. To the dismay of the two-hundred other passengers that day on route to fill up on fresh Maine lobsters, the captain turned the plane around and landed back in Providence to dump me off on the gurney waiting curbside for me.

  To that day, I had no idea how a camera crew from Channel Twelve Eyewitness News got wind of the breaking story. One would have thought Elvis came back to life with the sea of microphones huddling around my mouth like an NFL football team at the start of Super Bowl Sunday.

  I landed on the television screens of millions that night as the girl who ruined flight 626 because of a panic attack.

  Scarred.

  For life.

  Now, staring at the control panel of this simulator ride, I prayed for mercy. I looked over at Paula whose big grin stretched across her face. “This is going to be so cool.” She wriggled in her seat like a restless kid in church on Easter Sunday waiting for Mass to just end so she could go pluck Easter eggs from the grass outside.

  “Ready for some thrills?” she asked.

  I wanted to throw up.

  Fucking Amber.

  * *

  The ride hadn’t even started rocking and my head whirled. I smiled weakly at Paula. As the ride warmed up, a runway burst onto the screen in front of us. The scene felt so real. Even in my peripheral vision, I could see a fake building to my right and planes parked alongside the runway waiting their turn to take off into the all-too-real blue sky. A breeze blew at us and suddenly, the seat bolted backwards and vibrated. We were racing down the runway full force, heading towards a group of trees. Just moments before we reached the end of the runway, the plane took off, and the ride titled backwards, spilling the blood out of my head in an instant.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, but still felt like I was suspended mid-air. The ride rolled side to side as the plane shot up. The growling tummy of the undercarriage, the shimmying, the pockets of air were all there to capture the reality.

  My head spun out of control. I opened my eyes and looked down at the control panel. I couldn’t see. Everything blurred like I was sitting in a bowl of water looking out at the world. I tried to grasp onto something, anything, for balance, but my hands were soaked in sweat and slipping from the plastic.

  My heart pounded too. The air thinned. I couldn’t get any of it in my lungs, just small little squirts. I gulped, pressing my eyes shut again and concentrating on taking in small, deep breaths. But, I was overloaded like a badly wired circuit. I shook violently and could only manage shallow gasps.

  Suddenly, Paula hooted and flipped the machine over in a mid-air somersault.

  I hurled out a blood-curling scream. “Stop! Get me out of here!”

  She continued flipping over and over again, laughing like the evil Wizard.

  I clawed at the door handle, yanking at it, willing it to pop open, still screaming as loud as my vocal chords would allow. My life depended on it. I was going to die.

  I broke out into hysterical, convulsive cries fo
r mercy. “Please stop! I’m not kidding. Get me out.” Then, finally, I screamed, “Stop the fucking machine!”

  And just like that, she dropped her hands from the controls and held them up like a suspected criminal in a raid. “You okay?”

  I held my throat and wrestled to breath. “Not feeling well.”

  After that, everything went black and fuzzy. The next thing I knew, a group of strangers stared down at me, one slapped a wet cloth across my forehead. Someone lifted my head and forced me to drink water, which of course, spilled down the front of my white shirt, giving a free showing of nipples to any pervert in the crowd.

  Paula leaned in and kissed my forehead. “What happened to you?”

  I propped up on my elbows and bit my lip trying to find the right way to break into the truth of who I was really. “I don’t think I’ll ever be getting back on one of those again.”

  She didn’t say anything. She just stared at me confused like I just told her I was from Mars.

  * *

  We walked back to the hotel room in silence. Even Amber managed to keep her trap closed and eyes pointed straight ahead. Paula marched ahead of me kicking rocks, looking pissed. She had no clue what I was going through on that ride. We’d never be happy together. I’d just hold her back. I would never be that adventurous partner always in search for the next adrenaline high. I was done pretending. I was who I was, just as clearly as she was who she was. I’d put the truth out there for her and let her chose.

  If she wanted to get her fix riding in a simulator ride every day for the rest of her life that was her choice. It would never be mine. If she wanted to toss herself off a cliff with a parachute attached to her back, then so be it. It didn’t make any difference to me or change my view of her in the least bit. I couldn’t imagine she’d feel the same.

  If I understood Paula, I’d bet she’d try to fix me. I hated when people thought they could. From the height she was giving those rocks, I could tell she was combing her mind for ideas on how she could do just that.

  “Hey, what the hell happened back there?” Chuck snuck up from behind me, hushing his voice to a whisper.

  I was so tired of pretending to be this super brave woman afraid of nothing. So what if I was afraid to fly? Paula was afraid of a silly snake. That didn’t make her any less of a woman to me. “I don’t like rides.” There I said it, and I felt pretty darn good about it, too.

  “Amber told me you’re afraid to fly.”

  I wanted to chop off all of Amber’s hair and flush it down the toilet where it belonged. I wanted to hurt her, not in a twenty-years-to-life type way. I just wanted to have a little fun at her expense. Make her whimper like she stubbed her toe really hard on the edge of her bureau. “She’s a smart one.” I couldn’t hold back on the sarcasm.

  “So, she’s right?”

  I hated her.

  “Yes. Okay. I am deathly afraid to fly and have tried all the techniques out there to get over it. I’ve read books. Tried hypnosis. Talked to people. Watched a special on Oprah. None of it works.”

  “Lots of people are afraid to fly. Amber was, too, until I coaxed her up in my plane.”

  “Well, good for Amber.”

  “I can help you.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You’ll come around.” Chuck swung an arm around my shoulder and picked up our pace. “You can’t hang with the McKennas and not fly.”

  My stomach dove deep. “I’m not going up in the air.”

  “Wanna bet?” In one motion, Chuck swept me into the air and up over his shoulder and started running.

  I couldn’t breathe I was laughing so hard. “I’m serious. I’m not!” I punched his back and kicked my feet. He just kept running with me and all I kept thinking was how much I’d miss him if he wasn’t around.

  * *

  Okay, so maybe Amber wasn’t too terrible of a bitch after all. When Chuck begged Paula to have a drink at the bar with him, Amber stepped up and offered to not only watch their kids, but also to watch Owen and Jake while I took a bath. My legs throbbed and the only salvation was hot water and an aspirin.

  I believed my panic attack scared the living crap out of her. Owen confessed that she told him she thought I was dead when I was lying there on the floor at the foot of the simulator. Death can have that effect on people. I’d seen it turn a stone-cold man into a gentle one when I was in hairdressing school. My instructor, Mr. Arnold, was the meanest instructor in the school. We swore he was the devil himself. He’d whack my knuckles with a comb when I wound my roller sets wrong. And once, he made Aziza bleed when he was demonstrating how not to cut someone’s cuticles. Even when Aziza screamed in horror at her bloody finger, he showed no emotion. But, the day he received a phone call that his beloved sister died in a car accident, he softened like a stick of butter in a pile of warm mashed potatoes. After that, he spoke with a soft breeze and a delicate smile pursed on his face. He even tossed compliments around the clinic floor.

  So, I was a firm believer that the near thought of death could change a person.

  As I relaxed into the pool of suds, I immediately laid my head back against my bath pillow and forgot all about the day’s fiasco. I thought of Paula and how great her legs looked in her shorts. I loved the way her calves curved when she walked and the way her ass bobbed back and forth in perfect rhythm with each step she took. I wondered how she would taste and how soft the skin between her legs would feel against my lips.

  I grabbed a handful of bubbles. They smelled like lilacs and felt like silk on my fingertips. I could’ve really gone for a glass of wine, and oddly enough a cigarette, at that point.

  I feathered another helping of bubbles in front of me.

  If I could just make love to her, bring her over that edge of ecstasy, maybe she’d never leave. Maybe she’d accept me as I was with all my wacky fears. We’d turn into horny, sex addicts towards each other, spending our mornings and nights tangled up together riding out the waves of euphoria.

  Chapter Ten

  Challenges of the human spirit always intrigued me. The more someone resisted, the more I couldn’t help but to dig further. That didn’t always work to my advantage. Like the time Pat Swift stormed through the front door at Bella and demanded someone fix her ruby-red roots or else suffer a curse. Now, most logical people would laugh at such a threat, chalking it up to some mental disorder, but the girls at Bella were a little more gullible. Pat told the girls that she was a witch, and everyone, including me, believed this to be true. In fact, I sensed Pat was fully armed and ready to toss her evil darts if someone didn’t throw her down in a chair that second and plop some serious ash brown on those flame-throwing roots that the salon around the corner gave her.

  Everyone, including Deogie scoured off into the break room, leaving me fending for a life free of Pat’s curses all on my own. After all, Pat was suspected to be the one who destroyed the wax machine after Dolly, an esthetician, tore off one of her eyebrows by accident. An hour after Pat left, huddling her hand over her eye like a frantic pirate, the wax machine mysteriously boiled over, dribbling hot, molten wax all over the cart and tile floor below. The huge mess cost Aziza nine hundred bucks to clean up. Aziza should’ve been the one shaking up at the front desk, repelling Pat’s negative force. Instead, she was the first one to plow through the back room doors to safety.

  Thankfully, I managed to massage the lady’s ego into submission. Pat left smiling and praising the ground I graced. From that day forth, she proclaimed me to be safe under the sun for the rest of my life.

  Maybe this proclamation was what lifted me off my seat on the bus ride home and head straight to the source of my angst. We were a quarter into the drive home, when I scooted up to where Chuck and Amber sat. “Hey, mind if I sit for a minute,” I asked Chuck, cocking my head over to the empty seat next to Paula so he’d get the hint and move out of the way.

  Thankfully he squeezed out of the seat. “Be nice,” he whispered to me on his way past.
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br />   My whole goal was to be as nice as possible. To be the bigger person. To be Paula’s first girlfriend to ever climb to the Mount Everest of winning Madam Amber’s approval. But, befriending her would no doubt be harder than anything.

  I’d swallow my pride and curse words and rise to the challenge. I’d break through the ice and plunge naked into her frigid world if that’s what it took. Okay, maybe not naked, but I’d at least attempt to be sincere in my efforts nonetheless.

  I slid into the seat beside Amber and smiled. “Thanks for watching the boys last night.”

  “I only did it because Chuck promised me a massage later on.”

  “Still, thank you.”

  “I talked to Chuck last night and he told me he’s going to help you get over your fear of flying. I think that’s great that you’re going to try.”

  Oh boy. Amber attempted to connect to me in a natural, unforced and nice way. She actually looked pretty in that moment. Our connection was as fragile as a cotton ball on the edge of a windy rooftop ledge, nevertheless a connection. Keeping the air as still as possible between us, I simply did the bigger thing and forced my mouth into a smile.

  “I know we kind of got off to a rough start yesterday. Can we start over again?” I asked.

  Amber took a deep breath and looked down. “Look, don’t take this the wrong way, but I really don’t care to make any more friends. Let’s just keep it superficial and I think we’ll be good.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t possibly tell her to go fuck herself the way I really wanted. So, I settled on making the first fake move. “Sure thing. It was great talking to you.”

  My teeth were still grinding together by the time I kicked Chuck back to his spot near his ungodly, inhumane, beast of a girlfriend. “She’s all yours. Nice and warmed up for you, just the way you probably like her.”

  Chuck rolled his eyes. “She’ll come around.” He got up and went back to his seat. Paula just smiled, laughing to herself.