Danny and Debbie never did quite manage to go swimming on Saturday, but they did make it on Sunday. Debbie decided to wear her bikini, and Danny said it didn’t make her look fat at all. Even in the shallow pond-like backwater in front of the trailer park the water was still pretty cold, but they had fun playing anyway though didn’t stay in long. They went out for a run together on Sunday afternoon, feeling a little guilty that they had missed it Saturday. While running down Lakeshore, they passed Randy and Nicole Clark’s place, and found the two out doing yard work, so stopped for just a minute to talk. It was a gorgeous early summer day, not too hot, and it was good to be out enjoying things.

After leaving the Clarks, they spent more time in the lawn chairs just talking, more time talking inside, along with a satisfying amount of more intimate indoor activities, many of which involved techniques Danny had picked up in his advanced seminars with Shirley months before.

And, like Friday night and Saturday night, on Sunday night they fell into a wonderfully exhausted and relaxed sleep in each other’s arms, and had the great experience of waking up in the morning to discover that it wasn’t a dream at all, that the other one was still there.

All dreams must come to an end; Monday morning they had to get up and go to work, and it was hard. It was harder because of the fact that Danny would be again working days at the store and nights on the railroad this week, Beepit for the second week in a row, but at least not with Anson this time. Still, that meant that he’d be busy in the evenings, and it seemed like a tremendous irritation just now.

Having woken up early enough to enjoy themselves before dressing with plenty of time left, Debbie suggested they go out to breakfast. They found themselves in a corner booth at the Spearfish Lake Café, sitting across from each other, hardly able to tear their eyes away from each other, not wanting to let the experience of the weekend go. They didn’t say a great deal that was consequential, but the way they looked at each other was communication enough. They’d covered a lot of ground in a short time.

Eventually, the waitress brought the check, and they sat there finishing their coffee wishing they didn’t have to go to work but knowing they had to in a few minutes. Finally, Debbie took a deep breath and said, "Danny, there’s something I really need to talk to you about before we leave."

The way she said that, Danny was a little afraid that she was going to say something to the effect of "it’s been fun, but . . . " and all of a sudden he realized with a pang that he didn’t want to hear her use those words. "What is it?" he asked.

"Danny, this weekend has been a lot of fun," she said. "Not only have I enjoyed myself immensely, but I’ve learned an awful lot. You put some pieces into my puzzle that had been missing, both as a woman and as a katara, and I’m grateful for that."

"You’ve done much the same thing for me," he told her. "Not only has it been a real pleasure, I’ve learned a great deal, and have enjoyed every bit of it."

"I know it, and it pleases me to see it," she smiled. "A lot of what I’ve told you would bore most people to death. But, Danny, maybe it’s just as well that you’re working nights this week, because it’ll give us a few days to think about a question that we both need to answer."

"What’s that?" he asked, thinking that here comes the bad news.

"Danny, it’s been fun," she repeated. "But we both have to ask ourselves and each other, were we partying, or were we starting something?"

Not exactly a kiss off, he thought, and a fair question. "I can tell you what my initial reaction is," he told her. "And that is while we did some terrific partying, I’m finding myself hoping that it’s the start of something more."

She reached out and took his hand. "I thought you’d say something like that," she smiled. "And that’s my initial reaction, too. But Danny, I think it’ll be good if we have the few days to think about it."

"Well, since you put it that way," he smiled, "I think I agree. But, would you like to get together for lunch?"

"I’d like that," she smiled. "You have to lock up the store to go to lunch, like you did Friday?"

"Most days I just take my lunch to the store," he told her. "It saves messing around and occasionally a customer comes in."

"All right, I’ll stop by the sub shop and see you around noon." She let out a sigh and continued. "You know, I really hate to say this, but I really need to be getting to work, and so do you."

"Yeah, true," he said, flipping a ten out on the table to cover the cost of their breakfast and the tip as they got up.

He followed her outside, and they went over to where they’d parked when they’d driven in separately. She turned to him and said, "Hey Danny?"

"Yeah, Debbie?"

"Thanks again," she reached out and took him in her arms, and they shared a big kiss. Finally, they broke away. "See you at lunch."

"See you at lunch, babe," he smiled as she got in her car. He walked over to the Lumina, and watched her as she backed out of the parking space, shaking his head. It was Monday morning. Friday noon seemed like half a lifetime ago. They’d covered an awful lot of ground in short order, and his head was spinning a little from the rush.

He got into the Lumina and drove over to Spearfish Lake Appliance, just thinking about it. As always seemed to be the case the last few months when he’d had an enlightening experience, dark thoughts seemed to close in, and this was no less the case now.

Right up front, he realized that there was more to her question than it seemed on face value. If it had been a party, it had been a hell of a party, but with no more meaning than happened routinely out at the Redlite Ranch. But, was it the start of something? A part of him screamed that it hoped so, but another part had reservations. While he’d learned a great deal about her over the weekend, the biggest thing that he’d learned was that he’d realized he’d only scratched the surface of this interesting, complex person. She clearly had intense interests, deep feelings, and a strong tendency to get philosophical. And, face it, she was strange, especially strange culturally. Some of it might be hard to understand, hard to swallow, and without putting a finger on it, she made him feel a little inadequate, like he felt around his own highly talented sisters. But still, what a woman. Too much woman? It was hard to say – but the question of whether this was the start of something was clearly going to take some thought.

He went into the store, turned on the lights, got the computer going, and set to work on some chores he’d put off on Saturday afternoon because he’d been in such a rush to get out to Debbie’s. One was unloading from the van the washer and dryer that had been traded in. Sometimes they were kept around as used appliances, but these were getting pretty old so Danny decided that the dumpster was a good place for them – after all, he’d hauled them off for nothing, just as a service to the customer. Then the store needed to be swept out a little, a few odds and ends done. Hanging around the store made him realize that he needed to be organizing his thoughts about possibly moving and expanding, like he’d been talking about with Debbie Saturday evening. Yeah, it wasn’t something that couldn’t be put off until fall, at least getting his thoughts together and examining options.

It didn’t take long before thoughts of Debbie swung right into his mind. As things stood right now, he did have the option of leaving this fall. Even this time last Friday, he’d been considering at least opening communications with Amy, and yeah, if Debbie had kissed him off this morning he’d be back to thinking about it even harder. Clearly the decision had to be made to remain in Spearfish Lake indefinitely before he could seriously think of taking over the store, moving and expanding it. Just as clear was the realization that getting something going with Debbie would just about mean having to stay in Spearfish Lake, or at least the general vicinity, as strong as her cultural ties to Three Pines and the Shakahatche seemed to be. So the "is this the start of something" question had an obvious bearing on the future of the store, and his parents, too. It was a bigger damn question than he first realized and it did need some serious thought.

It was much too early to settle whether what they’d been doing had been more than just partying – but at least a decision about the store didn’t have to be made this week, and there was some time to see what would happen with her.

The thoughts were rambling around in his mind in a really undisciplined manner when he heard the bell on the front door ring as someone walked in. He looked up to see his mother walking back toward the office, a huge grin on her face. He hadn’t seen her all weekend, of course; this time of year they pretty well lived out at the Club and commuted to work. Presumably his dad was still out there.

"Danny!" she said in a bright and chipper voice, as soon as she was far enough in the store to realize there was no one else there. "What did you do to that woman?"

He knew just who she was talking about but wasn’t about to give an inch. It really wasn’t her business, after all. "What woman?" he asked as innocently as possible, the grin on his own face probably giving him away.

"Don’t give me that," his mother snorted. "Debbie came floating into the office a while ago, her eyes all full of stars and as laid back as I’ve ever seen her. She walked up to me and said in thisvery mellow voice that I had a pretty neat and awesome son who’s a hell of an interesting guy. I’ve never seen her like that before, all relaxed, and, uh, satisfied or something."

All fucked out is probably what you’re thinking, he thought, but there’s no way you’re going to say that. But yeah, she did act sort of sated this morning, now that he stopped to think about it. Mellow, yes. "Well, we had a date," he conceded, maintaining a sham of innocence.

"It must have been some date," his mother snorted again. "The house was all closed up this morning, the Saturday and Sunday papers were lying on the porch and the mail was still in the box from Saturday."

"Well," he grinned, knowing that he was thoroughly caught and would have to pay the price, "ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies."

She shook her head, smiled and said cattily, "I think that’s about all the answer I need."

"Hey," he laughed. "That also means we could have spent the weekend hitting every garage sale in Camden looking for pink teddy bears, too."

"That’ll be the day," she laughed back. "Look, I just wanted to tell you that I don’t have any problems with the two of you dating or whatever it is you were obviously doing, but I do want to give you a piece of advice. I don’t know what you talked about, but she’s a lot deeper woman than you think."

"We did get pretty deep into some really interesting stuff," he conceded.

"Danny," his mother sighed, "she’s a still deeper woman than that. She was a nice kid a few years ago, but a kid, nothing special. She’s changed a lot in that time. In the last few years I’ve learned that there’s a lot more to her than we ever knew. More than she ever knew, too, I think. I don’t want you to think this is a warning, but just take it as a tip."

"Sounds like a warning," he frowned.

She let out a sigh. "Look, I realize I made a mistake when you were going with Marsha. I should have told you to stop and think it over, but I didn’t want to get Bob and Linda mad, so I’ll admit to butting out when I shouldn’t have. That would have been a warning. This isn’t like that. I’m just telling you that there’s more to Debbie than meets the eye, and I mean, yours, mine, hers, anyone’s."

"There’s a lot I don’t know about her," he sighed. "But that’s one thing I think I figured out already."

Danny didn’t tell Debbie about his mother’s visit when she showed up for lunch a few hours later – he figured she didn’t need to know that they’d been that obvious. But the topic just didn’t get to the "Were we partying or what?" question either, for it seemed like both of them were studiously avoiding it. That didn’t mean that Danny didn’t think about it off and on all day, right down to closing the store at five, and stopping off at the Frostee Freeze for a couple of hamburgers before heading out to the C&SL Railroad office. Working all night on Beepit was going to be no thrill after spending all day in the store, but at least his father would work most of the morning the rest of the week so he could get some sleep. All the hours really were getting to be a pain in the butt, too. At least this week he’d be riding with Dave Ames, rather than Anson, so there might be some pleasant conversation even if it was mostly about bass fishing.

Danny got something of a surprise when he reached the office – rather than having Ames waiting for him, Josh was just pulling in. "Switch the schedule around?" he asked.

"Just a little," Josh told him. "Dave had some family thing, so we switched a little. I’m going to do the north half of Beepit, we’ll switch on the way back through. Then he’ll make it up to me Friday."

"Well, great," Danny smiled. "It’s been a while since I ran with you, and I wanted to talk with you anyway. So how was the wedding?"

"Oh, pretty good," Josh smiled as he locked his truck; they’d take the railroad’s pickup out to the café for the crew change so the incoming crew could drive it back to where their cars were parked at the office. "I have to say that charter jet stuff works a whole bunch better than airlines."

"They don’t give it away, I bet," Danny snorted.

"Well, no," Josh told him as they walked over to the railroad’s pickup. "Wasn’t as bad as I thought, and the tight scheduling saves a few bucks, especially when you’re paying Alaska prices. But it was a pretty cool wedding, Jack is a neat guy, and you don’t often see a wedding that has a flyover of three business jets in close formation as a part of it."

"Oh, yeah, some of that Alaskan flair," Danny laughed. "So, how did John like Alaska?"

"Summer Alaska isn’t much like winter Alaska," Josh smiled. "Of course, I’ve only been up there once before in the summer, anyway."

"Did they make any progress on Candice doing the race?"

"A little, maybe," Josh shrugged as he started up the truck. "If you want to get in the first pool for the starting order drawing, you have to have your entry in the first of the month. Candice is making an entry, but I don’t think John knows about it – I think she’s still working up the guts to tell him. If it falls through, it’s refundable up through the first of the year. I mean, last year, Phil, Tiff, and I all entered, and only Phil ran. But, I’ll tell you that I’m trying to stay out of the middle of Candice’s dilemma."

"Makes sense," Danny laughed.

Josh told Danny a little about the wedding and the trip up and back while they rode out to the Spearfish Lake Café, which didn’t take long. They knew Keyhole wasn’t far out; the crew usually checked in by cell phone half an hour out just to minimize the waiting around, but they still had a few minutes to kill. "I see you had an interesting weekend," Josh teased.

"A little less dull than usual," Danny conceded, realizing that he and Debbie had been truly caught when they’d had breakfast this morning.

"Looked like it to me," Josh laughed. "I mean, most of the regulars were sitting at the breakfast table this morning, and we saw you outside in the parking lot. Yeah, that looked to me like you had a little less dull a weekend than usual."

"Well, hey," Danny shrugged. "Do you know how many unmarried women there aren’t in this town? Turns out she’s a nice lady, a hell of an interesting person."

"Interesting, yeah," Josh laughed. "Just about as crazy as Carole Carter in her own way, at least from what I hear."

"So what?" Danny snorted. "I come from a crazy family anyway, you know that. Even Garth is goofy in his own way. Why should I be any different?"

"That might be true," Josh laughed. "But I’ll bet that you can think of somewhere you’d rather be than on Beepit tonight."

"It doesn’t take being real creative," Danny conceded. Yeah, it would be an easy choice for him, too; if he weren’t working he’d probably be with Debbie, maybe partying. And, maybe not; after his thoughts today, maybe they’d both want to hold that angle down a little bit, to explore some other things about each other, get a real romance going, not just a, well, an all-out party.

"Got an idea I want to throw at you," Josh said. "There are several things in the schedule I’m not happy with. It’s hard to balance things out, what with having to run five ten-hour days and trying to keep everybody around forty hours, the college kids less than that. The end result is that the college kids are being worked more than they’re supposed to be. Plus, I can see it’s harder than hell on you. This working two weeks on nights and then a week on Peddler gets a little wearing what with working at the store, right?"

"Yeah, it does," Danny agreed. "I mean, the idea was for me to work as many nights as I can so I could have most of the days at the store, but when I work days on the train it just about means Dad has to be in the store full time. I wouldn’t mind if it could be balanced out better."

"That’s sort of what I’ve been thinking about," Josh admitted. "There’s a couple other things, too, like both the college kids say they can take Anson once in a while but a week of him at a crack is a little too much."

"Make that three," Danny snorted. "I mean, I can put up with a walking hemorrhoid like him because I learned how when I had to put up with a walking hemorrhoid with PMS like Marsha." He couldn’t help but smile at the wisecrack; nobody in Spearfish Lake but Debbie knew about that little episode, and he hoped to keep it that way.

"I hear you," Josh shook his head. "Plus, I’ve got ten years of knowing what it’s like to switch back and forth between nights and days. I pushed the pencil around some today, and came up with a couple ideas. Briefly, what I’m thinking is that we do some crew changes while southbound, like we’re going to have to do tonight. It’d give a little more flex to scheduling, and we could switch people around so no one has to put up with Anson for a whole week at a crack. The afternoon trick would be the easy one, you’d go on around 1300 and off around 2300. The morning trick, that’s a little harder because it’s a split shift, but that’s where we do the switching so sometimes you’d have to go on at 2300, get off at 0400, sleep for a few hours, come back on at 0800 and get off at 1300. In your case, old buddy, it would mean that you’d be half days at the store, sometimes mornings, sometimes afternoons. To make it work, we’re going to have to work the old schedule hours some, but I think I can keep most of that on the college kids. You interested?"

"Damn interested," Danny conceded. "It would fix the big problem with my hours."

"One of the downsides is that some weeks you’d be working five days instead of four, you’d have to do the first half of the morning trick one day, and then maybe a couple days later have to do the second half," Josh pointed out.

"But no more of this two weeks of straight nights?"

"No, but actually your sleep schedule will get jerked around more quickly, but you do at least get to spend part of each night in bed, so in some respects it ought to be easier to adapt to," Josh noted.

"I say go for it," Danny told him. "Look, I’ll be honest. Maybe Debbie and I are getting something going, maybe not, I don’t know. But I wasn’t looking forward to not being able to see her except maybe for lunch once or twice all week, and really not looking forward to it two weeks out of three either."

"Been there, done that," Josh nodded. "The old schedule, it’s not a damn sight better if you’re married, let me tell you. OK, here’s the deal, I’ve talked to about half the people and so far everybody’s bought off on it. I don’t think anyone else is going to cry too loud about it, either. I think if everyone more or less goes for it, we may start trying it for a cycle or two starting Monday. I should know in a couple days, and I’ll put out the new schedule as early as I can so you can give your dad the heads up."

"Just as a suggestion," Danny said, "I know we can’t park the Keyhole empties out on the passing track overnight because it blocks the Grove Street crossing, but how about if we park them north of the yard throat? That leaves the track clear south so Peddler can head south. That would save all the screwing around with backing into the yard overnight."

"Yeah, but that blocks the yard track for the engine change," Josh pointed out, noticing Keyhole come around the bend, slowing down for the crew change. He cracked the door of the pickup and got out.

"So change engines some other time," Danny said as he got out the other side. "Rather than run out here with the pickup, run out here with a single Stud and let the crew coming off take the oldest Stud back in."

"That means that Peddler doesn’t get to use a Stud days," Josh protested.

"Wouldn’t matter if you did the switch at 2300. You’d still have the third Stud available days for Peddler."

"Oooohhhh, boy," Josh shook his head. "That has some possibilities. I’m really going to have to push a pencil around on that one, but to make it work would mean we’d only have to use the Geeps when a Stud is in the shop. Let me play with that a bit, maybe game it out a little. It might put off the schedule change for a week or two, maybe not, we’ll have to see."

Danny and Josh talked about several other things that night, since there was a lot to catch up on. He didn’t really tell him a lot about Debbie – and especially what they had spent the weekend doing – but it wasn’t far from his mind. After the southbound crew change, when Dave took over the throttle, he mostly droned on about bass fishing, but Danny said "Uh-huh" a lot while he thought about Debbie. The new schedule offered a lot of possibilities for him to see her more – the hours would be a little goofy, but a hell of a lot less goofy than he’d had up to this point. So, depending on how the "party or something more" question came out, maybe he’d be in a little better position to move past it.

In the southbound hours of that night on the Camden and Spearfish Lake, Danny was able to work out a couple of things. Yes, he had some issues with Debbie, unknowns that could affect the future. From what he could see at this point, there were three. Two of them, her potential for alcoholism and her potential for gaining weight she seemed to be both well aware of and have under pretty good control, and in the long run he could probably help her out with them by giving her some support. So, really, they were non-issues, just there to be catalogued.

Her intense interest in her Indian cultural heritage, the katara stuff – well, that was another animal. Not that he objected; what he’d learned so far had been intensely interesting, and he had the feeling that there was a lot more to learn. But, he also had a feeling it could be a potential pain in the butt, too.

After all, he had gone into his relationship with Marsha, a long-time nudist, but for family reasons and no particular reason for it of its own self. Marsha was different, though – she was passionately interested in it to the point of fanaticism, as she was about other things, especially vegetarianism and all sorts of health food craziness, and that turned into a real pain in the ass. Back when they’d been kids, she had occasionally snuck a hamburger when her folks’ backs were turned, but he’d soon learned that it had been just a little teenage rebellion – she’d soon reverted to form.

But maybe that meant nothing. Debbie was not Marsha, not any way, shape or form. She certainly was not a lesbian who didn’t get turned on by guys! And, she seemed pleasant, good-natured, and genuinely interested. He and Marsha had sort of been thrown together and considered it something of an inevitability by all parties, including themselves. Get right down to it, he’d never reallyliked Marsha as a person, they just had some mutual interests at the time and he’d appreciated her athleticism. He remembered commenting to Josh last summer that it was almost as if he’d been looking at Marsha and seeing Brandy, but it hadn’t worked out that way in most respects but the athleticism.

In any case, Debbie seemed a lot better than the alternative of Amy, even though there was still the nagging guilt he felt about not doing something back there at the Redlite Ranch back before Christmas. And, somewhere along in there, that was an issue he was also going to have to settle – not so much Amy but the guilt he felt over her. Maybe Debbie would settle it for him, maybe not. But, it was pretty clear that he couldn’t tell her about the dilemma.

Though he knew he’d chew at it all week long, and they’d done some serious partying, it was worth a further look. Yes, this could be the start of something.

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