“Treasure”
Nathan
About Four Years Earlier
This was the last thing I needed tonight, I thought. It was completely out of character for me to be at the weekly Friday night throwdown in the Catalina Foothills. One of the other pilots in my recurrent class was renting a house up on Skyline Drive with a view to kill for. There was also a pool/backyard combination that screamed pilot party, and the faithful had heeded the call. Almost every week, Hoss played host to an afternoon and evening of drinking, storytelling, and women. Oh, and did I mention the drinking? The group of guys in the apartment complex near mine had been nagging me to come along and join in the fun, but I eventually realized what they were gunning for was a designated driver. And it sure looked like I was that guy.
I turned away from the music and rowdy conversation currently rocking the pool deck and stared out at the lights of Tucson. Skyline Drive was living up to its name on this clear spring evening, and the view drew me in, stick-in-the-mud though I was. Nursing a beer that bordered on lukewarm, I felt a growing pang of guilt. I was only here for a couple of months of refresher training after a desk job at the Pentagon. What I needed to be doing tonight was hitting the books. It was great fun to be back in the cockpit, doing what I loved, but the gray matter needed a thorough flogging to get back on top. I sighed and turned toward the house to look for a cold soda or bottle of water. It was evident from the increasing decibel level that this party was just getting started. Shit. It was gonna be a long, late night.
More than a few women had joined the party in the past couple of hours. It was mostly a word-of-mouth affair with guys inviting neighbors or friends of whomever they were dating at the moment. There were familiar faces here and there, but I made very few of the social gatherings this group put on, formal or otherwise. My reputation as a straight arrow, if not a killjoy, wasn’t intentionally earned, but it was mostly on target. I didn’t go in for the party scene and preferred to keep mostly to myself, staying on top of my studying and well clear of trouble. I’d never really seen the point in getting drunk every Friday and dragging home a new stranger to fuck. Don’t get me wrong, I liked sex. Really liked it. I’d been told, on more than one occasion, that I was damn good at it, too. And I loved women. But maybe that was the thing—it didn’t make sense to me. Using women that way. Hell, I didn’t want to be used either. There had been a few women over the years, a little serial dating, but nothing I’d call serious.
What the fuck was with the unavailability of nonalcoholic drinks at these parties? I was reduced to rummaging through Hoss’s fridge in an abandoned kitchen. Three supremely over-served girls in the hot tub were threatening to discard their bikini tops any minute. At a party like this, food was superfluous. Or so the logic went. The lights in the kitchen were off, so I didn’t notice her perched on a countertop across the kitchen. Not until she spoke.
“If you have the good fortune of surviving your encounter with that bachelor refrigerator and don’t pull back a bloody stump, I’d like a shot at it, too.” My head snapped up, eyes slowly adjusting to the dim kitchen, and I saw a diminutive figure hopping off the counter. Long hair hung almost to her waist and dark eyes looked me over quickly as she propped herself against the cabinet opposite where I stood and folded her arms. Before I could formulate a reply, she went on, “What is it with you pilot types and your food-free parties? What is that anyway? I understand Uncle Sam compensates fairly, so what would be the harm in springing for a bag of chips or a damned veggie tray, for God’s sake? I’m seriously fucking starving here, and there has been no food in evidence since my arrival.”
Her laughing face lit up as she joined me and continued her good-natured rant in the open fridge, searching crisper drawers and checking condiment jars. “Hey, I was brought up right, you know? I don’t arrive for a party with empty hands. It’s usually a bottle of wine or a bunch of flowers, but this time I blew the wad on a hostess gift, sadly unaware that there was no hostess to gift. But the hot tub full of drunken harlots out there?” She pointed in the general direction of the backyard. “Yep. All me. One neighbor and two coworkers. I bundled them up and drove them over my own sober self. And where’s my thanks, I ask you?”
She plucked a package of baby carrots from the drawer and unscrewed the top on a bottle of ranch dressing, giving it a perfunctory whiff. “I think this will suffice until I can seduce you with my considerable charms and procure a dinner invite.” She ripped into the plastic bag of carrots and poured dressing into a coffee mug she grabbed from the cabinet. “I’m Eliott, by the way. One L, two T’s,” she advised cheerfully, extending her hand. “And who might you be?”
Well, hot damn. Even for a smooth-talker like me, it was hard to collect myself and not babble after a tour de force like that. I extended my hand in the not-so-romantic light of the open refrigerator and intoned, “Well, Eliott, with one L and two T’s, ‘I’m the player to be named later.’“
She closed the fridge door and again leaned on the cabinet, munching a carrot and cocking her head as she studied me. “Hmmm. Bull Durham. Interesting first movie quote choice. Sexy and fun; that could be telling, but it’s probably too early to say.”
“It’s Nathan, Eliott. Nathan Morgan. Sorry, but I didn’t expect to find intelligent life here tonight—couldn’t even find a bottle of water. I accidentally became designated driver for a group of drunken neighbors like you did. And frankly, I was a little pissed, but I suddenly see the beauty of my predicament.” She pointed a dazzling smile my way that lit me up in the dark kitchen; I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.
“Well, Nathan Morgan, you know what they say.” She sucked the dressing off the tip of one of those lucky fucking carrots. “Sometimes, even a blind squirrel finds a nut.”