“Have you ever wondered if maybe you got it all wrong from the beginning? That you somehow started off in the wrong direction, and everything you did since, every step, it was all the opposite way from where you meant to go?”

The stars blinked sleepily above them. Irene turned to Sam, whose throat worked and worked. Irene tried to speak too. Sam got there first.

“It’s been coming on for a while. Bit by bit, ever since I got back from Australia. Bertha was still in the hospital. I’ll never forget the expression on her face. Like she’d won some game of chess or something. Trapped me in a tiger pit. And there was nothing I could do to escape, because of Pixie. Because she was Pixie’s mother. Whatever move I made to grasp some straw of joy, she would counter it. I thought, I can’t do this. I just can’t go on.”

“But you kept going. You kept on flying.”

“It was the only thing I knew how to do, the only way I could support my daughter. So I flew, because I had to fly, but when I got into an airplane I didn’t care if I lived or died anymore. The only thing that kept me alive was Pixie, because she needed me.”

“Oh, Sam—”

“I just—I have nothing left, Irene. Nothing. Last weekend, in that air show, I went through my routine, you know, cut everything a little close. Gave them a good show for their money. About halfway through, I just knew. I was through. It was time to either break free or die. And I thought there was only one way to do it so I wouldn’t get the chance to back out.”

Irene put her face in her hands.

“Not to kill myself. Crash the ship, that was all, so I couldn’t go up again. I know how to crash, you know. Used to do it all the time for the movies. God knows the crowd loves it. That’s what they’re really there for, to watch somebody crack up. I did it right at the end, when I came in for the final landing.” He finished off the last ounce of whiskey and soda and made a motion with his hand. “Clipped the ground with my right wing, turned a nice cartwheel. Bang.”

Irene dropped her hands and stared at him. There was nothing to say, even if she could remember how to talk. Sam raised the cigarette to his mouth, and the end flared orange in the darkness.

“Irene,” he said, “it’s all right. I’m here, aren’t I?”

From the darkened beach came a scream of drunken laughter. Neither of them moved. Irene remembered her soda water. She lifted it to her lips and drank it all, and when she was finished she could speak again.

“So what are you going to do now?”