"Opportunity knocks but once," may be a tired old cliché, but any katara would tell you that it’s nonetheless true. When opportunity knocked for Danny Evachevski, he was just barely prepared for it – but prepared enough.

Having the afternoon trick on the railroad meant that he wouldn’t be seeing Debbie until they changed off crews with the morning trick on the southbound Beepit. It would be pushing midnight by then, and both would be tired. Even getting up a little early, it didn’t give them much time together in the morning, either. But it was better than the old days of being on nights two weeks out of three, when he’d only be able to see her for lunch.

That meant Danny was in the store in the morning. It had been a good morning with a couple of sales, and a couple of service calls that his father would have to deal with in the afternoon, or possibly after work. As it was, when his father called up a little after twelve and said he’d be tied up out at the Club for a while yet, Danny just put up the "Out On Service Call" sign and got out of there. He called the sub shop and had them put together a turkey and veggie sub for him, and a few minutes later he stopped off to pick it up. That left him going the wrong way on Lakeshore, so he headed around the block with the idea of driving out to the yard and eating the sub under the awing at the office.

It would be hard to say, but it was perhaps the two hundredth time that he’d driven by the empty lot where the old Record-Herald building had stood. And, once again, the thought crossed his mind that it was too damn bad that the lot wasn’t available. There was a lot of potential to the lot. It was a little small for the size building he was sketch-padding for the new store, but the old Parker Nash Sales building next door had been for sale for years; it had been a warehouse as long as Danny could remember, and now the roof sagged badly and looked terrible. Nothing a bulldozer couldn’t cure, he’d often thought – but as a lot, it was too small for the size of expansion he was thinking of.

So, once again it was with resignation that he glanced up and discovered that the sign that said "Future Home – United Bank of Camden Branch Office – A Clark Construction Project" didn’t say that anymore. It had been painted over in white, and in the middle there was a smaller sign that said, "For Sale – Northwoods Realty."

Danny couldn’t believe his eyes. He slammed on the brakes of the Lumina, causing an angry honk from the summer tourist behind him. He glanced at his watch – he had twenty minutes to get down to the rail yard or people were going to get pissy about running late. Not enough time to do anything about it today. Damn, someone else might have the same idea about some way to use a big lot like that downtown. It sure would be nice to hop on that thing while it was hot. His father was out of reach at the club – but there was a good chance Jennifer and Blake were at home. Give it a shot, he thought.

He swung around the corner, went around the block again, and headed up Lakeshore and turned on Point Drive. In five minutes, he was screeching to a stop in the driveway of Jennifer and Blake’s house, to find Jennifer and Blake having lunch with Myleigh and Trey. "Danny!" Jennifer exclaimed. "What brings you here?"

"No time to shoot the bull," Danny said, barely able to talk with excitement. "Can you guys do something for me in a big hurry, like right away? I have to go get on Keyhole in a couple minutes."

"What do you need?" Jennifer asked.

"I just noticed that the old Record-Herald site is up for sale," he said. "Apparently the bank isn’t going to build after all. Look, the hangup we’ve all had – you, me, Dad – with a new store is that there isn’t enough space for one downtown and none of us wants to go way out on Central. With that lot and tearing down the old Parker building, there’s more than enough room. The problem is that I don’t have my ducks anything like in a row, but if you can tack down ninety-day options on both places, or even thirty-day, I could have a chance to get them there."

"Sounds like an idea," Jennifer nodded. "I’m sure we can tack down a thirty-day extendable option this afternoon."

"Do it for me and I’ll cover it out of my bank account if I have to," he replied. "I just don’t have the time to mess with it right now."

"We’ll take care of it," Jennifer agreed. "You’re on afternoons this week, right? Let’s get together tomorrow morning. That might fit in with something Blake and I have been talking about."

"Works for me," Danny told her. "How about eight, right here? I could bring Debbie then, I’ve been talking this out with her the last few weeks and she’s got some ideas."

"That’d be fine," Jennifer replied. "You better run, we’ll talk about it in the morning."

"Yeah, spirits," he said, "look at the time, I’ve got to fly. Thanks, Jennifer, I owe you one."

"Maybe we owe you one," she said. "We’ll see you in the morning."

In seconds, Danny was back in the Lumina, heading for the rail yard. A glance at the clock on the dash showed he had just about enough time to make it. Spirits, was he glad he caught Jennifer and Blake at home! He wished to hell he had a better idea of what he wanted to put together, but the lack of a potential site, along with everything else going on this summer had put everything on the back burner. Well guess what, it was on the front burner now.

Damn, he would have liked to take the afternoon off, since the blood was well and truly up in him now – but this close to crew change time, there was no way any alternative could be worked out. It’d be evening before they were back in Spearfish Lake northbound on the tail end of Keyhole, so even that wouldn’t help.

Any other day he’d have been happy to be running with Chris, but today proved to be different – he’d actually have preferred grumpy old Anson, sitting back there glum in the engineer’s seat and keeping his mouth shut. Chris was in a gabby mood, wanting to yap about this and that and the other thing, and Danny desperately wanted to put his thoughts about the store together before he met with Jennifer and Blake in the morning.

The frustration was still on him when he pulled into the driveway at Debbie’s place shortly before midnight. She was up and waiting for him, and had a midnight snack all pulled together so they could unwind a little bit before bed. "Relax, Danny," she said as soon as he came in the door. "Blake called and said it’s all taken care of, we’ll be seeing Jennifer and him for breakfast tomorrow. And he told you to quit worrying. I don’t know what he was talking about."

"Thank the spirits," Danny sighed. "That’s a relief."

"Something interesting happened today," she smiled. "We heard down at the paper that United Bank of Camden isn’t going to build their branch here after all, at least not soon. With this Bush economy they have to retrench. The word is that they’re going to put the old Record-Herald lot up for sale. I know we talked at one time that it would make a good place for a new store."

"I think so," Danny smiled broadly. "That’s what Blake called about. I asked Jennifer and him to put an option on that lot and the Parker Nash building, so they must have done it."

"Good spirits, Korican, you’re quick on your feet," Debbie smiled in amazement. "I’m proud of you."

"I couldn’t get hold of Dad, that was the next best thing," Danny explained. "You know as well as I do that we’re nowhere near ready to go ahead with this, but seeing that ‘For Sale’ sign was too good of a chance to lose. Now we’re going to be playing catch-up. That’s what the meeting tomorrow is all about."

"And you’ve been thinking about it and worrying about it all day, right?" Debbie smiled, knowing full well he had. "Danny, tomorrow morning isn’t that far off. If you’re going to be fresh, you need to get your mind off it, relax, and get some good sleep."

"I know," he sighed. "I was thinking about popping that pill combination I use to shove my sleep schedule around."

"I can think of something that would do the job that we’d both enjoy more," she smirked.

"I’ll bet you can," he said, picking up the signal instantly. "Some old Indian magic, I imagine?"

"Well, this Indian would be involved, although she doesn’t like to think of herself as old yet. But I was thinking about some magic you taught me, called a half-and-half."

"That’d do it," Danny laughed. "Hudaroi, don’t you ever quit?"

"No, I don’t," she smiled. "Some korican of mine has converted me to what has to be the horniest Indian on the continent. Considering that a month ago, I thought that I could live just fine without a man, I find that rather amazing. But you’re the one responsible, and now you’re going to have to live with it."

Danny was indeed relaxed the next morning when they drove up Lakeshore toward Jennifer’s house. So was Debbie, for that matter. He was just a little surprised to pull into Jennifer and Blake’s house to find both his father’s Buick and Phil’s Ford pickup sitting in the driveway. "Looks like a bigger meeting than I expected," he told Debbie. "Trust Jennifer and Blake to grab the ball and run with it."

They headed inside. Jennifer and Blake’s house faced the lake, so the back of the house was to the street, with the kitchen right by the driveway. As soon as they were inside, they found an amazing sight – Jennifer at the griddle, making scrambled eggs, flipping sausage patties and herding around the big grill full of hash browns, just like she was a short order cook down at the café. What made it amazing was that Blake did most of the cooking around the house, but now he was standing back in the corner, a blanketed Jeremy on his shoulder, while Gil and Phil looked on. "Wild!" Debbie grinned. "This kitchen looks almost normal for once!"

"I have to cook once in a while, just to prove I still can," Jennifer snorted. "It must be the mommy side of me coming through. Dad, do you want to deal with some toast while Blake brings Danny and Debbie up to speed?"

"I got the idea you had been busy," Danny nodded.

"You were out on the railroad, and things had to be done," Blake explained. "I know you were concerned about the fact that you couldn’t get to Gil, so we figured we’d better touch base with him, and one thing led to another, which is why Phil is here. Just to fill you in, I called Binky Augsberg over at Northwoods Realty within five minutes of when you left, and the deal is done, both lots. It’s just an option for now, but over the afternoon we pretty well agreed we’re just going to go ahead and close the deal."

"Blake," Danny protested. "My thinking isn’t that far along. I have a lot of ducks to line up, and I’m nowhere near started."

"True, but this will buy you time, without having a deadline hanging over your head. Danny, your instincts were good even if you weren’t thinking this one out quite all the way. A big lot like that downtown? That’s valuable real estate! Someone will want to build a big place there sooner or later even if we don’t. We can tear down the Parker building and still make money on the deal if we never do anything else."

"OK, I’ll concede your point on that one," Danny said. "I was just looking at the problem in front of me."

"Understandable," Blake nodded. "But there’s some other things going on that you don’t know about, and Debbie, this isn’t for publication yet, OK?"

"I sell ads," she snorted. "I’m not a reporter."

"Yeah, but we all know how things work down at the Record-Herald," Blake grinned.

"Let’s get breakfast served," Jennifer suggested. "Then we can go over this in detail."

"I’ll come help, Jennifer," Debbie offered.

In a few minutes they were sitting around the table in the breakfast nook just off the kitchen. "This is on the complicated side," Jennifer told them. "As you know, we’ve done an awful lot of recording in the basement over the years. That’s a pretty advanced studio we have down there, and we’ll be working on recording Whispering Pines on it in another week. On top of that, we have Myleigh’s album, Canyon Tours, in production. Debbie and Myleigh can discuss the spirituality all they want but the bottom line is that it was sheer urge that couldn’t be ignored. We could not manage both at the same time, which is why Trey has been doing the mixing and editing using our equipment. He’s very good at it, and he’s also going to be production engineer for Whispering Pines.

"Now, this is actually leading up to something, so bear with me," she continued. "When it was just Blake and me recording in the basement, no big deal. But the last several albums have been with the Boreals, and the band keeps growing. Now, Canyon Tours and Harp Strings are the first steps into doing even more studio recording with groups that we don’t have much to do with musically. For instance, there’s a good possibility that we’ll have a young lady named Nola Johnson in to do a blues album, possibly over the winter. She has the most soulful, smoky basement blues bar voice you’ve ever heard." She let out a sigh. "With Jeremy in the picture now, and hopefully another child before too long, that’s just too many strangers running in and out of what we intend to be our family home. So, we’ve been looking at options of moving the studio to a separate location."

"Ahhhh," Danny smiled. "I think I begin to see."

"You’re probably right," Blake laughed. "Danny, our plans are probably no farther along than yours are, but there might be obvious economies of scale by putting both functions in the same building. Or instead, possibly putting the studio in the current Appliance Store building. So, with that in mind, if you have no objections, we’ll go ahead and close the deals on both lots. I’ll get hold of Randy and get rolling on removal of the Parker Nash building. We might as well get that much of it out of the way, anyway, and we’ll have time to get the rest of our acts together. There’s a lot of ways things can be handled financially, and we both need to define what we want to do. That’s why Gil and I asked Phil to sit in on this and ride herd on it. He’s been involved with this kind of thing before, and since it’s summer, he has time on his hands for the next month or two when you and I don’t, with you on the railroad and Jennifer and I getting to work on Whispering Pines. I hope you don’t think we got too far ahead of you, but after you lit the fuse, things came together pretty rapidly yesterday afternoon."

"No, fine with me," Danny nodded. "Especially under the circumstances. Phil, I’d been intending to get with you on this but there just hasn’t been the time, between Debbie, the store and the railroad."

"I figure the first thing we need to do is for me to sit down and get an idea of what everyone thinks they need," Phil said. "I know the backs of some envelopes have been scribbled on, but nothing formal. Once we have an idea of what we need, we can go to Randy and get an idea of what we’re going to have to spend. And, somewhere in there we’ll have to formalize things a little, and we need to drag John Archer in pretty early so he can figure out how we can do it to the best tax advantage for all of us."

"I thought of most of those things," Danny said. "But again, it comes down to the fact that the last month has been very busy. Since we didn’t have the lot nailed down, there was no rush, but I can see that we’re in a position to think about moving ahead with a little more purpose than we had before."

"Now, here’s the kicker for you," Blake continued. "Going beyond that point will require your commitment to stay through the process, including the expansion of the store. It’s probably going to take several years to bring to fruition. I know at one point you were going to just ride things out until the busy season is done on the railroad, then stop and reassess, so I don’t think any of us want to push you."

"Staying is not a problem for me," he said, reaching out to take Debbie’s hand and give it a squeeze. "I have no reason to leave Spearfish Lake when what I want is here."

*   *   *

Debbie was waiting up for him again with a midnight snack when he got home that evening. Like the night before, he had a lot on his mind, but he also had a way to get his mind relaxed, and it included giving Debbie some fair exchange for some of the very pleasurable things she’d done to him the night before. "Welcome home, Korican," she smiled as she kissed him at the door. "How was your day?"

"Busy," he reported. "Phil and Dad and I spent the morning firming up what we want to have in the new building. The new lines of stuff are up in the air, but we’re leaning toward just filling the lot and finding stuff to put in the building."

"It’s moving along pretty rapidly then," she said as she took his lunchbox.

"Yeah, for a couple reasons," Danny said. "First, Phil is under a time deadline, he’s going to want to be training dogs in two months, max. Plus, there’s a possibility that Randy can get a crew in this fall to throw up a new building to the point of having it closed in before the snow flies. That’d mean that the finish work could be done over the winter. The four of us are going to meet with Randy tomorrow morning. But, it’s like last night. I don’t want to think about it right now. I want to relax, make love to you and get some sleep. These four-day weeks are killers, but when they’re done, they’re done. I should know more tomorrow night. Do we have anything on?"

"Not that I know of," she smiled.

"What?" he laughed. "No houses to dedicate, no parties to attend, no katara showmanship?"

"I can do some of that last if you like," she grinned. "Unless you’d prefer hudaroi showmanship."

"We can probably manage some of that," he laughed. "But I’d almost appreciate even more some time to sit around and talk quietly, just you and me, and not have to feel rushed. The last few days have put a new spin on some things, and I’ve got a couple things that I need a katara viewpoint on."

"I’d like that," she said. "This week has been a little frustrating, with the hours you’ve been working. We need an evening together for ourselves."

"Tell you what," he said. "Since I’ll be a little loose tomorrow, I’ll do dinner. Maybe grill some steaks outside or something."

"That would be wonderful," she smiled. "There’s a grill in the little storage shed out back. But my korican, would you like to eat now so we can get on with what we both really want to do tonight?"

He laughed and smiled, "You know, my hudaroi, you do have a way with words."

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