Chapter 3

Since she became his patient, life has never been better for Steve. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Mrs. D’Amato comes to the hospital for her physical therapy from Mr. Anderson. Every Wednesday when Maria was volunteering at the Humane Society, her pool boy and gardener came by to maintain the pool, gardens, and lawn, and every Saturday when Darlene had the evening off, Maria’s best friend Steve comes over for dinner and they talk and drink wine long into the night, often playing in the pool.

She never knows what to expect when Steve gets an idea in his head. She came home one evening and her pool shower was finally completed. Steve got a friend at the VFW to plumb the simple cold water shower head on a post holding the patio roof up. Then he split a piece of bamboo and hid the water pipe behind the bamboo ala Gilligan’s Island. He used the rest of the bamboo to make a low bamboo privacy wall around the shower.

One weekend, at Steve’s request, Maria made a picnic dinner and packed it up like they were going out for a picnic, and brought it out to the picnic table by the pool. The patio has become their oasis ever since Steve installed a ceiling fan in the patio roof over her table and outdoor kitchen. “This looks awesome!” said Steve as he looked at the feast of cold fried chicken, potato salad, fruit salad, and Steve’s favorite, roasted cherry tomato and goat cheese bruschetta. “Darling, this is perfect!” and instead of helping her sit down as usual, he started packing up dinner in a picnic hamper.

“What’s happening?” asked Maria. “I thought you liked the dinner I made.”

“It looks awesome!” said Steve. “I’m starving and I can’t wait to try it. Let’s go!”

“I don’t understand,” she said, but she followed him around the house to his pickup in the driveway and he placed the hamper in the back of the truck and helped her in the cab. “Where are we going?” she asked.

He climbed in the driver’s seat, started the truck, smiled and said, “On a picnic!”

“Wha...?”

“It’s a beautiful park, you’re going to love it.”

Maria inspected Steve’s truck, a glossy black Ford F-150. “This is quite a truck,” she noticed a plaque affixed to the dashboard with Arabic writing and asked, “A gift from an oil sheik?”

“There was a tiny province in Afghanistan that was overrun with every bad guy you could imagine, so the local law enforcement asked for my help, and I had a few spare bullets, and I found this waiting for me when I got home.”

“It sounds like there’s more to both of us than what meets the eye,” said Maria.

They drove up to Sebastian where at the north edge of town on Roseland Road there was a campground. Steve pulled into the campground and found the site that he had selected. The individual campsites were private, trees and bushes between the sites were thick and tall, separating the campsites insuring privacy. Rather than gravel, the floor of the campsites was a thick, soft bed of sand and Steve was tempted to set up his small tent, but Maria would never be able to sleep on the ground and get up in the morning.

Steve set up a four-pole canopy over the picnic table and set her chair at the end of the table. Sitting on the bench of a wooden picnic table was an arduous task for the raven-haired beauty, and Steve’s job was to make life as simple and as easy as possible for her. As she sat in her chair at the end of the table, they enjoyed dinner while a campfire snapped and cracked in the fire ring next to the table. Campers out for their evening stroll would stop by to chat as Steve and Maria ate dinner.

“Are all campers this friendly?” asked Maria.

“In my experience they are,” said Steve. “Somewhere in my collection I have a flag that says, “Coffee’s On.” My folks would hang that in front of our trailer in the morning when we were camping and folks out for their morning stroll would stop in for a cup of coffee.”

As the sun set, Steve got another folding chair for him out of the truck and he and Maria sat by the fire, inviting campers to join them. Eventually a dozen people from all over the United States brought a chair over and sat around Steve and Maria’s campfire swapping stories of campouts long gone by. Steve told stories of camping in the woods up in the “Yoo Pee” while others talked about South Dakota and Mount Rushmore, Arizona and the Grand Canyon, or Northern California and Yosemite.

Finally, someone asked Maria if she had any camping stories. “Just one,” she said. “A friend stopped by for dinner one afternoon and asked me to make a picnic dinner, as I made the picnic dinner, he set out the paper plates and cups on my patio table. When dinner was ready, he packed everything up including me and here we are.”

The laughter was contagious, and eventually someone asked Steve, “what are you going to do when they want to rent out this site?”

“I rented this site for the evening; they’ll have to wait for checkout before they can kick us out.”

“You rented a camp site to take me on a picnic?” asked Maria, startled to hear his admission.

“Well ... yes. The picnic shelters at the state parks get so crowded and I didn’t want to be interrupted,” said Steve, causing their new friends around the campfire to chuckle and nod in agreement. As they laughed, Steve leaned over and gave Maria a gentle kiss on the lips. She wasn’t aware of the kiss until after it happened, it was so sweet, so automatic, she just responded naturally and returned his kiss like she did a thousand times with Giuseppi, and when it was over she sat gazing in the fire, feeling the caress of his lips on hers.

It was a couple of hours later when some of the folks started heading back to their own campsites that Maria realized that she and Steve were holding hands, and they had been all evening long. “Do you like camping with me?” he asked softly.

She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed the back of his hand softly. ‘I love camping with you.”

“If I bought a pop-up camper, would you go camping with me?”

Maria thought about it for a few moments, then squeezed his hand and smiled. “Anywhere you want to go, I’ll follow along.”

Taking a huge, nervous breath he kissed her cheek softly and whispered, “I would love to continue camping with you except...” he cleared his throat softly again and he looked sad then said, “Annamaria Giacinta Bellini-D’Amato, I don’t think I can see you as a patient any longer.”

Maria was horrified and with a quivering chin she sputtered, “Why not? Did I...”

“No, it’s not what you did, it’s what I did.”

“Why? What did you do?” she asked softly.

Steve took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I think I fell in love with you.”

Maria was completely taken aback by this statement from this young boy. He’s just a youngster, about half her age. How can he possibly know what falling in love is all about? Then, a few moments later, she heard a familiar voice, a voice from her past asking, “How can he not know?” It was her Giuseppi, pointing out the obvious. Maria looked at Steve, now he had a face that clearly said he was in the middle of a heartbreak. “I think we should go home and think about it,” she whispered. She watched him pack up the remainders of their dinner, then fold up the awning over their table. He was so sad looking. “What’s the matter?” she finally asked.

“Something is over,” he said sadly. When she looked at him, confused, he continued, “I love treating you. Your condition is a challenge, and I truly love the challenge of treating you...”

When he dropped off the statement, she asked, “What else? Is there more?”

“I love touching you, but it’s clearly obvious that you don’t love being touched as much as I love doing the touching ... you...” His words were now catching in his throat, he just made an absolute fool of himself in front of the woman that he fell in love with. He fought back the tears and finished cleaning up. “I’m so sorry ... I’m not being fair to you; I’ll take you home and stop bothering you. I will have Doctor Albertson find a replacement and I’ll see if there’s an opening for me elsewhere.”