"Yes."
She sprayed his arms and neck.
"Can you get my back also? They love me there, too, for some reason."
"Millie?" Lourdes asked.
"No thank you. They don't bother me."
"Oaky." Lourdes sprayed her own arms and neck.
"Tonight," Millie said, checking the app on her phone, "it looks like We're having some awards and presentations. The Cub folks? And later, a barbershop chorus?"
"Like a barbershop quartet?" Lourdes asked.
"I guess so," Millie said.
"I love that. Like the one in The Music Man? How charming."
"Lovely," Mike agreed.
Jim moved his hand over to hold Lourdes' hand.
Lourdes felt herself arouse again. She looked at Jim before she could stop herself. She didn't want to display in front of others, but it had been so long for her, since she felt anything for anyone, and much longer since anyone had felt anything real for her.
She noticed Millie had caught her look at Jim-and that Millie had then noticed her embarrassment.
"Me, too," Millie said in comfort. She leaned against Mike.
"When are you two gonna do it," Lourdes asked Millie, to redirect attention.
"When we get back to the motor home," Mike said.
Millie hit him on the leg. "Marry," she said to Mike, then to Lourdes, "When we get back home to Greenhills. No reason to wait. Life is too short."
"That's right," Mike said in one of his few sincere moments.
Jim, ever so gently, squeezed Lourdes' hand slightly more, moving his hand as well briefly along her leg.
Lourdes responded to him. She tried not to move for fear it would show, but she didn't know how to contain it.
Jim's shirt was open at the collar, and she could see part of his chest. He was clean-shaven. He smelled like heaven. His jawline-
She squeezed Jim's hand, also.
The tent is right over there, she thought before she could stop herself.
But she had Millie here, whose friendship she also needed.
Lourdes reached over and held Millie's hand also, yet for support-who seemed to understand with a knowing smile.
CHAPTER 25
The dawn sunlight shone brilliantly over Runway Three Six to light the bellies of planes and the bottom half of Lourdes' tent.
The weather had been perfect the night before, but they had no idea because they slept so soundly.
Lourdes woke to see Jim sleeping beside her, the two of them barely covered with the corner of her sleeping bag. She lifted his right arm and moved to lie on his shoulder, laying his arm behind her.
His whiskers had grown out again. It was morning.
He stirred and stretched a little, keeping her on his shoulder, and moved his left hand over her left breast.
"I guess we've gone and done something now," Lourdes said. "Look at this." She moved her hand over the scant hair on his chest, but it was the situation she was referring to.
Jim waited a few seconds to reply. "Yes, I guess we have."
"I don't know where this will go, but I do have to say I'm into you," she said. "How do you just meet someone and fall in love-"
She caught herself. "How could I say that after only five days?"
He squeezed her tight and kissed her warmly on the lips, letting his hands wander.
She loved his kiss and even his scratchy whiskers. She explored his lips with her teeth, then her eyes widened.
Lourdes placed her hand on top of his hand to hold him still. "Stay here," she pleaded to him.
"I'm in love with you, Lourdes," Jim said seriously, kissing her eyes, rolling her onto her back to explore some more.
Lourdes couldn't stop herself responding to him.
"And thank God for that," Jim said.
They stood on the grass, under trees, by the wooden siding of a small building, holding each other close, brushing their lips together. They couldn't get enough of each other.
People passed by and noticed, sharing large smiles and making cute comments. Pilots are a life-loving bunch.
But Lourdes and Jim heard none of it.
Lourdes phone rang.
Jim's phone rang.
What phones?
It was right. It happened. They were into each other. They had each other. And the world could handle itself.
He moved her around the corner of the building and kissed her again.
"Get a room," someone called playfully.
"Young love," a young man in his eighties said as he and a friend walked by.
Jim took her hand. "I know you don't know me well, but I think I know your heart. And I certainly know mine."
"Okay," Lourdes said.
"Come with me," he said.
He lead her by the hand through a maze of light general aviation aircraft on display by vendor booths, emerging in Show Center, near Wittman Road-the small, north-south frontage road for the airshow that parallels Taxiway Poppa and Runway Three Six-in front of a spotlessly restored 1937 cabin Waco biplane, with a gaggle of other people standing by it admiring the workmanship.
He looked around. "This is it," he said to Lourdes. "We're right here in the middle of the show, in sight of everything-one of the places our hearts belong."
"Yes," she said.
"Hold that thought," he said. He held her shoulders for a second to anchor her into that spot.
Lourdes stayed.
He fished in his shirt pocket for a tiny wild flower.
"Where did you get that?" she asked.
He smiled at her and gave it to her with a gentle kiss. "I'm doing romantic things, here, Hon. Nice when that happens in life."
She accepted both kindly.
"Lourdes, there is no way we can get to know each other well in a few days. And this environment is artificial for us. It's beautiful, but neither one of us actually lives at an airshow. We might behave differently at another setting, around a lot of other folks, with different things going on. I know that."
She followed him easily. That was all a given.
"But on the other hand, I also know my heart. I know how important and rare love is when it happens. And I know the mistakes people can make when they don't share their feelings, and I won't let that happen to us. So, Lourdes-"
Her eyes widened as she realized what he was doing.
"I'm in love with you."
Her heart raced.
"I have been since we met."
He looked into her eyes. "So I need to ask you in the kindest, simplest, and most direct way I know how." He paused to look at her and continued softly. "Will you marry me? Will you come to Greenhills and be my wife?"
Lourdes melted. She was in shock, entirely unable to think.
He kissed her, held her briefly and then looked in her eyes to ask her again.
She looked up at him.
He looked back with a smile.
Lourdes said nothing for a while letting her thoughts coalesce, until she blurted her feelings out.
"Are you kidding me?" she asked too loudly. "Marry you?"
His face changed to shock.
Everybody around them heard and stopped to stare-surprise on some, half a smile on others.
Realizing her multiple mistakes, Lourdes turned quickly and walked away in shame, north up Wittman Road.
He followed her into the outdoor patio area of the Vicki Cruse Educational Pavilion, a large, covered patio, at the International Aerobatics Club.
She turned on him hard by one of the patio tables, without sitting down, and scolded him in a loud whisper: "You don't know me very well, Jim. I have severe trust issues. This rapid stuff doesn't fit for me. Five days I know you!"
"What a coincidence!" he said.
She looked around to see if she was drawing attention to herself again.
"You're good looking." She leaned in so she could be quieter. "You're good in bed- But you scare me."
He smiled.
"Who the hell are you?" she scolded. "Thi
s is too fast! Disaster. For all I know you're a vampire or a warewolf or something."
"I know! It's too soon. But it's the way I feel," he said, smiling again, "and I think you feel that way, too-and I don't want to lose you after this airshow! I don't know where you live. You don't even know where you live-"
"People like us," she said, "we like to jump the gun too fast. We're so lonely inside we jump into relationships too fast, and then they don't work out and erupt, a net gain in pain, and then we wonder why we're so hurt inside-up and down our emotions go like a roller coaster, rarely taking the time to find someone who really fits us. This is wrong, Jim."
His smile dropped again.
"And me? I'm a basket case. You know I'm messed up." She ran her hands through her hair into a pony tail that wasn't there, turned around in frustration darting at unknown paths of escape.
He looked around. "Please. Sit down here? It's a nice patio." He leaned in to her so he could be quieter. "No one's listening to us."
He sat down, and she reluctantly followed in a huff.
"This is wrong?" he asked. "When was the last time you felt something like this in your heart, if ever? Don't hurry up and grab happiness? I didn't ask for this life, Lourdes, but it's here, and I'm trying to deal with it!"
"It's probably infatuation," she said.
"Haven't we spent long enough away from each other? Alone?" he continued. "And then if you were to come down there and you find out that I really do run a vampire cult that fences stolen jewelry, you can leave."
Lourdes put her face in her hands, then ran her hands through her hair again, letting it fall afterward where it may.
"You don't know me?" he asked. "Call your parents and tell them the details. So if you wind up dead in a ditch somewhere, the law will come after me. Take my picture on your phone and send it to them."
"I already did, but it was really to share. I like to pretend they care. I'm not worried about that kind of thing," she admitted to him. "I'm worried about jumping into something too fast that looks great this week, but hurts next week. It's foolish. Better to take it slow and see if it develops."
"Slow? Until when? We're at an airshow," he said.
She said nothing.
"So you're starving, but you don't want a nourishing meal."
"No, I'm starving, but I don't want to grab at just anything because it might be bad for me."
"Fair enough. Normally. But you know better than that, this time. You don't give yourself to people easily. Years go by, you keep yourself apart. You're so overly self-protective, probably there have been dozens of relationships you could have pursued that you didn't because you feared they'd turn out painfully. You'd rather starve than risk it? So you find yourself starving to death-you even blow off your home town and leave everything because it gets too you too much. Then you find yourself here with me."
His smile was slight but knowing.
"This," he indicated the two of them, "has developed between us," Jim said, touching her arm.
Her arm tingled.
"You feel that, I know. And we don't have a lot of time. We take a chance on love. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't. But it can't, if we don't give it a try."
"I marry you," she said in practical summation, "I divorce you. I take half your farm 'cause you're so na?ve. And then I sell it because it turns out I'm the real thief."
"Then we get a prenuptual, so we meter things out to you in grades over the years we're married-"
"Your hair is thinning on top."
"You're five pounds over-weight."
Other people noticed.
"Oh!" she groaned and got up to leave again.
He turned her back, still on Vicki's patio, speaking forcefully whether people were watching or not. "Okay! Then we don't marry-but you know where I'm coming from!"
Everyone was watching now.
"You come down to Greenhills, anyway, and live with me-"
The look on her face showed that idea wasn't getting any better.
Jim, always good with an audience, turned to the others on the patio. "What do you say, people? Should she give our love a chance?"
"Yes!" came the unanimous reply from a dozen of them, this drama temporarily more important than everything else.
Lourdes, uncharacteristically, replied back to them. "I've only known him a week!"
"So what!" they called out.
"Big deal!"
"I knew my wife three years-and look what that got me!"
"If you're married, you have an excuse to run around!" the guys joked.
Lourdes left the patio and steamed through aerobatic planes on the lawns of the I.A.C., unwittingly toward the Cub they'd enjoyed with Heath.
He caught up to her.
"I'll keep asking you until you give in or leave, because I do know my heart. I do love you. This is not an airshow crush," he told her affirmatively. "Stay in a different bedroom! Ha, like that'd work. You'd be in my room all the time or I'd be in yours. And then the day comes you don't like it any more? Or it turns out I'm a controlling ass, you go out to your plane and fly away-gone-no different than you are, now.
"We-" He held her shoulders, "We do have rocky lives."
Her glare indicated let go of me.
He did, but continued, "I know that. Maybe we're not the best emotionally prepared to face all our needs in love. We do have loneliness a lot-but we're not prepared to deal with that, either, are we!" He put his hand on his chest. "I deal with loneliness better when I'm with someone."
"Witty."
"Thank you.
"We need to struggle to find a way to make life work," he said, "because if we don't, we're not living. We gain ourselves at some point, but then for what? To live in isolation right there among people who pretend they care when they don't? And you, from L.A., ought to know better than most: You can be surrounded by millions of people and be totally alone-maybe even made worse because you have so many people around you, constantly reminding you that you don't have anyone."
He looked in her eyes as if pleading for her to understand.
Lourdes responded quietly, slowly, looking around. "True. True," she said. "But," there was an angry look in her eye. "pardon me if I ask, for clarification on something?"
"Shoot."
She waited for a second before asking: "'We' what?"
He looked at her questioningly. "Still doing the 'different' thing?"
"Yes."
"How long?" he asked.
"Always," she answered.
"Even if you love me?"
"If I loved a Republican, and even if I also agreed we need better fiscal responsibility, I'd still claim it's different to be a Democrat," she said.
He rubbed his hand through his short hair and exhaled in exasperation.
"It's a continuum," he said.
"We did that one, already," she said, trying to remain patient-easier to do, now that she knew she loved him. "I think it is between Republicans and Democrats, also. Arrange all persons side-by-side and you can't tell the difference in views from one person to the next."
"They're different parties," he said. "I don't want to be called a Republican, either."
"And males and females are different sexes," she responded. "And sex and gender are different things, when we're talking about what you physically are."
A passerby seemed to begin to overhear. Without a hitch, Lourdes noted to Jim loud enough for the man to hear, "So, if you put Taylorcraft wings on this Cub, it'll still be a modified Cub."
The passerby smiled in confusion at the "hangar flying" and kept walking.
"Nice segue," Jim said.
"Thank you."
Jim had accidentally reached out and held onto the wing strut of the Cub and jerked his hand back, because he shouldn't touch another person's plane without permission.
"Look," she said. "I-" Lourdes looked around, thinking more than looking. She looked down at her purse as well, then back to Jim, taking a breath for stre
ngth. "I think you're thinking this is all just my own eccentricity, that I'm not enlightened or something, because I say such things that don't fit your weltanshauung." She paused for a second, considering again, as this was farther outside her comfort range. "Do you still have keys to Mike's Prius?"
Lourdes and Jim got out of the Prius. Jim touched the sensor on the door handle to lock it, and they walked across the street to the beautiful Polk Library.
"I love college campuses," Jim said.
"I do, too," Lourdes agreed. "I don't know why. I think they feel like a bit of a retreat for me. But I know I like the air of learning. They're like hospitals for ideas, where old ideas go to get better, or die."
"The Paradigm is strongly correlated with universities," Jim said.
"And tens of thousands of hospital errors occur each year, too," she countered. "So they need to keep trying." She gave him a curt smile.
The clerk on the first floor Circulation Department greeted them with a smile.
"Hello," Lourdes began. "We're here with the airshow-"
"Oh, yes, Welcome to Oshkosh," the clerk said, rounding her "Os" in a comfortable northern accent.
"-and I'm a nurse from U.C.L.A.-"
"What a lovely area."
"I find I need to do a little research, here, with my colleague," Lourdes said, indicating Jim, "So I thought I'd ask if I could come over here and borrow a terminal or something? To get on the internet a while?"
"Oh," the clerk thought for just a second. "Yes. I think that would be fine. I can- You can use a terminal on the second floor. Here's a guest sign-in."
Lourdes and Jim sat before a terminal. Lourdes quietly scanned the internet looking for information to support things she'd been saying. "Due to the Paradigm's massive marketing effort for its social issues," she whispered to him, "there's tons of stuff that you'd recognize. But I thought I'd just show you a little bit of what tends to get overlooked, so you can see that I'm not making all this stuff up on my own."
Jim quietly sat beside her reading material she found.
"Ok," Lourdes said, speaking quietly into his ear. "Here you see the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists referencing Ekins and King saying that Virginia Prince, Ph.D., coined the term 'transgenderism' which was about, in effect, changing social gender, even acquiring secondary sex characteristics, but not intending to change sex with genital reconstructive surgery. Dr. Prince lived that way and brought it out into the open- You think society's difficult now? In the second half of the 20th Century, I personally knew 'professionals' who thought folks should be committed to a mental institution for it, and discrimination was off the charts. Dr. Prince really forged ahead with the strength of an ice breaker, and I agree with a lot she said.