Different Circles

Jake and Laura wanted to be alone with each other during the seven days of her tour break and they accomplished that quite literally. They awoke on this morning in the master stateroom of a large houseboat Jake had rented in Greenville, Maine, on the southern tip of Moosehead Lake in the isolated north-central region of the most northeasterly state in the contiguous United States. From Greenville, they had motored the boat twenty miles north, anchoring it in a moderate-sized cove fifty yards offshore of a seven-hundred-foot-tall slab of ancient volcanic rock known as Mount Kineo, which rose from a large peninsula that jutted out into the lake. The peninsula itself was a state park but it was a state park that was only accessible by watercraft or helicopter. There were no roads to drive to it and there was no airport to land at. There were occasional boats that came in to explore the cove during the day, but they tended to keep their distance. There was no cellular phone coverage and the only communication device they had access to was the marine radio in the cockpit of the vessel, which they kept turned off. For all intents and purposes, Jake and Laura were utterly, wondrously, and intimately alone in one of the most isolated places in the continental United States.

They had been here for three days and three nights now and were thoroughly enjoying themselves. The days were pleasant and sunny, and the nights were chilly and quiet, with only the sound of the gentle waves lapping on the boat. The water itself was far too cold to swim in, but Jake had rented them a pair of jet skis and dry suits and they spent a good portion of each afternoon tooling around and exploring. At night, Jake would make dinner for them and they would share a bottle or two of wine and then spend some time in the hot tub up on the upper deck, looking at the stars and talking. It was therapeutic for both of them. They had agreed not to discuss the impending article in the New England Reports in which Laura would be outed for dallying with female groupies. Laura, working through Pauline, had already denied the accusations, calling them ridiculous storytelling. Jake had refused to comment at all, other than to say that the accusations were not even worthy of a response from him. There was nothing that talking about the issue, or even thinking about it, could accomplish at this point, so they didn’t.

“Good morning,” Laura said now as she sat up in the queen-sized bed they shared in the master stateroom. She was naked, as was Jake, and smelled of sex, as did Jake, but the bedding was relatively unruffled since they had done their pre-retirement fucking the night before on the foldout hide-a-bed in the entertainment room. Their goal was to fuck in each of the eleven beds on the vessel before they returned it. So far, they had used six of them, plus the hot tub.

“Good morning,” Jake returned with a stretch and a yawn. He leaned over and gave her a kiss on the side of her jaw. “How’d you sleep?”

“Like a baby,” she said contentedly. “This was a great idea.”

“It was, wasn’t it? I think we should make a habit of doing something like this at least twice a year from here on out. Find some out of the way place and isolate ourselves for a few days there. Get away from everyone and everything and just be.”

“I’ll vote for that,” she said, pushing the covers off of herself and standing up. She stretched a little and then headed for the tiny bathroom attached to the stateroom. “It should be pretty easy to find places like that once we get the new plane, right?”

“Uh ... right,” Jake said, careful to keep any inflection out of his voice. He did not want to talk about the plane right now.

But Laura did. She sat down on the toilet, leaving the door open, and began to pee. “Didn’t you say it’s going to be entering escrow soon?” she asked.

“Yes,” Jake said. “Uhhh ... escrow starts today, as a matter of fact. Jill was supposed to fly down to Bogota yesterday with that property lawyer Paulie set me up with.”

Laura giggled a little. “And to hook up with that Colombian pilot, no doubt.” Jake had told her the story of Jill getting herself laid.

“No doubt,” Jake said, giving a little chuckle in return. “She was very enthusiastic about the trip. Told me it was no problem at all, that whenever I needed her to go to Bogota for something, she was on it.”

“Wow,” Laura said. “That from the woman who grumbles when you ask her to fly down to Los Angeles for a meeting.”

“I guess that pilot knows his way around her cockpit.”

She looked at him in confusion. “How’s that?”

“Cockpit,” Jake explained. “As in, a pit for him to place his cock. It’s kind of a pun, you see.”

She shook her head and gave him a little eyeroll. “I don’t think puns are your thing, sweetie,” she said dryly.

“I thought it was funny.”