Water Guy

He'd closed the deal and had a date to install the new system, so when he got back to his truck he was already in a good mood. When he checked his phone and listened to the call, a smile broke out on his face.

"Craig? Hi. This is Laura. Krimmer. The office manager at..."

He listened to it twice, and was still smiling when it finished the second time. She'd asked him to call back at his convenience, but he wasn't very far from the building where she worked, so he headed that way and parked along the street in front of it.

His name was still embroidered on the front of his shirt, but the shirt itself was now a different color and had a different name. 'On-Tap Water' was proudly displayed across the back in large letters and again on the opposite side from his name and the word 'owner' in the front.

He saw her before she saw him, and he smiled when he saw her wearing a sweater with a skirt that was short but still very acceptable for work in an office.

She finally noticed him, and when she did, she did a double-take then smiled. That also served to back up what he recalled about her beautiful face which was at least as beautiful, if not more so, than her very shapely body.

"Oh, my goodness! It's the water guy!" Laura said, the smile still there.

"And look at you!" Craig said. "I knew you were a very attractive woman, but...wow!"

He smiled, too, and did an eyebrow wiggle which made her laugh.

"And there you go again! You just made my day!" she told him. "If you have a minute, come on into my office."

"I do so I will," he told her cheerfully.

It took her a second, but she got it and laughed.

"You see, you always know how to make me laugh," she told him as they walked into her modest office space. "Please have a seat."

Craig sat across from her and immediately saw a photo of her and her late husband along with a pretty young girl who looked to be maybe five or six.

Laura saw him looking then said, "That's Mike and our daughter, Kim."

"She's a cutie. How old is she now?" he asked.

"She's ten. Going on 18," Laura told him.

"Uh-oh. I'm not gonna ask any more questions."

Laura laughed again then said, "No, she's not a...handful. She's just...very cute...and she's becoming aware of boys. The good news for me is they don't typically get too interested in girls until around 12 or so. But she's already getting boy crazy and asks to wear things that I'm not okay with. Other than that, she's a very smart girl who's still very sweet. Well, most of the time."

Craig was looking at the photo again then looked back at Laura.

"I was more than a little pleased to get your voicemail," he told her, the smile now back on his face.

"Well, of course," she said with a straight face.

"Oh, my. Aren't we full of ourselves," Craig teased, thinking she was referring to how attractive she was.

Laura gave him a puzzled look then said, "I was referring to me being a potential new customer."

Now aware of how far off he'd been, all he could was, "Oh."

"What? What did you think I meant?" she asked with a smile of her own.

"I uh, I was pretty sure you were making reference to how attractive you are, but..."

Laura laughed but not so loudly that it was rude.

"Oh, please!" she said. "I hit the big Four-Oh over a year ago, so that's the last thing I'd be thinking."

Craig kind of winced then said, "Hmmm. Then we obviously have very different definitions of what the word 'attractive' means."

He was smiling again, and as she took in his words and his expression, Laura was wondering if he could really be serious. She knew she was still attractive—for her age—but because Craig was every bit as handsome as her late husband had been when she met him, and at least a good ten years younger, the only real possibility was him just laying it on thick.

"I've already decided to buy an RO system, so you don't need to flatter me," she said in a pleasant way.

"I wasn't, but I'm very happy to hear you say that. Any idea when you'd like to have me take care of that for you?"

"I was kind of thinking somewhere around Thanksgiving maybe?" she said as more of a suggestion than a definitive time.

"Sure. Anytime you like," Craig told her. "I will need a deposit to get you on the schedule, but you can choose the day and the time. Since that's nearly two weeks away, I don't think there's much chance of a conflict."

"I can write you a check for the deposit," she told him. "Will that work?"

"Sure. That's fine."

She wrote the check, signed it, then handed it to him.

"I won't cash this until I come do a pre-inspection to make sure everything looks good. It's rare to have serious issues, but it would be foolish not to check ahead of time."

"Oh. Yes. That makes sense," Laura told him. "What's a good time for you?"

They each had a conflict with the first day and time the other proposed then counter proposed, but reached agreement for that Saturday morning at 10am.

"I still have your contact info, so unless something has changed, I'll see you there at ten o'clock," Craig told her.

"Sounds good...Craig," she said, as she stared at the name on his chest.

He looked down and laughed.

"Right. Same name. New business."

"How do you like being the owner?"

"I like it a lot," he told her. "In fact, this is the first time I've had a boss I always agree with."

Laura smirked and tried not to laugh, but she couldn't help it.

"He sounds great. I'll look forward to meeting him," she said as she laughed.

Craig got very serious then said, "I'm not sure I want to bring him along."

Laura gave him an 'okay, I'll bite' look knowing something else was coming.

"Yeah, he's a little more...outgoing...than I am. I uh, I'm afraid he might do something crazy like, you know, ask you out or..."

Even as he was saying the words, he wondered why in the world he had. By the time they finished spilling out, he wanted to slither under the door and go away.

"Oh. I...I see," Laura said as her eyes broke contact with his.

The look on her face told him she didn't take kindly to this latest attempt at humor, or at least that's the impression it gave him.

In an effort to clean up the mess, Craig actually did get serious and said, "I'm sorry, Laura. I don't know why I said that, and I hope you won't think I'm like that. I honestly meant no offense."

She understood why he was apologizing, but what he didn't understand was the way what he said had made her feel. She'd noticed how attractive he was many times, but until just then she'd never seen him as anything but the water guy. The very handsome, very young—water guy. For those few moments, she found herself looking at him as a mature, responsible business owner who was very handsome and someone who could make her laugh.

But after his clarification, she realized he'd only been kidding. The thing she was missing, though, was that he hadn't been kidding. At least not completely.

Feeling fully recovered, she smile politely then told him it was no problem and that she looked forward to seeing him on Saturday.

Craig also felt like he'd recovered, and grateful he hadn't lost a customer, he stood up and thanked her for the call and let her know he was also looking forward to seeing her that weekend. He didn't mention the part about pulling his foot out of his mouth, but that's exactly how he felt as she walked him to the front door.

After saying goodbye, each of them had similar-yet-different parting thoughts.

Laura was thinking, "Yeah, right," in terms of a guy like Craig asking her out while she shuddered at the thought of a date even as she thought about being 'one of those women' who ended up with a younger man as a way of trying to recapture their youth.

As he walked to his vehicle, Craig was thinking, "What the hell is wrong with you, man?"

That evening, Kim saw her mother writing something on the calendar on the refrigerator and asked what was going on.

"Oh. It's nothing, honey. Well, it isn't nothing, it's just an appointment."

"What kind of appointment?" her daughter asked as she moved closer and saw the note.

"Who's 'Water Guy'?"

"Hey, Little Miss Nosey!" her mom said as she realized her daughter was right beside her.

For a moment, it felt like things used to feel. It almost felt as if Mike would walk up and put his arm around both of them and ask, "Will the two of you be staring at the refrigerator all day?" But that was never going to happen again, and her daughter really was growing up.

"So...who is he?" she asked again.

"We're finally getting rid of the stinky water," Laura said.

"Oh, my gosh! Seriously? Even in my bathroom?"

"Yes. Seriously. And it's for the whole house."

"Even the washing machine?"

"Yes, even the washing machine."

Kim suddenly hugged her mom then said, "So my clothes won't stink anymore?"

Her clothes didn't actually 'stink'. It was more that the water for the wash cycle was hard and smelled bad. Laura compensated by adding fabric softener and using a dryer sheet, so their clothes didn't actually stink. But it would be nice to have them as soft and clean as possible, and that's what Kim meant but didn't understand.

Laura realized she should have done this a long time ago. It had been on Mike's to-do list since they bought the house, and he'd have gotten to it within a month or two, but that all got put on hold the day his life ended and Laura's got turned upside down.

LtCol Krimmer was an instructor at Marine Air Weapons and Tactics Squadron-1 or MAWTS-1 as it was known, and he loved being able to train and fly with some of the best pilots from the Marine Corps who came to Yuma to get their MAWTS certification, a highly-coveted checkmark on the way to future promotions and command.

Mike flew F-18s and was qualified in both the C and D models. The latter was a two-seater, wherein the backseat aviator was known as a Weapons Systems Officer or WSO, which was pronounced 'wizzo'.

They often flew against the only 'aggressor squadron' in the Marine Corps which flew F-5 aircraft that belonged to VMFT-401, a reserve training squadron that participated in each semi-annual WTI course.

Laura clearly remembered every detail of that final morning when Mike got up at 3:30am in order to arrive for a mission brief at 5am or 0500 which was pronounced ZERO-five hundred and never OH-five hundred by Marines.

For some reason she got up and made them both a cup of coffee, and also some toast. Mike never flew on an empty stomach, but he also wouldn't eat a big meal. It wasn't that he'd get airsick. That hadn't happened since flight school some 17 years earlier. But it did occasionally make him drowsy, and he needed every bit of awareness during these highly intense, air-to-air sorties.

He showered, shaved, then sat down and sipped his coffee while they munched on toast. She clearly remembered him in his flight suit, and could still see his amazing smile and his thick, black, closely-cropped hair. She'd been so in love him, and when he got ready to leave, she followed him to Kim's room and watched him kiss their sleeping daughter goodbye.

She walked him to the door where he also kissed her then said, "I may be late so don't wait up for me, okay?"

Laura was used to the long hours, but at least while he was at WTI, he wasn't being deployed for six months to a year in Iraq or Afghanistan, two places among many to where Mike had been sent in the past.

It was around 4am when she heard the doorbell ring, and it startled her out of a dead sleep. Mike would never do that, so she assumed it was a prank. Junior officers often did crazy things like 'drunk dialing' their squadron executive officer at some ridiculous time of the night as well as other equally juvenile things, all while being heavily under the influence.

She grabbed her robe, and headed toward the door, pretty sure whoever'd rung it would be long gone. Then again, there might be two or three drunk Marine lieutenants there to holler, "Wuzzz Uppp!" at her. Of course, it would be Mike they would be pranking, so she'd smile and offer to call them a cab if need be.

When she opened the door, her knees went weak, and the Marine colonel who was standing there wearing his dress blues caught her before she fell. Another officer followed him in along with the Air Station Chaplain, dressed in his Navy whites.

Laura was already sobbing and saying, "No! No! Not Mike," as he held her and did his best to comfort someone who couldn't be comforted.

She didn't remember anything else about that visit other than something about hypoxia. She'd heard from other wives there were problems with the oxygen systems in various aircraft throughout the military, and although pilots had been assured everything possible had been done to remedy the situation, it was another silent fear they all lived with.

They, of course, minimized the problem when talking to their wives making it sound like some minor thing no one was really concerned about. And yet everyone who flew jets was very concerned, so they coped with it the way service members did through gallows humor and sarcasm.

Starved of oxygen, the pilot would quickly lose his or her ability to fly the plane, and unless they quickly got low enough not to need oxygen masks so their brains could recover, the problem could be fatal. That was something both she and her husband, as well as the WSO in the back seat, had learned the hard way that fateful day, as the plane went into a steep dive from which it never recovered.

All those thoughts cycled through her brain for the thousandth time in a second or two before she remembered why Kim was asking her questions.

Money certainly wasn't the issue. The colonel who arrived at her door presented her with something called a 'death gratuity' check for one-hundred thousand dollars. Less than six weeks later, she received another four-hundred thousand from Mike's SGLI or Serviceman's Group Life Insurance.

Laura could have sold their decent, comfortable home, and bought one of the nicest houses in Yuma for cash, but she couldn't bring herself to leave the place where she and her husband had spent their final days together. She could therefore have done this or any other upgrade or repair to her home, but it was hard enough just getting up and going to work every day while putting up the appearance of strength for her daughter's sake let alone stay on top of something like water purification.

So now seemed like the right time to stop dragging bags of salt around and get more bang for the buck.

"Anyway, we'll have nice, soft water in the shower, in the kitchen sink, and even for the washing machine," Laura assured her daughter who was now becoming very concerned about every aspect of her appearance and that included any and all smells.

"Awesome!" Kim said, suddenly satisfied, and ready to move on to something else.

Kim was too young to understand the dynamics of losing a husband and her feelings about dating, but she was old enough to care about her mom.

After starting to walk away, Kim stopped then turned back around.

"Mom? Are you ever going to get married again?" Kim asked out of the blue.

"Whoa! Hold on. Where did that come from all of a sudden?"

"Well, Emma told me she heard that Courtney's mom was engaged, so I..."

"Wait. Major Eddins's wife is getting married already?" her mom asked, hardly able to believe her ears.

Ben Eddins was the WSO flying with Mike, and she'd gotten to know his wife, Sara, quite well. Sara wasn't a flirt, and she'd received the same amount of money Laura had, so it wasn't as though she needed a husband to support her. Whatever her reasons, it was just really hard to understand how she could not only have started dating again so soon, but already be...engaged.

Laura knew people grieved and 'healed' at different rates, but this was nothing short of stunning. At least to her anyway, as she was barely even capable of thinking about a single date let alone date-ing, let alone marriage. But if Sara was happy, who was she to judge, even though she wasn't judging her. It was just so different from her own experience that Laura found it hard to process.

"I know it's just gossip unless I hear it myself, but that's what she told me," Kim explained.

As shocked as she was by her daughter's words, Laura wasn't so shocked that she initially missed the significance of what her daughter just said. And what she said made her mother think that perhaps Kim was paying closer attention to her motherly wisdom and advice than she thought.

"That was a very grownup thing to say, Kim," her mom told her as she stretched out her arms to hug her.

As she held her daughter, she finally answered her question.

"I honestly don't know, honey. Someday, I guess. Why? Are you in a hurry to marry me off or something?"

Kim wasn't quite mature enough to understand the subtle humor, but she did give her mom a funny look.

"I think I was just insulted," her daughter said, not sure whether or not she had been.

"Aaah! What am I gonna do with you?" her mom said, pretending to be aggravated but secretly feeling more pride than she could convey.

"Keep me?" her daughter suggested with a smile.

Laura let out a long sigh for emphasis then looked at Kim and said, "Yeah. I guess I'll have to."

"Mom!" Kim said in mock protest.

"Well, I am stuck with you," Laura said with a look that also told Kim she had no other choice.

Kim started walking away again then said over her shoulder, "That goes double for me, you know!"

Laura smiled happily as her daughter left the kitchen, and found herself wiping away a tear she wasn't aware had formed until it fell on her cheek.

Saturday rolled around before she knew it, but in the interim Laura couldn't get over the thought that Sara was already engaged. She kept trying to imagine being able to let go of Mike's memory in such a short amount of time, start dating, fall in love, accept a proposal, and plan a wedding.

She'd heard many times over the years that one year was considered some sort of reasonable period of time before a surviving spouse should consider dating. It had been over two, and Laura still couldn't imagine it. And yet, there was a part of her that not only hated being alone, but that craved the kind of love and security life with Mike had given her.

Early on, the love part meant sex all the time, and when they were dating, that meant morning, noon, and night. And then the physical gradually gave way to something deeper. And somehow, almost by magic, she knew she loved him. She still didn't how she'd known, but there'd never been a moment of doubt that she did once she knew.

And whatever growing part of her that seemed to be so deeply connected to this other, 'older' part of her, very much wanted that kind of connection again. So the more she thought about Sara having already found someone else, the more her brain began slowly and gently trying to open her heart to the possibility of that happening for her, too.

She sighed audibly when she realized how hard all of that seemed just as she realized it was time for Craig to show up. She had no intention of 'dressing up' for his arrival, but she was still in her robe and that wasn't okay.

The only thing she'd done all morning was take a shower, so she nearly bolted off the couch and headed to the bathroom where she quickly brushed her teeth and then her hair.

As she reached for the tube of mascara on the countertop, she started to ask herself why she was bothering. She went to set it back down when she couldn't come up with an answer, but before she did, she stopped. She couldn't articulate her feelings but she was aware she was feeling something, and that seemed reason enough to touch up her lashes.

By the time she found herself shedding the robe and trying to decide what to wear, she didn't even bother trying to ask why it mattered. Looking reasonably nice just made sense so she threw on another nice-looking sweater and some jeans then went back into the bathroom and fixed the hair she'd just mussed up before calling it quits.