Chapter 7

Nikki's Dan's turn

I have been informed by my beautiful and bright wife that I am now 'Dan 2.0'. It's funny. I was 'Danny' to Momma and Dad always called me 'Dan', as did my friends growing up, you know, when they weren't calling me 'Peanut' or 'Asshole' or any of the other wonderful nicknames guys give one another.

"You're Dan 2.0, according to Tina," my little love said. "She says that's because she met Cindy's Dan first."

We're shutting down the house down here. I'm not giving it up. This land is family land. This acre was walked upon by my great-great grandfather. Their first house was here on this ridge and it was wiped out by a hurricane in 1928. They built again, but it was a little further over to the east. There are the ghosts of five generations of Grangers here, with all the trials, the sorrows, the triumphs, the love and the laughter, and I and that brown-haired teen over there packing her bag are among the reasons I am adding a new load of laughter and joy to the history of this place. My house has now survived two Category 3 hurricanes, so it'll be here long after Dan and Nikki are gone on to their reward. At least I can hope that. Roots. We may vine out to Alabama, but Dan Granger's roots are here.

We've loaded everything we needed into the travel trailer. That's gonna be home for the next two months while the apartment building is finished. I've lived in apartments in the past,, up to the time I built this house, but I've never looked forward to living in an apartment. This one, though, is different.

First, I'm following this astounding brown-haired girl there. Nikki. Love of my life. Quirky, funny, smart, caring, kind ... I run out of words, and if I say some of them out loud, I get this somewhat athletic, delectable body plastered against me, her teeth and tongue teasing at my ear, knowing that I can't control what happens after that.

Nikki's going to college. Nikki, who is fifteen, precociously graduated from high school, the mind under those brown bangs in the last, tippy-top percentile in intelligence, is going to interview with the Engineering Department at Auburn University in Alabama. Interviews aren't normally part of enrollment, but in Nikki's case, a few letters went back and forth between an interested guidance counselor at this end and the Engineering Department at that end, that just maybe they need to look at my Nikki and see if there's something just a tiny bit different with her.

Nikki's got sisters. I laugh. When I met Nikki and I married Nikki, she was all by herself, her mom in the custody of the State of Arkansas. Now I find that she and three similarly intelligent teen girls have summarily adopted each other and formed what I am told is The Sisterhood, preparatory to descending en masse on Auburn University's Engineering Department. And each of those sisters is married. Even Cindy, a fourteen year old redhead who just might eclipse my own Nikki in raw intelligence, is married.

And of late, a collective little sister in the form of Terri, age seven, daughter of my old friend Alan Addison. And Terri regularly calls or Skypes Nikki asking questions that you'd only hope a middle schooler might ask. Oh, hell, Terri asks questions that I'd hope that a second year computer science major would ask.

The whole thing was a surreal blur. I imagine that from the outside it would take on an air of implausibility, but from the vantage I hold as mate to one of the participants it's just a string of happy curiosities.

My end of the string of curiosities was on her way back into the living room, trailed by a big goofy cat who was apparently her familiar. "He was just waiting with you for me to show up," Nikki giggled once. Tommi, the old yellow cat, accords her much more attention and affection than I ever got, even when he and I were the sole occupants of the house.

"He's gonna miss us," she said to me. "Look at this big ol' kitty face." She was holding him and he was lounging comfortably in her arms. He'd never tolerated me holding him for more than a few seconds before he writhed to free himself.

I just shook my head. "He'll miss you. Me, I'm not so sure."

"He's a cat, for gosh sake," she smiled, then she buried her face in his fur, buzzing him. "He's supposed to be strange. Let's go find something for dinner so we don't dirty any more dishes."

"Okay, good idea," I said. We did dinner, then returned to the house, straightening up a few things and then we disturbed the cat for an hour. He's smart. He knows better than to try to get on the bed or near the sofa or anywhere else that happy tangle of arms and legs may form.

Things are quiet after the shower and as Nikki and I snuggle into the bed together, he finds his new favorite spot on her side of the bed. I don't even get to touch the cat. Oh, well. The soft hair of Nikki's head on my shoulder, her body forming against mine as we drift into slumber, that's a bit more than a fair trade for a cantankerous old cat.

We were up and out the door at the crack of dawn the next morning, munching granola bars for breakfast. The cat was in the picture window, watching us depart as I maneuvered the truck and travel trailer onto the road. We were off, eating up miles, a goal in mind that would put us most of the way to our destination by sundown. I didn't relish driving this rig on secondary roads after dark.

Nine and a half hours of driving later, we parked the rig in the back lot of a nice hotel with a hamburger joint right next door. Yeah, yeah ... travel trailer. Why didn't we just stay in it? Honestly, it's okay if you must do that, but given the choice, I'd rather not. Especially when I have the choice of dealing with the holding tank and the water tank and all those issues. I had a full tank of potable water and full tanks of propane to cook with and keep the little refrigerator cold, but we had eyes for a king-sized bed and a big shower, both of which we availed ourselves after ditching the truck and walking next door to get a couple of burger baskets. And chocolate malts. Real ones.

"We can't do this too often," my healthy beauty said. "But mmmmmmm, chocolate malt. It's been years."

"Me too," I said, "But when I saw the mixer, I knew we had to try. Burger's good, too!"

The response to that was a muffled grunt because my cutie had one of the burgers at her mouth.

Our waitress was a friendly little thing only a couple of years older than Nikki. She was attentive and bright and Nikki looked at me when she dropped off the ticket. "Tip 'er good!"

"I usually do," I said.

"That could've been me, you know..." Nikki said as we walked back to the hotel.

"That would be a true shame, punkin," I said. "You're too smart to waste your mind on a dead-end job."

"I don't know if she's wasting her time. She has a couple of college textbooks behind the counter. One of 'em was open."

"Good," I said. "She's trying."

"Yeah," Nikki said. "So many of 'em give up. And don't get me started with the ones who think that high school's all they need."

"It is, for a lot of 'em," I said. "Some of them will get jobs and work their way up, learning as they go. Some of them will work a few years and see that they really do want something different. And some of them, by the time they get to that point, it will be too late because they're trying to juggle a house and kids and whatever else in life."

"I can see that," Nikki said. "And some of them will start their own businesses and get by. Sometimes they'll take off."

"People can be satisfied with a steady income from something like that little restaurant we go to up the road." Up the road from home, that is. It was a family restaurant, made good money in return for good food, and they had a neat little sideline going, putting together gift baskets that were popular among businesses. Even had, of all things, a bit of on line business. We talked about them.

"I like that bunch. They have a good business," she said. "But still, I'm glad that I get a chance to go past high school."

"Yeah," I replied. "Next week you might get a chance to get past some college, too."

"Me an' Cindy," she giggled. "Who'd've thought. Seriously, last year, I was NOTHING..."

I interrupted, "Oh, no, punkin, you were never 'nothing'. That potential is yours."

"But how do you ever think I might have gotten a chance to use it, Dan?"

"I dunno," I said. "I would hope somebody would've recognized you for what you are."

She swung her hip against mine. "Somebody did." Blue eyes twinkled at me. "Right?"

"You got it," I said. Her fingertips brushed my hand. I took hers in mine. "I got it. We both got it."

"Us!" Giggle. "Nikki and her Dan 2.0."

We strolled into the hotel hand in hand, hitting the elevator laughing, and went to our room. We took a bit of time to connect with the rest of the community. The contrast is amusing. Alan, Dan 1.0 and I are guys, we talk about the business, the plans, arrangements in level, measured tones.

Nikki and Cindy and Tina (and Terri) are a mass of laughter and giggles about relationships and life and family.

"Anybody heard from Susan in the last couple of days?" Nikki asked.

Tina giggled. "Terri, cover your ears."

Terri pulled her most mature (from a seven year old) tone out and said, "Tina, they're on a honeymoon. I know what honeymoon means. Gosh!"

"Okay, then, Little Miss Grown-up," Tina retorted. "Susan and Jason will be back home Friday."

Cindy's titter cut the noise. "And despite my own prediction, they're both still alive."

On my screen, Alan said "It may take a month for Jason to stop grinning, though." I completely understand that. It's been almost a year since I first met Nikki, and I still find myself smiling when I think of her. Right now, though, I'm watching her animation over the raised screen of her laptop. She looks up for a second, our eyes connect, and her smile broadens.

Yeah, I'm hooked.

The conversations over, it's time to give that shower a workout and then road-test the mattress on that king-sized bed.

The bed's quite handy for gymnastics, we decide, but when it comes time to go to sleep, we fit together in a corner in a compact and happy knot.

"I love you, baby," she says. "I miss our cat, but I love you."

One more long, conscious sniff of the fragrance from her tousled head, and we're asleep.

Nikki's turn:

We pulled the travel trailer into an RV park that Cindy and Dan 1.0 scouted out. It looks nice, but I am certainly no expert on these things. Cindy's lived in one for years and her Dan has been in and out of a bunch of them over that past few years, so they're in a position to pass judgment.

'Dan 2.0'. I giggled when Tina popped that one on me, and Dan laughed when I told him.

"I can't be Dan 1.0?" he asked.

My guy. Sometimes it hits me. This is my guy. I smile. "That's okay, baby. Version 2.0 is usually much better than 1.0."

"You have a point, bunny," he said.

We were having this conversation on the sofa in the living room. That's a good place to start happy conversations, you know. Up the hall is a great place to end them. Disturbed the cat. He gets extra skritches after the festivities are over. Gotta take care of my kitty. And my husband. And, oh yeah, that cat, too.

After we got our tiny house leveled and hooked up to the utilities, we unhitched that big truck and drove to a little airfield to wait for our ride back to Louisiana. I flip my phone open and punch it and say "Tina". It dials.