The Lady of the Lake

Viv was out there beyond the point on the other side of the lake maybe. More likely, she had returned to either her home or Ann Arbor. Still I harbored the thought that she would find a way to say goodbye before she left. I admitted to myself for the first time that she had meant more to me than I had to her. The thought stung, but there was nothing to do but shrug and move on.

I returned to my room, and checked the weather app on my phone. A line of good sized thunderstorms was out over Lake Michigan, but it would take a while for the storm to come ashore. I grabbed my towel, and trotted down to the lake breathing in the heavy humid air knowing that this would be my last swim. Despite the loneliness that came with it, I would miss this place. I would miss the evening swims most of all.

A gusty wind raised a chop on the lake and flipped the maple leaves showing their silvery undersides, but the blue sky and puffy clouds hinted no menace. I enjoyed my swim knowing it was my last one.

Viv waved to me when she saw me. I wore her orange one piece suit. When I stepped on shore, she hugged me.

"I wanted to see you one last time," she kissed me lightly on the lips. "I need to tell you what happened."

She handed me a towel and motioned for me to follow her to the gazebo where she handed me a bottle of water and motioned for me to sit down. I chose the Adirondack chair facing away from the lake. I did not want her sitting next to me as she told me her bad news.

"The day after I last saw you, Steve drove up to talk to me. He apologized for breaking off the engagement and asked that I take him back. I did and we spent five days together. We had some long talks about commitment. He told me about his fling with a drug rep and I told him about you. He wasn't happy, but he agreed it was his own fault for breaking our engagement."

There was a long pause between us. Maybe she expected me to say something or yell at her, but she had the wrong guy. My father had told me long ago that either a woman wanted to be with you or she didn't. No amount of begging or yelling would induce a woman to stay if she wanted to leave. Let the woman walk if she wants to.

"You've made your choice," I said as I stood. "Goodbye Viv. Thank you for being my friend this summer."

Viv stood, frowning.

"Please don't be like that."

"There's no other way for me to be. You're an engaged woman, and I shouldn't even be standing naked in front of you."

"I've hurt you."

I nodded.

"You have. I thought we had something. But I was the only one. I'll get over it."

I walked toward the door to leave when an ominous clap of thunder rolled from horizon to horizon.

We looked southwest across the water in the direction of the nudist resort.

"I've never seen the clouds look green," she turned to me, "what's happening?"

"We're in for one hell of a storm."

The fresh gale blowing out of the southwest dropped to nothing which allowed us to hear the constant growling of distant thunder. The storm had come ashore much quicker than I thought it would. A flash of lightening illuminated the towering clouds giving them definition against the roiling thunderheads behind.

"How long does it take you to row from here to your house?" I asked her holding my hand out the door to see if it was raining.

"About about half an hour."

I shook my head. "You'll never get back to your house in time. I don't want you out on the lake sitting in an aluminum boat with lightening overhead. We'll shelter here on the island."

"Where?"

"Underneath your rowboat."

"Why not in the gazebo?"

"It won't be any protection at all in the coming storm."

I ran down to the water and lugged the rowboat to higher ground. I felt pulling at my incision and an ache deep in my gut, but everything held. When I got it to the sandiest ground I could find, I flipped the boat over then motioned for Viv to climb under it with me as the wind that had been high in the trees descended upon us and nearly tore the boat from my hands as it pelted me with sand grains. The towering Vive pines bent to crazy swirling angles in the gusting winds. Small branches broke off and dropped upon us. Above the roar of the gusts, the sound of creaking and snapping wood filled the air.

Once we were underneath, I shoved handfuls of sand toward the bow of the boat in the close darkness.

"What are you doing?" Viv a voice in the darkness asked above the constant growling of thunder.

"We need to scoop out a depression so we can lay here without touching any metal. We'll get electrocuted if we're touching metal and lightening strikes."

It took a few minutes, but with Viv's help, we had a cramped place where we could sit up without hitting our heads on the boat seats. My gut ached from the lifting and the digging, but I didn't think I had done any damage.

Outside the storm continued to build, and heavy raindrops thudded on the aluminum. The wind blown hail that followed sounded like shovelfuls of gravel thrown on top of us.

A couple of times, the wind shook the boat, but it stayed in place. I should have pointed the bow into the wind. I hoped we wouldn't suffer from my mistake. Branches snapped and trees crashed to the ground outside our makeshift shelter shaking the ground. Following a huge wind gust, a loud crackle and a louder thump, followed by a lot of scraping scared the hell out of both of us.

She screamed and a very naked Viv cuddled in hard next to me.

"What happened to your suit?"

It was too dark to see anything in the gloom.

"It got full of sand and was itching me to death."

I didn't mind.

A thousand heart beats later the storm abated outside our shelter under the boat. The wind dropped and the rain abated.

"It's time," I sat up and pushed against the boat. It didn't budge.

"What's wrong?" Viv cried, a hint of panic pitched her voice higher in the darkness.

"A tree fell across the boat."

"Are we stuck here underground?"

"No, we're in soft sand. It'll take digging, but we'll get out."

I tunneled under the gunwale ignoring the pain in my side pushing the sand anywhere I could. Gradually our depression in the sand filled up. After ten minutes of digging and about the time I was sure there were no other places to shove sand, I broke through to the smell of fresh air heavily scented with pine. None of the branches laying across the opening I dug were big enough to block us and we crawled and wiggled through the wet sand to our freedom.

"Oh my God!" Viv said surveying the damage, "look at the gazebo."

A towering white pine with a trunk two feet in diameter had smashed into it crushing the roof. It was the same white pine that had pinned our boat to the ground. Fortunately the gazebo had cushioned us from the full force of the tree falling. We would have been crushed otherwise. The island had protected us.

"Do you think you can get my boat out from under that tree?"

"No way. Not without a shovel and a chain saw." I rubbed my side. A piercing pain told me something was not right.

Viv hugged herself in the half light.

"What are we going to do? I don't even have my swim suit. It's buried in the sand beneath the boat."

"We'll swim to the point, take a break there, and then we'll swim to my dock. It's the shortest way to help."

"I'm not that strong a swimmer," she said in a daunted voice.

"Were there life vests in the boat?"

She thought a moment. "They're stowed in a compartment under the middle bench seat."

I pushed pine branches aside and began digging. The fight was only half over when I discovered the door. The fallen tree had crushed the keel enough that the door was sprung and would only open about a third of the way. It took twenty minutes of tugging and pulling to remove a life vest.

Viv slid the life vest on and zipped it up. We waded into the water. It took a while, but she learned how to swim with a life vest on and we made slow progress through choppy water to the point. I could see nothing in the dark, but near constant flashes of lightening from the retreating storm kept us orientated.

Half way across, Viv stopped swimming.

"There's something wrong with the life vest. I'm sinking lower into the water and it feels like a soggy blanket around me."

"We're two hundred yards from the point. Do you think you can swim it without the vest?"

The burning sensation in my side made my swim difficult, too. I could only manage a side stroke.

She unzipped the life jacket and shrugged it off. It sank out of sight.

"I damn well can't make it to the point wearing that."

We set off again for the point, but progress was slow. Viv was tired and I was feeling worse by the minute.

"You go ahead, I've got to rest here for a minute." I heard fatigue in her voice.

We were a hundred yards away from the point. It might as well have been a thousand.

"No way in hell I'm leaving you. We either do this together, or we don't do this at all."

Exhaustion was etched into her face, I had to do something.

"Viv, can you float on your back?"

"I think so."

"I'm going to put my arm around your neck and buddy swim you to the point."

It took a while for us to get used to it. If I took too big a stroke, I dipped too low in the water and Viv would come up sputtering. We got there, but I'm not sure how. The pain in my side was constant and growing. Something was very wrong.

Viv breathed a huge sigh of relief when her feet touched the bottom and she waded to shore.

"Oh, my God, what's wrong?" she shouted when she turned to see me doubled over at the edge of the water.

"I tore open an old injury."

She pulled me from the water and set me on a branch of a fallen tree.

"We're four hundred yards from the dock," she squinted into the dark sporadically illuminated by heat lightening.

"You can swim that easily once you've rested a bit."

The all encompassing pain that wrapped me in a cocoon had begun separating me from Viv and my surroundings. I didn't care about what happened to me as long as Viv got to safety.

"I'm not leaving without you. I love you too much," she stroked my forehead, "when I was in trouble, you said we finish this together or we don't finish it at all. Nothing has changed."

After a brief rest, she pulled me to my feet.

"We can do this. You were strong for me, now it's my turn to be strong for you."

I leaned on her as we waded back into the water. The buoyancy of the water took some stress away from my stomach muscles and the pain lessened.

It took a long time to swim the last two hundred yards. Viv swam beside me the entire way giving me steady encouragement.

My final obstacle was the ladder at the dock. I tried to climb it and discovered I was too weak to pull myself from the water. I swam to the boat launch and dragged myself out with Viv's help.

"What do we do now?" Viv asked as I lay balled up on the wet grass.

"I can't go any further. Follow the path, it will take you to a cluster of buildings. The biggest one is the lodge and cafeteria. There will be people there."

Then she was gone. I passed in and out of consciousness. I could feel myself growing colder; I was going into shock, and in a strange way, that was all right with me. I had done what I needed to do. Viv was safe. I heard the music again and knew I was dying. The eerie tone soothed me. At times it seemed I could reach out and touch it.

I woke up once to people throwing a blanket over me while a flashing light was shining in my eyes. The next time I awoke, I was in an ambulance and the siren was on.

I drifted back to consciousness in a hospital room. Nothing hurt, but nothing moved well either. I wondered what day and what time it was for some reason and got my answer when I read the whitee board on the wall at the foot of my bed. It was Wednesday, September 5. I had lost a day. The clock above the board said it was 3:35. The sun streaming in the window told me it was the afternoon. With that answered, I wondered where Viv was.

After a while, a nurse breezed in.

"Look who's awake."

She gave me a sympathetic smile when I pointed at my mouth and throat.

"You're getting your fluids and nourishment by IV for right now, but I can get you some ice chips for your mouth."

I nodded and my recovery began.

Through the miracle of band aid surgery, a specialist from Ann Arbor had flown in to repair the tear in my small intestine, a fistula at the site of my old injury had popped dumping infection into my abdominal cavity. The surgeon discovered that my bowel was seventy percent blocked with scar tissue. My injury had revealed the blockage and an ulcer that had never healed. Once I had recovered a little, and the threat of peritonitis had passed, they released me.

A week later, I signed myself out of the hospital over their objections, and drive downstate to East Lansing. Classes had resumed, and I hoped I wasn't too late. My house mates helped me get set up. Then a campus veteran's association appeared and got me my books and schedule, and began driving me to class. What truly amazed me was when food appeared at the door. One night it would be pizza, another night a Rueben and fries would appear along with a Greek salad. I guessed it was the Veteran's association who was doing it.

My body healed. I walked to my classes after a few weeks. Sympathetic professors eased me back into the role of a student. Life returned to normal except for my morose state. I dragged around for weeks missing Viv, then decided that the only thing I could do was throw myself into my studies. Over the next few weeks, my mood improved, but there was no way I was getting over her. She had been a glowing candle in the darkness of my life. Even worse, I feared that I had lost the love of my life. There was too much that was right between Viv and me. I was sure I would never find her equal.

At 11:55 am on a cool, sunny second Friday in October, I received a text as I was leaving my last class for the day.

I'm at the coffee shop on Grand River and Charles St. You've got fifteen minutes to get here. I'm illegally parked in a loading zone. Viv

I lurched across campus ignoring any discomfort, and discovered her sitting at a small table that she had snagged despite the crowd. She sat in a pool of sunlight streaming in through the window looking like a preppie angel. A coffee sat across the table from her waiting for me. I settled in and took a sip.

"How did you know I like my coffee black?"

She grinned at me revealing those captivating dimples. I had missed that smile.

"Your mother told me. She says hi by the way, and she wants you to call home when you get a chance."

"You talked to my mother?"

She nodded.

"I told her everything. How we met on the island with you naked and me wearing a bathing suit, how you saved me twice our last evening together and how the last time I saw you, you were being rolled into an ambulance.

She giggled.

"I like her. I learned a lot about you, mystery man."

The frown of concentration crossed her face.

"You know, I like you better naked. Your clothes are okay, but they hide some really outstanding parts."

One of the two coeds sitting at the table next to ours nearly lost her mouthful off coffee. They both stopped talking and listened in without making it obvious.

"What brings you to East Lansing?" I asked nodding my head in the direction of the coeds.

Viv winked at me.

"You do, silly. We have unfinished business. We never got a chance to make mad, passionate love and I really, really want to."

She turned to the coeds as if they were friends enjoying a group conversation.

"He worked at a nudist resort all summer, and we met on an island in the middle of a lake. We never got the chance to crawl in bed together, and well, look at him. Who wants to miss out on a chance like that?"

She gave them a hundred watt smile. Both coeds turned bright red and hunkered down in their chairs. Viv turned back to me.

"By the way, Steve and I are done."

I leaned in.

"What happened?"

"The next morning after your boss dropped me off at my house wearing only a borrowed hockey jersey, I checked my phone and got message after message from Steve who had been trying to reach me all evening. When I called him, he asked me what happened, I told him everything. He went ballistic. He said there was no way that he could love a woman who he couldn't trust. This time I broke off the engagement. I'd had enough of his 'trust me whatever I do, but I control you' attitude."

She pointed at me.

"That's your fault. You gave me the courage to think about what I want, not what my mother, or my father or Steve want."

She reached up and scratched her neck.

"I may have told him to go play with himself. He hung up the phone after that."

She sipped her latte, her pride in her assertiveness evident. Confident Viv was back again and I loved every moment of it.

"I'm done with him. He didn't care about a tree nearly killing me or that I could have drowned or if you survived after saving me. All he cared about was that I had gone out in the boat one last time to say goodbye to you."

The coeds continued to stare at their coffee cups feigning disinterest, but neither had gotten up though both had finished their muffin and coffee.

"Then he had the nerve a couple weeks later to tell me that he had forgiven me and that he would take me back. He said that I made a great partner for him. He didn't say he loved me, only that I'd be a great partner like we were a law firm. How could a girl not get all warm and fuzzy from that? I'm surprised that he didn't high five me and give me a Team Sullivan tee shirt."

"What did you say to him?" I may have smirked a little guessing what her answer had been.

"I told him to go fuck himself," she gave me a triumphant grin, "it made quite a stir in the formal restaurant. I got up and marched out of there with my head held high and called Uber to take me home. He tried calling a bunch of times, but I turned off my phone."

"Anyway," Viv continued, "I'm assuming you want to make love to me. Do you?"

"Of course I do, but will this be a momentary dalliance or is this going to be longer term?"

"I had a wise man once tell me that it's best to become friends first, then move on to becoming lovers."

I turned to the little blond next to me who was listening in.

"What do you think I should do?"

She blushed again.

"I'd kiss her, but I'd also like to give you my number in case you two don't work out."

Viv shook her head and shot daggers at the girl with her eyes.

"Not a chance, Spartie. I saw him first, and he won't be of much use when I'm done with him, anyway."

She may have said it a little louder than she should.

The little blond's buddy slunk down in her seat so far that I thought she would slide out under the table. The blond withstood the onslaught and looked like she wanted to say something back, but decided not to.

I leaned across the table and kissed Viv to distract her from the blond and also because I wanted to.

"M-m-m. I've waited for that kiss far too long," she cooed.

I stood.

"C'mon. Let's get out of here."

As we left several tables wished us good luck. More than one table had been listening in. Viv is like that, she attracts attention wherever she goes.

We climbed into her SUV and headed north on the expressway.

"Where are we headed?" I asked looking out the window at the passing trees about ninety percent changed to their autumn splendor dazzling in the sunlight.

"To the lake, of course."

"It's a bit nippy to be running around naked on the island."

"Relax, I've got everything covered," she nudged me with an elbow, "covered, get it?"

"That's good because the island was almost denuded by the thunderstorm," I punned right back.