White Rabbit Chapter 15

15.

To boost her confidence for her eventual leap of faith from The Fleet Finch, during the ascent Delores reminded herself of the brave woman who jumped off the Eiffel Tower without a parachute and with no expectation to live. Delores was tucked in the back of the plane behind Turk, whose white scarf whipped wildly in the wind occasionally back across her face. She thought of the heroine of that story. Her name was Sophia and it was spring of 1926 when the infinitely smaller trees below were in bloom just as the trees below appeared to Delores like balls of cotton. She thought of Sophia waking up and eating breakfast at a small table covered in some sort of tablecloth. She imagined her to have lived alone in some tiny Paris apartment and working in a café, though the story never specified. She wondered what she ate that morning and what she ate the night before; who she last spoke to or wanted to speak to. She wondered if her mind was made up before she went to bed; who she thought of when she jumped—some estranged lover, she presumed. Perhaps, she skipped breakfast, Delores considered. She wondered if Sophia paid any attention to the clothes she wore, if she picked out a particular dress, a favorite or a least, something to die in, to look pretty in the newspaper if the photographers found her tasteful enough on the pavement to photograph. She wondered if she wore gloves, a hat, a scarf or a broche; if she did her hair or let it be the way it was.

There are so many details that go into such, Delores knew. Or maybe when there are details one isn’t rightly committed. She had flirted with suicide by hanging, but she had a sliver of optimism about something or other that made her not able to conceive of a plan that wouldn’t allow time for a last minute self-reprieve. She stood on the chair in the basement with a noose around her neck for an hour or so. It was a sturdy rope that was tied well around a strong beam on the other end, tied there first. The old red chair she stood on teetered on the cracked concrete floor but she never kicked it away. It was after her grandmother passed away and when cutting herself no longer felt like anything. The something that made that chair stay was the romanticism of him. It was him—that soulful compliment to her; that mysterious presence she felt but didn’t know, what made no logical sense, defied reason, but that she was sure about. He wasn’t someone who wanted to fuck or marry her, at least not only either. He didn’t want to consume her but he wouldn’t neglect or be indifferent to her. He was true romance, as much her as his own being, a something more, something impervious and meaningful in a world of meaningless and porous—the throw-away society of glib materialists in pointy braziers and leather. He is an inspiration to live, a smile, a conversation in the coffee shop, a walk in the rain, a movie companion who thinks of her when she’s gone and watches her sleep like the moon through the window. A him who is drunk on her, in love completely and selflessly so. And it is the same him now that has her sitting in the back of a rickety yellow biplane ready to plunge to the earth in hopes of seeing him.

Turk turned and yelled, “When we reach the right altitude,” pause for breath…his eyes looked kind of buggy behind his goggles. “I’ll tell you ‘go’ when I want you to climb out on the wing!”

“On the what?!” she yelled back crinkling her face.

He pointed right with a leather gloved finger. “The wing! On the wing!”

She shook her head as though she understood. She looked despairingly to the yellow foggy wing that stuck out like a carnivorous toad’s tongue.  

“Hold on to the struts and the bracing until you get to the flag!” He paused. He pointed proudly to the flag. “The Union Jack! Just stand there!”

Delores nervously agreed and buried her head down into the front facing parachute. She was hugging herself rocking slightly back and forth. She really wasn’t sure if she heard what he was saying because of the engine noise, the wind, and his accent, or rather, her perception of an accent.

“Got it?!” he called back.

“Sure!” she replied.

“What?!” he called louder.

“Yes!” she responded. The wind was bitterly cold and the snow made blurry streaks in the gray pageant of a sky. ‘What the hell?’ she thought as she looked down over the canary yellow side. They say never to look down but what the hell is the purpose of lying to yourself, she thought. Face it. She was always good at facing it no matter what it was. She had never been skydiving before and she never thought she’d have to climb out on a wing if she ever decided to do it but those are the rules and she didn’t believe Turk would lead her astray.  

“Go!” Turk roared all of a sudden. So precariously like a nimble trusting cat with three legs (one of her arms held the parachute so it didn’t drag or get caught on something), Delores climbed out of a perfectly good airplane, regretting her decision at first, but then rallying herself around that old familiar motto—live free or die! People have that on license plates and on tattoos and in their heads but they don’t goddamn do it, she thought climbing. They have school, or parents, or people expecting them to be what they want them to be, molded like clay pots. Fake flowers that always look pretty. Get a job, a car, a house, a mortgage, a pet if you’re lonely, pile on responsibility like pounds, like junk in junk drawers, screws and ink pens. Join a club to feel alive, the Moose, a bowling league, play Pinochle for kicks, Daughters of the American Fucking Revolution, softball with a spouse, do a run, a warrior dash, a fucking triathlon, clip coupons and finance cars, lypo, Botox, Maui, maybe once. Bury yourself in debt, in relationships, a social network with thousands of people you don’t even fucking know. She said (or thought) fuck and fucking a lot when she was nervous. Bacon would never suffice for a good expletive. It was like a sneeze for an orgasm. She was the little half-digested insect trying to climb out of the mouth of the yellow-tongued toad on the tongue.  

As Delores got herself in position, her right foot firmly planted on the Union Jack and her left free hand gripping a strut that was frighteningly tiny, Turk smiled and gave her a confident thumb’s up. He looked a little like Red Baron in the wrong plane. Then with no other warning or indication that he was about to make such a drastic maneuver, he rolled the plane and Delores tumbled off the wing. And in her tumble the poor girl cracked her leather-capped head against the edge of the top wing that in the roll was below her. Unconscious, Delores fell from the plane and her chute never opened.