Minnehaha 5 (end)

    When it gets dark, we head back towards the camping area. We had wanted to pitch our own tents but they said they didn’t have any more capacity; they only allow a limited number of campers in the area. They do however have little cabins or pre-set up tents of their own to rent for the night, so we reserve two tents. All the tents have the names of birds; theirs is the Hawk, mine is called the Raven. The tents are old and in sad shape, but very roomy with foam pads inside to sleep on. The zipper to my tent flap breaks as soon as I unzip it so I just let it hang half open.

    Noodle and Bradley come in to hang out with me before we all go to bed. Babe produces a Ziploc baggie filled with beaded necklaces and bracelets. 

    “What’s that?” I ask him.

    “Oh, a bunch of jewels. I found them in the tent. Someone must have left them behind.”

    “You should turn them in at the lodge, I bet someone’s missing them,” I say.

    He doesn’t answer but turns the bracelets over and over in his fingers, focusing on one made of some shiny black stones. 

    Noodle and I get to talking about the old days a little bit, when she and I used to go out.

    “You know, it’s been exactly ten years since I met you, Nood,” I say, sprawling out across a mattress pad.

    “No, it can’t be!” she exclaims. “Ten years?”

    “So why did you guys not stay together, anyways?” asks Bradley.

    “I don’t think we were a good couple,” I say. “We weren’t all that good for each other.”

    “Yeah. Noodle told me once that he would have to break up with me when I had my operation,” she says.

    “What?” I say, shocked. “I never said that.”

    “You did!” she insists. “You said you didn’t think you could handle me being in the hospital for so long. You said you couldn’t take it.”

    I look at Noodle, with the scars above her lip from all the operations she’s had on her cleft palate. I wonder if I’d really said it, and if so, if I’d really said it as callously as she makes it sound. I wonder. 

    I hadn’t broken up with her though, and after the operation, she’d had her mouth wired shut. We hadn’t been dating long. I remember her eating nothing but cheesecake her mother baked then pureed in a blender so she could suck it up through a straw.

    After a while they retire to their own tent. I close the flap as best I can before popping a few sleeping pills and crawling into my sleeping bag. I have more strange dreams that I don’t remember.

    The next morning they wake me up at six and we all walk down the gravel path past the lodge to the springs.

    We part ways at the sauna shed; I can’t go in there again but they seem hooked on it. Instead I continue down past the “healing waters” sign to the first pool we’d shared with Halley. I am the only one there. I undress slowly, standing naked as I look out over the meadow. The grass is tall and yellow in the morning light. The sky is bright but I cannot yet see the sun over the trees. To my right, a sharp toothy outcropping called Devil’s Point juts up over the valley. A layer of steam constantly rises from the pool. Sighing, I step into the water and sit back against the smooth rocks. 

    It’s peaceful, but I can’t relax. Blue dragonflies hover over the water, cutting through the steam with their cellophane wings. A hawk glides overhead. A spider drops down from an overhead branch and hurries back up its thread. Runoff water sloshes over the edge when I shift my weight. I feel painfully alone.

    To distract myself from this awful emptiness, I try to picture Halley coming up the path, slipping off her clothes and joining me naked in the tepid water, though, I know that she left last night; I saw her and her friend heading out to the parking lot. She’s gone back to her fire tower, back to look out over the crowns of the forest, hoping to see some smoke, some sign of purging flame. Eventually I haul myself up out of the water, slowly dress, and head back down the path towards the lodge.

    As I’m rounding the bend, I almost run right into a doe standing on the path, feeding on some scattered grain. Standing beside her, nearly invisible against the tan grass, is a fawn. Two fawns. Almost close enough for me to touch. The fawns lift their heads and stare at me with their big black eyes. Their mother pays no attention to me and, following her lead, the fawns go back to grazing. 

    The lodge is just a little ways ahead of me; a number of people have come out onto the long porch to watch the deer. I see Noodle and Bradley up there watching along with the others. I want to join them but I don’t want to startle the animals. Eventually they amble along, crossing right in front of the lodge. I follow slowly and quietly behind until I reach the front steps. 

     The three of us follow behind the deer until they veer off into the woods, then we turn off into the campground one last time to pack up our gear.

    It isn’t until we’re about fifteen minutes away from Breitenbush that we get reception on the cell phone. I call work just before eight and tell them I’m not coming in.

    We take a different route home, driving along the river towards Salem and then up I-5. As soon as we reach the interstate it’s as if we’ve entered the blandest, most anonymous landscape imaginable. Everything looks the same; we could be anywhere in the country. We pass massive housing developments, large chunks cut out of the forest to accommodate them. Tractor trailers roar past us on their way to and from distribution centers. Billboards flash by, faces sneering down at us. Bradley drives and I sit in the passenger seat. We don’t talk much. From the back seat, Noodle places a hand on Bradley’s shoulder and leaves it there for a few minutes before slowly pulling it away. 

    Once back in Portland, we drop my gear off at home. They only have a few hours before their planes leave -within a half hour of one another- so we stop by the co-op to get some snacks for their ride home before heading down to Powell’s books. Bradley wants to get a book for his niece, whom he’ll be seeing in LA. He has a specific book in mind:  “It’s something about these bats that go to the beach. It’s brand new.”

    “Babe, why that book and not some other one?” Noodle asks him.

    “I dunno, I just think my neice’ll like it is all.”

    “Have you read it? Do you like it?”

    “No, I’ve never seen it before. It just came out.”

    “Well where’d you hear about it?”

    “Oh, I dunno, I just heard about it somewhere.”

    So I take them to the bookstore. Powell’s is always an overwhelming experience, especially for the uninitiated. People are flowing in and out in a mad rush. We cut against the current and head down to the children’s department. I suggest looking the book up on the computer, but Bradley doesn’t know the name or the author.

    “It’s brand new, though,” he repeats. “They probably have a display of it somewhere.”

    I think he’s pretty crazy to have such faith, but there by the counter is a whole stack of the book about a family of bats who go to the beach. We each flip through a copy. As with so many other children’s’ books nowadays, the art is nice but the story is really stupid, with terrible rhymes. Bradley says that his favorite kid’s book was Outside Over There. Noodle pipes up and orders me to show him my favorite book when I was young. I looks around and find a copy of Rain Makes Applesauce but he doesn’t seem impressed. He looks around for a while, almost buys her a copy of The Giving Tree, but in the end gives up. 

    Noodle is overwhelmed by all the books and the crowds; I suggest we get out into the sunshine. I remind her that she wanted a smoothie before she left, and the vegan place we had supper at the other night is right around the corner. 

    The vegan place is even more crowded than Powell’s was. Noodle’s face gets all scrunched up and her brow furrows. She looks at the people in the long undulating line before the counter as if she doesn’t know what they are, or if she should be afraid of them. 

    “Do you still want a smoothie?” I ask. Bradley has wandered off somewhere. She nods. “What kind do you want? Cacao coconut?”

    She corrects my pronunciation. “Cacao. Yes. I’ll get it, though.”

    “No, I’m buying. I want one too.” I step into the queue, which is actually moving pretty quickly. She joins me, her eyes bugging out as she stares at the people eating all around us. I see Bradley getting a juice out of a cooler; by the time he gets into line behind us there are seven people between him and us. I motion to him to bring his juice up so I can pay for it but he doesn’t see me. We get our drinks and wait outside for him.

    “Hey, let’s go down to that park we passed before,” he suggests. “You know, the one with the elephant. Is that close to here?”

    “Yeah, it’s only a few blocks. That sound good?”

    Nood nods and we head down to the park. It’s filled with kids out playing, as well as the usual tourists and the shady gutter punks engaging in all the usual shady interactions. We find a bench in the sun and sip our smoothies. The bronze elephant statue stands with its tail to us. It’s very stylized, covered in abstract patterns and swirls, and has a smaller elephant standing on its back. I’ve always liked it; I took pictures of it on my first visit here to Portland with Lucy. As we watch, a group of photographers descends like buzzards upon the statue and start snapping close ups of the swirls and spirals. We sit in silence in the blazing sunlight. Noodle takes Bradley’s hand and holds it tight.

    After a little while I check my watch and tell them that they’d better get going if they want to catch their planes. I think about accompanying them to the airport but they seem to want to be alone. I walk them to the car. Bradley decides to take one last photo. After digging around in his backpack, he declares that he’s lost his camera. 

    “You sure it’s not there, Babe? You didn’t look that long.”

“I’m positive. I would have put it right here in the pocket. I think I remember leaving it on a rock down by the river.”

    As he’s putting his things back in the pack, I notice the Ziploc baggie full of beaded jewelry he found in the tent at Breitenbush. He packs it away with his other things and slams the trunk shut.

    I tell them I’ll call Breitenbush to see if anyone’s turned in the camera. He looks crestfallen. 

    “I really wanted to show those pictures to my family,” he says sadly.

    I shake Bradley’s hand, give Noodle a tight, tight squeeze, and walk away. I’m not a big fan of goodbyes, and I know Noodle’s not either. I turn around and watch as they drive away, turn the corner, disappear.

    When I get home I see that Noodle’s sand dollars are still spread out on the coffee table. Nine out of twenty-five. I think that maybe I’ll mail them to her but they break so easily.

*

    A few weeks later, I call our old friend Teddy to catch up. I tell him about Noodle and Bradley’s surprise visit.

“I guess that was supposed to be their honeymoon,” he says. “I know they wanted to hike the trails out there.”

“Their what?” I ask.

“Didn’t she tell you?” He sounds puzzled.

“Tell me what?”

He pauses. “They got married six months ago. I figured you knew.”

“You have got to be kidding,” I say.

“Nope. I think it’s something to do with him going into the army and her getting benefits. She needs more work done on her teeth.”

I think about all that time we spent hiking through the woods, sitting by the fire, soaking in the hot tubs, riding in the car. I think about all the years we’ve known each other, all the things we’ve been through together. I feel hurt and rage bubble up inside me for a moment, and then I laugh.

“God damn it, Noodle,” I say.

    “I still can’t believe she didn’t tell you,” he says.

    “I can,” I say, and think about my old apartment in Allentown. I can still hear her little footsteps as she scampers up the fire escape, can still hear her voice, trickling like laughing water outside my bedroom window. “Noodle! Nooooodlllle....Wake up, Noodle! Wake up, Noodle! Wake up!” 

for Jasmine Lea, 1978-2019

Minnehaha 4

    As I head back up towards the lodge I pass a wide open expanse of dirt, into which has been laid a maze of flat stones. A sign declares that this is The Labyrinth, and that one is to follow the path at a leisurely gait in a “journey to one’s own center enhanced by the song of the nearby river.” I see two men dressed in white close to the center of the maze, their heads down. The journey is supposed to take 45 minutes to complete. I decide I don’t have 45 minutes to waste and besides, I feel like I’ve had enough mazes in my life. It would be nice, just for once, to walk a path that didn’t twist and turn back on itself constantly. 

    Beyond the labyrinth is a pavilion beneath which sit five stone tubs in a circle. Each tub is supposed to be a different temperature, the idea being that you move in a circle, gradually working your way up to the hottest one. When I approach, I see that one tub is occupied by a large, attractive middle-aged woman sitting by herself, looking slightly uncomfortable. Another tub is filled by a young couple with their appendages wrapped tightly around one another.

    I strip down, feeling very self-conscious, and slip into a tub that is not adjacent to the occupied ones. The water is the hottest I’ve felt so far. I sit on the little underwater ledge and stare out over the meadow, which seems rather scraggly and ugly from this close. The couple gets out and moves into the tub to my immediate left. They only stay there a moment before they leap out and relocate to another one. The middle-aged woman gets out and takes their original tub. It’s like they’re all playing a game of musical hot tubs. For some reason it makes me nervous.

    A young curly haired boy approaches the pavilion, striding confidently. Casting his gaze about regally, he smiles as if approving of all he surveys. He shrugs off his clothes and makes a beeline for my tub. There’s enough room for three or four people in each one but the moment he steps into the tub I feel it shrink dramatically. He stretches out and sighs. I try to forget that he’s there but cannot. 

    The middle-aged woman climbs out and lies down in the sun on a wooden platform made for sunbathing. Her flesh spreads out beneath her as though it were melting; she has transformed into a shapeless blob. The young couple has stopped cuddling and is just sitting in their pool. 

    A maintenance worker comes by and my tub-mate engages him in conversation.

    “Man, finally some water that’s hot enough for me,” the kid says.

    “Yeah, we been having trouble with these other ones,” the worker replies. “They’re supposed to be gradated but they all seem to be the same temperature.”

    The kid says he’s in the middle of a long bike tour across the state with a friend. They chat for a while; I wish they’d shut up. Finally the worker says he has to go do some stuff, “Otherwise nobody’ll have any hot water tonight.” 

    I stay a few minutes longer. The kid looks at me and smiles. I climb out and put my clothes on.

    On the way up the path I run into Noodle again. She’s ready to get back in the water, so we cross the meadow to the closest pool.

    We’ve noticed that calling one another “Nood” is problematic in the hot springs, as it causes every nude bather within earshot to look around when they hear it, so we try to use the ridiculous nickname as little as possible, though it’s hard, as I hardly think of her as Jasmine anymore; her real name feels strange on my tongue.

    There is a girl alone in the water when Noodle and I get there. She’s gorgeous, with very pale skin and red hair pulled up into little pigtails that stick up from the top of her head like ears. She sits in the water up to her neck but even so I can see her wonderful round breasts floating just below the surface. I instantly feel a little nervous. She says hello and smiles, so Noodle and I strip and lower ourselves into the pool.

    The two girls get to talking right away. Her name is Halley. Although she looks young, when she smiles a set of wrinkles fans out adorably from the corners of her eyes. She speaks only to Noodle; even when I ask her something, she directs all her answers to her and not to me. I wonder if my presence is making her uncomfortable; I’m not staring, and I try not to show any excessive interest, but perhaps she can pick up on how attracted I am to her. Part of me feels angry at having to stifle such natural impulses and feelings. And part of me wants so much for her to be attracted to me that I feel an almost unbearable tension rise up in me. Eventually I just get out of the pool and sit on the nearby bench.

    Halley tells Noodle that she’s an artist who lives in Portland but has a summer job tending a rickety wooden ranger tower deep in the forest, on a hill overlooking Mt Hood and the surrounding valleys. Her job is to keep an eye out for forest fires. It has been an unusually hot, dry summer, and lightning storms have sparked a number of major fires all across the state. She says she spends most of her time up in the tower reading and painting, and when she isn’t up there she spends her days traipsing through the conifer forest. 

    “What I’ve seen from spending so much time in the woods is that there are so many diseased and rotting trees just taking up room where new growth could be taking place. These areas need to be burnt down. It’s actually good that there are so many fires.” She pauses. “Sometimes I think we should just let them burn.”

    “So what do you do when you see a fire?” Noodle asks.

    “Well, when I first started I would call the fire fighters at the first sign of smoke,” Halley explains. “But now I wait a little. Give the fire time to clear out some dead wood.”

    I ease back into the stone pool, taking off my glasses and setting them on a rock in the hopes that it will make her more comfortable and less afraid that I’m checking her out. No sooner have I slipped into the water than another cute girl comes running up the path. Halley squeals with delight at the sight of her.

    “Where have you been, girl? I thought you’d never get here!” She leaps out of the water and quickly wraps her lovely flesh in a towel. The two girls run down the path towards another, presumably more private pool without a single word of farewell.

    Bradley comes by and asks if we want to go into the sauna with him. Noodle and I dress and follow him back down the path. On the way is a little pool I hadn’t noticed before, totally fenced off. A sign beside it warns people not to swim in it, saying that the temperature of the water is 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Nailed to the fence is another sign with a diagram that shows how the hot springs were formed. The heat of the lava beneath the mountain melts the glacier that covers the peak, and some of this water collects in pockets beneath the earth. The lava further warms the water in these wells and the heat sends it shooting up towards the surface where it bubbles out and forms pools. The power of the hot springs generates electricity and heat for the entire facility. According to the sign, Native Americans used to come from hundreds of miles away to take advantage of the natural healing powers of these springs.

    The sauna is a little shed right next to the lodge. It has wooden door so tiny I have to crouch down and practically crawl through.

    The room is thick with steam and the crash of churning water. It feels like I’m entering the inside of someone’s mouth. I sit on one of the little benches that line the walls. There are tiny windows that you can slide open if you need a breath of fresh air, which I do almost immediately. Within seconds I feel like my lungs are filled with water; I can hardly breathe. I sit still and try to relax, but I can’t, it’s too uncomfortable. I am completely coated with sweat although I can’t really feel it; my flesh has become indistinguishable from the air. I close my eyes and breathe deep, but it feels worse. After a few minutes or hours or days I burst back out through the little door and turn on the shower head affixed to the outside of the shed, sighing as the cool water cascades down over my body.

    I sit on the porch and read and after a while my companions meet me back there. Bradley tries to call his brother in LA to ask him to pick him up at the airport the next day, but there is no cell phone reception way out here. He goes inside to use the phone but comes back out a few minutes later looking discouraged.

    “What’s the matter, Babe?” Noodle asks.

    “They wouldn’t let me use their phone. They say it’s for emergencies only.” He pauses. “The lady wasn’t very nice about it.”

    I think about the museum. How am I going to call in sick tomorrow? I’m supposed to be at work at eight in the morning, so I need to call before then; preferably as early as possible so I can just leave a message with the night shift. 

    “We’ll just have to get up really early,” Noodle says when I voice my concern. 

    There is still some time before supper. Anxious to get hold of his family, Bradley decides to drive out to where he can get some cell phone reception. Noodle says she wants to do some reading, so she and I head out to sit in a few of the wooden lounge chairs clustered in the middle of the lawn in front of the lodge. The sun casts long shadows across the brown grass. She takes out a book about the afterlife, written by some ancient old lady living in the middle of the Arizona desert, just like Noodle herself has been doing.

    “Is that book yours?” I ask. She says no, she’s borrowing it from the lending library inside the lodge. I ask her if she believes in the afterlife and she shrugs.  

    “Is the book any good?” I ask.

    “It’s… interesting,” she says, burying her face in the pages. 

    A large brown spider inches its way up the chair leg towards my hand. I flick it off lightly but two seconds later it’s back in the same exact spot. I think about deadly spider bites, brown recluses, and decide to take my chances and let it live.

    A scruffy-looking man in his forties or fifties approaches. He’s holding a guitar. A few young people also clutching guitar cases are making their way across the lawn towards us, stealthy as wolves.

    “Hey, you guys mind if we make some noise over here?” the man asks, grinning.

    “That depends on the kind of noise you mean,” I say. 

    He chuckles and holds up his guitar. “Well, I was thinking of playing some tunes on old Janis here.”

    I wave halfheartedly to the other empty chairs. Noodle glares at me over the top of her book, giving me the look that our friend Teddy once described as “staring at you as if you were a bug.” I smile and shrug.

    The three musicians settle down and take out their instruments. The two youngsters are a hipster looking boy with a bushy black beard and a skinny, blandly pretty brunette. Right away they explain to the older man that they are definitely not a couple, just “buddies.”

    “Oh, okay, I was just going to ask if you guys were together,” the older guitarist says. “Not that it matters or anything…. What kind of tunes you in the mood for?”

    “Well, we were thinking sixties, seventies kinda stuff,” the boy answers. Noodle and I exchange an alarmed glance.

    “That’s great, cause that’s mostly what I know,” the man laughs, and after a few warm-up strums he’s belting out a sluggish rendition of Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold,” a song that until now I was pretty fond of.

    The girl takes out her guitar when he’s done. “Wow, what a beautiful instrument,” the man says. 

    “Thanks,” she says. “It’s a limited edition Gibson. The owner of Gibson himself designed it. They only made 300 of them.” She pauses. “I’m not that good, I’m afraid.” She starts tuning the instrument, twisting the knobs and pulling the strings tighter and tighter. Suddenly with a twang one of them snaps.

    “Oh shoot, I didn’t bring any spares.” She frowns at her buddy.

     He shakes his head.

    “Man, I didn’t either. I totally forgot.”

    They both look at the older guy.

    “Hey guys, I’m sorry, mine are all out in the van.”

    “I can just sing, I guess,” the girl says, and starts in on “Blackbird.” The others accompany her. 

    After about ten minutes Noodle puts her book down, looks at me and says, “I can’t read this stupid thing anymore.” We decide to go inside so she can pick out something new to read. The library is a large room inside the lodge right across from the dining hall. A sign by the door reads “Please remove your shoes before entering library.” I reluctantly slip off my shoes and step onto the thin carpet. It’s just a room with some couches, some bookshelves and a piano. Anyone can take any book they want; there’s no librarian or anything. 

    Noodle sits down at the piano and starts to play a tuneless plinking and plunking as I scan the shelves. The books are separated into subjects such as “Nutrition”, “Metaphysics”, and “Self-help.” Happily, I find a brief shelf of poetry. The books have all been donated, so it’s a pretty random selection; a lot of Khalil Gibran, a few Bukowskis, a handful of thin chapbooks. I pull a battered copy of the Song of Hiawatha off the shelf and plop onto the couch. I never could be bothered to read this thing.

    As Noodle bangs on the keys I start singing from the book, making barely melodic yowling sounds like a cat. She starts laughing and playing more fervently, and in response I yowl with greater passion.

"Annnnd the laaaast of all the figuuuuures

Was a hearrrrt within a cirrrrcle,

Drawn withiiiiiin a magic cirrrrrcle;

And the iiiiiiimage had this meeeeeaning:

“Naked lieeeees your hearrrrrt before me,

To your naked hearrrrt I whisper!”

.

Poor Longfellow is no doubt turning over in his grave, but we are laughing and laughing. She is doing that thing where she’s laughing so hard she’s not making any sound, nearly falling off the bench, doubled over with silent merriment.

    Bradley appears at the door. He stands there listening with a smile, then kicks off his shoes and throws himself onto the couch next to me, picking up a magazine and reading as my little Indian and I continue to crack each other up.

    When dinnertime arrives we put our shoes on and join the others in line for the meatless smorgasbord that awaits us in the dining room. While we are waiting, Bradley tells us about the article he’s been reading, about this guy who is a vegetarian except that he cooks and eats road kill to supplement his diet. The man sees it as a form of recycling. 

    At the table, Noodle breaks her vow against cooked food and shoves slice after slice of cornbread into her mouth, a devilish gleam in her eye, as if she’s daring us to say something. We don't say anything.

Minnehaha 3

     The sky is just beginning to darken when Noodle and Bradley return to camp. Down by the stream I had found a few larger sticks and the fire is blazing brighter than ever; we all sit and watch it quietly. I am surprised that there are no mosquitoes or flies; no insects of any sort seem to be attracted to the fire nor to our flesh.

  We turn in before the sky goes completely dark. I ask if we should extinguish the fire but Babe says no, it’ll burn itself out by morning. 

    The trees are much blacker than the sky when I crawl into my tent and zip the flap shut. I think this must be the earliest I’ve gone to bed since I was a kid, but I’m so tired I don’t want to do anything but sleep.

    Lying in my huge tent alone, I think about the possibilities of bears, murderous fugitives, devil worshippers... what if we’re murdered in our sleep, our bodies buried deep in the woods, not to be found until years later? I think of The Blair Witch Hunt, Deliverance, Grizzly Man… I know I’m just being paranoid but I’m still a little nervous. I’m amazed at how silent the night is. Every once in a while I hear the call of a bird, but other than that it’s absolutely quiet. I don’t fall asleep for a while and wake up dozens of times throughout the night, unable to get comfortable on the pine needle floor.

    The next morning ‘m woken up by Bradley calling my name. I sleepily unzip the tent and stumble out.

  “She’s gone,” he says. “And all her stuff’s gone too.” He’s really upset and paces back and forth restlessly. I tell him I’m sure she’s fine, that she probably just headed out for an early start at the springs, but there’s no convincing him. We clean up the camp and pack our things as fast as we can, then set out to find her.

    We cross the creek, careful not to slip on the wobbly rocks. On the far bank we are met by an enormous German shepherd standing protectively beside a tent that was definitely not there the night before.

    “I got up early,” Bradley explains, “and when I saw that she was gone I came over here and thought that was her tent. I saw the dog and thought, oh, she found a dog.”

  The tent flaps part and out step a man and a woman. 

    “Sorry if I woke you up this morning,” Bradley says to the couple. “I mistook you for our friend. She has that same tent.” I look at the tent. It doesn’t look anything like Noodle’s.

    “You took our favorite spot!” the woman whines. Then she breaks into a smile. “Sorry. We crossed the creek last night and found your tents in our spot. I hope the dog didn’t wake you up.”

    “No, we didn’t hear anything,” I say. “It’s a great spot over there alright.” They watch us scale the loose dirt of the ravine and ascend the path back to the hot springs.

    The forest is completely still. Every couple of yards I stop and listen: all I can hear is the light tramp of Bradley’s hiking shoes on the packed dirt ahead of me. The morning light is uniformly blue, with no light and no shadow. I hear a crow caw once and then stop.  

    We find Noodle alone at the baths, basking in the steam of a water-filled log.

    “You had me worried,” Babe says, easing off his pack. “I thought you’d left.”

    “What? Why would I leave without you?” Noodle asks, her brow wrinkling in annoyance.

    The bath house is littered with soggy matchbooks and the melted stubs of candles from the night before, along with the occasional empty can of Olympia beer. We all take a nice long soak in the tubs.

    As I climb out for the final time, I notice a single brown pine needle floating on the surface of the water, spinning wildly like a compass in a magnetic storm. I sit on the bench and carefully dry my sore foot and get dressed. 

    Hiking back we each talk about the weird dreams we had the night before. I had long, convoluted dreams about a city that incorporated elements of all the places I’ve ever lived. I could actually feel my brain trying to integrate all the people and locations into one coherent whole. Bradley dreamed about a war in which there was a mix of soldiers from Iraq and the American Civil War as well as the Revolutionary War. He woke up just as a British general was about to cut off his head with a long sword.

    Noodle seems reluctant to share what she dreamed. Finally she says she had a dream in which she was raped by her father. I picture her father’s craggy John Wayne face, his squinty, crinkled eyes. He was always an extremely reticent, super-masculine man. I always sensed that he didn’t approve of me. Walking through the woods, Noodle tells us he used to hit her with a broom. “Not with the side of the bristles, but with the ends of them. They would leave little red dots all over my legs. In the dream, my whole body was covered with those same little red dots.”

    The hike back to the car seems much shorter than the hike out had been. I wonder why this always happens. For some reason I think it should be the other way around; having nothing to look forward to on the way back, I would think the return trip would seem gruelingly long, but it never does. 

    As we emerge from the forest, I am relieved to see that the car’s windows are all still intact. 

    The next stop on our trip is Breitenbush. We’ve made reservations to spend the day and night; there’s an entire retreat center rather than just a hole in the ground with hot water running out of it. I couldn’t find decent directions anywhere on the internet, but I have a hunch the highway we took to get to Bagby might lead us in the right direction. 

    We are all much chattier than we’d been on the way to Bagby. I’m getting used to being around them again, perhaps the soak has made me more relaxed. I mention how strange it feels to be naked in public for the first time. 

    “Babe was naked all the time in public when he was a kid,” says Noodle, munching on what looks like a seaweed Slim Jim. “Right, Babe?” 

    With a little coaxing, she gets Bradley to talk about the neighborhood he grew up in. His parents both worked so he was raised by his schizophrenic grandmother. There was a big pack of kids in the area and they’d all play together. 

    “One day, we just all got naked,” he says in that low, deliberate voice of his. “I don’t know who started it, but all of a sudden we were all running around naked in the yard.”

    “Didn’t anyone notice?”

    “I guess not. I mean, we were little kids, like nine or ten years old. Maybe they thought it was normal.” He paused. “Then sometimes we’d play doctor.”

    Noodle laughs. “You played doctor?”

    “Oh yeah. There was this girl, and she and I would go in the backyard and she’d lie down like on a hospital bed, and I’d say what’s wrong, what hurts, and she’d point to it, and I’d say I need to look at it. And we’d act all serious and upset like we saw adults act.”

    “Did you, you know, do anything?”

    “No, we just looked. I think I touched her belly button once. It was an outie. I’d never seen one before.”

    After driving for less than an hour we see clearly marked signs for Breitenbush. I am surprised at how easy the trip has been. Our spirits are high. It’s another gorgeous day out. 

    The road leading from the highway to the retreat center is extremely narrow and lined with ferns and trees that have turned grey as ash from all the dust kicked up by the tires of passing cars. We park in the gravel parking lot and stroll down a tree lined path to the main lodge to check in. 

    The lodge is a large wooden building fronted by a long porch with a balcony festooned with bath towels hanging likes prayer flags along its length. Meals are included with our overnight fee, but lunch won’t be served for a while, so Noodle and Bradley head off to explore. I sit at a picnic table on the long porch beneath a Douglas fir and take out my blank book to try to do some writing. 

    In a little while a plump, very attractive woman comes out of the lodge and asks if she can share my table. She sits diagonally across from me, takes out a journal and starts to write in it. As usual I look for a wedding ring and notice that she wears an enormous chunk of pale amber on her left ring finger. 

     I steal little glances at her and suspect that she senses this. She has short, frosted blonde hair and a very pretty face. She is dressed all in white. I want to talk to her but my mouth is dry. After the seclusion and isolation of Bagby, I realize I am really feeling socially awkward here where there are so many other people walking around, and pretty girls on top of it. I feel exposed and self-conscious. 

    After a few minutes she closes her book and gets up to go. I glance at her as she does. She comes around to my end of the table and says, “Your handwriting is quite beautiful.” 

    I thank her, smiling. “It’s not always legible though, even to me,” I manage to stammer. She is standing very close; I smell overpoweringly strong perfume.

    “Well, all that matters is that you get it out, right? That you express yourself?” she says. Her voice is light and sweet as honey.

    I think about it a moment before answering. 

    “No, I think it’s important to make it legible, too,” I say. “Because I want it to be read, I want it to communicate something. Otherwise what’s the fucking point?”

    A blank look flashes across her face for a moment but quickly gives way to a smile. She grabs my arm warmly, then releases it and walks down the steps and across the lawn. I see her sit down heavily on a bench in the shade. 

    Noodle comes up the steps and, looking over her shoulder, says, “Well, she’s cute! Is it lunchtime yet?” 

It’s not, so she wanders off, and when 1:00 rolls has not reappeared, so I’m left to eat by myself; I’m too hungry to wait for them. It’s a vegan buffet and all the food is pretty good. I sit on the edge of the room where I can watch everyone, hoping to see the blond woman come in, but she doesn’t, and I feel a twinge of regret that I didn’t try talking to her more.   

    When I’m done there is still no sign of my friends, so I decide to brave the hot springs myself. I head on down the path and pass a sign that reads HEALING WATERS. I come to a series of small stone pools set into the side of the mountain. There are people in the first one so, feeling shy, I take the second one, which is empty. I strip down, feeling very vulnerable at the edge of the meadow overlooking the forested hills. Everything’s much more exposed here than at Bagby. I slip into the water and try to relax. No sooner have I done so than I am joined by an old man who sits at the water’s edge across from me. I nod hello and he smiles.

    He tells me he’s only been a nudist for a couple of years but that “Once I got started, I was instantly hooked.” He says that he goes to the nudist beaches on Sauvie Island in Portland and at Rooster Rock in the Gorge. We sit for a while in slightly uncomfortable silence until he slowly gets up and walks away without another word. 

    I get out and wander aimlessly; the sun is beating down, much hotter than the day before. Outside of the forest and the camping area, there isn’t much shade here. I decide to cool off in the river. On the way I run into Noodle and Bradley, who are sluggishly looking for some shade to sit and read beneath. I tell them I’ll meet up with them later and continue on my way. 

    There is a new-looking wooden bridge crossing the river, which is actually more of a wide stream. I cross the bridge to the other side where a gently sloping bank of rock leads into the water. my feet are pretty much numb from neuropathy and therefore a poor gauge of temperature. I reach down and dip my fingertips into the icy cold water, then roll up my pants legs and step into the rushing current.

    Though the water is crystal clear, it’s impossible to gauge its depth; the bottom fluctuates wildly, dipping down suddenly before rising up to form bumps that look like they’re hollows. There are also deep pockets filled with small river rocks that slide around when stepped on. It’s slow going. I hold my books up high to avoid dunking them. The stones hurt my feet even through my pool shoes. 

    The creek seems much wider once I’m out here in the rapids. Once I reach the middle, I stop to rest and gaze upstream. The forested hills rise above me, their tips threatening to pierce the cloudless sky. The roar of the river is deafening. I look at the far bank; it seems impossibly distant. How pleasant it would be to just give in, to let the current carry me along with it to wherever it’s going How wonderful it would feel to just give up, to stop fighting the pull of the endless gallons of water pushing against me.

Minnehaha 2

     In a little while they come tramping up the porch. “We walked to the co-op,” Noodle explains. I’m surprised; it’s a pretty far walk. As we load our groceries into the trunk, Bradley slaps a bumper sticker from the co-op onto the back of the rental car; not on the bumper but right under the window.

    “What are you doing, Babe?” Noodle yells. “That’s not your car!” 

    Bradley shrugs. “I just wanted to put it there so I did. It’ll come right off.”

    “What if it doesn’t? They’ll charge you a fee if you scratch the paint.”

    “So what? I don’t care. besides, it’ll peel off. I’m sure of it.” 

    They argue about it some more but he refuses to even try to peel it off. I tell Noodle to let it drop and she manages to bite her tongue, but every once in a while she brings it up again. “I just don’t understand why…” He stops responding after a while.

    “Try one of these,” Noodle says, handing me a kombucha. I look at it with suspicion. “It’s good,” she insists. “Don’t shake it up though, it’s kind of fizzy.” I try it and it is good, not like anything I’ve ever tasted.

    As we distance ourselves from the city, tract housing developments give way to industrial parks give way to open fields and eventually we find ourselves following the twisting Clackamas River. The sun is high and glitters off the surface of the surface of the water. Rock formations rise like castle towers and turrets high above us. Bradley takes the curves fast, zipping between the hills at great speed.

    “Slow down, Babe,” Nood keeps saying. “I really just want to relax and enjoy all this scenery.” He responds by slowing down slightly, but a few minutes later he’s speeding as fast as ever, and once again Noodle scolds him. I glance over at him, trying to read his expression, but his face remains blank. 

The forest rises up around us, trees growing taller and denser, and the road turns from asphalt to gravelThe side roads are narrow and overgrown, with tiny wooden signs naming them. After a few wrong turns, we finally find the parking lot for the hot springs, which is a few miles hike.

    Blue crumbs of glass from shattered windshields cover the gravel. I remember hearing that there have been a number of car break-ins there all summer but we decide to chance it. 

As Bradley goes to throw some food wrappers out in the dumpster I carefully pick at the bumper sticker on the back of the car. To my amazement, it pulls right off in one clean piece without any sticky residue left behind or paint removed. Noodle claps her hands in delight and thanks me. Bradley comes over and she hands him the sticker, perfectly intact. He smacks it onto the side of the dumpster.

    “Good job, Babe! That’s a good place for it! You really like your stickers,” Noodle coos. 

    Aside from one barely-remembered family excursion when I was very young, I’ve never been camping before. My upstairs neighbor has been kind enough to lend me his tent and pack. I’ve never worn a backpack like this before: the thing is enormous. I feel like a turtle when it’s strapped on. Nood and Bradley help me adjust it so that it rests on my hips rather than my back, and they pull the straps tight for me. Though it’s heavy, I’m surprised by how comfortable it is, though I’m sure that if I topple over, I won’t be able to get back up. 

    When we’re all loaded up, we set off along the trail, the parking lot disappearing behind us replaced by a solid, silent wall of conifers.

    The trees around Bagby Hot Springs are part of the old growth forest; ancient Douglas firs and Sitka spruces rise up as far as you can see, covered with moss that, in the dryness of the late summer, dangles like drab feather boas from the branches. It looks like an enchanted forest, right out of some fairy tale. Knocked over tree trunks expose huge tangles of roots, wide as a car’s undercarriage and still clutching boulders imbedded between them, as if clinging desperately to some reminder of the earth they were once buried in. 

    The trail is well maintained: though it seems to be a much-traveled path, there is no litter or sign of human interference anywhere, other than little wooded bridges thoughtfully placed span the rougher terrain.

    I let them move on ahead; my left foot really slows me down. Ever since I had my toes amputated the year before, I keep getting blisters that don’t heal up completely. I’ve brought my rubber pool shoes along to keep my feet protected while I’m in the water. Every step I take hurts, but I try to ignore the pain and lose myself in the beauty around me. The rock formations are stunning. Trunks seem to stretch endlessly in every direction.

    We walk along the edge of a ravine, at the bottom of which a little creek gurgles merrily. Our path ascends gradually, and I am soon out of breath. I call for the others to wait as I sit down heavily on a log to rest. Bradley hands me a jug of water and I take a long swig.

    We come to a bridge that spans the creek. The water beneath us cascades and eddies between huge rock formations, tumbling down from pool to pool. A cute short-haired girl is crouched on one of the rocks below, piling river stones in a tall column. She steps away from her sculpture and looks up. I smile down at her. She beams back up at me and carefully tiptoes from rock to rock like a mountain goat, looking for a new location for another cairn.

Bradley looks down into a dark pool completely surrounded by rock flow and says, “I bet that’s really deep.” He pauses. “I bet I could dive right down into that hole.” He has a dreamy look on his face.

    “I don’t think so, Babe,” says Noodle apprehensively. Bradley looks at her, looks back down at the little pool, and swings his leg up onto the wooden rail.

    “No Babe, No!” Noodle sounds really scared. Bradley has an enormous grin on his face. Waiting a long moment, he pulls his leg back and continues across the bridge. Noodle shakes her head exasperatedly.

    We climb a steep ridge and on the other side we get our first view of the bath houses of Bagby Hot Springs. The place is basically just a few clusters of rustic wooden sheds scattered amongst the trees. A trickle of water runs from a hole in the ground and follows a narrow wooden aqueduct down to the bath houses. There are five private stalls and one large common one in which there are three hollowed out logs large enough to fit one or two people, plus a huge barrel that could probably seat four or five. 

    A family of four is just stepping out of the barrel. The log on the end is occupied by an attractive young couple. Everyone is naked, even the kids. This is my first experience with public nudity, and I’m very self-conscious. I try not to look but I can’t help but notice the father has a penis like the stub of a pencil. The attractive young stands up and I feel completely intimidated, but I strip down and change into my pool shoes to protect my feet. The left shoe is only half filled by the stump of my foot. I feel more self-conscious about people seeing my foot than my prick, though I feel a little ridiculous wearing nothing but these clunky rubber shoes.

    The others undress as well. I have not seen Noodle naked in years. After we broke up it was not an uncommon sight to see her running around in the buff; she’s always had a kind of on again, off again relationship with clothing. I am surprised to see two new tattoos she didn’t have before. One, the most recent, is merely a circle inscribed in a single blue line inside the triangle of her back; it’s quite simple and lovely. The other tattoo is a pair of intertwined triangles etched directly over her left breast. The lines of the triangles are thick and clumsily drawn, and there are stray little dots of ink here and there. She got it the day our friend Teddy had his quadruple bypass, the day after I’d left home for the west coast. 

Bradley and I step into the larger tub, while Noodle pulls the lever that allows hot water to flow from the spring down into the tub. She then fills a bucket with cold water from a big wooden cistern and pours it into the hollowed out log to cool off the hot water, which is much too hot to bear undiluted. She then slips into the log, ooching and ouching at how hot it is. The water in the barrel is just right. Steam rises sluggishly and dissipates in the sunlight. 

    

    After a while the young couple leaves and we each get to have our own log; we now have the place to ourselves. It feels heavenly, floating in the water, resting my head against the wooden back of the hollow tree trunk. There is only half a roof above us and I look up at the treetops that stretch towards the clear sky.

    We stay there a long while. Hours, days, months pass by. It’s lovely to lose all track of time.

    

    We finally get out, one by one. I dry my foot carefully, inspecting the open wound where my toes had once been. After the amputation last year, the flesh seemed to heal up perfectly, but lately it had rubbed open again. It worries me but I try not to think about it now, pulling my sock on so I won’t have to look at it anymore. I sit on the bench for a while with a towel draped over my lap before slowly getting dressed. 

    Relaxed and contented, we trudge on through the forest to find a suitable place to pitch camp. I feel like my bones have all turned to Jello. A thick carpet of pine needles covers the ground. We come to a creek and cross on a row of stepping stones. My weak left foot slips and I plunge into the cold water up to my knee, almost toppling in sideways under the weight of my pack. On the other side is another vertical pile of stones. I wonder if they were left by the same girl or by someone else. 

    On the other side of the creek we find a secluded spot with a ring of stones surrounding a pile of old ashes. Despite the drought warning, we decide to start a fire. There is hardly any kindling around, however; we all set to work scouting around for wood. The largest tree in the nearby vicinity has a large, hollowed out space beneath it, a tunnel cutting all the way through, large enough for an adult to crawl through. Searching for sticks, I peer into the space and see yet another pile of river stones like a crouching gnome hiding within the trunk of the tree. 

    Bradley disappears into the woods on a quest for logs, but only comes up with some small branches and a handful of twigs. Despite this we soon have a fire crackling merrily before us. I change into dry socks and put my wet ones beside the fire along with my shoes.

    We lay out our food on a huge stump and eat. I’ve brought hummus to go with our sprouted pita, avocado, trail mix, nori, and grapefruit. We wash it all down with juice and spring water. Even though it’s been cooked, Noodle eats some hummus. I watch as a single yellow jacket crawls across the green pulp of the avocado. I can see no reason to brush it away.

    After supper I walk over to a hollow log and unzip my fly. The hot piss bubbles and fizzes as it hits the dry earth. I hope desperately that I don’t have to take a shit while we’re out here; we haven’t brought any toilet paper and I don’t relish wiping my ass with leaves.

    We each have our own single-person tent. Noodle and Bradley’s are just wide enough for a single body; mine seems huge in contrast. I am surprised at how easy they are to assemble; I was picturing having to hammer tent pegs into the ground and comedic collapsing poles, but they practically set themselves up. The ancient trees form a roof of foliage over our heads.

    Stomachs full and camp all set up, my friends decide to go back to the springs. I would like to join them but am really exhausted. Even though we’ve only hiked a few miles, this had been more exercise than I’ve had in a while; as a result, my foot is throbbing. I tell them to go on without me.

    They head out and I am left alone to tend the fire. It keeps almost going out and I keep scrambling to find more twigs but fuel becomes more and more scant. Babe has placed two enormous logs on the pyre but they just aren’t catching. I resort to throwing handfuls of moss into the glowing ashes; the clumps flare up suddenly and are instantly incinerated. 

    I try to do some writing but it all sounds like pastoral crap. It’s hard for me to write about nature without sounding corny. I am such a city boy, spending my time sitting in bars and coffee shops, so used to being clean and having all my conveniences close at hand. I take a stub of charred wood and try to sketch with it, but even that seems like such a trite thing to do that eventually I just stop and stare at the flames and that seems like it’s enough. I realize how difficult it is for me to just relax, to allow myself to do nothing. 

Minnehaha

    The phone on the reception desk of the museum rings. It’s a call from outside, which is unusual. The number seems familiar but I can’t place it.

    “Nooooodllllle!” cries the voice on the line.

    I laugh, completely taken aback. “Noodle! What are you…why are you calling me here? Is everything okay?”

    “I’m here in Portland! Babe’s here too! We’re at the airport!”

    I hadn’t talked to Noodle in nearly a year. None of our friends from back east had seen or heard from her in months. I’d heard a rumor she’d moved to Arizona.

    “What are you doing here?” I ask, still stunned.

    “We’re going to be hiking along the coast for a week, but we want to see you first. Are we allowed to come to your work?”

    I give her directions and two hours later, her impish figure shuffles through the front door. I step out from behind the desk and she runs across the lobby and throws her arms around me. Her hair is a knotty tangle; her scrawny body is lost in loose hemp clothes. I lift her off the ground a few inches and squeeze her tight. 

    “I can’t believe you’re here,” I say, putting her down and standing back to take a good look at her. 

    She grins. “Well, believe it, Nood!”

    Another figure lopes into the museum lobby. 

    “Bradley,” I say, and take his hand. 

    “Hey buddy. Long time no see.” Bradley smiles, revealing a wall of enormous white teeth. His normally long hair has been shorn to a crew cut and his body looks buff and trim.

    I call the control room and get permission to take a short break. The three of us walk across the street to sit in the park. Sunlight flickers through the canopy of elms. Squirrels scamper down from the trunks and stare at us, hoping we have food.

    “So what are you guys doing here, exactly?” I ask.

    “We’re on vacation,” says Noodle. “Babe’s getting shipped out to Baghdad next week.”

    “We heard there was good hiking,” says Bradley, his voice slow and thick as ever.  When I was first introduced to him, years ago, I thought he might be developmentally challenged, but he’s just a burnt out. That same night I’d met him, he took Noodle out to get high in his van. He’s a nice enough guy, very kind-hearted, but I never really understood what Noodle saw in him.  

    She’d broken up with him over a year ago, or maybe even longer; the details of their relationship were always a little fuzzy to me. Shortly after the break up, Bradley had enlisted in the Army. It had shocked the hell out of me and Noodle and everyone else we knew. Bradley has always been a real hippie, and is the last person (besides Noodle and myself) I could picture joining the armed forces.

    I should take a minute to explain that Noodle’s name is actually Jasmine. After trying out a number of different nicknames for me -“Chowda! Nugget! Pork Chop!” -she landed on Noodle. 

    “But what do I call you, then?” I had asked. 

    “Noodle,” she said. 

    “But you just said I’m Noodle.” 

    “We’re both Noodle.”

     “We can’t both be Noodle.” 

    “Noodle Noodle Noodle.”

    And that settled it. Over the years we tried to stop but by now using our real names feels unnatural, and we always end up slipping right back into Nood or Noodle. 

    Noodle tells me they’re taking the bus out to Cannon Beach, where they plan to follow a trail through the woods and along the coastline for the next week. I work until five and their bus leaves at six, so we don’t have time to hang out before they go, but they promise to call me when they come back into town to catch their respective planes (she’s flying back to Arizona and Bradley’s returning to the army base in Colorado Springs). When my break time is up they hang around the desk for a while before heading out.

    A few days later Noodle calls me at work again, saying they’re coming back to town the next day. Surprised that they’re cutting their trip short, I ask if they’re okay, but she says everything is fine, that they’ve walked all the way down to Tillamook and are catching the bus from there. She wants to know if they can stay with me a night or two and I say of course.

“Hey Nood. Do you know how to get to any of the hot springs around here?” she asks. “Babe really wants to go.” I tell her I’ll find out. I’ve never been to any of them, they’re hard to get to without a car.  

They arrive back in town the next day and meet me at the museum after work. It’s my weekend so I have two days off to spend with them, plus I figure I can call in sick the third day, which is when their flights leave. They’ve rented a car and we plan out a trip to see two of the nicer hot springs, Bagby and Breitenbush, both about two hours away and tucked in Willamette National Forest. 

    We have supper at a health place downtown called Blossoming Lotus. Noodle’s currently on a raw food kick. When we first met, she was an indiscriminate omnivore, while I was vegetarian. We eventually swapped places, and over the years she’s grown increasingly judgmental and intolerant of others who don’t eat the way she things they should. Being obstinately omnivorous, I’ve gotten plenty of lectures from her on the subject. 

    Bradley tries his best to follow a vegan diet, though he says it’s been hard since he joined the military. He says the other soldiers beat him up when they found out he was a vegan.

    “What do you mean, they beat you up?” asks Noodle.

    “They beat me up,” is all he says.

    We order a bunch of things and share. The raw food is good, though very acidic; it’s made with a lot of vinegar. It’s all curly tangles of sprouts and seaweed and sprouted bread, nut cheese and some things I don’t recognize. I think back on all the times we ordered pizza, how crazy she went for it, and I feel a little sad.

    Noodle tells me about the place she’s been staying at in Arizona. It’s a naturopathic healing center called The Tree of Life, nestled in a canyon in the middle of the desert. She camped out for a while in Coronado National Forest when she’d first moved to the state. She says that at night she could see the distant explosions of bombs being tested way out in the wilderness, flashes of bright light illuminating the desert sky. She talks about thunder that rolls along the canyons and ravines, nights of nonstop lightning. Recently she’s moved into an old wooden trolley on the edge of the Tree of Life compound, where she helps out with the cooking in exchange for room and board. 

    We split a coconut-cacao smoothie that tastes good but feels gritty between my teeth. It definitely feels like the end of summer outside; the sun seems to set earlier than it should, and there’s a slight chill to the air as we walk back to the car.

    We plan on leaving pretty early in the morning, so we head right home to get a good night’s sleep. Noodle looks around at all the stuff in my apartment. “You dragged all this stuff here from Allentown?” she asks. I think of the U-Haul, packed tight with all my shit, and admit that yes, I did. At the time I remember thinking I had so little; it’s strange when you realize that everything you own in the world can be packed into the back of a fourteen foot long truck. But then I think of Noodle, leaving everything behind to camp out in the middle of the desert with nothing but a backpack full of her scant belongings.

    “I guess I get kind of attached to things,” I say sheepishly.

    She marvels that I’ve kept all the critters that had once decorated the apartment we’d shared together, six years and three thousand miles away from here: a brass owl, a rubbery seagull, a boxing kangaroo puppet. She picks up a small bronze casting she made during her brief stint in college and shows it to Bradley.

    “Wow, you made that?” He turns it over and over in his hand. It’s a lovely little piece; an indigenous-looking figure curled up on its back with its stumpy legs kicking up into the air.

    “And you still have Ivan. Hello there handsome. I haven’t seen you in a long time.” My cat, who she brought to me when he was a tiny ball of fluff, smashes his cheek against her hand. 

    She removes a little bag from her knapsack and pulls out sand dollars she collected during their hike along the coast. She spreads them out on my little coffee table. “They keep breaking,” she says. “I started out with twenty-five whole ones, and now I’m down to nine.” She asks if I have a box or something to keep the remaining ones intact. I say I’ll check before they leave. 

    I pull out the Murphy bed but they take one look at the thin, lumpy mattress and unroll their sleeping bags in the middle of the living room floor. 

    When I wake up, they’re gone.