Singles Week
Tom Crowley
A willowy woman arrived to take 27B, the middle seat beside Georg. Emerging from a sleeve of the woman’s yellow T-shirt was a thick, heavily-patterned, gray-green-and-rust snake. It apparently had swallowed almost whole the owner of a delicate white hand protruding from where the snake’s mouth should be. Looking from the corner of his eye, snake-fearing Georg cringed. Who’d buy such tattooing?
His clandestine peeks showed the snake-arm’s “scales” to be tiny ballerinas in Degas’ positions, some upright, some upside down, and others sidewise. The arm’s owner was attractive, early thirties with dark hair to her waist. But shyness and that arm kept Georg from chatting her up. At ten-thousand feet she asked, her tone suggesting she’d doubt any answer, “So, who are you?”
“I’m Georg,” he replied, smiling and carefully pronouncing “Gay-org” so she wouldn’t say, “You mean George?”
But instead she asked in perfectly-accented German, “Sind Sie Deutsch, Georg?”
“Uhm…nein. German-born, but immigrated at two. Dad was a Luftwaffe pilot who got a US Air Force commission. But I am pretty fluent. We spoke German at home, and I studied it some. What’s your name?”
“I’m Maggie, and I dance.” She leaned toward him, confiding, “I’m here to recover from a bad break-up,” her firm tone commanding, “So don’t mess me around.”
Raising his hand in defense, Georg rocked back. “Whoa, Maggie, me too,” and to escape painful break-up talk, he asked, “What’s your dancing?”
“Contemporary poetical dance,” she answered, awaiting the inevitable.
“What’s that?”
“I dance to poetry, not music. A speaker recites the poem, and I don’t just mime the words but penetrate to their true heart with my body’s fluidity.”
Engineer Georg’s inner voice asked, Body fluids penetrating poems—Artspeak detected! Leave by the nearest exit. But airborne with no exit, he only asked, “Performing where?”
Maggie answered, “Last was Aspen’s Wheeler Opera House. I live near Aspen in Carbondale.”
“I’m just southwest of Denver, near my work,” Georg replied.
“Whata you do?”
“Engineering. I’ve worked a lot on weather satellites.” Past tense made it true, and importantly, follow-up questions then concerned weather satellites, not his current classified work.
But Maggie, apparently bored now, said only, “I see,” and pulled out Poetry Magazine.
For six months Georg had designed better ways to kill with satellites, but this non-stop Denver-to-St.-Lucia night charter finally would begin a windsurfing R-and-R on a “Caribbean All-Included Singles Week.” At thirty-four Georg had never windsurfed but knew it would come easily. He’d sailed boats for years, usually lifted weights on days too snowy to run, and often biked thirty miles on weekends. So he relaxed and read this month’s Journal of Aerospace Engineering until sleep struck.
~ ~ ~
Five hours later the plane smacked St. Lucia’s tarmac so hard the oxygen masks dropped and passengers screamed. But the plane rolled on and Georg, shocked awake, saw through the window neither sparks nor flames. He figured the carriage probably was undamaged, so a ninety percent chance they’d stop safely. Also, ninety that an inexperienced idiot made that crappy landing. Georg then noticed a scared Maggie fumbling to apply her dangling mask, per the pre-takeoff safety instructions. Silly lady, he thought, since their altitude here was about eleven feet.
~ ~ ~
Georg had chosen Castle St. Lucia for its all-day windsurfing classes, so before breakfast he saved strength by running two—not his usual five—miles on the beach’s firm, wave-wetted sand. Dressing for breakfast, he lay aside his usual jeans and plaid flannel shirt, donning short pants and short sleeves. He locked away his cell phone with its proprietary orbital-mechanics apps. Proud to be an engineer, he defiantly placed in a shirt pocket his clear-plastic pocket-protector, its five ball-point pens in five ink colors.
Next to breakfast’s Please Wait to Be Seated sign rested a large bowl of condoms, marked Free. As Georg waited, Maggie arrived and put three in her pink check-in packet. Wisely so, since her underwear-unencumbered bosom in its snug pale-blue cotton Tee certainly would attract guys—at least until they read, where the Tee stretched tight, a refrigerator-cold, Calibri Bold 20-point invitation:
INTERESTED?
[email protected]
Georg’s head imperceptibly shook. Ambivalent messaging.
A brisk, motherly manager, about fifty, arrived. “Two for breakfast?”
Maggie immediately answered, “Yes, two please.” The manager led them along a continuous glass wall spray-splashed from below by boulder-bashing waves. Walking behind Maggie as they entered a cafeteria-style dining-room, Georg tried ignoring the snake-arm to appreciate its owner. Long, lean, and lithe with a coal-black waist-length ponytail, she moved in sinuous, smooth, effortless steps. Floating above the floor, she stirred in him longings ancient, but ever new. Is this how Singles Week things start?
After indicating adjacent chairs at a table-for-eight the manager, pointing toward the food, said, “Everything’s self-service.” Maggie returned with granola and yogurt; Georg, with big pancakes and a three-egg ham, cheese, and mushroom omelet. Already at the table were four mid-twenties, arranged male-male-female-female and all talking loudly in New York accents about who in “The City”—apparently, there’s only one—had the best scrambled eggs with lox. The two men agreed, it’s Barney Greengrass the Fish King. The women disagreed, disagreeably.
To Georg Maggie said, “I saw you going into Room 324. I’m just across the hall in 323. You bought that expensive Deluxe Ocean View.”
“Right,” he replied, but, protecting his privacy, he changed the subject. “They’ve got so many activities here. What’ll you do today?”
Maggie looked for a moment in her check-in packet. “Beach yoga sounds cool, 9:15 to 10:15.” Sliding her finger down the sheet, she added, “At 10:30 the Chef’s Tasting Demo on healthy seafood.” With an urchin’s grin she added, “Maybe after lunch I’ll go to their topless West Beach. Wanna join me?”
Topless? Too fast! Too much! “Sorry, I’m windsurfing today. Gotta eat and get out there. You have a nice day.”
~ ~ ~
The shuttle took Georg to a sandy-beach lagoon where a low rock jetty broke the Atlantic swells. Fifteen-knot trade winds that had blown unimpeded since Senegal three thousand miles back white-capped the lagoon’s dark water. A French instructor, Guy, big, friendly, powerfully-built, and handlebar-mustachioed stood under a shady tree. He used a windsurfing board fixed in the sand and carrying a tiny sail to briefly demonstrate the seven steps students should practice today. Georg, a quick study, memorized the steps and carried a board and sail into the water.
“1. Kick with legs and pull with arms to get aboard. Kneeling, face forward.” He did it. Piece of cake.
“2. Stand, holding the loose rope tied to the mast. Partially turn toward the sail lying in the water.” Board’s narrow, wobbles … over-weighting left foot, sinks left side … overcorrecting, right foot’s sinking right … losing bal … falling! Repeat Step 1. Again, and again.
“3. Pull on the rope, raising the sail from the water.” So heavy … damn… Repeat Step 1. In the third of these falls he bruised his knee on the board.
“4. Raise mast to upright. Ignore the sail’s angry flapping.” Wind’s a hurricane … falling again … Repeat Step 1.
“5. Hold the upright mast with one hand. With the other hold the boom (the curved aluminum tube connecting the mast to the back of the sail).” Impossi … shit. Repeat Step 1. On the fifth of these falls the board badly banged his elbow.
“6. Tip the mast forward, turning the bow downwind.” So tired … NOT AGAIN! Repeat Step 1.
“7. Jump off before blowing out to sea.” Who needs to ju … Repeat Step 1.
Each step took at least seven fall-ins, and 7 squared2 = 49. Exhausted, standing by his board to eat a quick sandwich, Georg recalled his office-desk sign. Long and hard => the big reward. So, he resumed falling, and around three p.m. each step worked. The board skimmed the surface like a fishing pelican, and he sailed a hundred yards with a joy unmatched since he caught a high-school pass for six winning points. The band played then as fans carried him off, but this was better.
~ ~ ~
Back in his room Georg showered and spotted out his window the Dockside Bar and Grill two minutes away. Aiming now at “attractive,” he donned a red-striped, short-sleeved button-down shirt sans pocket protector, with shorts showing his muscled legs.
He walked to the Grill for a loosen-up mai tai before joining a group on a wooden dock. A drunk fellow said they were awaiting “the Green Flash,” some legendary light supposedly appearing in the tropics at the instant the sun sinks beneath the sea’s horizon. Suddenly, people called, “There it is,” and “Did you see it?” He didn’t, and suspected that any green flashes originated in alcohol-soaked brains.
He walked about twenty meters across a grassy lawn to two adjacent empty chairs facing into the dusk. Sitting, he became a fisherman, waiting to see what an empty chair might catch. Maggie appeared, waving and walking barefoot toward him, and he first thought, Not that nutcase. But he remembered Elizabeth, furious in their last argument. “I’ll never get perfect, and I’m done waiting for you to decide about marriage. I’m thirty-three. The clock’s ticking. For years I’ve been paying not to conceive. In ten years I’m not going to pay to conceive. I’m going shopping—for someone who wants a family.”
Don’t demand perfection. Maggie settled in. They had a drink, then dinner together, then sat through a comedy show more corny than Iowa. When big windsurfing Guy appeared in drag, lip-synching Joan Baez’s English and French versions of Plaisir d’Amour, Maggie whispered, “Her mustache needs a hair stylist.” During a painfully clumsy dance routine she said, close to Georg’s ear, “Maybe it’s hailing up there. They’re running around like they’re looking for shelter.” She’s fun, he thought.
After riding the elevator to their third floor Georg said, “Maggie, tonight was the most fun I’ve had since I got dumped. Thanks a lot.”
She said, “No! Thank you! I’ve been in the pits for weeks, and I finally enjoyed myself.” She stood on tip toes and kissed him—on the lips, yes, but still a kissin’ cousin’s kiss. He watched her door close, then opened his to enter his Deluxe, lonely room.
~ ~ ~
At two a.m. Georg heard gentle knocking. His door’s peek-scope showed Maggie. He opened the door a bit, squinted at the light, and being nude, put just his face in the crack. “What’s up?”
Almost crying, she said, “I’m so upset alone. I don’t want sex, but can I sleep in your big bed?”
“There’s no sofa, so I’m there,” he answered.
“Again, no sex. I just don’t want to sleep alone.”
Georg said, “OK, lemme organize some stuff. Knock again in five minutes.”
“Oh, thanks so much,” she said, now laughing. She kissed her finger tips and reached through his door’s opening to touch his lips, saying “You’re a honey.”
Outside the trade-winds had calmed and a rising full moon painted on the quiet sea a highway of light running straight to Georg’s window. He pulled on pajama pants and, not fully trusting Maggi, locked his laptop, passport, and wallet in the room safe.
But then he slapped his forehead. Oh God, no! He’d watched online as Chinese and Russian missile developers probed his team’s software. IT thinks they can’t get in, so Security’s biggest concern is the Honey Trap: an attractive Mata Hari seduces a worker, using sex—or sexual blackmail when necessary—to get info. Booked the same flights … seated together … almost-adjacent rooms … “happened” to join me at breakfast … professional-quality German … ”happened” into a lawn chair beside me … a no-sex slumber party … even said “you’re a honey” … that’s all just chance?
But he also thought, Tonight was more fun than I’ve had in weeks.
The knock came, and he decided. I’m not blackmail-able: no wife, no girlfriend, parents dead, boss’d congratulate me for bedding a beauty. And if she’s a Mata-Hari the FBI could use me as a double agent.
He opened the door. Sniffling again, still in her Tee-shirt and short shorts, Maggie walked past him, turned, and smiled. “Thanks again. This’ll help a lot. I’ll go straight to bed.”
She lifted the Tee over her head, dropped it to the floor, and stepped out of her shorts. Fascinated, Georg thought, No underwear. Lovely. She turned, flowed with her dancer’s grace to the edge of the bed, and slipped between the sheets. Remembering “no sex,” Georg lay far to his side, but falling asleep took an hour. At 4:19 soft crying re-awakened him. He touched her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
She sniffled. “You’re too nice to lie to.”
Damned Russians! Angry and grim, Georg withdrew his hand and turned to stare at the ceiling. “OK, gimme the truth.”
Still facing away, she cried more, then said, “I never performed at the Wheeler. I only auditioned there. I last performed a year ago, volunteering at Aspen Valley Nursing Home.” Rising onto one elbow, back still toward him, she pulled a tissue from the box on the night stand, blew her nose, then dropped the tissue into the waste can. “Twenty people spread around their big cafeteria. Most drooled, some slept. I first thought an upright guy in a wheelchair was paying attention, but he just stared straight ahead. Afterward I cried and cried. My career’s gone from Tanglewood to a nursing home—it’s over.”
Georg thought, Oh, thank God, then recalled that none of his Applied Physics classes had addressed counselling the backs of crying naked women. Clumsily, he patted her back and said, “It’s OK. Now I know the whole story.” She cried harder. Maybe geography’s safe, so he asked, “Why Carbondale? Are there dancers there?”
It wasn’t safe—she cried louder, then said, “One more dumb decision. I followed a guy there. He always had coke, but I didn’t know he dealt until they arrested him. Moving there took all the money I’d saved, so with him in jail, I took this low-pay job at Second Life Clothing. This is the first travel I could afford in a year.”
Get her thinking on the bright side. “But I bet your dancing went well before Carbondale.”
That worked. She turned, facing him, still tight-wrapped in sheets. He rolled onto his left side to face her. Smiling a little, she said, “Well, three years ago Poetry’s Soul Magazine featured two photos of my dancing. And a year before I was runner-up for the Rosen Prize at the American Congress of Mixed-Media Artists.”
Keep her positive. “What started your dancing?”
“At eleven I saw The Nutcracker on TV, and I loved it. Mom was delighted. She found a dance teacher where I grew up, Racine, Wisconsin, (nasally pronounced, ‘iscahnsin,’ so a native, no foreign spy). The teacher told me about Bennington’s dance program. They accept just thirty percent of applicants, but I made it. I did Bennington’s Year Abroad at Philipps-Universität Marburg. That’s where I got hooked on Poetical Dance.”
Georg asked, “That’s where your German got so good?”
She actually blushed. “I studied it in high school and college, but yeah, speaking it full time for a year really helped. At graduation I won Bennington’s Language Prize.”
He asked, “Did you ever dance in the town square with Marburg’s big rooster?”
Amazed, Maggie laughed. “You know about that squawking mechanical bird?”
“I was born in Marburg, still have two aunts there,” Georg answered.
Excited, she said, “Let’s go there!”
Oh-h, she needs a brake job. Then, Damn––don’t demand perfection! “For now, let’s sleep. Then, how about after breakfast I rent a car and we drive up the shore for snorkeling?”
Sitting up, still fully wrapped, she looked worried. “Those big air tanks scare me.”
“No tanks, no prob. Snorkelers just float on the surface. You look down through a glass-front mask and breathe through a tube. If you can swim, you can snorkel.”
~ ~ ~
After making a seven p.m. res for an outdoor dinner, they drove up the west shore with fins and masks from Castle St. Lucia. The beach at a fancy resort was open to the public, and they donned swim suits in the car.
A buoy marked a shallow bed of seagrass where, they were told, sea turtles grazed. Georg explained fitting the mask, clearing the tube, and using the fins, and Maggie backed into the calm sea until waist deep. She then plunged, stroking smoothly, steadily. About fifty feet before the buoy she stopped to float.
Thirty seconds later she raised her head, waved, and called with muted excitement, “One’s right here,” then dropped her head again. Georg swam to her just as a second four-foot-long turtle arrived. He tapped her shoulder. Heads up, she hugged him, and Maggie whispered, “They’re fantastic … so are you for bringing me here!”
Later, sitting on towels in the sand, Georg asked, “What brought you to Castle St. Lucia?”
She smiled broadly. “You won’t tell anyone?”
“I promise.”
She answered, “One, I hate snow, and it never snows here. Two, I don’t cook or make the bed here. Three, it’s so damn beautiful.” Then grinning, she added, “And four, it’s got tons of neat guys.”
“How’s that last one going?” asked Georg.
First a grin, then a shrugged shoulder and mock uncertainty. “Eh, so far, pretty good.”
Georg laughed hard, “So far, it’s great for me. You’re really fun.” Then he asked, “Tell me, what’s with your big tattoo?”
Maggie answered, “Well, I dance, and Degas did about fifteen-hundred dance paintings. He painted my soul, so I owe him.”
First thinking Weird, then, Don’t demand perfection, he asked “Did it hurt?”
“Ah, sure, but it’s not one sitting. It took a couple years, and she said to come in drunk or high.” Then Maggie said, “Enough. You know lots about me, but I’ve heard almost nothing about you. Who are you?”
Georg frowned, looked first to the sea, then at his feet, then finally said, “Not much to tell. I’m thirty-four, a BS in Aerospace Engineering, a Master’s in Applied Physics. Both from CU. At Wright Aerospace seven years. Now I’m a Team Leader.”
“Wow, impressive. You like it?” Maggie asked.
“I love my work and my team.” They got me through losing Elizabeth.
“Ever married?” she asked.
“Never. No kids. Couple of serious girlfriends, but they dumped me, one just a month ago. She said I was indecisive, wanted perfection, and she was tired of waiting for a proposal.”
“Are you chasing Miss Perfect?” she asked.
Tipping his head, scrunching his face, he said, “Well, she made me think a lot. I see why she said it.”
“Why,” Maggie asked.
Georg paused, sighed, and slowly shook his head, looking again at his feet. “I guess – sometimes women scare me. When I was about six and my sister was four, our mom abandoned us. She kissed me goodbye one morning at the school bus stop and was gone when I got home. Dad raised us, quit the Air Force to avoid overseas deployments.”
Maggie spoke softly, gently. “She had another guy?”
“Nope. Her note said, ‘I need to find myself.’ She had some family money and just drifted between communes and yoga camps. Called maybe three or four times a year.” He shrugged. “Saw her only twice more.”
Lying back on his towel, he closed his eyes, falling silent. Maggie touched his hand. After a few seconds he drew it back, sat up, adjusted his sun glasses, shook the feelings off his head and shoulders, and said in a business-like voice, “None of it matters any more – she died eight years ago. My sister and I flew to Montana for a funeral run by some disgusting commune parasites. I couldn’t wait to get back to work.”
They returned to Castle St. Lucia for an outdoor dorado dinner on a narrow spit of land with views to both horizons, Gulf westward, Atlantic eastward. After two glasses of wine while delighting in Maggie, Georg even thought he saw the western sunset’s Green Flash. An almost-orange full moon rose from the eastward sea, lighting their darkness. Later, after a long, loving kiss they whispered, chuckled, and entered Georg’s room together, closing its door behind them.
~ ~ ~
The same manager greeted them. “Two for breakfast?” Georg smiled, put his arm around Maggie, and answered, “Absolutely.” Directed to the same table, they found the same New Yorkers, now in couples but still arguing, this time over The City’s best art-house movie theatre. After they collected repeats of yesterday’s breakfast, Maggie asked, “Can I watch your windsurfing today?”
He laughed. “Sure, but mainly, you’ll see me floundering.”
With an urchin’s smile she answered, “Mainly—I’ll see you.”
Georg grinned. “Wow. Sweet, especially since your other T-shirt says, [email protected].”
“Oh, the shirt.” Looking into his eyes, laughing and coy, she shook her head. “It’s not for you. It’s for the guy who hasn’t noticed the woman attached to the breasts he dates.”
Still grinning, he said, “Sure, come watch. Maybe you’ll bring me luck.”
At the shore Georg said, “See those people standing out there? The whole lagoon’s just waist deep, perfect for beginners.” Then pointing, he laughed and said, “Watch him,” just before the guy splashed down off his board, followed by the sail falling on top of him.
Georg sailed better today. After some falls he managed a straight quarter-mile run along the shore, and Maggie, sitting in the sand, pumped her fist in the air. He tried returning the pump, but with only one hand on the boom the sail went crazy, throwing him down again.
Standing in the water, grabbing the board before it drifted away, and blowing sea water from his nose, Georg thought, Good I fell … no idea how they turn these things. By morning’s end he usually could pull the sail up, catching the wind to course along the shore. When Georg stopped at noon, Guy shook his hand, saying with his strong accent, “You learning really good.” Guy had recognized his progress, and Maggie had selected him from “tons of neat guys.” It was just a vacation, but he did feel proud.
Maggie, standing topless under a shady tree, stepped forward, awaiting Georg. As they hugged he grinned, saying, “I thought only West Beach was topless.”
“Yup” she answered, “but, vacations are freedom. The FBI’s not here, and I’m with a famous windsurfer, so who’ll hassle me?”
He hugged her, pulling those breasts against himself. “I’m worn out, had enough today. Let’s get lunch and a margarita.” As they walked toward the shuttle, Georg caught a disapproving stare from a woman wearing an old gray maillot into her old gray sixties. I’m finally happy, Witch. Remembering Luther’s words to Satan, he smiled and mouthed to her, “Get thee gone to the place where thou ought to be.”
~ ~ ~
After his burger and her fish sandwich they carried a jug of four margaritas along the beach to a secluded, shady inlet cooled by the trades. Two beach chairs faced northwestward toward the Gros Piton, a heavily-forested, steep-walled, pointy-topped cone rising 743 meters from the sea to impale the sky—Engineer Georg of course had Googled its height.
After a margarita apiece Georg said, “Yesterday you probed my life. Today, I want to hear more about yours”
“Oh, just Middle American,” said Maggie. “Born, Racine. Loving parents, good schools. On probation in high school for graffities. College at Bennington, top third of my class.”
“After college my dance career started pretty well. I joined an experimental troupe in Lennox, Mass. Drew decent crowds from Tanglewood. They loved my solo poetical dancing.”
Proud to be with her, Georg took her hand, saying, “And you told me about an award and some magazine photos.”
“Yeah, but along the way I made some dumb mistakes.” She frowned, looked down, slowly shook her head. “Too many one-nighters. Lottsa drugs. Two years a vegan. Got hoarse at rallies and marches. Tried a woman lover for a couple months but decided that wasn’t my thing. Lived six weeks at Lake of Vishnu Ashram near Kalispell, Montana.” She frowned. “I left when the Guru told me screwing him brings infinite consciousness.
“Then I met a guy, knew him just three weeks. Quit the dance troupe to follow him to Carbondale. Had no clue he dealt coke ‘til they arrested him. How stupid was that?” She frowned, once more shaking her head, mourning her self-restraint’s flighty infirmity. “Before leaving for Carbondale I was dating our troupe’s manager. He was a great manager, nice guy, good looking. Other women in the troupe said, ‘Fine hubby material, steady as a rock.’ I thought, ‘Interesting as a rock. He’d make falling out of an airplane boring.’
“Carbondale’s beautiful so I stayed on, but dancers need a troupe, and no one there’s even heard of Poetical Dance. Second Life’s owner is great, but she can’t pay much. I told you, I saved a year to get here.”
Georg didn’t respond. He’d numbed out at “Lake of Vishnu Ashram.” He saw again four monks, red-robed, rowing out on Flathead Lake. The gabbing one looked drunk. Two others chuckled at some whispered joke. After praying for ten seconds they emptied overboard the urn holding the ashes of Georg’s mother, then rowed back, laughing and talking. That was his mother’s entire funeral service.
Georg, feeling nauseated by the migraine storm gathering on his brain, knew disdain distorted his face.
Maggie turned slightly away, angry and not sure why he had suddenly shut down. She asked, “What? You thought I was a damned virgin or something?”
Georg said, “Hold on. I’m feeling crummy—got a migraine coming on. Let’s sit quietly a couple minutes and watch waves.
Engineer Georg checked his watch, waited exactly two minutes, then asked, “Why’d you go to that ashram?”
“Why’s it your business?”
Georg answered, “I’ve been there, and it is important for me to know.”
Still angry, Maggie barked, “’I went because Baptist Sunday School didn’t enlighten me.”
Georg stood, turned, and picked up his towel. “I’m getting a terrible headache … I need my medicine. You take the margaritas.”
“Screw you!” she said, pouring them into the sand. “Yeah, go to your room and play with yourself.”
Georg stood still, staring at the Piton. Soon Maggie was a hundred meters ahead. He walked a snail’s-pace, pretending to stare downward as he passed the Grill. Maggie had disappeared inside, but as Georg went on, windsurfing’s dreary gray woman again stared and shook her head in disapproval. In his room he took his migraine tablet, pulled down the shades to block the light he knew he’d soon despise, put a pillow over his face, and tried to sleep.
~ ~ ~
Around two a.m., his headache mostly gone, he heard Maggie and some guy singing off key, “Show me the way to go home.” Their noise continued until, he assumed, her door shut behind them. The headache again worsened, and after barely making the toilet before vomiting, he took another pill and returned to bed.
About 10:30 a.m. he heard Maggie’s door open, then her voice fading down the hallway. By noon Georg felt well enough to try a fish sandwich and some yogurt, eating’s gentle re-start. Back in his room he began reading Aerospace Review’s “Gyroscopic Governance of Flight Mechanics in High-Orbit Vehicles.” New, challenging, and fun, work always made him feel better.
The cleaning lady hadn’t yet made his bed, so when she knocked, he immediately opened the door. But it was Maggie, who said, “We should talk.”
Dismissing his first I’m busy thought, he said, “We should. Come in.”
Maggie’s sinuous smooth dancer’s gait floated her to the chair where he’d read. Georg sat on the end of his bed, facing her. She was angry, direct. “I told you personal stuff I hadn’t told anyone, and you looked at me like I was some syphilitic sore on your dick. Why?”
“Maggie, my mother died at Lake of Vishnu Ashram. Those bastards sucked up her money, then staged a ‘funeral’ that looked like a trash dump. Why’d you take six weeks to see through them?”
She nodded, ever so slightly, leaned a bit forward, and said, still firmly, “Look, I’m sorry about your mother, but I didn’t bring her there. And when they tried using me, I left. If it wasn’t soon enough for you, too bad. And how dare you look at me like I’m some unflushed toilet?”
Trying to control himself, Georg consciously relaxed his facial muscles before calmly saying, “You’re right. I shouldn’t have done that. But being attracted to someone like my mother—it terrifies me. Hearing you’d been there, I just lost it.” His eyes teared. “I’m so sorry. Let’s try to fix things.”
For a moment Maggie sat, unmoved. But then a tiny smile appeared. She rose and, quiet as a fog on a lake, drifted toward him. Those delicate hands tipped his head upward, and she kissed him—a loving kiss. “This is a time for comforting,” she said, teacher to child. “No sex, but walk to the bed with me and undress, except your skivvies. I’ll do the same.” She took his right hand in her left and led him to the bed. They undressed and lay down.
Through his tears Georg heard again his sister, five, sobbing into the phone, “Mommy, please come home, please.” He heard again his mother, “I’ll be home for Easter … before school starts … by Christmas.” He heard his own pre-teen phone voice, flat, uninflected, “A-huh… a-huh…a-huh…OK…bye.” And he saw again his burned-up mother, a pile of sodden ashes slowly sinking toward Flathead’s floor. She’ll never come home.
Maggie held his hand, saying nothing. It’s what he needed.
They slept a couple hours. Drained but relieved, they rose and dressed for a beach dinner of garlic mussels on pasta with a dry Chablis. When mostly done eating, Georg reached across the table to Maggie’s hand. “In Montana I was furious with those monks, but told myself, ‘She’s finally gone, it’s over, let it rest.’ I realized today—it’s not over, probably won’t be for a long time.”
Maggie said, “Most women wouldn’t do to their kids what she did to you. And since you’re a decent guy—most still won’t do it to you.” Then she looked down and said, a little sadly, “I’ve also got a confession. After I left you at the beach I picked up some turkey in the Grill. I got him singing a dumb song too loud in our hall, just to get at you. When he dropped his drawers in my room, I told him he was insufficient and sent him away. Leaving this morning, I talked as though he still were there—again, just bugging you.”
I probably deserved it, Georg thought.
Back in Georg’s room Maggie said, “Too much happened today. I’ll say again, ‘No sex, just comforting.’ Save the sex ‘til we’re back in Colorado.”
Georg replied, “Thanks. I’m drained … no juices left, literally or figuratively. But a long session back home sounds spectacular.” He checked the ticket in his drawer. “Tomorrow’s flight – 11:33 a.m. Leaves time for breakfast and packing. Let’s sleep now … and pray our charter pilot practiced some landings.”
~ ~ ~
The next morning they both answered, “Yes, please,” to the manager. Many guests had left, and their table was empty. Looking at his full plate, Georg said, “It’s been a Hell of a roller-coaster, Maggie.”
She answered, “Yeah, but that old song was wrong. The best things in life never are free—or easy.”
Georg smiled. “I want to know you a lot better. Would you come to Denver in a couple weeks to see a dance performance? You could teach this engineer about your art.”
Smiling, Maggie answered, ‘Well first, to know me better, let’s start with my name. I’m Margret Anne Carlson.”
Partly to hide his smile, he looked down. “I’m Georg Heinrich Staube. You know the German pronunciation, but here I say it American.”
She shook his hand, grinned, and said in her perfect German, “Guten morgen, Herr Staube. I’d love seeing Denver’s dancers.”
They finagled seats together, and the take-off was professional. The Keys below were emerald-green beads on a tight-stretched string holding the islands above the surrounding cerulean-blue depths. Taking Georg’s hand, Maggie said, “The colors almost move. I could dance to them.”
A couple hours after a perfect Dulles landing, they boarded United’s four-hour Denver flight. Heading home, Maggie said she had no phone, so they exchanged only email addresses. Because she’d parked in the Remote Lot, and Georg in the garage, they warmly kissed goodbye at her shuttle stop. But, as her bus’s door shut, he noticed a cellphone-shaped bulge in her carry-on. That night he dreamt of a woman whose carry-on exploded.
~ ~ ~
His email the next night thanked Maggie for her warm understanding. He also told her his team, following a plan of his, had a great breakthrough while he was gone—no details, of course. He said the Project Manager had thanked him for his leadership, even said, “You’re on your way up.”
Georg also asked about her cell phone.
Maggie responded at 2:24 a.m., congratulating him on the breakthrough, saying, “I’m so proud of you,” words his mother had never uttered. The message ended, “Silly, of course I’ve got a cell phone. But my apartment’s behind Mt. Sopris, so reception’s iffy.”
Georg knew the positions of Sopris and Carbondale, and her explanation seemed unlikely. His brief emails on the next two nights got no response, but on the third afternoon, this came:
Dear Georg,
I told you most women would not do to you what your mother did, and I won’t. I’m a risk-taker (maybe too much). You’re a planner (maybe too much). That wouldn’t work. And I bent the truth. I spent the night with that man I picked up at the Grill. His vacation ended then, and I thought I’d never see him again, so I re-contacted you.
But the night I got home he texted me (yes, my phone worked). “Big lay-offs, lost job. Moving to CA. Come with me.” Yesterday I quit my job and held a garage sale. We’re driving now to California. Maybe I’ll dance in the movies—or more likely, land on welfare. But I love risks.
You and I had fun. Thanks for your decency, and good luck in the future.
Annette Margaret Reitson
Before going home Georg called his Project Manager, saying he could, after all, take next Saturday’s On-Call. Salving disappointment, he thought, We both played parts we’d played before. But I really went to learn windsurfing, so I met my goal. Still, he motor-minded all night, rerunning conversations. Twice he was teary, once for losing another woman and once for Maggie, playing again with dynamite.
Tom Crowley
A willowy woman arrived to take 27B, the middle seat beside Georg. Emerging from a sleeve of the woman’s yellow T-shirt was a thick, heavily-patterned, gray-green-and-rust snake. It apparently had swallowed almost whole the owner of a delicate white hand protruding from where the snake’s mouth should be. Looking from the corner of his eye, snake-fearing Georg cringed. Who’d buy such tattooing?
His clandestine peeks showed the snake-arm’s “scales” to be tiny ballerinas in Degas’ positions, some upright, some upside down, and others sidewise. The arm’s owner was attractive, early thirties with dark hair to her waist. But shyness and that arm kept Georg from chatting her up. At ten-thousand feet she asked, her tone suggesting she’d doubt any answer, “So, who are you?”
“I’m Georg,” he replied, smiling and carefully pronouncing “Gay-org” so she wouldn’t say, “You mean George?”
But instead she asked in perfectly-accented German, “Sind Sie Deutsch, Georg?”
“Uhm…nein. German-born, but immigrated at two. Dad was a Luftwaffe pilot who got a US Air Force commission. But I am pretty fluent. We spoke German at home, and I studied it some. What’s your name?”
“I’m Maggie, and I dance.” She leaned toward him, confiding, “I’m here to recover from a bad break-up,” her firm tone commanding, “So don’t mess me around.”
Raising his hand in defense, Georg rocked back. “Whoa, Maggie, me too,” and to escape painful break-up talk, he asked, “What’s your dancing?”
“Contemporary poetical dance,” she answered, awaiting the inevitable.
“What’s that?”
“I dance to poetry, not music. A speaker recites the poem, and I don’t just mime the words but penetrate to their true heart with my body’s fluidity.”
Engineer Georg’s inner voice asked, Body fluids penetrating poems—Artspeak detected! Leave by the nearest exit. But airborne with no exit, he only asked, “Performing where?”
Maggie answered, “Last was Aspen’s Wheeler Opera House. I live near Aspen in Carbondale.”
“I’m just southwest of Denver, near my work,” Georg replied.
“Whata you do?”
“Engineering. I’ve worked a lot on weather satellites.” Past tense made it true, and importantly, follow-up questions then concerned weather satellites, not his current classified work.
But Maggie, apparently bored now, said only, “I see,” and pulled out Poetry Magazine.
For six months Georg had designed better ways to kill with satellites, but this non-stop Denver-to-St.-Lucia night charter finally would begin a windsurfing R-and-R on a “Caribbean All-Included Singles Week.” At thirty-four Georg had never windsurfed but knew it would come easily. He’d sailed boats for years, usually lifted weights on days too snowy to run, and often biked thirty miles on weekends. So he relaxed and read this month’s Journal of Aerospace Engineering until sleep struck.
~ ~ ~
Five hours later the plane smacked St. Lucia’s tarmac so hard the oxygen masks dropped and passengers screamed. But the plane rolled on and Georg, shocked awake, saw through the window neither sparks nor flames. He figured the carriage probably was undamaged, so a ninety percent chance they’d stop safely. Also, ninety that an inexperienced idiot made that crappy landing. Georg then noticed a scared Maggie fumbling to apply her dangling mask, per the pre-takeoff safety instructions. Silly lady, he thought, since their altitude here was about eleven feet.
~ ~ ~
Georg had chosen Castle St. Lucia for its all-day windsurfing classes, so before breakfast he saved strength by running two—not his usual five—miles on the beach’s firm, wave-wetted sand. Dressing for breakfast, he lay aside his usual jeans and plaid flannel shirt, donning short pants and short sleeves. He locked away his cell phone with its proprietary orbital-mechanics apps. Proud to be an engineer, he defiantly placed in a shirt pocket his clear-plastic pocket-protector, its five ball-point pens in five ink colors.
Next to breakfast’s Please Wait to Be Seated sign rested a large bowl of condoms, marked Free. As Georg waited, Maggie arrived and put three in her pink check-in packet. Wisely so, since her underwear-unencumbered bosom in its snug pale-blue cotton Tee certainly would attract guys—at least until they read, where the Tee stretched tight, a refrigerator-cold, Calibri Bold 20-point invitation:
INTERESTED?
[email protected]
Georg’s head imperceptibly shook. Ambivalent messaging.
A brisk, motherly manager, about fifty, arrived. “Two for breakfast?”
Maggie immediately answered, “Yes, two please.” The manager led them along a continuous glass wall spray-splashed from below by boulder-bashing waves. Walking behind Maggie as they entered a cafeteria-style dining-room, Georg tried ignoring the snake-arm to appreciate its owner. Long, lean, and lithe with a coal-black waist-length ponytail, she moved in sinuous, smooth, effortless steps. Floating above the floor, she stirred in him longings ancient, but ever new. Is this how Singles Week things start?
After indicating adjacent chairs at a table-for-eight the manager, pointing toward the food, said, “Everything’s self-service.” Maggie returned with granola and yogurt; Georg, with big pancakes and a three-egg ham, cheese, and mushroom omelet. Already at the table were four mid-twenties, arranged male-male-female-female and all talking loudly in New York accents about who in “The City”—apparently, there’s only one—had the best scrambled eggs with lox. The two men agreed, it’s Barney Greengrass the Fish King. The women disagreed, disagreeably.
To Georg Maggie said, “I saw you going into Room 324. I’m just across the hall in 323. You bought that expensive Deluxe Ocean View.”
“Right,” he replied, but, protecting his privacy, he changed the subject. “They’ve got so many activities here. What’ll you do today?”
Maggie looked for a moment in her check-in packet. “Beach yoga sounds cool, 9:15 to 10:15.” Sliding her finger down the sheet, she added, “At 10:30 the Chef’s Tasting Demo on healthy seafood.” With an urchin’s grin she added, “Maybe after lunch I’ll go to their topless West Beach. Wanna join me?”
Topless? Too fast! Too much! “Sorry, I’m windsurfing today. Gotta eat and get out there. You have a nice day.”
~ ~ ~
The shuttle took Georg to a sandy-beach lagoon where a low rock jetty broke the Atlantic swells. Fifteen-knot trade winds that had blown unimpeded since Senegal three thousand miles back white-capped the lagoon’s dark water. A French instructor, Guy, big, friendly, powerfully-built, and handlebar-mustachioed stood under a shady tree. He used a windsurfing board fixed in the sand and carrying a tiny sail to briefly demonstrate the seven steps students should practice today. Georg, a quick study, memorized the steps and carried a board and sail into the water.
“1. Kick with legs and pull with arms to get aboard. Kneeling, face forward.” He did it. Piece of cake.
“2. Stand, holding the loose rope tied to the mast. Partially turn toward the sail lying in the water.” Board’s narrow, wobbles … over-weighting left foot, sinks left side … overcorrecting, right foot’s sinking right … losing bal … falling! Repeat Step 1. Again, and again.
“3. Pull on the rope, raising the sail from the water.” So heavy … damn… Repeat Step 1. In the third of these falls he bruised his knee on the board.
“4. Raise mast to upright. Ignore the sail’s angry flapping.” Wind’s a hurricane … falling again … Repeat Step 1.
“5. Hold the upright mast with one hand. With the other hold the boom (the curved aluminum tube connecting the mast to the back of the sail).” Impossi … shit. Repeat Step 1. On the fifth of these falls the board badly banged his elbow.
“6. Tip the mast forward, turning the bow downwind.” So tired … NOT AGAIN! Repeat Step 1.
“7. Jump off before blowing out to sea.” Who needs to ju … Repeat Step 1.
Each step took at least seven fall-ins, and 7 squared2 = 49. Exhausted, standing by his board to eat a quick sandwich, Georg recalled his office-desk sign. Long and hard => the big reward. So, he resumed falling, and around three p.m. each step worked. The board skimmed the surface like a fishing pelican, and he sailed a hundred yards with a joy unmatched since he caught a high-school pass for six winning points. The band played then as fans carried him off, but this was better.
~ ~ ~
Back in his room Georg showered and spotted out his window the Dockside Bar and Grill two minutes away. Aiming now at “attractive,” he donned a red-striped, short-sleeved button-down shirt sans pocket protector, with shorts showing his muscled legs.
He walked to the Grill for a loosen-up mai tai before joining a group on a wooden dock. A drunk fellow said they were awaiting “the Green Flash,” some legendary light supposedly appearing in the tropics at the instant the sun sinks beneath the sea’s horizon. Suddenly, people called, “There it is,” and “Did you see it?” He didn’t, and suspected that any green flashes originated in alcohol-soaked brains.
He walked about twenty meters across a grassy lawn to two adjacent empty chairs facing into the dusk. Sitting, he became a fisherman, waiting to see what an empty chair might catch. Maggie appeared, waving and walking barefoot toward him, and he first thought, Not that nutcase. But he remembered Elizabeth, furious in their last argument. “I’ll never get perfect, and I’m done waiting for you to decide about marriage. I’m thirty-three. The clock’s ticking. For years I’ve been paying not to conceive. In ten years I’m not going to pay to conceive. I’m going shopping—for someone who wants a family.”
Don’t demand perfection. Maggie settled in. They had a drink, then dinner together, then sat through a comedy show more corny than Iowa. When big windsurfing Guy appeared in drag, lip-synching Joan Baez’s English and French versions of Plaisir d’Amour, Maggie whispered, “Her mustache needs a hair stylist.” During a painfully clumsy dance routine she said, close to Georg’s ear, “Maybe it’s hailing up there. They’re running around like they’re looking for shelter.” She’s fun, he thought.
After riding the elevator to their third floor Georg said, “Maggie, tonight was the most fun I’ve had since I got dumped. Thanks a lot.”
She said, “No! Thank you! I’ve been in the pits for weeks, and I finally enjoyed myself.” She stood on tip toes and kissed him—on the lips, yes, but still a kissin’ cousin’s kiss. He watched her door close, then opened his to enter his Deluxe, lonely room.
~ ~ ~
At two a.m. Georg heard gentle knocking. His door’s peek-scope showed Maggie. He opened the door a bit, squinted at the light, and being nude, put just his face in the crack. “What’s up?”
Almost crying, she said, “I’m so upset alone. I don’t want sex, but can I sleep in your big bed?”
“There’s no sofa, so I’m there,” he answered.
“Again, no sex. I just don’t want to sleep alone.”
Georg said, “OK, lemme organize some stuff. Knock again in five minutes.”
“Oh, thanks so much,” she said, now laughing. She kissed her finger tips and reached through his door’s opening to touch his lips, saying “You’re a honey.”
Outside the trade-winds had calmed and a rising full moon painted on the quiet sea a highway of light running straight to Georg’s window. He pulled on pajama pants and, not fully trusting Maggi, locked his laptop, passport, and wallet in the room safe.
But then he slapped his forehead. Oh God, no! He’d watched online as Chinese and Russian missile developers probed his team’s software. IT thinks they can’t get in, so Security’s biggest concern is the Honey Trap: an attractive Mata Hari seduces a worker, using sex—or sexual blackmail when necessary—to get info. Booked the same flights … seated together … almost-adjacent rooms … “happened” to join me at breakfast … professional-quality German … ”happened” into a lawn chair beside me … a no-sex slumber party … even said “you’re a honey” … that’s all just chance?
But he also thought, Tonight was more fun than I’ve had in weeks.
The knock came, and he decided. I’m not blackmail-able: no wife, no girlfriend, parents dead, boss’d congratulate me for bedding a beauty. And if she’s a Mata-Hari the FBI could use me as a double agent.
He opened the door. Sniffling again, still in her Tee-shirt and short shorts, Maggie walked past him, turned, and smiled. “Thanks again. This’ll help a lot. I’ll go straight to bed.”
She lifted the Tee over her head, dropped it to the floor, and stepped out of her shorts. Fascinated, Georg thought, No underwear. Lovely. She turned, flowed with her dancer’s grace to the edge of the bed, and slipped between the sheets. Remembering “no sex,” Georg lay far to his side, but falling asleep took an hour. At 4:19 soft crying re-awakened him. He touched her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
She sniffled. “You’re too nice to lie to.”
Damned Russians! Angry and grim, Georg withdrew his hand and turned to stare at the ceiling. “OK, gimme the truth.”
Still facing away, she cried more, then said, “I never performed at the Wheeler. I only auditioned there. I last performed a year ago, volunteering at Aspen Valley Nursing Home.” Rising onto one elbow, back still toward him, she pulled a tissue from the box on the night stand, blew her nose, then dropped the tissue into the waste can. “Twenty people spread around their big cafeteria. Most drooled, some slept. I first thought an upright guy in a wheelchair was paying attention, but he just stared straight ahead. Afterward I cried and cried. My career’s gone from Tanglewood to a nursing home—it’s over.”
Georg thought, Oh, thank God, then recalled that none of his Applied Physics classes had addressed counselling the backs of crying naked women. Clumsily, he patted her back and said, “It’s OK. Now I know the whole story.” She cried harder. Maybe geography’s safe, so he asked, “Why Carbondale? Are there dancers there?”
It wasn’t safe—she cried louder, then said, “One more dumb decision. I followed a guy there. He always had coke, but I didn’t know he dealt until they arrested him. Moving there took all the money I’d saved, so with him in jail, I took this low-pay job at Second Life Clothing. This is the first travel I could afford in a year.”
Get her thinking on the bright side. “But I bet your dancing went well before Carbondale.”
That worked. She turned, facing him, still tight-wrapped in sheets. He rolled onto his left side to face her. Smiling a little, she said, “Well, three years ago Poetry’s Soul Magazine featured two photos of my dancing. And a year before I was runner-up for the Rosen Prize at the American Congress of Mixed-Media Artists.”
Keep her positive. “What started your dancing?”
“At eleven I saw The Nutcracker on TV, and I loved it. Mom was delighted. She found a dance teacher where I grew up, Racine, Wisconsin, (nasally pronounced, ‘iscahnsin,’ so a native, no foreign spy). The teacher told me about Bennington’s dance program. They accept just thirty percent of applicants, but I made it. I did Bennington’s Year Abroad at Philipps-Universität Marburg. That’s where I got hooked on Poetical Dance.”
Georg asked, “That’s where your German got so good?”
She actually blushed. “I studied it in high school and college, but yeah, speaking it full time for a year really helped. At graduation I won Bennington’s Language Prize.”
He asked, “Did you ever dance in the town square with Marburg’s big rooster?”
Amazed, Maggie laughed. “You know about that squawking mechanical bird?”
“I was born in Marburg, still have two aunts there,” Georg answered.
Excited, she said, “Let’s go there!”
Oh-h, she needs a brake job. Then, Damn––don’t demand perfection! “For now, let’s sleep. Then, how about after breakfast I rent a car and we drive up the shore for snorkeling?”
Sitting up, still fully wrapped, she looked worried. “Those big air tanks scare me.”
“No tanks, no prob. Snorkelers just float on the surface. You look down through a glass-front mask and breathe through a tube. If you can swim, you can snorkel.”
~ ~ ~
After making a seven p.m. res for an outdoor dinner, they drove up the west shore with fins and masks from Castle St. Lucia. The beach at a fancy resort was open to the public, and they donned swim suits in the car.
A buoy marked a shallow bed of seagrass where, they were told, sea turtles grazed. Georg explained fitting the mask, clearing the tube, and using the fins, and Maggie backed into the calm sea until waist deep. She then plunged, stroking smoothly, steadily. About fifty feet before the buoy she stopped to float.
Thirty seconds later she raised her head, waved, and called with muted excitement, “One’s right here,” then dropped her head again. Georg swam to her just as a second four-foot-long turtle arrived. He tapped her shoulder. Heads up, she hugged him, and Maggie whispered, “They’re fantastic … so are you for bringing me here!”
Later, sitting on towels in the sand, Georg asked, “What brought you to Castle St. Lucia?”
She smiled broadly. “You won’t tell anyone?”
“I promise.”
She answered, “One, I hate snow, and it never snows here. Two, I don’t cook or make the bed here. Three, it’s so damn beautiful.” Then grinning, she added, “And four, it’s got tons of neat guys.”
“How’s that last one going?” asked Georg.
First a grin, then a shrugged shoulder and mock uncertainty. “Eh, so far, pretty good.”
Georg laughed hard, “So far, it’s great for me. You’re really fun.” Then he asked, “Tell me, what’s with your big tattoo?”
Maggie answered, “Well, I dance, and Degas did about fifteen-hundred dance paintings. He painted my soul, so I owe him.”
First thinking Weird, then, Don’t demand perfection, he asked “Did it hurt?”
“Ah, sure, but it’s not one sitting. It took a couple years, and she said to come in drunk or high.” Then Maggie said, “Enough. You know lots about me, but I’ve heard almost nothing about you. Who are you?”
Georg frowned, looked first to the sea, then at his feet, then finally said, “Not much to tell. I’m thirty-four, a BS in Aerospace Engineering, a Master’s in Applied Physics. Both from CU. At Wright Aerospace seven years. Now I’m a Team Leader.”
“Wow, impressive. You like it?” Maggie asked.
“I love my work and my team.” They got me through losing Elizabeth.
“Ever married?” she asked.
“Never. No kids. Couple of serious girlfriends, but they dumped me, one just a month ago. She said I was indecisive, wanted perfection, and she was tired of waiting for a proposal.”
“Are you chasing Miss Perfect?” she asked.
Tipping his head, scrunching his face, he said, “Well, she made me think a lot. I see why she said it.”
“Why,” Maggie asked.
Georg paused, sighed, and slowly shook his head, looking again at his feet. “I guess – sometimes women scare me. When I was about six and my sister was four, our mom abandoned us. She kissed me goodbye one morning at the school bus stop and was gone when I got home. Dad raised us, quit the Air Force to avoid overseas deployments.”
Maggie spoke softly, gently. “She had another guy?”
“Nope. Her note said, ‘I need to find myself.’ She had some family money and just drifted between communes and yoga camps. Called maybe three or four times a year.” He shrugged. “Saw her only twice more.”
Lying back on his towel, he closed his eyes, falling silent. Maggie touched his hand. After a few seconds he drew it back, sat up, adjusted his sun glasses, shook the feelings off his head and shoulders, and said in a business-like voice, “None of it matters any more – she died eight years ago. My sister and I flew to Montana for a funeral run by some disgusting commune parasites. I couldn’t wait to get back to work.”
They returned to Castle St. Lucia for an outdoor dorado dinner on a narrow spit of land with views to both horizons, Gulf westward, Atlantic eastward. After two glasses of wine while delighting in Maggie, Georg even thought he saw the western sunset’s Green Flash. An almost-orange full moon rose from the eastward sea, lighting their darkness. Later, after a long, loving kiss they whispered, chuckled, and entered Georg’s room together, closing its door behind them.
~ ~ ~
The same manager greeted them. “Two for breakfast?” Georg smiled, put his arm around Maggie, and answered, “Absolutely.” Directed to the same table, they found the same New Yorkers, now in couples but still arguing, this time over The City’s best art-house movie theatre. After they collected repeats of yesterday’s breakfast, Maggie asked, “Can I watch your windsurfing today?”
He laughed. “Sure, but mainly, you’ll see me floundering.”
With an urchin’s smile she answered, “Mainly—I’ll see you.”
Georg grinned. “Wow. Sweet, especially since your other T-shirt says, [email protected].”
“Oh, the shirt.” Looking into his eyes, laughing and coy, she shook her head. “It’s not for you. It’s for the guy who hasn’t noticed the woman attached to the breasts he dates.”
Still grinning, he said, “Sure, come watch. Maybe you’ll bring me luck.”
At the shore Georg said, “See those people standing out there? The whole lagoon’s just waist deep, perfect for beginners.” Then pointing, he laughed and said, “Watch him,” just before the guy splashed down off his board, followed by the sail falling on top of him.
Georg sailed better today. After some falls he managed a straight quarter-mile run along the shore, and Maggie, sitting in the sand, pumped her fist in the air. He tried returning the pump, but with only one hand on the boom the sail went crazy, throwing him down again.
Standing in the water, grabbing the board before it drifted away, and blowing sea water from his nose, Georg thought, Good I fell … no idea how they turn these things. By morning’s end he usually could pull the sail up, catching the wind to course along the shore. When Georg stopped at noon, Guy shook his hand, saying with his strong accent, “You learning really good.” Guy had recognized his progress, and Maggie had selected him from “tons of neat guys.” It was just a vacation, but he did feel proud.
Maggie, standing topless under a shady tree, stepped forward, awaiting Georg. As they hugged he grinned, saying, “I thought only West Beach was topless.”
“Yup” she answered, “but, vacations are freedom. The FBI’s not here, and I’m with a famous windsurfer, so who’ll hassle me?”
He hugged her, pulling those breasts against himself. “I’m worn out, had enough today. Let’s get lunch and a margarita.” As they walked toward the shuttle, Georg caught a disapproving stare from a woman wearing an old gray maillot into her old gray sixties. I’m finally happy, Witch. Remembering Luther’s words to Satan, he smiled and mouthed to her, “Get thee gone to the place where thou ought to be.”
~ ~ ~
After his burger and her fish sandwich they carried a jug of four margaritas along the beach to a secluded, shady inlet cooled by the trades. Two beach chairs faced northwestward toward the Gros Piton, a heavily-forested, steep-walled, pointy-topped cone rising 743 meters from the sea to impale the sky—Engineer Georg of course had Googled its height.
After a margarita apiece Georg said, “Yesterday you probed my life. Today, I want to hear more about yours”
“Oh, just Middle American,” said Maggie. “Born, Racine. Loving parents, good schools. On probation in high school for graffities. College at Bennington, top third of my class.”
“After college my dance career started pretty well. I joined an experimental troupe in Lennox, Mass. Drew decent crowds from Tanglewood. They loved my solo poetical dancing.”
Proud to be with her, Georg took her hand, saying, “And you told me about an award and some magazine photos.”
“Yeah, but along the way I made some dumb mistakes.” She frowned, looked down, slowly shook her head. “Too many one-nighters. Lottsa drugs. Two years a vegan. Got hoarse at rallies and marches. Tried a woman lover for a couple months but decided that wasn’t my thing. Lived six weeks at Lake of Vishnu Ashram near Kalispell, Montana.” She frowned. “I left when the Guru told me screwing him brings infinite consciousness.
“Then I met a guy, knew him just three weeks. Quit the dance troupe to follow him to Carbondale. Had no clue he dealt coke ‘til they arrested him. How stupid was that?” She frowned, once more shaking her head, mourning her self-restraint’s flighty infirmity. “Before leaving for Carbondale I was dating our troupe’s manager. He was a great manager, nice guy, good looking. Other women in the troupe said, ‘Fine hubby material, steady as a rock.’ I thought, ‘Interesting as a rock. He’d make falling out of an airplane boring.’
“Carbondale’s beautiful so I stayed on, but dancers need a troupe, and no one there’s even heard of Poetical Dance. Second Life’s owner is great, but she can’t pay much. I told you, I saved a year to get here.”
Georg didn’t respond. He’d numbed out at “Lake of Vishnu Ashram.” He saw again four monks, red-robed, rowing out on Flathead Lake. The gabbing one looked drunk. Two others chuckled at some whispered joke. After praying for ten seconds they emptied overboard the urn holding the ashes of Georg’s mother, then rowed back, laughing and talking. That was his mother’s entire funeral service.
Georg, feeling nauseated by the migraine storm gathering on his brain, knew disdain distorted his face.
Maggie turned slightly away, angry and not sure why he had suddenly shut down. She asked, “What? You thought I was a damned virgin or something?”
Georg said, “Hold on. I’m feeling crummy—got a migraine coming on. Let’s sit quietly a couple minutes and watch waves.
Engineer Georg checked his watch, waited exactly two minutes, then asked, “Why’d you go to that ashram?”
“Why’s it your business?”
Georg answered, “I’ve been there, and it is important for me to know.”
Still angry, Maggie barked, “’I went because Baptist Sunday School didn’t enlighten me.”
Georg stood, turned, and picked up his towel. “I’m getting a terrible headache … I need my medicine. You take the margaritas.”
“Screw you!” she said, pouring them into the sand. “Yeah, go to your room and play with yourself.”
Georg stood still, staring at the Piton. Soon Maggie was a hundred meters ahead. He walked a snail’s-pace, pretending to stare downward as he passed the Grill. Maggie had disappeared inside, but as Georg went on, windsurfing’s dreary gray woman again stared and shook her head in disapproval. In his room he took his migraine tablet, pulled down the shades to block the light he knew he’d soon despise, put a pillow over his face, and tried to sleep.
~ ~ ~
Around two a.m., his headache mostly gone, he heard Maggie and some guy singing off key, “Show me the way to go home.” Their noise continued until, he assumed, her door shut behind them. The headache again worsened, and after barely making the toilet before vomiting, he took another pill and returned to bed.
About 10:30 a.m. he heard Maggie’s door open, then her voice fading down the hallway. By noon Georg felt well enough to try a fish sandwich and some yogurt, eating’s gentle re-start. Back in his room he began reading Aerospace Review’s “Gyroscopic Governance of Flight Mechanics in High-Orbit Vehicles.” New, challenging, and fun, work always made him feel better.
The cleaning lady hadn’t yet made his bed, so when she knocked, he immediately opened the door. But it was Maggie, who said, “We should talk.”
Dismissing his first I’m busy thought, he said, “We should. Come in.”
Maggie’s sinuous smooth dancer’s gait floated her to the chair where he’d read. Georg sat on the end of his bed, facing her. She was angry, direct. “I told you personal stuff I hadn’t told anyone, and you looked at me like I was some syphilitic sore on your dick. Why?”
“Maggie, my mother died at Lake of Vishnu Ashram. Those bastards sucked up her money, then staged a ‘funeral’ that looked like a trash dump. Why’d you take six weeks to see through them?”
She nodded, ever so slightly, leaned a bit forward, and said, still firmly, “Look, I’m sorry about your mother, but I didn’t bring her there. And when they tried using me, I left. If it wasn’t soon enough for you, too bad. And how dare you look at me like I’m some unflushed toilet?”
Trying to control himself, Georg consciously relaxed his facial muscles before calmly saying, “You’re right. I shouldn’t have done that. But being attracted to someone like my mother—it terrifies me. Hearing you’d been there, I just lost it.” His eyes teared. “I’m so sorry. Let’s try to fix things.”
For a moment Maggie sat, unmoved. But then a tiny smile appeared. She rose and, quiet as a fog on a lake, drifted toward him. Those delicate hands tipped his head upward, and she kissed him—a loving kiss. “This is a time for comforting,” she said, teacher to child. “No sex, but walk to the bed with me and undress, except your skivvies. I’ll do the same.” She took his right hand in her left and led him to the bed. They undressed and lay down.
Through his tears Georg heard again his sister, five, sobbing into the phone, “Mommy, please come home, please.” He heard again his mother, “I’ll be home for Easter … before school starts … by Christmas.” He heard his own pre-teen phone voice, flat, uninflected, “A-huh… a-huh…a-huh…OK…bye.” And he saw again his burned-up mother, a pile of sodden ashes slowly sinking toward Flathead’s floor. She’ll never come home.
Maggie held his hand, saying nothing. It’s what he needed.
They slept a couple hours. Drained but relieved, they rose and dressed for a beach dinner of garlic mussels on pasta with a dry Chablis. When mostly done eating, Georg reached across the table to Maggie’s hand. “In Montana I was furious with those monks, but told myself, ‘She’s finally gone, it’s over, let it rest.’ I realized today—it’s not over, probably won’t be for a long time.”
Maggie said, “Most women wouldn’t do to their kids what she did to you. And since you’re a decent guy—most still won’t do it to you.” Then she looked down and said, a little sadly, “I’ve also got a confession. After I left you at the beach I picked up some turkey in the Grill. I got him singing a dumb song too loud in our hall, just to get at you. When he dropped his drawers in my room, I told him he was insufficient and sent him away. Leaving this morning, I talked as though he still were there—again, just bugging you.”
I probably deserved it, Georg thought.
Back in Georg’s room Maggie said, “Too much happened today. I’ll say again, ‘No sex, just comforting.’ Save the sex ‘til we’re back in Colorado.”
Georg replied, “Thanks. I’m drained … no juices left, literally or figuratively. But a long session back home sounds spectacular.” He checked the ticket in his drawer. “Tomorrow’s flight – 11:33 a.m. Leaves time for breakfast and packing. Let’s sleep now … and pray our charter pilot practiced some landings.”
~ ~ ~
The next morning they both answered, “Yes, please,” to the manager. Many guests had left, and their table was empty. Looking at his full plate, Georg said, “It’s been a Hell of a roller-coaster, Maggie.”
She answered, “Yeah, but that old song was wrong. The best things in life never are free—or easy.”
Georg smiled. “I want to know you a lot better. Would you come to Denver in a couple weeks to see a dance performance? You could teach this engineer about your art.”
Smiling, Maggie answered, ‘Well first, to know me better, let’s start with my name. I’m Margret Anne Carlson.”
Partly to hide his smile, he looked down. “I’m Georg Heinrich Staube. You know the German pronunciation, but here I say it American.”
She shook his hand, grinned, and said in her perfect German, “Guten morgen, Herr Staube. I’d love seeing Denver’s dancers.”
They finagled seats together, and the take-off was professional. The Keys below were emerald-green beads on a tight-stretched string holding the islands above the surrounding cerulean-blue depths. Taking Georg’s hand, Maggie said, “The colors almost move. I could dance to them.”
A couple hours after a perfect Dulles landing, they boarded United’s four-hour Denver flight. Heading home, Maggie said she had no phone, so they exchanged only email addresses. Because she’d parked in the Remote Lot, and Georg in the garage, they warmly kissed goodbye at her shuttle stop. But, as her bus’s door shut, he noticed a cellphone-shaped bulge in her carry-on. That night he dreamt of a woman whose carry-on exploded.
~ ~ ~
His email the next night thanked Maggie for her warm understanding. He also told her his team, following a plan of his, had a great breakthrough while he was gone—no details, of course. He said the Project Manager had thanked him for his leadership, even said, “You’re on your way up.”
Georg also asked about her cell phone.
Maggie responded at 2:24 a.m., congratulating him on the breakthrough, saying, “I’m so proud of you,” words his mother had never uttered. The message ended, “Silly, of course I’ve got a cell phone. But my apartment’s behind Mt. Sopris, so reception’s iffy.”
Georg knew the positions of Sopris and Carbondale, and her explanation seemed unlikely. His brief emails on the next two nights got no response, but on the third afternoon, this came:
Dear Georg,
I told you most women would not do to you what your mother did, and I won’t. I’m a risk-taker (maybe too much). You’re a planner (maybe too much). That wouldn’t work. And I bent the truth. I spent the night with that man I picked up at the Grill. His vacation ended then, and I thought I’d never see him again, so I re-contacted you.
But the night I got home he texted me (yes, my phone worked). “Big lay-offs, lost job. Moving to CA. Come with me.” Yesterday I quit my job and held a garage sale. We’re driving now to California. Maybe I’ll dance in the movies—or more likely, land on welfare. But I love risks.
You and I had fun. Thanks for your decency, and good luck in the future.
Annette Margaret Reitson
Before going home Georg called his Project Manager, saying he could, after all, take next Saturday’s On-Call. Salving disappointment, he thought, We both played parts we’d played before. But I really went to learn windsurfing, so I met my goal. Still, he motor-minded all night, rerunning conversations. Twice he was teary, once for losing another woman and once for Maggie, playing again with dynamite.
