5
I watch nervously as Grant puts the backpack, with the 45 grand and the laptop inside, on backwards so it’s hanging off his front.
“You might as well leave the laptop,” I tell him. “Once it gets in water, it’s going to be good for a doorstop and nothing else.”
“You never know, we might luck out and hit land instead.” Then he straps one of the parachutes onto his back.
“So you’ve done this before, right?” I ask.
“Nope,” he says. Like I’d just asked him if he’s ever been to Boise, Idaho.
“WHAT?!”
He shrugs. “How hard can it be?”
Just as I’m about to have a stroke, he breaks into a huge grin. “I’m kidding. Of course I’ve parachuted before.”
I hit him several times on the chest with my fists. “STOP – DOING – THAT!”
He laughs. “What?”
“Bullshitting every time someone asks you a question!”
“You ever heard the expression, ‘Laugh to keep from crying’?”
“Yeah, so?”
“So I can either joke around and keep it light, or I can be serious and we can all be miserable and afraid and then panic and lose focus and die. Which is it gonna be?”
“Why don’t you try being serious so I can know exactly what we’re up against, and then I can respond appropriately and we can all live.”
“Okay. Fine. I have trained in parachuting. Fifty solo jumps, in fact. But only over land, and only day flights. Never over water, and never in the dark. Feel better now?”
I feel pretty queasy, actually. “I’m… fine…”
“Well, allow me to continue.” He puts his hand on another package: an orange inflatable raft, one of those industrial-size ones you see in movies. “I’m pulling the ‘inflate’ cord on this sucker as soon as we pop the chute. I’m hoping we’ll either hit the beach or shallow water. Hopefully if we hit the beach, we won’t break any bones. Shallow water would be best. But if we hit deep water, we’ll need to get on the raft almost immediately to survive. We’ll have to get out of the parachute harnesses quick or we’ll get tangled up and drown. And if we’re far enough out, our chances of making it to shore in waterlogged clothes go down drastically without the raft.”
I’m going to puke, I just know it. I must be green by now.
“You don’t look so good,” he says. He’s teasing me, the bastard.
“I don’t feel so good.”
“What, don’t you think you’re ‘responding appropriately’ and that everything’s going to be okay?”
“Not really…”
“Okay, then, maybe you’ll trust me to handle things my own way in the future.”
I want to hate him, but I’m too damn depressed. “If we even have a future beyond the next five minutes…”
“See? There you go again. Incessant negativity.”
He starts to strap a parachute on me.
“WAIT – WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”
“I’m putting a parachute on you. What does it look like?”
“I thought we were jumping out together!”
“We are. I’ll tie you to me so we go tandem. This is only if we get separated – or my chute fails for some reason.”
I start to hyperventilate.
“Hey, you were the one who wanted the straight facts,” he chides me.
“You can go back to the joking.”
“Finally, she sees the light.”
“Five minutes!” Mike yells.
Grant strides over to the cockpit. “Alright, are you going to open the door, or is that something we do from – ”
“You can’t go out the door,” Mike interrupts.
Grant and I both stare at him, stunned. “…what?”
“You could get sucked into the engine if you go out the door. Or smash your head against the wing, or the vertical stabilizer on the tail.”
“What the hell good are parachutes if we can’t go out the door?” Grant fumes.
“There’s a baggage area under the left engine nacelle. You can access the baggage area from the rear of the cabin. Look for a panel on the left side with a bunch of bolts in it. There should be a tool bag in the same compartment where you found the parachutes.”
“Problem solved,” Grant mutters as he hurries back to the rear of the cabin.
I run after him. My terror feels like cold, slushy ice rising slowly through my body. “Grant, this is getting worse every second.”
“Relax,” Grant says as he fishes out a small canvas bag from the same place we found the parachutes. “Found the tools, and – yup, there’s the panel.”
“No, Grant, seriously – ”
He kneels down and begins unscrewing the bolts. “Relax, this is nothing. Hell, we jumped out of a skyscraper with nothing but a bunch of rope.”
“Yeah, exactly – we already cheated death once.”
“Once, twice… what’s the difference?” he says as he pulls the bolts out of the panel, one by one.
“One hundred percent.”
“What?”
“Twice is one hundred percent more than cheating death once.”
He grins. “Very funny.”
“It’s not funny at all.”
“Just look at it as 100% more cheating death. That’s a good thing.”
“I don’t think death likes to be cheated that much.”
“Years ago, I got drunk with a Hollywood stunt man in a bar,” Grant says cheerfully.
I stare at him. Partially because of the weird non sequitur, partially because I just can’t comprehend how this can be relevant in any way, shape, or form.
“He told me that when they do high jumps into water – you know, like from a cliff into a lake – the number one problem they have is that they hit the water so hard, sometimes it goes up their ass. So you have to wear rubber underwear, otherwise you could get an all-natural enema.”
I shake my head in disbelief that I am even hearing these words right now. “And why are you telling me this?”
“Don’t worry about death. Worry about an accidental enema.”
“This is not making me feel better!”
“Wasn’t supposed to make you feel better, just distract you.”
He pulls off the panel. Behind it is a dark chamber. I shiver when I realize we’re going to have to crawl into it.
Emanating from the baggage compartment is the moaning of the wind outside the metal walls of the plane. It sounds like a ghost from a horror film.
“Two minutes!” Mike shouts from the cockpit.
Oh God…
6
We’re back in the cockpit, where Mike is giving us last-minute instructions.
“Once you crawl in there, tie yourself to each other. When you’re ready, yell, because I’m going to open the door. That’s your cue to jump. You ready?”
“No,” I say. I’m literally shaking.
“Oh well,” Grant says good-naturedly, and takes me by the hand. “Thanks again, Mike.”