Fjord

Love in a rowboat.

A person can vacation anywhere, but most people go to the places everyone else goes: four-hour cruise-ship islands, rubber mat ski-rental locker rooms, rental car offices that sell insurance. They struggle with paddleboard levers, trudge past boardwalk shooting galleries, hunt for exits out of famous museums.

There’s always rain and 95 degree heat. Pecans. Fudge. Salt-water taffy. Tour guides that want you to sing. There’s one day left.

And lines. Lines to lines. Lines at theme parks, ski lodges, all you can eat buffets, and gift stores to buy magnets for coworkers because you can’t go back empty-handed. There’s jostling onto city tour get-on get-off buses, jostling to find two adjacent seats on the upper-deck, jostling to get the left ear of the international headphones to make a sound.

And disappointments: whales from a quarter mile away, icebergs that don’t calve, fish that don’t bite and backs that are starting to hurt.

Somebody left soaking-wet black socks and underwear in “your” hammock that have to be removed them with a stick.

… aaah, but some people go to Norway, borrow rowboats without asking, paddle to the center of vast lakes ringed with the late-afternoon silhouettes of pine trees, jump into freezing cold water, clasp hands somehow around an oarlock, laugh until they sigh and fall asleep on seat planks. There are eleven more days.

They lie back and stare up at the stars. He tries to remember the names of constellations he once memorized in high school. There are eighty-eight. Now he can only think of twelve.

She hums the only piece of Norwegian music she can think of, something by Klieg, no that’s not right, Frieg maybe. After she’s hummed her song for a bit, he recognizes the tune. It’s Grieg, not Klieg. Now it’s their song together. They couldn’t have done it alone. More laughter. Northern Lights. Their voices carry over the water.

They can’t possibly make love in a rowboat, right?

Wrong. He bets nobody else has ever done it.

Have.

Haven’t.

Dawn.

Then just the two of them stealthily returning a rowboat on an unnamed fjord in Norway.

This little guy was inspired by the first line of someone else’s story which was inspired by a writer’s prompt, both of which happen to have been written by the same person, a former employee of the Eagle Harbor Bookstore on Bainbridge Island, WA. Fellow writers, you can find her pencil-chewing, time-sucking, dastardly writer prompts via the link below.