The couple in the hot-air balloon basket are together. Alone.
A gust makes the basket rise and fall like a rowboat in a current.
“That tickled my tummy, if I’m being honest.” Hannah grips the basket’s edge more tightly. “And if I’m really being honest, I’d tell you I have a bad feeling about this.”
“If I was being honest, I’d tell you I’ve heard that before.” Cal adds, “Just stand close to me. I’m here for you. I got a quick refresher lesson from the pilot this morning.” He pulls a lever, increasing the fire below the balloon, causing it to rise faster.
“A refresher?”
“Uh-ha. When I was at art school in San Francisco, there was a festival with balloon rides just like this one. I became friends with the pilot.”
“Of course you did.” Hannah rolls her eyes. “You seem to know something about everything.”
He snickers just loud enough for her to hear.
Their conversation dries up as her worries whisper and then shout in her mind. What will we talk about? Are we going to talk at all? What if he tries to kiss me? What if I let him? She waves to Emma and Noah.
No one will see from down below. No one.
In just moments, Hannah and Cal rise higher and higher. Over palm trees and scrub oaks. Watching horses and buggies below. Over soldier-like lines of trees in orchard after orchard. Few houses dot the landscape.
“You know, someday flying will be as popular as riding in a train, maybe even replace it like trains replaced wagons.”
Cal’s prediction sails past Hannah’s ears. She’s entranced as she watches the balloon’s shadow move over the landscape. “Me? Flying? I’m surrounded at home with chickens and turkeys. Birds with wings that can barely lift their bodies off the ground except when they’re being chased. And even then, it’s just a dustup with a few loose feathers in the mix.”
“Seems unfair,” says Cal. “To have wings and not be able to fly. But think about caterpillars. There’s nothing about a caterpillar that even hints it’s going to have wings and ride the breeze. And yet it does.”
“And what wings they have! The most beautiful wings of all who fly. They fly on wings they didn’t know they had,” Hannah says. “Sort of like us. Here. Now.” The thrill Hannah’s feeling from the elevation swells as the world continues to shrink below. A tsunami of emotions sweep over her. This is the first time she’s allowed herself to be alone with a man since she became a widow. She keeps looking away from Cal to the city below. “It looks like a giant…well, now small…donut.”
“What does?”
Hannah points to the center of town, which is ringed with an unbroken loop of canvas tenting over the booths.
“You’re right. Kind of makes me hungry. Maybe we can take the children to dinner when we get—” Cal’s words are severed when the balloon’s basket sways like the pendulum on a mantle clock.
“Whoa there, Nelly,” he says as if the balloon is a horse. Cal releases more heat and the balloon rises above the unstable stream of air. “Allow me to distract you and take your mind off of things. I did some research about balloons this morning, in case the children had questions.” He clears his throat. “Did you know the Chinese invented the first hot-air balloon about 2,000 years ago?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“They weren’t gigantic like this one. They were small, like lanterns, and used for signaling in times of war.”
“That’s very, um, interesting.”
“Did you know animals were the first hot-air balloon passengers in eighteenth century France? Yes. They were. A sheep, a rooster, and a duck traveled more than two miles and safely landed after the balloon’s fabric became damaged. The animals were then inspected by a physician, who determined they were alive and well. And by golly! Those three animals became pioneers of ballooning and paved the way for humans. For their bravery, they were hailed as heroes and even got to spend their remaining days in the Menagerie in Versailles. Imagine that!”
Hannah forces a grin. “I’m feeling quite like a sheep or a rooster or a duck right now. Not quite myself.”
“Then you might not be delighted to know the first person to ever take flight in a hot-air balloon was also one of the first to die from it.”
“Cal, this lecture is becoming less and less reassuring. If that’s what you’re hoping for.”
He doesn’t acknowledge her comment and continues, “In 1783, that man successfully took flight in France. Up and down. But then he got greedy. He and his friend wanted to push the boundaries of ballooning by flying across the English Channel. Sadly, something went wrong, and the balloon caught on fire, which sent the two men falling to their deaths.”
His gaze goes up to the fiery source of heat above their heads and says nothing more. For the moment, anyway. Cal reaches down and pulls back a burlap sack that’s been concealing a green bottle and two fluted glasses. “You’ll like this part of my speech. My research, which I did to impress you, included tales of people clinking glasses and drinking champagne when flying in a balloon. In fact, it’s common to take part in the Balloonist’s Prayer before a flight and have a toast with a glass of champagne. While delightful, the whole thing is less celebratory and more practical.”
“Really?” I wonder if he senses that I’ve already prayed about 10,000 prayers.
“Farmers in the French countryside didn’t like balloons randomly landing in their fields. So, balloonists began to offer champagne to the farmers on whose fields the balloons would land, soothing their anger and allowing them to continue with their farm work.”
“Makes sense.” She eyes the bottle. “When do we get to—” Hannah clips her question and the basket pendulums again. More wildly this time. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Absolutely. Look down. See, we’re still safely connected to the ground by that rope. Wave to the children. Go on, wave.” He stops talking and takes in the view.
She hesitates, but she looks down and waves broadly to ensure her son and daughter see her. “It’s so quiet up here. Even serene.”
“The wind is our master.”
“I thought you were, considering all the training and experience you have.”
“I can help, but we’re at the mercy of the wind. That’s because we’re flying with the wind…at the whim of the wind.”
“You mean this isn’t a magic carpet ride with you at the reins? Or the steering wheel?”
“Far from it.” He looks out at the horizon. “A bird’s-eye view of Orange. Incredible. Just incredible.”
She smiles.
He returns an even bigger smile.
Her eyes dance back and forth.
So do his.
“What if we fall?”
“My dearest Hannah, but what if we fly…I mean keep flying? What if we navigate the skies forever?”
“Sounds wonderful,” she says sarcastically. “Let’s go down now. Should we signal the man at the other end of the rope?”
Cal pulls back the burlap sack a bit more. “You want me to do that before or after I give you these?” He reveals a bouquet of fresh-cut peach-orange roses. “They’re from my garden.”
“They’re lovely. You seem to have thought of everything.” Her words stop flowing as she allows her gaze to lock with his.
They gaze. And they gaze. And they gaze.
Cal breaks the silence. “Can you hear what I’m thinking?”
“Yes. I can.” She opens and widens her eyelids several times. “I always listen really carefully…with my eyes.”
His hand moves over to cover hers, which is gripping the basket’s edge.
She tilts her head slightly and lifts her chin.
He tips his head the other way and leans down. Slowly. Slower. Slower. Cal whispers, “I believe this is the part of the story when he kisses her.”
The hot-air balloon’s basket abruptly drops out from under them. His cheek collides with her mouth. They both stumble to the bottom of the basket and end up sitting next to each other. They fumble to find something to hold on to, to stabilize themselves in an unstable situation.
He chooses her.
She chooses him.
They embrace as the peach-orange roses scatter and do an airborne ballet around them.
The air swirls.
Their minds whirl.
Their lips meet.
And then suddenly, she lets go of her fears. Her hesitations. Her inhibitions. His lips are soft, impossibly soft against mine. Almost silken and pillowy at the same time. She doesn’t try to stop him. She does more than that. She kisses him back.
This is more than a kiss. Much more. As her lips caress his, over and over again, time stalls and then seems to stand still. Hannah’s world melts away. Into silence. Into intoxication.
He toys with her.
She toys with him.
He leads.
She leads.
Hannah wants desperately to keep her eyes open, to bear witness. But she can’t. Nobody’s kissed me like this before. All giving and no taking.
His lips tenderly trespass farther, focusing on her lower lip. Hot and tingly. Intimate. He’s kissing me with his whole mind. All of his attention. I can tell. I’m his whole universe. And he’s mine. Now, I’m cursed. Or am I blessed? No other kiss will ever compare.
She leans back. She studies him. She realizes something profound.
In the studio. In the store. In the street. Cal’s eyes were kissing me. His kiss was in his eyes all along.
“So, this is the air the angels breathe. Smells like roses to me,” Hannah states matter-of-factly as she brings them both back to reality. She looks at the remnants of the bouquet. “Wait a minute. It’s cooler all of a sudden. Are we flying higher? Or am I just feeling—”
He releases her, reaches up to grasp the edge of the basket and pulls himself upward.
Hannah watches him, but she stays put.
“I’m not quite sure how to tell you this,” he says from his standing position.
“I don’t like the way you just said that.” Hannah gets up and looks out. Then she looks down. “The rope. Where’s the rope?” She looks at him and then back down. “Where are my children?”
He checks the compass that’s dangling from the edge of the basket for the first time. “We’re heading southwest.”
“Southwest? To where? The Pacific Ocean? Dear Lord, the ocean. Can you get us down? Please say yes!”
“We’ll be fine. Just fine.”
“You’re going to save us…like when you caught and saved my runaway hat this afternoon?”
“Yes, but on a bigger scale.”
“You’ve done this before? In a balloon?”
“Not exactly. But I promise we’ll be okay.”
“That’s a pie crust promise, if I ever heard one. Easy to make. Easy to break.”
“Just let me remember. The hot air is what’s keeping the balloon up. If I don’t heat the air with the burner anymore, the air will cool and we’ll go down.”
“How long does that take?”
“A while.” He looks at his shoes. Embarrassed. “I’m so sorry. This isn’t what I’d hoped for.”
“What were you hoping for? To sweep me off my feet?” She starts to nervous cry. Between sobs, she adds, “Because if you did, you succeeded. Mightily, I might say.”
“Let’s take a deep breath and keep calm. We’ll be on the ground in no time…no time at all.”
“I know. What goes up must come down.” Hannah clicks her heels together once, twice and then a third time.
“What are you doing that for?”
“It worked for Dorothy, that girl in the book I’m reading to Emma and Noah. At the end, a witch named Glinda tells Dorothy to knock her magical silver shoes together three times and she’ll—”
“Instantly be back home in Kansas.”
“You read it already? I should’ve known. Of course you read it.”
Cal gazes down. “See my store?”
“I suppose it’s somewhere down there. I can’t say I’ve ever seen it from above.”
“I might not have children of my own, but I do sell books for children. And the Oz books are big sellers. One of my favorite characters is the Good Witch of the North.” He leans forward.
There’s nowhere for Hannah to go even if she wants to resist.
Cal kisses her on the forehead. “I did that to protect you, like Glinda does in the story. She kisses Dorothy at the beginning of the book on the forehead, giving her magical protection from harm.”
“Oh.”
“I even named one of my parrots Glinda. My green-feathered friends would fit right into the Emerald City.”
Hannah responds, “This whole experience is like when the Wizard offers to take Dorothy and Toto back to Kansas himself…in the balloon that brought him to Oz from Omaha in the first place. But we both know how that worked out. Or didn’t work out. So, I’m knocking the heels of my shoes together. In case it works for me too.”
“We’ll get home. But not directly in this balloon. Perhaps by truck or carriage from wherever we land.” Cal lowers his chin to more directly look into Hannah’s face. “Are you still afraid?”
“I’m not afraid of flying. What I’m afraid of is not flying.”
“Well, we’re just going to have to work on not letting your fear of not falling keep you from flying. Perhaps I can distract you some more.”
“Not with more facts about hot-air ballooning, please.”
He leans forward and their lips meet again. Softly. Tenderly.
“I could get used to that kind of distraction.” Hannah’s words flutter. “But please, let’s go home. Take us back to Orange. To the fair. To the children. To home.”
“Yes, home.” Cal clears his throat. “Dry up here too.” He takes a swig from the bottle and passes it to Hannah. “It’ll be over soon. I’ll make time fly for us.” He pulls out his pocket watch and dangles it over the edge of the basket.
“Please don’t joke at a time like this.”
As the air in the balloon cools, it descends more and more.
“You see. It’s just a matter of time. But I have to say I enjoy having wings.” Cal adds, “I read the other day that the bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking. That’s because her trust is not in the branch, but in her own wings.”
“Are you saying we have to believe in ourselves?”
“Sure. Birds learn to fly never knowing where flight might take them. Look at what we’ve done today.”
“I’d say that differently. Look at what was done to us today.” Hannah sighs.
“A few things we chose to do.”
“Yes, we did make some choices.”
“And soon we’ll be home.” Cal pulls Hannah in closely. “I can tell you this now.”
“What?”
“When I look at you, I’m home. I knew it the first time I met you. I was sure of it when I painted your portrait. But I did my best not to let you know it…and now, I’ve done a lousy job of keeping my feelings secret.”
“Oh—”
“I’ll say it again. When I’m with you, I’m home. And I’m not someone who likes to leave home for long.”
My instincts were right all along. But can this really be happening? Did he really just say that? She casts her gaze at the cloudless sky. It’s going to get dark. Too dark to see, she thinks. We’ll be knocking on heaven’s front door…in the shadows. Yes, we. I like how that sounds.
They embrace as night falls slowly around them and the stars come out of hiding.