I didn’t think about the storm again, until Monday morning when Chad arrived at work! He came walking in with his easy step and carefree smile, and for a moment I thought I was off the hook; and then he told me about his weekend. He had gotten home on Friday afternoon, changed out of his wet shirt, and hopped into his convertible, all set for a romantic evening, “It was hot” he said “so obviously I had the roof down” I nodded, I did understand the premise of a convertible, “well, we were about five minutes from the restraint when the rain started, Ava and I got soaked!” “Why didn’t you put the roof up when it started raining?” I asked, Chad gave a smile, “I tried to, but for some reason the electronics in that car don’t like water; the roof got about 1/3 of the way up,” he demonstrated with his hand “and then it went right back down again. I tried three times, and it never got further than that! We were wet after the first try failed, after three tries, we were truly soaked, and so was the inside of the car. I have never seen anything like it! Both indicators were on but they were out of sync, and the radio kept switching itself on and off, and changing stations, I swear we had CCRs ‘have you ever seen the rain’ and then Rehana’s ‘you can stand under my umbrella.’ It was not funny Chloe!” I looked over to where Chloe was dissolving in silent giggles. Chloe does not laugh like a normal person; she keeps it bottled up, silently, and then has to grab gulps of air, “in the end” Chad continued “we had to leave the car parked on the road side and get a taxi home. We ordered takeaway when we got there.” Chad ended the conversation there by sitting down at his desk, but before he settled down to work, he looked back over his shoulder and added “It can stain you know” I looked at him blankly; “what?” “Water. It can stain; I ruined two suits in one day!” And that is how I ended up going round work on Monday morning, asking for stories, or suggestions, of how to propose marriage, all the time trying to dodge questions about my none existent girlfriend. You are probably wondering why I didn’t just tell Chad to ‘do his own dirty work’ or just ignore him, it is hard to explain really. All I can say is that Chad has this strange power of getting you to do things you would usually never dream of. I guess you could call it charisma but that doesn’t do it justice. The point is; it was an awful experience, for one thing the subject was one that I did not feel at all comfortable on, and for another I like to view my coworkers as… Well, coworkers. Things that materialize in the office at 9 do their assigned jobs, and then disappear at 5. But when you start talking about ‘proposals’ and ‘engagements’ they suddenly become people! I don’t know if you have ever talked to an old person before, but some of the stuff they got up too! Or at least the stuff they say they got up too… I mean; take old Mr. Brown, dull, respectable old Mr. Brown, he apparently taught his golden retriever to carry ring box and a note saying ‘will you marry me’ to his ‘young lady’ I had been rather impressed by this method and asked him if it had worked; if she had accepted him. To which he pursed his lips and said ‘yes and no’ what sort of answer is that! How can it be yes and no, surely it has to be one or the other? Mr. Brown explained that the dog, while a very intelligent and gentle animal, had on the day in question run up to the wrong young lady, “I remember it clear as anything; he ran straight past Marry and went right to Jane! But she did accept me” Mr. Brown smiled at a found memory, and then, Mr. Brown, dull, old, respectable Mr. Brown said “yip; Jane and I have been happily married now for 35 years.” I was horrified, speechless, unnerved!

The other surprise was Judith Keen, a stern-faced lady who wore her glasses on a chain around her neck, and was a true loss to the library, she has the librarian face. Anyway, she told me that her husband proposed by backing a cupcake “it sounds very romantic” I said trying to sound polite, [it sounded a bit crazy, but I could not say that to her face] “oh, it sounds romantic enough, but, when I took a bite out of it… well, I chipped my front tooth on the diamond. Had to go to the dentist and have it built up before the wedding” She ran her thumb over her front teeth as if to make sure they were all where they should be.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

I reported my findings to Chad at lunch, and compared notes with Chloe, [Chloe had volunteered to tackle the, younger, female element of the office, saying; “It is less creepy if I do it.” Whatever that is supposed to mean] while I had had limited successes it was still better than Chloe’s.’ Apparently, none of the girls in the office had ever had a proposal. In fact, the only one who had been of any help was Belinda, and that was just because she reads those sloppy online novels and watches romance dramas. Her leading suggestion was to take the girl [Ava in this case but she didn’t know that] to the beach, then get a biplane to tow a banner behind it with the message; ‘will you marry me, Ava?’ on it, and then as it flew past, Chad could point to get Ava’s attention, and while Ava was reading this message, he could get down on one knee and hold out the ring! I thought this was impractical. For one thing the beach was about 2 hours away, and for another it held the potential to be very embarrassing if she said, ‘No!’ Chad seemed fired by the idea though, “It doesn’t have to be the beach” he pointed out “I could take Ava hiking, up one of the mountains to look at the sunrise or something, and while we are looking at the view, or even while we are walking back, the plane could fly by!” I had to admit that this was a better solution all round; less people to see it if it all went wrong!

Finding a biplane was difficult. Finding someone who could tow a banner was very difficult. But we managed it by the weekend and things were looking promising. Chad had organised a rental car, as his was still getting repaired after the water incident. And so, on Saturday morning operation proposal was underway; Chad and Ava left early so they could get a nice head start climbing the mountain, and Chloe and I were at the aerodrome to make sure that things ‘got off the ground’ as it were. The first snag was the form of fog; it had come in just as the sun was starting to rise and meant that the pilot could not take off. He assured us that this was perfectly normal, and that it would burn off as the sun got up, and he would be away. ‘Besides it would give us plenty of time to get the banner attached and the preflight checks done.’ The banner attached… now I don’t want to assign blame in anyway, [I imagine it was Chloe’s’ fault,] but we just might have become so focused on finding the plane, and the pilot, and getting the car rented, that we had forgotten the banner… as I said I think it was Chloe’s’ fault for not reminding us, after all she had set this plan in motion. The pilot was very helpful, but the only banner he had was one that said ‘Happy New Year!’ and this would not really do. I could just picture Chad, hearing the plane but not bothering to read the banner before pointing, and Ava would turn from reading an out of season ‘Happy New Year!’ to find Chad kneeling with a ring. With the fog still preventing take-off I rushed to the nearest store to try and find some paint. But at this time of the morning the hardware store was closed, so was the arts and crafts, in fact the only thing that was open was the chemist, [that’s drug store to the Americans] out of desperation, and without much hope I went in; they did not have paint. They did have a clearance sale on lipstick… apparently, they had gotten the colour slightly wrong, not that that worried me; I got about 150 sticks of the brightest reds and pinks I could and hurried back to the air field. When I turned up with the lipstick Chloe gave me a look that wasn’t far off what the casher at the chemist had, I think the cashier imagined I was playing the field, Chloe just thought I was losing my marbles. But there was no time to worry about that, so we set to work. And I must say that, by the time the pilot declared visibility good enough for take-off I was rather proud of our work. But as it turned out, we might as well have left the ‘Happy New Year!’ banner, and not have bothered with the alterations. You see there are several mountains near the town, and one of these mountains, [the one Chad and Ava were climbing] is called Mt Barkley, but there is another mountain, on the other side of town called Mt Berkley. I don’t know where the mix up happened but the pilot swears he was told Mt Berkley… so the plane with its’ banner ended up circling round a hill about 50 km away from Chad and Ava, and the message remained completely invisible to them!