THE DROP-ZONE HANGAR has its back to the westerly winds. It’s open, with jumpers getting their rigs on for the next hop, riggers on the mats meticulously folding and packing chutes, and a couple of guys napping in lawn chairs. One has his mouth hanging open. It’ll be a matter of minutes before someone shoots the air compressor in his piehole or glues his shoes to the floor.
Under the row of flags on the back wall, a large group of guys slide around the concrete floor on creepers, practicing their formation dive. Their bellies are on the boards, feet in the air, as they move and switch patterns. It’s like synchronized swimming on wheels, only sweatier and with lots of laughing and swearing.
I dump my rig in a pile on the carpet and run over to the group, take a flying leap, and land on Dom’s back. We roll across the floor, bounce into the wall, ricochet, and spin in a circle. All the while I hold on tight and kiss the back of his warm neck, burying my nose in his jet-black hair, which reminds me of rippling water at midnight.
“Now this is my idea of a tandem,” Dom murmurs. He reaches behind him and squeezes my butt.
“Ryan Poitier Sharpe!” My mother’s Caribbean accent cuts through the chatter in the hangar. I roll off Dom and sit on my knees. She stands right outside the hangar doors. Late-afternoon light glows behind her vivid flowered shirt and red head wrap. Her lips are color coordinated with the wrap and glowing like a stoplight against her smooth black skin. My mother is a hibiscus in the eternal beige of the desert.
I shrug the what’s up shoulders and am met with a stern look. “Be right back,” I whisper to Dom when she crooks her finger at me.
“I don’t like to see that.” She points vaguely in the direction of Dom and leads me to the office. “This is a public establishment. A business. Our business.”
“He’s my boyfriend, Mom. That’s my business. We were just goofing around.”
“Yes, but must you crawl all over each other in public like a couple of monkeys? It’s unseemly.”
I always laugh when Mom uses that word. It’s a carryover from growing up on Cat Island. “Unseeeemly,” I tease, imitating her island accent. Like clockwork, when I laugh, Mom laughs. And my mother doesn’t just chuckle. Her laugh is full-bodied and carbonated. Her laugh is dark, sticky soda. We can never stay mad at each other.
She smacks me on the rear with her clipboard and shoos me out of her office as my father walks in. I touch his arm tentatively, but he slips away like an eel, busying himself with a pile of mail on the desk. I stare, trying to think of something to say to engage him. Dad slices the top of an envelope, shakes the letter open, and smiles broadly. It’s the sun appearing from behind a curtain of clouds. The drop zone is the only place I ever see my dad’s real smile. I stay because I want to know what’s in the letter that has made it appear.
“The good news,” he says, “is that we’ve made the short list of locations for the X Games.”
“And the bad?” Mom asks, her painted nails resting on his shoulders.
He rubs his forehead. “If we don’t get that event, our doors will close for good.”
We all sigh. I knew things were tight, but I had no idea they were that critical. This place can’t close. It’s our life and the only thing holding Dad’s PTSD in check. It keeps him focused on something other than his injuries, his losses, his bad dreams. His razor pain. “What do we have to do to make sure we get it?” I ask, squaring my shoulders in a reporting for duty kind of way.
My question brings his gunmetal gray eyes to meet mine. “We need to get their attention. We need a huge big-way when they come to scout the DZ??—??so many jumpers in the air that the formation will look like a spaceship landing. It’ll take every experienced jumper we know to pull it off.”
“I want in,” I say, a pebble of hope lodging in my chest. When he shakes his head, I firmly tell him, “I’m ready.”
“No,” Dad answers in his first-sergeant voice while riffling through stacks of mail on his desk. “I assess your readiness. You’re too young, too inexperienced, and this is too important. I need perfection. Absolute precision. It’s not personal; it’s business. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I mumble, but it is personal. Do people have to be willing to die in order to earn his respect? Is having a penis a prerequisite for his regard? I back out of the office right into Dom’s outstretched arms. He whispers in my ear, “Come with me. I’ve got something to show you.”