Flying Trapeze
Josh Woods

"Sorry, no sign of it," Anne says as she walks in the door.

Anne is back from a brief visit to her parents' house where she announced the date of our long awaited marriage. Six months, two weeks and three days from today I'll be a married man. Evidently, without a hat.

Anne tries to offset the disturbing news about my lost hat with an extended kiss on the cheek. It doesn't work. Not even close, it doesn't work. Feels more like a pat on the back, the condolence of a child who's lost his kitten. I'm a bearded, six-foot, three-inch, two-hundred-fifteen-pound man, and my hat's no kitty. So I'm already irritated when Anne tells me that she is no longer hungry for the dinner I spent half the afternoon cooking.

Anne walks through the living room, picks up one of the eight million magazines she subscribes to and sits down in a wicker rocking chair out on the balcony of our third-story, suburban apartment. I'm standing in our kitchen with a hot frying pan filled with crab cakes which, at this very instant, are vehemently refusing to assume their intended shape. "I don't think you understand," I call to Anne. "I know it's there. I know exactly where I left it."

Anne drops the magazine to her lap, pries her running shoes off by jamming her heels into the deck, then leisurely crosses one leg over the other. With little more than a half-smile on her face, Anne tells me that there is only one explanation for what happened to my hat. While casually massaging the sole of her foot, Anne explains that my hat evaporated, that it's hiding from me behind the clouds, that it has taken up yoga and badminton, and that she thinks it is extremely happy with its new life.

I inform Anne that she is funny. And she really is funny. That is one of the biggest things I like about her, that humor she has. In fact, if things were different, I would be laughing right now. After all, there is something pretty funny about a hat playing badminton. The problem is, I'm not laughing. I could be, but I'm not. I'm just not going to give her that right now. I'm not going to start laughing and let her know she's still funny when I'm feeling pretty agitated about my hat.

Instead of laughing, I start spouting off to Anne, telling her about the tribulations of my long morning of work, trying to capture exciting photographs of an eight-year-old golfer whose expeditious mother, my client, is convinced that her son is the next Tiger Woods. The ranting culminates with a calm reminder of my inordinate affection for the hat and still she presses on.

"Wait a minute," Anne says, pointing roughly in the direction of the sky. "There it is, right in the belly of a cloud," she says to me, and then pauses. "Or is that a goat? Yes, I'm sorry, that is a goat. The poor thing ate your hat."

I quietly ignore Anne as she goes on about the goat. All the while, the anger pushes up in my chest like a rubber ball and the crab cakes continue their ardent plea for disunion. I am certain that by their very nature, hunks of crab meat are deeply opposed to clinging together only to be fused in a hot frying pan lined with virgin olive oil. I try turning the first crumbly batch of crab cakes, but they're burned to the pan, charred irreconcilably. I dump the skillet in the sink and start over.

I'm watching Anne now. She pulls a rubber band from her pocket and manipulates the girth of her curly locks into something that resembles a dishwater-blonde porcupine on top of her head. She lifts her feet to the railing of the balcony, slides a ball point pen behind her ear, then begins lightly whistling Chariots of Fire as she flips haphazardly through the pages of her magazine. The ease with which Anne weathers these trying times is enough to separate the world and all its inhabitants into two very different categories: People like Anne, who would sooner forego a few breaths than worry about breathing, and people like me, who are serious about life and all of its intakes and expirations.

I go to the refrigerator, pull a bottle of beer, twist the cap with my teeth, and drink it half-empty.

My attention returns to Anne as she slaps her magazine shut and walks toward me through the living room. I notice the slight extension of her arms, what looks like the makings of an embrace. Just as she approaches, I turn my back, pretending some grave preoccupation with finding a cooking utensil or maybe a pinch of salt. Anne could have called my bluff by simply asking me what I had no idea I was looking for. Instead, she waits, tenderness itself by my side, armed to the hilt with a terribly sweet and beautiful sort of patience. Finally, I turn round and after a short pause she asks, "Can I do anything?" Then, to make matters infinitely worse, she explains how she had, in fact, completely forgotten to look for my hat, that she is sorry, and that she will certainly retrieve it on her next trip to see her parents.

I pull a bowl of mixed greens from the refrigerator and toss honey roasted peanuts and dried cranberries into the salad. Anne's in the dining room setting silverware, plates, and wineglasses on the table. When she returns, she throws her slender arms around my back and tells me, "Baby, we'll find your hat. We'll go get it tonight if you want. Mom and Dad would love to see you." Anne runs her hands down my chest and lower stomach. She unfastens my belt buckle, the top two buttons of my shirt, breaks the uncanny grip of my perfectly worn-in Levis. The jeans fall to the ground.

If I could believe in the happiness between us, I'm sure we'd be happy. But here's the thing that gets me, I can't help suspecting the subtle worst. In spite of the magnitude of our major problems, it's the little things, those modicum incentives, half-truths and hidden prejudices, that keep me up at night. I'd like to tell this to Anne, but if I do there will surely be a fight. And if I don't, if I don't say anything, well, I didn't. I didn't say a word and now Anne and I are making love right here on the kitchen counter. No words, no warnings, just sweat on the brow, pants-around-the-ankles, having at it. Anne's doing her breathing exercise, some kind of sex trick one of her girlfriends told her about. I'm not breathing at all. I don't think I'll ever breathe again.

I look over Anne's shoulder. There's a black and white photograph on the adjacent wall. In my seven years as a freelance sports photographer, this is my best shot. It's a photo of Anne with her arms extended flying through the air.

Last summer Anne enrolled in a one-day course on the flying trapeze. Sixty dollars for a four-hour lesson. They started her out on the low bar, but by the end of the day they had her swinging upside down some forty feet above the ground. The people from the trapeze company were amazed by her speedy progress, her poise, her unabashed, midair tactility and grace. She was beautiful that day and I adored her.

But now it's one year later, six months shy of wedding bells, and when I look at Anne, I think of myself up there. I think about the flying trapeze. I think about soaring upside down through the air, legs clinging to the bar, and I say to myself, I don't care who's catching me, I'm not letting go.

I look to the frying pan on the stove and watch another batch of my fractured crab cakes sizzle into brown-black, carbon particles.

I look to the frying pan on the stove and watch another batch of my fractured crab cakes sizzle into brown-black, carbon particles.

Anne and I finish up. I pull my jeans to my hips and help her down from the counter. "Well," Anne says and that's all she says.

"I'm going for a smoke," I say. I walk out the door. Down three flights, I find my place outside on the cement stairs that lead up to our building. I turn my back and light a cigarette and look over the fence that surrounds our complex. Beyond the fence, there are bulldozers and bobcats and a crane and other types of machinery. Soon they will build a new apartment complex next door. There was an old apartment building in this lot before, but they tore it down and now there will be a new structure where the old one once stood. This is what I think about, old things being leveled and new things growing up from nowhere. I wonder what it takes. I wonder what seals the deal. Is it courage or fear? Who makes these decisions? Somebody did. Somebody was either bold enough to tear the whole thing down and rebuild, or frightened enough by the alternative.

I walk back up the stairs and into the apartment. Anne has this look on her face like someone's dead in the next room. I go to the refrigerator for another beer. I salvage what's left of the crab cakes and set them down in front of Anne who has seated herself at my request.

"Appetizers," I announce. "Dig in."

I lean back in my chair and tip my beer. I watch Anne pick at the golden, black-speckled crab chucks before her. She situates a morsel on the end of her fork and says, "There's something I need to tell you, Warren."

"What's that," I say.

"It's about your hat," she says. "I called Mom while you were out and she found it, but-"

"What?"

"It's not good," Anne says.

"Not good," I say. I stand up and walk toward the kitchen while Anne explains that her Mom mistook my hat for the painter's hat and threw it out with the garbage. I'm alright, I say to myself, and I am. I've had the hat for years, but I'm fine. I just don't want to talk about it, not with Anne.

"I'm going out," I say. "I'll be back soon."

"I know you're upset," she says, "but it's not like Mom purposely threw it away."

I turn round. I can hear the words in my head: Actually Anne, your Mom did purposely throw it away. I say nothing.

"You're always so serious," Anne says. "Everything's the last line of the play with you."

I turn away and head for the door.

"Your crab cakes are getting cold," she says.

I open the door to leave.

"You don't have to cry about it," Anne says. "Mom said she'd buy you a new one."

I slam the door behind me with such a force and at such an angle that the wood molding shatters, the hinges pop loose, and the door collapses into the apartment. I walk briskly through the hall, down the stairs, then out to my truck. I hop in the driver's side and instantly my head drops to the steering wheel. I can't believe what I've done. I've left my keys in the apartment.

I sit there. Motionless, pointless. I think about Anne, who's probably on the phone talking with her Mom right now, telling her how awful I am, how it was all a big mistake.

Ten minutes pass by, then five more. I pull my head back from the steering wheel. I step out of the truck and head up the stairs toward the apartment. As I walk down the hall, I have this picture in my mind, this image of Anne throwing all my stuff off the balcony.

I'm standing before the wide-open entranceway of our apartment. The door hasn't been touched. I'm ready for the worst. I walk in, pick up the door and set it aside. I spot Anne. She stands from where she was sitting with her back against the wall in the living room. She has the temperament and poise of a Siberian tiger, a softness of the complexion, capricious eyes, the sort of beauty that pulls you in despite the weighted odds of being torn to shreds.

I notice she has my keys in her hand. They swing, almost in slow motion, back and forth on her finger. I feel this quickening sense of fear, as though any second she's going to throw the whole damn wad of keys at me like a fast ball and gouge my eyes. Then it occurs to me that rather than throwing them, she'll probably drop them to my feet, making it my choice to pick them up and leave, and I'm ready to go. I'm ready to walk on out of there. The mix of fear and spite makes the idea of leaving Anne seem suddenly and deliciously possible, as though all this time I've been longing for nothing more than unaccountability and here, at last, is my chance.

But right then, just at the moment when I realize there's nothing holding me back, something warm shoots across Anne's face. She relaxes her shoulders, smiles. There are new colors in her face where there were none before. It looks like she might laugh. Any second she might laugh. And then she does. Not the sarcastic laugh I hate, but a laugh with something like truth in the middle of it, a laugh that comes up from the belly even if you'd rather it stayed behind.

I feel my grip begin to loosen from the bar. Anne tosses the keys in this perfect arc and now my body is suspended in midair, miles above the earth. Disengaged, for a moment, it all seems effortless. If I reach out everything will fall into place.

It's a little scary how a decision can turn on itself in moment's notice. It's as though drawing the final conclusion is something the mind does without us. Maybe I'll never know what sealed it, fear or courage, but I reach out and the keys land firmly, purely in my hand.

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