Part 2: Full Moon Over Pennsylvania


Saturday, Sept. 9
Harm’s Loft
North of Union Station
0900 (local)

Despite our mutual morning explorations of how to make the other feel really good, we’ve already finished our run and shower. I’m making coffee while Harm is cutting up fruit (I’ll eat some just to keep him happy) and frying bacon (the real breakfast, in my humble opinion).

Time to start digging for whatever put that gleam in his eye last night. Well, beyond the usual, that is.

“So, what’s this ‘surprise’ you have for me, Sailor?”

“Your favorite breakfast food, Mac. M and M,” he smiles wickedly.

Right. I’d love to think Harm was gonna feed me M&M’s for breakfast, but hell hasn’t frozen over yet.

“Melons and mangoes,” he presents a bowl of the aforementioned delicacies with a flourish. “Enjoy them now, it’s the last of the season.”

Well, there’s something to be happy about.

“How come I don’t think that is the surprise you were teasing me with last night?”

“All in good time, my dear. Let’s have breakfast first. Your stomach has been growling so loudly I thought the elevator motor was seizing.”

“Can’t we talk and eat at the same time?” I know I’m getting dangerously close to wheedling, but I’m fixed on my objective. (Hey, Harm whines; I wheedle; neither of us always gets what we want but those seem to be the strategies we’ve locked onto.)

“No, ma’am. This surprise requires visual aides. Your stomach requires breakfast, which means your hands will be occupied.”

“Usually only one at a time,” I try to bargain.

He puts plates on the table, draws me onto his lap and starts feeding me.

“Usually. But not always.”
OK. He’s got me there. Don’t think any ‘visual aides’ are gonna be as good as feeding Harm melon and mango bites between kisses.


Harm’s Loft
1030 (local)

Wow, who knew M and M could get so sticky? Good thing Harm’s water heater has a fast recovery rate.

Once again dressed, once again with mugs of tea, once again seated on the couch I return to my original objective.

“Harm, about this ‘surprise’...”

He sets his mug down. He turns to me and transforms before my eyes into an 8 year old. I’d almost swear he is missing a front tooth in the grin that spreads across his face.

“Keeter called me this week.”

Oh. Keeter and Harm. Always a combustible combination. Though I’ve gotta admit, that last time, at Keeter’s wedding, it was an awful good thing, if I may be so bold.

“Really. How’s it going with him and Heather?”

“Great, Mac. Really great. Keeter sounded so happy. He even said he was sorry he waited so long to get married.”

Loud sirens go off in my head, accompanied by a mechanical voice intoning ‘Danger, Danger.’ We’re back to the ‘going public’ discussion again. Wait, he’s regressed to his 8 year old; I’m still an adult, and a lawyer. I can work through this.

“But Harm, as I recall, Keeter didn’t wait that long to get married. Didn’t he and Heather get engaged six months after they met?”

“Yes! Exactly!”

I can see from the look on Harm’s face that our many-years ‘courtship’ is flashing in neon in his brain as much as it is in mine.

“It’s good that they’re happy. Is he gonna keep flying for the CIA? I’d think that’d keep him away from Heather too much. Plus all that secrecy stuff gets in the way of a relationship.” Oh, damn. Did I really have to say that?

“No, he’s not. Yes, it would. Yes, it does. You should know. Yesterday was his last day with the Company. He’s going civilian. But he’s got a great idea for a fun weekend before he starts his new gig.”

He’d sobered for a moment there. Now the overly-excited youngster is back.

“He’s invited us to go on a Mooney weekend in two weeks. September 22 to 24, if we can get away on Friday. Fly the fall colors in New England. Forget those chumps stuck in traffic on back roads! We’ll see the colors from up above, and Mooney’s are great at low altitude. We can swoop down low, get close. Keeter’s got it all planned out. I think he’s trying to make it up to me for sticking me with that Bitsey woman at their wedding. And remember, I even told you Heather and he suggested during the wedding weekend our doing a flying colors weekend.”

Harm’s spouting run-on sentences like he always does when the 8 year old takes over, but this is too much. A ‘mooning’ weekend flying around New England with Keeter? And Heather is signing on for this? Hey, I only got briefly introduced to her at the wedding but she didn’t seem like a woman who’d go for this kind of stunt.

For that matter, what kind of strange communal mid-life crisis has both Harm and Keeter thinking that this would be a good idea?

I jump up from the couch. I need my space for this or, well, I can’t imagine that I’d really hit Harm, but I do know that there have been times that I gripped his arm hard enough to bruise him. (Hey, I get involved in scary, tense movies and sometimes his arm is just, well, there. I’m always appalled and he always laughs so I guess mainly we’re OK with that.)

But I’m not OK with this.

“I don’t want to be up in any airplane you and Keeter are planning on mooning from!” I throw my hands up. “Jeez, Harm. Grow up! You’re 40 years old. Keeter is, too. And all you guys can think about is renting a plane so you can moon people driving back country roads in New England to enjoy the fall colors.”

I start to pace. I’m actually surprised Harm hasn’t jumped in to defend himself. Or Keeter. Well, maybe that’s just because there is no defense for this!

“Innocent families with their children, out to experience nature’s wonder and you two are gonna....,” how does one describe exactly what they’re planning to do?

“ ...wave your naked butts at them!?!”

He’s just sitting there, calmly, looking somewhat bemused. Then he slowly stands, walks to his desk, opens his briefcase, extracts a brochure and hands it to me.

“A Mooney, Mac, is the safest single engine, four-seater, closed fuselage airplane in production. Keeter and I want to rent a Mooney.”
He’s walked behind me, has his arms around me holding the Mooney brochure open in front of me.

“So we can take the women we love on a wonderful fall colors weekend. Fly over a whole bunch of state forests and camp in the Allegheny National Forest. ”

Oh, well, when you put it like that.

“So, you can rent these for the weekend? You and Keeter found some unsuspecting, otherwise upstanding businessperson to rent one of these to you for the weekend?”

Hey, I’ve got to do at least a little ribbing to recover from the “butt waving” allegation.

“Better than that. Keeter has a friend who actually owns a Mooney. Well, he owns it with two other guys. But we can rent it from them. Way cheaper than through a regular operator.”

“And way less safe?”

He spins me around in his arms. “No way, Mac. No way you believe I would ever put your safety at risk.”

Uh-oh, got too heavy too quick for me. He’s Mr. Ernest and I was trying to be Ms. Flippant. Guess I missed.

Looking into his troubled eyes I know I have to take this seriously. So I do. “Harm, I believe you would never intentionally put my safety at risk ... unless of course you had to, or you didn’t know about something that would put me at risk, or that puts us both at risk.”

It appears that my attempt at lightening the mood is not tremendously successful.

“Harm. Risking our lives or each other’s life was sorta our version of ‘I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours’ for years. It’s not like I think you did it on purpose.”

I watch him chew through all that.

Time for diversionary tactics. “So, if this brochure isn’t from a commercial rental place, where’d you get it?”

He brightens. He brightens a whole lot. A whole lot more than a mere brochure should merit.

“I downloaded it from the Internet.”

“By yourself?” Not in this decade, I think.

“Bud helped me.”
“So Bud knows you’re planning on renting a Mooney for a weekend sometime soon.”

He nods with a shy smile and, oh my god, is that a hint of a blush???

“Harm, did you tell Bud that you and I were gonna be riding in this Mooney together?” He couldn’t, he wouldn’t. He *knows* that as soon as Bud knows, Harriet knows. As soon as Harriet knows, AP, NPR and the Navy Times knows. Hell, she may have started her own blog.

“No, Mac, I told Bud I hoped you would be riding in it with me. I figure I can tell my friends what I hope will happen. I figure you get to decide what does happen.”

Damnit. Backed into the rhetorical corner again by Mr. Litigator. I cave.

”Okay. If you and Keeter think it’s safe for Heather and me, I guess we both better be able to trust you. Which weekend are we talking about again?”

“September 22 to 24. But right now, Mac, my dear,” ooohh, he’s backed me into the actual wall and he knows what calling me ‘my dear’ does to me, “I’d like to further explore the concept of ‘you show me yours and I’ll show you mine’.”