The Dock Timber Conch

Alana woke up with a dead arm and pine needles everywhere.

Pine needles everywhere. Her mouth tasted like camp coffee and bad decisions. Varian's arm was slung across her middle, heavy and warm, and his breathing was slow and even against the back of her neck.

Oh no.

She lay still and did the math. Thirty-four years old, six months out of a five-year relationship, and she had slept with a coworker's coworker on a hillside in Martinique after one small glass of rum and a successful dock timber negotiation. Not drunk. Just stupid. Or maybe not stupid. She didn't know yet.

The morning sun came through the bleached pine trunks in long white bars. Somewhere below, the sea did its thing. The air smelled like salt and old iron.

"Varian," she said.

Nothing.

"Varian. Your arm is cutting off my circulation."

He stirred. "Mm. Good circulation is overrated." He pulled her closer instead of letting go, which was not the answer to any of her questions.

She turned around under his arm so they were face to face. He was thirty-six, forearms like cables from hauling LiDAR equipment up hillsides, and his hair was full of pine needles. His eyes opened halfway.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

"So last night happened," he said.

"Last night happened."

"Okay." He nodded slowly, as a man accepting a verdict would. "Good. I thought maybe I dreamed it."

She wanted to laugh and also to run down the hill into the ocean. "We should probably talk about..."

He sat up suddenly and reached for his pack. "Coffee first. I have a thermos. And chocolate. It's the good kind, the dark stuff Karyn keeps in her desk, I bought my own bar so she wouldn't know I know about hers."

"You bought your own bar."

"Obviously." He poured coffee into the thermos cup with the concentration of a man defusing nothing, just a man very interested in not looking at her. His hands were almost steady. He handed her the cup and broke off a chunk of chocolate and held it out.

And there it was. The expression. Shy and hopeful, like a guy at a school dance hoping she'd say yes to one song. It was such a dumb face for a grown man who ran laser surveys of eroding coastlines to make.

She took the chocolate. She smiled before she could stop herself.

His whole face changed. "Okay," he said, softer. "That's a good sign, right?"

"Drink your coffee."

They drank coffee sitting on the needle pile, shoulders touching, the conch shell between them like a guest nobody had invited. It had a crack down one side. Yesterday Fenton had blown it three times to signal the truck down the switchbacks, and it had made a sound like a goose losing an argument.

"You know what the rules are now?" she asked.

"Nope," said Varian. "Do you?"

"Not even a little."

"Okay." He turned his cup in his hands. "So we figure it out as we go. Fair?"

"Fair."

Down the hill, an engine ground its way up the switchbacks. Then the conch sounded, three long terrible blasts.

"He's early," Varian said, standing and brushing needles off his jeans. "Fenton's always early. He says lateness is a form of disrespect to timber."

The old flatbed crested the rise and Fenton Tuchson leaned out the window, sixty-two years old, forearms like driftwood, grinning under a hat that predated both of them. He waved the conch out the window for no reason at all.

"Morning, lovebirds!" he called. "Or should I say, morning, timber professionals!"

Alana felt her face go hot. Varian waved like a lunatic.

Fenton backed the truck up along the stump line and got out, slapping the hood. "Got the whole lot loaded by noon, that's my promise. Karyn coming?"

"She's bringing the paperwork," Varian said.

"Good. Because if that woman shows up with a clipboard and finds one number off, she'll start over from the top and we'll be here till Thursday." Fenton looked at Alana, then at Varian, then at the single bedroll, and his grin got worse. "Real professional operation you two are running up here."

"The bedroll situation was logistical," Varian said.

"Sure it was, boy."

Karyn's little hatchback came up a short while later, and she got out already talking. Thirty-nine, red hair pinned back, clipboard in hand like a badge. "The lot numbers are wrong, Fenton. Again. You gave me lot numbers for the Martinique shipment and the Martinique shipment doesn't exist, it's the Pilote shipment, these are two different piles of rotting wood."

"Morning to you too, Karyn," said Fenton.

"Don't 'morning' me. Sit down. We're doing this now." She planted herself on a stump and flipped pages. "Alana! Good, you're here. Are you helping with the inventory?"

And that was the moment Alana realized she had exactly one job this morning: pretend she had come up this hill at dawn for timber reasons. She was a receptionist. She had never inventoried anything in her life except office supplies.

"That's why I'm here," she said, in a voice she hoped sounded professional. "Inventory. Helping with it."

"Wonderful. There's a checklist in the truck bed. Count the eight-foot stock, there should be forty-two."

Alana went to the truck bed and started counting timbers, and it was actually good, having something to do with her hands. Fenton and Karyn argued in a warm loop behind her, Fenton insisting the numbers were the ferry company's numbers and not his problem, Karyn insisting that as of the bill of sale they were absolutely his problem.

Varian came over to "check the count."

He did not check the count. He stood next to her and looked at her hands on the timber.

"You're counting wrong," he said quietly.

"I've counted nine."

"There's forty-two of them. Nine is a start." He glanced back at Karyn, who was deep in the paperwork and not looking up. "Come here a second."

He led her around the biggest twisted pine, the one with the bleached trunk bent as a question mark is. On the far side the hill dropped away and it was just them and the sea noise.

"What are we doing," Alana whispered.

"Something I should have done before last night instead of after." He put one hand on the trunk beside her head. "Can I kiss you? Properly. In daylight."

"That's a weird question when we already..."

"I know. But last night was fast and dark and I was running on nerves." His ears were red. "I want to do this one right. So. Yes or no?"

"Yes," she said. "Obviously yes, you idiot."

He kissed her. Slow, careful, nothing like the quick fumbling in the dark. His hand came up to her jaw and he kissed her like