But futures have a way of forming up with minds of their own. No matter how many shots of exquisite beauty, character and wonder Ravid sent off, they all came back with a form rejection. He called to ask why, when his shots were clearly superior to the shots actually appearing in the magazine, not that those shots are bad, Sir, it’s just that... And so he got the news:
1. We’re not your personal gallery.
2. You got lucky on some eel shots. Your color balance was slightly off, and your water was more turbid than we like to see. They were original enough to warrant 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 around photos. We commission photos to go with our stories.
“Okay, then. Perfect. You can 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, then you’re good enough to get an agent. We can’t possibly respond to individual inquiries or sort through all the material we get every week. Thank you. We wish you the best of luck with your search elsewhere. Good-bye.
Well, at least he wouldn’t need to hear his mother’s assessment on continuing failure and fading prospects. But he would be required to hear the growing voice within, asking why, what for, and when. It was no use spending time and money packing up his best work for shipment to New York in search of an agent. He knew this by other instincts and proved it anyway by soliciting fifteen agents. All of them said no in one of three stock forms:
1. You’re very talented indeed, but I’m not sure how I would market your skills.
2. Your skills are most apparent, but we don’t accept unsolicited clients, and we’re not taking on new clients at this point in time.
3. You’re very good to send us your pictures, but your approach does not seem to fit our current needs. Please feel free to stay in touch, and best of luck on your search elsewhere.
Here, too, a healthy dose of low expectation helped soften the impact, which would be tough enough if the photos showed visible defect. Something seemed amiss. What could warrant rejection over and over on flawless photos? Oh, sure, a blemish or speck might show up here and there under microscopic scrutiny, or maybe the highbrows in New York didn’t know that larvaceans are a type of pelagic tunicate and not digital noise, though they look the same to the untrained eye. Of course the difference could not be explained to anyone east of the Mississippi, because everything was already known there, leaving a world-class photog reeling on the ropes with rejection coming quick and often as a lightning left jab and right hook every time he looked up.
Rejection takes a toll on the artistic process — take away hope, and fatigue will gain the upper hand every time. Knocking it out of the park all day is less draining than a swing and a miss times three. So a hard working dive instructor still felt physical fatigue at the end of the day and still found it good. As it should be, for a young man in peak condition who can relax over a beer and the occasional herb, who can feel his muscles let go of their constant vigil at last. Adding emotional disappointment to the mix, however, could test a young man’s resolve, could measure his legs in the middle rounds, so to speak, in the thickening transit between youth and middle age. Not that thirty-something was middle. It was not. But those years were heavy enough without constant reminders about tough topics, like mortality, waning vigor, incremental system failure, value to society, self-esteem and the end of youth. Unlike success and recognition, rejection brought on the doubts. They began most often in a trickle that didn’t douse the fire but made it sputter.
Then came the real test, in which an enterprising, independent film producer called on Ravid at his beach shack one evening to say that he was most impressed with Ravid’s reef photography — that nobody had so meticulously captured pelagic tunicates in a casual reef context.
At last!
Ravid felt the surge in his heart with this obscure praise that was nonetheless informed and well placed. The producer, Albert Huffman, lived in one of the Carolinas but worked out of New York and spent considerable time there but couldn’t actually afford to live there, which hardly mattered with the surroundings available in the Carolinas. Besides, things would change soon enough with only a few more successes like those of the last three years, which included an in-depth analysis of three Civil War skirmishes and a scathing look at health care in the Piedmont.
But never mind all that — he was on to reefs, because they were in the news, dying quick. Highlighting their accelerated demise could get the media’s attention, all right, and with media attention, the world would tune in. “Okay, what do you have in mind?” Albert Huffman asked.
Ravid laughed. “I’m sitting here drinking a beer.”
And having the last inch of a skinny joint.
“I don’t have anything in mind. I can probably think of something. What did you have in mind?”
“I can tell you this, Ravid...” Albert Huffman rhymed it with “David,” so the name suggested an animal unhinged. But Ravid let it go; better to bag the big game than swat the gnats; better to get this project off square one and onto square two than begin the arduous task of teaching an American the fundamentals of proper accent, beginning with “eed”: No, not RAVE-id but Rov-EED! Eed!...
Let it go.
“It’s danger. Danger gets their attention. So this should be easy. You’re out there every day in the ocean, in a world of danger. All we need is to focus on a few threats you face every day with your camera skills and me producing. We’ll ring the bell. Guaranteed. Putting the ingredients together happens to be 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, as if death is like a...like a water cooler or a coffeemaker to you.”
“I’m actually as afraid as the next guy. If I think death — or threat or danger — is anywhere nearby, I leave.”
“You know what I mean. Take, uh, sharks, for example. You see sharks every day, right?”
“No. Not every day. But I see them.”
“Bingo! Sharks. There it is: death and danger. We’ll open with something everyone can relate to — something everyone is afraid of...in their worst nightmares! Eaten by sharks! Perfect.”
“But they’re nearly all whitetip reef sharks.”
“How big?”
“Some get up to 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 one born out at Molokini, so we named him Oliver and put him in a little cubbyhole in the coral, and he lived there. We fed him, and he got bigger than the hole, and he’s still out there. He checks us out every time to see if we brought him any snacks. No death. No danger.”
“He’s a shark, right? He’s got teeth, right? In fact, he’s got shark teeth in rows, right? I already got the working title: Vicious Killers of the Deep. But I’ll tell you what, bubby, I think that working title is going to make it all the way to rolling credits, if you catch my drift.”
“Pshh. Oliver? Vicious? Anybody who knows anything will know he’s friendly. Wait! I got it! I was afraid! In fact, deathly afraid! In fact, 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! And it’s a big problem here, with so many people flushing number two twice a day, and the sewage treatment plant is too small, so it overflows into the ocean, and then three months later they post a notice in the newspaper to tell you that back in April you swam in shit. And the charter boats dump their shit in the water too. I’m telling you, no tiger shark or white shark or any shark scares me more than turds. You know they’re dirty and can make you very sick!”
“Oh... Man...”
“What? You want danger? I’m telling you: turds! They’re the most dangerous things in our water now, and they’re showing up in shoals. You can be out there in the middle of 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.” The silence ensuing was difficult to assess. Was it in fact a religious moment, a moment of epiphany and gratitude? Or did the independent producer call upon the deity to assuage exasperation? Then came Albert Huffman’s mumble, “What a waste.” Then came the last exchange ever with A. Huffman: “I’ll run it by the execs. I’ll call you.”
“Who are the execs?”
“You know. The producers.”
“I thought you were the producer.”
“These are the money guys. The guys who have to answer to the sponsors.”
So it was that Ravid learned about being strung along, finessed so quick and easy that it felt like nothing, or next to nothing, unless he counted the wispy smoke trickling up from his shorts. In short order he also learned that when hope is engendered but not fulfilled, it’s worse than rejection — that rejection is in fact an act of mercy — a mercy killing, as it were, designed to shorten the agony as perfected in New York.
The days still ended as they had for years with a couple of beers or a doobie. Refreshments made more sense to a man at a fork in the road, with the doobie providing significant health benefits in those days of questionable purpose — those days of doubt and wondering if “water schlep” was more than a casual label. The marijuana had served at one time as a sledgehammer in the sundown gandy dance, laying track to oblivia. Yet in the way station days of middle age coming on, the legumba was both more and less. In a measured, moderate dose it allowed a cutback on beer and the deletion of tequila altogether. The recent ingredient in the sundown mix, media hype about vicious killing ocean creatures, seemed overly dosed. Any given reef could be safer than any given shopping mall on any given day. The media stuff smelled foul and tasted worse. Showing the ocean as a threat felt like a stubborn stain. Albert Huffman took things beyond rejection to dismissal. Ravid’s breakthrough at National Geographic had come on like a sparkling champagne with a touch of crème de fraise, but then had lost its head and fizzled into gray brown scuz that looked chronic. He’d been discovered, such as it was, then he’d been shunned, as if an artist far from Manhattan was without resources, unavailable for lunch.
Ravid Rockulz never thought life would remain unchanged. He could stay physically fit into the future, and that was pivotal — and he’d believed that someday he’d know when and what to change. He’d have money to make the change. The details weren’t important yet; it was so far off.
But where Basha Rivka often said that a person has nothing without her health, Ravid knew that a healthy, unhappy man had less than everything. Why would he feel unhappy, living la vie en rose? The tropics, friends, adventure and beautiful women — what was the problem? Well, this sorting process was complex, because he had no problem, like a sailboat downwind in following seas has no problem — which doesn’t absolve the skipper from watching the barometer and horizon. Squalls can appear at any time, no problem. A squall can race across the sky and vanish, or rush in to dump a deluge, neither of which should present a problem. But a squall line bunching into a system with the barometer dropping a millibar or two will require a skipper to weigh options. He could reduce sail or change course. The situation hardly called for bare poles, battened hatches, sea drogues and hove-to survival mode, yet. It was simply time for assessment — make that reassessment.
Most dive instructors are seasoned veterans by age thirty, spending their years of peak physical strength on the steep learning curve and second nature. With water wisdom from experience, an instructor can lead and control more by presence than physical force — he can see most situations as they develop. But the best watermen also learn the hard way, by physical force. Ravid had been a diver with natural aptitude seeking a job. He’d found a career by default. We are what we do. He’d come late to the game at twenty-three, an age when many nitrogen junkies have stopped counting their dives, because thousands of dives don’t prove experience. They count repetitions of the same old dives at the same old spots, with a hazardous dive or crazy tourist thrown in. The hardcore elite with the most dives, highest income and few casualties claim that they breathed compressed air first, then learned to walk and talk as necessary for getting along in society. The end.
The industry was macho; the worst of the hardheads got bent or lost clients or failed in business. The decompression tables cut no slack, and every tourist has the potential to process nitrogen off the charts. The tables got adjusted conservatively, because disregarding the tables could change a life or end it. Even the worst macho idiots knew this, so errors tended to be honest, leaving ample room for macho expression elsewhere.
For example, dives were counted to about a thousand, then not counted. They became countless — an appendage of a seasoned diver. Most instructors stopped counting in the second year or so, or wouldn’t admit to counting. Counting was for novices who hadn’t yet accepted life at depth.
Ravid Rockulz was pleased to reach six hundred dives by his second year, knowing he could break a thousand soon. No, wait: two tanks daily would be seven hundred and thirty if he didn’t miss a day, which he would, because you need a day off to do something else every now and then. But still, in about eight months, if he threw in, say, three night dives a week, or two — well, he’d break a thousand by his third year. He’d have been an instructor for a year and a half by then, which was very fast. But who’s counting?
Nobody is who, because a raw number indicated repetition and tedium on the same routine with six tourists daily, who soon looked the same. Ravid stared at familiar faces. Weren’t you here last week, or year? Do I remember you? He stopped staring because he couldn’t remember. Repeat customers greeted him heartily, saying it was truly great to see him again, hoping that today’s dive would be as unbelievably, incredibly spectacular as last year’s dive. Remember? We went to...
He went along with equal zest, “Yes! It’s wonderful to see you again.” Most repeats laughed short, so apparent was the memory lapse. Then came the reverie, when he glazed over in awe and wonder at what was different today from a year ago, or three years ago, except for another circle round the sun, gone up in bubbles.
So 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 from excess nitrogen in the bloodstream with a baseball cap that said:
Nitrogen Junkie.
Ha!
Counting dives became so faux pas that the exact count gave way to a new expression 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, stay wet for five years or ten, there was your count. Twenty years? It happened once or twice, but reality took its toll sooner or later. Age happens to everyone, if they make it. Even your top dive instructors in collective denial get stooped and leathery with sinewy muscles wrinkled as the rest from so much flexing. Why would they flaunt their measure of exposure to the elements? They wouldn’t; suffice it to say they were in for the long haul.
Besides, a raw number didn’t count for squat next to the tall tale. Any physical pursuit will engender lore — the big one that got away, or the summit beyond reach — so too, deep dives daily made danger a regular presence. Dive adventures had bigger stakes than more pedestrian pursuits. If a climber failed to summit, he could likely climb down. If a fisherman lost a big one, he could have another beer and two more hotdogs. Big deal. Even a sailor whose boat sank could tread water. But a scuba professional at depth with six strangers, mostly novices with little instinct on any given day, knew the price of error. People died — not often, but then how many drownings, bends or embolization victims do you need to gain attention?
Ravid 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 of the strange appetite for 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 emergency free ascent, narced at 110 feet, and into the nightmare medley of things gone wrong. Too many stories could generate the knee-jerk — a short laugh, a scoff or scorn or furrowed forehead. Kill a tourist, and the details would be audited ad nauseam, till diver error could be accepted. Kill two tourists, or three, and the tourists for many seasons would see the dark shadow on the dive leader in question — or hear about it.
Cheerfully dumb but not as dumb as they seemed, the tourists were often successful shirts back in civilization. Most could read subtle signs. Body language was a memo. A chronic fuckup could face years of trying to forget, of compensating by exemplary diligence, as if the job wasn’t tough enough.
Some stories of things gone wrong were common, not to be taken lightly but accepted as having humorous potential. The most common event 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 will breathe twice as much nitrogen. Or is that 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. It speaks with the voice of God, who can be a mermaid of perfect proportions. Ravid Rockulz advised many a six-pack — industry slang for six tourists — of the risk of narcosis, particularly on one of his boat’s more popular dives. Standard procedure was to gather round on entry, treading calmly and signaling okay, going from snorkel to regulator. The exchange continued on descent, okay on ear clearing, okay on feeling, okay, okay and okay. The dive plan called for drifting for twenty-five minutes at 110 feet along the back wall of a crater, an advanced dive, but an easy one with proper care — a certain favorite for drastic views: no bottom, big creatures and a current to move divers through the water with ease. Then the boat would pick them up at the end of the wall.
Except that on one particular day the tourists were Japanese, an oddity in those days, when most Japanese tourists traveled in tight-knit groups of twenty or thirty that never separated. If they got in the water at all, each would put a hand on the boat, hold onto their mask with the other hand, look down briefly and then come up chattering like a chorus of tape recorders in reverse.
But this group was young, six fit divers doing fine to seventy feet, where one saw something amazing, something deep. Ravid swam around to ask the guy if he was okay, and the guy beamed, peeling off his mask and ditching his regulator to better spread his Cheshire grin. Then he took off downward, full speed in pursuit of perfection. Maybe he saw the stark difference between ultimate beauty and what he’d return to in Tokyo. Ravid hadn’t known nitrogen narcosis to enhance physical prowess, but the guy wasn’t fazed for a hundred feet, till Ravid caught his ankle and jerked him to a stop, then manhandled him up 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 Ravid checked his depth gauge: 180 and sinking. Then he saw the worst of it: five more obedient Japanese tourists had followed to 180 feet and awaited further guidance from management.
Ravid 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, though they could have, and he’d done the right thing. He couldn’t tell the story locally any more, because everyone had heard it too many times, but the tourists still loved it, especially in the interim, killing time on the boat between the deep dive and the shallow dive, when a body needs to hang out for an hour or so to ditch some of the excess nitrogen. Ravid would set it up with a final warning on nitrogen narcosis, so that someone would ask if he, Ravid, ever got it, and he would reply, “I got a slight case once. I saw a mermaid, but she was a little bit chunky.” Not the stuff for primetime, but a boatload of tourists on reprieve from the dull commute would love to laugh their asses off. Soon came the fond farewells, the gratitude and tips.
Not that a man in his prime is proud of working for tips, though 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 gratitude bordering on love. These tips were tribute for safeguarding against so many things taught in certification training but not discussed on board, because risk is far-ranging and could never be eliminated. Diving offers fun and fulfillment, and 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, but that’s another story.
Suffice it to say that the whole experience was required every day, including all components 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 on the Danish pastries to the towel-dried bench seats. Package components gained nuance and sophistication from there, to where the dive team donned wetsuits and booties, rigged regulators to tanks and slid into buoyancy compensators like Degas’s ballerinas prepping for another peak performance. Reading wrist computers, fastening hog clips and quick releases, zipping zippers, checking knives, cameras and housings and applying the No-Fog Goop — oh, yeah, and turning valves to open the air supply, as if to remind the attentive audience that this will be fun if you don’t get complacent.
Then came the descent in warm, clear water to the grottos, ledges, walls and currents of the magical world.
Back on board, enriched for life, guests were further entertained on the interval between dives or the lovely cruise back to the dock. The package was made fatter, sweeter and more rewarding to all parties with a bit of narrative at each juncture, each story designed to fit the allotted time. Crusty called the story component critical and necessary, and most valuable when it was a twenty-four-karat line of bullshit.
Stories didn’t need to be wild or humorous; Crusty just liked those stories best, maybe because they best fit his worldview. When all the guests were male and over twenty, the crew would dummy up in preparation for Crusty’s favorite entrée. He’d clear his throat and lob a goober to leeward, no dangles and no wipe necessary. He’d grumble like an elder down from the mountain to these surly young’uns, “You know... I reached a point in life where a perfect day for me is four hours of work, nice people, nice charter like this. Then I head out for a round of golf. Then I go home for a blowjob.”
A few eyebrows rose on that note, with isolated laughs of agreement, approval or envy, till one of the crew asked, “How’s that plan 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.
Crew stories were neither idle nor random but tried and true; a story could be tested, once. Many tales were seldom told before a long warm-up, like, say, with the rare tourists profiling as true reef addicts. Reef-addicted tourists dove two tanks daily for three days in a row, or seven, demonstrating commitment that would warrant service and generate tips.
Like the story Ravid told 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, made them wince and worry rather than relax. You want your passengers happy, Crusty counseled, not anxious, not thinking about their lives, jobs, debts and all that crap they came this far to get away from. You tell them jokes, not how a goofy crowd nearly died.
Ravid 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 on their own dives.
And he itched to tell a story that was practically garden fresh. It happened commonly on routine runs with apparently reasonable groups heading out to the channel off Lahaina Roads and the sunken submarine — sunk for good — with its deck at 110 feet. That was advanced, a deep dive in anyone’s book and nearly twice the sport-diving safe limit of sixty feet, but what could you do, hang out at sixty feet in the water column? No, you couldn’t. So you told them it was advanced, like nearly any wreck dive, with more rigorous safety requirements. You asked them if they wanted to take it on, and of course they did, because any dive is cake if you don’t choke, and they’d heard about it, how unbelievably great it was, which it really wasn’t, given the return on the effort, but every diver in the world suffers a bit of the macho burden. Anyway, it was a level bottom, so the deck was also level, so nobody could dip ten or twenty feet below the dive plan, unless they went off the deck, which they should be smart enough to avoid, though six tourists of variable intuition and skill could be a handful. Well, if nobody tried to kill himself — the women are generally more composed by the time they make the grade to that depth — you could pull twenty-five minutes right off the dive table, as long as nobody sucked a tank down in fifteen, which happens from time to time, when macho gets outpaced by sheer, raw fear. Otherwise, it was twenty-five minutes to money in the bank. Then you hung out at fifteen feet for five minutes on the way up, call it a safety stop, and you were done for an hour and a half, till the second dive, which was shallow and easy.
That was if you caught the submarine at slack tide with no current, about an hour-long window twice a day. Otherwise, it was a three-knot tide, which doesn’t sound fast till you factor in that Olympic gold runs are around 1.9 knots. Still, it wasn’t insurmountable, and nine submarine days out of ten got you a sensible, attentive group treading easily in a bunch near the anchor rode, holding hands while grasping the rode in turn and descending to sixty feet for a check and okay. The scene had comic potential most days, which is a good thing, to a point, cutting the anxiety with a little laugh at six scuba tourists strung out like pennants in the current halfway between the bottom and the surface — till one let go, and the dive leader chased him down easy enough but then blew half a tank getting him back to the anchor rode. Or maybe the chase took an extra minute, putting the leader and wayward tourist out of sight, compelling the others to let go and follow, flying through the water column over a bottom dipping to 180. Even with visibility at a hundred feet, you’re down to a wing and a prayer, hoping nobody gets any stupider than he absolutely must.
What else could a dive leader do but chase down the idiot who let go? Nothing is the correct answer, though the chronic mishap boiled down to the dive leader’s fault for not banging the procedural mallet hard enough on the tourons’ heads. When the submarine dive went wrong too many times, it was left to Crusty to utilize the special rig and technique he liked to claim credit for inventing: using a quick-release pin that freed the anchor rode from the Samson post on the dive boat deck and then securing the rode to a spare mooring buoy, then throwing the buoy overboard, thus freeing the boat quick enough to chase the bubbles — slow enough to see them yet fast enough to find them. Crusty commonly claimed credit for vision, foresight and water wisdom in the same sentence he might damn you and your heirs to hell for putting his extraordinary skill to task. Crusty got his name for good reason, because he liked to save the day, every day, and then spend the rest of the day saying what a miserable worthless piece of bilge scum you were for letting things get so out of hand. Crusty’s first job on arrival at the submarine was to give Ravid the helm, with a reminder not to fuck everything up. Then he went over the side and down to the sub deck to make sure the anchor was in fact on the deck, so the descending divers wouldn’t descend any deeper than the deck, wouldn’t get bent and sue. He needed to prime the loop on the shank to another ingenious quick-release line, all requiring a mere handful of seconds. That’s where Ravid first learned about the bounce, and that you don’t even need decompression tables if it’s only a bounce. Some days the release was jammed, but Crusty could fix that, too, in less than two minutes, and then he’d come up with his slowest bubbles, or with his medium bubbles, anyway. He couldn’t very well hang out: “I can’t be expected to babysit an anchor and get these people in the water at the same time, can I?”
Ravid learned a great deal from Crusty but frankly felt relieved to leave the Westside for a better boat off the Southside. Sure, Crusty’s constant chiding was mostly justified and insightful, but the feelings of ineptitude and error Crusty constantly engendered got to be as destructive as they were helpful. Ravid wished the Westside crew all the best and felt ahead of the game, no longer chasing down wayward tourist divers with the spare anchor buried under a load of spare line. Engine failure could put a boat aground, which could put a boat on the bottom. It didn’t happen during Ravid’s time, maybe by sheer macho willpower, or maybe it was sheer dumb luck. Or maybe they’re the same thing.
At any rate, Ravid and Crusty parted with mutual good cheer. “Take care, brother,” Ravid warmly offered, to which Crusty grasped his upright hand in the local style, drew him near for a half hug and offered his own gift of spirit:
“Aloha, waterman.”
It was the ultimate compliment. It indicated matriculation to the unofficial, mostly unspoken rank of waterman bestowed by general consensus or, on rare occasions, by the saltiest veterans. A waterman had achieved intuition, skill and experience in seawater at all depths, in all weather, all conditions and all circumstances, buoyant or lacking therein. The low mumble of it filled Ravid’s heart and made things right, both back and forward, securing their time together as good time, as time for making a living with nobody dying, and for securing their friendship too. Still, Ravid wondered when the day would come for Crusty to quick-release himself from sanity and a last view of the tropical blue sky.
Then came the very worst of the stories, those told strictly in confidence among local divers, stories that spread like brushfire but never beyond the working crews — stories that would never go away, even if the principals went away, stories indelible as tattoos with horrific images.
Like the instructor who wasn’t freely discussed but whose impression on the fleet was uniformly negative. A capable diver and journeyman photographer known for macro work showing ciliary structure and attitude, he captured a rare scene, plankton that looked choreographed by Busby Berkeley — all legs and bodices, top hats and tails in tiers of chorus lines in a grand finale fit for Neptune’s ball. Known for incessant bragging on his superior skills, vast experience and specific expertise in bottom knowledge, dive table discrepancies, correct safety stops and photography, including composition, exposure, strobe angle, and on and on, he made people wonder why he wouldn’t shut up. His skills were apparent, most often modest and widely known. So if everybody knew of them, why did he insist on a browbeating? He became tolerated, more or less, despite knowing every detail and consequence of every behavior with judicial superiority, calling blame on any vessel or person violating his code of diving conduct. If a boat offered carbonated beverages in the interval between dives, he yelled across the water that CO2 in the system will show up just peachy in the autopsy when some poor, innocent tourist gets bent and embolized because of such a dumb fucking error. Naturally, the fleet avoided him, with nobody even slightly motivated to point out that CO2 is immediately absorbed and then offed — or that he could stick a Coke up his ass, diet or classic.
So his comeuppance seemed inevitable in the natural course of events. With notable superiority in exploration, fearlessness and sea sense, this arrogant fellow discovered a cave opening on an eighty-foot bottom and went in to explore and discover further. Nobody doubted the drive or skill at hand, to a point. Sure enough, the cave opening proved big enough for access at a forty-five degree angle for about another hundred feet, to a narrower but still manageable bend. At that point, the depth gauge showed 130 feet from the surface. From there, the opening widened for much more comfort and came up at another forty-five degrees to a chamber big enough for six divers to surface and tread without banging into each other or the lava walls — yes, surface.
By a quirk, the roof of the chamber was watertight, or else the chamber was fed by bubbles of some kind at a greater rate than the rate of leakage. The net result was that the divers were back up to ninety feet from the real surface but were actually much farther away. They could remove their masks and regulators to grin and say hello to each other. They could crack a joke or tell a story. They couldn’t exactly breathe the gas in the room, a moderately noxious mix of CO2 and something astringent that caused the lungs to constrict and rebel.
Never mind. Anyone could short gasp a breath or two and get a story or a punch line out, all the while notching a unique groove on the old adventure belt, having a scuba klatch in a private room at ninety feet — make that 170 feet, all told, to the real world. Machismo motivation never led to a destination so rich in overview and retelling; what happened when we were in the Room.
The Room soon became the be-all, end-all destination for tourists on the inside track to the very realest of extreme thrills. A few took cameras. Photos from the room were more sought after than spondylidae — thorny oyster shells in garish pastels with intricate spines and flutes in a flat finish, found in former times at thirty feet but now unfound till 180 feet, because all the shallower thorny oysters got plucked by humanity to prove something or other, then set on shelves to catch dust. The shells became an incurable proof of machismo for the guys who got bent fetching their thorny oysters too deep. Some of those divers survived with difficult images and tales, till thorny oysters were associated with instability, idiocy and danger. What a relief.
A photo starring Me(!) in the Room, on the other hand, seemed more worthwhile, courageous, pertinent, and tangible 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 the safety hazard imposed by the ocular incursion disparity or the peripheral dangle or the snag factor or some such. Only the misguided dive instructor was allowed to take a camera, because, after all. Each diver was photographed in the room and could buy an 8 × 10 afterward for thirty bucks, with a full menu of additional prints at varying prices, after all. The photos were copyrighted, so scanning or otherwise generating non-authorized copies was strictly forbidden, as if by law. The fleet’s general smirk could not compensate for collective embarrassment.
For a while, another dive instructor felt the spirit of commerce on this rich new vein, especially considering his unique skills as a diver and photographer. I can do this, Ravid thought, counting the dollars that would fill his pocket. Nobody has exclusive rights to a dive site, and temptation cast a shadow. Consensus among the fleet and crews was that somebody would soon die — maybe somebody working his ass off right now, somebody seeking adventure instead of the daily grind, somebody innocent yet weakened by the greed and arrogance of somebody else. Ravid was urged to avoid the temptation.
Scoffing at dire predictions and remaining insensitive to his errors in judgment, 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 secret path to the Room. Only he could get you in and out without giving your insurance carrier an ulcer, and he wasn’t sharing. That’s what the ad said. The coconut wireless had it that he threatened to sue for infringement or something or other 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 divers to use a gentle sideways kick or a short, easy flutter with the fins way off the bottom. A cave often has tributary caves feeding at blind angles on the way in, 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 elaborately with tributary caverns, feeding the primary drive. He seemed compensatory, driven to make up for something or other, hungry for the leading edge. Suffice it to say he made the first turn easily enough, though he had only five hundred pounds of air remaining at 130 feet. But he’d come this far, and then came that odd little voice that urges the inexperienced to go for it, requiring him to surface to 90, then descend again to 130 before surfacing again with a safety stop on the way. He made the Room and actually lingered there to have his picture taken to better imprint the experience on his identity. Then he hurried out. Hurry stirs silt in a cave. He didn’t come out — well, 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 other 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 from diving a few months later, cast permanently into the fatal column, dangerous by any assessment, and worse, imprinted with murder, second degree.
Litigation on that one lasted far 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 60 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, while writhing on the surface. Soon reduced to a whimper, he was flown by medivac 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.
Well, maybe best not tell that story either, or about the geeks and harebrains who showed up daily to go flopping along the back wall like clown plankton, pinwheeling, flapping their arms, riding the bicycle, bumping into each other, kicking an unwary dive leader in the head. Realization isn’t always nice. So Ravid Rockulz shook it off but sensed another persistent insight: This was getting old.
Well, some days were better than others, and a few good days passed before an early afternoon nineteen years in, when Ravid took the hand-off of empty tanks from the boat on its trailer to the parking lot where he stood, behind the dive shop, near the compressor. First came the 40-gallon tanks for the women and children, then the 80s, then, what the hell...160s? But it wasn’t 160s; it was only more 80s, along with much heavier bones, muscles, joints, tendons and the essential attitude of one Ravid Rockulz. Stooping under the burden of sheer, dead weight, he felt a milestone: On that day, in that arduous task, he’d crossed the line from youth to middle age. A moment earlier it was another working day nearly done, heading for a brief rest and a lazy afternoon, his to enjoy. Then would come evening recreation, maybe after a swim or some errands. Maybe he’d call a woman, though that would be rare with so few women met other than tourist women. The tourist women were available but repetitious, and most often demanding on the glib, social side for the brief return on the other side.
But time slurred, on realization, to slow motion to better scrutinize the fatigue — physical and mental and, let’s face it, spiritual and emotional. Repetition and strain prevailed at last, as they will, but still. The afternoon was given to rest and recovery, which shouldn’t seem so bad to a hardworking man, but life’s changing phase had announced itself with grim reality. A man of youth and vigor was slowing down. A nice nap in a heavily shaded room with an oscillating fan felt like a seductive prospect. He felt old when a major bowel movement led to the jubilation formerly reserved for sexual triumph.
On the bright side, with realization a sentient being can assess life and change direction as necessary, which can be a blessing.
With that optimistic rationale, Ravid Rockulz drifted into his first daytime nap in recent memory. He had been in his early thirties only a short while ago. Okay, maybe mid-thirties. He woke two hours later in his late thirties, pushing forty, laughing briefly at Crusty’s chronic morning complaint that he felt shot at and missed, and shit at and hit. Ravid downed three aspirin with a caffeinated cola to ease the funk. Then he decided on a solitary dinner at a quiet café, where he would ponder his future with specifics. He would make a list to better see the options and assess the pros and cons, goals and fears, so he could have a chart by which to navigate.
Beginning with a beer and an excellent ahi poke (PO-kee), raw tuna diced into half-inch cubes and seasoned with sesame oil, black sesame seeds, cayenne and ogo (seaweed), he unfolded his sheets of paper and stared at the blank surface. It did not shimmer or promise or even hint but awaited the plunge, 8½ × 11 of open ocean. Who would dive here? I mean, right out in the middle?
He couldn’t have said how long he sat and stared, waiting for the syllables, words, phrases and concepts drifting by like flotsam on a steady swell into his brain, down his arm, through his fingers and pen to swirl onto the paper and tell him where to go, what to do, what to say to whom and when.
In a few minutes he wrote:
Being a dive instructor is not enough.
Beneath that, in a few minutes more, he wrote:
Hawaii. Tahiti (?) Carib (?) Indonesia (?)
Photography.
He waited a few minutes more and then finished his poke. He waited another few minutes after that, doubting that clear answers to tough questions would drift in from the cosmos no matter how long he waited, and even if they did, by then the message might be, Okay, go ahead and decompose.
In fact the right directive could drift by any time, but waiting wouldn’t help, so he ordered another beer and one more round of poke. Just so, the future arrived unannounced, casually strolling up and out of anonymity into the heart of a dumbstruck waterman, with chemistry and coincidence as random as that encountered by the first single cell, who was likely male. The future wore women’s clothing — and what a woman. No different than most on biological, mental and emotional levels, yet this woman seemed unfathomable, incomprehensible and lush. Such is man’s weakness for the tricks of nature.
Ravid did not meet women by going out, because he didn’t hit the hot spots — too loud, too weird, so tediously posed with half-drunk youth claiming identity by virtue of sitting in an airplane for six hours, then coming down the road for a few beers. All that and the sunburn from earlier in the day rounded out their experience. Not only had they nothing to offer Ravid Rockulz, but they were also worthless in the world he valued. No, it was not nice to be cynical and superior, but reality demanded certain standards.
He’d heard only last week that a honky-tonk bar in Kihei was “crawling with leg.” That language alone made the place seem creepy, but it got worse: Light bulbs hung from the cross ties inside blowfish — inflated, dried blowfish, the same creatures swimming just yonder who might have recognized a certain waterman in the recent past and approached in greeting. Well, maybe not the same, because nobody could catch blowfish near shore on Maui and sell them as light fixtures to a lowbrow, low-grade honky-tonk without rousing the waterpeople to a shark frenzy impersonation. Never mind. The grimy pub bought the dead fish from a reseller in Indonesia; the drift was the same. The place was vile, willfully ignorant and hateful of reefs and the neighborhood. The people there were blind to the lights and most else but their poses, appetites, hormones, impressions and on and on ad nauseam. Get the picture? Some aspects of the early years are easy to leave behind.
In fact, Ravid went out rarely; so few restaurants could serve anything near as good as what he got at home at a fraction of the cost. And only a fool would go deep, looking for leg, when all the leg he wanted was there for easy catching on his own reef. Some nights, however, called for a change of scenery, like tonight. So there he sat, waiting on the future, when three women walked in looking like the mysteries of the Universe resolved...
Ooh...if I could gnaw on that bone from eight to eleven...
But it wasn’t like that. It was more resigned, more reserved and removed. It was something else, another place that felt like a destination, no further seeking required. Calling two of these women very good looking, perhaps beautiful and certainly doable. Either would pass muster in any crew. The third woman, however, was beyond beauty, a cameo classic in proportion and essence, nubile in body and spirit, a picture of youth for tired eyes. Would she think him too old? She had to be tabu, or kapu in Hawaiian, a word commonly used to warn tourists of private property. But this parcel seemed open and inviting, and who could fence that off?
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 ancestry on the other. High cheekbones offset her Polynesian lips and slightly slanting eyes. Glistening teeth shone pearly white with no cane holes, yellowing or overbite, and her skin alone — golden brown as heart koa — would have made her perfect. But the features came second. First came grace, her movement a subtle lead from the hips, the eyes and fingertips. Fluent and warm as lava, compelling as hula, she held the power of women over men, yet with regal mercy, she dismissed it. In Hawaiian terms, she combined humanity and nature, with legs, hips, breasts, face, eyes, slippers and a pareo in tropical pastels and patterns on her curvy self. Her embodiment of the elements seemed a consensus of the components. Apparently at ease with ogles, she smiled on the trim, fit fellow alone with his little beer, his little dish of poke, his little chopsticks and his pen writing little words on his little list, probably mapping out a good life for himself.
Ravid Rockulz understood current, surge and undertow by instinct and how these ocean forces related to the power of women; no man can dominate, no matter how strong or skilled he may be. He can only stay calm, ride it out and survive, if he’s lucky and smart. Great loss may come otherwise, once he pits his meager power against a force of nature. He knew as well the profound scope of peripheral vision, a view developed by any waterperson in the company of large predators. Hard and hungry stares do not go unseen, no matter how oblique the assessment. Women learn it too, early on. Ravid knew the game, often picking his beauty du jour and ignoring her. With practiced indifference, he could often entertain her after sundown. A beauty not gazed upon, if it’s human, wants to know why. So he reached for indifference, looking away even as his eyes strained in their sockets.
The trio headed for a table close by. Passing Ravid on the way, the first two women tittered and whispered, freely feeling the voltage in the air. Passing close enough to touch, her eyes on him since first sighting, she still smiled. Neither furtive nor flirtatious but like a long-lost friend, a friend in need, not a family friend and certainly not a sister, she approached like a soul in the bond, in trust and common values shared. She said, “Aloha,” which said it all, after a fashion, instantly recognizing what would survive them, what would transcend whatever came between them, whether a brief greeting or love as durable as time.
In keeping with tradition, Ravid returned the greeting: “Aloha.” He matched her smile, meeting her eyes, attempting indifference but failing.
As if pleased by his good graces and cultural presence, she stopped to offer both hands in a greeting at once familiar yet formal, cordial yet symbolic. Grasping hands was spontaneous, warm and natural, an honest recognition of the life force arcing between them. They conceded, each seeing, feeling and knowing it, though rubbing noses seemed premature. She dispensed with social protocol — meaning petty barriers — and let the friendship begin. What a woman.
He stood, taking her hands as offered in a reunion of sorts, like intimates meeting after a lifetime apart, after passing on to the waters of forgetfulness and then returning to a reef remembered. “I’m Minna,” she offered.
Dumb as a fence post on which a nightingale just landed, he said, “I know.” But he couldn’t have known. Could he?
She laughed. “What’s your name?”
Ravid. “Ravid. I’m Ravid.”
“Ravid? Is that French?”
No, it is not French. It’s Israeli. “No. Everybody thinks 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 whatnot. I know I can.” He squinted, as if to see how she knew she could. “I mean I’ve been around the water my whole life. I can, you know, free dive and whatnot.”
Free dive and whatnot? She sounded like a valley girl gone Native, which is better than sounding 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 cut himself off before any more stupidity could be spewed. Not to worry. She didn’t think him stupid, just dumbstruck, which was normal, given her intense beauty and appeal.
“Somayan,” she murmured, squeezing his hands as if infusing him with her magic. “I work in a shop. For tourists. I got this pareo there.” She freed her hands for 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 then so far, so fast held no alternative than to dispense with the run and reel. He wanted to take up the slack, tighten the drag and put her in the boat. He shuddered at the thought of gaffing.
She smiled more sweetly, assessing him for safety or savoring the moment before murmuring again, “Edith’s Beach Treasures. In The Shops.” He knew the place. “I’m working tomorrow. Eight to five. Come see me.”
“Okay.”
“That’s not what I want to do for my life and whatnot. I’m in school. I’m going to be a nurse. I work at the hospital too, as a volunteer. But only twenty hours, because of my paying job and whatnot.” Ravid stared at thin air, wondering if an angel could be more angelic. Only half a normal workweek could she give selflessly, on top of a regular job and school. Perhaps compulsive, she was still admirable and a cut above the standard waitress or shop clerk or tourist woman. She interrupted, amused. “Good-bye, Ravid.”
“Good-bye, Minna.”
“A hui hou.”
“A hui hou.” Till we talk again.
She turned away and then 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.”
“Yes, I am.”
She drifted. “You know what I mean. I’m born and raised.”
“I love that.”
She beamed on cue. “See you.”
He sat down thirsty for another three beers but was too dazed and confused to remember how to get one with the pressure of the three women mere meters away, one of whom had altered Life as He Knew It with terrible and beautiful voltage, much as lightning can alter a sapling, or the same voltage properly harnessed can light up an entire city.
Feeling more like the scorched sapling, he decided to remove the embers to somewhere else, to sizzle and twitch in private rather than risk everything with too much, too soon. Besides, he could get a twelve-pack on the way home for twice the price of a single beer here, which was like getting two for one and then ten for free, or some such amazing return that swamped his bilges in his quest for snug harbor on suddenly turbulent seas.
So he left and went home, his mind sloshing this way and that. He lay himself down after a long, tiring day and a brief, exhausting evening. Falling quickly as usual, unburdened in the midst of his prime, he slept like a rock, or a very tired Rockulz, till five, waking to a cat’s tongue on his nose a half hour earlier than usual. He lay there, thinking of the future, Minna Somayan, diving, photography and Minna Somayan till Skinny insisted that early eats were in order.
She was everything he fantasized about in a woman and then some, transcending hormonal attraction with spiritual aesthetic — so pure was his analysis, yet he found himself in bed again with Skinny and Minna hardly thirty hours from their first meeting. “We could wait,” she said rhetorically, naked and halfway under. He didn’t even shrug. Her attributes held from a distance closing to intimate proximity. He could not have her any more than a person could own land. Stewardship seemed the concept of the hour; they would care for each other, maintain and nurture, each according to needs.
Together they craved beer, wine and liquor, as if to transcend sensory logic or short-circuit the wiring network — or take the edge off the intensity of meeting each other after so long apart. Whatever the motive, the alcohol did not diminish the drive but calmed them down to workable levels so they could proceed directly to contact where they seemed to have left off in the sweet by-and-by, reconnecting desire to fulfillment and thereby satisfying the longstanding needs in their love and lives. Some buds along the way covered everything in mist — or maybe that was fog — never mind; immersed in underwater beauty or dream time, they went deep beneath the sheets. They scourged the depths, resurfaced briefly and delved again, going macro on the detail and delightful recollection again available on this side of the life/death continuum. With potent dope and sexual abandon they had their fill of the hot buffet — of total, carnal possession — with such vigor that Skinny jumped off the bed much as a person moves out of traffic. This was narcosis, in which the seasoned diver and novice lover will ditch his mask and regulator, because he sees more clearly without these encumbrances and needs only the air he can breathe between the water, or from his loved one.
Then came the irrational hunger for more, for depths where no human could survive — for sexual appetite that reduced every experience prior to this one as nothing, as a series of strolls down empty streets. But then love never did make sense.
At one time a two-pack-per-day man, because nicotine could take the edge off so much life and vigor and seething energy, Ravid had quit smoking years ago, because smoking can kill you and will make you stink in the meantime. But when she lit up and offered him one, he took it, inhaling the small death of a man willing to pay the price for this taste of perfection, in which every qualm is incidental to the timeless moments of aftermath. She told him she knew it from the moment she saw him.
He figured most women had that power, to know whatever they want from whomever they want, but he only agreed, “Yes.” He told her he saw her too as somebody different, but the greatest difference was her presence, so warm and, well, commanding, that he had only to let go and let the whirlpool claim him.
She smiled sanguinely and said, “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, because it’s inconvenient. You see all these Hawaiians now claiming cultural rights they never had in the first place, because the things they claim, like fishing grounds and netting privileges and whatnot were kapu to them. They would have been killed for those things in the day. But we don’t talk about it, because we lost so much and whatever anybody gets back is a good thing.”
They smoked.
Ravid got up for a beer for him, more wine for her. She called, “Do you think I’m stupid?”
Only when you say whatnot —
“Why would you ask such a thing? Why would I think you are stupid?”
“Because we were more than ali‘i. We were regal. That’s why I can say that about my presence — for generations members of my family were held in awe. Nobody could look upon us. People bowed their heads when my family was near, had to, or they died. But we don’t talk about that time either, because it’s more inconvenient. Some people here 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, and in some families more. 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 of the people I know sound stupid sometimes. So maybe I’m only normal. Besides, I have so many other bloodlines in my family. 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 so openly and her eyes so freely confirming, till he blinked and changed the subject. “The missionaries were compelling. They were able to conquer many places besides Hawaii, places where the monarchs didn’t interbreed.”
“Maybe. It doesn’t matter now. I just don’t want to sound stupid.” She rolled over, turning her lovely self to him. “Promise me you’ll tell me if I ever sound stupid.”
“Don’t say whatnot.”
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 before laughing and showing him the true meaning of promiscuity in the tropics and whatnot. Immersed in her simple yet thorough solution to the mysteries of the Universe, he wondered how such a being could ever think herself retarded.