by Kim Baldwin
Sally stopped what she was doing and smiled a kind of Cheshire-cat smile, as if she were privy to a secret. “What do you want to know?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Megan responded vaguely. Is she gay? Is she seeing anyone? What’s her type? Has she talked to you about Elise? About me?
“Well, let’s see. I would describe Chaz as…loyal and honest. Trustworthy. Sensitive and intelligent. Considerate and kind. Resourceful.”
She sounds like a Boy Scout, Megan wanted to interject, but didn’t. She found Sally’s listing of Chaz’s attributes somehow reassuring, but she didn’t stop to consider why. “So she...uh…told us she wasn’t married,” she said, cursing her nervous stammer.
“Nope. She’s had a few girlfriends, but no one recently,” Sally volunteered. “I think it’s hard for her to make the first move when she’s interested in someone.”
Bingo. Megan felt buoyed by the confirmation of Chaz’s sexual preference, and very interested indeed to hear that she was the type to let others take the lead in a relationship. She was so intrigued by this bit of information, in fact, that she failed to think twice about the smug grin on Sally’s face.
*
Chaz was successful in her efforts to catch enough grayling and arctic char to feed them all. And because they were in an area with ample downed wood, she prepared them grilled over an open campfire and served them with lemon and a side of wild rice. She was grateful she had tasks to do to keep her mind occupied. But all through dinner, she couldn’t help glancing in Megan’s direction. She often caught Megan looking at her, in a way that made her a little weak in the knees. Once again she wondered what had precipitated the apparent change in Megan’s attitude toward her, and she worried about how she might react when they were alone in the tent together.
After they had eaten, they split up into small groups. Yancey and Justine took a turn at washing dishes, while Sally and Chaz packed the garbage and leftover food into bear-proof canisters and carried them to a spot well away from where they’d be sleeping. Pat and Linda excused themselves to take a walk together along the riverbank, while Megan and Elise tended the fire.
“You know, if you’d be more comfortable staying with Yancey, I’d be happy to bunk with Chaz tonight,” Elise offered.
I bet you would. “That’s not necessary,” Megan answered as offhandedly as she could manage. “I’m fine with things the way they are.”
“Well, actually, I’d like the chance to get to know Chaz better, if you get my drift. She is so flaming hot, I think I’m going to spontaneously combust!” Elise confided, as if her intentions hadn’t been patently obvious the whole trip.
“I’m sure you’ll find ample opportunities to flirt with her, Elise,” Megan said, cutting off further discussion of their sleeping arrangements. Unless I have something to say about it and beat you to it.
Elise frowned, as though she’d expected that Megan would readily swap tent mates with her once she’d expressed her interest in Chaz. But before she had a chance to protest, Yancey and Justine returned to the campfire, followed soon after by the two guides.
“Saved you a spot,” Elise said, nodding her head with a smile toward a camp chair beside her as Chaz neared.
Megan was initially irritated by Elise’s invitation, and Chaz’s quick acceptance, until she realized that would put Chaz directly opposite her, where it would be impossible for them not to look at each other.
The sun sank low in the sky, painting the tall mountains on either side of them with that pink light of the Arctic, and casting long shadows beneath the forest surrounding them. They all settled comfortably around the fire, sipping merlot and relaxing in their camp chairs or lying half supine on their sleeping mattresses, and chatted about the sights they’d seen that day.
Megan heard little of it. She could hardly keep her eyes off Chaz, who sat with her long legs stretched out in front of her toward the fire. She was damned sexy-looking in the golden glow of the midnight sun, with the flickering firelight reflected in the dark pools of her eyes.
Before too long, Pat and Linda reappeared, their arms around each other and with their clothes and hair in enough disarray for the assembled gathering to clue in on what they’d been up to the last half hour or better. As they took seats, Linda curled within the circle of Pat’s embrace, and Pat gave her a long, deep kiss.
“If you two don’t give it a rest, you’re going to get me way too hot and bothered…and just when there’s apparently nothing I can do about it,” Elise jested, looking pointedly at Chaz as she said it.
Chaz squirmed slightly at the comment and looked away, but she was smiling. Though she considered herself a nonviolent person, Megan felt like slugging Elise.
“So who’s up for a round of probing questions?” Yancey asked.
“Probing questions! I forgot all about probing questions!” Elise said, a mischievous look in her eyes. “Oh, absolutely, I’m game.”
“Probing questions?” Sally repeated.
“Our version of Truth or Dare, without the dare,” Elise said. “Someone comes up with a probing question, like ‘how did you lose your virginity?’ and we answer in turn, going around the circle. The last one to answer poses the next question.”
“Me first,” Linda said. “Let’s start off easy. Most embarrassing moment.” She turned in the circle of Pat’s arms and looked at her lover. “You first,” she challenged, with mirth in her eyes.
“Most embarrassing moment? Let’s see. As you know, I don’t embarrass easily.”
“Which is exactly why I asked that.” Linda turned to the others. “She’s almost gotten us into trouble a half a dozen times getting too amorous in public,” she confided, which made them all smile.
“Oh! I know!” Pat said. “I did feel kind of embarrassed the morning I woke up in the hospital after my appendectomy, when they told me I hit on the surgeon while I was under anesthesia.”
“That’s doesn’t sound so bad,” Chaz said.
“Except that the surgeon was straight, married to the anesthesiologist, and I was apparently very explicit in what I wanted to do to her,” Pat said sheepishly. “Your turn,” she said to Sally as the others laughed.
“I actually have a picture of my moment,” Sally said. “I tripped going down the aisle at my wedding.”
“You tripped?” Chaz got up to toss a few branches on the fire. “You never told me that.”
“Yup. Stepped on the dress and took a header into the nearest pew. Fortunately my dad caught me as I was going down. My mother swore it was God getting me back for playing practical jokes.”
“I see it didn’t deter you any,” Linda said. “By the way, I thought the rubber snakes tonight were a nice alternative to the spiders. Very realistic looking.”
“Thanks. We aim to please.” Sally beamed. She shifted to look at Megan. “Your turn.”
“Right out of college, I was a reporter for about a day and a half at a TV station in Traverse City,” Megan said. I can’t believe I’m gonna tell this.
“You were on the air?” Justine’s eyes widened in astonishment. “Oh, I want to see a tape of that.”
“There is no tape. I destroyed all copies personally,” Megan huffed.
“So what happened?” Justine asked.
“Shortly after I was hired, I had to anchor the 11 p.m. show. Right before airtime, the regular guy got food poisoning. Well, I was so nervous I took several deep breaths before we went on, and I guess I hyperventilated. I fainted, midway during the first paragraph.”
“Fainted?” Yancey gasped.
“Fell face-first into the desk and caught my chin on the corner of it.” Megan lifted her chin and pointed to a hairline scar that ran beneath it. “Took eight stitches to close. I bled all over the desk while the director decided what the hell he should do. After several seconds, he went to commercial and then to a repeat of Cheers while they called the ambulance. I decided to be a behind-the-scenes person after that.”
Everyone cracked
up, but it was Chaz’s reaction that pleased Megan the most. She felt a warm rush of satisfaction to have provided the reason for that dazzling smile and warm, rich laugh.
“Next, please,” Pat said.
“Caught by the law in a compromising position is all I can say about mine,” Elise said, to sniggers from around the campfire circle. She smiled at the memory and turned to Chaz. “Your turn.”
“While I was still in college, I was asked to present a scientific paper I’d authored to a conference in Seattle,” Chaz said. “It was in one of the ballrooms in this huge hotel, and I was really nervous—I was not used to speaking in front of groups.” A smile lifted the corner of her mouth. “I hid out in one of the bathrooms until right before I was to speak, then I came out on this tiny stage and launched right in to ‘How Climactic Changes Impact Musk Oxen Reproduction.’” She paused a moment, chuckling. “In my own defense, the stage was brightly lit and the rest of the room was dark, so I couldn’t see that the audience was made up entirely of rabbis.”
Everyone started laughing.
“They let me talk for at least five minutes before a nice bearded gentlemen told me he thought I might want the Arctic Wildlife conference in the ballroom next door.”
They howled with laughter.
“How have you ever kept that from me?” Sally asked, wiping a tear from her cheek.
Chaz shrugged. “Next!”
They continued around the circle, swapping stories and laughter. When they finished with most embarrassing moment, they covered pet peeves and biggest crushes, then it was on to hidden talents.
“Gosh, hidden talent. That’s kind of hard.” Yancey stretched out on her sleeping mattress and took a sip of wine from her metal mug. “I am so sore, by the way. I keep stiffening up if I stay in any position for too long.”
“Yeah, me, too. Speaking of which, I think I’m due to take another dose of ibuprofen.” Elise reached into her pocket for a small bottle. “Anybody else?”
The bottle got passed around the circle and Justine, Megan, and Yancey also took a couple of tablets.
“Okay, I’ve got it,” Yancey said. “At least this is what my kids would say my hidden talent is. May I have quiet, please?”
The only sound that could be heard was the crackling of the fire.
Yancey put her fingers next to her mouth, took a big deep breath, and out came the uncannily realistic sound of a taxi horn.
The women all clapped.
“Wait!” Yancey waved away the applause and got to her feet. “There’s more!” She leaned over and put her hands around her mouth. After a moment, the distinctive chirp of a cricket could be heard. More applause. That was followed by the slurp of a toilet plunger, then the unmistakable blare of a foghorn.
“Very cool!” Sally said. “You’ll have to teach me how to do that. My kids would love it!”
“My oldest can do lots of sound effects. We got them out of a book.” Yancey turned toward Megan. “We all know what your hidden talent is.”
“That’s not true,” Pat reminded her. “Sally and Chaz don’t know about Megan.”
“No, we don’t,” Chaz confirmed, looking at Megan curiously.
“Megan has a photographic memory,” Justine provided. “Virtually a walking encyclopedia.”
“What shall we have her do?” Pat asked.
“Nothing mundane, like the Declaration of Independence,” Justine said. “It should be something really spectacular.”
“I like when she does the countries of the world in alphabetical order,” Yancey suggested.
“As long as it’s anything but that awful shipwreck poem that goes on forever!” Linda pleaded.
“It’s only twenty-three stanzas. And ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ was written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, I’ll have you know,” Megan said.
“So it’s a classic.” Linda pulled a face. “It’s still awful.”
Megan looked directly at Chaz. “Try me,” she said, with a hint of flirtation in her voice.
A corner of Chaz’s mouth tipped up as she suppressed a smile. It was a long moment before she spoke. “All right. What can you tell me about the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?”
“I could talk about it for a couple of hours. What would you like me to address specifically?” Megan answered confidently.
“How about bird life?”
“Let’s see,” Megan began, as she leaned back in her chair and stretched out her legs toward the fire. “There have been 181 different species of birds spotted in the refuge, most migrating here from at least four continents, at least according to the official government Web site.”
“What draws them here?” Chaz challenged.
“When the permafrost melts in the summer, you have thousands upon thousands of little pools of water everywhere, the perfect breeding ground for an enormous insect population, which draws the birds.”
“Very good. I’m impressed,” Chaz complimented her, as though that had been her entire answer.
“Oh, she’s got a lot more, I’m sure,” Justine interjected. “Don’t you, Meg?”
“Well, I could name all 181 species, if you like, and tell you something about each one,” Megan said. “What they look like, where they can be found in the refuge, where they migrate from.” She was pleased to see the look of astonishment on Chaz’s face.
“Now I’m really impressed.” Chaz said. “Do you remember everything you see and hear?”
“Everything important, anyway.” I won’t forget any single detail of you any time soon, that’s for sure.
“I can’t remember my ATM pin number half the time,” Yancey complained. “At least tell me that you occasionally misplace your car keys.”
“Never,” Megan said, smiling.
“Bitch!” Yancey answered with a laugh. “All right, now who gets to follow that? Isn’t it your turn, Justine?”
“Oh, great. This is going to be so impressive after you.” Justine stuck out her tongue at Megan. “I used to be able to tap dance. That’s my talent.”
“You? Klutz Bernard? When was this?” Megan asked, not buying a word of it.
“From about age six until I was probably fifteen or so. I stopped when we moved away from the woman who had been teaching me.”
“Prove it,” Megan challenged. “I don’t believe you have ever danced. You trip over something every time we go somewhere.”
With a sigh, Justine stood up. “It’s been a long time, and this isn’t exactly ideal footwear,” she said, holding one foot up in the air so they could all get a good look at the hiking boots she had on. “But here goes.”
“Wait!” Sally hollered. “Would you like some accompaniment?”
“Uh, sure,” Justine said uncertainly.
“You and Chaz can demonstrate your hidden talents together,” Sally said, turning to her partner guide. “Waddya say?”
“All right,” Chaz said, and got up and headed toward the tent she and Megan were sharing.
In a minute, she returned carrying a rectangular waterproof case about the size of a breadbox. It had already piqued Megan’s interest. Sally had seemed to treat it with respect, placing it carefully among Chaz’s gear in the corner of the tent, after they’d set it up.
“So is there anything in particular you’d like me to play?” Chaz asked Justine as she regained her seat by the fire.
“How about a few bars of ‘Me and My Shadow’?”
“I can do that.” Chaz unfastened the twin latches that held the case shut and flipped open the top. Inside lay an antique concertina, protected by thick eggshell foam that had been custom cut to conform to its shape. The instrument was made of leather and rosewood, and the decoratively filigreed plates on each end that held the forty-eight button keys were sterling silver. It looked as though it had been well played but lovingly tended.
“Is that an accordion?” Linda asked, as Chaz removed the instrument and put her hands through the leather hand rests on either end.
�
��A near relative. It’s a concertina,” Chaz said. “Or squeezebox.”
“I think I’ve only ever seen one of those in the movies, usually in an organ grinder’s hands, or some guy singing on a gondola,” Megan said derisively, but she was smiling as she said it.
Chaz merely smiled at the challenge. “Ready?” she asked Justine.
“As I’ll ever be.”
Justine surprised all her friends with a more than passable time step. Then she launched into a soft-shoe routine that had to have been memorized long ago, for some childhood recital.
They were also all pleased with Chaz’s accompaniment, a four-part rendition of the popular tune played flawlessly. When the number was over, they all applauded and whistled.
“I will never call you a klutz again,” Megan promised as Justine took a bow and settled back beside her in her camp chair.
“And very nice playing, Chaz,” Pat said.
“Yeah, not half bad,” Megan conceded with a smile.
“Why don’t you give them an idea of what you can really do with that thing?” Sally said. “You know—like that around-the-world medley you did that time.”
“Yeah! Play some more,” Elise urged.
“If you insist,” Chaz said, her eyes on Megan as she launched into a rousing Irish jig, her hands flying over the buttons at an astonishing speed.
After a minute or so of that tune, she transitioned skillfully into a French café song that sounded vaguely familiar, then, from there, into “La donna e mobile,” the familiar Verdi piece Megan had been thinking of when she’d made the gondola crack. After Italy, Chaz segued into a German biergarten song, another lively piece with impressive fingering, then into a Polish polka, and, finally, to a Cajun Zydeco strain that took them all to New Orleans.
Megan would never have guessed that the unusual instrument had such versatility. And it was obvious Chaz had spent a lot of hours with the concertina, for she didn’t miss a note in the impromptu concert.
There was a rousing chorus of applause and whistles when Chaz finished with a flourish.
“Bravo!” Yancey called out as the clapping died down. “That was marvelous!”