Romantic Hazards

I often joked with potential clients that I knew starting an agency exclusively for daredevils would have its ups and downs, but it was true. There were incredible moments of absolute amazement at Hazards for Hire. I personally witnessed Pete McCreet, the Vertical Heat leap over the bus-jumping record by two whole passenger-grade Greyhounds. Almost a year later to the day, I helped fix a bug in Hannigan Airbase's Jumbotron screen so that all sixty thousand spectators would get a closeup of Lady Falling Star free-diving from one airplane into another. But every dizzying high seemed to have a busted-up counterpart: witnessing Guzzlepuss McCoy's champion drinking skills descend into alcoholism, or that day we helplessly watched Crash Helmet Terry explode into bitter nothingness on a tarmac in Pittsburgh, PA. That one hit me particularly hard.

Would I have done it all over again? Absolutely - without hesitation. But one thing I hadn't counted on was the tar pit allure of office romance.

The "Devils", as I took to calling them, tended to have what you might call elevated libidos. They would pair off, split up, and get back together - sometimes within hours of the first encounter. They'd have one-night-stands during dual events, causing X to tell me later that they only wanted to work with Y from then on, followed by Y dropping by an hour after that to tell me that they never wanted to work with X ever again.

Occasionally, they'd get themselves caught up in warped love triangles. Case in point, Captain Charcoal, who ate fire and spewed lava out of his ears, spent years developing a personal flame for Shirley Fleetfoot, only to have it doused when she flipped for our resident high rope guy, Upton Walker. The good captain, a huge draw even in the dead of winter, put in his resignation at Hazards when Shirley told him the score, turning to short-term contact work with state fairs and Burning Man rip-offs. Less messy, I assumed at the time.

A few of the Devils preferred to prey on the event workers, or "normals" as they chillingly took to calling them. Francene Nitro once admitted to me that she had bedded almost every ramp jockey I had hired for her dirt bike jumps. Honky Tonk Jack, who could tear whole tree trunks into firewood kindling with his bare hands, could never resist the allure of a single mom selling kernel corn. And I have female promoters in Louisiana and both Virginias that proclaimed to me in writing that they would never work with the Human Blender again, though I later removed certain unsavory clauses in his contract rider.

However, it was my own story - not theirs - that caused me to rethink my backstage role in the daredevil circuit. Her name was Molly Mississippi and she specialized in underwater lasso tricks. She could rope an octopus and hog-tie all eight arms before the tiger sharks even noticed she was in the tank. I never saw a vision so stunning: Molly bursting through the salty water's surface in her orange and blue wetsuit, splashing the fools with their faces pressed against the glass. I used the giant tank as an excuse to travel across the country with her, saying its setup demanded special supervision. But the only thing I took to supervising was Molly sitting on a folding chair atop her trailer, lasso in one hand and a sweaty glass of sweet tea in the other.

I might never had asked Molly to go on a date with me, but then she took to joshing me about my habit of collecting expensive pens with the names of the cities we traveled through. She especially enjoyed calling me "Cheyenne" the entire week we spent in Wyoming. Well, at the end of that week, I gave her my pen as a gift and asked if she wouldn't mind taking me to my first rodeo in Helena, Montana, our next stop on the tour. And for months after that trip to Big Sky Country, even Honky Tonk Jack wouldn't have been able to pry me and Molly apart.

Things were pretty good for a couple of years. I couldn't always be on the road with Molly when she toured, but I'd be sure to hit at least the first and last performances of her season, which ran April to August. She'd spend some of her downtime doing office work with me at HQ, but she was one of those rare performers that loved what she did. The Human Blender wouldn't so much as lick a piece of food that wasn't deep fried during his downtime, but Molly loved the ocean. She often set out for several months on deep sea expeditions, sometimes paying her own travel expenses out of pocket. She'd always come back a little changed after those, like a tree that learned to grow a new fruit. I can't say that I was always thrilled by the differences, but I trusted that she was still my Molly at heart.

Having spent the majority of my life on dry land, however, I naturally underestimated the call of a vast ocean, its tides tugging persistently at a heart I thought I might forever lasso.

One warm August evening in Columbia, Missouri, after she'd taken her last bow for the season, we sat on top of her trailer with sweaty glasses of sweet tea and had the talk. Molly said she appreciated everything I'd done for her over the years, but that she couldn't keep to Hazards for Hire's salty tank anymore, had to set out for open waters permanently. I'm sure I put up a fight, told her every reason I could possibly imagine for her to stay, but I knew the look in her eyes. Had seen it a hundred times before.

After she left, I threw myself back into the business hard. In my mind, I had the other Devils to take care of and plenty of my own past mistakes to make up for. I took on twice the business we'd been operating prior to Molly's employ, and I even took on a trio of underwater acts to replace her. It justified keeping the big tank, but I no longer cared much for the show. Francene would sometimes ask me if I needed help with the day to day, but I told the dirt bike queen to keep her thoughts on those ramp jockeys she liked so much and leave me to the paperwork. But all the while, I wondered which underwater mountain Molly might be swim-hiking while I was stuck in Toledo, yelling at a stage manager for missing a spotlight cue the night before.

Then one day, I looked at tired, old Pete McCreet, who was fast hitting the end of this Vertical Heat days. I saw too much of myself in the lines on his face and figured the time had come to look for my replacement. At my request, Captain Charcoal (under his given name) returned to Hazard for Hire and I taught him the ropes of the company, though he preferred that I didn't call them "the ropes" on account of Upton Walker.

Before too long, the Devils threw me a retirement party at a swanky hall downtown. It was strange to see them all in the same room, and I couldn't help by notice that we were all getting up in years. But the spark was sure there when they started revealing all the worst stories from the road that they'd kept hidden from me until that night: Lady Falling Star's habit of diving into hotel pools from 10+ stories up, Turbo Linnex's impromptu drag race with half of Tuscon's PD, and Crash Helmet Terry's one man, two-hour-long bar fight, just a week or so before the accident in Pittsburgh. I was thankful for their discretion, as some of the offenses would have involved hefty lawsuits had they ended differently, but I laughed until I cried as the Devils took turns spilling all the wild secrets they had kept so well. The next day, I bought myself a gold watch and began looking for a hobby that didn't involve collecting over-priced pens in cities like Rio Rancho, NM.

That pen is blue, by the way. It's blue like the ocean that I dream of every night. I had my first scuba diving lesson last May and I hope to be certified by the time you read this.