2022-04-23 - Big Clam Dicks

7pm, Friday night. It's not, perhaps, as bright and clear an evening as one could hope for, but it's not actually raining, and it's not too cold, and that's win enough for now.

Mikaere's replaced his usual fleece and t-shirt combination with a black cotton shirt patterned with little silver ferns, and a light grey jacket over the top; he's even wearing long trousers, though they're heavy canvas outdoors-wear, so not exactly fancy. Anyway, 'fancy' would probably be wasted on the Boardwalk, especially pre-season: it's not deserted, but it's not exactly teeming with people, either, and the overall effect is a little tired and rundown.

It's maybe a place better suited to a date between teenagers, and not a pair of fully grown adults, but Mikaere, waiting for Jules near the road, seems amused and maybe even pleased by the ridiculousness of it. He's watching a mother-of-two wheedle her children away from the candy shop, distracted by their childlike drama; it means he's not looking at his phone, not watching the time, or over-thinking anything... if that's even something he might do.

Jules is running late, but not fashionably late. Just five minutes or so. To be fair, she takes her time getting out of her car and putting herself in order before she heads for the boardwalk herself; one wouldn't want to be early or overly prompt. Or so she tells herself.

She's sporting a similar style tonight: jeans, boots (the heavier, slightly rugged kind good for walking, not ones with stiletto heels), a loose maroon slub-knit top that laces up at the front, and a dark grey utility jacket. They said casual, and she's stuck to it. And let it be known, for the record, that Jules does not do makeup.

"Hey," she calls when she spots Mikaere. It's not hard. He's tall. He also isn't white, and thus more prone to sticking out in this West Coast town. "What's up?"

Jules' voice draws Mikaere's attention, a bright smile blossoming not only about his mouth, but also into the creases of his face, his eyes. He lifts a finger, as if asking her to wait, then tilts his head towards the woman and her children. "Wait for it," he says, amused. "There's going to be a tantrum in three--two--one--"

It's probably actually minus two before anything happens, but look, it's not so far off, and it doesn't interrupt that smile. Small Child #1 bursts into loud tears, dropping to his knees in the ground. As Mom drops down to say something to Small Child #1, Small Child #2, apparently feeling left out, begins to cry as well.

"-- and there we go. Hello. You look nice. She's picking the kids up after an afternoon spent with their dad, I think, and he's hopped them up on sugar. Poor kids. Poor her, too. I don't know why I just felt the need to say that, but I've been watching them for ten minutes, and it was the inevitable next step. Hi."

Also, no purse. Jules doesn't do purses either. (These things are important to note.)

With the lift of his finger, she draws to a halt, eyebrows drawing up, too. There's a smile playing at her lips, though, making it the curious kind of eyebrow-raise and not its skeptical sister. Jules looks to where Mikaere has indicated, and her smile turns to a sympathetic wince. "Ouch. Good going, dad. Hopefully they'll crash in the car. Thanks, so do you. So where to?" It's all stated relatively matter-of-fact, and then expectant in the friendly sort of way as she looks back, away from the children melting down.

The children melting down are, it's true, nothing more than a distraction-- a way to pass the time, while Mikaere waited. Now, he turns his body so that Jules gets his full attention. "So you get a choice," he tells her, with a grin. "I was warned that the beach down here isn't up to much, and that's true; I have specific standards, though, and they tend to include beaches that are more about the sand than the rocks, though I'm willing to be educated on the merits. So we could take some food down that way. Alternatively, my girl's back in the water, even if she's not yet ready to go anywhere, and we could eat on her deck. Either way, we're staying near the ocean, because I miss it when I can't smell it in the air."

"Ooh, tough choices," Jules replies, brow knitting as she pretends to think harder than she actually is. "See, I like my rocky beaches. They're good for hiking. You get more sandy beaches the more you go down to Oregon, for what it's worth. But, I am super curious about this boat of yours, and it sounds like you miss her. And I haven't been on a boat in forever. And by that I mean since last summer." She grins, then. "I totally, totally get it. I grew up on the coast, too. And not like this harbor -- the actual coast, the ocean. We used to go down and build bonfires every weekend, stay out all night under the stars."

"I'll have to give the rocky beaches a chance," is Mikaere's immediate reply. "But I may need to take a sail down to Oregon over the summer, too, just to get my hit. Is that a vote for dinner with my girl and I, then? Either way--" he gestures towards Jules, not going so far as to offer his arm, but certainly encouraging her to fall into step with him (a step he'll shorten, deliberately, to make it easier). "The actual coast. Yes, exactly. We have two harbours in Auckland, mind, but it's still-- the coast. Sailing out to the islands, or up the coast."

There's something a little faraway about his expression, not to mention his voice, when he says, "There's this little isolated beach. Whatipu. It has these huge caves that were used for dances, once upon a time, though of course we used them as meeting places, long before that. One road in, unpaved. Just--" He laughs, mostly at himself. "Special places, you know?"

"Yeah, let's do it," Jules decides, stepping up to walk alongside Mikaere. This close, it brings the height difference into relief; she's not a tall woman. Not having to struggle to keep up is definitely appreciated, though she compensates too by lengthening her stride. "Sounds beautiful," she says when he describes the beach. "I love our coast, but I love our forests and mountains, too. It's all connected. The rivers that lead to the Pacific start in the mountains, and the salmon swim upstream to spawn--I'll stop there, before I get too Circle of Life. But I'm planning to do a solo hike in the Olympics soon."

"It is all connected, though," agrees Mikaere, easily. "Disney gets some things right, in the spirit of them, at least, if not the actuality of everything. Fried Fish okay by you? It's not fancy, but it's good, and without taking the time to catch something for myself, it feels the most appropriate thing to eat by the sea. I have beer, too."

He casts a side-long glance in Jules' direction, interested. "A solo hike. For a specific purpose?"

"Fried Fish is great," Jules confirms. "I like my fish any way I can get it, except overcooked and dry."

Her hands are in her pockets, as they walk along, and the question makes her look a bit pensive, perhaps more than the question itself warrants. "Kind of," she replies. "I mean, I've always been a hiker. It's something I really enjoy. The rain doesn't bother me, though it's especially nice to get out in the summer when there's more sun. Still rains, of course, especially if you're going into the rainforest." She looks sideways (and up) at Mikaere, thinking to clarify, "Not like a tropical rainforest, obviously, but still gets the rainfall. Really wet and really green. Beautiful mosses, giant ferns."

She digresses. What she's working her way to saying is this: "But I was thinking of it along the lines of a meditative experience. There are so many places here that people used to consider special. Even sacred. I'd like to spend some time alone in one of those." Now the side-eye is real, as she looks to see how her plans are received. She's choosing her words -- and how much she reveals -- carefully.

Mikaere listens as they walk, and even when he could butt in and talk about New Zealand's similarly lush forests, its beautiful ferns, he holds back; for now, it's more important to listen-- really listen -- to what Jules has to say, because it's not hard to tell that it's important to her.

"Okay," he says. They're nearing Fried Fish, and for a moment, he looks torn: this is a conversation he clearly wants to continue, but equally, it doesn't seem to be one best carried out surrounded by early-season tourists and food service employees. He pauses his steps, turning to face Jules head-on. "I'd love to hear more about that, if you want to share it. Sounds... intense? Or at least, has the potential to be. Important, though. Are you looking for something specific?"

Jules stops too, thoughtful as she considers Mikaere and the question he puts before her. “Kind of,” she answers. “But I’m not sure what that something is.”

It’s Jules who breaks off this conversation, for now. “Right now, the specific thing I’m looking for is whatever they have that’s freshest. And then fried. What have you tried here?”

There's lots of things Mikaere could say in response to that, but Jules has set it aside, for now, and he doesn't seem inclined to pick it up without her say-so. So he grins, instead, and admits, "I usually ask for whatever's come in today, and take what I get. Is there some kind of local delicacy I should absolutely be trying? Otherwise-- catch of the day it is."

"Local seafood right now? Shellfish: clams, oysters, geoduck. But the season won't really pick up until the end of the month as things warm up." Trust Jules to promptly rattle this off. "You know what geoduck is?" Gooey-duck. "It's a Pacific Northwest thing." She does not launch into a further description. Mikaere will have to ask for it, if he doesn't know already. "I think I want fish, though. Maybe with a side of fried oysters." Because why not.

"Scallops?" wonders Mikaere (pronouncing it the non-American way, 'scollop'), only he'd distracted from that because there's one thing Jules has listed he doesn't know about, and that makes him pause. "Gooey-duck? I haven't heard of that; what is it? Aside from being a Pacific Northwest thing."

It's very clear, as Jules looks at Mikaere, that she's trying to hold back her grin. There's mischief in her eyes. First, though, she says, "You can find scallops, but they're not really harvested much on a commercial scale. The shelf drops off pretty quick on this coast, and they like shallower water. Best place to look for them is on the Oregon coast, where there are some reefs. And there's a small pink scallop that I've heard is really good, but it's in the Puget Sound, not out here."

Geoducks. It starts with the more technical explanation: "Geoducks are big clams with a really long neck. They're really tasty. And expensive, if you don't go clamming for them yourself." And now for the not so technical description. Jules can't keep a straight face, but props to her, she holds back any embarrassment when she bluntly adds, "They look like a clam with a big dick sticking out of it."

Forget scallops, then: Mikaere's nod acknowledges Jules' comments on them, but they're not the most interesting bit of what she's just said. First, it's just a matter of eyeing her, noting that held-back grin, and then... and then.

"Oh fuck me dead," is all he can get out, before he begins to laugh: a warm, rich, unrestrained laugh that ends, ultimately, with a grin as broad as his face. "Isn't the ocean amazing? I'm going to have to see one of these. And probably taste one, too, if they're as good as you say they are." Is it weird, to consider eating something that looks like a penis? Too bad. Wait, hang on--"

He needs to get out his phone, and google. And then, yes, laugh again, because... dude.

"Fish, yes? Fish and fried oysters."

Now Jules is laughing too with the delight of a local who thinks these things are hilarious and even better when shared with the uninitiated. "Best way to eat them is to eat them raw," she adds, and now she's deliberately leaning into the innuendo while shifting to see the picture that Mikaere comes up with. Yup. That's it. "And when you go clamming for them, you have to dig fast, because they'll squirt you in the eye."

Along with the laughter, a nod. "Yes please." She pulls her wallet out of her back pocket, too, even though it's early and they're not at the counter. It's one of those signals, the gesture of a woman who doesn't expect someone else to pay.

None of that innuendo passes Mikaere by, his mouth twitching with easily-expressed mirth though he doesn't specifically add any of his own. Well. Except: "I wouldn't mind trying that, sometime. The clamming but, as well as the eating. I've dug for pipis and tuatuas, but a dick clam? That's a whole new experience."

He gestures towards the Fried Fish stand, acknowledging Jules' wallet with a bob of his chin that says he's not going to argue with her (at least not today). "Ladies first."

"They're a delicacy," says Jules, and she leaves it there, stepping up to place her order. She pays, then steps aside to wait. The fish will be up quick, greasy in its wax paper, with lemon wedges and white tartar sauce on the side that's spilling out of its little paper container.

Then, as they walk with their food, she remarks, "In case you couldn't figure it out, this is kinda my thing." No shit, Jules. Most people don't go taking off after escaped crayfish yelling about invasive species. "Not just me though -- it's a big part of the culture for native people here. Even now. There's all sorts of treaties outlining our fishing rights, and even whaling rights, for the Makah. Salmon was what the world revolved around. Like the buffalo, out in the plains. I still work part-time up at one of the hatcheries."

"I figured," Mikaere says, not without a side-long grin, aimed back at Jules. Not quite teasing, because there's seriousness to the subject, but hinting that it could be, anyway. "I get it-- it's the same for us. Well." He pauses, shaking his head. "No. No, not the same. Clearly not the same, because we're not the same peoples; that's an obvious simplification. What I mean is, there are absolutely similarities, and believe me, I understand the concern over invasive species."

He pauses, then adds, with apparently-genuine curiosity: "You said you were studying. Is that part of what you're studying? Preservation and fishing rights and everything?"

"I'd be surprised if there weren't similarities," Jules replies. And then she confirms, "Yeah. Technically it's an AA in Forestry, a two-year degree at the community college here. But it includes the larger picture. I don't think you can do Forestry here without paying attention to the waters, and everything that goes with it. I didn't go to college after high school." She says casually, as another piece of information, but it's not just that. She's glancing sideways, looking for a reaction.

"Kaitiakitanga," says Mikaere, with a quick nod. They're already leaving the crowded boardwalk behind, weaving their way onto the docks themselves. It's not far. "Guardianship. Of the land, the sea, the sky; because they're all three connected."

He's noted that look, and the expectation of reaction. He turns his head to meet Jules' gaze, and wonders, "Are you expecting disapproval for that? Dismissal? My ma was the first in her family to do further study, and there's not one member of my whānau I'd dismiss for it. Your education doesn't matter. What matters is all here." He thumps at his chest with one hand (the hand that is not holding his dinner).

Jules doesn't repeat the word, but she nods. That. It makes sense to her. All the better for there being a word for it.

When Mikaere turns to her with his question, then she does look a little embarrassed, called out for what he rightly identifies as her expectations. His affirmation draws a small smile, though. "Thanks." She's quiet for a moment as they walk back to the marina. "I don't know," she says then, trying to put it into words. "You were in politics and stuff, right? A lot of people I know around here are really smart. Meanwhile I'm like, shit, I haven't written an essay in ten years and struggling through stuff that you'd probably find really easy. I think it will be worth it in the end, but part of that is because I think people want the degrees, like it proves you have the experience. So sometimes it's weird to be like, yep, didn't go to college, working on it now, here I am."

Instead of answering directly, Mikaere lets his gaze sweep out over the old harbour, staring at the distant horizon. Thoughtfully, then: "I went to university because it was what my ma expected. I studied business, because I didn't really know what I wanted, and if we're honest, I spent most of my time drinking and sailing and screwing around. But yeah, having that bit of paper opened doors for me. Arguably, though, what really ended up opening doors was being tall and well-spoken and Māori, in a world that wanted to prove it wasn't racist."

He lets that hang, but only for a moment. "I think my point is... you're studying, now, for the right reasons. Not going at eighteen doesn't make you stupid; going now, though, that means you're thinking about what you want, and what you need to get there."

Beat. "Also, if you need help with those essays, hit me up. Politics isn't good for much, but writing bullshit? It's a specialty."

A quirk of a smile. First, at his assessment of his college years and thereafter, and then again, for writing bullshit. "Thanks. I'll let you know." She may never ask, as proud and stubborn as she is. Time will tell.

They've arrived at the docks, lit up in regular intervals of light so no one slips over the side and into the water. At this point Jules pauses and gestures for Mikaere to lead the way. The moment lends itself to a subject change, one she's happy to provide in a brisk tone. "So, which one's yours? I'll follow you."

Mikaere's content enough both to lead the way, now, and to change the subject. "My girl's an S&S 34. Australian-built, early 2000s after they started making them again-- the old ones date from the late 60s. Still beautiful boats, but she came to me in a roundabout way, and I wouldn't trade her for the world. Here:" He gestures, leading them around a corner and down the dock to pause in front of the fibreglass yacht.

"Wā kāinga," he says, pronouncing the name painted so clearly on her side. Wah kai-nga. "'Home'. It's more than that, though. More like... 'the place I truly belong'."

He clambers up, setting his food down carefully and then offering a hand, should Jules want it.

She'll take the hand and the help, especially given how she's carrying food too. "She's beautiful," Jules says appreciatively once she's safely aboard, looking up and down the length of the boat from this vantage point. "You must be glad she's back in the water, where she belongs. Even if there's still repairs left to do. So how did you end up with her?"

Mikaere's hand lingers around Jules' only for a few seconds more than is really required, and then releases it, so that he can gesture up and down her-- the boat's!-- length with an expansive gesture. "Enormously glad. There's a reason for most repairs to be conducted from land, but it never feels quite right: boats belong on the water, floating free." Or, at least, floating steadily while tied up to a pier, but who's counting?

"That's a story. Hang on, let me grab the beers, then I can tell it." They're not far: he's got an ice-filled cooler on the deck, and bottles of a local microbrew chilling within. There are cushions laid out, too, all ready for the guest who may (or may not) have chosen to come aboard; Mikaere seems glad she did.

He sits, digging in to the cooler to grab out a beer, using the bottle-opener on his keys to open it: all in plain view, no funny business. Offering it over, he begins, "Okay, so. It's 2007. I'm at uni, and it's the summer holidays, and a mate of a mate has helped me get a job at the local marina, which I'm doing during the day, before working in a bar at night. And there's a bloke, always sitting aboard his almost brand new boat, always drinking a beer and staring out over the water, but never actually out sailing. So I go up and talk to him, one afternoon: what gives? Beautiful boat, but she's made for flying over the waves, not rocking against the pier. Arthritis, he tells me. Saved up his whole working life to buy the boat of his dreams, retired, sailed his girl over from Aussie, and then-- boom. Swollen joints, pain. The treatments help, but he can't trust his hands anymore, and a sailor who can't trust his hands is a dead sailor."

Meanwhile, Jules sets herself down. She takes the offered bottle with a quick, “Thanks,” and then opens up her food to dig in while she listens to Mikaere tell the story of the boat’s origins. “Poor guy,” she says during a pause, nose wrinkling in sympathy. She’s attentive, watching Mikaere tell the tale, broken only by the first few bites of fried fish and an appreciative, “Mm, this is good.”

"It's really good," agrees Mikaere, who pauses to take a bite of his, too, before he continues his story.

"So he started paying me to take him out-- us both, I guess. All over the harbour, 'round Rangitoto and Motutapu, even to Waiheke and further: Great Barrier Island. Well out to sea. I'd always sailed, but he taught me how to handle a boat like this one. And gave me focus too: he had me invest most of what he paid me, nudged me towards government when he saw business wasn't really for me. He had a heart attack five years later, and instructed his children to let me buy his boat at a discounted price. It took everything I had, even so, and drove my then-girlfriend mad because she wanted to buy a house, instead, but..."

He pats the deck with one broad hand, affectionate in gesture and expression both. "Worth it."

Jules has a little soft smile on her lips as she listens to the story while digging into her food, punctuated every so often by a sip of beer. “Sounds like a good guy,” she says approvingly. And then — since he brought it up — she ventures, “So why did you get into politics? What were you hoping to do?”

"The best," is Mikaere's answer to that; simple, and to the point. There's something in his expression that suggests how deeply he cares, and how much he likely still misses his old friend. He's slower, after that, pausing to eat, to uncap a bottle of beer for himself, and to wash his fish down with it.

Finally, "I wanted to make a difference. Same as any bright-eyed young thing, ay? Naive. Local government's not sexy, too much about roads and rubbish and community needs, but it's immediate and connected, and it helped me get a grounding on what really matters to communities. I did a lot of work on that. The people's panel, we called it. That built me a profile, and led to me standing to be an elected member of the council. And eventually, that built me a bigger profile, and I ended up-- well, as you saw. Running for national government."

A small hum of acknowledgment. It's all she can give, without words for this bittersweet memory of friendship and loss. Jules doesn't try to fill up the silence, leaving Mikaere to take his time to indulge her curiosity. It's easier to let silence linger without concomitant awkwardness when there's food to eat. When he does speak again, she divides her direct attention between the fish and his face.

"Until the thing happened." She states it after a swig from the beer bottle. "Must've been some people pissed with you for dropping out. Were you doing well up until then?"

"Until the thing happened." Mikaere acknowledges that without flinching, his voice expressing faint ruefulness, but not distinct disquiet.

"I wasn't going to win. Labour romped home, but... without going into the complicated details of our electoral system," though, you know, just ask him: he'd almost certainly be willing to comment at length, "Epsom, the seat I was chasing, was the only one we didn't get a plurality of the party vote in. It was mostly a practice run for me: give it a go, get some experience, maybe chase a more winnable electorate next time, or get on the party list. Which... probably makes no sense to you; sorry, our system is very different to yours. Anyway, the point is: people were mostly pissed because it gave us some bad press, not because I threw in the towel on something winnable. It didn't matter, though; Jacinda romped home."

"I understand about ten percent of that," Jules freely admits. "But I probably only understand my own system about fifty percent of the time. Who's Jacinda?" Political junkie, Jules is not. Her grasp of the world stage is fairly tenuous. And then, "Do you miss it?"

Mikaere grins around the neck of his bottle, and pauses to take a swig before he answers. "I imagine you understand the important bits, anyway," he says. "The bit where I wasn't expected to win anyway. I'm not sure I understand your system at all. Jacinda's-- Jacinda Ardern. Our Prime Minister, so a little like your President, but chosen in a completely different way."

He's slower to respond to the rest, taking another moment, this time to take another bite of his fish. "The politics? Or home, in general? I miss feeling like I was contributing to something. I liked the work, just not the fakeness of being an actual politician. Local government was better; much more immediate. I should've stuck to that, but-- hubris, maybe. I swallowed the whole line about being able to do more on a bigger stage."

"Oh." Oops. No chagrin, though.

"You could go back to it," Jules points out. "Nothing says you can't, right? If that's what you liked and want to get back into." What she says next is a little less matter-of-fact, a little more thoughtful. "So do you miss New Zealand? It seems like it's a big part of you."

She's nearly polished off the oysters, but there's still a couple left. Enough to tilt her paper carton and offer, "Wanna try one of these?"

Mikaere does want to try one, and promptly reaches out to do so, his smile broad and appreciative. (His reaction, on eating the oyster, is equally so: yum). "Um, yum," is what he says, satisfied and pleased.

"Yes-- of course I miss it. It's part of me. And I will go back, eventually, because there's just no way. She's part of me, and I'm part of her, you could say. She's not perfect, but she's mine, you know? I miss a lot of small things. Pineapple lumps, and Whittaker's chocolate, and hokey pokey ice cream, and L&P, and... dumb shit that I didn't even eat all that often. I miss her oceans, and her inlets. I miss the brilliant red in the pōhutukawa trees in the early summer, and I miss... lots of things. Things I took for granted, maybe, when I was there."

"Have another. I think I've stuffed myself full." Jules sets her nearly empty carton down on the bench between them, then draws up her legs to sit comfortably cross-legged. "Sounds beautiful," she says with a little smile. "It kind of sounds like a totally different world, since it's so far away. I think the farthest I've travelled is Arizona or North Dakota. A couple of friends and me roadtripped out to Standing Rock during the protests there. Did you hear about that? No idea how much people heard about it outside the U.S."

Have another? Mikaere will, using his fork to spear the oyster, and look, he's not even going to make jokes about oysters and their aphrodisiac properties.

"It kind of feels like a different world to me right now, too," he admits. "A different lifetime, or something. Mm-- Dakota. Pipeline of some kind? It sounds vaguely familiar, but I'm not entirely sure. There's so much world, and only so much time to follow everything. Tell me about it?"

"Sure." Jules takes another pull from what's left in her beer bottle as she organizes her thoughts into a relatively linear story. "In 2016, the Dakota Access Pipeline was approved by the government, and the plan was for it to run straight through the Standing Rock Reservation. The tribes there got organized to protest, because it was seriously going to fuck up their water. The pipe was set to run under the Missouri just a mile north of the reservation, plus a lake on the res. They organized a huge camp where people camped out for months to stop the construction, used social media to really get the word out about it, got a lot of public attention. It got bad -- bulldozing sacred ground, using attack dogs, turning water cannons on people in November, and winter there is rough. The pipe got built, shut down for awhile by the courts, then overturned, and it's still playing out." All of this has Jules frowning. It's not just the memories. It's this: "So once again, tribal sovereignty don't mean shit in this country."

It's not a particularly pleasant topic, and Mikaere's expression correspondingly shifts from listening, to seriousness, to downright dismay-- complete with a long shake of his head and an unhappy sigh. "That's fucked," is his assessment of the situation, delivered bluntly and with feeling. "Not completely unfamiliar, but still absolutely fucked. It doesn't get better, does it? And, you'd think... I mean, climate change. You'd think that would change things, but it doesn't."

"You'd think," Jules agrees. "They're doing environmental impact studies now, but I doubt it considers the larger issue of how depending on fossil fuels fucks us all over. And it's not something you can solve on an individual level, you know? Like, I'd love to buy an electric car, but I don't have the money for that. So you have to push through these movements, when there's something concrete to protest against. So that's why I went out there, at the time," she concludes, looking straight across with dark-eyed earnesty. "It felt important to be there in person."

Mikaere lets Jules' explanation hang in the air between them for a few seconds, though his expression is sharply intent: he's choosing to leave the gap, but doing so not because he's lacking in anything to say, but because the words are important. His hands drop away from his food, now finished, and then reach instead for his beer.

"Some moments are important. Being part of something. And protests do work. It's before my time, and on the other side of the world from you... ever hear about the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior? Greenpeace. I mean, the details don't matter. But it changed things. The reaction people had to that one event. I do, without question, believe in the power of collective action."

Jules shakes her head; that incident is unfamiliar. The point, though, has her nodding along. "It can change things. It just has to be paired with the hard slog of the day in, day out stuff that isn't sexy. I think that's what I ultimately want to be doing. The unsexy stuff with Fish and Wildlife where you're measuring water temperature and tracking population over time and getting the hard data so you can back it up when you say, 'No, you can't log here, it's causing serious erosion and damage in the ecosystem.' So when you go yell at them and chain yourself to a bulldozer, you've got the fistful of evidence on paper to shove in their face."

It may be-- may well be-- that Mikaere's twitchy little smile is for the mental image (so easily imagined) of Jules chained to a bulldozer. It's a little piece of light relief from the seriousness of the conversation at hand. "That seems like a really sensible thing to be doing," he says, and he means it. "Unsexy, but-- important. So important. Ultimately, I think I want to end up back writing policy. Trying to make change through official channels, rather than being the face of it. The marriage of pragmatism and idealism, somehow."

"That makes sense," Jules says, nodding. Her bottle's empty now, so she starts picking at the label, though she refrains from doing more than pulling up the corners. No littering on Mikaere's boat. And she saw that smile. It prompts her to say, "I haven't actually chained myself to a bulldozer before. Though you saw me run after the guy stealing the lobster, so it probably wouldn't surprise you if I had."

Mikaere's gaze drops towards that bottle, and what Jules is doing to it. He doesn't comment, though in his corner of the planet, that meant something, back in the day. Maybe that fuels his smile, or maybe it's just what Jules says, which does draw his gaze back up again. "It wouldn't," he admits, without hesitation. "You made quite the impression, I'm not going to lie. More beer?"

Presumably label-peeling does not mean anything here other than something for fingers to fiddle with. Jules has a smile twitching at the corners of her own lips. "Hopefully not a crazy one." The question is simple on the face of it. And yet it isn't. "What time is it?" she starts there, fishing out her phone to ostensibly check the time. "It's not too late, is it? I could have one more, if you're having one too."

"Not crazy," Mikaere promises. Without even looking at his phone (or his watch, for that matter, for he does wear one), he promptly digs into the cooler to draw out two more beers, uncapping them both before handing one over. "I don't tend to seek crazy people out, as a rule. Only interesting ones. It's not late, and I promise, I'm a gentleman."

It may be a challenge. It may be: ball's in your court.

Away goes the phone, back to her jacket pocket (the pocket without the bear spray), and Jules leans forward to accept the bottle handed to her. "Are you now."

And just to be clear: "I'm probably, like, zero percent a lady."

That's direct.

It's not unwelcome, mind. Mikaere grins. "A gentleman follows a woman's lead," is what he says. "So it's up to you, what happens from here. We can drink this beer, and then I can escort you back to your car-- and you can argue that you don't need me to, and I'll argue that it's about me more than it is about you, and we can come to some kind of impasse."

Beat. "But you're also welcome to stay longer."

It's also honest. Jules knows who she is and sees little point pretending otherwise.

This probably also has something to do with why she carries bear spray. It's not just for hiking.

There's no immediate reply. Jules sits with his response for a few quiet moments, enough for a few slow sips from the newly opened beer. Her gaze is also direct, considering, watching for those little non-verbal signs that take on so much significance in a moment like this. The boat rocks ever so gently with the tide. It's too large to rock any more when Jules sets aside her beer and moves, uncrossing her legs and getting to her feet to close the distance. She just looks at Mikaere first, up close like this as she stands above him, before leaning in to kiss him.

Mikaere seems reasonably content to let that hang; to watch Jules, idly, and every so often to glance out towards the ocean, and the sun that is now setting. It's peaceful, sitting like this. Drinking beer. And even if nothing happ--

Jules sets aside her beer, and the Kiwi follows suit, tipping his chin up to watch her. It's an unusual angle to be in, looking up at her, being looked down on. He's not unwilling let her take the lead, but only to a point: as she leans in, he leans up (it's not that far up, really, given their difference in height), meeting her in the middle as one hand reaches out in an attempt to grab for her hand.

That's an innocent enough gesture, maybe, but the kiss? Not so much.

Jules won't stay indefinitely. But she will stay for this, without much more talking.