Saturday Evening

"I'm sure that I can teach you," smiled Maria as dinner drew near to a close.

They cleaned up and Maria made a plate for Steve to take home, then she disappeared into her bedroom and changed into her swimsuit while Steve carried their wine and glasses out to the patio. "I can't wait to see what you did with the pool," she said as she crutched out to the patio. The sun had set but the heat of the day was still on them. "I love this time of day," she sighed as Steve set up deck chairs near the edge of the pool. "It's nice and hot but the sun isn't blazing."

"Ok, check this out," said Steve as he went to a switch panel. The underwater lights came on, then the feature wall started gurgling then a waterfall splashed into the pool, lights hidden in the rock work illuminated the trickling water and there were plants growing in the nooks and crannies of the feature wall. It had been so long since those lights worked that she forgot that they were there.

"How wonderful! What did you do to it? And the plants! Where did you get them?"

"I just cleaned a few electrical connections and fixed a broken hose; the plants all came from your neighbor's garden."

"You stole plants from a neighbor's garden?" she was laughing now.

"They were growing over your fence. Stolen plants grow the best, everyone knows that, including Mrs. Weberman."

"My neighbor Mrs. Weberman?"

"Yeah, she's cool, I pretended not to watch while she grabbed some cuttings off of your plants and I returned the favor. She's from Wisconsin and she knows the golden rule about stolen plants."

Maria sagged into her chair shaking her head, "In a few hours you brought my pool back to life."

I'm going to do the same for you, thought Steve. The evening was sweltering hot, the music on the stereo was intoxicating, and the wine was delicious. Against her loudest complaints Steve eased Maria into the pool and they sat on the underwater benches, drank wine, and talked.

"What's your favorite color?" Maria asked.

"I was thinking about that the other day," said Steve. "Up north there's a tree called the tamarack. It's a pine tree that every year sheds it's needles and every spring they come back in such a brilliant, bright green that it's almost painful to look at on a sunny day. I love that green, it's probably called neon green but I'm going to call it Tamarack Green. And you? What's your favorite color?"

"Gold," said Maria showing off the golden necklace she was wearing. "Any woman that doesn't say gold is thinking of diamonds or just isn't thinking." She sipped her wine and said, "Favorite pet?"

"I had an orange cat named Morris when I was a kid. For a cat, Morris was my dog. He didn't fetch, and he wasn't a hunter, at least not like a dog, but he was by my side for years and he would fight anything. Then one day I came home from school, and he wasn't there anymore. Mom said she saw him heading off to the woods like he always did, maybe he found himself something too big to fight. What was yours?"

"I grew up in Brooklyn..." she started.

"Like Captain America?"

Maria looked over at Steve who was grinning gleefully. "Just like Captain America," she muttered, "pour the wine. So, we couldn't have any big pets like a cat or a dog, but for years we had a blue parakeet named Budgie and he could talk. He could say "Son of a bitch" and he could say "Fuck the Yankees" because when my uncles stopped by to watch a game with my dad, that was all you could hear from them. Ok, who was your first crush?"

"Denice O'Rielly, we were in the same grade, and she lived maybe two miles from me. After the school bus dropped us off, we'd grab our .22 rifles, hop on our bikes, meet up at the old grain elevator, hunt squirrels, and shoot rats until it was dark. In the winter we went sledding down the side of the Buckeye Ravine and in the summer, we rode our bikes all day long. How about you?"

"Anthony Leone," smiled Maria. "He was a bad boy, went to juvie for something when he was twelve. He was so cool, like the Fonz."

"Like the... what?"

"The Fonz... Fonzie, from Happy Days," but Steve still looked confused. "Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli... Fonzie was the epitome of fifties cool, he was played by the most uncool person you would ever know, Henry Winkler. If you don't know Fonzie you'll never get it. I always thought that Anthony was at the bottom of the class because he was too cool to listen to the nuns. It turned out that he was just stupid. Don't laugh! He was cool and at that age cool covered over a lot of sins." Maria took a deep breath and sighed. "Who was your first real kiss?"

Steve nodded that he understood, a "real kiss" eliminated mom kisses and kisses from aunts at family parties. A "real kiss" signified a kiss from a girlfriend or some other lover. "It was Claudia Holtz, we kissed from the eighth grade to graduation. Then I marched off to basic training and found that she had slipped a Dear John letter in my jacket pocket for my reading entertainment on the flight to Fort Benning."

"Oh my god, that was horrible!"

Steve shrugged. "It kinda helped, she gave me the urge to kill. That came in handy in Afghanistan."

"Were you infantry? Armor?" she asked.

With a chuckle he said, "I went to Fort Benning for Officers Training School, I was a field medic, a physician's assistant so I got lieutenant's bars." Then sipping some wine, he asked, "Who was your first kiss, was it that Fonzie guy? Did ya kiss him?" He punctuated his question with a wag of his eyebrows.

"No, my first kiss was Giuseppe D'Amato, he took me to the prom, and we were inseparable after that. We weren't blessed with many children, so we gave all of our love to each other... I'm the one to give him his first and his last kisses."

"Oh lord, I'm sorry," said Steve, "if I had known I wouldn't have brought it up..."

"It's ok, it was a long time ago. I miss him dearly, but we've gone our separate ways, maybe we'll meet again. Stop frowning! I have had more fun tonight than I have had since I lost Giuseppe... I forgot how great it is to laugh."

"Yeah, but still," groaned Steve, "I should have asked what your favorite kink or something is."

"That's horrible! You nasty man... like I would ever admit that I enjoy spanking to you!" She looked at him waiting for the laugh that never came. "You look nervous Steve, what's wrong?"

He paused for a while playing with his wine glass then said, "We have a session Tuesday and Thursday at the hospital and I'm going to be therapist Anderson, and you are going to be client Mrs. D'Amato, and we're going to work hard and you're going to go home in pain, but that goes away soon, but..."

"But what?" asked Maria, but in her heart, she was begging Don't say it, don't say it, please don't say it!

"I'm going to miss Maria who sings when she cooks and laughs at my jokes, and I'm going to miss being Steve the handyman/gardener/pool boy until the next time Mrs. D'Amato lets me come and visit my friend Maria. It seems like that may be a long time away."

"Steve, darling," Maria turned her face to him and said sadly, "You should be looking for girls your own age, not some broken down old woman. We can be friends on occasion."

"You're right, women my age are girls, and I don't want a girl whose idea of cooking is ordering take-out. I want a woman that can laugh and cook and love doing both. And you... don't call yourself broken down until I say you are. I can have you walking here, tonight, without crutches or braces, in a matter of minutes."

Her melodious laughter rang through the night. "Walk?

"I guarantee it. Would a Yooper lie?"

"I don't even know what a Yooper is," Maria called in that cheerful laugh of hers. "I just call you that because that's what you say you are."

"A Yooper is someone who is from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the You Pee becomes Yooper."

She chuckled at the nickname then sighed, "and you're going to make me walk again."

"If you don't walk, I promise to weed that entire garden on the south side of your yard next weekend," said Steve bravely.

"And if I do?" Maria suspected that Steve was up to something.

"What more do you want lady? Ok, if you do walk, I'll thin out those bamboo clumps, maybe we can build a Gilligan's Island hut with all that bamboo, that would be cool." Her clumps of Bamboo were getting huge, they need cutting back.

"Deal! I need the bamboo cleared. What do I have to do?"

Steve stood and started walking around the pool. The pool was designed for adults to sit around and talk and drink and maybe swim a few lengths, there's a seat built into the side of the pool that goes around the pool at 16 inches below the edge of the pool while the floor of the pool changes depth. Steve found the right depth, memorized where he was, then he walked over to Maria. "Are you ready?" She nodded nervously and he scooped her up and carried her to the spot he found and said, "stand here." She looked nervously into those blue eyes of his and he said, "You can do it, you've proven to me that you can do this, now prove it to Maria."

Slowly she began to unfold, her legs straightening out and reaching for the pool floor, her glittering brown eyes locked onto his and soon her feet touched the bottom, and she was standing. Steve moved away carefully; he didn't want to make a current that threw her off balance. "You're standing, it's all you!"

"And a swimming pool!"

"Use the buoyancy as a tool like you used the braces and crutches and walk toward me."

And to her immense surprise she did.

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Since she became his patient, life has never been better for Steve. Every Tuesday and Thursday Mrs. D'Amato comes to the hospital for her physical therapy from Mr. Anderson. Every Wednesday when Maria was volunteering at the Humane Society, her pool boy and gardener came by to maintain the pool, gardens, and lawn, and every Saturday Maria's best friend Steve comes over for dinner and they talk and drink wine long into the night, quite often playing in the pool.

She never knows what to expect when Steve gets an idea in his head. She came home one evening and her pool shower was finally completed. Steve got his buddy at the VFW to plumb the simple cold water shower head, but then he split a piece of bamboo and hid the water pipe behind the bamboo ala Gilligan's Island. He used the rest of the bamboo to make a bamboo privacy wall around the shower.

One weekend at Steve's request, Maria made a picnic dinner and packed it up like they were going out for a picnic and brought it out to the picnic table by the pool. The patio has become their oasis ever since Steve installed a ceiling fan in the patio roof over her table and outdoor kitchen. "This looks awesome!" said Steve as he looked at the feast of cold fried chicken, potato salad, fruit salad, and Steve's favorite - roasted cherry tomato & goat cheese bruschetta. "Darling, this is perfect!" and instead of helping her sit down as usual, he started packing up dinner in a picnic hamper.

"What's happening?" asked Maria. "I thought you liked the dinner I made."

"It looks awesome!" said Steve. "I'm starving and I can't wait to try it. Let's go!"

"I don't understand," she said but she followed him around the house to his pick-up in the driveway and he placed the hamper in the back of the truck and helped her in the cab. "Where are we going?" she asked.

He climbed in the driver seat, started the truck, smiled and said, "On a picnic!"

"Wha...?"

"It's a beautiful park, you're going to love it."

Maria started to inspect Steve's truck, a glossy Ford F-150. "This is quite a truck," she noticed a plaque affixed to the dashboard with Arabic writing and asked, "A gift from an oil sheik?"

"There was a tiny province in Afghanistan that was overrun with every bad guy you could imagine, so the local law enforcement asked for my help, and I had a few spare bullets, and I found this waiting for me at home."

"It sounds like there's more to the both of us than what meets the eye," said Maria.

They drove up to Sebastian where at the north edge of town on Roseland Road there was a campground. Steve pulled into the campground and found the site that he had selected. The individual campsites were private, trees and bushes between the sites were thick and tall, separating the campsites insuring privacy. Rather than gravel, the floor of the campsites was a thick, soft bed of sand and Steve was tempted to get a tent, but Maria would never be able to sleep on the ground and get up in the morning.

Steve set up a four pole canopy over the picnic table and set her chair at the end of the table. Sitting on the bench of a wooden picnic table was a very difficult task for the raven haired beauty, Steve's job was to make life as simple and as easy as possible for her. As she sat in her chair at the end of the table, they enjoyed dinner while a campfire snapped and cracked in the fire ring next to the table. Campers out for their evening stroll would stop by to chat as Steve and Maria ate dinner.

"Are all campers this friendly?" asked Maria.

"In my experience they are," said Steve. "Somewhere in my collection I have a flag that says, "Coffee's On." My folks would hang that in front of our trailer in the morning when we were camping and folks out for their morning stroll would stop in for a cup of coffee."

As the sun set Steve got another folding chair for him out of the truck and he and Maria sat by the fire inviting campers to join them. Eventually a dozen people from all over the United States brought a chair over and sat around Steve and Maria's campfire swapping stories of campouts long gone by. Steve told stories of camping in the woods up in the "Yoo Pee" while others talked about South Dakota and Mt. Rushmore, Arizona and the Grand Canyon, or Northern California and Yosemite.

Finally, someone asked Maria if she had any camping stories. "Just one," she said. "A friend stopped by for dinner one afternoon and asked me to make a picnic dinner, as I made the picnic dinner, he set out the paper plates and cups on my patio table. When dinner was ready, he packed everything up including me and here we are."

The laughter was contagious, and eventually someone asked Steve, "what are you going to do when they want to rent out this site?"

"I rented this site for the evening; they'll have to wait for checkout before they can kick us out."

"You rented a camp site to take me on a picnic?" asked Maria, startled to hear his admission.

"Well... yes. The picnic shelters at the state parks get so crowded and I didn't want to be interrupted," said Steve, causing their new friends around the campfire to chuckle and nod in agreement. As they laughed Steve leaned over and gave Maria a gentle kiss on the lips. She wasn't aware of the kiss until after it happened, it was so sweet, so automatic, she just responded naturally and returned his kiss like she did a thousand times with Giuseppi, and when it was over she sat gazing in the fire, feeling the caress of his lips on hers.

It was a couple of hours later when some of the folks started heading back to their own campsites that Maria realized that she and Steve were holding hands and they had been all evening long. "Do you like camping with me?" he asked softly.

She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed the back of his hand softly. 'I love camping with you."

"If I bought a pop-up camper, would you go camping with me?"

Maria thought about it for a few moments then squeezed his hand and smiled. "Anywhere you want to go, I'll follow along."

Taking a huge, nervous breath he kissed her cheek softly and whispered, "I would love to continue camping with you except..." he cleared his throat softly again and he looked a bit sad then said, "Annamaria Giacinta Bellini-D'Amato, I don't think I can see you as a patient any longer."

Maria was horrified and with a quivering chin she sputtered, "Why not? Did I..."

"No, it's not what you did, it's what I did."

"Why? What did you do?" she asked softly.

Steve took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "I think I fell in love with you."

Maria was completely taken aback by this statement from this young boy... he's just a youngster, about half her age, how can he possibly know what falling in love is all about? Then, a few moments later she heard a familiar voice, a voice from her past asking, "How can he not know?" It was her Giuseppi pointing out the obvious. Maria looked at Steve, now he had a face that clearly said he was in the middle of a heartbreak. "I think we should go home and think about it," she whispered. She watched him pack up the remainders of their dinner then fold up the awning over their table, he was so sad looking. "What's the matter?" she finally asked.

"Something is over," he said sadly. When she looked at him confused, he continued, "I love treating you. Your condition is a challenge and I truly love the challenge of treating you..."

When he dropped of the statement she asked, "What else? Is there more?"

"I love touching you, but it's clearly obvious that you don't love being touched as much as I love doing the touching... you..." His words were now catching in his throat, he just made an absolute fool of himself in front of the woman he loves. He fought back the tears and finished cleaning up. "I'm so sorry... I'm not being fair to you, I'll take you home and stop bothering you. I will have Doctor Albertson find a replacement and I'll see if there's an opening for me elsewhere."

"Wait," she grabbed his sleeve as he walked by and said, "what do you mean "find a replacement?" I don't understand."

"I guess I can't make it any worse," muttered Steve and he knelt down in front of her and made painful eye contact with the woman he loved. "Darling, I love you, which means that I can no longer treat you. We get too close to treat our patients properly. I wish I could explain it better, but my words aren't coming right now."

He started to get up and finish cleaning up, but Maria grabbed the collar of his T-shirt and pulled him back down. "You're saying that you can't treat me because I don't love you in return?"

"No." He gently took her hand and kissed the back of it. "I can't officially treat you. Being in love with the patient messes up our judgement, so we avoid working on the people we love." He started to get up again, but she pulled him back down.

"So, if I loved you, you could treat me?"

"No. But it would make the whole breakup go so much easier." And he started to get up, but again she pulled him back down to his knees.

"What breakup? Can't we still be friends?"

Steve's eyes filled with tears as he said softly, "Have you ever poured your heart out to someone only to have your feelings rejected? It's not..." He wanted to explain how painful the rejection was, how humiliated he felt. She never felt this because she found the love of her life when she was young and he returned her love, Maria would never understand because she's never been rejected. He clenched his jaw when he saw the hurt look in Maria's eyes. "It's not your fault, it's mine, this is all on me." He started to get up again, and again she yanked him back to his knees.

"What do you mean it's all on you? I don't understand."

"No, you wouldn't. Darling, you're a beautiful, wonderful woman. You never had to go through life pulling yourself back from someone that you found yourself falling in love with because you're just a dirt poor dirt farmer. You are an incredible, beautiful, sexy, successful businesswoman, and I'm just a busted up ol' Army medic that is so in love with you... let me be noble and thank you for the wonderful time we've had." He tried to get up but her grip on his shirt collar was too strong.