Page 24 of The Hitchhiker in Panama
“Oooh, what will we do with a drunken sailor?” the guitarist called into the mic. He pulled back and the audience responded.
“What will we do with a drunken sailor?”
The dance floor became a whirlwind. Eivind led, spinning me, and with everyone else we galloped around, laughing and carrying on like the drunken sailors we were.
I laughed when they sang the rest of the verses. Everyone knew the question, but the answer was more obscure:put him in bed with the captain’s daughter, who was, apparently, not attractive.
Eivind and I spun around the dance floor with the masses. After the song finished, we moved back to the table with the rest of theEikcrew. One drink became more. Eivind ordered shots. I danced with Marcella and Elayna when a guitarist played some pop covers, and then Elayna struggled to drag Jonas onto the dance floor, only succeeding to coax him out for a slow song.
My hair escaped its confines, and Eivind couldn’t stop touching it, his fingers twirling at the nape of my neck.
Time flew, and the musicians tired. Eventually the music switched to piped-in radio, and the atmosphere got quieter. We were closing down the place.
Ten
As we walked back to the boats, Eivind and I trailed behind the other three. I was delightfully buzzed and happy.
“I know this sounds insane,” I said, “but I want to go into the jungle.”
Eivind laughed, his arm around my neck and his fingers intertwined with mine. “Yes, insane. Why do you want to go into the jungle?”
“I want to see the darkness of it. Like, it’s such a raw, natural place, and if you go in there, the darkness will just be . . .” I trailed off, not knowing how to finish my thought.
“Hmm . . .” Eivind kissed my forehead. “I’ll take you into the dark.”
“What? Really? Don’t you think it’ll be dangerous?”
“What is dangerous here? Anything we come across will hear and see us first. It will run. And we won’t go deep. Stay here, okay? I will be right back.”
“Okay. Right here.” I pointed at the dock below my feet.
Eivind’s eyes crinkled in amusement as he turned and retreated down the dock. I gazed up at the sky, looking for a few constellations I might know, everything so new to me here in the northern hemisphere.
Eivind was back quickly and he handed me a strap of some kind.
“Here, put this on.”
I peered at it in the dark: it was a headlamp, the kind someone might wear for spelunking. Eivind pulled his headlamp on and I did the same. He reached over to click the button on mine, and his face lit up in a red glow.
“It’s red so you can see better at night. Now, let’s go find this darkness of yours.”
Eivind looped his arm back around me and we walked out toward the road. “You use these headlamps on the boat?”
“Yes, we use red light most of the time, because your eyes do not have to adjust from red to dark. But they adjust from white to dark, right, and it is hard to see sometimes. This is better.”
“That makes sense,” I said.
“Did you not camp when you were a child?”
“We did, but we used white flashlights and were always camping in campgrounds and not out in the wilderness. Besides, you have to drivefarfrom Sydney to find dark skies away from the lights of the city.”
“You never went to the Outback?” Eivind asked.
It took me a moment to respond; my eyes were glued to my feet, making sure the headlamp lit up my path. “No, it was always too far away, too expensive. By the time maybe we could afford it, I was a teenager and too cool to want to go vacationing with my parents.” I sighed and dramatically leaned my head against Eivind’s shoulder. “Maybe someday. I bet you have some amazing dark nights at sea!”
“Yes, we do. Okay, stop here.”
I looked around. We were far enough into the jungle that the foliage blocked the lights from the marina. Eivind took his headlamp off, and I took mine off too. We faced each other, and Eivind pointed the beam of his light right between us; my headlamp dangled from my hand. He grinned, looking wicked in the red light and shadows.
