Chapter 6

Still Carlie’s turn:

First time THIS ever happened. I woke with the light leaking into a hotel room, looked over into the bed next to mine and saw a MAN there.

He’s mostly asleep, I think, laying on his side facing towards me, hugging a pillow to his chest.

I can be still for a bit, and I do that, just sort of studying.

Hugging a pillow. I find myself just a little bit jealous of that stupid pillow.

Oh well ... ease out of bed silently, pad to the bathroom, relieve pressures, wipe my face with a warm washcloth, turn around, jump out of my skin because he’s standing there.

“You startled me,” I said.

“Heard the water running. Kinda triggers some processes.”

“Lemme get out of here,” I said, stepping out, closing the door behind me. I heard the ‘process’ that was triggered.

He came out. “Bathroom’s yours. I’ll get dressed out here.”

I grabbed my day’s jeans and blouse, shut the door behind myself, donned them, opened my makeup bag, which is woefully bereft of makeup. Hairbrush. Perfume, just a little ... Grandma said ‘just a hint, baby.’

I brushed my teeth. Looked at the girl in the mirror. Gonna need a trim of my hair in a week or two. It’s touching my collar. I like it short. Brush, brush, brush ... Shake my head. Brush some more. Straighten my bangs. Open the door.

He’s sitting on a chair pulling his socks on.

My turn to do the same. Five minutes, we’re dressed, bags packed, and out the door.

Breakfast is at a little diner. I miss OUR coffee, but this is good enough. We drag around a bit before hitting the first of the day’s museums.

Art. It’s a personal thing, a person’s tastes. We looked at a lot, talking quietly between ourselves, finding that he appreciates realism over abstraction. Surprise. Practical Bob.

We’re looking at an abstract painting.

“I can’t get my head around that,” he said.

I smiled. “Dude walked into his studio one morning. Thought ‘Speckles. I think I’ll do speckles. Now, what colors do I have left?’”

He smiled at me. “And somebody calls it ‘art’.”

So yeah...

Lunch at a hole in the wall restaurant, then the Museum of Natural History and that’s just the place you want to go with a polymath engineer.

Wasn’t hard to notice that another couple along with their kids caught our conversation and started tagging along. Next thing I knew, the kids’re asking questions of Bob. He looked to their parents.

“I hope you don’t mind,” the dad said. “Katherine and I are schoolteachers. We’re getting educated today along with Devon and Laila.”

“Please, I don’t mind at all,” Bob said. “I just don’t want to come off as a know-it-all ... Engineer, by the way ... Bob Newman. My friend Carlie...”

We exchanged handshakes.

‘Another couple’. That makes US the first couple. Interesting thought, there, Carlie. Let’s look at the dinosaurs.

Five o’clock, we’re headed south to Galveston.

“We’re pushing too hard, Bob,” I said. “Either of those museums, I could’ve spent a whole day. Or more...”

“If it’s YOUR thing, this doesn’t have to be the last time,” he told me. “I didn’t want to drag you through something you didn’t really like...”

“Maybe it’s a matter of discovering what I like. Never been to a REAL museum like these...”

“I like ‘em. Just sometimes it’s kinda sad to go by myself. If it’s YOUR thing...”

“I think I’d like to explore more...” I looked at the little smile on his face. I’m discovering another facet of this guy. And me.

Galveston. Seafood restaurant that was really good. So was the view of the Houston Ship Channel, one of the busiest waterways in the country. After our meal we walk out on the wharf and watch together.

Yeah ... I see it as ‘together’. Standing side by side. Not too close.

And then another hotel room. I could like this.

“It’s a lot of money, Bob,” I tell him after we’ve checked in.

“Same amount of money if I came here by myself,” he said. “But I wouldn’t do that, because it’s just kind of sad doing things like this ... Just like that meal. I enjoy good food, but having a friend to share it with, that’s two or three orders of magnitude better.”

“Orders of magnitude?”

“Factors of ten,” he told me. “Thousand times better with you...” I think he caught himself. “With a friend.”

I looked at him. “Me?”

“Yep. It’s great being here, doing things with you, if it’s things YOU enjoy...”

“I am enjoying myself, Bob,” I said.

Half a movie on TV after we took our showers. Dammit! Aftershave, cologne, whatever it was, he smells great, face a little red from shaving, sitting there on his bed in his pajamas challenging me to a few hands of rummy again.

That’s TWO nights ... I’m definitely in the arena of wanting him and my logical side is telling me all the things wrong with that idea.

I’m half his age. That’s a pretty big one.

I’m broke. I can just see people thinking that the reason I’m with Bob is that I was hopelessly broke and I saw him as a sugar daddy. Distribute a little of the nookus, get a place to live, with amenities ... he’s already given me full use of the car. Or the truck. Run of his house. Come and go as I please.

Bob wouldn’t buy that. Shouldn’t buy that. I can’t do that to him. ‘Benefactor’, okay? Carlie, push the thought out...

Sleep. Waking. This time he’s first out of bed. I’m hopping on one foot when the bathroom door opens and he comes out.

“Move! Emergency!” and I push past him. Bathroom. Door shut. Sit. Ahhhhhhh. Then a tingle because I rubbed against him.

Okay, Carlie. Cool yourself.

Breakfast again. We’re loaded up for the trip home when we leave the hotel.

“If it weren’t for school, I could spend a week doing this.” Then, “I guess I need to cool it. I’d run you broke.”

“You’re not gonna run me broke, Carlie, and I’ve been hanging around the house looking for a bit of incentive to get out and do what we’re doing.”

“You sure?”

“Sure sure.”

We took a big scenic loop around the city, coming back up the street along the seawall, heading for Moody Gardens, our museum for the day.

“Stop, Bob. Park.”

“Sure. Why?”

“I wanna get out and look...”

“Okay.”

We parked. First time here for me. Standing on the sidewalk at the top of the seawall, looking out over the Gulf of Mexico. Off in the distance I could see ships, some of them anchored, some heading off, some coming in, and I could feel the stiff, damp Gulf breeze hitting my face, when I was set upon by a roar.

I twisted, looking. Big old twin-engined plane, clawing for altitude, then swinging right, looping back around.

“Mygawd, what’s that?”

“World War Two bomber. B-25,” Bob said.

“Seriously?”

“Absolutely. Lone Star Flight Museum.”

“Where?”

“Used to be right back on the road to Moody Gardens. Dunno what that ol’ guy’s doing here.”

“Forget the penguins, Bob. I gotta see THAT!”

“Seriously?”

“You don’t want to?”

“No, I really do, but...”

“But what? I’m a girl and that stuff’s not gonna interest me?”

“Well...”

I tossed a little attitude into my tone. “We’ve been living under the same roof for weeks. Haven’t you paid ANY attention, Bob? I AM interested in things. Mechanical things. Electrical things. Technology.”

“Okay, then ... Let’s go look at aviation history.”

We DID that. Drive back towards Houston, destination Ellington Field. History. Up to my gills. Form and function has a beauty of its own. State of the art – 1942. All aluminum and iron and Bob’s a history buff and I am his acolyte.

Fascinated is a good word. Things I saw and read about in books are more alive when I see the machines in front of me.

We looked. Asked questions. Talked with a couple of guys working on a restoration.

They go all the way from a B-17 bomber to a Piper Cub – TWO of those, one in the color known in the aviation community as ‘Cub Yellow’ and another in the olive drab of the World War Two Army service livery.

I caught Bob’s smile. “That’s more my speed.”

I can tell when a person’s eyes light up. Lit, were his.

“You could have one. Or maybe something just a little newer and faster. I mean, look. Two people and twenty pounds of luggage. Two hundred miles, and if you fly along the Interstate, you’ll get passed up.”

“Baby doll,” he said, “sometimes the journey IS the destination.”

‘Baby doll?’ He really IS happy to let THAT slip out.

“Wait?!? Do you know how to fly a plane?”

“I haven’t been at the controls since my first job out of college, but yes, I do. Did.”

“That’s a piece of knowledge you haven’t given me.”

“Subject never came up. I also am classified by the NRA as ‘expert’ class rifleman. What else? Let me think.”

“Now you’re being smart...”

“No, not really. I’ve lived a lot of years, done a lot of things. Some I kept up, some I didn’t.”

“Okay,” I said. I pulled my iPad from my backpack and started a search.

“What’re you doing, Carlie?” he asked, eyeballing me as we drove.

“Google search.”

“For what? Or should I even ask?”

“J-3 Cubs.”

“Carlie...”

“Bob ... killin’ time.”

“Okay.”

Doesn’t take long to frame some data, you know.

“Bob?”

“Yeah, sweetie?”

“Got fifty thousand sitting around?”

“Dollars?”

“No, silly! Avocados. I want a really BIG guacamole...”

He snorted. “Good one.! What’s fifty thousand get me?”

“Ninety percent of the Cubs on the market. Maybe more. They start at the mid to upper twenties.”

“And why would we want that?”

“Wings.”

“You ever see a Cub? Fly a Cub?”

“Well, no. I thought that was something YOU would show me.”

“I haven’t flown in years.”

“If you were gonna start again, what’d you have to do?”

“Go get a physical. Find an instructor, get checked out again. Renting planes is expensive these days.”

“Oh. I have no idea...”

“Neither do I. Have to call around.”

“You’d do it?”

“Might look into it. Why not?”

“Could be fun.”

“It’d have to be fun. There’s not a lot of practical use to it.”

“So,” I countered, “like skateboarding...”

“More useful than that.”

“Like a skateboard you could share with a friend and go places...”

“If you don’t mind going slow and ending up at some little airport on the edge of town with your twenty pounds of luggage.”

I giggled. “Next weekend. Me and you. Twenty pounds of total luggage.”

“Oh, so you DO want to do another weekend like this?”

“Of course. I had a wonderful time.”

We stopped midway through the trip home for lunch. Iconic Texas Whataburger. Then home early afternoon, hit the house and took care of business, retired to share Mister Art’s barbecued ribs and Mizz Bekka’s baked beans and potato salad.