They’d barely fallen asleep when Logan woke Ajax. “More adventures. Wake up.”
“The rain stopped,” said Ajax from the sheets.
Logan was dressed in shorts, a polo shirt. “Get out of bed, lazy head.”
Ajax pulled the sheets over her head. “Fuck, Logan, go ’way. Lemme sleep.” Logan uncovered her. Toby stood beside the bed panting, his red tongue lolling. He was almost sure to shake his head in a second and cover her with slobber. She closed her eyes.
“I have inducements,” said Logan. They waggled the Sunday New York Times.
“Ohhhh, gimme,” said Ajax, reaching. She got up on an elbow, frowned. “Did you just boat into Bracebridge?”
Logan laughed. “I have chocolate croissants, smoothies, coffee, strawberries, yogurt.”
“Coffee,” said Ajax nodding.
“Coffee for you in a thermos,” said Logan. They threw Ajax’s shorts at her. “Thick and strong. Vite, vite. Time, she is a wasting.”
Ajax rolled out of bed; held her arms, shivering. “It’s cold.”
“It’s beautiful, quit yer whining. Bring a coat.”
Wrapped in a heavy sweater, the screak and slap of screen door behind her, Ajax followed her lover down to the dock: red canoe. Toby stayed on shore, whimpering piteously.
Logan paddled them over glassine waters in dawn’s light, quiet except for the liquid cuts of the paddle, drops falling, Ajax lifting her steaming coffee. The green-black shore was still shrouded in night, a cowl not yet pulled away for morning’s breath, but the mist burned off the lake in the distance, small comforting sparklers evident on the water’s skin as the sun caught. Ajax allowed herself the luxury of admiring Logan’s forearms, their thighs, their face. Despite the sweater and the heavy borrowed parka, Ajax couldn’t warm up; she shook and couldn’t stop. Slowly they circled the island into the low-hanging sunshine, past stands of birch, pine, and hemlock now bright and dewy. Lily pads opened pink flowers. Geese flew honking overhead; two swans gave pissed-off hoots and swam away from the canoe.
“I canoe,” said Ajax. “Can oe?”
Logan pulled the paddle. “Glad I yanked you out of bed?”
“Glad I’m finished turning fifty. Grateful for last week. The past months. Glad you’re in my life.”
Logan moored and climbed out, held the boat steady for Ajax, who smiled and said, teeth chattering, “Did someone say something about the Times?”
Toby was beside himself just on shore, wiggling his huge bum. Over breakfast, Ajax put her feet up on Logan’s chair, while Logan put theirs on the dog.
“Let’s go zip-lining,” Logan said, looking up. “Want to?”
“Now you want to hang me on a clothesline?”
Two hours later, they were harnessed and helmeted on a rank beginners’ course.
Logan said they loved being in the treetops where they could imagine themself an airborne creature. They loved the wind in their face, relaxing back off the line, even the self-rescues when they came up short at a platform and had to pull themself along, hand over hand. They loved the woody smell.
The course was too strenuous for Ajax even with a prophylactic nitro patch. Logan was solicitous, climbing patiently with her, waiting out her many breaks, sympathizing with her obvious bouts of pain, but was merciless regarding Ajax’s fear of heights. On the suspension bridge, Ajax clung to the railing, and in the end, morbidly frightened, dropped to the boards, making the bridge jitter, and crawled back to the start, terrified.
“You good?” Logan asked Ajax.
“I am not good,” said Ajax weakly, letting Logan pull her to her feet. “Also, I hate you.”
“You’ll remember this fondly.”
“I won’t.” Ajax couldn’t forget soon enough.
“I thought you loved nature.”
“I love nature down there,” said Ajax pointing at the ground, “where nature belongs. I do not like green trees and zips. I do not like them on this trip. I do not like them in a harness. I do not like them as an artist. I do not like green trees and zips. I do not like them, Logan, you drip.”
“I’ll make us capes for next time,” said Logan. “We’ll fly.”
Ajax said, somberly, “There will be no next time.”
But she gamely climbed a net like a spider, tip-toed across rolling logs screaming the whole way, and finally finished the course.
“Okay,” she said when they arrived at terra firma.
Logan opened the car door. “Sit, baby. You were brave.”
“You were brave. All I did was try to impress my bf.”
Logan said, “I’m proud of you and duly impressed.”
“I love you even if I do think you’re an asshole. What else is there to do in these parts?” said Ajax. “Are we going back to the city?”
Logan said, “What did you do as a kid at your grandmom’s cottage? I grew up in Paris, remember?”
“We could play board games.”
“We have other games we can play.”
Ajax squeezed their hand. “You can chute down my ladder anytime.”
“I can’t even think of all the things I want to do with you. I want you beside me all the time.”
“Me too,” said Ajax quietly, gripping Logan’s hand. “I want that too.”
They made love after they pulled up to the dock again without going inside—hot, itchy sex in the baking sunshine. Elliot and Joe could certainly see them, if they were looking, and this excited Ajax, and Logan’s cock excited Ajax, and she gripped at Logan’s ass, pulling them deeper, while in the trees, a raccoon mom and her kits wildly chirred, and inside Ajax pleasure percussed.
But a few minutes into it, Ajax had a suspicious feeling she was being punctured. A few more seconds and she shrieked for Logan to stop.
Logan laughed when Ajax stood up and showed them a bum full of splinters.
“Oww, oww, oww,” said Ajax.
Logan flipped Ajax over the arm of the couch and picked out dock slivers.
“Fuck!” Ajax kept hollering. “That hurts, Logan, goddammit. Go easy.”
“And it seemed like such a good idea at the time,” said Logan. “How is it you didn’t even notice, for christ’s sake; you’ve got half the dock up your might-I-note-bruised bum.”
Ajax stuck out her tongue. “You’re on the bottom next time we do that, asshole.”
“I was so not up your asshole, sweetheart. Hold tight. Don’t wriggle. Maybe we should be thinking clinic, although, geez, you really are black and blue. That’s making it worse because your tissues are swollen.”
“Oww! No! No clinics.”
“Well, Polysporin at least.” Logan plucked, Ajax squealed, and Logan said, “This is going to be one of those relationship stories. Those remember when you got slivers all up your bum stories.”
Finally Logan let her up, slathered in ointment with a warning not to rub. Ajax pulled on a robe. “Fucked and plucked,” said Ajax. “Kinda humiliating.”
“That’s not what you said about being over the arm of the couch the other night.”
“Va te faire fotre. And your horse.” The room smelled of oranges.
“My bride over the sofa arm … nah-uh. It’s going in the scrapbook.”
“I keep the scrapbook, goddamnit.” Then she realized what Logan had just said. “What did you just call me?”
Logan went down on one knee, pulled something out of their pocket, a ring box, square, navy velvet.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ajax said. “On bended knee? Get the fuck up. Get goddamn up, Logan. Do not do this.” But Ajax was starting to laugh and cry at the same time, and when Logan handed her the box, she sobbed. She could see herself as if from the outside being proposed to in this stereotypical way—a log cabin, for christ’s sake, French country chic, the beloved down on one knee—and it was goofy and absurd and her ass hurt a lot, the pain radiating down her thighs, but still, it was somehow perfect, somehow perfectly timed, and she knew that even though she was surely red-faced with embarrassment and pleasure—along with purple-bottomed—she was also full of love, the right kind of love, and a sense of safety and release.
“I want to marry you. Will you do me the honour of being my wife?”
Ajax opened the box.