The day I returned from Portland it was nearly 100 degrees, warmer than it had been all summer. My business in Oregon done, I had nothing to do the rest of the week except wait for the shipment of CDs, so I went with Geoffrey to Springfield, where he was building a kiln shed for Ann, his mother-in-law.
It felt good to be out in the heat doing physical work, nailing up a frame for the shed roof and hauling it with ropes and ladders up the side of the finished and paneled stud walls, clambering on this lacy network of two-by-fours to nail on the corrugated aluminum panels. Ann's house sits on the Willamette river, and after the roof was finished, we fought our way through ripe blackberry vines to strip and cool off in the surprisingly chill shallows. For my volunteer effort, Ann presented me with a home-fired cup, which I carefully packed up and mailed to Port Townsend.
On Friday evening, day 8, it became apparent that my shipment of CDs, already a day late, would not arrive before I had to leave for my next engagement in California the following Wednesday. It took several hours of phone calls back and forth to the East coast to discover that yes, someone in the shipping department had made a mistake and, no, the discs would not arrive until Monday. The discs would have to be shipped overnight from Eugene to Sacramento, where I would be staying until Wednesday. I slipped into the bathtub to relax.
While I was in the tub, Carla arrived. She was a tall, slender redhead, in Eugene to heal from some sort of broken relationship. After a fragrant dinner of garlicky pesto and sweet homegrown corn, we washed dishes together. Washing dishes turned into massages on the livingroom floor, turned into a sudden rush to a late-night movie while Geoffrey and Wendy slept. Carla was from Seattle. We were both of us lonely, but neither available. Had my discs not been delayed, we might never have met. That late platonic date had a feeling like "oh yes, that's why I'm here now." As if we stood at a point where threads converged from otherwise unrelated directions. After the movie we stood in a long hug, not with the desperate need of two people groping towards sexual resolution, but with a sweet timeless feeling as if to say: here we are. Here are some bodies that need to be held.