On Saturday, May 7th, at 11:42 A.M., I watched Gary jump for the last time.
     It was warm blue sky good day at the beach lemonade and suntan weather, and I was feeling drowsy and comfortable and very very mellow. That’s the only reason I was at the airfield in the first place, because Gary had been working all morning on my mood.
     “Aw c’mon,” he kept saying, bending over me, blocking the sun, rubbing little circles in the baby oil on my back with his finger. “It’ll be fun. Everyone’ll be there. We’ll all go out after, maybe tailgate in the desert. C’mon, Mandy. C’mon, Baby-cakes. C’mon Honey-pie. Oh, c’mon.”
     So there I found myself, my hand shading my eyes, my sunhat shading my hand, staring up at a bright bright sky, following the plane’s slow circles, wondering why I was doing this when I promised myself on my grandmother’s grave I wouldn’t do it again ever, never. Not if I lived to be ninety-seven.
     He said he’d be number three. “Watch number three, that’ll be me,” and then he winked. He was feeling happy because I was there, and when he feels happy he likes to make things come out a rhyme.
     Two jumpers were floating down from the sky, their chutes all colorful above them, and then it was Gary’s turn and I watched him lean out of the plane and fall away.
     I began to chew on my thumbnail. One Mississippi, I started, two Mississippi, my mouth went dry as sand, three Mississippi, four...  The sun made spots in my eyes and I blinked. Five Mississippi, six Mississippi, my right hand made a fist and I pulled at air, braced myself against the harness yank. I waited. I watched him keep falling. A humming sound came into my throat and I started jumping up and down, holding onto my hat. He’s delaying, I told myself, that’s what he’s doing, delaying. God, no, I answered myself, he knows I’m here, he’s not delaying, he’d never do that. Cold spread through me. I quit jumping. Paralysis. Oh god oh god oh god.
     What I wanted was Friday night at Elmo’s back. I wanted to feel Gary’s ten o’clock whiskers brushing my cheek and have his lips singing you were always on my mind right above my left ear. I wanted to turn and run, scream, but I was frozen, numb, my voice wouldn’t work. And then, against the blue blue sky, the pink purple red of his parachute bloomed, filled, spread, floated.
     My feet remembered how to move. They took me across the field to the van, and in the rear view mirror I saw a last glimpse of the chute, its edges beginning to flutter in on itself. A collapsing flower disappearing in my dust.

     “You can’t do this, Amanda!”
     I hold the phone away from my ear. “Don’t shout at me,” I shout. “I can do it. I am doing it. It’s practically done.”
     “Amanda...”
     “You knew I was there, Gary. And you know how I feel. You’ve known for a long long time.”
     “And I know you know I know what I’m doing. Damn it all, Mandy.” The phone goes silent and I can tell he’s taking a deep breath, changing his line of attack. “I was just showing off a little.” I have to put the phone back tight against my ear to catch it. “Can’t I show off a little for my best girl?”
     He’s going all sugary on me because he knows what sugary can sometimes do. But this time sugary isn’t going to work. Sugary schmugary.
     “First of all,” I say, keeping my voice as cool as a cucumber sandwich, “I am not your best girl. I am not, in fact, a girl at all. I am a woman. I am a thirty-five year old woman who just happens for some reason I can barely remember to be your wife. Which reminds me, by the way, that you are thirty-six. Which is the only way I can tell, reminding myself I mean, because no one could ever know by the way you conduct yourself.” I stop just long enough to refill my lungs. “And I am tired of watching you jump out of airplanes and leap off cliffs and drive cars that go a hundred-and-fifty miles an hour. Terminally tired. And I’m not going to do it anymore, Gary. I’m not getting any more cricks in my neck over you. I’m not going to recite three hail marys and five our fathers if please oh please you’ll let his parachute open one more time let the glider down easy one more time let the car do its last twenty laps without hitting the wall one more time. I’m not even going to sit home and worry about you anymore. Because...”  And here I really turn up the cool even though my cheeks are blazing hot... “I’m not going to be your wife anymore. Period.”
     My hands are shaking. I clear my throat. I pace back and forth on the end of Mama’s phone cord like a collie waiting for its dinner. In my head I can see him sitting on the stool, leaning his elbows on our kitchen counter. He has a Coors sitting in front of him. He’s rubbing the top of his head so he can think better. And right this minute he’s deciding I’m bluffing, figuring all I need is time to cool down.
     But then in another minute he’ll slip into scared, afraid he’s pushed me just a little too far this time. And then after that he’ll go into mad, when he realizes it’s seven-thirty and he had to hitchhike all the way back to the trailer and hasn’t had anything to eat since breakfast. Especially when he remembers there’s that nice pink pork roast sitting in the refrigerator, his very favorite dinner, and realizes it’s going to take him at least three hours before he can cook it and sit down to eat.
     “Does this mean you won’t be home tomorrow night?” he says.
     “I’ll be in Reno tomorrow night,” I say.
     I can hear him taking a long sip from the can. Then, “What about your stuff?”
     “Kurt’ll come by tomorrow to get it,” I say.
     “Oh.”
     That surprises him. Surprises me, too. Because this is always where the hitch comes. “What about your stuff?” he says. “I’ll be by to get it tomorrow,” I say. And he’s always waiting. He has coffee and warm cinnamon rolls and everything neat as a pin. Sometimes the radio’s on or the wedding album’s lying on the sofa. “Remember this song?” he says. Or “Look at this picture I forgot all about in the album.” Then one thing leads to another and the whole sad story starts up all over again. But getting Kurt into it is a stroke of genius, because Gary has always had a problem when it comes to my brothers. Especially Kurt.
     Except now I have to call Kurt and listen to his I-told-you-sos and his why-did-you-wait-so-longs.
     “I’ll leave the trailer open,” Gary says.
     “I’ll give Kurt my key and have him leave it on the table.”
     “Oh.”
     It’s such a little sound it almost makes me feel sorry. Almost.

     Carter is a CPA, and every three months he comes in carrying his shiny brown attaché case, sets it on the reception desk, and tells me the latest changes in the tax laws.
     He gives me helpful hints on how I can protect myself against the hard times ahead, until his watch beeps and it’s time for him to go into the accounting office and start on the books.
     Carter does nothing for me in a slow heat, toe-curl kind of way, but it’s occurred to me since I got back from Reno that at least part of the reason I am now a divorced person has to do with me, so I’ve decided to reorient myself away from the pull of passion and toward the things I know are what I really want.
     It’s also occurred to me that Carter, who perches his sharp-creased leg on the edge of my desk quarterly and looks at me like I’m some kind of attractive investment which requires more capital than he could ever muster, might be just what I need.
     So on June twentieth, exactly a month to the day I got back from Reno, I hint to Carter that I would be available for lunch if he could manage to tear himself away from his ledger at noon. And since it’s my birthday, couldn’t he make an exception just this one day?
     “Course I can, Amanda,” he says very fast.
     Anyway, I really do need cheering up. Considering the only two cards that were in my mail this morning did anything but make me feel fine.
     My mother’s said, Now you’re almost old as me, and actually I think she’s got something there. Because sometimes I feel we’re two cars on adjoining tracks, Mama and me, her coming down from one direction, me from the other, and right about now we’re passing each other, and pretty soon we’ll both end up where the other’s just been.
     I figured she’d be real supportive about me divorcing Gary, since for twelve years she’s thought he was just about the dumbest thing on two legs. But true to the way she’s been lately, all she did was complain because I wasn’t going to be around to help her trim her hedges. “You can go to Reno anytime,” she said. “My hedges won’t wait.”
     The other card was from Gary. On the front’s a picture of a spaniel dog with big sad red eyes. I can’t believe you did it, he wrote inside, But Happy Birthday anyway. It was enough to make me start banging drawers, cupboards, doors.
     “I don’t mind you staying here,” Charleen said, sticking her head into the kitchen. “But that doesn’t mean you can wreck the place.”
     Charleen and I have known each other since third grade, so we don’t pay much attention to what the other one says.
     “He could keep his two feet on the ground,” I said, slamming the refrigerator door hard enough to make her little cow magnets fall off. “Would that be such a hard thing to do?”
     She just shrugged and went back to whatever it was she was doing.
     It turns out that being with Carter is like, well, like recuperating from a broken leg or seeing the sun after a spell of rain or hearing Hank Williams in the middle of the night.
     He makes me happy in a hundred little ways.
     For one thing, he doesn’t own a van with Blowin’ in the Wind painted on the sides. And there aren’t ever any empties rolling around the floor of his car, giving off that sour week-old beery smell, or stickers on his bumper saying Hang Gliders do it Better.
     Carter’s bumper says sweet things. Have you hugged your CPA today? Fifty-five, stay alive! Carter takes life seriously, the way I’ve always known a man should. He takes me seriously, too. If he tells me he’s going to call at ten, the phone rings before Charleen’s cuckoo has a chance to fly out of its house more than seven or eight times. If he says he’ll pick me up at six, he’s pressing Charleen’s buzzer at that exact hour. And if we’re planning to go to some fancy restaurant, he doesn’t decide half-way there to stop at Bridey’s Creek and go skinny dipping even though I’m wearing my best Laura Ashley. Like some people I know.
     And with Carter, there’s been no slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am-let’s-get-this-affair-under-way-with-no-further-delay. I had to wait until our third date for a kiss, for heaven’s sake. And now that it’s been six weeks since our first date, I can tell by the way he keeps clearing his throat and by the little frown pucker between his eyebrows and the fact he keeps staring at my forehead instead of my eyes that something’s up, and I’m feeling pretty sure that Carter’s finally ready to take things to the next stage of our relationship.
     “Amanda...” He clears his throat again. “Next weekend I’m going up in the mountains. Grace Peak. With some friends.” His eyes flicker onto mine, then off. “It’s a very special weekend, Amanda, and I’d like you to come. I’d really like you to come with me.”
     I almost say yes right there and then he looks so suddenly hopeful, so appealing. Truth is, though, I’m not sure. I’ve been a free and independent person such a short time. And Gary...well, he’s still an awful lot in my dreams. And Grace Peak ? Why, I wonder, does it have to be Grace Peak?
     Grace Peak is Gary’s blue nylon tent and our red sleeping bags zipped together. It’s him scratching on the side of the tent and whispering, “Did’ja hear that?”
     These things are going to get in the way, I just know it. But I don’t want to ruin Carter’s special weekend, either.
     “Let me check my calendar,” I tell him, “and I’ll let you know.”

     The very next morning at work, Gary calls.
     “Just thought I’d call and say hello,” he says, “for anniversaries and old time’s sake, you know?”
     I’m not supposed to take personal calls at work and he knows it. Of course, he’s known it for the seven years I’ve worked here and it hasn’t ever given him pause before. And actually it isn’t all that bad hearing his voice...at least it means he isn’t dangling upside down from some tree dying a slow death or done up in plaster in some traction machine somewhere.
     “You’re sounding chipper,” I say, wondering a little about that. “You win the Indy 500 or something?”
     He chuckles. “Well, there are races and there are races.”
     I put him on hold while I punch up some calls.
     “I’m back,” I say. I can hear him cranking the kitchen window open and closed open and closed. “You’re bound and determined to wear that window out, aren’t you?” The cranking stops.
     “I hear you’re getting out a lot these days,” he says.
     “And just how would you know that?”
     “It’s a small town.”
     I start clicking my pen. Small town my eye. There are none of my friends who have anything much to do with Gary, and none of his who have anything much to do with me. I click faster. Charleen.
     She’s loved him since she was fourteen. Not that she ever made it all that obvious, us being best friends, but a girl can tell. And then there was that thing at our wedding, when she got drunk and knocked the bride and groom right off the cake. She’s been claiming she’s between men right now, but she’d been out an awful lot lately.
     I put him on hold and leave him there.
     Any normal person would hang up after a while, but ten minutes later he’s still lit up. I disconnect. He calla back.
     “Can’t you take a hint?” I say.
     “Now wait a minute,” he says. “How come I‘m the one who got left, and you’re the one who’s mad?”
     “I’m not mad,” I say.
     “Good. Then since you’re not mad, and I’m not mad, let’s get together this weekend for old time’s sakes. I’ll get us a booth at Elmo’s. How about Saturday at seven?”
     “No.”
     “Eight?”
     “No.”
     “Friday better?”
     “No.”
     He clears his throat. “I thought you said you weren’t mad.”
     “Will you stop with the mad?” I say. “Mad has nothing to do with it. I’m busy, Gary, if you have to know. I’m going away. Not that it’s any business of yours.”
     He’s quiet for a second. “Who with?”
     I feel my face go hot. As if he has a right to ask me such a question. Me, a free and independent person. “We seem to be having a problem communicating,” I say.
     “Well, I’m trying Amanda. I’m communicating and communicating, but I’m getting precious little in the way of talk from you.”
     “Don’t you raise your voice at me,” I say.
     “I’m not raising my voice,” he yells.
     “I don’t have to talk to you at all, you know,” I hiss. “I don’t have to tell you what I’m doing or who I’m doing it with.”
     “So you’re just going to traipse off with anyone who comes along. First one who crooks his little finger.”
     “I hope your race car blows both its engines,” I say, and push his button. Then I call Gwen to take over. I need a break.
     The styrofoam cup shakes all the way to my mouth. What right does he have, what right? I crush the empty cup in my hand. That Charleen. I fire the cup into the basket. Then I call Carter and tell him yes.
     I’m through with drifting in the wind, running with the tide. I’m digging in my heels, digging them into Carter’s solid predictable earth.

     “Your friends sure like to be off the beaten track,” I say.
     Carter just smiles. “Almost there now,” he says.
     I don’t care how long it takes. I’m enjoying the ride. I like driving with Carter. He doesn’t race trains.
     “I’m glad you decided to come, Amanda,” he says.
     “I’m glad you asked. Is it somebody’s birthday this weekend?”
     “Birthday?”
     “A special weekend, that’s what you said, remember?”
     “Oh. Well...” He clears his throat. “I’ve been meaning to get to that.” He taps his fingers against the steering wheel. “Guess now’s as good a time as any.”
     I look at him. He sounds a little like I did the time I finally got around to telling Mama why her bottle of forty dollar perfume was empty.
     “Well, you see...my friends and I have been working something out. Sort of a puzzle, I guess you might call it. An historical puzzle.” His fingers tap some more. “We’ve been feeding information from this historical document .. “ He looks at me. “I’ll show it to you if you’d like.”
     I nod and he puts his eyes back on the road.
     “Anyway...we’ve been feeding it into a computer.”
     I wait. He swallows. I watch his Adam’s apple go up, then down.
     “This weekend,” he says, “either tonight or tomorrow night... it’s hard to know exactly, hard to be precise, though we’ve worked it out for nighttime between dusk the 27th, that’s today, and noon the 29th, that’s Sunday. Well, either tonight or tomorrow night, you see...”
     He hesitates, and I feel like hitting him on the back to get him going again.
     “It’s...well, the world’s going to end.”
     I laugh.
     “It’s true, Amanda. Really. And I should have told you, I know that, but, well...I was afraid you’d think it was crazy...think I was crazy.” He looks at me. “It’s not crazy. It’s a fact. A real proven fact.” He looks back at the road. “But I was afraid you wouldn’t come, wouldn’t be prepared. And that really bothered me, you not being prepared. And I thought it would be nice, more than nice, if we were together, you know, at the end. Even though we haven’t known each other all that long. Still, I figured it was fate, getting to know you just now. Just in time.”
     Then he begins to tell me how it’s going to happen. Tremors, tides, volcanoes, something about the poles. But I’m not really listening by now. I’m thinking there has to be some good explanation. A fit of craziness that will go away as quick as it came. Or all of a sudden he’ll start laughing and say, “Pretty good joke, huh? Fooled you, didn’t I?” To which I’ll say, “You sure did. Now turn this car around and get me home fast and that’s no joke, Carter. No joke at all.”
     Then we pull onto a dirt driveway and there’s a house and a couple of other cars and two people come to the door. It all looks normal and the people look normal, and I feel a little better because maybe they know that Carter’s prone to fits and can do something about it.
     We go through introductions, and Fred, whose house it is, smiles at me. “Wait til you see what Lila put together for dinner. A feast.” Then he winks and pats his stomach. “Guess we don’t have to worry about the old calories anymore.”
     I stare at him. I’ve walked right smack through the looking glass.
     Fred’s laying odds it’ll be tonight,” Carter says.
     “Carter...”  I’m working hard to keep my control. “Remember in the car you said you were afraid I’d think this whole thing was crazy?”
     He nods.
     “Well, you were right, Carter. I want to go home.”
     Four other people have come out of the house. They all go quiet, looking at me like I’m the one waiting for the end of the world and they’re all from Missouri.
     “Amanda,” Carter says, “can’t we talk about this?”
     “Four to five hour drive round-trip.” Fred checks his watch. “Almost six already. You might not make it back in time if you go with her.”
     “All this planning,” someone says, “months of planning, and Carter goes and does this.”
     “Don’t you understand, Amanda.” Carter’s looking like he might cry. “It’ll be safer up here. We’re ready. No fires, no explosions, no people running all around crazy. Why, we’ll just float right up.”
     I stare down the driveway.
     “I’ll show you the document,” he says. “You’ll see it all right on the computer. Oh, Amanda. Please. Stay. You just gotta stay.”
     I turn around. “Are you going to drive me or not?”
     He looks at me. “Not.”
     “Then give me your keys. Car’s not going to do you any good from now on, right?”
     His hands make fists on either side of his legs. “No keys. You’re staying whether you want to or not. There’s nothing around for miles. You’re safe here, Amanda. You’ll be safe with me.”
     I grab my bag out of the car. I start walking. With any luck, it’ll take me four days before I find someone sane. I can’t remember a house, a gas station. There weren’t even any other cars. And now the sun’s going down. I look at the sky. I have a choice between looneyville and a night under a bush. I keep walking.
     “Amanda...”  Carter’s voice follows me down the road like a sick puppy.
     Stories go through my mind about the mountains. About what’s in them...snakes, cougars, little men who want you to go bowling.
     “Amanda...”
     I wonder how long he’s going to keep it up.
     It’s at the first bend in the road, rock hills mounded on either side, I first hear the noise. Far off. A growling that turns pretty quick into a rumble. I stop and listen. It gets louder. I look back at Carter. He’s standing in a funny position, like the noise has caught him in the middle of a step, frozen him there with his arms a little out from his side and his knees bent.
     I turn my head trying to pick out the direction, but the noise is bouncing off the rocks, the road, maybe the sky. It gets louder and louder until it’s like being at the races, right smack in the pit. With those cars coming at you and all their noise filling your head so it stays in your ears for a long time even after the race is over.
     And then it’s coming up from the ground and I can feel it inside me, the noise. Feel it coming up through my feet all the way to my teeth.
     That’s when Carter goes down on his knees and Gary comes around the bend on his motorcycle.
     He pulls up beside me, everything vibrating, his mouth moving inside the helmet. “Hey,” I think he says. Then he turns the key and it all stops, just like that, so at first it’s so quiet, the quiet seems louder than the noise.
     “Thought I lost you,” he says. “Hey, how come you’re standing in the road, anyhow? You have an accident or something?”
     Soon as I can move, I move real quick.
     “Hey, Amanda,” he says, after a while, loosening my arms from around his neck. “Damned if I can ever tell how you’re going to be.”
     “Where’d you come from?” I ask, stepping back, feeling my heart going back to normal inside my chest.
     He pulls off his helmet and slings it on the handlebars. He rubs the top of his head.
     “What on earth are you doing out here?” I ask.
     He looks down at the road. “Following you,” he says. He looks up again. “You and the CPA.” He shrugs. “Whatever that stands for.”
     Something catches his eye and he looks over at Carter, still on his knees. “That him? What the heck’s he doing?”
     “Waiting for the end of the world,” I say. “And it stands for Certified Public Accountant.”
     “Oh.” He says it as though that explains it all. “Anyway, I was following you and then my baffles blew and I had to pull over. Can’t fix them out here, though. Have to ride it all the way back sounding like twenty-five Hell’s Angels.” He grins. “By the time I got going again, I figured I might have lost you. But here you are.”
     He smiles like it’s all a nice church picnic.
     “One thing,” I say. “Just why are you following me in the first place?” I put my hands on my hips. I used to hate it when my mother did that. It always meant I was in some degree of trouble.
     Gary doesn’t seem to like it either. He fiddles with his helmet.
     “Look, Mandy...this wasn’t supposed to happen. I mean, you weren’t supposed to see me. I’ve followed you before, you know, and you never saw me once.”
     My face must get a certain look on it, because he ducks his head a little like he’s expecting a punch.
     “I couldn’t just let you go off with anyone.” He jerks his thumb in Carter’s direction. “I don’t know this dude. And neither do you. Don’t you see the risk you’re taking, how dangerous it is going off with someone like this? Someone you hardly know?”
     I stare at him. I can’t believe my ears.
     “Damn it all, Mandy.” He looks straight into my eyes. “I had to look out for you.”
     Then Carter’s getting up and walking over, slapping at his knees where they’re all dusty from the road. He stands next to me, awkward, pale, acting like he’s waiting for an introduction.
     Finally he sticks out his hand. “Carter,” he says.
     After a second, Gary takes it. “Gary,” he says.
     “Oh yeah,” Carter said, “you and Amanda...”
     They nod at each other.
     “I was trying to talk Amanda into staying,” Carter says, looking around like he still isn’t sure what happened. I wonder if once he’s sure, he’ll be disappointed. Having to open his spread sheets again on Monday morning after all. Though, looking at it his way, I guess there’s still plenty of time. Gary’s just provided him with a kind of dry run.
     “Really.” Gary looks from Carter to me. “Well, maybe it’s a good thing I came along, then. Maybe she’d like to hop on and come home with me.” He unstraps a helmet from the back of the seat and holds it out to me. “Wanna go home?” he asks.
     I look at him, wondering if that really is what I want or not.
     “No more free falls,” he says. “And I sold the race car.”
     I think about it. I don’t know if that will be good enough. But I take the helmet and put it on. I get on the bike. The sun’s almost gone now. And anyway, it seems like no matter what you do, you wind up waiting for the end one way or the other.
     I point to my bag sitting in the middle of the road. “You can drop that off to me please on Monday?” I say to Carter.
     He just looks at me like his brain’s too busy refiguring for the words to sink in.
     “If I’d known you were heading for Old Grace,” Gary says, “I’da brought along the tent and the bags.” He fastens his helmet, turns the key, gets ready to step down on the starter, then he turns his head sideways so I can see him smile. “I hear the cougars are real ornery this time of year.”