The air in the tropics is dense heat. I walk through a garden of palm fronds, into a yacht club. I wipe my upper lip on the back of my hand, slick my hair back into a ponytail. My eyes are slowly adjusting to the shadows.
The yacht club is carpeted, a chequered pattern of bright yellow and blue squares that makes me think I’ve stepped back in time three decades. My sandals stick to the damp carpet. It smells of beer and salt and Chapstick.
I make my way over to the bar, where a woman is pouring beers for two men with burnt necks.
‘Ah,’ one man says after taking a sip, ‘that’s better.’
He clinks his glass against his friend’s. ‘Cheers, mate.’
‘Cheers.’
The woman turns to face me. ‘Bonjour,’ she says.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘English?’
She nods. ‘What can I get for you?’
‘Actually, I’m looking for someone. A guy named Vlad. Do you know him?’
‘Yes,’ she says, scanning the bar. ‘Over there.’ She points to a man sitting out on the deck with a beer and a cigarette, a spiral of smoke curling in the afternoon sun.
‘Merci,’ I say.
‘You’re welcome.’
I walk out onto the deck and move to stand in front of him, casting a shadow across his broad chest.
‘Vlad?’
He eyes me suspiciously. ‘Yeah?’
‘I’m Olivia.’
Vlad shades his eyes with his hand. Squinting, he looks me up and down. ‘Have we met?’
‘No. Well, kind of. You emailed me.’
He stubs out his cigarette, frowns. ‘Did I?’
‘You’re skippering Poseidon, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You emailed me about the NZ delivery.’
He opens his mouth to speak. Hesitates. ‘What’d you say your name is?’
‘Olivia.’ I think of the email I sent and remember how I’d signed off. ‘Oli?’
‘Oh!’ Vlad cracks up.
I shift my weight from one leg to the other. The couple on the table across the deck look over to us, at this man laughing, at me, silent.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ he says at last. ‘You’re just not what I expected.’
I cross my arms. ‘What were you expecting?’
‘A lad.’
‘Ah, right …’
He kicks out the chair opposite him, motions with his hand for me to take it. I sit down, cross my legs.
‘Want a drink?’ he asks.
‘Nah, I’m good. Thanks.’
He takes a sip of his beer. ‘You’ve been to sea, yeah?’
‘What?’
His arms protrude from his tank top, pink and meaty. His eyes are pointed, like shards of blue ice.
‘I’ve been working on boats for four years,’ I say. ‘I thought I told you that in the email?’
Vlad leans forwards in his chair, puts both elbows on the table. And suddenly this is starting to feel like an interview. Like I don’t already have the job. He takes another sip of his beer.
‘Yeah, cool. It’s just that I’m skippering four guys. I thought it was gonna be five.’
‘I know how to pull my weight.’
‘Have you ever been at sea with a crew of all lads?’
I shake my head. A strange heat is crawling across my skin.
He pulls a cigarette from the deck on the table, offers the pack to me. I go to take one then reconsider. Pretending to smoke would surely be worse than passing up the offer. Vlad sparks his cigarette. Inhales, exhales. Takes another sip of his beer.
‘How good are you in a galley?’
The fucking kitchen? I feel my mouth drop open. But before any sound escapes, another guy appears. He claps Vlad on the back then pulls a seat over from the table beside us. ‘Am I interrupting?’ he asks as he joins us.
Vlad shakes his head, and the new guy offers me his hand.
‘I’m Cam,’ he says. His eyes are deep brown.
I shake his hand. ‘Olivia,’ I say.
He squeezes my hand. And I notice his nose is a little bent, perhaps broken once, the crookedness oddly endearing.
Vlad butts in. ‘Oli,’ he says. ‘This is Oli.’
‘Ha!’ Cam laughs. ‘No shit! You are not what I expected.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ I say, letting go of his hand.
Vlad draws on his cigarette, blows smoke across the table.
‘It’s a nice surprise, though,’ Cam says, and Vlad rolls his eyes.
I feel myself blushing. That strange heat is twisting around my waist.
Vlad shrugs, then mutters, ‘It’s bad luck to have a chick at sea.’ ‘I worked the galley on my last two deliveries,’ I lie, having never, in four years, worked a delivery where we didn’t share the kitchen duties. But I can feel this job slipping through my fingers, and I’ve been hanging around the docks in Noumea for weeks now, waiting to join a crew. I think of my bank account. Barely enough money for a few more nights in the hostel.
‘I know how to cook,’ I insist.
Cam grins. ‘You’ve got my vote.’ Then he turns to Vlad. ‘Come on, mate,’ he says, prodding Vlad’s arm. ‘Not afraid of a silly superstition, are you?’
Vlad laughs. The sound is hollow pink.
The day is just peeling open when I leave my hostel for the dock. I’ve got my life in a rucksack slung over my shoulder. Clothes, my passport, a purse with coins in several currencies, some toiletries, sailing gloves, wet-weather gear, a handful of letters from Maggie and Mac, and my own copy of A Field Guide to Getting Lost, which they sent me for my last birthday.
On the way to the yacht club, I pass through a local market. Among the wild fruits are a line of sarongs, swaying in a yellow breeze. There’s a table of jewellery made from seashells. Fish, skinned and filleted. Cracked coconuts served with plastic straws. And paintings. I pause a moment to gaze at an artist’s impression of the reef as seen from above. Tendrils of turquoise. Blooms of coral like pale blue birthmarks. And my mind falls back two years to a delivery I worked in Indonesia. Diving off the coast of Lombok. Eating freshly caught fish on deck.
Then I think of the week I spent between jobs on the island of Bali. Sipping Balinese coffee in a warung, a fan clicking overhead. I think of the waterfalls in the mountains, nestled between lush jungle. How the water came over me in a rush of cold white. And then I think of the art, of the paintings that crowded marketplaces. How I’d had the privilege of entering one man’s studio, watching Bali take shape in daubs of paint. How it had changed the way I read the landscape. Like land coming into focus, I noticed everything. The carved edges of houses and backyard temples. Smoky offerings of flowers and rice. Streets lined with towering poles made from dried palm fronds and fabric for Galungan festival. How I’d written to Maggie and Mac about all these wild colours I’d never felt before.
My stomach rumbles, drawing me back to this day in this marketplace. I search my rucksack for my wallet, and with the last of my money I buy watermelon juice and a banana, eating and drinking as I walk.
I find Cam by the front door of the yacht club. He smiles when he sees me. ‘How ya going?’ he asks, giving me a hug.
I shrug. ‘Fine. A bit tired.’
‘Well, you look great,’ he says.
‘Thanks,’ I mutter, yawning.
Cam suggests that I don’t yawn like that in front of the guys. ‘Everyone takes watches in Vlad’s crew, even if you’re working the galley.’
I nod, closing my mouth, sealing it shut.
He opens the door for me, gently touching the curve of my back as I step through.
Poseidon is tied up in the last row of berths. Her hull is painted scarlet, a full-bodied red. Like puckered lips. A lobster tail.
There are three guys on deck. Vlad is standing at the bow. Two others are in the cockpit.
Someone whistles. The way someone might whistle out of a car. At a woman.
I look up to where the sound came from to see a guy slung in a harness at the top of the mast. ‘Hey!’ he calls out, waving.
‘That’s Ajax—call him AJ,’ says Cam, pointing to him.
I smile and wave back.
At the stern of the boat, Cam introduces me to Hunter and Zach.
I shake their hands. ‘Nice to meet you.’
‘Yeah, you too,’ says Zach.
Hunter smiles. ‘You ready for a week with these idiots?’
Zach says, ‘Speak for yourself, dude.’
I laugh. ‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’
‘Where ya from?’ Hunter asks me. ‘Can’t pick your accent.’
I think of each time I arrived at a new school growing up, how many times I was asked this question. Themyscira, I used to say.
That’s not a real place, the other kids would respond.
Yes it is.
Is not.
The most powerful women in the world live there.
You’re making it up. There’s no such place.
I look at Hunter, standing bare-chested in a pair of washed-out board shorts. ‘Australia,’ I say. ‘Originally. But I grew up in Asia—Hong Kong mostly.’
‘Why?’
‘Dad’s work.’
‘Must have been cool.’
I shrug. ‘Yeah, it was pretty good.’
‘Vlad’s a pom,’ he says. ‘Zach is from Cali and Cam is a Kiwi. But don’t you worry.’ He winks. ‘I’ve got your back. I’m an Aussie. From Perth.’
Behind us, Zach is lowering AJ down the mast. When AJ gets to the bottom, he unhooks his carabiner and jumps down into the cockpit. Still wearing the harness, he’s bulging between the straps. AJ looks at me, a smile brewing. He offers his hand to shake, but when I take it he turns it over and kisses the top of my hand. ‘Enchanté,’ he says.
Hunter rolls his eyes.
‘Are you French?’ I ask.
‘My mum is, yes.’
‘Well, it’s nice to meet you too,’ I say, my cheeks warming.
He wriggles out of the harness and puts it under the bench seat in the cockpit. Then, standing up straight, he turns back to me. He’s striking, with silky green eyes, a shadow of stubble and a shock of volcanic black hair. He takes off his t-shirt, uses it to wipe the sweat off his forehead. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘What a pleasure.’
Vlad steps down into the cockpit. ‘There’s a northerly blowing until tomorrow afternoon. I want to catch the best of it, okay, boys?’ He turns to me. ‘Let’s get you familiar with the boat so we can leave before lunch.’
At sea, land fades like a watercolour left out in the rain, the details bleeding together until the mountains wash into paper sky. And then it is all sea. Here. There. Everywhere. Like the boat has become its own little world. A red planet, drifting through blue.
I draw a deep breath, feeling myself open out into the void.
This is the moment I relish most every time: leaving land, when the near and the far fold into each other. It’s a returning. Home.
For our first night at sea, I boil potatoes and mash them with mixed herbs, garlic, butter, salt, pepper and mustard. For a side, I steam vegies with lemon and salt.
The yacht is the biggest I’ve worked on, fifty-eight feet, but it’s a racing yacht, so its interior is sparse. Comforts are sacrificed for speed efficiency. There’s a single cabin at the bow, with a bed doubling as storage for sails. Beside it is a toilet with a door that won’t latch. In the middle of the main cabin are two rows of bunk beds—slings hanging from the walls. Then there’s the galley, where my carrots and broccoli are softening, and the nav station, where Vlad is charting our course. Behind, at the back of the boat, the space under the cockpit is storage for more sails.
There are no walls to divide sleep from work from eat. No walls to get changed behind. On a yacht, I’ve learnt, nothing is discreet. On this yacht, red sky is wide open. Everything is on show.
I give Vlad his meal at the nav station. I want to ask him about the course he’s plotting, but there’s something in the hunch of his shoulders, in the terse way he says, ‘Thanks,’ without looking up, that I find intimidating. He’s only a few years older than me, yet he makes me nervous in a way a skipper never has before. I feel his words, bad luck, looming. Like a roll cloud. And so I refrain from asking a question he might find stupid.
I take dinner on deck for the rest of the guys. Zach is at the helm, steering. He’s wearing board shorts and a linen shirt, unbuttoned, the fabric flapping at the edges. He’s clean-shaven with a sun-kissed crew cut and a thin leather bracelet. His hard jawline makes him appear older than the rest of us, though we’re all in our twenties.
Hunter, the youngest of the crew at only twenty-one, is sitting up on the side of the cockpit behind Zach. Though he has a head of messy curls, his body is hairless. He’s skinny, his pale skin taut over lean muscle.
‘You got burnt today,’ I say as I hand him his plate.
Hunter eyes his pink shoulders, laughs. ‘Sorry, Mum.’
I give Cam and AJ their dinners, then go down below to fetch mine. When I come back on deck, AJ slides along the bench seat to make room for me between him and Cam. I sit down and both guys edge a little closer.
‘This is delicious,’ AJ says.
Cam adds, ‘I knew you were a good decision.’
I eat a mouthful of potato, feel it thick in my throat. It’s hard to swallow.
Vlad enters the cockpit a moment later, his strawberry blond hair shining in the late sun. He has his dinner in one hand and a small whiteboard in the other. He sits down, puts his plate at his feet, and rests the whiteboard on his knee. He pulls a marker from his shorts pocket.
‘Two-and-a-half-hour watches,’ he says, ‘starting from eight.’ Five sailors, two-and-a-half-hour watches from eight. I do the maths. Someone is getting a full night’s sleep.
‘I’ll take first watch,’ he says, writing his name in the first slot on the whiteboard. ‘And then Hunter, you can do ten thirty to one. Zach, you’re one to three thirty.’ He looks up at me, Cam, AJ. ‘Which of you wants the darkest hour?’
Cam shrugs. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘Okay, then,’ says Vlad. ‘You’re three thirty to six. And AJ can take sunrise, six to eight thirty.’
‘What about Oli?’ asks Hunter.
‘She can go on with Cam.’
‘If I go on watch by myself,’ I say, ‘we’ll have shorter watches.’
‘Exactly,’ says Hunter.
‘I think that until we’ve all sailed together,’ says Vlad, ‘it’s a good idea to double up.’
I feel that strange heat crawling up my neck.
Zach says, ‘At least for the first night.’
‘I agree,’ says Cam. ‘Better safe than sorry.’
I wake to a hand on my shoulder. ‘Oli, time for watch.’
I climb out of my bunk. Moonlight exposes my naked thighs. I step aside, hiding myself in the shadows as I search my bunk for my shorts. Finding them at the foot of the bunk, I quickly step into them. Cam passes me my wet-weather jacket. I wait until I’m through the hatch and in the cockpit to put it on. The heat below deck is meaty.
‘How’d you sleep?’ he asks.
I think of the hour’s sleep I lost cleaning up after dinner. And the snoring that had already started by the time I finally got into my bunk. I’d lain there for hours, trying to imagine the snoring as a thunderstorm rolling through the bunk above me.
‘Fine,’ I say.
‘Good,’ he says. ‘Me too.’
I sit down at the helm. I’m barefoot, with my jacket unzipped. The sea breeze drifting around my torso is a welcome reprieve. I inhale it deep into my lungs. Feel the sky coursing through me.
The moon tonight is a sliver, like a cat’s eye. The paleness of it opens up the night to a swathe of stars. They ripple through the black like a river twisting overhead.
‘Wow,’ says Cam, looking up. ‘I forgot about this.’
‘Forgot?’ I ask.
‘It’s been a while since my last delivery,’ he says.
And I’m the one who isn’t trusted with a solo watch.
‘Pretty incredible,’ I say, gazing across a pool of stars.
‘I’m not religious or anything,’ he says, ‘but out here, it’s kinda hard to believe there isn’t a God. Don’t you think?’
I shrug, casting my mind back to a conversation with Mac and Maggie in another time, on another sea. We’d been talking about my pa.
‘You’ll see him again,’ Maggie had said.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t believe in heaven.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ she told me. ‘There are other ways of seeing, Oli. I see wind in shades of red. I see Mac laughing in green.’ She hesitated. ‘And I see Robynne in a breeze filling the sails pink.’
Across the cockpit, Mac closed his eyes and I watched his body soften, his lips just hinting at a smile.
‘You okay?’ asks Cam, drawing me back into this time, on this sea. A breeze rises from the water. A woman’s body fills the sails.
‘Yeah. I was just thinking of something a friend told me.’
‘Gotta concentrate when you’re on watch,’ he says.
‘I know.’
‘Sorry, I’m not trying to tell you what to do or anything.’
I cross my arms.
‘When I first started, I’d drift off too sometimes,’ he says. ‘You’ve just gotta be careful of that—that’s all I’m trying to say.’
‘This isn’t my first watch.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve been working on boats for four years.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-five.’
‘Oh, no shit.’ He laughs. ‘You’re the same age as me.’
I look over his shoulder to check the nav instruments.
‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘you just don’t look your age.’
‘Thanks?’
‘Nah, I just mean, like, you’re really hot.’
For breakfast, I slice papaya and watermelon into cubes, and put them in a big bowl in the middle of the cockpit. Everyone is up except for AJ, who’s sleeping after his early watch.
Back in the galley I boil five eggs, let them cool in cold water, and then take them up on deck, pass them around. When I give Cam his, he grins. ‘Thanks, babe.’
Hunter is peeing over the back of the boat. He shakes himself in the wind, then tucks back into his board shorts and turns to take the boiled egg off me.
‘Eugh,’ I say, laughing. ‘Wash your hands first.’
He rolls his eyes, sticks his hands over the stern deck, reaching into the ocean. Turning back to me, he smirks and flicks his hands so water flies off them onto my skin.
I shriek, stumble backwards, trip over a coil of rope and fall back. Hard.
I land at an angle on the winch, my torso bending in a way torsos aren’t meant to bend, and something inside me cracks.
I feel the crack in a piercing purple.
There is laughter around me, but the shock of pain distorts the sound; it ripples around me as if I’m deep underwater. The sky and sea blur together. I can’t breathe. Pain shoots out from my rib in waves. Electric. Hot. My side is on fire. I roll onto my back, my eyes squeezed shut.
‘Are you okay?’
I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.
‘Shut up. I think she’s hurt.’
‘Oli, are you okay?’
‘Where does it hurt?’
Hands scoop behind my shoulders. Hands hoist me to my feet. But my legs don’t work. They quake, give way, and I collapse into someone else’s arms. His arms.
Hands hold me straight. Hands touch my side, my rib. I cry out in pain. And then I’m throwing up. Only there’s nothing in my stomach. Just water and bile. It lands on someone’s feet.
‘Gross!’
‘Shut the fuck up.’
‘Oli?’
‘Take her below deck.’
In my bunk, my breaths are shallow. Every inhale is piercing purple.
I can hear voices at the nav station.
‘We have to go back.’
‘We can’t.’
‘I really think—’
‘She’ll be fine.’
‘She’s hurt!’
‘I think it’s serious.’
‘It’s just a bad bruise.’
‘She’s a girl.’
‘Probably tired after watch.’
‘Just needs to sleep.’
A voice whispers in my ear. ‘Oli?’
‘Can you sit up? I’ve got painkillers.’
Cam helps me to sit up in my bunk.
‘Here,’ he says, putting two pills in my mouth. ‘Drink this.’ He offers me a cup of water.
I take a swig, swallowing the pills.
He helps me to lie back down. I reach for his arm, wrap my hand around his wrist.
‘We’re going back, yeah?’ I manage between sharp breaths.
‘Yep,’ he says, patting me on the shoulder. ‘See if you can get some rest.’
I wake in a cold sweat. The light in the cabin is dim. Out a porthole, I see the sun is setting. I can hear voices up on deck. I need to pee.
I struggle out of the bunk, stumble through the shadows to the toilet. The latch is broken, so the door swings open and close on its hinges, slamming with each rise and fall of the swell. I feel each slam resound through my body.
After I flush, I fumble my way back through the cabin to the nav station, where I get up the electronic chart to see how far we are from Noumea.
I gasp.
The sudden breath sends a hot wave of pain through my body.
‘Fucking arseholes,’ I mutter, collapsing back into the chair.
That strange heat, snaking up my back, wrapping around my neck.
I stare at the screen, where Poseidon is a tiny blip in a chasm of blue. Pushing on towards New Zealand.