She Slept With My Husband, So Her Fiance Rides My Balloon novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Thirty Witnesses

The station posts a clip that makes Adelina the ambusher and Nestor files a complaint over the Fiesta slot, but Eloy brings the foreman and six pickers to stand in her yard, and Nestor's note on her hangar is due in five weeks.

By noon Nestor's version of the morning had forty thousand views.

He had cut the video so it began with my balloon dropping out of the cottonwoods and ended before anyone spoke.

Under it he had written: "My ex-wife landed an aircraft on a private conversation. Please pray for her."

Corina's station had shared it with a line of its own, saying it was "aware of an unfortunate incident."

I read it standing in my father's kitchen, across the road from the hangar, with a cold cup of coffee.

Then the phone rang, and it was the director of the Fiesta.

He was a kind man, and he sounded tired.

"Adelina, Nestor filed a complaint this morning," he said. "Careless operation."

"I landed in a lane on private land with the landowner in my basket," I said.

"I know. I've seen the video. Both of them."

"Then you know," I said.

"I know the pepper's registration lists you and Nestor as co-owners," the director said.

"If you two can't agree on who flies it in October, nobody flies it."

I put the cup down very carefully.

"The board meets on the fifteenth," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm on your side, I just don't get a vote."

I went out and sat on the porch step.

At three o'clock a car I didn't know stopped at the road, and Nestor got out of it.

He had on a clean shirt and was carrying my father's old green thermos.

He sat down on the bottom step and held the thermos out to me.

I didn't take it.

"I'm not angry, Del," he said. "I know how it looked."

"It looked like you and a news anchor," I said.

"It looked like what it was. Two people who were lonely."

"You're lonely?" I asked.

"You never looked up from the weather long enough to see me," Nestor said gently.

"All I ever wanted was to be part of something.

"You had your father, and the pepper, and your hangar.

"I was standing at the edge of it holding a rope."

He used the warm voice he kept for passengers.

For six years I had believed every word that voice said.

For a moment I felt myself leaning toward it.

Then a truck pulled up in the road, followed by two vans, and my yard filled with men in work hats.

There were seven of them.

The foreman got out first, a heavy gray-haired man with a chile-stained shirt, and behind him came Eloy Armijo.

The foreman said something short in Spanish, looking at Nestor.

It meant that the man might consider leaving the lady's porch.

Nestor stood up slowly and smiled at all of them.

"I think there's been a misunderstanding," he said.

"No," Eloy said. "I saw it and so did they."

"We saw her land," said the foreman, in English now. "We'll say so to anyone. We saw you, too."

Nestor looked at the men, and at me, and then at the thermos in his hand.

He set it down on the step.

"Keep it," he said. "Your father would have wanted you to have it."

He walked back to the car.

"You didn't have to bring them," I said.

"I know," Eloy said.

"I don't want to owe you."

"I'm not asking you to." He looked at the hangar across the road. "Is that a notice on your door?"

I had not seen it.

It was taped to the tin at eye level, a white envelope with the name of a bank in the corner.

I crossed the road and peeled it off, and Eloy followed me.

The foreman stayed in the yard and told the others to keep their eyes on their boots.

A loan, taken in July, against my father's hangar.

Forty-one thousand dollars, due the first of October.

The signature at the bottom was Nestor's.

"He told me he was buying parts," I said.

"Let me," Eloy said.

"No."

"I haven't offered anything yet."

"You were about to," I said. "I'll tell you what I'm doing instead."

"What?" Eloy asked.

"The pepper flies at the Fiesta, with me in it," I said. "Your father bought that balloon."

"He did."

"Then tell the board that the sponsor picks the pilot, and the sponsor picks me," I said.

"It flies with you or it doesn't fly," Eloy said. "I'll tell them tomorrow."

"I don't want a favor."

"It's not a favor. It's the contract."

I looked at him in the light from the hangar bulb.

He was a large, plain man with silver at his temples and a tired mouth, and he looked at me steadily, in no hurry at all.

"Then I'll tell you my rules," I said. "I'm pilot in command whenever you're in my basket, and my word is the only word."

"Yes."

"And nothing on the ground between us. Not while the board is deciding. You don't get to be the man who rescued me."

His mouth moved, almost a smile.

"I wasn't offering to rescue you."

"You were thinking it."

"I'm thinking," Eloy said slowly, "that I want to be at the end of your flight tomorrow with a truck."

"I have a chase truck."

"You have a truck with your husband's boots in it."

He was right, and it was infuriating.

"One rule of mine," he said. "You can leave any dawn you like."

"Leave what?" I asked.

"Quit. Ground yourself. Tell me to go to hell," Eloy said. "I'll still be at the end of the flight."

"That's not a rule. That's a threat," I said.

"Yes," Eloy said. "It is."

At half past four the next morning his truck sat at my gate with its lights off, and the passenger seat was empty.

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