Midsummer-Night's Dreaming Ch. 03

Now obviously smug, Puck said, "I like to know my partners." He held his hands up and shrugged. "Before I approached you, I looked into your life."

"Well, you should have been able to tell I'd make a lousy partner."

"On the contrary," Puck said, "your talents are exactly what I need." He turned away, but looked back over his shoulder and smiled. "And, yes, you will be rewarded."

* * * * * *

Puck had left that night once he was satisfied with their agreement, but Dash was exhausted. The fairy had been mercurial through the whole discussion, and many time Dash felt as if he was skating on the edge of receiving another of Puck's magical tantrums. It was as much a treaty as a contract, but Dash agreed to produce a series of articles about the need to maintain the ecological purity of the valley for local publicity. He also would write a series of appeals to a long list of environmental groups, from the American Bird Conservancy to the Wilderness Society, to enlist them in the cause. Puck had not mentioned a dollar figure, for Dash's help but at that point, Dash did not want to get into a debate over numbers.

Happily Dash found he could now write as easily as in his pre-divorce days when his words had just flowed. While he did a lot of work for Puck, he made considerable progress on two other projects he had already started. He also began the work of looking for a new agent, but what really gave Dash hope was the number of new ideas that popped into his head for short stories, articles, screen plays - all sorts of new works. In fact he set aside time after supper each evening to start a file of notes of project ideas, characters, plot concepts, and anything else that had come to him while he had worked on other things during the day.

Ten days after Puck's visit, right in the middle of one of his evening note taking sessions, there was a knock at the door. Dash looked up from his computer and sighed. He hadn't seen Puck since the night of their agreement, and he didn't need the aggravation tonight. He went back to work.

A moment later there was another knock at the door, and this one was louder and more prolonged. "Yeah, give me a minute," Dash called. He closed his laptop and got to his feet. "I don't need this," he muttered to himself. He opened the door. A woman stood smiling on his porch. She was almost as tall as Dash, attractive with a dark complexion and long dark hair. She wore a down vest over a flannel shirt which hid her figure, but her blue jeans tucked into bright red Doc Martens showed her legs were long and slim.

Puck had sent him another woman. Ridiculous. "I really don't need this," he said to her and slammed the door. He hadn't taken one step back towards his chair when the door reverberated with a heavy thud. Then another. And another. The door jumped in its frame with each blow from her heavy boots.

"Open up, you jackass! Open this mother-fuckin' door before I kick it in and beat on your skinny little ass." Dash hesitated torn between the demands of courtesy and fear of the tigress outside. "Damn it," she continued, "Puck said you could be thick headed, but I'll stick my can of mace up your butt if you don't open this God." Kick. "Damned!" Kick. "Door!!" Kick. Kick.

Cautiously, Dash eased the door open, timing it between kicks. She stood on his porch glowering at him. "Puck?" he asked cautiously.

The woman took a breath, smiled sweetly at him, and extended a card she took from a breast pocket. "Maria Ramirez, attorney at law, and at your service, Mr. Ressel. May I come in?"

Dash looked stupidly at the card. It had her name followed by a bunch of letters he didn't bother to try to puzzle out, but what caught his attention was the Washington DC address. He looked up at her. "You're from Washington?"

"And I'm here to help - yeah, that old line." She picked up a briefcase beside her and pushed past him into the cabin. "If we are going to fight this whole fracking deal, we're going to need help from at least three government agencies, maybe more - not to mention the courts. Time to bring in the big guns." She looked back at Dash who stood there speechless holding the door. "Well? Are we going to get to work?"

Carefully, Dash closed the door as his thought processes began to catch up with the situation, and he thought of an immediate concern. "Look, I could use some help on this, but there is no way I can afford to pay a lawyer."

"Don't worry, Mr. Ressel," she said retrieving her card from his hand, "that's all taken care of. Our firm does a yearly quota of 'pro-bono' work, and you and the good fairy are the beneficiaries."

"Your firm approved pro-bono work on behalf of Puck?"

For the first time she appeared a little uncertain. "Although I responded to his initial request, all of my work will be done on behalf of the Sager Valley Protection Committee, a tax-exempt organization created for the sole purpose of protecting the environment in the Sager Valley aquifer." She finished with a nod of confidence then looked around. "This is your base of operations?"

Immediately defensive, Dash said, "This cabin has been in our family for years, and yes, I'm living here now."

"Okay," she said slowly still looking around. Finally she took off her vest and tossed it at the couch. "Let's see what you've got, big guy, and I'll show you where I'm taking this on the legal end."

For the next hour they poured over the preliminary work they had both done. Maria was coolly professional, and Dash tried to match her businesslike approach. He asked her to call him Dash, and she smiled distantly and called him, "Mr. Ressel." However, Dash's lizard brain couldn't help but notice the thin, sharply lined planes of her face and lovely eyes. Her lustrous long dark hair caught the light as she pulled it back from her face. She had on jeans and a flannel shirt, but the jeans fit her like a glove and had swirls of elaborate embroidery - Levi Strauss had never designed anything like this. The flannel shirt, too, was tailored and trimmed in that understated way that said, "money." Dash sighed to himself. Maria was and extremely attractive woman, but her darkly dramatic eyes, while not quite contemptuous, were definitely chilly. Plus, he had already seen her temper. Dash matched her coolly professional pose.

Finally Maria stood up, picked up her organized stack of folders, and put them in her brief case. "Well, let's wrap this up for tonight. I have to check in to my hotel room by 8:00, but we can get back at it tomorrow."

"Where are you planning to stay?"

She speared him with a glance that seemed to challenge his right to know, but she said, "Marshfield. I've got a room at the Marriot."

"Okay," Dash said, "but that's about a two-hour drive from here."

"Two hours? Bullshit!" Maria pulled out her cell phone and with a few deft flips of her thumb, she held up a map. "Marshfield. Fifteen miles."

Dash smiled. "Check the drive time. It's on the other side of Indian Ridge. The most direct way is about sixty miles, and most of that is back roads where you can't make any time." She went back to the phone, but Dash went on. "Did you come in through Wilsonville?"

She nodded absently.

"Did you see Cecil's Motor Hotel?"

Now Maria looked at him. "Yeah. Sort of, anyway." She made a face. "But that's an hour away and it didn't look..."

"Cecil is about as good as it gets around here. You'd better get started, too, because it will take even longer on these winding country roads after dark."

She sighed. "Well, shit, fuck, and ass-boogers!"

Ass-boogers? Dash made a mental note to use that in a story sometime. "Look, Ms Ramirez, if you really need a place to stay, I've got an extra bedroom." He held up his hands at her dark look. "Yeah, yeah. I hear you already, but if you need a place to stay, it's got a better mattress than Cecil's Hot-Sheet Hotel, and we will have more time to work during the day. No tricks." She was still scowling at him, so he added, "...and that will get your pro-bono work done all the quicker."

"Show me," she said finally.

The spare room was spare. Dash used it to store some of his files and some other unneeded junk, but it had a bed - and a door that locked. He took a couple of boxes of stuff out to the shed to make more room after Maria agreed to stay. "One thing you do have to do," he said and rushed to finish the thought before she bit his head off, "you have to go get your own groceries. I've got enough on hand to last me through the weekend when I go to the Food-Boy in Wilsonville, but if you are going to eat here, you've got to get your own food."

Since there was only one bathroom, they had to make a few awkward compromises, but Maria settled in - grudgingly, perhaps, but settle she did. The next day she pounded on Dash's bedroom door early in the morning. "Hey, I want to go running. Where should I go?"

"How far are you going?" he called as he rolled out of bed. He pulled on his robe, ran his fingers through his hair, and opened the door. She stood there with her slim, brown legs revealed below her fluorescent green running shorts and her ample breasts blunted beneath a bright red jog-bra. Her midriff was bare, and Dash thought her navel winked at him but decided he was still fuzzy with sleep.

She pointed at the GPS unit on her wrist. "This is my day for a ten-mile run. What's good?"

"Stay off the highway. Some of the local yahoos think it's great sport to chase runners into the ditch." She made a face. "Yeah," he said, "but that's the way it is. You could drive back to Wilsonville and run in their park, but I usually just run up the Sager Trace. There's a connection to the main tail just down the road from the end of the drive."

"You run too?" she asked showing the first bit of personal curiosity about him.

"I used to run a lot, but I got away from it for a while." Yeah, he thought, while I tried to drink himself into oblivion over Marcy, it was a little hard to get up and out in the morning. "Lately I've been trying to get back into it." He yawned. His butt itched, but he refrained from scratching in front of her. "I'll slip over and do about a mile after bit. You can't get lost. Just follow the sign to the Trace and turn right."

She went out the door without another word, and Dash got himself around for his run. About twenty minutes later he trotted down the gravel track from the cabin to the road. He settled into a comfortable pace and enjoyed the morning scenery. Around a curve in the trail he spotted a flash of fluorescent green and a few strides later he saw Maria sitting on the trail clutching her right ankle.

He stopped beside her and looked down. "Trouble?"

"No," she snapped. "I was just admiring a tamias straitus along the side of the path." She looked at him darkly still holding her ankle.

"The chipmunk didn't bite you did it?"

For a moment she looked at him appraisingly, then she gestured at her leg. "I rolled my ankle," she said in more normal tones.

"Let me see." Dash bent down beside her. Her ankle looked a little puffy. He gestured towards it with his hand. "May I?" he asked and waited for her to allow him to touch it. She nodded, and he prodded it gently noticing her wince. "Looks like a sprain, and I'll bet it hurts."

"I don't suppose the EMS makes runs out here."

"Did you hear that, Chip?" Dash said addressing an imaginary chipmunk at the edge of the wood. "I think Ms. Ramirez is being ironic." He stood up and offered her a hand. "I'm afraid I'm as good as you are going to get. Let me help get you back to the cabin."

He saw her hesitation before she reached out and took his hand. After he pulled her to her feet, she tentatively put a little weight on her right foot. "I can't walk on this," she said.

Sighing to himself for what could happen next, he said, "Lean on me. Let me take some of the weight, and we'll get you back to the cabin." She looked at him but didn't move. "Look," he said. "I could go back to the cabin for my car, but I can't get it onto the trail at all. Either let me help you," he couldn't repress a little smile, "or crawl."

She put a hand on his shoulder and took a careful step and winced. "Here," he said moving in to put his shoulder under her arm. "Put your hand on my other shoulder and put your weight on me." They both adjusted things until they managed a joint hobbling motion down the trail. "Sort of like the old three-legged race at the county fair, huh?" Dash quipped.

Maria said nothing, but Dash was ever so aware of her body where she leaned and bumped against him. He could smell her as well as feel her. Her skin was moist with perspiration, and she had a light, musky scent. Dash forced himself to concentrate on matching her steps so she didn't stumble on her injured ankle. "Don't think of her as a woman," he told himself - but it was an impossible task.

There was no traffic on the road, and they hobbled across towards the mailbox. With one thing and another, he hadn't gotten the mail yesterday, and he retrieved it now while Maria leaned on the mailbox. Dash caught motion out of the corner of his eye, and he looked down the road to where Jennifer was putting out the Westfall's trash for pickup. He tentatively raised his hand to wave hoping to catch her eye if she looked this way, but she never did. Disappointed Dash turned back to find Maria looking at him closely. "What?" he said.

"Who was that?"

Dash looked back down the road. Jennifer had disappeared. "Just the neighbor lady." He held the mail in his one hand while he took Maria's arm, and they started up the drive to the cabin.

"Bull and shit," she stated baldly. "There was something there, wasn't there? You looked like a lost puppy there for a moment." Dash didn't say anything, and she probed again. "Too lonely up in the hills?"

"It wasn't anything like that," he stated.

"But there was something, wasn't there?"

Poking and prodding on the way back to the cabin and after, Maria gradually drew out the whole story of Puck's contact with him and the events that followed. She sat in his chair with her feet up while Dash filled two zippered freezer bags with ice. He wrapped a towel around her injured ankle and placed it on top of one of the bags then placed the other bag on top of her ankle. Her questioning continued the whole time, and by now she had dug into deeply into how Marcy had dumped him for her Pilates trainer and cut him off from contact with his daughter.

Finally Dash looked around and realized he had been sitting beside Maria for a long time pouring his heart out. Embarrassed, he realized he had been crying and wiped his face and snuffed his nose. "Sorry to go on so long like that." He snuffed again and stood up and sighed. "Guess you must be a real bear in the courtroom, huh?" he said with a weak little laugh.

"Cross Examination - 101." She looked down. "Look, Dash, I'm sorry I got carried away and pried into your personal affairs so deeply." She shrugged. "I guess sometimes I can't help myself."

"Nah, it's okay," he said. "How about I fix some breakfast? You want any of my raisin bran?" He did not fail to notice she had finally called him by his first name.

"That would be great, and I really am sorry."

Dash puttered around the kitchen getting the cereal ready and realized he felt better after spilling his guts all over Maria. "You know, if this lawyer thing doesn't work out, you could always get work as a therapist."

She blushed. "Thank you. I guess that's another field for the naturally nosey."

* * * * * *

Over the next two weeks they worked hard together on the Sager Valley project. Maria could do most of her work from the cabin, but twice she had to make the two-hour drive to Marshville, the county seat. In a few days the swelling in her ankle went away, and she started running again. She even allowed Dash to accompany her for the first part of her runs as he started to work himself back into shape.

Early one afternoon Maria was critiquing Dash's draft of a follow up piece to his article which had run a week ago in the Louisville Courier Journal when there was a knock at the door. Dash got up to answer it and found a tall, powerfully built middle-aged man standing there.

Before Dash could say a word, the man took Dash's hand in a firm grip. "Mr. Ressel? Seth Hawk here. I wanted to talk to you about those newspaper articles I've been seeing. Can I come in?" Without waiting for an answer he pushed his way into the cabin. As soon as he saw Maria, he said, "And Ms. Ramirez! So nice to see you again. I think the last time I saw you was at that Senate hearing advising a group of fisherman while they testified about their by-catch taken in the Gulf?" He dropped Dash's hand and went over to Maria where he took her hand in his, not to shake it, but to pull her closer so he could give her a hug. "I didn't know you were involved in this."

"Mr. Hawk," she said, "I'm surprised to see you in Kentucky."

He held her in the embrace too long before he released her and stepped back. "You shouldn't be. And, please - it's Seth. " Hawk said. "I always try to keep an eye on my projects - especially ones that generate controversy." He looked at Dash. "I especially wanted to meet the person who could stir up the Nature Conservancy that much." He finally let Maria out of his grasp, but he kept his attention focused on her. "Hey, I would like to see a little of this Sager Valley. My truck's right outside. How would you like to show me around?"

Dash could tell Hawk's 'you' did not include him. "Hey," he mocked Hawk's tone, "if Maria wants to show you around, go ahead. I've got some writing to get finished up."

Hawk turned to look at him, "Nothing to do with my project, I hope."

"Oh, no," Dash lied. "Just a screenplay I'm working on."

"A screenplay, huh? Hey, maybe if I can coax you to play ball with me, maybe I could run that by some people I know over at Universal Studios. We own a piece of them, you know." Dash hadn't known, but he wasn't about to trust Hawk with any of his work.

Hawk had the persuasive powers of a freight train, and within moments he had Maria out the door. Dash heard the doors slam, the engine start, and they were gone. "Well, wasn't that something?" he said out loud, but he did not give voice to the very real disappointment that Maria had been so easily swept away. Then again, she was a big girl as she had proved to Dash more than once.

He sat down with his laptop. He was really crafting a letter to the Environmental Defense Fund, but... The words wouldn't come. What had he been going to say? He got up and walked to the window and stared out into the forest beyond. He heard his clock chime, and suddenly he realized he had been standing there for fifteen minutes. Huh. Back to work. Calling up the letter he had sent the last time, he tweaked a few words then read the result. It still sounded like a form letter.

It was 5:00 before he heard the sound of the truck again. After the doors slammed, he heard them on the porch, then Maria led the way into the cabin. As they walked into the living area, Dash saw Hawk had his hand familiarly at Maria's waist.

"So what do you say, Maria," Hawk said, "will you think about joining our team?"

It didn't surprise Dash that Hawk had wasted no time in trying to break up their operation, however, the fact that he had waited to make the final offer until Dash was present, signaled to Dash that Hawk wanted Dash to know what a 'big, swinging dick' Hawk had.

Maria turned to Hawk and smiled. "I'm certainly impressed by the offer."

"Well, I've seen your work around Washington, and I have to admit I'm impressed. We certainly can offer you more than Halley, Smithe, and Rose - say 50% more?"

"Now that could really turn a girl's head," Maria said, but Dash detected a little warning simper in her tone. "But it really wouldn't be appropriate right now would it? I'm mean, we are going to be on opposite sides in court..."