Long story... To do it over again

It took a few more minutes but finally I convinced him. He staggered over a few paces, got down on his knees, and stuck his finger down his throat. A moment later he was regurgitating beer all over the place. While he did this I went to check on Nina. A fresh puddle outside the passenger door told me that she’d had another bought of vomiting. She was currently curled up in the seat, her head against the doorframe, asleep. I elected not to disturb her.

When Mike finished I loaded him into the back seat and buckled him up. I buckled up Nina and then started up the engine. I headed back to the city.

Mike was easy to get home. A few quick shakes in front of his house and a helping hand getting out of the car and he went staggering up his walkway, giving me a slurred farewell. He had some trouble getting the door open but finally figured out he was using the wrong key. Once this was rectified, he was inside. I drove off towards Nina’s house.

The Blackmore house was darkened as I pulled to the curb and shut down my engine. I breathed a sigh of relief at this. Maybe I could get her inside without awakening her parents. Beside me Nina was unconscious, snoring softly. I began to shake her gently, trying to wake her.

“Nina,” I called, using a louder and louder voice. “You’re home.”

She stirred a little but would not open her eyes. She batted at me once when I shook her a little too hard.

“Shit,” I mumbled.

I began patting down her pockets, looking for her keys. Feeling the telltale bulge in the right front of her pants, I put my hand in, having to force it the pants were so tight, and finally felt the cold metal of the keys. It took a few moments of stern yanking before they popped free. Using the dome light I searched through the ring and finally identified a likely house key.

I got out of the car and walked up to the door, quiet as a mouse, and inserted the key into the deadbolt lock. It wouldn’t turn. With a curse I pulled it out and searched through the ring again, locating another prospect. This one did the trick. I released the bolt and pulled the key free. I then tried the doorknob, finding it to be locked too. Using the first key I unlocked that and gave the knob a quick turn to make sure it would open. Knowing that Nina had a cat that was not supposed to be outside, I did not open the door just yet, although that would have made my task easier.

I quickly returned back to the car and opened the passenger door. I shoved the keys back into Nina’s pocket and then reached down and picked her up, cradling her like a baby. This was easy since she only weighed about a hundred pounds or so. Even in her stupor her arm automatically went around my neck.

Tiptoeing, I walked up to the door and, after considerable twisting and stretching, managed to get my hand on the doorknob. With the layout of the Blackmore house in my mind, giving me the fastest route to her bedroom and back out, I turned the knob and pushed open the door, prepared to make the dash.

A loud sound blared through the house. “BEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

My eyes looked up to the lighted box next to the front door. An alarm code box. As soon as I heard the noise and saw the box a memory came to me, a memory of the days before our breakup, when Nina’s mother used to drive us to this house after school to study. I remembered either Nina or her mother punching in a code as soon as the door was unlocked. A code that shut off the infernal beeping before the alarm would start to ring. How in the hell had I forgotten about that?

I shook her up and down, trying to rouse her. “Nina,” I whispered frantically into her ear, “what’s the code for your alarm?”

“Huh?” she croaked, her glassy eyes creaking open a quarter of an inch or so.

“What’s the damn alarm code?” I asked desperately.

She giggled. “That’s funny.” She went back to sleep.

“Nina!” I barked louder.

A bedroom door opened from down the hall. A light clicked on.

“Nina?” came Jack Blackmore’s voice. “Turn off the damn alarm! What’s the matter with you?”

Footsteps began to approach. Mary’s voice spoke up. “Jack? What’s wrong? Why is the alarm going off?”

I could only stand there as Jack came around the corner. He was dressed in gray sweatpants and was shirtless, the surgical scar on his chest standing out like a zipper. His eyes locked onto me standing there and holding his unconscious daughter in my arms.

“Christ almighty,” he muttered, tromping over. He punched in a code and the beeping fell silent.

“Jack?” came Mary’s voice from the bedroom. “Is everything all right?”

Jack looked at me carefully for a moment and then at Nina, who was snoring drunkenly again. I wondered if he was going to go get his hunting rifle and blow me away right there or if he would at least give me a running start.

“Is she okay?” he asked tonelessly.

“Uh…” I stammered.

“She smells like a damn brewery. Is she okay?”

“She had a little too much to drink,” I finally admitted.

Mary came around the corner. She was dressed in a long cotton nightgown and pulling a robe around her body. She took in the scene before her and walked carefully into the living room.

“What’s wrong with her?” she asked.

“Too much to drink,” Jack explained.

“I tried to get her to slow down,” I offered weakly. My arm muscles were starting to cry out as I stood there. I wondered if we were going to end right back up at step one again because of this?

“And you?” Jack asked me. “Have you had too much to drink too?”

I shook my head. “No,” I replied. “I only had three beers all night, and those were when we first got there. I told you I take driving very seriously.”

He nodded. “You seem sober enough,” he pointed out. “Well don’t just stand there. Go put her in her room. Mary, can you take care of her once she’s there?”

“Of course,” Mary said, shaking her head sadly and looking at her intoxicated daughter with something that looked almost like affection. Strange.

“C’mon,” Mary told me, leading the way.

“Aren’t you guys mad about this?” I finally had to ask.

They both stopped and looked at me. “Mad?” Jack asked. “Why would we be mad? You got her home safely just like you said.”

“Yeah,” I stammered, “but…”

“You mean because she’s drunk?” Mary asked next.

I nodded.

They looked at each other for a moment and chuckled knowingly.

“Bill,” Jack told me, “we’d be about the biggest hypocrites in the world if we got mad over this. Why back in our day I drug Mary home many a time carrying her just like you’re carrying Nina there.”

“And I’ve dragged Jack into the house more than my share too,” she added.

My mouth was agape as I tried to picture what they were saying.

“Drinking is a part of every young person’s life,” Mary said, reaching out to stroke Nina’s hair. “She’s free and eighteen and if she wants to drink until she vomits, that’s her prerogative. Did she vomit?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“You were a lot more responsible than we used to be,” Jack told me. “Why we used to go out to parties and when it was time to go we decided who would drive by whoever had to carry the other. A couple times we woke up the next morning and the car was in the garage and we had no idea how we’d gotten home.”

They looked at each other affectionately again. “It’s a wonder we didn’t kill ourselves back then,” Mary said nostalgically. She turned to Jack. “Remember that time we woke up in someone’s house in the morning and we didn’t know where we were?”

Jack laughed fondly. “Oh yeah,” he said, turning to me. “It was back in the late fifties or thereabouts. We went to this Christmas party and got drunk out of our minds. The next thing we know, we’re waking up the next morning in chairs at someone’s dining room table. Never seen the house before in our lives.”

Mary actually giggled, to my astonishment. “And the kid!” she said. “Remember the kid?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “There was this kid eating breakfast at the table. A bowl of cereal. We’d never seen him before, had no idea who he was. He just kind of looked at us and said hi and then went back to eating. Were we hungover? Oh boy I guess we were. Our car was out front so we got into and tried to drive home but we had no idea what part of town we were in or anything.”

“It took us about twenty minutes to find a street we were familiar with,” Mary laughed.

That this story would be one of their fond marital memories seemed strange at first but I finally realized I was dealing with the alcohol generation here. In their youths alcohol use did not have the stigma it would develop in mine. Drinking was a part of every social function and was seen as a rite of passage almost. The Blackmores seemed almost proud of their daughter for having her first vomitus trip through the land of intoxication.

“This is very weird,” I couldn’t help commenting.

They offered no reply to that. Mary led me to Nina’s bedroom where I gently laid her down on her bed. She shoed me out and closed the door while she began attending to her comatose daughter. When I returned to the living room, Jack was holding two bottles of beer in his hands. He handed one to me.

“Since you didn’t get to drink at the party tonight,” he said, “I thought you might like a cold one before you headed home.”

I took it and looked at him, at the surgical scar on his chest. “You’re not supposed to drink, are you?” I asked lightly.

“Screw those doctors,” he told me. “If the beer knocks five years off my life than I consider it five years I wouldn’t have wanted to live anyway. Drink with me.”

“I won’t insult you by saying no,” I said, borrowing a line from Fiddler on The Roof. I popped open my beer.

Nina spent the majority of the next day in bed, leaving it only to throw up in the nearest convenient toilet. I did not go over to see her, only talked to her on the phone. She sounded miserable and she vowed she would never drink again. I believe everyone has made such a vow a time or two in their lives, usually a few days before breaking it. The following day I visited briefly but she still wasn’t quite right. I could sympathize. Two-day hangovers are the pits.

________________________________________

Instead of coming home for the summer, Tracy elected to enroll in summer classes to knock out a few more general education requirements. She told us on the phone that she knew there wasn’t a lot of money for a plane ticket anyway and besides, summer was the most pleasant time of year in the Bay Area. No sense coming back to sultry, hot Spokane when she could be basking in 80-degree days and furthering her degree. Mom and Dad were somewhat disappointed, going so far as to assure her that they had the money for a plane ticket, but Tracy was undaunted. She wanted to stay.

________________________________________

The testing process for the Spokane Fire Department began. On June 12 Mike went down to the Spokane Community Center to take the written test. It was this portion of the process that I worried about since I knew that Mike was not the strongest person when it came to written material. But my worries turned out to be unfounded. He’d picked up study guides at the bookstore and had gone over them obsessively in the weeks preceding the test. He called me shortly after he returned that day and told me it was in the bag. Though the results wouldn’t be mailed to him for a week, he knew he’d passed. I couldn’t doubt the confidence he displayed and I was right not to. When he got the letter the first word on it was “Congratulations”. His score was 91 percent. He was scheduled to take the combat challenge at two o’clock the afternoon of June 20.

I didn’t believe he would have any problems with the combat challenge. As I’ve mentioned, the majority of the test was leg muscles and endurance. The exercise regime that Mike had been following had strengthened both of these attributes to a level that I could only dream of. His thighs and his calves bulged with runner’s muscle. He had worked his endurance to the point where he could go full out at a run for nearly five minutes. He could carry sixty pounds of weight up the library stairs at a jog and barely break a sweat. His resting heart rate hovered at around fifty. He not only intended to pass the test but to threaten the record time while doing it. I had every confidence he would do so.

The day of the test came. It was about as pleasant as it gets in Spokane during the summer that day; the heat and humidity approaching a record low. Mike had called me the moment he’d gotten home from the written test so I knew, when I still had not received a phone call by five o’clock, that something was wrong.

It was the next day before I found out. He came over to my house about ten in the morning and we took a walk over to the elementary school. He told me the story on the way.

“I didn’t pass, dude,” he told me bitterly, almost biting back tears.

“What happened?” I asked, feeling his pain to some degree. I’d failed the same test before of course but I hadn’t wanted it as badly as he did.

He sighed, shaking his head. “My legs and my endurance were fuckin’ top rate,” he said. “I lit into that course like you wouldn’t believe. The guys at my station helped me practice putting on the turnouts and the tank so I did it in less than ten seconds. I pulled out the hose in nothing flat. It didn’t even hurt my legs. I was a little slow on the sledgehammer part. It kind of hurt my arms, but I got it done and picked up a lot of time on the ladder climb and carrying the hose up the stairs of the tower. When I got to the top I wasn’t even winded and my time was pushing the record.” He gave me a bitter look.

“And then what?” I asked gently.

He scowled. “I’m tellin’ you, man,” he said, “I’ve spent all this time working on my legs and my endurance because that’s the main part of the test. But I never worked on my fucking arms. When I started pulling the hose up the rope I knew I was in trouble. I never realized how fucking heavy a forty-pound roll of hose is when you try to hoist it up hand over hand. By the time I got it halfway up my forearms were screaming. When I got it up to the ledge and tried to pull it in, they weren’t working right. I dropped the rope and the hose fell back to the bottom.” He sniffed a little. “Automatic disqualification.”

I looked over at him, trying to think of something to say. Like Mike, I’d never considered there would be difficulty with this part of the test. When I’d taken it I hadn’t worked my arms either. But I’d also spent the previous two years constantly lifting gurneys with human beings on them from floor level to loading position, actions which had strengthened my arms to the point that a forty pound roll of hose was nothing. But Mike had never done such a thing. His arms were used to lifting nothing heavier than beer cans.

“I’m sorry, man,” I told him. “I know how much you wanted this.”

He nodded, pulling out a joint as we reached our standard smoking spot. “That kinda shit happens,” he told me. “Oh well. There’s always next year, I guess. I’ll be sure to have my damn arms built up by then.”

We smoked the joint together but it didn’t improve his mood much. He was in the middle of a black depression. I hoped he would come out of it soon. I didn’t like seeing him that way.

________________________________________

As June wound onward a good portion of my time was taken up by work. Other idle time was used in researching and filling out the complex paperwork involved in applying for the college of my choice, the University of Washington at Seattle. There was also the paperwork involved in applying for the academic scholarship I was shooting for. Nina’s time was taken up by much of the same process.

But it was summer and these pursuits did leave time for other pursuits. One of them was my dad’s boat. It was a twenty-foot jet boat capable of seating eight and pulling a skier out of the water in nothing flat. He’d purchased it during the height of his financial irresponsibility stage and our family had enjoyed it for about three good years. Since then it had pretty much sat in disuse in our garage, it’s engine broken, its paint faded, and its hull being used as extensive storage space for household items.

I myself had owned a small boat during my own financial irresponsible period in my first life. I’d finally sold it to help pay off a few credit card debts. But the fever to be out on the water had stayed with me. I’d gotten Dad’s tacit permission to put the boat back into serviceable condition if I could. I knew I was not capable of doing this on my own but I also knew that Mike knew a considerable amount about engines and mechanics thanks to his dad.

And so Mike became a constant fixture at my house during the latter part of June during the morning hours before I went to work and on the weekend. We unloaded all of the crap from the boat and stored it elsewhere. We cleaned up the hull. And finally we dove into the engine compartment to try to find the source of the “engine doesn’t work” problem my dad had described. The work seemed therapeutic for Mike in a way and it served to put us closer together. For the first time since my return I was seeing an actual maturity in my friend, actually feeling kinship with him instead of tired resignation.

He discovered the source of the problem quickly, shortly after we’d installed a fresh battery, changed the plugs, oil, and fluids, and attempted to fire up the Chevy engine for the first time. He listened with a practiced ear to the pathetic idling of the engine, looked into the compartment for a moment, and then told me to shut it down.

I turned the key and it roared to life, sounding exactly like an “Head gasket is blown,” he told me happily.

“Okay,” I said, not knowing what that meant. Like my old man, I knew next to nothing about the internal combustion engine. “Can we fix it?”

“Are you serious?” he asked, shaking his head.

“What do you mean?”

“I can do it in a day for less than a hundred bucks,” he told me. “The head gasket is the seal between the head and the engine block. If it’s blown it fucks up the compression and lets oil and shit spray out. That keeps the engine from running or from cooling right. If that’s all that’s wrong, we’ll have this thing up and running next weekend.”

“No shit?” I asked, impressed.

“No shit,” he answered happily.

So the next Saturday he came over at nine in the morning and we went to work. First we visited the auto parts store where he requested the appropriate parts and I paid for them. We took them back to my garage and he opened his toolbox. We went to work, me very much in the apprentice mode.

I had noticed that he was preoccupied with something else throughout the day but I didn’t broach the subject. Mike was not the kind of person you tried to draw out. If he wanted to tell you what was wrong, he would do it. If he didn’t, you weren’t going to get it out of him.

It was after we’d removed the head and placed it on some newspapers on the garage floor along with all of the other parts, as he was scraping the old gasket off, that he finally spilled it. Our hands were grimy and greasy and both of us were dripping sweat from the high humidity. We were both drinking cans of beer that my dad had supplied us with.

“I’m thinking about joining the Air Force,” he told me, scraping away with a razor.

That one sentence sent chills through my body, even before my mind completely processed it. The Air Force? I could almost feel fate pulling at Mike, could almost sense it as a hostile, aware presence in the garage with us, a cloaked figure with a satisfied smile on its face.

“What did you say?” I asked quietly, hoping I hadn’t heard him right, or that he was merely joking with me.

“The Air Force,” he repeated, grinding away at a stubborn piece of gasket. “I got a call from this recruiter guy the other day and I talked to him about twenty minutes. He was a really cool guy.”

A really cool guy. Not surprising. Recruiters were, after all, salesmen. A good one would have gone out of his way to learn the lingo of his target group and would talk just like a teenager, even if he were a fifty-year-old man. They were paid to seduce the young and they were good at it.

“What did he say?” I asked, my mind in overdrive trying to think of a way to counter this situation.

“Well we talked for a little bit,” he said, “and I told him that I was interested in firefighting. He says that every Air Force base, everywhere in the world, has a fire department. They handle all of the medical aids and fires on the base housing. They also get extensive training in aircraft fires and rescue. If I spent four years in doing that it would almost guarantee me a job when I got out. Think of how that would look on my resume, being trained in aircraft suppression, HAZMAT, and with four years of practical experience doing it.”

I realized two things as I listened to him. One was that he was repeating, almost word for word, what the recruiter had thrown at him. Mike would never have said anything like “resume” or “practical experience”. The second thing was that he was seeking my approval of his plan. Whether he was doing it unconsciously or consciously, he was running his idea by me hoping I’d say it was a great one. This gave me hope that I could divert him from what I was sure would be a destructive path. I had no illusions about what would happen if Mike joined the Air Force. But I needed to do it carefully. If I pushed too hard, my words would have the opposite effect that I intended.

“Did he tell you that you could go into the fire department?” I asked.

“He said that I could put that in as my request for skills and they would try to place me there,” Mike said. “It sounds like a pretty good deal.”

I nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, it sounds like one.”

“I made an appointment to talk to him tomorrow.”

I chewed my lip a little, knowing that the recruiter had every intention of getting Mike to sign his name on the line tomorrow, knowing that Mike would most likely do so if left to his own devices. What to do? I picked up my beer, which was warm at that point and tasted like shit but I took a big drink of it anyway. “I’ve looked into the military a little bit,” I told him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I affirmed. “It could be a good career move under certain circumstances, but there’s a few things you have to realize.”

He scowled a little bit. “What do you mean?”

I took a deep breath. “Well,” I said, “first of all there’s the recruiter. You have to understand what his purpose is. In our country we have a volunteer military. There’s no draft in place so they have to staff everything with people who have signed their names of their own free will. In order to do that, they have to make the military look attractive to their prospects, to draw them away from civilian life. That’s where the recruiter comes in. He probably sounded like he was your best friend, right?”

Mike shrugged, scraping away a little more gasket. “Yeah, he was pretty cool.”

“That’s because he’s a salesman. His job is to sign people up for the Air Force. He wouldn’t be doing it if he weren’t good at it. So he’ll pretty much tell you anything in order to get you in there. He’ll go on and on about how great the Air Force is but he won’t tell you the unpleasant parts because that might put you off a little. So the first thing you need to realize is that the recruiter is not really your friend. He has a job to do, and his job is to sign you up.”

“Yeah,” Mike scowled further, “but…”

“Now hold on,” I interrupted. “I’m not saying the military is a bad idea. I’m just trying to get you to see that the recruiter cannot necessarily be trusted to hold your best interests in mind. Can you see this?”

He thought for a moment and finally nodded. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I see where you’re coming from.”

“For instance,” I said, “did he mention the ASVAB to you?”

“The az-vab?”

“Armed services vocational assessment battery,” I translated. “The ASVAB. It’s a test they give you once you’re committed. It’s a general knowledge exam designed to get into your mind a little and see what makes you tick. Psychologists and so forth have designed it and it measures what your strengths and weaknesses are. From that, they determine what job you’re going to be assigned to once you’re in.”

“But he told me they’d put me into the firefighting school,” Mike protested.

“No no,” I corrected. “You yourself just told me that they would put that in as a request for skills and try to assign you there. He didn’t actually say that you would be put in there, did he?”

Mike thought for a moment. “No,” he finally said, “he didn’t. But still, my request will be in. Why wouldn’t they put me there?”

“Lots of reasons,” I explained. “First and foremost your ASVAB might say you wouldn’t be a good firefighter. If that’s the case, then you won’t get it no matter what. If your ASVAB says you’d make an excellent, oh, missile technician in some silo in North Dakota, then that’s where you’re going to go. But even if your ASVAB says you’d make a good firefighter, there might not be any openings for that skill. I imagine that firefighting and MP skills are taken up pretty quickly.”

“If they don’t give me what I want,” Mike said firmly, “then I won’t do it.”

“That’s the catch,” I told him. “You take the ASVAB after you’ve signed your name and committed yourself. You would have taken the oath at that point. You can’t back out after that. You’d be in for four years, doing whatever they wanted you to do. If they wanted to send you to Germany to clean out shithouses, you’d be doing it. Once you sign your name, you’re government property. The only way out at that point is some sort of discharge that would be other than honorable. It could be medical, psychological, dishonorable, but no matter what it would be, it would destroy your chances of getting on with any fire department anywhere.”

He had stopped scraping the gasket and was looking at me. I could read his face and could see that a part of him wanted to be angry with me, to storm out of my garage for telling him something he didn’t want to hear. But another part of him, the part that was becoming an adult, was also there. That part was carefully considering what I’d just said.

“Are you sure about all of this?” he asked me.

“You don’t have to believe me,” I told him. “You have an appointment with the recruiter tomorrow. Ask him all of this. Ask him directly if what I’ve just told you is true. He’ll hem and haw and try to convince you that you’ll almost surely be put in the firefighter class but he won’t give you any sort of guarantee in writing and he won’t be able to say, ‘Mike, you will be in that firefighting class’. I’m not wrong about this. You need to be wary of making impulsive decisions that can erase four years of your life.”

He nodded, not speaking.

“If you don’t join up,” I told him, “you can take the Spokane test again next year. Or you can start applying at other departments around here. Someone, somewhere is always hiring. Seattle Fire hires twice a year I hear and they pay quite a bit more than Spokane. Put in your interest cards everywhere and fill out the applications. Take the tests even if it’s some bum-fuck Egypt department that you’d never work for. It’s good practice. In the meantime, sign up for the fire science classes at the community college.”

“College?” he asked, never having considered that concept.

“Why not?” I enquired. “It’s cheap and it gives you something to do. When you go to the interviews you can tell them that you’re working on your degree in Fire Science. They love that shit. Once you get hired you can drop out if you want. Or you can continue. My point is that just because you missed one test the first time, you don’t have to do something rash like joining the military. If you do that there’s a good chance you might regret it later and have no way out. If you stick it out for a while you might get hired somewhere else or you might get hired at Spokane next year. If none of that works out, then maybe you can give the military a try. But there’s no hurry is there? The Air Force will still be there in a year, won’t they?”

“I suppose so,” he told me.

“Just don’t let the recruiter seduce you tomorrow. Be on guard and ask the right questions. Remember that the recruiter can act like your friend, he can make you believe he’s your friend, but he’s not your friend. He exists to get you to sign your name. He doesn’t give a fuck about you.”

Mike nodded. He didn’t commit himself one way or the other but I knew I’d given him a lot of food for thought. I hoped it was enough.

The conversation soon turned to other things. We worked for another three hours and finally the engine was back together.

“Okay,” Mike told me, standing near the back of it. “Fire it up.”

eight cylinder, gas-guzzling engine should. Mike proclaimed the boat fixed. Of course it still had to have its registration updated but we made tentative plans to take it out the following weekend.

I thought about reminding him of what we’d talked about as he headed home but decided not to. I could only hope his maturity would win out over his other side.

________________________________________

I didn’t get a chance to talk to Mike for a few days. The day after the boat was fixed Nina and I spent the day together downtown, catching a movie and then having dinner together. We made out a little in my car at a deserted park but did nothing fancy. My mind was preoccupied with a thousand things, as was hers. We said our good-byes at her doorstep at ten that night, exchanging a demure kiss. I then went home and wanked myself to sleep.

Monday and Tuesday were my normal routine. I got Dad to go down to the Department of Motor Vehicles and re-register the boat. He did so grudgingly, he hated DMV as much as anyone, but he was proud of the accomplishment of getting the old boat running again. I told him my plans to take it out the following Saturday and he quizzed me once more about my experience with driving a boat and driving a car with a boat trailer attached to it. I assured him that I knew how to do it. One of the advantages of having my dad in on my secret was that he didn’t question things like that too heavily and that I didn’t have to lie to him. It was nice.

During this time period I almost called Mike a half a dozen times. I was worried that the recruiter had somehow gotten to him. I wouldn’t have even put it past one of those slime to outright lie and tell him that of course he’d be placed in the firefighting program. After all, by the time he found out to the contrary, it would be too late wouldn’t it? And if his complaints somehow landed on something other than deaf ears, the recruiter could always deny it. I hoped he’d taken my speech about putting things in writing seriously.

He finally called me on Wednesday, just before I left for work. It was maddening as he talked of inconsequential things for five minutes and part of me wondered if he knew what hell he was putting me through and enjoying it. Finally the subject of the meeting with the recruiter came up.

“You were right, dude,” he told me. “That asshole was a piece of shit.”

“Yeah?” I asked, suppressing a shout of joy. “What happened?”

“I asked him the questions you told me to ask,” he said. “He went on and on about how I would most likely be placed exactly where I wanted to be, even in the city I wanted to be in, but that he couldn’t actually guarantee it. He told me the ASVAB was just a formality and that it didn’t mean much but he wouldn’t break out anything in writing to put me in the firefighting program. He kept trying to smooth talk me and get off the subject of where I would end up. He started talking about college, and money for college, and serving my country, and a bunch of shit like that. Finally I told him to fuck off and left.”

“That’s fuckin cool, Mike,” I said, unable to suppress any longer. “You made the right decision.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks for clueing me in about that asshole. I owe you one.”

He had actually thanked me! Unbelievable. “No problem, man,” I told him. “That’s what friends do.”

“We still on for Saturday?” he asked next. “I’m ready to try water-skiing.”

“We’re on,” I told him. “You and me and Nina. We’ll head out about nine.”

“Cool,” he said, and then paused for a second. “I’m not gonna be in the way or anything with you and Nina, am I?”

“No,” I assured him. “You need three to water-ski anyway. Someone has to be the observer.”

“That’s cool,” he told me. “You’re lucky. You got a girlfriend to take with you. I seem to be fresh out of women at the moment. I tried to call Jess Round but she’s not even speaking to me. She told me to fuck off when I got hold of her.”

“Fuck her,” I told him. “She’s a ho. We’ll find you someone else.”

“Think you can do it by Saturday?” he asked jokingly.

“I’ll get right on it,” I said, just as jokingly.

________________________________________

It was Thursday morning and I was at the local mini-mart pumping gas into my Datsun. I wasn’t thinking of much, just reflecting upon the fact that I missed the convenience of just sliding my ATM card into a little slot and pumping my fill without ever having to actually go inside the store and pay in cash. It was one of those things that would appear in the next few years that I had to live without. Such a little thing, the ATM card and the interlinked networks, but something that once you got used to, you felt the sting if it wasn’t there anymore.

ATM machines themselves were just starting to make their appearance to the world. At the moment, my bank did not have any of them. When I wanted money I had to physically go inside and cash a check. I had to be sure to do this between nine and five on a weekday or I was shit out of luck in the money department. I reflected, as the numbers on the pump clicked off dollars and cents, that the American public in general was probably spending a lot less money than they would in a few years. Right now you had to go to the bank to get cash and cash was basically the only way to acquire anything small. In a few years you would be able to go to any machine anywhere and deplete your checking or savings account at any hour of the day. It would be no longer mandatory to take out a supply of money in order to survive the workweek.

I was wondering if this was a bad thing or a good thing when I detected a presence moving in on me. My instincts flared, thoughts of Richie Fairview coming for his final revenge crossing my consciousness. Adrenaline flooded me in an instant as my body prepared to fight or flee. I turned into my aggressor, my arms coming up in a defensive posture and suddenly I was enveloped in a pair of female arms, a warm, soft body pressing heavily into me.

“Bill!” a familiar voice squealed at me. I felt the press of breasts against my chest as I was pulled into my attacker.

“Maggie?” I asked, taking in the form and instinctively returning the hug.

She gave me a wet, sloppy kiss on the cheek. “Did I scare you?” she asked teasingly, pulling back to look at me.

“No,” I lied. “What are you doing here?”

“Getting gas,” she told me, finally releasing me from her embrace. She was dressed in a pair of tight shorts and a half-shirt. She looked very pretty. The endlessly horny part of my brain remembered what that body looked like naked, how it felt moving beneath (or above) mine. “What else does one do at a gas station?”

“Good point,” I allowed. “How have you been? What have you been up to?”

“I’m still going to college,” she said. “Working on my pre-recs for nursing school. Hopefully I’ll be able to transfer over to State next year. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”

“Good for you,” I told her, knowing what was going to come soon from her lips. An offer to get together with her for a little fun. Fortunately she’d allowed me an opening to derail her offer before it came. I seized upon it. “My girlfriend is going to be getting those pre-recs too. She wants to go to med school.”

“Girlfriend?” she moaned sadly, but good-naturedly. “Don’t tell me you’re out of circulation?”

“Afraid so,” I confirmed.

“Well that sucks the big one,” she giggled. “I was hoping you and I could get together, you know, for old times sake.” Her tone heavily implied that this would still be a possibility, girlfriend or not.

“Sorry,” I said, smiling. “But if I was ever tempted…” I winked.

We chatted for a minute, her catching me up on the whereabouts of Cindy. “That bitch moved in with the college professor and left me holding the lease for our apartment. If I wouldn’t have found another roommate right away they would’ve had to evict me. She’s such a blonde.”

“Are they still together?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” she said. “They’re gonna get married as soon as his divorce is final.”

“Go Cindy,” I said.

“So who’s the lucky girl that snagged you?” Maggie asked me. “She must be a hottie.”

“Nina Blackmore,” I told her.

Her brow crinkled in confusion. “Nina Blackmore?” she asked. “Really?”

“Really,” I confirmed, knowing the source of her confusion. Though Nina was pretty and though I longed for her body as well as her mind, she was not exactly in the category of “hottie”.

“Well congratulations,” she told me. “But if you ever break up with her…”

“You’ll be the first one I call,” I promised. “But I don’t think I’m gonna break up anytime soon.”

“Pretty serious huh?”

“Very,” I confirmed.

She sighed. “That’s what I need,” she told me. “Someone to be serious with. Having different boyfriends every month used to be fun but it’s getting kind of old. And now with AIDS and all that shit, well, you know?”

I nodded and then an idea suddenly hit me. It was an impulsive decision, one that I did not have time to think out carefully, but I went with it.

“Hey, Maggie,” I said, “do you like to water-ski?”

She looked at me, wondering what this was about. “I’ve done it a few times,” she said. “It’s fun.”

“I just fixed up my dad’s ski boat,” I told her. “Nina and Mike Meachen and I are taking it out on Saturday. You want to come?”

She grinned knowingly. “Are you trying to fix me up with Mike Meachen?” she asked.

“No,” I protested. “I just thought you’d like to come, that’s all. What’s wrong with Mike anyway?”

A giggle. “You are,” she accused. “There’s nothing wrong with him I guess. He’s kinda cute, but he’s younger. I don’t go for younger guys.”

“You don’t have to go for him,” I said. “I just wanted to know if you’d like to go skiing with us.”

She considered for a moment. “Okay,” she finally said. “What time?”

________________________________________

That evening after work Nina came over for a visit. We did the obligatory time chatting with my parents and then we went out front to sit in the porch swing with our arms around each other, watching the sunset while we rocked slowly back and forth. I told her that I’d invited Maggie to go boating with us and felt her tense up.

“Maggie Bartlett?” she asked carefully. “You invited her to go?”

“Yeah,” I answered, wondering suddenly if it had been such a good idea after all. “I ran into her at the gas station. I thought that maybe her and Mike might hit it off a little.”

She looked over at me. “She’s very pretty.”

I shrugged. “I suppose.”

“You’ve uh, done it with her before,” she said. It was not a question.

“Nina that was the past,” I said. “And it was a long time ago.” Which wasn’t exactly true, Maggie and Cindy had been the last two girls I’d slept with after all, but I didn’t think that little fact needed to play a part in this discussion.

“Bill…” she started worriedly.

“Those days are over,” I told her. “I promise you that. I’m committed to you completely. Maggie is just a friend and I thought that maybe her and Mike would maybe make a good couple. Mike needs a girlfriend and Maggie needs a boyfriend. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. If you want, I’ll call her up and tell her we cancelled the trip.”

She considered this for a moment. “No,” she said finally. “Let her come. It’s very nice of you to try to fix Mike up. It’s just weird to think that I’ll be spending the day with someone that you used to… you know?”

I nodded. “Are you sure?” I asked.

“I’m sure,” she told me. And then softly, “Was she good at it?”

I nearly choked. “What?”

“Was she good at it?” Nina asked. “In bed?”

I shook my head. “No,” I replied. “Terrible.”

Nina smiled a little. “You’re not a very good liar, Bill.”

________________________________________

My mother was still not in on the secret of my recycling and so she naturally questioned my Dad’s decision to allow my friends and I to take out the boat. I can see her point of view well. Somehow, how I know not, Dad convinced her that it would be all right. She didn’t like the idea but she consented to it. And since she’d consented to it she made it her mission to make sure we were suitably supplied for a day at the lake. She packed a picnic basket with enough fried chicken, homemade potato salad, chips, and pork and beans to kill us all. She filled up a large ice-chest with soda. After a stern, motherly warning to be careful and to bring back her silverware, we were allowed to proceed with the loading of the boat.

Things were a little awkward at first. Maggie was wearing cut-off jeans and a T-shirt over her bikini top. Nina was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans too. They were pulled over her one-piece bathing suit. The two girls sized each other up for a few moments, exchanging only polite pleasantries with each other, both of them wondering what I saw in the other.

Mike was also surprised, although pleasantly so, to find Maggie there. I’d decided that the best course was not to tell him beforehand. If there was chemistry to be found between the two of them, then so be it. I did take one step in order to help the chemistry along.

“What’s she doin’ here?” Mike asked me when we were out of earshot.

“She’s an old friend of mine,” I told him.

“She’s fuckin’ hot,” he proclaimed. “I used to see her at school.”

I nodded. “Don’t get your hopes up,” I told him. “She’s got a boyfriend. She’s just along for the ride.”

“She does?” he asked, disappointed.

“Sorry, dude,” I said. “She’s off the market.”

“That’s the shit,” he pouted. “Oh well, she’s nice to look at anyway.”

“You got that right,” I agreed.

By telling Mike that he didn’t have a chance with her I figured that I was actually giving him his best chance. If he knew that she was available he would have been hitting on her like mad and I knew his lines and techniques would have been immature enough to drive Maggie away. But if he thought she was already spoken for he would tend to be much more like himself. That was what I wanted.

Mike and I, shirtless for the occasion and wearing shorts, finally picked up the tongue of the trailer and placed it on the hitch on my dad’s car. I was gratified to see that Maggie was taking in the bulging leg muscles of Mike as we did this. I suppressed a grin.

We connected the wires for the trailer lights and, with a last farewell to my parents, pulled out into the street and headed for the freeway. We got on I-90 heading east for Idaho, Nina and I in the front, Mike and Maggie in the back. My plan was working so far at that point. The two of them were talking easily in the back, discussing the merits of Spokane’s community college. In the front, Nina rested her hand on my bare thigh and occasionally gave me a little squeeze.

Our first stop was a grocery store just outside of Coeur d Alene, just across the state line. The drinking age in Idaho was nineteen years old at that time, though in a few years it would be raised to 21 thanks to the efforts of the group my mom and dad were supposed to be part of.

“Okay, Maggie,” I said, handing her the cash that we’d pooled. “Go do your stuff.”

She smiled sweetly and stepped out of the car. “You wanna come?” she asked Mike. “I’ll need help carrying everything.”

“Sure,” he barked, stepping out with her.

While they were inside Nina and I went back to the boat and opened up the ice chest. We took out all of the soda my mom had placed in there and tossed it into the trunk of the car. When Maggie and Mike returned they had three twelve packs of beer and two bags of ice. This was placed in the ice chest and we headed north.

Lake Pend Oreille, our destination, is a huge lake, the third largest west of the Mississippi. We paid our money and pulled into a launching facility at the south end of it. The facility was crowded with other boaters out to take in a day on the lake and we had to wait in line for about twenty minutes. The air was festive as we watched people scurry here and there, watched the sun beat on the blue surface of the water, and listened to the gunning of boat engines. Finally it was our turn. It had been a while since I’d done such a thing but I managed to back the boat into the lake without breaking or hitting anything. We detached it from its trailer for the first time in years and I parked the car while Mike held the boat to the dock with a rope.

We climbed into the boat, Nina sitting next to me in the front while Mike and Maggie sat directly behind us. The engine fired up at once and I took a moment to praise Mike’s mechanical skills.

“You fixed the boat?” Maggie asked Mike, her eyes shining at him. It seemed she was warming up to the possibilities he represented.

He nodded suavely. “Yeah,” he confirmed. “I know a little about engines and stuff.”

“Don’t be modest,” I said as I backed the boat away from the dock. I turned to Maggie. “We wouldn’t be out here today if it wasn’t for him. He’s a goddamn mechanical genius.”

Mike blushed at the praise and Maggie smiled. “You know,” she said, “my car’s been making a funny sound lately. Maybe you could take a look at it sometime.”

“Maybe I could,” he agreed enthusiastically. “What’s the sound?”

While Maggie described the ticking noise her car was making I throttled up a little and began to ease the boat out towards the buoy. Nina dropped her hand to my knee again and smiled at me. I was able to read her thoughts. She was thinking that bringing Maggie along had been a good idea after all.

Conversation became impossible once I passed the buoy and throttled up the engine to full. It screamed with horsepower, driving the boat along at 45 MPH, the bow bouncing over the chop on the surface of the water, tendrils of spray occasionally wetting us. It was thrilling to be on the lake again, to be at the controls of a boat after all that time. I felt the thrum of the engine beating through my chest, felt the bow bouncing up and down in the waves, felt the sun beating down on my shirtless body, felt the hand of my beloved on my thigh.

I headed in a northwest direction, hoping to find a reasonably deserted portion of the lake so we could do some skiing and maybe find a nice island to hang out on. I looked at Mike at one point and mimed the act of drinking with my hands. He got the idea and fished in the ice chest, pulling out a frosty can of beer for me. While I opened it he pulled out three more and distributed them. Nina, who had sworn off alcohol after graduation night, opened hers and took a huge drink.

Finally finding an empty spot I throttled down the motor and let the boat drift.

“Who wants to ski?” I asked.

Nina and Mike had never done it before so Maggie volunteered to be first. She stripped off her shirt and tossed it onto her seat. Her bikini top was red and was very brief, allowing her large breasts to bulge out the side. I tore my eyes away from the appetizing sight of this and looked at Mike instead. His eyeballs were nearly bugging out.

She put on the life vest and then jumped into the water.

“How is it?” Mike asked her.

“A little chilly,” she admitted, suppressing a shiver. “It’s making my nipples hard.”

I looked over at Nina to see if this statement would offend her but she only giggled and took another drink from her beer. Mike, on the other hand, was staring agape. This made both of us laugh even more.

Maggie smiled up him. “The water might make Nina’s and my nipples hard,” she said, “but wait till you see what it does to you and Bill. Does the word shrinkage mean anything to you?”

We all laughed at this and Mike, trying to compose himself, finally picked up the water skis and put them in the water for her.

“Thanks,” she said, gazing at him. While he blushed she began the process of putting them on.

She fumbled around in the water for a few moments and finally managed to get the skis on her feet. Mike tossed the rope to her next and I instructed him to face backward and watch her carefully.

“No problem,” he assured me, watching her pretty legs bobbing up and down.

“And tell me if she falls,” I added.

“Oh… yeah,” he said.

I throttled up a little until the rope was tight and pulling Maggie forward. She got into position and then gave me the thumbs-up. I throttled up more and she was pulled neatly out of the water where she began sliding across its surface, a huge grin on her face.

Maggie turned out to be quite an accomplished skier. I turned left and right and she hung in there, turning gracefully behind me, maneuvering herself so she went back and forth across the wake. Finally I turned a little too sharp and she hit the wake at the wrong angle. She went down in a tumble of arms and legs, her skis flying free.

“She’s down!” Mike screamed, much too loudly.

I throttled down and circled around to pick her up while she swam after the skis.

“You asshole,” she yelled at me when I got close. “You turned too sharp.”

“If you can’t hang…” I said, smiling. “You wanna try again?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Let someone else have a chance.”

She tossed the skis in the boat and climbed up the ladder. Her body was dripping with lake water and when she pulled the life vest off I noticed, uncomfortably, that her bikini top had pulled down from her collision and the upper half of her aureole was showing. I dragged my eyes away from this but Mike didn’t.

“Like what you see?” Maggie asked him sweetly, slowly reaching down to pull her top back into position.

Mike suddenly found something to look at in the sky, his face reddening even more. “I didn’t see anything!” he protested.

Nina and I both suppressed laughter at this while Maggie kept the amused, interested expression on her face. “It’s okay,” she said. “Accidents happen.” She handed him the life vest. “Let’s see how you do, Mr. Mechanic.”

Mike gulped and then began to put on the vest. He did it quickly and jumped into the water. But not before everyone had seen the fact that his shorts were definitely bulging outward.

We spent the next two hours skiing back and forth across the portion of the lake we were on. Mike did badly at first, continually falling the moment I tried to pull him out of the water. He was making the typical beginner’s mistake of trying to pull himself up instead of letting the boat do it. This let the line develop slack which, when it was un-slacked, inevitably pulled the skier sharply forward. Maggie gave him helpful hints from her position as observer and finally he was able to get up without falling. Once he figured this out he was unstoppable. He had a keen sense of balance and soon he was out-skiing Maggie.

Nina had no trouble gaining her feet but she had a lousy sense of balance. It was quite a while before she was able to keep from falling whenever I turned. While she skied and while Maggie continued to serve as observer I taught Mike the basics of piloting the boat. At last, when Nina came dripping inside it was my turn. With Mike at the helm I skied back and forth for a while, reacquainting myself with the pleasure of sliding along the water. While Nina sat backwards, watching for me to fall, I couldn’t help but see that Maggie and Mike were sitting quite close together in the front. Just call me Cupid.

We were all buzzing pleasantly from the beer and absolutely famished with hunger when I finally pulled myself back inside and threw down the life vest. We opened up another beer and then went to find a place to eat.

I found a small island to park at. It was about an acre or so and had some scrubby looking trees growing on it. We pulled the boat onto the shore, tied it to a tree to keep it from drifting away, and then grabbed our picnic blankets. We spread them in the shade and opened up the food my mom had packed for us. The next twenty minutes were filled with contented chomping and chewing and the slapping at bees and flies that had been drawn by the smell of fried chicken. Out on the water an occasional boat shot by, most pulling skiers behind them, but for the most part it was peaceful and quite.

After we stowed the food away and got rid of the trash we lounged on the blanket. I sat up drinking a beer while Nina laid down on her back with her head on my lap. She seemed very contented to be there. Maggie looked at us for a moment and then at Mike.

“That looks comfortable,” she said and then patted his bare leg. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” he croaked, shifting his position to give her room.

With a smile she stretched out and put her head in his lap. He seemed as if he was in ecstasy and a look was passed between the two girls. A knowing look.

The conversation went back and forth, varying on subject as we sat there. Mike was strangely quiet through all of this.

“I have to pee,” Nina finally said, lifting up her head.

“Go do it in the lake,” I suggested.

“That’s disgusting,” she told me. “You don’t do that do you?”

“Of course not,” I lied, suppressing a smile.

“I would hope not,” she said. “I had my head on those shorts.”

“Don’t let him fool you, Nina,” Maggie said. “Men are pigs. They pee anywhere.” She raised her head off of Mike’s lap. “Come on,” she told her. “I need to go too. Let’s take a walk to the other side of the island.”

“Okay,” she said, slipping into her sandals and giving me a brief kiss on the lips. “We’ll be back.”

Maggie gave Mike a saucy look and the two girls then tromped off, disappearing into the trees.

Mike and I looked at each other for a moment. When he was sure they were out of earshot he said, “Are you sure she’s got a boyfriend? She’s been flirting with me all day.”

“That’s what I heard.” I shrugged. “Maybe I was wrong. It sure seems like she likes you.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” he said wonderingly, obviously unaccustomed to the sensation.

When the girls returned the flirtation continued, gearing up a little. She fawned over his red shoulders and offered to rub lotion on them. Watching the way her fingers slid over his skin, massaging in the lotion, I knew he had to fighting to maintain control of himself. I knew from experience that Maggie could do wonders with her hands.

“Do you want to go swimming?” Nina asked me, giving me a look that said they wanted to be alone.

“Sure,” I said, standing up.

“We’ll just stay here,” Maggie said, putting some more lotion in her hand.

Nina and I splashed out into the water, holding hands as we went. The water was a bit biting but it wasn’t icy and we quickly got used to it. We went out until we were almost completely submerged and then began to move along the shoreline. In a matter of minutes, Mike and Maggie were out of our sight. I mentally wished him luck and then diverted my attention to Nina.

We played in the water for a while, splashing each other and romping around. Gradually our playfulness turned to caresses and hugs. While still standing in shoulder deep water I pulled her tightly to me and we kissed; a long, sensuous kiss that made things stir a little down below.

When our mouths parted she looked at me. “I’m glad you invited Maggie along,” she told me. “It would’ve been kind of awkward without her here.”

“That’s what I figured,” I answered. “Did she tell you anything when you went off to pee?”

“Just that she thought he was kind of cute. And that he seemed very, you know, inexperienced.”

“Does that bother her?” I asked.

She smiled knowingly. “No,” she said. “In fact she kind of seemed to like the idea. I think she wants to teach him a few things.”

“Oh?” I grinned. “What kind of things?”

“These kind of things,” she said, leaning in and putting her mouth to mine.

We stood there kissing hotly, our hands gliding up and down each other’s backs while the waves gently lapped against our bodies. We quickly heated up despite the cold as we rubbed against one another under the water. There is something intrinsically erotic about making out in a lake. Maybe it’s the water, maybe it’s the thrill of doing it outdoors, or maybe a combination of both. Whatever it was we both felt it, both responded to it.

Her hand slid down my chest and across the front of my shorts, her fingers squeezing my turgid erection.

“Nina,” I said with feigned shock at her naughtiness.

“Just checking for shrinkage,” she told me, licking at my lips, sucking at my tongue. “It doesn’t seem to be a problem here.”

“No?” I asked.

She nibbled on my ear. “Well, there’s only one way to be sure,” she said.

Her fingers found the button on the top of my shorts and undid it. Next she found the zipper and slowly slid that down. Her cool hand reached inside and wrapped around me, squeezing and sliding up and down. I let my head fall onto her shoulder and my hands slide down to her ass, which I began stroking through the material of her shorts.

She stroked me to a near frenzy while I fondled her ass and kissed on her neck and shoulders. At last she pushed downward on my shorts, sending them down my leg and freeing my cock.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” I whispered to her.

“Shhhh,” she whispered into my ear, her hand grabbing me once again. “I want to make you come again.”

“But…”

“Shhhh,” she repeated, silencing me by putting her mouth to mine. She kissed me for a second and then said, “Take off my shorts.”

“Your shorts?” I asked, wondering uneasily what she had in mind. She didn’t want me to make love to her here, in this lake did she? That certainly wasn’t the first time of love with her that I’d envisioned. We also had no protection. “Nina, I think we should stop and think about what we’re doing.”

“I know exactly what I’m doing,” she told me, giving my cock a few strokes. “Now take off my shorts.”

The demanding tone of her voice drove me to action. Too aroused to fight anymore I reached down and unbuttoned her. I slid down her zipper and then pushed the shorts down her legs. She kicked them free and they floated up to the surface next to her. With her free hand she grabbed them and tossed them onto the shore where they landed with a wet plop. She was standing before me only in her bathing suit now. Her face was flushed with excitement.

“Now come here,” she told me, pulling me towards her by the cock. She pulled me until I felt the head touch the soft flesh of her inner thigh. She slid it up and down a few times and then the top of my shaft was touching the material that covered her crotch. She let go of my cock and pulled my groin into her, closing her thighs around it. I felt the soft, baby smooth skin of her upper legs engulf me while the top of my shaft pressed firmly against her mound through the bathing suit.

“Ohh,” she sighed, gyrating her hips a little, obviously enjoying the pressure in her nether regions.

I certainly was. It wasn’t as pleasurable as being inside of a vagina, but it was very nice indeed. I moved my hips back and forth a little and her thighs rubbed the sides of me, sending pleasure radiating upward. Nina began to move back and forth too, increasing the pressure on her mound while her hands pulled at my ass, driving me into her.

We were both panting as my hips moved, driving my cock between her thighs. She kept them just tight enough against me to generate a pleasant friction but not so tight that abrasions would result. Her hands squeezed and fondled my ass and my hands did the same, dropping down and grabbing her cheeks, my fingers sliding beneath the elastic and touching bare flesh.

I had never done anything like this with anyone before, in either life and I found it blackly exciting. Especially when I considered that the woman who had initiated this was Nina who, though I loved her deeply, I’d figured to be a bit sexually repressed due to her upbringing and history. I guess I was wrong about that.

“Do you like it?” she breathed, her eyes shining as she watched my face.

“Yeah,” I panted back at her. “Where did you learn this?”

“I read a lot,” she told me, giving my ass an extra hard squeeze. “And some of the stuff I read is not exactly what my mother would approve of.”

“I guess not,” I answered, kissing her neck.

“I want you to come,” she told me, whispering in my ear. “I want to feel it.”

I didn’t answer her, just continued to thrust in and out against her thighs, against her nylon-covered sex. Her tongue dipped into my mouth again, finding and attacking mine, her lips sucking obscenely at me. Nina had learned the lessons of kissing well. Finally I could take it no more. My hips began to blur as I drove in and out of her thighs.

“Yes,” she told me, breaking the kiss for an instant, leaving a string of saliva stretched between our mouths. “Come. I want to feel it.”

“Ahhh,” I groaned, feeling the sensation beginning. I pulled her tightly to me and pumped like mad, my body out of control as the spasms began. She kissed me hard and squeezed my ass with all her might as I began to shoot between her legs. My semen shot out and splattered against her thighs, against her crotch. Some of it floated upward in the water, sticking to her swimsuit. It went on and on, seemingly forever before I finally relaxed in her arms.

We stayed that way for a moment and then finally I looked up at her. She was smiling. “That was interesting, wasn’t it?” she asked me playfully.

“You never fail to amaze me, Nina,” I told her. “Tell me about this book you read this in.”

A giggle. “Let’s just say that you’d be surprised at what kind of things you could find at the public library.”

I reached down and pulled my shorts back up, tucking myself inside and fastening them. I suggested we move a few feet from where we were.

“How come?” she wanted to know.

“Because the evidence of our indiscretion is floating all around us in the water,” I said. “A lot of it is stuck to your swimsuit.”

She looked around and saw the little stringy globules floating everywhere. The sight gave her the giggles, especially when she saw it sticking to her suit in various places. “What would my mother think about that?” she asked, moving with me out of the danger zone.

I spent a few minutes splashing water over her to get rid of the residue and then dropped my hand down between her legs.

“What are you doing?” she asked, making no move to stop me.

“Just making sure you’re clear down there,” I said.

She was, but I made extra sure, running my hand all over her thighs and the crotch of her suit. One of my fingers slid deftly inside, touching hair and the swell of her vaginal lip. She jumped a little at the contact.

“You know,” I told her, “it seems the least I could do is return the favor you just did for me.” I slid my finger between her lips, pushing the crotch of the suit further aside. Despite the fact that she was under water her passage was slick with her juices.

“If you insist,” she breathed.

It didn’t take long. She held tightly to me as my fingers moved in and out and my hand made circular motions across her clit. When she came her pelvis humped up and down on me and her teeth bit lightly into my shoulder.

We spent a few more minutes kissing and holding each other, just enjoying the touch of our bodies together. Finally we decided we should start working our way back. She went and retrieved her shorts from the shore, washed the dirt off of them and then put them back on.

We made sure to make enough noise as we headed back to the boat so that Maggie and Mike would not be caught in an embarrassing situation. Our ploy worked. When we came ashore we found them lying on their stomachs, very close together. Their eyes were shining with the glow of new discovery.

We spent the rest of the day at the lake, either lounging on our island or going out for skiing runs. We had to refill the gas tank on the boat once, it really was a gas-guzzler, but otherwise it ran perfectly. By the time the sun started to set we piled in the boat once more and began heading at a sedate pace towards the launch ramp. As we idled along slowly, watching the sun sink towards the mountains, watching the light fade from the sky, feeling the warm summer breeze caress our exposed skin, Nina cuddled up beside me. Behind us Mike and Maggie were also pretty chummy. He had his arm around her shoulders and they kissed frequently. You could almost taste the romance in the air.

There was of course a considerable line of boats waiting when we reached our destination and we had to wait until well after full dark before we could pull up to the ramp and put the boat back on the trailer. We didn’t mind. We sat with our arms around our respective companions and watched the brilliance of the stars as they came out, even seeing the occasional satellite as it passed overhead.

Knowing that I would have to drive home I’d quit drinking beer a few hours before. I was the only one. Though no one was roaring drunk they were all quite asleep long before we reached I-90. I drove in solitude, with Nina curled up on my shoulder, with Mike and Maggie cuddled together in the back, their soft snores echoing in the car.

I wondered about Mike and Maggie as I drove. What would happen with them? Some sort of chemistry had obviously occurred between them, a powerful chemistry judging by the rapidity by which they’d connected. Was it doomed to be short lived? In my first life Mike and Maggie had never met each other except for brief glimpses in school before Mike dropped out. He’d probably whacked off a time or two thinking about her but I don’t believe he ever even talked to her. Did this mean the relationship was shot before it could begin? Were they just two ships passing in the night? I didn’t know, couldn’t predict what would happen. All I knew was that it hadn’t happened before. Did that automatically preclude it from happening now? Just how powerful was fate anyway?

I couldn’t have known of course, that I was only a few minutes away from getting a very dramatic answer to that question.

My passengers were still asleep when I pulled onto my street. I turned the car and prepared to back the trailer into the driveway so it could then be backed into the garage. The lights on in the house were a little unusual; after all it was approaching ten o’clock and my parents were usually in bed by then. I didn’t think much of it however until Dad came rushing out. I knew by his face that something was wrong.

He came up to my window and I rolled it quickly down, the car still blocking the street.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, feeling adrenaline starting to pump through me, bracing myself for horrible news. Beside me Nina began to stir from her slumber.

“It’s Tracy,” Dad said hollowly. “There’s been an accident.”

Those four words: There’s been an accident, brought the blackest dread to my heart in that instant. Just four little words, a simple arrangement of syllables rolling off my father’s tongue and I felt that my whole world had just collapsed around me. I felt fate at work, felt it’s presence as I had in the garage when Mike had said he was thinking about joining the Air Force, only stronger, in lethal proportion. Had I really thought that I could thwart fate in the matter of a life? Had I really thought I’d won? Why hadn’t I foreseen this? Especially after Mike.

“Is she…” I asked my dad slowly, fighting to maintain control of myself. Fighting and losing. I couldn’t finish the sentence, couldn’t speak the word.

“She’s alive right now,” Dad told me, knowing exactly what I was thinking, what I was dreading. “We don’t know a lot about how she’s doing.”

By now Nina was fully awake and following the conversation. Her face was troubled, worried, but she kept silent. Behind us Mike and Maggie still slept, oblivious.

“What do you know?” I asked him. “What happened?”

“We got a call from the South Lake Tahoe Police,” Dad said.

“South Lake Tahoe?” I asked. That was a considerable distance from Berkeley, about four hours by car.

He nodded. “Tracy was up there and was riding in a taxi cab. They don’t know what happened yet, or at least they’re not telling us, but the cab somehow crashed into the lake and landed upside down.”

“Jesus,” I muttered. “And Tracy?”

“She didn’t drown,” he said. “She got out of the car somehow but she was hurt. The cops didn’t know how badly, all they know is that she was airlifted to a hospital in Reno. The cab driver is in a hospital in South Lake Tahoe. He wasn’t hurt too bad they said.”

“They don’t know anything about her injuries?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Dad said. “I tried calling the hospital she’s in but they couldn’t or wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“What time did all of this happen?” I asked him, feeling guilt that I’d been out playing on the lake while in another part of the country my sister was having a horrible car accident. A possibly lethal car accident.

“We got the call a little over an hour ago,” he told me. “The accident happened about an hour before that. They had a little trouble identifying her because she apparently had a fake I.D. on her. Only after they searched through her things did they find her real driver’s license. I guess she was up there for a little gambling trip.”

“Jesus,” I said again.

“There’s a red-eye flight out of Spokane in two hours,” Dad told me. “It doesn’t go to Reno but it stops in Sacramento, which is only a couple hours away by car. Your mother and I are going to be on it.”

“Me too,” I said quickly.

“Bill,” he started, “there’s nothing that you can…”

“I’m going, Dad,” I told him. “I’ll pay for the ticket myself.”

He looked at me for a moment. “You don’t have to do that,” he said. “Why don’t you get the boat put away so we can get ready to go?”

Obviously a damper had been put on the end of what had been a very pleasant day. Mike and Maggie, after hearing the story of Tracy, offered condolences and then quickly slipped away. I was not so far out of it that I didn’t notice Mike climbing into Maggie’s car even though he only lived around the corner. Nina offered me some soothing words and a hug and then she too left, making me promise to call her and let her know what was going on. I promised.

I showered quickly and packed a few things. Soon we were on our way to the airport.

________________________________________

We took off on time, heading southwest for Sacramento. The flight took forever. I spent much of it staring out the window to the darkness below while Mom and Dad held hands quietly next to me. Around us the lights were dimmed down and most of the other passengers were asleep in their seats. I was exhausted from the day I’d just spent and the droning of the engines was soothing white noise but I couldn’t sleep. Not while my sister was maybe already dead somewhere, maybe sitting in the refrigerated section of the county morgue in Reno, a little tag tied to her toe.

Sometimes having knowledge of how a medical system works is not a good thing. This was one of those times. I could perfectly envision Tracy being taken into some hospital room, possibly the trauma resuscitation room, possibly the emergency operating room. I could see a team of doctors working on her, mechanically following written protocols as they cracked open her chest, or cracked open her skull, trying to save her but knowing it was useless, doing it only because their training dictated they try. I could see a technician squeezing a bag attached to a breathing tube to supply her with oxygen while the efforts were going on. The technician would probably be checking out her tits as he did it, admiring them, thinking lightly that it was a shame they were going to be taken out of circulation soon. At some point the doctor in charge would decide enough is enough. The time would be noted and all of the devices would be taken off of her. She would be zipped into a body bag, which, by protocol, would have already been placed beneath her before she’d even arrived. The doctors, nurses, and technicians would all go onto other things, treating patients, stitching wounds, writing orders, fetching blankets, reflecting sadly for a moment how it was a shame that someone so young had died that way. But none of them would shed a tear for her. None of them would slam their fists into the wall, cursing the insidious nature of Death, the mortal enemy. They would go about their tasks, eat their lunches, and the next day none of them would even remember her. Except maybe the technician who had admired her tits. The zippered bag would be moved into a storage room somewhere and a phone call would be placed. Soon a white van from the coroner’s office would arrive and the bag would be placed on a small gurney and taken to the county morgue. The next day a pathologist would rip open her body, saw open her skull, take out her internal organs and weigh them, and then finally stuff everything back inside and crudely sew her up.

I could not get this vision out of my head no matter how hard I tried to think of other things. As our aircraft slowed and began to descend into Sacramento we passed within sight of Reno. I could see it’s lights shining up from the pre-dawn darkness and the vision became almost overwhelming. Tracy was down there somewhere. Was she still drawing breath? Not if fate had had its way.

We touched down normally at ten minutes after four in the morning. The Sacramento airport was almost completely deserted, the few passengers from our plane it’s only customers at the moment. Mom went to go secure a rental car while Dad and I headed directly for a bank of pay phones. He dialed a number he had written on a slip of paper. The number for Washoe Medical Center in Reno, where Tracy was (if she wasn’t in the morgue, a nasty part of my brain insisted upon reminding me).

Dad fought through at least five different people, said Tracy’s name at least fifteen times, and was placed on hold at least ten. It was maddening watching this, waiting for someone to tell him something. Finally, after nearly fifteen minutes he managed to get hold of someone who knew something.

“She is?” he said softly.

She is what? I wondered, wanting to rip the phone out of his hand. She is dead? She is alive? What?

Dad, sensing what I was going through, held the phone away from his mouth for a brief moment and told me, “She’s in surgery right now.” He then spoke into the phone again. “What kind of surgery? Can you tell me how bad she is?”

He listened, his face souring. “What do you mean you don’t know who I am?” he shouted into the phone. “I’m her father and I’m very worried about her. Please tell me what’s going on!”

He listened some more, his expression darkening. “But I’m in Sacramento!” he yelled. “I’m more than two hours from there! Are you really going to let me go the next two hours wondering? Just tell me how bad she is! What kind of surgery she’s having!”

He listened for another moment and then slammed the phone down angrily. “Fucking asshole!” he shouted, loudly enough for his words to echo through the terminal. A few people glanced at him uneasily and then went about their business.

He turned to me, shaking his head. “They won’t tell me anything about her condition,” he told me, “because they can’t verify who I am. Who the hell else would call up and say they were her father?”

I sighed. “You’re dealing with bureaucracy at it’s finest when you’re dealing with a hospital,” I said. “And remember, the accident happened in California, law suit capital of the world. They probably have lawyers who call up and pretend to be family members in order to get information. It happens all the time, even in Spokane.”

“That’s disgusting,” he proclaimed.

“That’s lawyers,” I said. “At least we know she’s still alive.”

“Yeah,” he breathed. “Let’s go find your mom and get headed up there.”

Mom had procured a Toyota Corolla for us. Dad updated her with what he knew as we walked to the rental car pick-up. Fifteen minutes later we were roaring away, Dad at the wheel, Mom in the passenger seat, me in the cramped back seat, reading the map we’d been given and navigating. There was little talk as I directed Dad down Interstate 5 to I-80 East. We passed through the darkened city of Sacramento and its suburbs and were climbing into the Sierra Nevada Mountains when the sun made its appearance in front of us.

It was shortly before eight in the morning when we entered the Reno city limits. I navigated Dad through the city, past the towering casinos, until we pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. We practically rushed inside and spent twenty more minutes finding someone who could tell us something. Was Tracy dead? Was she alive? Was she horribly crippled? Was she on a ventilator awaiting permission from the parents to pull the plug? The tension was so thick between the three of us that it was almost palpable in the air.

We were directed to a small waiting room on the third floor of the hospital. It was empty when we arrived. This time my knowledge of the medical system was an asset. I smiled happily as I read the sign and saw what part of the building we were in. Hope showed itself for the first time.

“We’re in orthopedics,” I told Mom and Dad happily, my voice conveying the message that this was good news.

They looked at me cautiously, waiting for me to explain the ramifications of this.

“We’re not in neurology, which would be bad,” I told them. “That would mean she had some sort of neurological damage. You know, brain injury, spinal injury, paralysis, something like that. Orthopedics is bones. They put you here when you have broken bones, and only broken bones.”

They became cautiously hopeful but I could tell they were awaiting a final word. It was understandable. I was too. About ten minutes after we arrived a young doctor came into the room. He was dressed in scrubs and I had an eerie flashback to waiting for the prognosis on Jack. He introduced himself and we all stared for a moment in disbelief as we heard him say his name.

“Did you say Dr. Quack?” Dad finally had to ask.

He smiled the smile of one who has explained this many times before. “It’s spelled with a KW,” he said, “but yes, you have the pronunciation right. But have no fear. My name does not reflect my skill, although I had to put up with quite a bit of teasing in med school and residency. Anyway, I’m an orthopedic surgeon and I’m in charge of Tracy’s case.”

“How is she?” I blurted before anyone else had a chance to.

“In considerable pain,” he told us. “And she’ll be in a wheelchair for a few months, but other than that, she’s doing fine. I expect a complete recovery.”

It took a few moments for that to sink in. I almost thought I hadn’t heard him correctly. Doing fine? Complete recovery? Had fate been thwarted again? Beside me Mom and Dad breathed great sighs of relief. Dr. Kwack smiled at us for a moment and then explained her injuries.

“From what I hear,” he said, “your daughter was seat belted into the right rear of the taxi. The driver was making a left turn and was struck by a shuttle van right where she was seated. The impact was considerable and the taxi was spun around to where it rolled off of an embankment into Lake Tahoe, landing upside down in the water. Fortunately Tracy was able to extricate herself from her seatbelt and get out of the car before she drowned. This is a remarkable feat I must add since her injuries were undoubtedly caused by the initial impact. It must have been horribly painful for her to drag herself out of the car but somehow she did it.”

“And what are her injuries?” Mom asked.

“Her pelvis is broken in four places,” Dr. Kwack explained. “Her right femur, that’s the long bone in the leg, is broken in two places. She has two broken ribs on the right side and had a partially collapsed lung when she was brought in. A chest tube down in the ER took care of that. She also has a nasty cut on the right side of her head. That’s been stitched up. I operated on her leg and her hip and put pins in to help set the bones back together. She’s going to have to go through some physical therapy and she’ll probably always walk with a little limp since her right leg is going to be about an inch shorter than her left. And she’ll probably set off airport metal detectors for the rest of her life. But she’s alive and doing well.”

“When can we see her?” Dad asked, tears in his eyes as he heard the news. It was understandable. There were tears in mine too.

“She’s just been moved to her room,” he said. “And she’s pretty doped up on pain medication, but you can go see her now if you wish. She may not be capable of talking to you, but you can see her.”

We did. And Dr. Kwack was right. Tracy was flying high. She was lying in a hospital bed, her body covered by a gown. Her entire pelvis and right leg were encased in a fiberglass cast. Her ribs were taped on the right side and the plastic hose of a chest tube snaked out from beneath it. Her face was deeply bruised, the right cheek an ugly purple color, her right eye swollen shut. Some of her hair had been shaved away and a neat line of stitches was visible on her scalp. There was also the inevitable catheter hose protruding from beneath the sheets and ending at a plastic bag with urine in it. The other end of the hose would be threaded through her urethra and into her bladder. Remembering my own experience with such a thing I pitied her.

Mom wept openly at the sight of her, stroking her hair and trying to get her to talk. Tracy opened her eyes a few times to Mom and Dad’s voices but seemed to have no awareness of what was going on around her. When she tried to speak it was only in nonsensical grunts. We stayed for nearly an hour before a nurse finally suggested we leave for a little bit. She would probably be like this for the next twenty-four hours we were told.

We found a hotel room in one of the downtown casinos and fell into immediate sleep within minutes. It had been a long night.

________________________________________

The next day Tracy, though in pain, was awake and alert enough to talk. She told the story of what had happened to her both to Mom and Dad and I and to the investigator from the South Lake Tahoe Police department.

She and one of her girlfriends from college had ridden a Greyhound bus up to the casino area to do a little weekend gambling and drinking. Tracy, I knew, did not like to ride in a car with anyone but she had no problem with airplanes or buses, figuring that fate would not wipe out an entire vehicle full of people just to get to her. Since you had to be 21 to gamble or drink in Nevada, Tracy and her friend had secured fake ID’s from a reputable dealer at the college. She declined to name just who this person was to the cop, although he did ask. The Greyhound had dropped the two girls off at one of the casinos on Friday night. They’d spent a few hours gambling and drinking and then, finding the room rates at the casino a little more than they could afford, rode a shuttle bus to one of the motels on the California side of the town and got a room there. Early the next morning they rode another shuttle bus back to the casinos.

The two friends spent all day on the strip and Tracy managed to get ahead more than a hundred bucks. Her friend was down about the same amount. Feeling fatigued, Tracy elected to head back to the motel to take a nap for a while. She tried to find a shuttle bus heading in her direction but discovered that none were scheduled for more than an hour. Wanting badly to sleep, she’d gone out to the taxi stand and hopped in a cab. After all, she was ahead of the game and she could afford it.