Scales

Scales 

by Maxwell 

The water was lovely, a deep blue with the afternoon sun laying gold over it as if they were lovers who met here every day, same time, same place. Bean imagined that the golden light went all the way down, touching deep into the being of the ocean. Okay, it was the sound and this was a ferry not some international cruise ship and the ocean certainly wasn’t his own lonely heart. 

He was a little blue. His hair was blue, anyway. He was a slender little man with two nails painted an iridescent purple. He stepped to the next seat, smiled at the woman, “Can I get you anything from the galley?”

She looked up at him, her eyes narrowing as her jaw tightened. “You’re new.” 

“I am,” he agreed. He’d been on disability for a few years, but it always happened that the urge to go back to work lured him back, and here he was. “We have cookies, tea, sandwiches.” 

“I know the menu. I worked on the ferry for twenty years. Get me a tea and a snickerdoodle. Have someone else bring it to me. I don’t want you touching my food.” 

He put the order, smiled, “Of course. Someone will have that out shortly, Ma’am.” In his mind, her name was now Choppy Seas.

She waved her hand at him and he stepped to the next seat. “Hi! I’m Bean. Can I get you anything from the galley?”

The man looked up at him and there was the sunlight. He had a biker, maybe veteran energy, with long brown hair that hung down past his shoulders in gentle natural curls and waves. His face was just enough rough to look very lived in, a day’s worth of scruff on his cheeks. 

“Hey,” he said in this deep cello voice. “I would kill for a coffee.”

“Sure thing,” Bean said. “Do you want a drip, a latte, a cappuccino?"

“Cappuccino, no sugar, but if you have a little hot sauce to put in it that would be cool.”

“I can do that,” Bean said. 

The ship rolled with the waves as he went back to the galley to get Sunshine’s coffee. He danced to the song on repeat in his head as he made the drink. He rummaged around in the sandwich supplies for the hot sauce and put a generous shake of a locally made death sauce. He personally did not partake in such things.

He checked that Alison had taken Choppy Seas her order. Then he signed out his employee cookie and took that and the coffee back to Sunshine.

“Hi! I’m Bean. I hope you don’t mind, but I brought you a cookie too. No charge.” 

“Thanks. I’m Jake.” Jake took the coffee, took a drink of it and leaned back against the seat with a contented sigh. “Thanks. So do you live in Seattle or Victoria?”

“Seattle,” Bean said. “First time?”

“Yeah. I’m moving there for a job, but it’s all very last minute.” Jake adjusted his vest so the Pride flag on his lapel showed. “Can you recommend a good hotel that’s not too expensive, that will have openings at like 8pm at night?”

Bean sat down opposite of Jake, rested his elbows on the table now between them. “Well, I have a spare room. I sometimes rent it out as an Airbnb,” Bean said, smiling suggestively. “What kind of work do you do?” 

“Personal security, mostly, but I’m pretty flexible. How much do you charge for your room?”

“You know, to welcome you to Seattle, you can just stay. I make a mean cappuccino at home. I have a nice machine.” 

“Wow, that’s sweet, but I’m happy to pay the going rate.”

“I have to get back to beverage service,” Bean said kinda sadly. He pulled a napkin out of his apron and wrote down his phone number, email address, and address. If you wait after we dock, it takes a little while to clean up, but I’ll take you home.” 

“I’ll bet you will,” the grumpy woman complained.

Jake turned to look back at her. “It’s not his fault you can’t get laid.” 

Choppy Seas turned red and shrank back into her seat.

Bean gave Jake a small, almost shaky smile and went back to finish the beverage service. 

As the ferry moved along its path, the water lifted the front, lowered it, a motion pattern that Bean liked much more than when the waves came from the sides. He hoped there would be whales. He always hoped there would be whales!

The sun set and there were no whales. At least the beverage service was done. He made Jake another coffee and took it back to him. 

“I don’t want you to fall asleep before we can get home,” he said, offering up the coffee. 

“Are you flirting with me?”

“Yes,” Bean said, sitting himself down across from Jake. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

“No,” Jake said. He’d accepted the coffee.

“So how old are you?”

“Twenty-five.  You?”

“Forty-two. I live an unstable life, moving around all the time.”

“Well, I just came off disability, for mental health reasons. I’ve lived in Seattle for nearly twenty-five years though so I am pretty stable. I bought the condo I’m in with my backpay. None of that prevents us from enjoying the moment, or the evening, as the case may be.” 

“True, but you seem like a nice guy,” Jake said, leaving the rest of that sentence unsaid. 

“I like to think I’m a nice guy, but that doesn’t mean I finish last,” Bean teased. 

The water though was not interested in who was a nice guy and who wasn’t. The wind drove waves towards the sides of the ferry now, rocking it. 

Bean saw it coming before the kid erupted and was on his feet, pulling a sick bag from this apron, but he was not fast enough.

Milk and cookies came back from the depth, arching into the aisle like the inevitability of poor choices. Bean patted him on the shoulder and held out the opened bag, in case there might be more raining down upon them. He smiled at the mother, “Don’t worry. The waves have a mind of their own.” 

“Jimmy,” another mother yelled.

Bean turned and speed walked in that direction. He arrived with the open bag enough to get zombie pizza down his front.

The floor crew was covering the cabin as well as they could as various volcanoes went off. It took nearly the rest of the trip to get it cleaned up. By the time they got near enough to Seattle for the water to calm down, Bean was ready to go back on disability. He was cleaning at his work shirt with a wet cleaning towel when Jake laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Maybe I could take you to dinner?”

“That would be fantastic,” Bean said, smiling over his shoulder, “but I’ll have to change clothes first. We could order delivery.”

“Whatever works is fine by me. I think you’re fine as you are. You worked hard.”

“The water isn’t always that choppy.”

“And you controlled what you could. What kind of food do you like?”

“Anything as long as it’s not spicy. I like pad thai.” Jake was still Sunshine in Bean’s mind.

“Sounds great.”