They sailed into Sullivan Bay on the morning’s dying wind. Julie was on bow watch with the sails spread wing-on-wing behind her when she caught sight of the red roofed buildings and the fat white boats. After weeks of forest, fjord, and waterfall, the quaint marina looked three shades of wrong, more like a fake peninsula tethered by its floating docks to the rich green backdrop of British Columbia. But soon the buildings grew larger and Peter dropped the big white foresail into her arms. He was already folding and flaking the main as she walked aft, touching his shoulder for balance, leaning to inhale heaven and taste salt as her lips brushed his neck, just behind the ear. He was concentrating too hard on a sail tie to respond. So she went to the helm, and with a click and a whirl, started the electric inboard.

An older man and woman waved from the dock, catching lines from Peter as Julie backed the Galene into a slip. Then Julie went forward to raise the deck hatch and quietly gagged as the boat burped its stench of rotting garbage from the v-berth. She felt safer with Peter than anyone she’d known since losing her parents. But he could be slightly uptight. And since the Galene was his boat he could invent rules, like they had to wait until they were anchored or docked before opening the deck hatch. Fine, except the last garbage facility had been three weeks ago, at Campbell River. She’d never lived amid such frank beauty, sighting more eagles and orcas than people each day. The only time they’d spoken to anyone was when they came across some purse seiners and traded beer for salmon. She had never cleaned such a large fish, she must have been drunk to put the guts in the garbage. And who knew a few empty smoked oyster tins could go so rancid. But the salmon guts were now mixed with coffee grounds and tampons, the tins had sullied the recycling, and it was too late now to sort through it all. Her best course was to start new bags, and promise to be more careful.

Some people don’t sweat. Peter didn’t make garbage. He just watched her detritus grow. Once or twice on this trip he’d commented about “choices.” She’d countered with the argument that everything they own will be landfill someday. “It doesn’t matter if you use an old fashioned straight razor and I use disposable blades. They’re both taking the same train to Oregon.”

He rolled his eyes. “That’s a perfect argument for not buying anything at all.”

This stop in Sullivan Bay was the turning point of their trip. They would fill the Galene’s freshwater tanks and return south. That meant three additional weeks of garbage piling up in the forward cabin.

Garbage in their bedroom made everything harder. Their differences were already magnified by the close quarters, and the stink made everything feel like her fault. On their second day out, she’d been looking through Peter’s bag for some fingernail clippers and found a diamond ring in his shaving kit. It was a perfect fit. Flawless in the light. And big enough to be slightly, delightfully, obscene. She put the ring back in his blue zippered bag, then tried hard not to bite her nails in anticipation.

But from then on, her trip had been a string of disappointments. Every tranquil anchorage that they entered, every evening that loons cried out, every dawn that found mewing gulls diving upon schools of herring, every time a porpoise surfaced and that one remarkable time an orca breached nearby — it was more than a perfect world, it was missed opportunities. What was he waiting for? The fir trees moaned in a midnight storm, the dawn broke in a silent fog, the tides came and went, and still Peter ate his English muffins and grabbed her ass like it was any other day.

She would have bet money on the day they bought salmon from the fishermen. They’d dropped anchor in Otter Cove by early afternoon. The water around the Galene was alive with small white jellyfish, scooting and drifting like sunken lily blossoms. They rowed to shore, climbed a hill, and got naked and busy in the sunshine on a warm flat rock. She should have cleaned the fish there, on the island, and left the guts to rot. Apparently she wasn’t thinking straight. Since it was their habit to listen to music while they cooked their evening meal, she’d opened their best bottle of wine as soon as they rowed back to the sailboat and she nervously brought out his gift.

“Open it,” she said.

He’d raised his eyebrows at the shiny package. Puzzled? Dismayed? This was the first physical gift she’d given him, in violation of his request that they exchange only experiences, not stuff.

“It’s something I want you to have.”

He began fastidiously unwrapping, in fact she drank a whole glass of wine while observing his efforts to remove the first piece of scotch tape with his fingernail. When he turned to the second piece of tape she cried out, “Holy crap don’t you know how to unwrap a present?”

She reached forward and ripped the glittering wrapping paper in a most satisfying way. Peter looked injured. He slid a big plastic sleeve out from the paper, then used his sailing knife to pry that open and get to a CD case inside. Then his glance drifted over the debris on his lap.

“It’s Carmen,” she noted.

“You could have downloaded it before we left.”

“And miss this fun?” She collected the mess and retreated to the galley to confront their gigantic salmon.

The next morning while Peter stood buttering his toast he mentioned that the garbage was getting unsavory, and maybe they should stow it away from the galley, in the v-berth. He hoped she didn’t mind if they bunked in the salon, on the single berths.

So now, weeks later, while Peter chatted with the couple who had caught their dock lines, Julia fastened a limp windsock to the open hatch and knew that without a breeze in the marina it would take hours for the boat to air out. Not even the temptation of a hot freshwater shower was enough to make her want to go below to grab a towel and a change of clothes. So she jumped down to the dock, slipped her arm around Peter’s waist, and introduced herself to their new neighbors.

Marc and Babe Wilson weren’t as old as they’d looked from a distance. They were probably the same age as her aunts and uncles, just worse for the wear. They were waving their arms, vigorously telling Peter about the ninety pound halibut their sons had caught the previous day.

Babe scrolled through her phone for photos of two blond men pulling a giant flat fish into a wheelbarrow.

“The restaurant did it justice. You don’t want to overcook a fresh delicate fish. Just a nice garlic and cilantro sauce. You’ll want to order some for dinner tonight, it will be gone by tomorrow.”

“Hopefully we’ll be gone by then too,” said Peter.

Then he laughed out loud when Babe asked them to cocktails. Julie hadn’t heard that laugh in days. It was strange to miss someone who stood right next to her. She checked her watch. “Did we sail through a time zone? It’s eleven.”

Babe squinted at the sun. “It’s always cocktail hour on my boat, Honey.”

Peter said, “I need to register with the dock master, and I need a shower.”

Julie was about to ask Babe to point them toward the dock master when Peter added, “You’ll hold down the fort?”

She forced a confused smile. But then Babe came to her rescue. “Julie can keep an eye on your sailboat from our flybridge.” When Babe smiled, she had the most impressively tanned and wrinkled crow’s feet that Julie had ever seen.

Julie nodded. “Thank you, I’d love to.”

Peter returned to the Galene. Julie followed Babe up into the third tier of a massive Tollycraft. Its flybridge was above all the boats and red roofs, and when she closed her eyes, Julie smelled pine and kelp and salt, and she heard the distant mew of a gull.

But this was not proper silence. Somewhere downstairs in the big white boat, Marc had turned on a baseball game. Nearby, she heard a fridge open and close, the clink of glass bottles. It might be eleven in the morning, but in a land so far from grocery stores that two beers could be bartered for a twenty pound king salmon, she respected the drink.

Indeed, the first sip was a skunky kind of heaven, chasing the garbage from her nostrils. She sighed as Peter stepped off the Galene with a small backpack under his arm. He waved, and she silently raised her bottle.

Peter started walking away, then he returned to stand beneath her. He crinkled his eyes, concerned, and he said as quietly as possible from ten yards, “You’ll watch the boat?”

Julie blinked at him.

“She’ll watch the boat!” called Babe.

As Peter strolled down the dock, Babe said, “Your first trip together?”

Julie nodded.

“Here’s some advice from an old pro. Take a break from each other whenever you can. There’s nothing more toxic to a relationship than spending every minute together.”

Julie wondered if that’s what had gone wrong. In her heart, she blamed the garbage.

Babe reached to pat her arm. “He’s a handsome son-of-a-bitch. Is he the one?”

Julie nodded. She traded her empty for another beer, and told Babe about meeting Peter a year ago at a Zero Waste fundraiser. He was the photographer behind a deceptively gorgeous show called “One Less Valley.” His massive, vivid photos snaked around the art gallery like boxcars, documenting the journey of a candy wrapper from garbage can to transfer station to the infamous mile long train of garbage that travels from Seattle to eastern Oregon every day. One hundred and ten train cars of compacted waste, shipped daily to a landfill. But it wasn’t a mountain of garbage, it was a valley, slowly filling.

Julie had never specifically thought about where her garbage went. She was now comforted by the idea that everything her family had lost or misplaced over the last seventeen years was lying in that Oregon valley, organized chronologically, with fine layers of dirt separating each day. Flushed with gratitude, she wrote a check and was introduced to the photographer. The pair spent the rest of their evening discovering all the ways they’d been made for each other.

“Your photographs,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound too drunk, “they remind me of an opera.”

“Which one?” he asked, his eyes sparkling.

“Carmen,” she said, thinking of the colors.

“Exactly,” he said. “Think of the suffering.”

It turned out that he lived on a 48’ sailboat, and she was a professional sailing instructor. Neither owned a car. They both shopped at Goodwill and owned less than 500 things. What should it matter that he’d made these choices out of respect for the environment, while she was afraid that owning a thing meant losing it, eventually.

It was the tin foil that drew them together that first night. Somehow, Julie found herself telling him that she’d been nursing the same small role of aluminum foil for over a dozen years.

“That’s unbelievable!” he cried. “Me too!”

He searched her eyes and they laughed, comparing notes about the tediousness of washing the stuff.

Peter took her hands in his. “I’ve waited years to meet a woman who shared this level of commitment.”

Julie saw beautiful amber flakes in his green eyes, and neglected to tell him about the casserole that her mother had covered with foil and left on the counter. It was the last thing she had done before she walked out the door. Julie’s older sister had claimed the Pyrex, and Julie had taken the roll of aluminum foil, hoarding it like a treasure.

But when they left for this trip and Peter told her about the garbage situation, she thought she understood. He explained that since there are no garbage facilities north of the Strait of Georgia, most boaters drop their metal and glass overboard, making sure it sinks. He said there’s a facility at the north end of Vancouver Island that burns plastic for a fee. She frowned and their eyes met. They agreed to keep all their garbage on board until they returned to civilization, where they could properly dispose of it.

Now at the apex of their journey, Julie took a deep breath from her perch on the flybridge of the Tollycraft. It smelled clean up here. She grimaced at the thought of three more weeks on a private garbage barge. While she’d been talking with Babe she heard men’s voices downstairs in the boat, and after a while a young man stuck his blond head up the stairway. “Hey Babes!” he said. “Dad wants lunch.”

Babe laughed like he’d told a dirty joke. “Tell your father to make sandwiches. One for Julie too. We’re busy keeping an eye on that beautiful sailboat.”

The man from the halibut photos was as tan as Babe, but without the wrinkles. He looked like he’d just woken up and not bothered to change his clothes. He craned his neck to look at the Galene and said, “Nice solar panels. What did those set you back?”

Julie blushed. The blond head disappeared, male voices resumed downstairs, and in a few minutes she heard the twin engines of the dinghy. Exhaust wafted up to them.

“That’s funny,” she told Babe.

“What is, Honey?”

“Your dinghy is a thirty foot Boston Whaler.”

“That’s our boat for the summer. This one here is our house.” Babe leaned on the teak rail and looked down at her sons. “Happy fishing! Catch another big one.”

“Thanks, Ma!”

“And don’t forget to take out the garbage!”

“We’ve got it!”

“Holy crap,” said Julie. “They take out the garbage?”

“Every day.”

“Can they take ours too? Please?”

Babe gestured for her boys to kill their engines. “Hold up a minute. Julie’s got something for you.”

For just a moment, Julie debated waiting a day so she could check with Peter. But Babe’s sons were walking down the dock and so she ran to grab the pile of bags from the Galene’s v-berth. They laughed when she offered money, and then she was waving goodbye to the whaler, feeling stupid for believing Peter when he’d told her there was no garbage facility at this marina. She couldn’t believe she had almost sailed another three weeks with all that trash.

She called to the top of the Tollycraft to thank Babe too, and stayed aboard the Galene to make herself a sandwich. Oddly, there was already a dirty dish in the sink. She was washing that along with her own when Peter returned. He walked past her and noticed the door to the forward cabin was open.

“Where’s the garbage?”

“It’s garbage day,” she said.

His eyes widened. “Seriously. What have you done?”

“Your cruising guide was wrong,” she said. “There is a garbage facility on this island.”

He ran both hands through his hair. “Holy Crap. You didn’t.”

“Babe’s sons took it out for us, on their way to go fishing.”

He stared at her with an open mouth.

“They went that way,” she gestured. “The transfer station is hidden around the point.”

“A transfer station,” he echoed. “You’re saying there’s a facility that collects garbage and barges it back to civilization?”

“I assume so. Yes.”

“The trouble with people like you,” he said, “is that you’ll assume whatever’s convenient.”

“People like me?”

“At least Babe knows her son cuts holes in the bags, pours gravel inside, and tosses them overboard.”

Julie dropped her sponge in the sink, fully turned to him.

“There is no garbage facility, Julie! All these big white boats parked here for the summer,” he yelled, waving an arm. “You think they have a v-berth full of garbage? Grow up. They’ve all been dumping bags of trash into these waters for years.”

“But how can they? Here? Of all places.”

“Every inch of this planet was pristine once. That’s never stopped anyone.”

“Well, I’m so sorry I gave them ours.”

“Me too. My shaving kit was in there.”

Now she sat down, stunned. “Your blue shaving kit? Why?”

“I came back for lunch and you were up there drinking. I could have been anyone, I could have been stealing my Leica. I wanted to lock up the boat so I could go shoot some photos, but I knew you’d be freaked out by the smell. So I put my shaving kit in a clean trash bag and put it on the pile because who the fuck is going to steal the garbage? I thought we’d agreed to take it back with us.”

There’s a very specific feeling that Julie and her sisters call, “The Sheriff.” It’s the feeling you get when you’re a teenager, and your parents are late coming home from the opera, and a sheriff knocks on the door instead. It’s a guy in a brown suit with a hat and a gun, come to wreck your adolescent heart. Whenever the sheriff comes to visit, she’s seventeen again, wanting to slam the door. He was here now, in Peter’s eyes.

Peter looked afraid, perhaps by the prospect of spending another three weeks together. “No worries,” he said calmly, “there was really nothing I needed in that shaving kit anyway.”

Julie sat quietly, looking beyond Peter to the tiny ripples of a breeze now returning to the bay. Some mew gulls flew overhead, calling out with their piercing, frantic cries as she savored the sweet relief of letting go of a thing before it becomes hers to lose.

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