“How many does that make this week?” Angie Stern asked as she counted the day’s receipts.

Ray Stern ran his finger down the column of names, counting to himself until he got to the bottom.  “Eighteen solos and four tandems.  Twenty-two altogether.  Not bad.”

Angie punched the figures into the calculator, hit the total button and ripped the long white paper from the carriage.  “Seventeen-fifty and change,” she said.  “A few more weeks like this and we can put a down payment on that new plane.”

Ray closed the ledger book and paced as he talked.  “Come on, Angie,” he said.  “We talked about this before.  We can’t afford a new plane.  We’ve been all over this.  We still owe a bundle on the one we have.  We’ll never get our heads above water the way you spend.”

Angie stood, ready for the usual argument.  When she turned to face her husband, he’d already taken several steps toward the door.  “Yeah, that’s it,” she said, “run away again.  That won’t solve anything.  We need a new plane if you intend to continue teaching your parachute classes.  How many people do you think are going to want to keep jumping from this wreck?”

Ray swirled around to face his angry wife.  He was usually at a loss for words when they argued.  This time he had an answer.  “Spoken like a typical pilot.  You just want to cruise around in that new turbo-prop job you saw last month at the show.  Well, we can’t afford it.  We’re getting this one fixed and that’s that.  End of discussion.”  Before Angie had a chance to use one of her biting, sarcastic lines, Ray was out of the office and walking across the hangar.

It had been five years since Ray and Angie Stern depleted their life savings to start the parachute school and still they were barely able to make ends meet.  There was plenty of competition in the area and buying a new plane would send them back to square one.  At least that’s how Ray saw things.

Ray had served his stretch in the Army, where he learned to jump and to fly.  He’d seen no real action during his four years, having been too young for Viet Nam, but still figured the experience would pay off once he got back home.  He was twenty-three at the end of this tour and eager to see what the world had to offer.  He knew what he wanted but wasn’t sure how to get it.

Angie had been a flight instructor since she was twenty-four.  Her job as pilot at the airfield had brought her together with Ray some eight years earlier.  After dating him for only six months, they married.  Everyone had commented on how short a courtship it was but Angie was determined and usually got what she wanted.  And what she wanted at the time was Ray.

It was Ray’s plan to teach parachuting for a few years until he earned enough to pursue his first love—art.  He figured it would take six or seven years of teaching before he had enough of a nest egg saved to go back to art school and get his degree.

Angie, on the other hand, was quick with a buck.  She lived from hand to mouth and didn’t care where their next dollar was coming from.  Every chance she got she’d reminded Ray that he couldn’t take it with him and that they might as well spend it now.

The magic had drained out of their marriage years ago and now they seemed to be merely going through the motions.  Whenever they argued, which seemed to be more often than not, Angie’s favorite jab was, “If you want to paint so bad, the hangar could use a couple of coats.”  She knew how to hit him where it hurt and seemed to enjoy doing it.

It was Friday and the start of another hectic weekend.  Ray had seven jumps scheduled for the afternoon.  With every landing he mentally tallied the fee and totaled his account.  “That’s eighty bucks closer to art school,” he’d say to himself as his feet hit the ground.

His last jump of the day climbed into the back of the plane as Angie revved the engine.  Ray buckled his student in and slipped into his own seat belt while Angie taxied down the runway and finally lifted off, tucking the landing gear beneath the plane.

At six thousand feet Angie looked back over her shoulder and signaled to her husband.  Ray unhooked his student from her safety belt and positioned her with her back to him between his legs.  He snapped the four clasps from his tandem harness onto the harness that she wore.  The two were now attached to the same rig and were ready to jump.

Shirley Young had jumped on several other occasions in this same configuration with Ray.  She always told the couple that she didn’t dare try it on her own just yet.  She just wasn’t ready, she told them.  It wasn’t customary for a customer to make this many tandem jumps, but Angie saw it as another fee and one more step toward the new plane she wanted.

Shirley was twenty-five and full of life.  Her five-foot-two inch frame had always sailed effortlessly through the air as she floated to earth attached to Ray.  She tucked her blonde hair up under her helmet and snapped it in place beneath her chin.  With a single nod from Angie, she and Ray edged toward the door.  He crouched with his back to the door and gave Angie the thumbs up as he launched himself and his student out into space.

Ray counted to five to clear the plane and pulled the ripcord as Angie headed back to the field.  The chute billowed out above them and quickly filled with air, yanking the two passengers upward.  Within seconds they were floating fifty-five hundred feet above the green Wisconsin countryside.  The sun was sinking toward the horizon--a horizon that the couple could see in any direction.  It was beautiful this time of day.

Shirley turned her head as far back as she could, trying to look at Ray.  “Did you tell her?” she asked, having to yell above the wind noise.

“Not yet,” Ray yelled back.  “I’m working up to it.  I have to find the right time.”

“Well,” she said, “It better be soon because I’m going back to California day after tomorrow—with or without you.  It’s your call.”

“I’ll do it, darling,” he said.  “I don’t want to lose you now.  Not after last night.”

The two floated for another three minutes before the treetops in the distance were at eye level.  Ray pulled on both sides of the chute just before touchdown and the couple landed in a standing position.  The two looked up to see Angie’s plane circling for final approach.  Ray unlatched Shirley from the harness and folded the chute, arm over arm, into a neat little bundle.  Shirley walked by his side back toward the hangar just as Angie taxied up to the office and killed the engine.

Shirley returned to the office with Ray to retrieve her coat and purse.  Angie was hanging her brown leather jacket on the peg near the door when the two entered.

“What a rush,” Shirley said, removing her helmet and running her fingers through her hair.  “Tomorrow okay again?”   Shirley looked at Ray and then over at Angie.

Angie smiled and nodded, seeing only money in this woman.  Ray smiled and nodded, seeing his ticket out of a bad relationship.  He made a quick notation in his appointment book.  “Got you down,” Ray said.  “Around one-thirty?”

Shirley nodded, threw her coat over her arm and tucked her purse under that.  “After tomorrow I’m going solo,” she said, mostly to Ray, who knew by the look in her eye that she wasn’t talking about parachute jumping.  He quickly looked to see if Angie had noticed the eye contact between him and Shirley.  She hadn’t.

“That’d be great,” Ray said, walking Shirley to the door.  “See you tomorrow.”

He turned to Angie, who had their appointment book open to Friday.  “Who’s next?” he said.

Ray and Angie finished the day with another four jumps before pulling the plane into the hangar for the night.  As usual they drove home in silence.

The following day after lunch Ray drifted back to earth with Henry Slocum attached to his harness.  They didn’t come down quite as lightly as he had with Shirley.  The two thudded into the dirt on their butts.  Ray unhooked Mr. Slocum and stood, rubbing his butt and trying to wake up his left leg, which had fallen asleep on the way down with his passenger tight up against it.

He limped for a minute or two until the blood began circulating again before he wadded up the silk and carried it back to the office.  His middle-aged student followed close behind like a giddy schoolboy, talking about the exciting sights and sounds that Ray had come to take for granted.

Henry Slocum was greeted at the gate by his wife and two young sons.  “Did you see me?” he said, a smile pasted to his face and what was left of his hair sticking up at odd angles.  His family swarmed around him like bees on a summer night as they all walked back to their car.  In a minute they were gone, leaving only eighty dollars behind as evidence that anyone had ever been there.

Angie glided in on runway twenty-seven and brought the plane to a stop in front of the fuel pumps.  She filled the wing tanks and checked the structure, running her hand over the surface of the plane, as was her practice before every flight.  Everything checked out fine.  She marked the appropriate sections on her pre-flight sheet, tucked the pencil behind her ear and carried her clipboard back to the office.

Ray laid his chute out on the long table in the shop, checked all the connections, silk and riggings before packing it up for his next student.  Shirley arrived a few minutes early and hung up her coat and purse on the rack next to Angie’s desk.

“Last tandem,” she told Angie.  “Tomorrow I solo.”

Angie laid her hands on Shirley’s shoulders, “Aren’t you proud of yourself?” she said.  “You can’t get a rush like this in any other sport, can you?”

Shirley agreed and smiled, though she’d never considered stealing another woman’s husband a sport.  Ray emerged from the shop carrying the chute and set it down on the desk.  “Ready for your jump?”

Shirley anxiously shifted her weight on her feet and toyed with the zipper on her coat.  “I can’t wait for tomorrow,” she said.  “This is so exciting.”

Angie collected the eighty-dollar fee from Shirley, handed her a receipt and then led the way back to the plane.  Ray helped Shirley into the back of the plane and climbed in after her.  Angie took her place in the cockpit, checking her pre-flight list.  The engine sputtered once before catching.  She taxied down to the end of the runway and set the brake.  Pushing the throttle full forward, the engine whined a high-pitched whine before she released the brake and began speeding along the white line.  The plane lifted off as she climbed higher and higher, circling the field.  She leveled off at six thousand feet and pulled the throttle back to the three-quarters position before signaling to Ray.

“Did you tell her?” Shirley whispered in Ray’s ear as he pretended to adjust her harness.

“It’s all taken care of,” Ray said.  “I figured out a way.”

“But did you tell her?”

“Well, not exactly,” Ray said.  “But after today it won’t matter.  We’ll be together always.”

“What do you mean?” Shirley asked.

Angie looked back over her shoulder again and said, “Drop zone.  Everybody out.”

“It’s now or never,” Ray said, crouching as he made his way to the cockpit.  From inside his coat he pulled out an eighteen inch, four pound wrench and after hesitating for a second, brought it down hard on the back of Angie’s head.  Ray hurried back to Shirley and strapped her into his harness.  “Let’s go.”

Ray propelled himself backwards out the open door and sailed away from the plane.  He pulled the ripcord and soon the two people were floating peacefully toward earth.  Above them Ray could see the plane heading away from the field.  “Free at last,” he said to Shirley.  “When that plane hits the ground, there won’t be enough left of Angie to find a bruise on her head—if they can even recognize her head when they find her.”

Shirley laughed and Ray soon joined her.  He held her tight on their earthbound journey and couldn’t wait to get back to the office to pack his things.

Angie’s body fell across the yoke, sending the plane plummeting toward earth.  The body fell to the right and the plane shifted and pitched.  It began to spiral as it fell and the spirals widened with every revolution.

Ray and Shirley were still three thousand feet up when they noticed the falling plane.  It was dropping much faster than they were.  Its last revolution sent it on a collision course with the couple.  Shirley’s eyes widened in horror as the plane came directly toward them.  At three thousand feet, no one on the ground heard the last screams of Ray and Shirley.  The whirling propeller sliced, diced and pureed the couple that hung from the nylon cords.  The rest of the chute and rigging tangled on the plane’s right wing and spiraled toward the ground in a bloody mess.