Hot Point (20 page)

“You look completely delicious.” He'd grinned down at her, and she felt a little better. He reached behind the seat for the couple of bowls of potluck food he'd stashed there, and they each took one.

Everyone was flowing from the parking lot into the grange hall.

They passed a man selling raffle tickets in front of three pickup trucks. Two had chopped firewood to the level of the bed and the third was stacked high with a full cord of firewood.

“Hey,” Vern called after her when she'd started to go by. “You gotta buy a ticket.”

“What am I going to do with a truckload of wood?”

“Hey, it gets Mom and Dad some extra chances.”

She fished out a five-dollar bill and put it on the table.

“Now don't be gettin' too greedy.” The man smiled at her but took the bill quickly enough and handed her back five tickets. “The library thanks you. That's who we're fundraising for tonight.”

At the door, there was another pile, this one of small, green logs. Then she looked more closely. It was a stack of a couple dozen zucchini, most the size of a very, very stout dachshund. A cardboard sign said, “Take one home, adopt it for free. Take two… Please!” Some wag had scribbled “(Nonreturnable)” along the edge of the sign.

Passing up the offer, they entered the heavy double doors pinned open to allow the cool evening air to circulate. Inside was a blast no smaller than a wildfire explosion.

She didn't know where to look first. Long tables had been lined up throughout the room. The longest ran down the entire side of the hall. Each person who arrived set down a platter, bowl, or something. There were trays of lasagna, several sides of baked salmon, Crock-Pots of what smelled like Swedish meatballs, and another one of chili.

“Hey, Vern,” someone greeted them, “are those your eggs? We've been missing them.”

He leaned down to whisper in her ear as they set down the bowls they'd been carrying. “Told you I was famous for them.”

She and Vern had spent part of the afternoon making his famous “portable” deviled eggs. They'd hard-boiled and peeled dozens of eggs. He'd filled one large bowl with the halved egg whites and then mashed up the yellow yolks with minced shallot, mayo, and an amazing amount of pepper with a dash of hot sauce. They were wonderful! Stick in a couple of serving spoons and set a bottle of paprika to the side, and they were indeed portable.

They joined the line that was already forming to flow down both sides of the food table. There had to be forty feet of food. In a small corner kitchen, several ladies were tending a couple of ovens that smelled of garlic bread. There were also amiable lines at the two massive coffeemakers.

“Vern. That's coffee. Aren't you going for it?”

He leaned in close and whispered, “May, the one on the left wearing clothes her daughter wouldn't be caught dead in, makes the absolute worst coffee on the planet. You have to live on the island full-time to develop a tolerance for it.”

The room itself finally registered through the mayhem of other impressions—slowly finding a place or at least a perspective. The hall had an old wooden floor, an open-beam ceiling, and white walls covered in photographs. A tired-looking American flag boasting forty-eight stars hung on one wall, and a brand-new one on a wooden pole had been shoved into a corner out of the way.

Most of the area was filled with rows of tables that sported white paper tablecloths and a scattering of jam jars overflowing with dahlias and asters. In the center of each long table was a steel bucket holding a large cluster of sunflowers, both large and small. A small stage at the far end of the room commanded a small, open space beyond the tables, an area big enough for a half-dozen couples to at least shuffle their feet.

She watched what and how much Vern took as they moved down the food line. She tried to do the same, but with smaller portions. Occasionally a dish would run out as she approached it, but three more of something else would replace it by the time she got there.

When she reached for a brownie from a bright red platter, Vern grabbed her wrist to stop it. “Those are Mabel's magic brownies. Consider yourself warned. Unless you go that way.”

“Mabel?” She'd never tried pot in her life.

“In green.” He nodded discreetly toward a corner of the room.

She waited a moment, then glanced over. Two overstuffed, well-worn couches were pushed into a corner of the room, and several folding chairs had been pulled up nearby. The couches were clearly the places of honor; not a soul there could be under seventy. Those in the chairs were obviously their gray-haired children. Mabel wore a pretty green dress and could easily be ninety. A soft smile emanated from her gentle face.

“Probably already stoned. She a great lady. Very mellow. Maybe you should try one.”

“That would be…not. Why, do I need to mellow out?”

In answer, he kissed her on the nose and continued down the line.

Infuriating man. She took a massive chocolate-chip cookie that Vern's nod confirmed to be safe. She took a bite because it looked so good. Definitely not safe! Dark chocolate and a serious dose of sugar. She took another bite before she'd finished the first, then set it on her plate and wondered if it would be rude to take two.

Vern took two. So she'd look considerate and only take one…then eat half of his second cookie.

At the tables they were soon surrounded by Vern's friends. There wasn't a chance of her remembering their names, so she didn't even try. Thankfully two of them were the fire-engine restorer, Emerson, and his wife Maylene. Or perhaps Marlene; it was hard to hear with the downpour of ever-shifting conversations going on.

And more kids. Kids were everywhere, stopping their communal racing up and down only long enough to grab a bite before racing off once more. A few dogs—including a Great Dane so tall that he ever so politely inspected Denise's plate over her shoulder—worked the tables seeking treats as well.

She wrapped both her ankles around Vern's nearest ankle so that she had some anchor in the maelstrom.

“Hey, there's Mom.”

Margi was up on stage, a grand word for a platform raised but a single foot off the floor and lit by a couple of colored floodlights that obviously came from the local hardware store.

In addition to an acoustic guitar, she wore a T-shirt that said “READ!” in massive letters over her chest, with “Vashon Library” below it. She too wore jeans and sneakers.

They hadn't been kidding. Denise now felt terribly overdressed. Then she looked around the room. Maylene or Marlene wore a nice blouse. Some of the men wore button-down shirts. One man wore a tie, a sailboat tie that clashed horribly with the green flannel shirt he wore it with.

Okay, she wasn't too out of place.

A few other musicians joined Margi onstage: a pianist at an upright that looked as if it had been left here by accident in a prior century (and not the twentieth either), a second guitar, a flute, and an electric bass.

“Tonight is about book music,” Margi announced over a microphone that squealed until someone adjusted it. “So we're calling this one-night motley crew the Book Band.”

When Denise glanced at Vern, he shrugged.

“They jam together a lot out at the house. She must have decided to run with the library fundraiser theme. Mom's the top of the heap this year. Sometimes we get some superstar here. Once the guy from the island who's in Los Lobos brought his entire band. Man, did we dance that year.”

“Dance?” She felt a sudden return of abject terror, worse than flying half-naked in a helicopter headed to see her father. “I don't dance.”

“Sure you do.” He winked at her, and she kicked him under the table. Hopefully hard enough for it to be a serious warning. She considered kicking him even harder so that he wouldn't be able to dance at all.

Denise let Vern drive them back down from Vashon Island to Mount Hood. He was doggedly slow, barely cracking the speed limit, but she wasn't up to the challenge. She simply lay back and watched the cities give way to the lazy hills of southern Washington. Vern took Route 14 down along the shores of the Columbia River.

They climbed Beacon Rock to look down at the river, though her legs still throbbed from last night. On a dance area sufficient for a half-dozen couples, she must have bumped into every resident of the whole island. Twice. Matriarchs had danced with two-foot-tall great-granddaughters. Teens used it as an excuse to slow dance in a tight clench no matter how upbeat the tempo. One couple had somehow managed to find room to waltz, slicing neat lines back and forth through the packed crowd.

Vern had hauled her to her feet for the opening number, the Beatles' “Paperback Writer,” kept her dancing to Jefferson Airplane's “White Rabbit,” and they'd finished the night tight in each other's arms moving together in a slow-motion shuffle to a softly jazzy version of the love aria from
The
Phantom
of
the
Opera
.

This morning, before they'd left, Margi had given her a wrapped gift, “Not to open until you get home,” and a hug that Denise would carry with her for a long time. The hug had been open, giving, and boundless. No admonishments about treating her son well or being careful. Margi had simply wrapped her tight in her arms and held her close for an infinitely long moment.

“Remember to hold yourself gently,” Margi Taylor had whispered before moving back and ushering Denise into the car.

From atop Beacon Rock's eight hundred and some odd feet—
how
casually
inaccurate
of
you
, she told herself—they could see over twenty miles of river, from the Bridge of the Gods beyond the Bonneville Dam in the west down to the bend in the river near Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge.

She and Vern leaned side by side on the rail from atop the towering precipice.

“I'm going to adopt your mom,” she informed him. “It is so unfair that you get to have her to yourself.”

“Dad might have some say in it. Sorry you didn't get to meet him.”

“Next time,” she said hazily, then hoped that Vern had missed it.

His amused smile said that he hadn't.

She continued before he could razz her about that. “Tough. She's mine now.”

“She's pretty great, huh?”

Denise nodded. She didn't trust herself to speak, not even once they were back in the car. She leaned back against the seat and turned her face to watch the tall trees sliding by her side of the road. She let the wind whip a tear from her eyes.

For the first time, Denise finally understood how much she and her father had lost that long-ago day.

Vern reached out and took her hand in his. They drove the rest of the way to her place like that.

She'd finally found one reason to have an automatic shift. It was a compelling one.

* * *

Vern had never been to Denise's place before. It was a small, two-bedroom town house in a ten-unit row of them that was tucked into the trees not far from MHA's base.

Denise paused at the door.

Vern stopped close beside her.

“It's nothing special.”

“My expectations are limitless.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, which he decided was a good sign.

He wouldn't have been surprised if her place had been filled with strange mechanical contraptions like the beginning of
Back
to
the
Future
, an endless expanse of Rube Goldberg devices. Or if it showed a shockingly feminine side of Denise carefully hidden away for no one to see. Or if she was a total slob, such as he'd been before the Coast Guard. But he hadn't expected this.

It was utterly plain; the place had not the least hint of personality. The carpet was a light brown and the walls white. The furniture was typical for a rental. A well-used couch with a cheap wooden coffee table that had seen better days. A laptop computer sat on one end. The dining room had a desk, and the walls were wrapped in bookcases.

He sidled up to them—almost entirely reference manuals on different kinds of planes. The only wall art was a few detailed technical diagrams. He recognized the drawing of the GE turbine engine that powered his Firehawk. Another, he had to look at the legend, was a “UH-60 Black Hawk Wiring Diagram (typical).” It was one of the most terrifyingly complex drawings he'd ever seen. The kitchen boasted no scattering of kitchen machines, nothing but a toaster and a microwave.

Denise hadn't spoken, simply stopped inside the door and watched his inspection. He still held their bags; she held the gift, wrapped in brown paper, that his mother had presented to her this morning.

“These go upstairs?” He held up both of their bags. There was no way he was leaving her alone here. Not in this place. It was clean, comfortable, but totally devoid of any heart.

The back bedroom upstairs was completely barren except for a small stack of empty-and-folded moving boxes. The master bedroom had a dresser and a comfortable-looking queen-sized mattress under a Macy's plain blue comforter. A quick peek revealed not one thing out of place, not even in the bathroom.

He had more personal items in the bunkroom he shared with Mickey on the MHA base. He'd pinned up some art posters, the first page of the sheet music for
Bad
Man-Music
, and a bunch of photos. A bunch. A couple of Mom and Dad, some fires, but mostly friends. High school, Coast Guard, helitack school, firefighters at play or on the line.

He dropped the bags on the foot of the bed and headed back down to her. He had about a dozen steps to determine how to react.

Vern figured this place was the epitome of the old Denise, she who kept herself so carefully hidden from those around her. Except it wasn't only that. Right now, she was the woman in hiding. One he hadn't really believed in until now because it was in such complete contrast to the woman who'd slowly revealed herself to him.

Denise's mandate? “Don't leave any impression on the world because you never know how the world will react.” It was a lonely, cautious place that only made him appreciate all the more how much and how freely she shared with him.

So, he'd set that aside and be otherwise honest.

She hadn't moved from the cusp of the living room entry. What verdict had Jasper laid down on her head the one time he saw the place? For Vern would bet good money that there had only been one visit, and based on Denise's silence, it hadn't gone well.

He shrugged. “Seen worse. Serves its purpose, right?”

Her nod was tight.

“Something I need to warn you about before we go any further in this relationship.”

Again the tight nod.

“I'm way messier than this. Just think you should know that.”

She blinked at him as if waking from a dream.

“Really? Nothing else to say?”

He went up to her and pulled the gift from her hands. He could tell through the wrapping that it was one of Mom's paintings. Cool. He leaned it against a wall and took both of her hands in his.

“The way I see it, Wrench, if this place was important to you, you'd have done more with it. It wasn't important, so…” He finished with a nonchalant shrug. “I don't care about your abilities as an interior designer. I care about you.”

She nodded once more.

“Let's take a shower, open your present, and then see what we can rustle up in the kitchen.”

“Not much. I eat at the base for most meals.”

“Hey, in our house, ‘not much' was standard operating procedure. I know how to be creative.”

* * *

The shower, rather than being intense, had been almost chaste. They'd kissed, scrubbed each other's backs, and copped a few feels, but little more.

But Denise discovered that she was finally past worrying about Vern. He'd passed some test she hadn't realized she'd given him. If they were simply showering together, her brain didn't automatically assume he wouldn't want to be with her without sex.

Jasper had been disgusted by the way she lived. Had never let her forget that there was nothing feminine about her. She was starting to see past the veil of a relationship that she had thought failed because of her lack.

Vern's parents lived in an immense clutter of overlapping interests. Boats, music, art…every corner of the house reflected some aspect of it. And now that she thought of it, she could see Vern's own flying interests in the mix. A photo on the family wall of a gangly teen with Yuri and the Bell 47 parked by a remote lake, the two of them holding aloft a string of trout they'd caught. His framed first pilot's license on his bedroom wall.

Looking about her own town house, she could see its starkness. Vern was right; it hadn't been important to her. It was where she slept and studied. The place she lived was up at the airfield.

But Jasper hadn't merely disliked it. He'd used it to…manipulate. That's what had locked her in place at the threshold as Vern had made his nonjudgmental tour. Jasper had used it to convince her that because there were no feminine touches, she wasn't much of a woman. That she was lucky he was willing to be with her. That—

She'd done her best to scrub that off in the shower.

Vern had helped. He was in the shower with her because he wanted to be. He was constantly telling her that she was beautiful. And every touch made her feel intensely female.

That was another thing. Jasper had always driven, insisted on it, even though it was obvious to both of them that he was a far less competent driver. Whereas Vern had offered her the keys to his own car when they were leaving Vashon, simply assuming she'd want to drive. He'd been surprised when she'd begged off.

Vern concocted a pretty decent meal out of her meager pantry. A can of chili, some eggs, and rice served over lightly fried corn tortillas. He'd even scared up a plastic tub of guacamole that she hadn't opened because she'd forgotten to buy chips with it. Huevos rancheros eaten while sitting cross-legged on either side of the living room coffee table. Bumping knees and talking about Vashon. Trading forkfuls across the table didn't make sense to her because they had the same food, but he made it fun, as if offering her the choice bits.

Giggling. She was actually giggling. Vern constantly made her feel very female. No, he made her feel feminine, which was somehow more about her and less about how men saw her. Most guys, you could hear their hormones grunt when you walked into a room, “Look. A woman.” Vern made her want to act…like she wasn't acting. Like she wasn't trying to fit someone else's image of her.

So to hell with Jasper and his warped past. He wasn't a tenth the lover Vern was, and his gross manipulations had failed. All through dinner she was…happy.

Though not nearly as happy as she was when she finally unwrapped Margi Taylor's gift. No, that was beyond happy; that was speechless.

It was a framed view of the Point Robinson lighthouse, the beach, and Mount Rainier beyond. It was an oil painting and the lines were soft, suggesting the blending and connection of the landscape—one element to the next. And there—in a state of absolute belonging—a lone woman stood on the beach, her long, light hair caught in a swirl of air.

But she wasn't lonely.

Not at all.

She was at peace. “How did she do this?”

Vern shrugged. “Got me, but it's amazing. I've never seen her do anything like this one before. You must have really touched her. Joke is, Mom wanted me to be an artist. Says she started me with finger paints and a guitar while still in the crib. I guess that I ate the crayons and napped on the guitar. Any string marks?” He turned one cheek, then the other for her inspection, actually had her looking for a moment at the face she was coming to know so well.

“Is that why you're such a colorful character?”

He grinned at her, then asked, “Did you notice the signature?”

“For Denise, from your friend Margi.” She read it aloud and again silently to herself. She'd dated it yesterday. “She made this for me?”

“Apparently.”

“I've got to hang it. I don't have any picture hooks.” It was an almost panicky feeling. She had to get this painting on the wall. Had to make this image a part of her life.

“Mom usually tapes one to the back.”

She was going to put it in the living room until Vern suggested the bedroom. They carried it upstairs, and he was right. The blank wall opposite the foot of the bed would make it the first and last thing she saw each day.

She sat on the foot of the bed and admired it. It was so perfect. She really was going to steal Vern's mother from him.

“Do you have any candles?”

“Sure. Under the bathroom sink in case the power goes out. Why?”

“Because the only lighting you have in here is a halogen reading lamp and the sun is going down.”

Indeed, she could see by the view out her window that the sun had already gone behind the mountain, plunging the western reaches into deep shadow. In fact, it was late enough that the colors of the painting were blending together.

“The painting will look better by candlelight?” That didn't quite make sense.

“Many things will.” Vern didn't explain himself as he ducked into the bath and retrieved the candles. The power went out here with every good storm, and she didn't like to have her reading interrupted.

He set several atop the dresser and lit three of them before returning to sit behind her on the bed.

She couldn't quite mark the transition from admiring the painting to being lost in Vern's arms.

He had apparently retrieved a hairbrush from her bathroom along with the candles and began brushing out her hair. He was gentle, working out small snarls, until he was finally able to make long, clean strokes starting at her part and traveling down to the very tips. No one had ever brushed her hair for her before. It was so sensual that soon the sensations had her eyes sliding closed.