Engagement Rings and Hot-Tub Flings

(July 8, 2016)

3: Frantic Friday

Though Ford drove them back to the Falls and they got to the Shack just at noon—they discovered no parking was to be had. People had double-parked in the lot, where three buses also stood. Drivers had pulled off and parked on both sides of the drive as well.

With difficulty and Dipper's help, Ford managed to turn the Lincoln around. Then he crept it along down the drive, through the narrow passage. "You go in," Ford told Dipper. "I'll drive down to my house and then come and join you. I'll have to walk it. I had no idea the crowd would be such a problem!"

"It's OK," Dipper said., getting out of the Lincoln at the foot of the driveway. "See you when you get up here!" He walked up the drive, having to step aside for another incoming car, a compact. The driver solved the parking problem by jouncing over the grass and stopping on the lawn.

Dipper went in the family entrance and stepped into chaos. It was like wading into a sea of football fans, everybody talking at once, and to add to the din, Stan's strong voice boomed from the museum: ". . . nobody knows how the mysterious mutation called the Turtle-corn emerged! Part turtle! Part horse! Part something with one horn, whatever that would be. A narwhal! The Turtle-corn!"

Sheila gave Dipper a grateful look as he relieved her at one of the two registers. Mabel, at the other, puffed out her cheeks to show how pooped she was, and immediately Dipper started to ring up merch.

The snack bar, where Teek, Abuelita, and Lorena fought to maintain order, overflowed. Some people took their food out to the lawn, to the picnic tables that Soos had not yet gotten around to folding and storing. Dipper saw Soos hurrying to the snack bar with a huge blue-and-white cooler in his arms—more hamburger patties and hot dogs, Dipper supposed—but he had no time to chat to Soos or anyone.

Wendy, her hair a little frizzy, walked the beat in the gift shop, preventing kids from playing catch with geodes or skulls, stopping shoplifting in its tracks, and answering questions—how could she even hear, with all that gabble going on?—and she flashed Dipper a weary smile.

The gift shop started to feel stuffy and humid, and Wendy came by opening windows. She almost had to yell to Dipper: "AC's fighting a losing battle, man!"

But early July was far from the hottest time of year in Gravity Falls, and a slight cool breeze from the windows helped things a little. At one point, Mabel ducked down behind the counter and pulled off her sweater, hopping back on her stool wearing a pink short-sleeved top. That told Dipper it had to be hot—Mabel was so acclimated to sweaters that, unless she were swimming, one hardly ever saw her in other attire.

For a horn-honking time the buses couldn't even leave because of the cars on both sides of the driveway. But slots opened up as cars departed, and with the aid of the bullhorn, Soos asked those drivers who were on the verge of the driveway to please move their cars. Finally, the buses pulled out . . . and two more took their places. But the tide turned by two in the afternoon, and by five they were down to just an ordinary day.

Dipper hadn't taken time for lunch, nor had Wendy. They finally were able to go grab a bite at five-ten, only fifty minutes before closing time. Teek had closed the snack bar at three-thirty, later than the posted time, so they went to the kitchen instead and made a quick couple of sandwiches and then went out to the family porch to eat them.

"Man!" Wendy said, settling down on the orange sofa. "That was like being in a madhouse! And tomorrow will be just as bad. But—you wanna go for a little hike at six tomorrow afternoon, Dip?"

"Out to Ghost Falls?" he asked.

"She grinned. Uh-huh."

"And, uh, out to the hot spring?"

"Oh," Wendy said, all innocence, "that's right, there is a hot spring there, isn't there? I had forgotten all about it."

"Uh-huh," Dipper mimicked.

She shoved him, giggling. "Get out of town, man. Yeah, the hot spring! You man enough for it?"

Putting on his best John Wayne impression, which was still pretty bad, Dipper said, "Well, little lady, I'll give it a try."

"Mm," Wendy said around a mouthful of sandwich. She swallowed and sipped from a Pitt's. "It is amazing how good baloney tastes when you're starving."

Dipper had already wolfed his own sandwich. "Want me to go make you another one?"

Wendy finished hers off. "No, I gotta go home and make dinner for Dad and my brothers, and I'll eat with them. But thanks. That's sweet of you."

Dipper drank about half of his cola and asked, "Why don't you guys just order pizza tonight?"

"Wish we could, but Dad's watching his cholesterol. Just one pizza a week, and we had one a couple days ago. You know what, though? I think I'll swing by the seafood store and buy some salmon. It's healthy, Dad can grill it, and I'll just have to throw together a salad and think up a side."

"Sounds like a plan," Dipper said. Then a little too casually, he asked, "So—we're planning to camp out tomorrow night and then just sort of relax on Sunday?"

"I want to do absolutely nothing but laze around in the hot spring for a couple of hours," Wendy said. "Boil some of the kinks out . . . of my muscles, dude! Don't give me that funny look!"

Dipper shrugged and grinned. He took another sip and asked, "And then Monday, drive over to Portland to poke around in jewelry stores?"

Wendy turned unusually shy, her voice soft: "Well, yeah, OK. If you still want to. We don't have to."

"What if . . . we just sort of window-shop?" Dipper asked. "Maybe we could, I don't know, find some rings that you like and then later—if you trust me—"

She kissed his cheek, and for a change her breath smelled like bologna, not peppermint. It was nice, anyway. "Now, let me see," she said. "Why should I trust the guy who held onto me and wouldn't let go while I was, like, drowning in the Pacific and too numb with cold to hang on to him? The one who punched out the Love God for zapping me with a crazy ray? The guy who made a vow never to pressure me into doing anything I don't want to do—and keeps his word? Yeah, Dip, I think maybe I might just take a chance this one time."

"Thanks," he said. "But I wanted to say, if we can narrow it down to maybe half a dozen that you really like, then maybe later I can pick one of those and sort of surprise you, at least in a small way."

"I don't want you going way overboard," Wendy said. "You still need your college money."

"How's this? I promise not to spend more than half of what I saved up just for this occasion. The other half—I'll save for our honeymoon."

"I'll agree," she said. "But honest, Dipper, I don't want a great big showy ring. You and I will know what it means. That's all that's important, not impressing other people."

"Today I talked to Grunkle Ford about diamonds, sort of," Dipper said. "I think whatever we wind up with, it'll be less than one carat. Not teeny, but not all show-bizzy huge, either. Something I can afford."

"OK," Wendy said. "We'll try it your way. Make a list of possibles and then you decide which. We won't let the sales people push us into buying before we're ready, either."

They got up, tossed the empty soda cans into the recycling bin, and with a sigh went back to work—just for thirty minutes. When six o'clock came and Stan shooed the last nine tourists out, they gave each other a little peck of a kiss and Wendy changed into her street clothes and drove the Green Machine down the drive, turning to head for the fish market.

But the Ramirezes, who were not under doctor's orders about cholesterol, ordered pizza, to Mabel's delight.

After dinner (almost zero clean-up, an advantage of a pizza night), Mabel sat out on the Museum porch with Dipper. He was practicing his guitar, hooked into a little battery-powered amp and turned low. "You're getting pretty good," Mabel said.

He shrugged. "I'm just OK. I'll never be more than just OK, I know that, but it relaxes me. You worn out?"

She waggled her fingers. "Ugh! I got calluses on my calluses from the register keys. We took in more money today than Grunkle Stan used to in a week! Oh, you missed it—while you and Grunkle Ford were out having fun, a team dropped in from Oregon Trails—"

"What's that?" Dipper asked.

Mabel rolled her eyes. "Dah-duh! It's the big Oregon tourist magazine, available online and in better stores anywhere! You've seen it, Dipper! It's in the supermarkets, right alongside of that magazine that tells the wacky adventures of Batboy!"

"His adventures aren't so wacky," Dipper said.

"ANYhow," Mabel said in an exaggerated way, "the two girls and the guy did a photo shoot and interviewed Grunkle Stan and Soos and took a bunch of photos of Wendy in provocative poses, and they said the Shack is in the running to be the number one tourist trap in the state!"

"That's . . . yayy," Dipper said mildly. He didn't know why the news wasn't thrilling. He was happy that Soos was having all this success, but—well—

He thought back to that summer when Mabel believed he was going to ditch her to take an apprenticeship with Ford. What had he told her? "Things change."

She had longed for everything to stay the same as it had been that summer. But—yeah. Things change.

That was still true. And change could be good. But—it still hurt a little bit, somehow. The Shack was no longer the dump it had been—and that was good, right? And Stan didn't have to rely on the Shack for his income. Really good. And Stanford not only had returned and discovered he was well-off from patent income, but now had this great job as president of a research institution. Good, man, yeah. All good.

But still it wasn't the same.

As night came on, Teek returned to the Shack, having showered and changed his clothes (though Mabel thought the way he normally smelled, like fast food, was charming). "Hi," he said to them. "Practicing, Dipper?"

Dipper played a mournful C-sharp minor chord, with some bass notes, and then a G7 major in F, a long stretch for his fingers, and then flubbed an E7 blues chord. "That one's real hard to get," he said. "Still working on it. Some of these fancy chords are murder on the hands."

"Play us something," Mabel said, she hopped up, grabbed Teek's hand, and said, "We wanna dance! Play us a slow dance!"

"Let me see. OK, here you go," Dipper said. He started one of his own compositions, "Up Over the Moon," not a hard one to play. It was a lazy 120 beat-per-minute tempo, a flowing melody, a clear beat, an easy A-C-G-D chord progression with E- and F-minor varying the middle section.

"Perfect!" Mabel said. She and Teek broke into a casual stroll-around dance, then did some steps back to back, then he swung her around, and they danced on the lawn in the fading light of day. Teek had developed a little style with his dancing, and he and Mabel made a good pair. He even dipped her once, making her giggle, "Oh, my!"

Dipper gave them a little fanfare to wind up on, and they came back to the porch holding hands. "What was that?" Teek asked.

"Nothing, really. Just a tune I put together," Dipper said. "I don't have lyrics for it yet. It's called 'Up Over the Moon,' and I want to do something a little bit different with the middle part so it's not as repetitive as it is now."

"It's a good dance number" Mabel said. "My talented Brobro!"

They sat and talked for a while, Dipper noodling around with chords, quite softly. Bugs came and swirled around the parking-lot lights. Way off in the distance, something howled, Yip, yip, aaoooowooooo!

"Poor doggie!" Mabel said.

"Coyote," Dipper corrected. "Probably a few out hunting."

"I haven't heard a coyote up here in ages!" Mabel asked. "That's adorable!"

"To small pets," Dipper said. "Usually, though, you hardly ever see them. They're mostly nocturnal. And they're not really dangerous to people. Unless you see one leafing through an Acme catalogue, or flying in a blimp overhead and leaning out the window clutching an anvil."

"Huh?" Mabel asked. "How could—oh, it's a joke! I get it! 'Meep-meep!' Teek, it's a joke, 'cause—"

"I get the joke," Teek said. "But real coyotes don't do that. Of course, this is Gravity Falls!"

"Yeah, and these are normal coyotes," Dipper said. He began to strum "Blue Shadows on the Trail," but the distant coyotes failed to come in on their marks. "I don't think there are very many of them in the Valley. They're really scarce here."

"Not enough food?" Teek guessed.

"I think . . . there's something in the woods that likes to eat them," Dipper said.

"Oh, yuck!" Mabel said. She got up. "I'm gonna go put on my sweater again. It gets cool quick at night."

As soon as she'd gone inside, Teek said, "Uh, Dipper? I've kind of got an idea about me and Mabel. I mean, how to, you know, make sure things are all right between us. Can I ask your opinion?"

Dipper let the tune fade away. "Sure."

Breathlessly, in two rushed sentences, Teek explained what he had in mind. "So—would that be OK?"

"I think it would be great," Dipper said. "And I like your idea. Keep it reasonable, though."

"Yeah, I've thought of that," Teek said. "I think I've got it covered. I'll run it past you before committing, though."

"Fine," Dipper said. "Better ask Wendy, too." He played a few chords of the song he'd written for her, "I Will Always Believe in Fairy Tales," and, smiling, he said, "She'd know about stuff like that."

"I can come over to talk to her on Monday," Teek said.

"Um, OK, but in the late afternoon. Wendy and I are going on a little trip over to Portland that morning."

Mabel returned in a new gold-colored sweater just then, so they cut their conversation short. For another hour, Dipper played lazy chords and sometimes little songs—Mabel and Teek harmonized on a couple—and then when full dark had finally fallen, he stood up, picked up his small amp, and said, "Well, gonna be a busy day tomorrow. I'm turning in."

Twenty minutes later, Mabel opened the door of the attic bedroom without knocking, as usual. Dipper lay in bed, writing in his latest Journal. "Hey, Dip?" Mabel said, taking a seat on the foot of his bed.

He finished a sentence and set the journal aside. "Yeah?"

Mabel was twirling a strand of her hair around a finger. "I just wanted to say goodnight. And, um, thanks for what you just did."

He smiled at his sister. "You're welcome. What did I just do?"

She shrugged and all but whispered, "You went inside and let Teek give me a goodnight kiss. Thanks for trusting us, Broseph."

"Oh, I trust Teek all the way," Dipper said.

"And me?"

He leaned back against the wall and folded his arms sternly. "Not for one second."

And that started a romping pillow fight.