Excerpt from Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Excerpt
Hot Air

Joannie was not certain how the date was going. She had not been on a date for a very long time. Not since her divorce seven years ago. And then, of course, not during her ten years of marriage. She had never been on a proper date with her ex-husband even before they were married. He had just sort of worn her down, so clearly in love with her.

And that was a big chunk of her life.

Her marriage.

Years and years of her life. Stolen. Not only the opportunity to date, but to lead her life, spend her days the way she would have liked, instead of always trying to placate someone else. She did, of course, have a marvelous child. Lucy.

So, she was on a date. Joannie had met him not on an app but in real life, at a block party on a very fancy block around the corner from her not-that-fancy apartment. Her daughter had a friend who lived on this block. At the party, Joannie had gotten pleasantly drunk and accepted a hit from a joint, even though she did not like to smoke pot, because she figured, why not? Some people made friends through their dogs. Joannie met people through her daughter. The man she'd met had a son the same age as her daughter, and her daughter said this boy wasn't awful.

Johnny texted her the next day, asking her out, and when Joannie replied that she did not have a babysitter, he wrote back that she should come to his house, bring her daughter, and the kids could watch a movie in the basement. He promised a nice meal, and Joannie loved free dinners. Nothing, of course, could ever happen between them because of their names. Joannie and Johnny.

* * *

Joannie realized very quickly that she was not attracted to Johnny. He was not unattractive. Attractive, even. He had money, too, which was important after being married for so long to a man who did not. He liked good movies. He read books. He had made her dinner. She knew, however, that she was not attracted to him, because after the meal, he had kissed her. They had gone outside to watch the sunset. The sky had turned pink. The light sparkled over the lawn, onto the swimming pool that Joannie did not know he had. She returned the kiss. It started out fine and then became unpleasant—oppressive, even—with Johnny's tongue in her mouth, his arms wrapped around her so tightly that it was difficult to extricate herself. It was a kiss that did not end. Joannie was realizing that she would have to forcibly end this kiss, because she would soon require oxygen, when a hot air balloon came veering down toward Johnny's very large backyard. "Holy fuck!" Johnny yelled, letting her go, looking up at the sky, while Joannie gulped for air.

The hot air balloon was heading straight for the swimming pool. It was crazy. Joannie decided she was never going to kiss this man, Johnny, again.

This made her sad, because during the meal, she had begun to imagine their life together, and already it had come crashing down. Like a hot air balloon. She had thought about the flowers she would plant in the yard, the coffee she would drink in the morning, sitting outside in one of the Adirondack chairs beneath the oak tree. The basement had a fully equipped playroom with a floor-to-ceiling movie screen. She would be a stepmother, which was tricky, but how hard could that be? It would be nice to have a playmate for her daughter. But now she would never find out.

There was a man and a woman in the basket of the hot air balloon careering from the sky, and they were screaming, not out of fear, but in anger. They seemed to hate each other. They were all dressed up.

"Make way!"

"We're coming down!"

"I will kill you, if we don't die!"

This was startling, to say the least.

"They are going to land in the pool!" Johnny said. He and Joannie ran for the pool, but the hot air balloon landed on the lawn, right at the edge of the pool.

From Hot Air. © 2025 by Marcy Dermansky. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.