I dreamed of Vanessa. Tonight the dreams were more explicit than ever. She came to me in a blue lace g-string and woke me up with a stellar blow job. Then we had sex in every position I’d ever heard of and a couple I swear I imagined. A hell of a dream.
What woke me from it was the sound of a boat engine. You went to sleep on a rock. You need to wake up to get their attention and get rescued.
Reluctantly, I opened my eyes. It was dark, but it felt like I was in bed, not out on the reef. I felt around. Blankets, sheets, mattress – not usually stuff found on a reef. I sat up. Hmm, I was buck naked, too. Also not something I was stupid enough to be out on the reef.
I got up. Yep, I dreamed of Vanessa last night. Now the sheets need a wash.
I pulled the sheets off the bed and bundled them into my arms, padding across to the laundry on the other side of the shack. There was a load already in the washing machine, clothes clinging to the outside of the drum as if they’d finished a full cycle. I pulled the wet stuff out, dumping it in the tub that I used as a laundry basket. Huh. Those are the clothes I wore yesterday. Don’t remember putting a load of washing on. Fuck, I don’t remember getting home.
I shoved the sheets in the machine and turned it on. Then I hunted up a pair of shorts and put them on, before going outside in the pre-dawn light to hang out the damp washing on the clothesline next to my donga.
Skipper was walking down the track, almost at the jetty, with another skipper I didn’t recognise in the poor light. “Morning.”
I nodded in reply and followed him down the jetty. The tinny was there, tied up where I always left it. The paddle was lying in the bottom of the boat, across some big dents that hadn’t been there yesterday. I knelt on the jetty and pulled at the rope. I hadn’t tied those knots, I was sure of it.
Behind me, Skipper laughed and I jumped. “Looks like you banged the dinghy up pretty good last night. Sounds like it was the only banging you got up to, though – Vanessa was looking for you last night, but you’d already gone to bed.”
Vanessa. I looked over at her jetty, but her boat was already gone. Like every other morning, out of the anchorage before I was even up. Good thing, too, this morning – I’d have trouble looking at her without thinking of that damn blue g-string. An imaginary blue g-string, I reminded myself.
“Ready to go?” Skipper asked.
I shook my head, trying to shake out the graphic pictures rattling around inside it. “Lemme grab a shirt.”
I went inside and grabbed the first shirt I found. I pulled it on over my head as I wandered down the jetty to the fishing boat.
“Time to go pull the pots and count the crays.”
I got to work, untying the ropes from the jetty, my arms aching in memory of my paddling attempts last night. When I had all the ropes back aboard the boat, Skipper started to pull away from the jetty into the anchorage channel, heading south, as the sun crept over the horizon.
As we passed her house, I saw her washing hanging out on her veranda, too. I realised that the g-string wasn’t imaginary, because there it was, moving in the breeze. I must have seen it on the washing line before and forgotten, though not completely. I looked more closely at the line of small lace items, which would be hidden from view from the path by the row of shirts and shorts, unless the wind blew the shirts up out of the way, like they just did. That wasn’t what held my attention, though. All of her underwear is blue. Hell, all of her clothes are some shade of blue, from her jacket to the tiny lace g-string.
Fuck, what I’d give to see her in it. This daydream lasted until we were well out of the anchorage channel.
“Hey, it looks like someone’s lost a torch.” Skipper pointed at the rocks at the southern end of the island’s western beach, bringing my attention back to the present reality.
I glanced at it, not needing more than a glance to know it was mine. I’ll walk over and pick it up after work, I told myself.
“Everything that’s lost on the reefs washes up here. Even found a dead body here once,” Skipper said.
A dead body. The chill from this was more effective than any cold shower. “Who?”
“Oh, it was more’n fifty years ago. Some bloke who got washed overboard in a cyclone. His body washed up here a couple of weeks later. They buried him up on the cliff.” He pointed at the white cross on top of the cliff that I’d never noticed before.
The chill went bone-deep. That’s where I would have ended up last night, if I hadn’t made it home. Now, how did I make it home?