Chapter 17

As it turned out, it didn't matter that they were running late, since Emily had said only that they'd get to Scott and Sonja's "after noon sometime." But that hadn't been all she'd been vague on; she'd only said she and Vicky were going to "drop by for a bit" and with malice aforethought didn't mention motorcycles. So, it wasn't surprising to see Scott, Sonja, and their kids pour out the side door of the house when the rumble of the Harley invaded their driveway; but it was a little surprising to see Aaron and Amber and their kids join them.

"Good God, it is you two," Scott shook his head as Emily and Vicky took their helmets off. "When I think of you two, I think of a couple cheerleaders running around school in your short skirts. I sure didn't expect to see you rolling up on a couple Harleys!"

"Oh, mine is only a Honda," Vicky laughed. "But it may be a hog next year."

"Well, hey," Aaron said, "It's good to see you two again, even if we didn't quite expect it to be this way."

"After you called," Scott explained. "We decided to invite Aaron and Amber and the kids over, and heat up the grill out back since it's going to be a nice day. We hang out together quite a bit and trade babysitting back and forth."

"Sure," Emily said. "Glad you did, the more the merrier."

"Did you have a good ride up?" Sonja asked.

"Real good, especially with the flying cantaloupe," Vicky laughed. "That was something I wasn't expecting."

"Flying cantaloupe?" Amber frowned.

"Right," Emily laughed. "We found out a cantaloupe makes a pretty good splat after you toss it a quarter mile."

"What are you talking about?" Scott shook his head.

"Tossing cantaloupes," Emily smiled. "It's a lot of fun. We'd have been here sooner but we had to stop and launch a couple."

"I still don't get it," Scott said.

"With a trebuchet," Vicky laughed. "Emily and I know some of the damndest people."

"A trebuchet? Oh, that story you did in the Courier last winter," Aaron smiled, the light dawning.

"This sounds like a story," Sonja smiled. "Why don't we head out back and you can tell it?"

It was warm in the fenced-in back yard, out of the cool spring breeze. The black leathers were hot, so Emily and Vicky soon peeled down to the T-shirts and jeans they had on underneath and settled into lawn chairs while Sonja served beer and soft drinks and Scott fired up the grill. The two couples had a total of four pre-schoolers, although Scott and Sonja's Sabra and Amber and Aaron's Clayton would be heading off to kindergarten in the fall. To keep the kids from getting too out of hand, and so the adults could talk a bit, Scott and Sonja had invited a neighborhood teenager, Brianna, to ride herd on the little ones.

When you got right down to it, Vicky didn't know either the Tylers or the Heislers very well. She remembered Scott and Aaron from high school, and had in fact dated both of them way back when. She'd met Sonja at the weenie roast after her sophomore year in college, but hadn't met Amber before the reunion last fall. Emily had been to both weddings back after college, but Vicky hadn't; it had been in the early days after marrying Augie, and he wasn't much on hanging out with her old pals.

Sonja was a dark, exotic beauty -- not beautiful in the sense that Jennlynn worked at it to be in your face about it, but Sonja had a quiet, reserved, natural handsomeness and placidity that was awesome. Back at the weenie roast Vicky had learned that while Sonja had been born and raised up in Pontiac, outside of Detroit, as natural an American girl as Vicky was, she sure didn't look it. Sonja had briefly told the story: her father Bob's step-parents had taken him out of a Japanese orphanage as an infant; his mother was Japanese and likely had been a prostitute, so his birth father could have been anything. Bob liked to think he was American Indian, but there was no proof. Sonja's birth mother Zivah was an Israeli, but of equally mixed lineage -- her father was Mexican, and her mother was Iraqi Jewish.

Sonja's father and mother had been married for a while, but she was an Israeli reservist. When the Yom Kippur War broke out in 1973, she left Sonja and Bob to go back to Israel to fight the war. While she was there, she'd decided she'd really rather be a patriot than a mother, and got invited to officer school. It was not quite a pre-run of Jason and Jody; the two had tried a transatlantic marriage for a while, but they soon found out it wasn't working. They'd agreed on an amicable divorce, with Bob getting custody. He remarried not long afterward, and everyone remained good friends except for the period that Zivah was trying to twist Sonja's arm to do her duty in the Israeli army. That had led to Sonja hiding out with Scott and his family at the time of the weenie roast; shortly afterward, Sonja's mother showed up in Bradford looking for her, and with Emily's warning the two blew town on literally no notice. They stayed gone all summer on an epic tramp across the country that sealed them as a pair for good.

Scott and Aaron had been pretty good friends in high school, if not best friends -- good enough friends to go to each other's weddings, both within a month of the time Vicky married Augie -- but in the years following, each couple had made moves and had sort of drifted apart. It was not until the reunion last fall that they mutually discovered they'd managed to wind up less than ten miles from each other and had been there for years. That and the Halloween party shortly afterward had turned them into close friends who spent a lot of time hanging out with each other.

It was even more than that: "We were sitting around one day last winter griping about how cold and miserable it was, and how we ought to take off and go someplace warm for a few days," Aaron grinned. "I was thinking maybe Daytona, but Scott and Sonja had a better idea: take us to Eilat."

"Eilat?" Emily frowned. "I never heard of it."

"Israel," Sonja grinned. "Down on the southern end, on an arm of the Red Sea, near Akaba in Jordan. The perfect place to warm up and dry out after a Michigan winter."

"It was a great trip," Amber reported. "Scott and Sonja tell all these stories about what a hardcase Zivah is, but she was our guide for the whole trip and was the perfect hostess. She's warm and friendly, very talkative. We had a ball."

"You caught her on her good behavior," Scott snorted. "You were our guests, so she wasn't going to turn hardnose on us. Believe me, that worked so well I'm not sure I want to go there again without taking guests."

"She was a little disappointed we didn't bring Sabra and Scotty," Sonja reported. "But we explained it was supposed to be a grownup trip, so she understood."

"Yeah, but still, she's quite a woman," Aaron grinned. "Jeez, I'd like to be in the shape now that she's in at what, Sonja? Fifty-four?"

"I think," Sonja nodded. "Something like that."

"Solid muscle," Aaron shook his head.

"And you could tell it," Amber added dryly. "What they're not saying is that Zivah had booked us into this real nice beachfront hotel but didn't tell us that it was a topless beach."

"It's how it's done there," Sonja shrugged.

"Yeah, but you didn't warn us," Amber blushed. "So here we are, getting set to head down to the beach, and Zivah comes out of her room wearing only what I have to call a G-string and a towel thrown over one shoulder. Muscles all over the place. I mean, I never really knew what the term 'statuesque' meant until that instant."

"So did you join in?" Vicky couldn't help but grin.

"Of course," Amber replied casually, the redness of her face giving voice to her true feelings. "I mean, we didn't want to stick out, or anything. Of course, that meant the guys had on swimsuits that would make a Speedo look conservative. I mean, I wouldn't wear a bottom that skimpy on a beach around here. The only thing that saved either Aaron or me was we'd gotten used to nude in the hot tub with Scott and Sonja."

"You do nude in the hot tub?" Emily asked.

"Well, not when we have each other's kids with us," Sonja explained. "I'm really to blame; it comes from my dad. He was brought here as a baby and didn't grow up with any Japanese cultural tradition. He tried to pick some of it up here and there and pass it along to Traci and me. It's really no big deal; Scott and I are used to it. I honestly thought we had told Aaron and Amber the beach at Eilat was a little on the skimpy side."