When You Least Expect It

But futures form up with minds of their own. No matter how many photos of exquisite beauty Ravi sent off, they came back with rejection forms. He called to ask why, when his shots were clearly superior to what appeared in the magazine, not that those shots are bad, Sir, it’s just that… And he got the news:

1. We’re not your personal gallery.

2. You got lucky on some eel shots. Your white balance was off, and your water was a bit turbid. You warranted coverage, and we hope you enjoyed the exposure.

3. You were good to send us your photos. They are, for the most part, well done, but…

4. We don’t build stories on photos. We commission photos to go with our stories.

“Okay, then. Perfect! Give me a commission.”

5. Have your agent make contact.

“I don’t have an agent.”

6. Get one. If you’re good enough for us, you’re good enough to get an agent. We can’t answer individual inquiries. Thank you. Good luck with your search elsewhere. Good-bye.

At least he wouldn’t hear his mother’s lament. But he could hear the voice within. It was no use sending his work to New York in search of an agent. He proved it, soliciting fifteen agents. All said no in three stock forms:

1. You’re very talented, but how would I market your skills?

2. Your skills are greatly apparent, but we’re not taking new clients at this point in time.

3. You’re very good to send us your pictures, but your work does not fit our current needs. Please feel free to stay in touch, and best of luck on your search elsewhere.

Low expectation helped soften the blow. It would be tough enough on iffy photos, but what could be wrong with flawless work? Oh, sure, a speck might show up on scrutiny, or maybe the New York highbrows didn’t know that larvaceans are a pelagic tunicate and not digital noise. Nothing mattered east of the Mississippi, where all was known. So a world-class photog reeled on rejection coming quick as a lightning left jab every time he looked up.

Rejection takes a toll. Without hope, fatigue gains momentum. So a hard-working dive instructor again felt the weight of sundown. A man can relax over a beer and some bud, can ease off at last. Disappointment in the mix, however, can hinder easy transit to middle age. Not that thirty-something was middle yet. But times got heavier on tough topics, like vigor, self-esteem, and waning youth.

It got worse when an independent producer called one evening to praise Ravi’s work: “Nobody has captured pelagic tunicates in a casual reef context as well as you.”

At last!

Who was this guy? “I’ve done very well the last three years with a docudrama on three Civil War skirmishes and a scathing look at health care in the Piedmont. But never mind all that.” Albert Huffman was on to reefs, in the news and dying fast. Highlighting their demise could get media play all right. “What do you have in mind?”

Ravi laughed. “I’m sitting here drinking a beer.” And smoking a joint. “I don’t have anything in mind. I could think of something. What do you have in mind?”

“I can tell you this, Ravid…” Albert Huffman rhymed it with “David,” suggesting an animal unhinged. But Ravi let it go; better to bag big game than swat at gnats. “Danger gets their attention. This should be easy. You’re out there every day, in a world of danger. We need to focus on threats. We’ll ring the bell. Guaranteed. Putting the ingredients together is my specialty.”

“I don’t sense the ocean as threatening.”

“Of course you don’t. That’s why you’ll be the hero of this thing because you look death in the eye and go on about your business. Death is like a… like a water cooler or a coffeemaker to you.”

“I’m afraid as the next guy. If I sense death or danger, I leave.”

“You know what I mean. Take sharks. You see sharks every day.”

“No. Not every day. But I see them.”

“Bingo! Sharks. Death and danger. We’ll open on everyone’s worst nightmare, what people fear! Eaten by sharks! Perfect.”

“But they’re mostly whitetip reef sharks.”

“How big?”

“Some get ten or twelve feet, but—”

“Perfect! Can you get close to them?”

“They’re whitetips, like puppy dogs. You can put your arm around them. We had a baby out at Molokini we named Oliver. He lived on a ledge. He grew up, and he’s still out there and checks us out every time. No death. No danger. He’s a friend.”

“He’s a shark, right? He’s got teeth, right? Shark teeth in rows, right? I got the working title: Vicious Killers of the Deep. But I’ll tell you what, bubby, I think that working title should make it all the way, if you catch my drift.”

“Pshh. Oliver? Vicious? He’s friendly. Wait! I got it! I was afraid! Deathly afraid! I almost walked on water!”

“What! What is it? Better than sharks? More teeth? Bigger?”

“Shit!”

“No, what? It’s okay. Tell me!”

“Shit! I’m telling you! I saw shit! It’s a problem here, with so many people flushing number two, and the sewage treatment plant so small; it overflows, and they post in the newspaper that back in May you swam in shit. And the charter boats dump their shit too. I’m telling you, no tiger shark or white shark or any shark scares me more than turds. You know they can make you very sick!”

“Oh… Man…”

“What? You want danger? I’m telling you: turds! That’s danger, and they’re showing up in shoals. You can be out there in so much beauty, and next thing you know, you’re surrounded. This is a terrific idea! Hey, Turdfish Killers of the Deep! Yes?”

“Look. You want to do the vicious killers thing or not?”

“Yes! Blind mullet! Turdfish killers! Of the deep!”

“God.” Then came silence. Was it a religious moment, a moment of insight and gratitude? Or exasperation? Albert Huffman murmured, “I’ll run it by the execs. But they won’t buy it.”

“Who are the execs?”

“You know. The producers.”

“I thought you were the producer.”

“The money guys. The guys who pitch the sponsors.”

So Ravi learned the game, that rejection can be an act of mercy, can shorten the agony of New York and sponsors for danger.

The day ended on two beers, a doobie, and a downer. The buzz made more sense at a fork in the road, but the downer gave “water schlep” new meaning. Marijuana was the sledgehammer of choice in the sundown gandy dance, laying track to oblivia. But with the way station of middle age coming on, the weed amplified the wrong stuff. Maybe it was all wrong stuff, like hyping ocean threats. Albert Huffman was a pimp. National Geographic came on like champagne but fizzled to scuz. A talented photographer got discovered then shunned, as if art so far from Manhattan was no basis for lunch.

Ravi Rockulz could stay physically fit and ready, but he couldn’t tell what for. Details seemed elusive, but the future drew nigh, and a man needed more. More than la vie en rose? More than tropical adventure with friends? What was the problem? Depression? Too much dope? Not enough dope? Like a sailor, downwind in following seas—he watched the barometer and horizon. Squalls come up, no problem. A squall can race across and vanish, or rush in to dump a deluge, no problem. But squall lines bunching up with the barometer dropping? That was a problem. He could reduce sail or change course. Bare poles, battened hatches, sea drogues and hove-to survival mode seemed premature. But he kept an eye to windward.

Most dive leaders gain water wisdom by thirty, leading more by presence, sensing situations. Ravi had aptitude and found a career at nineteen. How many dives ago was that? Most dive leaders don’t count dives. They count income and years because age happens.

The industry was macho; hardheads got bent or failed in business. Any tourist may process nitrogen off the charts because the tables are conservative, but ignoring the tables can change a life or end it. Even the idiots knew this, so errors tended to be honest, leaving ample room for macho expression elsewhere. For example, dives got counted, then not counted. Not counting showed seasoning. Most instructors stopped counting in year two or counted to themselves. Counting was for those who hadn’t accepted life at depth.

Ravi Rockulz reached six hundred dives in his second year and would break a thousand soon. No, wait: two tanks daily would be seven thirty a year if he didn’t miss a day, but he would on days off. Still, in eight months, with three night dives a week, or two—he’d break a thousand by year three. That was fast. But who’s counting?

A raw number indicated repetition on the drill, with six tourists daily. Ravi saw familiar faces and wondered: Weren’t you here last week, or year? Do I remember you? Repeat customers said it was great to see him again, hoping today’s dive would be as incredibly spectacular as last year’s dive. Remember? We went to…

He went along: “Yes! It’s wonderful to see you again.” Some repeat customers laughed short. Then he glazed at the gap from then to now and the years, up in bubbles.

A seasoned veteran did not count dives because it was pointless after several thousand dives. Oh, I have thirteen thousand dives. What? Are you nuts? Thirteen thousand? Did you count them? Would you rather dive than fuck? Will your bones turn to ash? The macho elite easily dismissed bone necrosis with a baseball cap that said: Nitrogen Junkie!

Ha!

Counting dives became so faux pas that it gave way to new expressions of expertise: We run six, seven hundred dives a year each, so the gear has to be tough. We don’t have time for breakdowns. Get it? Six or seven hundred dives a year was the pro standard. If you wanted to stay in, stay down for five years or ten, there was your count. Twenty years? It happened, but reality took its toll. Even top dive instructors get stooped and leathery. Why would they measure exposure? They were obviously long haulers.

Besides, numbers didn’t count for squat next to tall tales. Any adventure has its lore—the big one that got away or the summit unreached—so, too, deep dives daily made danger an old familiar, maybe more so. A climber failing to summit can likely climb down. A fisherman losing a big one can have another beer and two more hotdogs. Big deal. Even a sailor can tread water. But a scuba pro at depth with six strangers, mostly novices with little instinct, knows the price of error. People died—not often, but then how much of the bends, or drowning, or embolism do you need to gain attention?

Ravi could spin yarns with the best, and the boys did sit and spin over a few beers and the latest dope and a cigarette or two because nothing felt better than war stories and nicotine after breathing a couple of tanks compressed. But the yarns could turn against the teller, could tangle a reputation in dark language, like unsafe, bent again, embolism, decompression, no safety stop, ran empty at depth, panicked on an emergency free ascent, narced at 110 feet, and into the nightmare medley of things gone wrong. Some stories could trigger the knee-jerk—a laugh, a scoff, scorn or worry. Kill a tourist, and the details would be audited ad nauseam, till diver error was accepted. Kill two tourists, or three, and tourists would see the shadow on the dive leader in question—or hear about it.

Cheerful but not so dumb as they seemed, the tourists were often successful suits back home. Most could sense things. A dive leader with a bad rep could wonder who knew, compensating with exemplary diligence, as if the job wasn’t tough enough.

Stories of things gone wrong were not casual but shared for humor and insight. The most common foible was nitrogen narcosis, caused by nitrogen on-gassing at seventy feet or deeper. With air compressed to half its former volume, or twice its former density, at every atmosphere—every thirty-three feet—of descent, a diver at seventy feet breathes twice the nitrogen. Or is it three times? It gets tricky, and getting it wrong can bend a diver or make her sick and unstable. Narcosis is a lesser risk but still a risk. It brings on euphoria, in which the sea makes ultimate sense, answers all questions, and opens its arms seductively. In narcosis, the depths can speak with the voice of God, who can be a mermaid of perfect proportion. Ravi Rockulz warned many a six-pack—industry slang for six tourists—of narcosis. Standard procedure was to gather round on entry, treading and signaling okay, going from snorkel to regulator. The exchange continued on descent, okay on ear clearing, okay on feeling, okay, okay and okay—down to narcosis depth and deeper on the all okay. The dive plan was a twenty-five-minute drift at 110 feet along the back wall, an advanced dive, but an easy one with proper care—a favorite for drastic views: no bottom, big creatures and a current to do the work. The boat would pick them up at the end of the wall.

Except that one day the tourists were Japanese, an oddity back then when most Japanese tourists traveled in tight-knit groups of twenty or thirty. If they got in the water at all, each would put a hand on the hull, grasp the mask, look down, and come up chattering like tape recorders in reverse.

But this group was young, six fit divers doing fine to seventy feet, where one went limp. Ravi swam around to ask if he was okay, and the guy beamed, peeling off his mask and ditching his regulator to grin. Then he dropped into full speed to pursue perfection. Maybe he saw the stark difference between ultimate beauty and life in Tokyo. The guy torpedoed a hundred feet, till Ravi caught his ankle, jerked him to a stop and manhandled him into a cross-chest carry, reaching around to stick a spare regulator into the guy’s mouth. The guy didn’t resist or struggle but breathed hard. No wonder, as Ravi checked his depth gauge: 180 and sinking. Then it got worse: five more obedient Japanese tourists had followed to 180 feet and awaited further guidance from management.

Ravi would shrug at that point in the telling: “I called it a bounce—no decompression necessary if you touch your depth for a few seconds and then bounce back up.”

It was a great story to tell because nobody died or embolized or got bent, but they could have, and he’d done the right thing. He couldn’t tell the story locally anymore; they’d heard it so many times, but the tourists still loved it in the interim, between the deep dive and the shallow dive, when a body needs to hang out for an hour or so to ditch excess nitrogen. When someone asked if he ever got narced he would reply, “I got a slight case once. I saw a mermaid, but she was a little bit chunky.” Not the stuff for prime time, but a boatload of tourists on reprieve from the dull commute loved to laugh. Soon came the fond farewells, the gratitude and tips.

A man in his prime is not proud of working for tips, but the gratitude felt different than, say, for a meal well served or a beer properly poured or a car efficiently retrieved from the valet lot. These tips showed respect and tribute to a dive leader who had safeguarded against so many things taught in certification training but not discussed on board because risk is far-ranging and can never be eliminated. Diving offers fun and fulfillment, and it came to pass as the tourists felt the watchful eye, keen mind, experience, and wisdom.

Still, a nagging mother would say, “It’s tips. You want to call it professional fees? Go ahead. Make yourself happy.”

As if a man could be wrong by making himself happy.

•

Suffice to say that every day was a full delivery of what Carl Geizen, aka Crusty Geezer, called “the package.” The package opened with first impressions on hygiene and mechanical soundness and went on through the niggling details, from the gooey squish and sugar factor of the Danish to towel-dried seats to confidence conveyed. The dive team donned wetsuits and booties, rigged regulators to tanks and slid into buoyancy compensators like Degas ballerinas prepping for a show. Checking computers, fastening clips, zipping zippers, staging cameras, defogging and, oh, yeah, opening air valves and reminding guests that this will be fun.

Descent in warm, clear water to the grottos, ledges, walls, and currents revealed the magic.

Back on board, enriched for life, guests got more of the package with entertainment in the interval between dives or on the lovely cruise back. The package got fatter and sweeter with a bit of narrative at each juncture. Crusty called the anecdotal component critical and best served with some twenty-four-karat bullshit in the mix.

Crusty favored wild tales; they fit his worldview so well. With a male crowd, the crew would dummy up to prep Crusty’s favorite entrée. He’d clear his throat and lob a goober to leeward—no dangles, no wipe, showing integrity and know-how with no doubts. Grumbling like an elder down from the mountain, he would venture into polite company, “You know… I reached a point in life where a perfect day for me is four hours of work, nice charter like this. Then I take in a round of golf. Then I go home for a blowjob.”

Eyebrows rose on that note, with laughs of approval or envy, till one of the crew asked, “How’s that working out for you, Crusty?”

“Oh, not too bad, really. I got a couple more weeks of yoga to get my neck stretched out, you know. But I’m getting there.”

Most groups strained momentarily before cutting loose the male bonding guffaw. This too, pumped tips.

Stories were neither idle nor random but tried and true; a story could be tested, once. Heavy tales were reserved for reef addicts, and even then got a long warm-up. That crowd dove two tanks daily for three days in a row, or a week, showing a commitment that would warrant service and tips of magnitude.

Ravi told his 180-bounce story for a few days till Crusty told him to shit-can the near-death experience stuff because it scared the bejesus out of the tourons. Even the heavies winced and worried. You want your passengers relaxed, Crusty said, not anxious or thinking about their lives, jobs, debts, and all the crap they came this far to get away from. You tell jokes, not how a goofy crowd nearly died.

Ravi disagreed, saying most of these people were eager to cheat death. They couldn’t get that action in the office unless you counted financial death, which had zilch to do with life in the real lane. Besides that, a story about diver error makes people more alert. Ravi insisted, but he deferred to his captain, after all.

He shared another slice of the dicey side, recalling the routine off Lahaina Roads on the sunken submarine—sunk for good—with its deck at 110 feet. The sunken sub was advanced, a deep dive in anyone’s book, at nearly twice the sport-diving safe limit of sixty feet. But what could you do, hang out at sixty feet in the water column? A wreck dive is often deep and advanced, with more rigorous safety measures. But people want to take it on because any dive is cake if you don’t choke, and they’d heard how great it was, which it wasn’t, given the effort, but every diver suffers a bit of machismo. The deck was flat, so nobody could dip twenty feet below the dive plan unless they went off the deck, which was easy to avoid, though six tourists could resist common sense on any given day.

The submarine was good for twenty-five minutes if nobody sucked a tank down in fifteen. That was if you made slack tide, about an hour window twice a day. Otherwise, it was a rip-snort current. But most days a sensible group treaded near the anchor rode, holding hands or grasping the rode, descending to sixty feet for a check and okay. The scene could get comical with six divers strung out like pennants in the current—till one let go, and the dive leader chased him down then blew half a tank getting back to the anchor rode. Even with viz at a hundred feet, it was a wing and a prayer that nobody would get any stupider than absolutely necessary.

What could a dive leader do but chase down the guy who let go? Nothing is the correct answer, but the chronic mishap went to dive leader failure on banging the procedural mallet. When the submarine dive went wrong too often, Crusty spliced a quick release into the anchor rode to free it from the Samson post on deck. Securing the quick release to a spare buoy, the rode went over so the boat could chase the wayward bubbles. Crusty damned his crew to hell for taxing his water wisdom, as he saved the day most days, asking what worthless piece of bilge scum would let things get so out of hand.

One day the anchor snagged on the sub deck, so Crusty went down to free it because you can’t leave a fucking four-hundred-dollar anchor stuck there. He only needed a minute. That’s where Ravi learned about the bounce and no safety stop required. Crusty could fix most things in a minute and rise with his slowest bubbles, or his medium bubbles, anyway. He couldn’t very well hang out: “I can’t babysit an anchor and keep this show going at the same time, can I?”

Ravi learned a great deal from Crusty but frankly felt better leaving the Westside for a better boat off the Southside. Crusty’s chiding was mostly justified, but doubt stacked up and hindered instincts. Ravi wished the Westside crew all the best and felt free at last of chasing down tourist divers. Ravi and Crusty parted with good cheer. “Take care, brother,” Ravi offered, to which Crusty grasped his hand and drew him near for a half hug with his own parting wish:

“Aloha, waterman.”

It was the ultimate compliment, indicating matriculation to the unspoken rank bestowed by consensus or, on occasion, by the saltiest veterans. A waterman had achieved intuition and skill in seas of all depths, all weather, all conditions and circumstance, buoyant or not. Crusty’s mumbled praise filled Ravi’s heart and made things right, securing their time as good time, as time for making a living with nobody dying, and their friendship strong. Still, Ravi wondered when the day would come for Crusty to quick release himself from sanity and a last view of tropical blue sky.

The very worst stories got shared strictly in confidence among local divers because a story could spread like brushfire but never beyond the working crews. Some stories seemed indelible as tattoos and never went away, even if the principals left.

Like the instructor who let a guy die in the Room. A capable diver and journeyman photographer known for macro work showing ciliary structure and attitude, the instructor captured and promoted a rare scene of plankton that looked choreographed by Busby Berkeley—all legs and bodices, top hats and tails in tiers, and a grand finale fit for Neptune’s ball. It was a great shot but got old on too much bragging about superior skills and expertise in species, dive table discrepancies, composition, and light, until people wondered: Why the browbeating? Tolerated, more or less, he called out any vessel or person violating his code of conduct. If a boat served carbonated drinks in the dive interval, he yelled across the water that CO2 in the system will show up just peachy in the autopsy when some poor tourist gets bent and embolized from such a dumb fucking error. The fleet avoided him. Nobody pointed out that CO2 is quickly absorbed and offed—or that he could stick a Coke up his ass, diet or classic.

His comeuppance seemed inevitable. He found a cave opening on an eighty-foot bottom and went in. Nobody doubted the drive or skill at hand. Sure enough, the opening proved big enough for another hundred feet at a forty-five-degree angle. Then it narrowed to a manageable bend. At that point, the depth gauge showed 130 feet from the surface. From there, the opening widened and came up at another forty-five degrees to a chamber where six divers could surface without banging each other or the lava walls—yes, surface.

By a quirk, the chamber roof was watertight, or else the chamber was fed by bubbles of some kind at a greater rate than the rate of leakage. So the divers were back to ninety feet below the surface but were actually much farther away. They could remove their masks and regulators to grin and say hello. They could tell a joke or a story. They couldn’t exactly breathe the gas in the room, a mildly noxious mix of CO2 and something astringent. Lungs constricted.

Never mind. Anyone could short gasp a breath or two on a story or a punch line, notching a unique groove on the old adventure belt, on a scuba klatch in a private room at ninety feet—make that 170 feet to the real world. Machismo motivation led to a destination rich in overview and retelling; what happened when we were in the Room.

The Room became the new big thing for those seeking extreme thrills—for those needing to demonstrate an inner self as yet unshared. A few took cameras. Photos from the Room were in greater demand than spondylidae—thorny oyster shells with intricate spines and flutes in a flat, pastel finish, formerly found at thirty feet but now unfound till 180 feet because the shallower thorny oysters got plucked then set on shelves to catch dust. The shells proved something, even for the guys who got bent, fetching too deep. Some survived, till thorny oysters were associated with instability, idiocy, and danger. What a relief.

But a photo starring me in the Room seemed more worthwhile, pertinent proof of the adventure-lust coursing in these veins.

Soon those who bought admission to the Room were not allowed to take cameras because of safety hazards in the ocular incursion disparity or the peripheral dangle or the snag factor or some such. Only the misguided dive instructor could take a camera. Each diver was photographed in the room and could buy an 8×10 afterward for thirty bucks, with additional prints at varying prices. The photos were copyrighted, so non-authorized copies were strictly forbidden, as if by law. The fleet’s general smirk helped balance collective embarrassment.

Another dive instructor felt the commercial pull on this rich new vein, especially with his skills as a diver and photographer. I can do this, Ravi thought. Nobody has rights to a dive site. Fleet consensus was dour—somebody would die, maybe somebody working his ass off right now, somebody seeking something beyond the daily grind, somebody weak on greed. Many fingers pointed at Ravi.

Scoffing at warnings, the offending instructor put an ad in a tourist magazine, claiming exclusivity to the Room. If you wanted it, you had to choose him because only he knew where it was. Only he had a perfect safety record in finding the Room. Only he could get you in and out without a worry, and he wasn’t sharing. That’s what the ad said. The coconut wireless had it that he threatened to sue for infringement if any other boat tried to coax the location from a tourist who’d been guided to the Room.

The Room was gladly forgotten within days of the death occurring there, within a few weeks of its unfortunate discovery.

One big risk of cave diving is silt, and no dive guide enters a cave without forewarning to kick gently sideways or in an easy flutter with fins way off the bottom. A cave often has tributary caves feeding at blind angles, so coming out can be fatally confusing without noting coordinates on the way in. Just so, an eager six-pack included a man whose past, like this cave, intertwined with tributary caverns, feeding the primary drive. He seemed compensatory, driven to achieve something or other, hungry for a leading edge. He made the first turn easily enough but had only five hundred pounds of air remaining at 130 feet. But he’d come this far, and then came the little voice that urges the inexperienced or inadequate to go for it, requiring him to surface to ninety, then descend again to 130 before surfacing again with a safety stop on the way. He made the Room and actually lingered for the photo op to secure his identity. Then he hurried out. Hurry stirs silt in a cave. He didn’t come out—not for a few days, when two rescue divers found him hung up along a tributary just past the deep turn where he must have kicked too hard and gone awry, where a hose snagged on a rock to one side, which he may have thought was overhead, and where any number of problems could have ensued, all of which were likely incidental to running out of air at 120 feet in a narrow cave full of silt with zero viz.

•

Nobody said boo, not calling the guilty instructor a jerk or dismissing the episode with the common discount: shit happens. The instructor retired a few months later, cast permanently into the fatal column, dangerous, and worse, imprinted with murder, second degree.

Litigation on that one lasted longer than anyone cared to follow.

Far better to tell about the doctor who sucked his tank empty in sixteen minutes and grabbed his dive buddy’s octopus. After hyperventilating on that, he took off for the surface, dragging his dive buddy along—a guy he met that morning—till the buddy realized they were outpacing their bubbles like a hare passing a tortoise and stopped short at sixty feet, up from 120 way too fast. The doctor, a card-carrying member of the American Medical Association, went full speed to the surface, forgetting to exhale and surely forgetting a safety stop since he was about to drown anyway, which he may as well have done. He embolized with a nasty bubble in his neck and got bent to boot, leaving him screaming bloody murder, or gurgling it anyway, writhing on the surface. Reduced to a whimper, he was flown by medevac helicopter to Honolulu at ten feet over the sea to minimize further decompression. Finally, in the hyperbaric chamber, he got pressurized back down to a hundred feet and seemed to be in less pain but died a day later anyway.

But that story was best squelched too, along with the geeks and lamebrains flopping along the back wall like clown plankton, pinwheeling, riding the bicycle, kicking heads. Realization can be tough, and the toughest yet was that this goofy shit was getting old.

Some days were better than others, but one afternoon nineteen years in, Ravi took the hand-off of empty tanks from the boat to the parking lot behind the dive shop. First came the sixty-gallon tanks for women and children, then the eighties, then, what the hell… 160s? But they weren’t 160s, only more eighties, along with heavier bones, muscles, joints, and essential attitude, bearing down. Stooping to the burden of sheer, dead weight was a milestone. On that day, in that arduous task, he crossed the line to middle age. A moment earlier it was another working day nearly done, heading for a lazy afternoon, his to enjoy. Then would come evening recreation after a swim or some errands. Maybe he’d call a woman, though he met few women other than tourists. Tourist women felt repetitious and demanding on the glib, social side for the brief return on the other side.

But things changed on that offload. Time slurred on a moment of knowing. Repetition and strain reached critical mass. An afternoon of rest shouldn’t seem so bad to a hardworking man, but reality had changed. A man slowed down. A nap in a shaded room with an oscillating fan went from seductive to necessary. A major bowel movement led to the gratification formerly reserved for sex.

On the bright side, a sentient being can assess and adapt.

Ravi Rockulz drifted into his first nap in recent memory. He was in his early thirties only a while ago. Okay, maybe mid-thirties. He woke two hours later pushing forty. Crusty used to grumble most mornings that he felt shot at and missed and shit at and hit. Ravi downed three aspirin with a caffeinated cola to ease the same feeling, then decided on dinner at a quiet cafe, to ponder options. He would list pros and cons, goals and fears. He would make a chart by which to navigate.

After a beer and ahi poke (PO-kee), raw tuna diced to half-inch cubes and seasoned with sesame oil, black sesame seeds, cayenne, and ogo (seaweed), he felt ready. So he stared at a sheet of paper with no shimmering promise. He could not plunge into 8½×11 of arid emptiness. Who would dive here? Right out in the middle?

How long did he sit and stare, waiting for a thought to drift into his brain, down his arm, through his pen, and onto the paper? Where to go? What to do? What to say to whom and when?

He finally wrote:

Being a dive instructor is not enough.

Beneath that, in a few minutes more, he wrote:

Hawaii. Tahiti (?) Carib (?) Indonesia (?)

Photography.

He waited. He finished his poke. He waited, doubting that insight would come, until it came: Okay, go ahead and decompose. Waiting didn’t help, so he ordered another round. And with it, the future arrived casually, out of the blue and into his heart, random as the first amino acid on a chance encounter with electrons—three women. Like any women can appear, these women seemed unfathomable. Such is man’s weakness for the trick of nature.

Ravi did not visit tourist honkytonks—too loud, too weird, too tediously posed with half-drunk youth claiming identity by virtue of a six-hour flight and a few beers. Throw in some sunburn and call it experience. Those places felt alien, and though a cynical outlook can be tough, reality has standards.

He’d heard last week that a bar in Kihei was “crawling with leg.” It seemed creepy and got worse: The light fixtures were dried blowfish, the same creatures swimming yonder who might have known a certain waterman and approached in greeting. No, not the same because… Never mind. The grimy pub bought the blowfish from Asia, but the drift was the same. The place was vile, willfully ignorant of the reef neighborhood and blind to everything but a postcard pose. Ravi ate at home; it was so much better and cost much less. And who would go looking for leg when it schooled up on the home reef? Still some nights needed a change of pace.

Yet he felt like a tourist with no local knowledge, or maybe fatigue had trumped instinct. But no… Two of these women were very good-looking and doable in a blink. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance? The third woman felt different, a cameo classic and a cool drink of water for a tired soul. Did he look too old? She had to be younger but seemed indifferent to his petty concerns.

Minna Somayan, a hapa Kanaka Maoli (meaning half pure Hawaiian—her phrase, spoken blissfully) explained that she was of pure descent on one side and a cross of Filipino and Chinese forebears on the other. High cheekbones offset her Polynesian lips and almond eyes. Pearly whites with no cane holes or yellowing highlighted her skin—golden brown as heart koa. But features came second. First came grace in a lead from the hips, the eyes, and fingers. Oozing like lava, compelling as hula, she could take a man down, yet she mercifully flowed around him. In Hawaiian terms, she combined humanity and nature; her embodiment of the elements was a consensus of components. She smiled on the trim, fit fellow alone with his little beer, his little dish of poke, his little chopsticks, and his pen writing his little list, probably mapping out a good life for himself.

Ravi Rockulz understood current, surge, and undertow and how these forces relate to the power of women; no matter how strong or skilled a waterman may be, he can only stay calm, ride it out, and survive if he’s lucky and smart. Great loss may come otherwise if he challenges a force of nature. He knew as well the profound scope of peripheral vision, what a waterman and women sense in the company of predators. Hard and hungry stares do not go unseen. Ravi knew the game, often picking his beauty du jour and ignoring her. With practiced indifference, he might reel her in by sundown. A beauty not gazed upon wants to know why. So he looked away.

The trio headed for a table close by. Passing Ravi, the first two women whispered. With her eyes on him, the third woman smiled like a long-lost friend, a friend in need, not a family friend and certainly not a sister. She stopped. “Aloha.” She stated what would survive them, what would transcend what came between them, whether a brief greeting or love as durable as time.

Keeping with tradition, Ravi said: “Aloha.” He matched her smile and met her eyes, casting indifference to the wind.

She offered both hands at once familiar yet formal, cordial yet symbolic. Grasping hands was spontaneous, warm and natural, a first connection. What a woman. He stood, taking her hands in a reunion of sorts, like intimates meeting after time apart, after returning from the waters of forgetfulness to a reef remembered. “I’m Minna.”

Dumb as a fence post where a nightingale just landed, he said, “I know.” But he couldn’t have known. Could he?

She laughed. “What’s your name?”

Ravi. “Ravi. I’m Ravi.”

“Ravi? Is that French?”

No, it’s not French. It’s Israeli. “People think I am French because of my accent. But it’s… Israeli.”

“Oh, wow! That’s so cool. I mean, Israel.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re not a tourist.”

“No. I am a dive instructor.”

“Oh, wow. I love that. I mean I love the water. I’d love to learn how to dive and what not. I know I can.” He squinted; how did she know? “I mean I’ve been around the water my whole life. I can, you know, free dive and what not.”

Free dive and what not? She sounded like a valley girl gone native, which is better than stupid but not by much. But then how stupid did he sound when he asked like a college boy at a frat party, “What’s your last name? Do you have a job?” Kicking himself for spewing questions so early in the game, he shut up. Not to worry. She didn’t think him stupid, just dumbstruck on her beauty and appeal.

“Somayan,” she murmured, squeezing his hands, infusing her magic. “I work in a shop. For tourists. I got this pareo there.” She did a pirouette and tropical curtsey. “Don’t you love it?”

“I do. It suits you. What’s the name of the shop?” Yes, another question felt stupid, but so far, so fast held no alternative. He wanted to tighten the drag and put her in the boat, and he shuddered at the thought of gaffing.

She smiled more sweetly, assessing him for potential hazard or savoring the moment before murmuring again, “Edith’s Beach Treasures.” He knew the place. “I work tomorrow. Eight to five.”

“Okay.”

“That’s not what I want to do for my life and what not. I’m in school to be a nurse. I work at the hospital too, as a volunteer. But only twenty hours because of my paying job and, you know, other stuff.” Ravi stared at a different kind of woman. She could only give selflessly for half a normal workweek, on top of a regular job and school. She stood apart from the standard waitress or shop clerk or tourist woman and seared his reverie with, “Good-bye, Ravi.”

“Good-bye, Minna.”

“A hui hou.”

“A hui hou.” Till we talk again.

She turned away and turned back. “What language do you speak? I mean, you know. Israeli?”

“I speak English.”

“Yes,” she giggled. “You know what I mean.”

“Hebrew is my mother tongue.”

“How do you say good-bye in Hebrew?”

He shrugged, “Shalom.”

“That’s amazing,” she said. “It’s like aloha.”

“Yes, it is.”

“That’s so cool. I mean, you’re not haole.”

“I am Caucasian.”

She drifted. “You know what I mean. I’m born and raised.”

“I love that.”

She beamed on cue. “See you.”

He sat down aching for another three beers but too dazed to remember how to get one within meters of a woman who had altered Life as He Knew It.

Sizzling like a scorched sapling, he found the wherewithal to uproot for a transplanting elsewhere rather than risk a flame out here. Besides, he could get a twelve-pack on the way home for twice the price of a single beer here, which was like two for one and then ten for free, or some such. But even twelve wouldn’t douse this fire. Ha!

So he went home and lay down after a tiring day and exhausting evening. He slept like a rock or a very tired Rockulz till five, waking to a cat’s tongue on his nose a half hour early. He pondered the future, Minna Somayan, diving, photography, and Minna Somayan till Skinny insisted on eats right now.

She was everything and then some, transcending physical with spiritual—and she held up under scrutiny. Hardly thirty hours from their first meeting she whispered, “We could wait.” He shrugged. Wait on what? He could not have her any more than a person could own land. Stewardship might work; they would care for each other according to needs. But waiting wouldn’t matter. Besides, they were naked in bed.

They didn’t wait until they had to. They craved beer, wine, and liquor to buffer the need after so long apart. The alcohol calmed things to workable levels so they could proceed directly to where they left off in the sweet by-and-by, reconnecting desire to fulfillment at the far end of a long time apart. Some buds made things misty—or foggy—never mind; immersed in beauty or dreamtime, they went deep. They resurfaced and dove again, going macro, seeking detail, until Skinny jumped off the bed like a jaywalker dodging traffic.

This was narcosis, in which the seasoned diver and novice lover ditched his mask and regulator to see more clearly and breathe between the water, to inhale his loved one.

Then came more, to depths where no human could survive. Appetite reduced every experience prior as nothing, as a series of strolls down empty streets. But then love never did make sense.

At one time a two-pack-a-day man because nicotine can take the edge off so much vigor and seething energy, Ravi had quit years ago because smoking can kill you and makes you stink till then. But she lit up and offered, and he took it, inhaling the small death, a reasonable price to pay for this taste of perfection, in which every qualm is incidental to the timeless aftermath. She told him she knew it from the moment she saw him.

He figured most women had the power to know whatever they want from whomever they want, but he agreed, “Yes.” He told her he saw her too as different, as a presence, so warm and commanding that he could hardly avoid the whirlpool.

She smiled sanguinely. “Yes. My presence is regal, but I don’t say that from vanity. My family was ali’i, but we don’t talk about that. You see these Hawaiians claiming cultural rights they never had in the first place because what they claim like fishing grounds and netting privileges and what not were kapu to them. They would have been killed for those things in the day. We don’t talk about it because we lost so much and whatever anybody gets back is a good thing.”

They smoked.

Ravi got up for a beer for him, more wine for her. She called, “Do you think I’m stupid?”

Only when you say what not—

“Why would you ask such a thing? Why would you be stupid?”

“Because we were more than ali’i. We were regal. That’s why I can say that about my presence—for generations my family was held in awe. Nobody could look upon us. People bowed their heads, or they died. But we don’t talk about that time either. Some people will kill you today for talking about those things and those times. But I think you felt it—I mean my presence.”

“What things don’t they talk about?”

“Inbreeding for one thing. We did that. We like to think it’s all played out. It was five or six generations ago, mostly. The royal families did it. That’s why we lost because our monarchs were mentally retarded. You can’t say that. I can’t say that.”

“I never heard they were mentally retarded.”

“You won’t. Maybe they weren’t.”

“But you worry about it?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I think I sound stupid. But then I realize most people sound stupid sometimes. So maybe I’m only normal. Besides, I have so many other bloodlines. I think we might have had some, you know, ditzies on da kine side.”

He laughed. “That’s not a very nice way to put it.”

“I told you. I don’t talk like that to anybody else. Only you. I think we’ll be together a long time.”

You do? He didn’t need to speak, with his eyes asking and her eyes confirming, till he blinked. “The missionaries were compelling. They conquered many places besides Hawaii, where monarchs didn’t interbreed.”

“Maybe. It doesn’t matter now. I just don’t want to sound stupid.” She turned to him. “Promise you’ll tell me if I ever sound stupid.”

“Don’t say what not.”

She sat up. “God! What is it with you men? Not five minutes after you get what you want, you’re telling me what not to do!”

“No. I didn’t mean it that way. You asked me to…”

But she was only pulling his leg, laughing and showing him the true meaning of promiscuity in the tropics and what not. Immersed in her simple solution to the mysteries of the universe, he wondered how such a being could ever think herself retarded.