There are probably a million things that could send a commuter airplane hurtling to the earth from 18,500 vertical feet. At the moment, I was consumed with only one.

A thin ribbon of her auburn hair lit to a campfire ember across the aisle and one seat up from me. I recalled her smile as we boarded. A little steamier than kind. Slightly more seductive than friendly. Rita Hayworth of the air.

The nineteen-passenger, twin-turboprop Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner bounced against an unexpected cross stream of air.

My sweating hands gripped the armrests, imprinting every nick and design flaw into permanent memory.

Eyes shut tight, I focused on that tawny-haired, exotic temptress. The meditative drone of the Metro’s engines transported us from the obnoxious hum of certain death into a mountain meadow fantasy where I chased her gleeful, naked form across thick, dew-laden grass. Wild and free, her flowing mane beckoned with its copper promise, her skin silkier than cream skimmed from the top of those thick glass, half-gallon jugs Gram used to pull from the front porch on a cool Montana morning. Wild-eyed, Rita and I tumbled to the flowering grass, giggling with sexual hysteria, blood rushing toward the promised rumpus.

Gravity left us, shattering the trance.

My belly button took a leap toward my chin. Honey-coated peanuts and overpriced beer gathered in the back of my throat.

Breathe in. One, two, three, four. Breathe out. One, two—

The airframe shuddered. Immorality threatened to bring this bird down. Rita was married. I’d seen her board with her new husband who doted and bragged on what a fine catch she was, never thinking for a minute that she would be the death of us all.

My heart pounded out a rhythm that darkened the edges of the world.

“I used to be afraid of flying,” a youthful voice across the narrow aisle interrupted.

I willed him into focus.

Grayson. Ten years old. Mother couldn’t make the trip. Flight attendant’s request that I keep track of him.

“Glad you’re the one sat next to me,” he said.

“How’s that?”

The boy’s undersized arms tucked the complimentary pillow into the hollow of his neck. He leaned against the portal.

A vast and eternal blue expanse taunted me over the kid’s youthful dependence and a trembling aircraft wing. Details of the Metro’s build history and the current model’s numerous drag-reducing airframe modifications raced around the inside bowl of my skull.

“Sitting next to an airplane fixer makes me feel much better,” he assured himself with closed eyes.

I released my death hold long enough to pat his leg. “Four-bladed props driven by TPE331-10 engines. Solid. Secure.” Turning away from the bright blue promise of death, I mumbled, “Capable of handling violent turbulence.” My head lolled against the headrest to mimic the young man’s tranquility. As soon as my eyes blinked shut, a mental View-Master flashed images of my panicked efforts to prevent a crash landing.

Schwick. Connor charges cockpit. Schwick. Connor forces emergency exit door. Schwick. Debris soars through the tiny passenger cabin knocking the unsuspecting off their feet. Schwick. Unbelted travelers launch over seat backs and slide forward on the downward-canted aisle.

I ended the show and stared at the Air Force blue upholstery.

How appropriate of them to decorate this flying casket with team colors.

Enlistment as an Air Force Aerospace Maintenance Crew Chief had only intensified aversion to air travel. The duty title sounded ridiculous now. Staying awake had me ruminating on dropped panel screws. Dozing invoked specters popping rivets into nearby cloud banks. Every turbulent bump and drift nudged me closer to the spray of disassembled components over an Eastern Montana wheat field.

A list of horrifying possibilities ran like ticker tape. The steel trim on the arm rests sliced my palms. Eyelids tightened against thoughts of airframe failure, my father’s life flashed before my eyes. I was him, flying high, riding the wind until the crash that ruined our idyllic home.

The 19-passenger, pressurized, twin-turboprop airliner shivered a tumultuous vibration. Dishes rattled, magazines slipped into the walkway and an IBM ThinkPad slid from a businessman’s makeshift tray to the floor with a torrent of curses.

Fantasy lover, Rita, maintained a calm confidence, the gleam of firelight sparking vitality into the obnoxious hum of certain death. Delusions of carnality danced the lurid seduction of a succubus. Enticement both terrifying and irresistible, indistinguishable from that temptress my father hunted to his death.

Maintain sanity without sexual fantasy.

The mantra had kept its promise from the tarmac at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa through airports in Osaka, Anchorage and Billings. Big planes. Lots of distraction. The small metroliner contained none of those diversions, but was filled with temptations that hastened death.

My father’s biography grappled for headspace. Thrown out of the house before I was a teen. Best loved and most hated businessman in town.

No more. Dead at fifty-six. A strong argument for self-restraint.

I settled for rumination on the eight hundred and seventy-five airplane parts I could point out by name that might catastrophically fail and send us hurtling twenty-thousand feet into the winter-hardened tundra.

“Sorry for the turbulence,” the Pilot’s voice declared from a metal can in the ceiling. “Flight attendant Nancy, please strap in.”

Great! The cute little lady with the flirtatious smile and the heart of a servant has my wife’s name.

The Swearingen gave another rumbling shudder with a sideways slide.

A baby wailed from behind. My teen titan seatmate, Grayson, slept on.

“Hang in there, folks,” the Captain reassured us with tinny glee. “We’ll be on the ground in a jiffy.”

“Choice words,” I grumbled.

The twin-jet plummeted a hundred feet.

I braced for impact. The mental View-Master flashed scenes of two small children at my funeral.

Schwick. Quentin Roger and Penelope Jane, crestfallen between two fresh graves chiseled out of the frozen Montana dirt. Schwick. Matching headstones with identical epithets for Daddy and Granddaddy, final episode. Schwick. Mother, sitting in the background, a secretive smile mocking my refusal to share my children’s time with her. Schwick. Wife Nanci, eyes dry with disappointment, one of Mother’s knitted shawls wrapping her shoulders. Schwick. Closed casket. Schwick. Legos spread across the lid, children searching for Daddy among the wreckage. Schwick. Kids with broad smiles eating ice cream with Mommy.

The airplane bucked, twisting with the wind before slamming against an updraft. This raucous tactic popped my eyelids wide.

A squarely built young cowboy crouched in the one-man aisle between me and young Grayson, Stetson clutched with the determination of a rodeo circuit rider ready to float this metal bronc into the dirt.

I figured him to be about twenty-five. Strong chin. Oversized build for full extension in the sixty-nine inch interior. One of the threesome that boarded along with my dreamy accomplice, Rita.

This is how I will die. Stuck in a pipe dream about the woman he boarded the plane with while he abandons reality and tears the cabin into an exploded parts schematic.

I swallowed my stomach and compacted my bowels, forcing blood-oxygen northward into my brain. Make-believe sex was a bad idea, anyway. My father’s game. I’d vowed before leaving my wife and children behind, no more looking, no more touching, no more fantasizing about old girlfriends, missed liaisons or charming flight attendants. These would bring this plane down—what others called karma and my bride, Nansi, labeled my “sin nature.” Violent words. Spit in my face a hundred times, they’d carved out a superstition.

In today’s episode of my untimely death, a panicked aerophobic with the strength to wrestle a full-grown bull to the ground but no capacity for free-fall turbulence, found himself trapped in the tiny cabin of a commuter plane while I daydreamed of an illicit encounter with his mysterious travel partner.

A mistake with terminal consequences.