\u201cShe\u2019s ready for takeoff,\u201d said Germaine, Tony\u2019s flight instructor. He motioned toward the waiting Cessna.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat, already?\u201d Tony\u2019s voice cracked a little. Apparently some of Martha\u2019s fear of flying had rubbed off on him over the years.<\/p>\n
Germaine laughed at him. \u201cI\u2019ll be right next to you you at the controls. It\u2019s okay to be nervous.\u201d<\/p>\n
That cinched it. Tony was not going to be timid in front of Germaine. He liked Germaine; Germaine was a nice person, an honest person and with a great confidence about him, for such a pup. Tony was more than twice his instructor\u2019s age and that fact shamed him into action.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s go,\u201d he said, barely stopping himself from adding, \u201cyoung man.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was such<\/em> a lot of work to do to simply cheat on his wife. But it was important to Tony\u2019s ego that he take an equally astonishing and magnificent lover as Martha had already found for herself. Fair was fair.<\/p>\n After takeoff, Tony gazed out the windshield over acres and acres of bright tropical plants, all striking green against the black, volcanic soil they grew from. The Big Island was so beautiful it was almost unrealistic. When they\u2019d first moved here, Tony could scarcely believe their fortune. They had always wanted to enjoy retirement somewhere spectacular. But then, he thought they would be enjoying the spectacular place together.<\/p>\n Germaine turned the plane out over the sea. \u201cAhh. My favorite view,\u201d the young man sighed. Tony stared down at the water and seethed hatred. Martha was under there somewhere, in the arms of her so-much-more-interesting-than-Tony lover.<\/p>\n \u201cYou ever scuba dive?\u201d He asked Germaine suddenly.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah. It\u2019s fun.\u201d<\/p>\n Everybody loves scuba diving,<\/em> Tony thought bitterly.<\/p>\n \u201cMy wife loves it. Does it all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut you don\u2019t.\u201d Germaine observed.<\/p>\n \u201cCan\u2019t.\u201d Tony twisted his pinky in his left ear. \u201cRuptured eardrum. Pressure would burst it all over again and I could go deaf.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo you took up flying instead?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYep. My wife\u2019s afraid of flying.\u201d<\/p>\n Germaine laughed at him again. \u201cSo, she does something you can\u2019t do, so you do something she can\u2019t do.\u201d<\/p>\n Tony sniffed. It was rude of Germaine to laugh at this central pain of his marriage.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was the idea, yeah.\u201d Tony said. Germaine kept laughing.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Tony and Martha made love that night. After, as she lay in the crook of his arm, she sighed contentedly and said, \u201cThere\u2019s no feeling like it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHmm?\u201d asked Tony, unexpectedly pleased and touched. Perhaps there is hope after all\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBeing under the sea,\u201d she sighed.<\/p>\n Tony\u2019s eyes flew open. He felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on his belly. Bucket and all.<\/p>\n \u201cDid you know,\u201d she murmured, \u201cthat I held a living sea urchin today? Right in the palm of my hand. And it wiggled!<\/em>\u201d She sounded delighted as a schoolgirl and her face was alight\u2014but not because of him.<\/em> Because of the damned sea.<\/em><\/p>\n It was another moment months earlier just like this that had prompted Tony\u2019s own resolution to fly. Martha had, like tonight, lain with him in a post-coital heap and said \u201cIt feels like flying.\u201d She\u2019d meant that <\/em>about the sea too. And what a pity Tony couldn\u2019t share it with her. It was the seed of his jealousy. He decided that night that he\u2019d also do something that felt like flying\u2014flying. So there.<\/p>\n He closed his eyes again.<\/p>\n \u201cTell me more about the sea urchin,\u201d he mumbled. He tuned out her poetical waxings on echinoderms and thought about next week\u2019s flight lesson, wondering how to feel as sensually enchanted with it as Martha was with her diving.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \u201cNow we\u2019re going to take her out over the sea,\u201d Germaine said.<\/p>\n \u201cCan we stay over the land?\u201d Tony nearly whined. If he didn\u2019t look at the sea, <\/em>he could almost <\/em>forget that he wasn\u2019t enjoying flying as to the quasi-orgasmic levels he was hoping for.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you like,\u201d said Germaine. He sounded amused. \u201cWhy did you move to an island if you don\u2019t like the ocean?\u201d Germaine was grinning.<\/p>\n \u201cMy wife,\u201d he said curtly, \u201cis in love with the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOh?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe were supposed to retire together.\u201d<\/em> Tony felt there might have been a tinge of whining in his voice. He cringed. He expected Germaine to laugh, but the young man was silent. Only the sound of the motor.<\/p>\n Germaine remained silent a long time and Tony started to think ahead next week to his first solo flight. He hoped that, alone, without an overgrown adolescent smirking behind him he could really get to know his new mistress, the sky. He hoped he could connect emotionally with her and reach that crescendo of infatuation he\u2019d been hoping for. Then he could tell Martha all about it for a change.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know,\u201d Germaine said suddenly, \u201cMy parents are retired too. They\u2019re not nearly as old as you are.\u201d<\/p>\n Thanks a lot, kid,<\/em> Tony thought.<\/p>\n Germaine continued. \u201cBut when they retired, they got on each other\u2019s nerves. Not enough money and too much husband, my mom said. But then she started playing bridge and joined a book club. Dad took up basement hydroponics. Now they don\u2019t see each other all day, every day. But they\u2019re much happier when they do<\/em> see each other.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWho asked you?\u201d Tony snapped. Germaine did not understand<\/em>.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \u201cTomorrow\u2019s my solo flight.\u201d He told Martha. Tonight\u2019s your last chance, <\/em>he thought. Then I belong to the sky.<\/em> He looked pleadingly at her, hoping she would understand his meaning and spurn her elemental paramour.<\/p>\n \u201cWonderful!\u201d Martha said. Tony sagged. He couldn\u2019t even elicit a spark of jealousy in his wife. Her feelings for him had all washed away in her lover\u2019s tides.<\/p>\n \u201cToday,\u201d she said, \u201cI sat on the ocean floor with thirty feet of crystal clear water above me. Everything was blue and silver, except the fish. I counted ten reef trigger fish. I heard the Hawaiian word for them is humuhumunukunukuapua\u2019a. That\u2019s a mouthful!\u201d<\/p>\n Tony\u2019s heart sank as she spoke. She told him how graceful she felt under the water and how free. He shook his head. He couldn\u2019t compete with a force of nature. He was only one man. One tired, old man. He turned over in bed and tried not to whimper.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Tony looked out over the black volcanic ground below the plane. His eyes glanced up the long, slow slope of Mauna Kea until it disappeared into the clouds above. He inhaled deeply, breathing in the silence. No Germaine next to him. It was just him and the sky. Hello, my love the sky, <\/em>He thought.<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t feel as he\u2019d expected to, enraptured, captivated. It was a different feeling very much unlike he\u2019d expected an affair to feel. It felt good, but he couldn\u2019t identify it. He ought to have felt frustrated, but he didn\u2019t. He sniffed.<\/p>\n \u201cNothing for it.\u201d He turned the plane toward the sea, not as a challenge, but as a question. \u201cWhat\u2019s she feeling when she\u2019s under the waves where I can\u2019t follow?\u201d He asked it aloud and was met by only the sound of the engines.<\/p>\n The sea, her territory, stretched blue and expansive underneath him. He let his eyes trace it up, up, up. It seemed to go on forever until he found the horizon. The place where the dark of her sea and the light of his sky touched, palm to palm.<\/p>\n \u201cIt feels like\u2026diving,\u201d he said aloud to no one. But when he next thought of Martha, he smiled.<\/p>\n
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