Page 44 of The Hitchhiker in Panama
I finally threw the cover off and made myself get up. The smells coming from the galley were too good to ignore, and the voices had grown louder now that they weren’t worried about waking us up.
I threw on some shorts and a tank top and ducked into the head to clean up.
Marcella and Elayna were in the galley, frying batches of toast. Jonas already had his laptop out on the table and was drinking some coffee. Eivind sat on the couch, wolfing down some toast with jam.
Marcella spotted me first. Her face lit up and she walked over to give me a hug. I blushed.
“You had a good night?” she whispered.
“Yeah.” I released her and my eyes immediately went to Eivind, who wore a big grin. He swallowed a bite of toast as I slid onto the couch next to him. He pulled me closer.
“Hey, baby,” he said, and kissed me, softly at first, but then he licked and deepened the kiss. He pulled back when a kitchen towel flopped over our heads. Eivind chuckled and tossed the towel back at Elayna, who smiled but didn’t respond.
Jonas caught my eye as he sipped his coffee. He smiled, genuinely happy for his brother.
Elayna gave me a plate and I helped myself to some toast and sliced fruit from the platter. Next came a round of coffee for me and Eivind.
I asked about their evening, and Marcella told me about rooftop barhopping; they had been to three other roofs as the night went on, but they said everything was pretty low-key since it had been a Wednesday night.
Elayna was unusually quiet and slipped upstairs to eat in the cockpit instead of down with us. Jonas was still working on his laptop, and Eivind ate as if the sex had dug a bottomless pit in his stomach.
Marcella and I chatted about her plans for the day. She and Elayna were going to the supermarket to stock up for the passage. Jonas had an errand to run to pick up supplies (he was looking for something he called a joker valve), so they agreed to head to shore together.
“What do you want to do today?” Eivind asked me.
“You don’t have any chores?” I said.
Eivind looked at Jonas, who said, “Not today, but first thing tomorrow morning we must go up the mast.”
“Ja,” Eivind agreed, and looked at me. “I am yours today.”
“Well, we could go do the canal visitor center or go see the ruins of Panamá Viejo?”
“I would like to see the canal museum.”
I smiled. “That sounds good.”
Everyone parted ways to get ready, and I returned to my small cabin to dress properly for the day.
When we were all ready to go, we piled into the dinghy and puttered to shore, hailing three Ubers at the marina and splitting up.
Our drive out to the museum took twenty-five minutes. It was at the Miraflores lock we had passed through the day before.
Eivind and I wandered into the museum and learned about the history of the Panama Canal, reading about the original attempts to build it, the death toll for every year of construction, the battles for control. I used my phone to snap photos of tidbits and facts.
“What are you doing?” Eivind asked.
“I’m going to send some of these to my dad. He’s been super excited about my trip and has been reading books and watching all these TV shows about the canal. He’d like seeing this.”
Eivind cocked his head. “Your dad is an engineering nerd like you?”
“Worse than me.” I grinned. “He’s why I got my engineering degree.” We moved to the next display, which showed a model of a Panamax ship.
“But you do not work as an engineer?”
“Not yet.”
Eivind studied the model. “Right. Not yet.”
