Chapter 26

The week went by with nothing major going on to interrupt our lives.

Waiting on Friday. Before Johanna, I wasn't one of those people who worshipped Fridays, but now it was not a matter of escaping FROM something, it had become a matter of escaping with somebody, TO something.

The weather was warm in the afternoon, cooler enough at night to be comfortable, and a cold front was due through late Saturday.

When I got home Friday, the weekend's provisions were stacked by the door. I walked in, noted her diligence, got a searing kiss that ALMOST put an hour delay into our plans. When I said so, she trilled a giggle.

"Don't tempt me, buddy boy," she said.

We loaded up and left. Buckled in beside me, she said, "Stoney ... That kiss..."

"I know," I said. "You've turned my sexuality on, cutie. Before you, I could've been almost asexual."

"I know," she said. "I never even got a twinge until you and I kissed the first time. Now..."

"Made for each other," I said.

Smiling. "Feels exactly like that."

Stopped at a traffic light, I turned to look at her. She was in her delightful 'knocking about' mode, jeans and sweatshirt against the cool fall air, her hair done up in a whimsical pony tail that she'd fished out the back of a baseball cap.

I've seen Jo both ways: formal dress for her solo concert and this. Both were visions. Both stirred me in ways that no woman ever had before.

"You're staring again, Stoney," she said. Her smile told me what her words didn't say.

"It's just that what you're wearing is a good look for you."

"I look like a frump."

"Hardly. Somebody else may wear that and look frumpy. You, however, look cute, whimsical and totally charming."

"You, sir, are crazy." Giggle. "And I love you this way." She has the sweetest look when she's satisfied with herself.

"Look, redhead," I said. "I could be freakin' Shakespeare and I could never come up with the words to explain the spectrum of feelings I get when you're around. And believe me ... You're ALWAYS around. In my head. In my heart..."

Giggle. "In your arms. In your bed. In your boat."

"In my life."

"In my life," she repeated. "Mom was right. This is how it's supposed to be. Wise woman, my mother. Says some people never get here. Some people take years to get here. And some people," she said, patting my arm as I drove, "know what is meant to be before either party knows what's happening." She lay back in the seat, putting her feet on the dash. Yes, she's flexible, more than me, now that I have that extra metal.

"You just had a dark thought, Stoney."

"I just reminded myself why I'm not as flexible as you."

"I know the answer to that one, guy."

I raised an eyebrow, questioning.

She smiled. "I'm female. Pelvic geometry's different."

"Oh."

"And you gave a lot of yourself saving others. Both good reasons." Her smile vanished into thin air, replaced by the 'you know I'm right and I love you' look. "So we're gonna stay tied up to the dock? Or see how far out we can get before it's too dark?"

In our meager plans for the weekend, we'd discussed both options. I'd worried about getting out of the office late on Friday. I'd gotten dragged in on the tail of a project gone wrong and the big guys were scrambling to fix it. I thought we had running room to recovery, but when the big boys panic, well, we don't punch a timeclock. I knew Jo and I would be on the boat this evening. I just wasn't sure exactly when.

"We're early enough. We'll anchor out."

Little squeal. "Naked in the moonlight. At least until we get goosebumps."

"Johanna Solheim Jackson," I said, "I got goosebumps the first time your fingers touched mine."

Giggle. "Not the same as 'naked in the moonlight in November' goosebumps."

"One of these days we're gonna be soooo caught," I said.

"You need to mate with me in a forest glen and in a moonlit meadow, you remember."

"Yes I do. Bluebonnets happen in the springtime."

"Oh, yes," she said. "Beautiful. And that way we not only go to jail for public indecency but we add a count of debasing the state flower."

"I'm thinking red hair, eyes that match the flowers, except they cry a little when they see what YOU do to that shade of blue..."

She bit my shoulder.

"Owwww," I blurted. "You're gonna make me wreck. What was that for?"

"Because every now and then you say something like that, and I just wanna eat you up." Her smile broadened as she thought about what she'd just said. "And I think I will. Tonight. Under the stars."

I chuckled. "I thought I'd know when I died."

"Died?"

"Yeah, I must've died and gone to heaven."

"You know, you're not the only one to feel like that, dear," she said. "It's so easy to love you, Stoney." She reached for the stereo controls. "I'm loving these Bach flute sonatas, too, you know. They stir me. But not the places YOU stir me."

"And we don't have to give up anything to have each other AND Bach," I said.

"And Mozart. And Beethoven and a whole book full of others," she said. "But I like these Bach pieces. I could arrange them for just TWO instruments," she said.

I caught the implications. I was going to learn more music. Plusses? Yeah, there are some. I LIKE the music and Jo's selections stretch me far beyond where I ever thought I'd be when I first started playing with a banjo. Second, it's like this. I'm sitting there with my banjo, making music and I sit facing Johanna, a concert-level player who can't play her flute without her eyes flashing and a smile on her lips. It was truly an unexpected direction, a very pleasant bit of serendipity.

"So what will it be this time?"

"Harpsichord. We'll dig up some sheet music. You can do with it what you did with Mozart, just move it into your range and adapt Baroque to banjo." She giggled. "And I'm telling Doctor Bob."

"He's gonna think you're nuts."

"No he won't. He thinks that I'm experimental, exploring the classical music idiom in the context of non-traditional instrumentation. He thinks YOU'RE nuts."

"He said that?"

"He said you had no idea what you were getting into," she laughed. "I told him you knew more than he gives you credit for knowing. He says you're still nuts, and he's happy for the both of us. And you oughtta think about doing a concert with me."

"I'm just an engineer who happens to plunk on a banjo..."

"At a level that seems to impress a guy with a doctorate in music."

"He's just using me to get to you."

"He gets me already. I'm his student. Now he's using me to get to you."

"I think we oughtta go play in the park and put a cup out. We can make enough to buy a few hamburgers."

Giggle. "I'll do it if YOU do it. Next weekend."

"It's a deal!"

We kept chatting, laughing together until we pulled into the marina, then we lugged things onto the boat.

"Too late to see Gary," I said, "but here come the geese."

"Got 'em covered," she laughed, waving a bag of popcorn. I think the geese now associate red hair with a generous feeding. She fed them on the bank of the slip while I stowed the gear, then she joined me aboard.

"I wanna take her out by myself, Stoney."

"Okay," I said. "You want me to handle the lines?"

"Yeah. I'll take it easy. I can do this. Plenty of room."

She knew how to steer and how to operate the engine and in the confines of our slip, there's no way that the little diesel was going to build up enough speed to hurt anything. Further, I didn't see Jo as one who'd go catatonic if things got a bit crossways. I singled up the dockline while we gave the little engine a bit of time to warm up.

"Ready when you are, cap'n," I said. I was holding the end of the last dockline.

"Easing forward," she said. I felt the little quiver as the transmission shifted into gear. Engine at idle, the boat slowly eased forward out of the slip. She started her turn into the channel gently. I was more familiar with the handling of the boat and I could have been a bit more aggressive in the maneuver. I was happy with her restraint. Too many people attack a task like they've seen it done before them, not realizing that a practiced hand makes things look easier than they really are.

I stowed the docklines and made my way to the cockpit. She was smiling. "Didn't hit anything. Took it slow."

"You did good."

"I need to master this thing, Stoney, since she's ours and we're spending so much time with her."

"I'm glad you look at it that way," I said. I wanted Jo to learn, for several reasons. Accidents do happen, and if I was incapacitated, Jo needed to be able to take control of the boat. That's a good reason. Sailing is fun. That's another good reason. It's something we can share. A third good reason. There was a big smile on that freckled face as she eased the throttle forward. That smile. All the reason in the world. I sat beside her.

"You want 'er back now?" she asked.

"Not unless you're tired of steering."

"Oh, noooo," she said. "I like it."

"Then help yourself. I'm gonna pull the sail cover."

"I got this," she said. "Be careful."

I busied myself with that little task, ending up with the sail cover rolled and stowed and me sitting beside a pretty redhead who was doing a quite competent job of keeping us on our side of the channel. Soon we were easing along in the bay, threading our way between the markers that showed the deeper channel cut into the shallow bottom of the wide bay.

She looked at the display of our GPS. A marker showed our goal for the evening. She looked at the wind indicator. "I think that if we go a little further out in the channel than you did last time, we can swing south in the deeper water and put ourselves on a little bit shy of close-hauled and sail right to where we need to be with no tacking. Close reach, you know."

"You've been paying attention."

She looked at me. "Dad's Norwegian. I'm half Viking. Sailing is imprinted in my ancestral memory." Grin. "And I pay attention." Giggle. "The Irish side, that means that after a long sailing trip, I expect to be molested and enslaved."

"Point taken. I shall do my best." I twisted to kiss her. As we kissed, I toyed with that red, bouncy ponytail.

"You like that, don't you," she said.

"Yes I do," I replied. "Way past that 'It's cute and convenient' point. Something in the way I'm wired, I guess."

"You're like a kitten chasing a laser dot," she said. "I'll leave it in tonight, if you like..."

"I'm afraid it might be an overload," I said.

"I'll take it out when we get ready to go to sleep," she said. "I can't sleep with it."

I smiled. Yes, I liked the way Jo looked, just like this, along with every other way I'd ever seen Jo. Or imagined Jo. "You're seventeen kinds of alluring," I said.

She faked a sniffle. "Only seventeen?"

"I can't count any higher than that when I start thinking along those lines," I said. "I lose the blood supply to my brain."