Dear Ester and Nazir, It has been so long since I have seen you.
One Café at a Time
France, the city of heartbreak. I’m sure it’s a lovely city for people trying to escape the reality and harshness of life by looking deep inside themselves for the drowning sensation of love.
France, the city of heartbreak. I’m sure it’s a lovely city to people trying to escape the reality and harshness of life by looking deep inside themselves for the drowning sensation of love. For my mother and me, it’s just another stop in a trail that has gone on for far too long.
We started in Seattle, Washington. At a little Italian café called Perso. We had gotten a call from my father’s company called In Air Soaring. The company worked on surveillance, city design, and luxury rides. It wasn’t a booming company, but it was essential to the government and city officials.
I remember my father being gone for months doing projects, but I would hide his black company jacket when he was home. He couldn’t leave without it. So naive I was.
I ended up keeping the jacket. It was leather with a phoenix soaring with some rainbows behind it. The company logo. He told me once that he came up with the idea from a video game series he grew up with. I didn’t care for it.
The call was about how my father was trapped about thirty-four thousand and four hundred and ninety-three feet in the air. His aircraft couldn’t get down. The man who called was my father’s best friend, Steven. He reassured us that he had enough fuel to stay up. The balloon he went up in was the company’s DGT-42, which meant that it had a solar power burner.
“What if a storm hits,” my mother asked.
“The envelope has been coated in a type of chemical that could survive any storm, Ester. Only God himself could crash that balloon. We just have to wait till he gets a certain altitude and pull him down,” Steven said.
That was weeks ago.
It was the call from a café called Perso telling us they had a letter from my father.
My father had been somehow leaving letters at cafés. It made a trail, and we followed it. By New York, we thought it had gone cold. There was news that there was a storm over the Atlantic.
I remember my mother collapsing in the hotel room. I tried to reassure her that dad was going to be okay.
“Didn’t Steven say that he would be fine during the storm,” I said. It only helped a little. I could see that she didn’t fully believe me. Her dark brown eyes showed fear, but her body showed courage.
When we got the call from La Mélancolie in France, my mother didn’t hesitate to book a flight.
The La Mélancolie was just like the many cafés we had already visited, but this time, my father’s letter was different. It was rougher. I don’t mean that the paper was wrinkled and made out of sandpaper. He wrote all his messages on company paper. It was the way the letter was written that was rough.
We sat there at the table outside of the café and read the letter together. He always started each letter with Dear Ester and Nazir; I hope my letter finds you well. This time it was different.
Dear Ester and Nazir,
It has been so long since I have seen you. The Prototype burner we installed seemed to be better than I expected. Surviving a storm and traveling over hundreds of thousands of kilometers with ease.
I’ve almost run out of rations, but I have been able to split them up into small doses. It’s getting harder and harder to live in this basket. Yesterday I looked over the edge and thought about jumping. Today my body became so weak that I can’t support myself on my feet. I’ve been able, with sheer luck, to guide myself. I think I’m heading east. You might get a phone call shortly from another café. I just pray that you are getting these letters. It’s so hard to be here all alone.
Your Love and Father
Robbie Jaymes
My mother pulled out her cell phone and called Steven. The first call didn’t get through, but the second one, he answered. “Hello,” he said.
“Steven, can Robbie’s aircraft be traced,” my mother asked.
She was different now. Determined. It had been a long time since I’d seen her like this. When we started this journey, it wasn’t like going on vacation. It was like we were going to a funeral and the casket just kept moving. Always in another castle.
Each day she would get drained and worn out. Her color left her, and her red rosy cheeks had sunken in. She had lost a lot of weight, and her hair started to fall out. Whatever life she had was with my father. The stress was so immense that it overwhelmed her to the point that she couldn’t react to it. I knew that if we could get him down, she’d come back to life.
“Yeah, we’ve been tracking him, but we haven’t been able to catch him. He’s far too fast for us,” Steven said.
“Have you tried to predict where he would be next,” she asked.
“I have, but he’s out of our jurisdiction. I have sent out warnings to other countries about him entering their airspace but nothing back.”
“I appreciate your help, but could you send me a picture of his last location, please?”
There was silence for a moment. My mother slowly gripped the phone. Squeezing it ever so slightly. Steven is an understanding guy and has been very helpful to us, but I don’t think anybody waking up early in the morning would be willing to jump through some hoops for us. In our case, though, it was different. It’s not like a car crash, where the victim dies on the spot. My father was dying slowly, and we could feel it.
“Of course, Ester, I’ll get right on it,” and he hung up. It only took 30 minutes for him to send us the picture. It didn’t make sense to me, but to my mother, she studied it. Mapping out all the possibilities. She drew line after line until around four A.M. the next day when she woke me up.
“Nazir, book us a flight for Hong Kong. I think that’s where he’s going”
I looked at her and then crawled out of bed and towards the desk.
Hong Kong. The only city in the world with enough knives sticking up towards the heavens. How in the hell is my father going to navigate around those skyscrapers? Each one could rip the envelope apart, didn’t matter what coating it had on it. Then I thought maybe he could leap out onto one of the buildings. He could muster some strength. Maybe.
Once we reached Hong Kong, we waited at the airport for a phone call. After a day we got a hotel. After a week, we got worried. “Nothing, maybe he had drifted off course,” I thought. We asked Steven for another picture of his location. My father had already passed over Hong Kong. In fact, he flew by it and was now over Taiwan and heading towards the Philippine Sea. It was over.
Broken, I carried my mother back to the airport and took a flight from Hong Kong to Taipei, Taiwan, and then back home to L.A. The trip, in a nutshell, was eleven hours and thirty minutes.
It was during the flight from Taipei to L.A. that we ended up flying through a storm. It was rough, and the seas were rougher. The waves crashed and toppled over each other, rising to a height that scared us. For a moment, I thought they might reach us. It was a stupid idea that I pushed out of my mind. The turbulence was terrible too. The wings of the plane wobbled and warped from the strength of the wind. There was a woman across from me gripping her chair, praying to whatever god she believed in. Her fingers had gone white, and she was sweating up a storm. At the same time, a guy in front of me slept—a bear in hibernation.
As I sat there, I wondered what we were going to do next. We had mainly traveled the world looking for my father. Going to places I’ve never dreamed of going. Hong Kong was fun. I had some time when we were there to explore, and I did. My mother didn’t join me. She waited at the hotel for the phone call.
I fell asleep on the flight, and I drifted off to a strange dream. I was high in a hot air balloon like my father. It was cramped and had empty boxes around. I assumed they had food once. I looked up to see the burner, but it wasn’t flames it was producing—just heat. I could see on the envelope of the craft that there were solar panels installed. It was how the burner got power.
I knew everything about the ship in my dream, and I soared freely without a single shred of fear. Sure, I was out of food, but I didn’t need it. I was content with just me and the sky. In the dream, I turned to look towards my left. There was another balloon, this one just rising up towards the stars.
I propelled my way towards the other aircraft. It was blue with a symbol of a phoenix on it. It looked familiar; I just couldn’t remember where I had seen it.
Once close enough, I peered inside the basket. It had boxes just like mine. Empty. There was a body lying on the floor of the basket. They were shriveled and dried out. The body was dark red. I did not fear this corpse, nor did I feel any remorse for it.
I just released the balloon and allowed it to rise. More balloons started to rise from below. Going up. I peered up to see a bright line in the sky. It was a caravan of hot air balloons going forward to a destination I would never achieve because I started to go down. Then I heard a rip and spark. I looked up to see a hole in my balloon and another part on fire. I tried to climb up the beams to put out the flames, but they were too hot.
The burner had malfunctioned. It had heated up the steel cables and was producing an endless amount of heat. In seconds the inside of the balloon was on fire. I watched as I fell swiftly back to earth. I remember thinking there was nothing I could do.
I jerked awake from my dream, sweating. I peered out the window to see something burning in the distance falling towards the ocean. For a moment, I thought I saw a man smiling before the sea swallowed it up.
When we made it back home, a letter was waiting for us. Steven personally delivered it. He looked tired, and his black hair had turned salt and pepper. He helped me carry my mother inside. She didn’t want to eat; she asked me to read the letter to her. Steven didn’t stay. He had already read it. The letter seemed small in my hands, but it felt like it weighed a ton. It felt grimy in my hands, like I knew something had happened. I just couldn’t put my finger on it.
Dear Ester and Nazir,
It would seem we’ve picked up some traction on the internet. People have taken notice. When I reached Hong Kong, they tried to help me down. Which failed, but the good news is that they were able to restock my supplies. It’s the first thing I’ve eaten in a long time. I had tried to send you a letter, but I had no strength. The Fanbase was so caring and helpful. There were people from France, America, and some from Hong Kong. Apparently, they’d been trying to get me down for weeks now. Chasing after me. Sadly many people didn’t support them and ignored them. So they couldn’t get the right materials to create a net that wouldn’t destroy the envelope. I’m sure Steven tried to make one, but I would have left the country by the time he would have finished. After some tinkering around with the burner, I learned that someone had messed with the calibrations. Meaning that…I guess it doesn’t matter now, and right now, I can’t think of anyone who would do this to me.
After Hong Kong, I decided to send this letter to Steven instead. I know he’ll deliver it to you unharmed.
I’m coming home, my love. Thank you for chasing after me. Nazir, thank you for taking care of your mother. I will be back soon. I can’t wait to sleep in my bed.
Your love and father
Robbie Jaymes.
My mother looked out the window, not looking just gazing. She knew he wasn’t coming home, and I knew he wasn’t. I refolded the letter and placed it beside her. I told her I was going for a walk, and I…I just never looked back.
