walked around reading all the news in the sand until I eventually noticed Rusty’s dark blue Explorer parked at one end of the pullout. He was smiling, amused that he’d snuck up on me and knowing the reason why I’d been so preoccupied. He enjoyed watching me work because only then was I so at ease. I think he could feel the rightness of it the way I did. Giving me a patch of sand was like giving a mathematician a problem or an athlete a physical challenge. I jumped in and it was like pulling teeth to get me to stop. I walked towards the Explorer and he pulled forward to save me a few steps.
“I was wondering if I was going to have to honk the horn before you’d see me,” he said.
“I’m sorry, I was reading and I lost track of time.”
“I know, I just think it’s funny.” His sandy brown hair always looked slightly windblown and his blue eyes usually smiled at me. I loved those eyes, so warm and expressive. I had certainly seen my share of emotions in those eyes. Guess that’s what comes from being a trouble magnet. He had helped me through many tough things in the short time we’d known each other. As usual, he was dressed in brown slacks with a sport coat. He’d taken off his tie and seemed at ease.
I placed Shadow in the backseat and then hopped into the front.
With a serious look he asked, “Okay, where’s it at this time?”
“Mount Pacifico.”
“And what happened?”
“I got forced off the road by an overzealous road hog.”
“Do you want to pull it out?”
“Do we have time? You’d be proud of me. I didn’t lose it over the side and I didn’t bury it axle deep. It just seemed a little risky to keep trying, so I started walking instead.”
“I was a little worried when you called me the first time. You know, we need to come up with a rating system or something. I never know if ‘I’m not going to make it back to town by six’ means ‘I’m going to be late’ or ‘I’m fighting for my life out here and if I survive I’ll probably be there after six.’ So I want to drive up there and see just what you got yourself into and I want you to tell me how serious this was in your eyes.”
“Okay. So is a one a mild situation and a ten an extreme emergency?”
“If that’s what works for you.”
“Okay, then this was a two.”
We drove up the highway a mile or so and turned off onto the road to Mount Pacifico. He drove the five miles to where my Jeep was hanging off the mountain and pulled over.
“A two. You rate this a two?”
“Sure. No danger, food and water in good shape, five miles, easy walking. Sounds like a two to me. If you change one of those factors, the number changes a lot though. If I didn’t have water I would have called it a three, and if it was five degrees hotter it would have jumped to a four.”
“So what would a ten have been?”
“The Jeep would be down there,” I said pointing over the precipice, “And I’d have no water and the temperature would be five degrees hotter. I guess that would make it a ten, if I was down there with the Jeep. If I was up here and the Jeep was down there I’d make it a four again.”
“Cassidy, what am I going to do with you? You wouldn’t have called at all if we didn’t have an appointment set up, would you?”
“I would have flagged down a ranger or a police car and gotten a ride to town and called a tow truck.”
“And what would you do if somebody else stopped and offered you a ride?”
“I doubt I’d accept it. I’m not very trusting and the walk wasn’t too bad.”
“You’d walk ten miles in the hot sun before you’d accept a ride from a stranger?”
“As long as I had water.”
He shook his head, although he seemed relieved that I wouldn’t accept rides from strangers.
“As long as we’re here we might as well pull it back up onto the road.”
I took the towrope from the back of the Jeep, latched it to the bumper and handed him the other end. Rusty attached it to his Explorer, and then pulled the Jeep gently from the edge and back onto the road. The Jeep sat crooked across the narrow dirt road so I got in and straightened it to let other cars pass.
“I better drive it home. You know what’ll happen if a ranger finds it here. Kelly or Paul would have a fit.” Kelly and Paul were the two rangers I knew best: Paul worked at the station I checked into on my many treks into the wilderness, and Kelly was Rusty’s friend. I’d tracked him down when he went missing in the spring and we kind of kept in touch through Rusty.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said to Rusty, “I swear, tomorrow I’ll go buy a winch for the Jeep.”
“Then when would I see you?”
“Very funny, you can see me whenever you want.”
“Then how about going out to dinner with me?”
“Sure, what kind of dinner?”
“I don’t know. Surprise me.”
“Surprise you?”
“Yeah, surprise me.”
“I can’t surprise you. Nothing ever surprises you. The only thing that would surprise you would be if I wore a dress.”
“Okay, don’t surprise me. Wear that dress you wore for your birthday party.”
“You want to go out for that kind of dinner?”
“I don’t care about dinner. It’s just a side of you I don’t get to see very often.”
We got into our cars and he followed me back to town before splitting off to return home to change. I didn’t know what he was going to change into. He was already wearing a sports coat and slacks. I, on the other hand, was covered head to toe in mountain dirt and sweat. And he wanted me to go out to dinner in a dress? I wondered if he knew how much he was asking. Asking me to put on a dress was like asking a wrestler to wear a tutu in the ring. There was only a handful of people I’d dress up for and even fewer occasions. Dinner was not one of them, unless Rusty asked.
I rushed home, brought Shadow into the house and took a quick shower and shaved my legs. I put on the evil panty hose and the dainty slip and pulled the dress over my head and felt the slightly slinky, clingy material settle into just the right places. I looked in the mirror at the stranger that looked back at me. I curled my hair and put on make-up and wore the matching pumps my mother had made me buy. I put on a little lip gloss and then paced nervously. I could fight. I could wrestle skittish horses. I could hike to the ends of the earth and back, but put me in a dress and I was a nervous wreck.
The doorbell rang and Shadow barked at it excitedly. I opened the door timidly and Rusty stepped in. He had changed to a different suit and he’d put a tie
