The River at Night(13)

Just as we tucked ourselves in at the far end of one of the tables, a dreadlocked young man, fit and strapping, fairly exploded through the doorway. Though he was well over six feet, his backpack made him appear even taller. He carried a cooler under one arm and a sleeping bag and pad under the other. With an exuberant sigh, he dropped his gear on one of the couches—just in time to receive enthusiastic hugs and high fives from most of the kitchen staff.

Pia still held on to the tray she’d set down a full minute ago. She could not take her eyes off him.

I, on the other hand, was already halfway through my plate of food.

Rachel sipped her iced tea as she watched the scene impassively. “Do you think I should take her vitals?”

Rory glanced around the room until his eyes fell on us or, I should say, on Pia. He bounded over to our table and held out his hand to her. She extricated herself from the bench, stood up to her full six feet, and trotted out that thousand-watt smile, coppery hair shining under the naked bulb that dangled over our table.

“It’s so good to finally meet you,” she said, glowing like I’d never seen before. They shook hands until he pulled her into a quick but bearish hug.

“You’re tall.” He folded his arms, considering her. “Couldn’t tell that over Skype.” He nodded, appearing lost as to what to say after that. She stared at him. We all did. Everyone enjoys beauty, after all. Fitted out in a T-shirt that said U. ORONO AGGIE: DOWN AND DIRTY EVERY DAY, ripstop nylon shorts, a bear-claw necklace, and several rope and leather cuffs around his wrists, Rory made the rounds, introducing himself to each of us with a charming politeness tinged with condescension. Male energy vibrated off him.

His hand was a surprise: big and soft, a student’s hand. “Welcome to the Mooseprint Lodge. Are you psyched about our trip? It’s going to be kick-ass!”

Pia uncorked a bottle of red wine and filled four plastic cups, skipping Rachel, who hadn’t had a drink in years.

“So, Rory,” Rachel said, an eyebrow arched, “are you certified to do this sort of thing?”

He nodded his thanks as he accepted the wine. “Absolutely. I grew up white-water rafting. Do it every second I’m not in class. I’m in the aggie program, as you can see,” he said with a smile and a nod to his shirt. “Someday I want to run my own sustainable farm with livestock. Make cheese, stuff like that. Live communally. I’m pumped about it.”

“That sounds fantastic,” Pia said. “I’ve always wanted to do something like that.”

“For real?” Rory said, echoing all our thoughts. Of all the hot items on Pia’s bucket-list blog, none of them involved cheese. “I’m just not cut out for some office gig. I’d want to die in, like, two days.” He glanced behind us at the steam tables piled with food. “I’m going to grab some chow before they close up. Be right back.”

We watched as he heaped his plate with dinner, including two slices of vanilla sheet cake and two glasses of milk from a metal dispenser, before balancing it all on a tray.

“So,” he said, threading his long legs between the table and the bench, “how do you ladies know each other?”

We looked at each other and smiled. “Pia and I grew up on the same street,” Rachel said. “But we met Wini and Sandra here when we all worked at the same cheesy clothing store, probably fifteen years ago?”

“Everything fell apart the second you washed it,” I said. “The stuff was so cheap!”

“Especially with our employee discount of—what was it, fifteen percent off? Remember?” Rachel fell back in her seat, laughing. “We were so excited about that, a whole dollar off some crappy dress!”

“Anyway,” I said, “we had so much fun together that we started hanging out and doing things after work.”

“Drinking, mainly,” Pia said.

“True.” Rachel shrugged.

“One year we pooled all our money and took this pathetic little vacation together—”

“—where was it, Rockport? Something like that . . .” Sandra said.

“Gloucester,” Pia said. “One-star hotel on a postage-stamp beach—”

“—but we loved it, didn’t we?” I said.

Pia dug into her mashed potatoes. “We felt like movie stars. Going out for dinner, sleeping late, not lifting a finger for a whole week. Fifteen years later, here we are.”

Even though the stories we were telling were true enough, they couldn’t express what all those years meant. Husbands, kids, jobs; then divorces, unemployment, and for some of us new husbands and even more kids. But there had always been us, bound by invisible golden thread the fifty-one weeks a year we were apart. Tied in a golden bow the week we spent together. On the surface it might have been about fun or feeling glamorous or exploring someplace new, but when the world, including our own families, got us down or turned its back on us, we were our own family. Dysfunctional in our own female-friendship way; but our bonds were unbreakable.

“Very cool,” Rory said, looking vastly entertained but possibly just humoring us. “But I have to say—hands down—this is going to be your most exciting vacation yet. You ladies realize we’re going to raft a river that no one besides me and my dad has had access to before?”

“We were wondering about that,” Sandra said. “Nobody owns a river, right?”