Most creatures gravitate toward better prospects. The hermit crab is a messy eater — good for the anemones riding on his shell, who snag debris drifting free of the hermit’s gob. Anemones offer camouflage and may also attract small, edible fish. The hermit/anemone friendship is based on mutual benefit.
Likewise the moray and jack often cruise in a joint venture, with one hunter staking out a burrow entrance while the other guards the exit. The prey will flee past the one or the other, with chance balancing the catch.
Surgeonfish pluck algae from turtles’ backs for an easy snack, while the turtles get cleaned — and satisfied as well, soothed by the gentle touch.
Cleaner shrimp cavort blithely in a moray’s toothy maw for easy tidbits, while the moray opens wide for dental cleaning in a demonstration of service and trust.
So the friendship between Ravid and Moeava is symbiotic, one providing the means, while the other provides operational management of a dive boat. Both are grown men sensitive to the difference between survival and success, including the appearance of know-how and chain of command. With tolerance and flexibility they both give orders and take them, forming a bond both tactful and humorous, so they both look good.
The smooth course begins away from the dock, however. The men agree that a trial dive on the following morning will be best, to allow each a measure of the other. The hotel could find no paying passengers, nor could the neighboring hotels. Not to worry; the operation is brand new, still getting the word out, under new management. The free day is a relief for Ravid. His new employer is likeable enough, but character can change at depth, just as it can with any risky influence, like cocaine or cash. Of course that was long ago, when everybody was somebody else, and youthful indiscretion was the rule rather than exception. Moeava wouldn’t know about that. Would he? Not likely, but here we are with who we be — with the risks and rigors at depth best vetted before a commitment of casual but ultimate trust. Because you have to wonder what he does know.
So day one of the new job follows day two of the new life — or is that one and three? Anyway, the morning schedule is further determined by circumstance, with Hereata at the dock first thing, skillfully wrapped in a pareo to accentuate her best and soften the other. No bathing beauty in the same league as, say, Cosima, she establishes her equally lusty presence in a niche suitable to any woman in whom many spices have fermented, upon whom the first look dispels any question of inhibition.
Well, it’s the high heels and body oil. Along with the shape and fluid motion, the suggestive eyes and full lips. Then come the details, the usual heightened stuff that gets pointier, fuller, rounder, the things so vividly prurient taken singularly, yet which radiate and inform taken as a whole. She delivers the news of six passengers — for tomorrow, none today.
So the boys, as it were, are off. Ravid senses Moeava’s minimal experience. The big fellow may be a certified diver. So what? So are a million nimrods flashing C cards to show their stuff, just before kicking a dive buddy in the head, blowing off a tank in twenty minutes, reacting fearfully, grabbing an octopus or narcing and heading deep on a death descent.
That’s okay; Moeava hasn’t done those things and maybe won’t. He’s likely trainable, if he’s not a reactive whacko, a nutcase better left to his own devices than in a position to kill the instructor along with himself. So they cruise out to a pass with Moeava at the helm, though nearing the dive site neither the anchorage nor the tide are easy to read. Ravid follows the chart plotter to fifty feet with no obstructions, keeping it simple and not too deep.
He picks the inside of a sandy hook in the lee of the current with some rocky cover on a mostly sandy bottom. They set the hook, head overboard and check it out to be sure. The anchor is wedged firmly in the sand, so they trade the okay sign and meander into the current. The uneventful dive presents no rigors or demands, except for the current picking up, as are the apex predators, mostly groupers, jacks and black tip reef sharks with a few lemon sharks minding their own business. Far less predictable are the skittish Galapagos sharks in the mix, but they hang off with a few more sharks not readily identifiable, fading in and out of visibility.
The current requires reckoning when it gains to a half knot, so they work up another hundred yards then drift back toward calmer water inside the hook, where they’ll be able to relax and explore without concern. Halfway back, an internal alarm sounds when Ravid casually clears his mask, and into the water spews a bloody cloud. Well, it could be one of those days with some residual congestion from bad diet or excess liquor, but then comes the splitting headache.
With sudden symptoms he rises as slow as he dares, exhaling more than inhaling, playing the volume exchange to maximum benefit, balancing between embolism and toxicity. He skips the safety stop because they hardly passed sixty feet, and time is critical on some hazards, and confirmation comes up top on a nasty hock and matching goober, with blood and snot trailers out the mouth and nose. Then come the dizzies, or is that vertigo? He takes a few strokes toward the boat before rolling onto his back, marginally conscious, too weak to swim.
So it’s up to Moeava, who can’t move too well at the surface, he’s so big, nor can he cross-chest carry another diver while in gear any better. He could ditch the gear but fears the material loss. So he heads for the boat, earnestly though awkwardly, finally clambering aboard, ditching his tank and BC, cranking the engine, getting the anchor aboard before the drift becomes perilous and motoring to where Ravid can be snagged with the boat hook and helped aboard with two big paws under his arms, still conscious but threatening convulsion and puking blood.
Yanking a rag from under the console, Moeava blows bloody snuk out his nose — carbon monoxide. Ravid trembles and moans on the ride back; he’s heard of dumb mistakes but always wondered who could be so stupid.
Test failed. Ravid Rockulz cannot work with anyone so uninformed, unintuitive and uncaring to the point of mortal risk. The compressor isn’t so old and appears to chug along in its steady effort to pump three thousand pounds of air pressure into each tank. Yet the compressor testifies to Moeava’s guilt. Exhaust pipe extensions are welded on to get the pipe twenty feet from the fresh-air intake, as required to avoid packing engine exhaust into the tanks. So far so good, till Moeava or somebody wrapped each weld in epoxy tape and glopped on the resin till it slumped like candle wax, much thicker on the bottom than on the top. It could have been a few years ago.
Since then the tape and epoxy have dried out, crazed, cracked and decomposed from ultraviolet rays, sending pinhole jets of compressor exhaust into the air five, ten and fifteen feet prior to the twenty-foot end, allowing exhaust — and carbon monoxide — into the tanks, compressed for breathing at depth.
Ravid won’t spell out the stupidity, but Moeava gets the message. In other times, closer to home, a seasoned waterman might have lashed out: You worthless piece o’ dogfuck. Why don’t you eat shit and die? A window webbing would further ventilate frustrations over a near death experience. Who can help but take such a thing personally? As it is, far from home and needing a job — in a word, insecure — a seasoned waterman can only glare, because sometimes a man must overlook the small stuff.
Moeava shrugs. “Hey. Shit happens. You know that. Don’t you? From what I hear, you’re an expert.”
So the two men swallow their pride and slog through the basics of clean air compression, and the transfer of that air into tanks for breathing underwater without carbon monoxide tainting caused by the exhaust pipe spewing poison too near the intake. This detail of miniscule proportion and monumental consequence is as obvious and unforgiving as getting out of the road to avoid getting hit. Carbon monoxide is tasteless and worse: it can kill.
So the welds are cut and cleaned with the grinder and re-welded and covered with fiberglass roving, matt and again roving, with epoxy in three light coats between layers, and then covered with duct tape against the sunlight. The process is accompanied by many groans, so the lesson will sink in on the unlovely afternoon beginning their life together.
Moeava proves his salt by staying mum, copping to the mistake and keeping the lid on further blunders. His initial premise that shit happens is in fact true of life aboard, though it can only be an effective defense if used sparingly. Shit doesn’t have to happen. The fundamentals must be correct, and Moeava takes care that they are. He can prep and start the boat, steer the boat in both forward and reverse in all conditions, dock the boat, anchor the boat, fuel, service and clean the boat.
He does not own the boat — not to worry; he pays a debt on the boat to a man willing to entrust the boat on the basis of longstanding friendship with Moeava’s nana, Hereata, who stepped up a few months ago to facilitate her grandson’s success in something — anything would do — even as she chided him for his lack of courage, his lack of experience, his chronic weakness for parsley.
Ravid finds himself distracted by caution; he can’t very well trust the younger man’s work without checking it over: checking the engine oil, hull plugs, degree of tilt on the outdrive leg, lines, knots, thimbles, shackles, seizing, anchor, spare anchor — all the mundane tasks and functions a captain or dive leader should expect done correctly by capable crew.
Yet he can’t help but sympathize with Moeava’s struggle. He replays his first meeting with Hereata to see the method in her prowess, by which she recruited a real waterman to the cause of Moeava’s career advancement. Well, a fellow shouldn’t complain about landing the job he sorely needed to make ends meet. Still, it goes to show something or other. But what more would he have gained by knowing he was in the catbird seat all along? He’s captain after all, and the money will improve once they see what the little operation can generate. For all anyone knows, multiplying the two-tank fare times six, times three hundred and sixty-five, may be great. Well, multiplying by six times two hundred fifty days per year at any rate, with a full complement on the day after the monoxide debacle. The test was failed, but the captain, crew and dive leader have a living to make here and are open for business.
As the fates would have it, distraction continues with the meatball man of a few nights prior, who recognizes Ravid from fifty yards out. Either the guy is approaching with two-fisted intent, or he’s stuck with a chronic sourpuss — and bowed legs and a bad attitude. The full-figured Hereata walks alongside the first day’s divers, displayed to maximum advantage for the good of mankind, with the high heels, the push-em-up, the lift and spread and lusty potential for any man to imagine.
Her control of the evident situation demands that we all just get along. Bound for glory and maximum fun, her business smile brightens her stern command. “You will have a wonderful dive experience.”
Moeava sees that the big Russkie or Croat or former KGB agent is a problem. Stepping into the gap between adversaries, he grabs the muscular fellow’s dive bag and says, “Get on. We go already.”
Ravid stays apart, focusing on technical stuff, and on service and good cheer to the other passengers, most of whom are French. He picks a fellow whose English is adequate to translate for the rest on the where, depth, bottom time, buddies, hand signs, what might be seen or expected and the rest.
Naturally, this feels very different from his former billet, where he’d been on board for eight years and was highly regarded for local knowledge, sterling credentials, no casualties and a reference from the Crusty one himself. The introductory song and dance were fluid and joyful, with laughter and anticipation from the crowd. Now perfunctory and humorless as a Frenchman, he wings it on the details, and for laughs he finishes his banana and drops the peel on deck, pretending not to see it. He plans to step on it and pretend to barely avoid breaking his neck, because he thinks the frogs will appreciate such antics, because they do; I mean: Jerry Lewis. Come on.
But a well-mannered young man picks the peel up and flings it overboard, causing the rest to laugh like hyenas.
Well, this might take some time.
Ravid plays straight man, hopelessly looking overboard for his lost banana peel. The crowd goes mum, as if watching a stalker or pervert.
Ah, well.
Then it’s off to the pass, Ravid hoping it will be as he described, which it should be; since he only dove the first half that’s all he described. He doesn’t know what to expect, like the snaggle-tooth lemons coming in for a sniff, or the giant hammerheads cruising around the corner, or the Galapagos coming in for a taste.
The current is stronger than yesterday and worse yet, it sweeps around the corner into another current heading out. Currents this strong can’t be resisted, except by fools, and they tire soon enough. Assessing conditions is the fundamental first step for any diver at any site. The tourists assume the crew’s familiarity with a site and conditions, so they wonder why the lead guy is taking so long to sort things out. Is he stumped? Or worried? But he’s only being thorough, and if the guy who kind of understands English doesn’t get it all, that’s okay too.
“Spring tides run like hell. We didn’t anticipate this much current. Man oh man, it’s gonna be a sleigh ride.” Moeava puts the boat in neutral and awaits guidance. Ravid walks to the cockpit to say that they’ll dispense with the anchor today. For starters the current may be strong enough to keep it from grabbing. Besides that, they’ll do better if Moeava watches their bubbles and tags along. Ravid will keep them at fifty or sixty feet for forty-five or fifty minutes and come up with the boat right there. Okay?
Okay.
Ravid keeps Moeava eye to eye to check for doubts, till the big man blinks and turns away.
What the hell can he do? A little slack might turn into more slack, but you have no choice when you really need a little cash on a regular basis, beginning right now. So Ravid goes back to where the gear is staged, dons his rig more like a cat burglar on a race with sunrise than a Degas dancer and takes a pause on the cap rail to demonstrate the easiest technique, in case anyone is a certified scuba diver but never saw this one.
He waits while Moeava checks the divers to ensure their air is on, they haven’t forgotten their fins, their buoyancy compensators have enough air in them to float, they have weights, masks, no-fog and so on and so forth. It’s like checking for mittens, lunch money and nametags but worse. Ravid then tells the casual translator that they’ll all flip back into the water at once to better stay together. Once in the water — dans l’eau — they will descend immediately to minimize drift. He follows with a brief charade and gets adequate nodding. Then he holds his mask in place with one hand and his reg in place with the other and falls back into the water. The group follows over the side with only a few kicks to heads. They regroup at the stern, share the okay sign all around, and down they go. Okay signals are repeated on the fly, and Ravid eases into the drift, signaling the others to follow close. He hopes that Moeava will see the bubbles and follow. He hears the engine, but the current is gaining, up to a knot and a half. He can’t slow down but feels certain that Moeava will speed up to keep up. Above all, he recognizes a situation requiring calmness in a dive leader.
The little troupe drifts along well enough, which is the case with a dramatic current, as long as nothing hangs up and no one needs to go back. A big hammerhead cruises by about forty feet out, which counts for a highlight and may qualify the dive to end on a happy high note with a once-in-a-lifetime sighting only ten minutes in. But Ravid fears repercussion and refund; such business hazards are known, whereas a fast current may have no hazards. So he takes the hand of a woman nearby and puts it in the hand of the next diver, signaling all the divers to join hands, which may mean very little in a surge but works for the moment in keeping the group together. So they wend along the bottom as it drops from sixty feet to seventy, which is outside the dive plan but still won’t require a safety stop, not for only a few minutes at that depth, and may offer significantly more safety in terms of things to hold on to, should the need arise.
Well, eighty feet on a sixty-foot dive plan is iffy judgment and ninety is what Crusty would call fucking with the phantom. But things level out at ninety, which seems to be below the fastest current, and bottom time at that depth might just squeeze into the three-minute limit that would make it a bounce — a bounce to experience the gang of fifteen-foot manta rays approaching in single file. The lone female leads twelve males in their orderly pursuit of manta love, as they swoop to within inches overhead, definitely securing the dive, all fares officially bankable on elapsed time and drama. Besides that, tips should peg the meter on a spectacular show — if this is a tipping group — not to mention word-of-mouth recommendation and referral leading to more business and the birth of a great reputation.
Should I tell the one about the four hours of work and the round of golf?
Do frogs tip? Is tipping de rigueur in the region?
I tipped at the buffet and hula show. And the bar...
Less than secure is the balance of the dive, now way off the plan at a depth that could only be assessed by computer and so requires conservative practices regarding a safety stop. Then again, conservative assessment can run afoul of plain common sense; like insisting on a safety stop to be extra careful in avoiding the bends, when a raging current could carry the whole lot out to sea. So what’s conservative now? Ravid assesses the few brief moments at ninety to ninety-five feet and determines that the safety stop might be waived, but not likely. He knows as his eyes focus on his computer that it will be flashing: 15 feet/3 minutes. Well, it’ll actually flash ten feet, but it’s a vintage unit built prior to recent “upgrades” in the dive tables, which aren’t upgrades at all but more conservative guidelines advised by the legal department of the dive association. So it’s out of habit developed over the last few years that Ravid reads ten feet as fifteen and holds it for three minutes, because ninety feet for twenty-one minutes is within the no-decompression limit, but they were down for twenty-five, which is only four minutes over but enough to bend a pretzel in a heartbeat, given the lack of backpressure to hold the nitrogen in place in the bloodstream where it belongs, till it can file out in an orderly progression.
But maintaining fifteen feet for three minutes might be dicey, given the goofballs and meatballs in the group and the accelerating current that must be two knots by now, which is faster than anyone can control and could make local knowledge incidental, if he had any local knowledge or knew someone who did, because Moeava is apparently local without the knowledge.
So, let’s take this one step at a time.
Drifting out to sea might be a problem but can likely be solved, whereas the bends could be a terminal embarrassment. So he signals a very slow ascent and at thirty feet sees the anchor coming down at a slant, because Moeava is apparently feeding the line slowly through the bow roller while steering from the cockpit and peering over the side at the same time. Damn — give the boy some credit for initiative. The anchor cruises along just behind the boat and over the divers at fifteen feet.
Where did Moe learn that? Ah! He could see on the chart plotter that we got carried into ninety feet. Never mind; let’s just hope he can keep the boat nearby for the next little while.
So the divers hover round the anchor as instructed, till the gathering is snug and stable — but then it’s not. Air expansion in so many buoyancy compensators on an ascent from ninety feet to fifteen would accelerate divers and an anchor toward the surface. That’s why every diver dumps his air on the way up, unless he doesn’t. A safety stop losing its safety exposes all the divers to complications, including a seasoned waterman now picturing himself writhing on deck, bent as a tourist, after yesterday’s encounter with carbon monoxide. At least he won’t get bent if he can manage to stay down in a harrowing current, which may be the single challenge remaining, except that challenges remaining have yet to get down to singular. Is this a pattern?
Never mind for now. A dive leader in a scramble has made a grave error in judgment. Ravid clambers into the cluster of bodies and buoyancy compensators, finding dump strings on right shoulders and left waists and dumping the air these divers should have had the training and presence of mind to dump on their own. But they don’t have the presence of mind or the smarts they were born with or trained to have, because they dive once a year and lose track of the tricky stuff, like basic volume exchange that works just as surely in reverse, expanding air on the way up just as it compresses air on the way down. A buoyancy compensator with a cubic foot of air at ninety-nine feet will expand to double that volume with each atmosphere — thirty-three feet — of ascent. So that becomes two cubes at sixty-six, four cubes at thirty-three and six cubes at fifteen.
Wait, that’s not right, but it doesn’t matter with the whole group rising out of its compression safety depth. Each pull of a dump string releases a trickle as the ascent continues — what’s wrong with these people? But wait! These people are certified — look! They see as clearly as I do and are dumping their top bladders and bottom bladders and back bladders too.
Why must you be so smug and arrogant when it comes to dive skills and calmness in the clutch? Is a macho asshole necessarily a better diver? Must you really show how much more you know than each and every tourist? Is that in fact the root cause of your problems and your...your life? It gets so tiresome. Maybe somebody could show you a thing or two. Like now...
Then he sees the meatball grinning, maybe — hard to tell if it’s a grin or a wince with his mouth hole full of regulator. What is unmistakable, however, is that the muscle man is pressing his BC inflator in short bursts, just enough to counterbalance each dump and keep the group hazardously ascending — just enough to make a dive leader scramble for all he’s worth and then scramble into overdrive. Well, a rowdy meatball might present a tussle on a swimming pool deck converted to a stage, but at fifteen feet, rising precipitously to twelve and then ten, he’s merely muscle-bent flotsam in a cruel current.
Ravid still keeps his dive knife in a clip sheath bound above his ankle, and it still has a blunt end to avoid inadvertent puncture or stabbing. And he’s still ready to use it on monofilament line snagging coral or net remnants or any manner of fouling material threatening a reef — or on duct tape on himself at night, adrift.
In a deft sweep he unclips the knife and has it out front as he rolls to within range of the meatball, who sees the flash and throws his arms up in defense. Ravid’s instinct is to slice into the meatball’s air bladder, ruining a three hundred dollar BC but securing the safety stop, too. Then the loss can be charged to the meatball’s credit card.
Maybe.
It doesn’t matter, really, considering the consequences of the bends with possible drowning, and who knows where this current is headed? Talk about life flashing before his eyes; the next frame shows Ravid Rockulz trying to get on a decent boat in Cucamonga or Timbuktu, where all the crews on every dock snigger over the nimrod who lost a whole load of tourii, all bent and drowned, ascending with no safety stop from ninety-five feet on a sixty foot plan and then sweeping out to sea, where some of the bodies may still be, in parts or in lumps of shark shit.
The next frame flashes quickly as a blade. Ravid imagines that the BC will not actually be ruined, only cut and easily stitched over a new bladder — who cares?
Well, neither the BC nor the meatball are at risk from the knife, because the meatball kicks off, kicks away to flee the aggressor with the hostile intent. Then the meatball bobs to the surface. The dive group settles back down to fifteen feet, hugging each other and the anchor, watching the feisty fellow above make his way to the swim step at the stern.
Twenty minutes later everyone is on board, some scared silent, some chattering like oscillating fans over their brush with danger, with the huge shark and then the giant mantas and then again with the safety stop that didn’t come off too safely. Most of the divers keep a wary eye on the muscular fellow and the lean fellow, sensing tension. At the helm, Ravid warns Moeava to keep an eye on the despondent one. Moeava nods, and Ravid is relieved to feel confident in his partner’s skill on board.
He steps back to squeeze in among the divers and take a seat beside the thick one, whose elbows rest on his knees reflectively, like he’s on a toilet and in no rush. Ravid addresses the group. “That was great. Wasn’t it?” The translator gets the words but converts good cheer to mordant matter of fact. Most of the others nod and mumble their amazement. With greatness established, kind of, he proceeds to say what happened. “We got out of our plan. That’s never good. But look — ” Reaching into the pile of dive gear for his gauges he points out their maximum depth, ninety-three feet, because anything challenged on an injury case will come down to hard facts, so these are presented before witnesses. “Our dive plan was to sixty-five feet, but then we rode the current and saw the manta rays. That’s okay. We stayed at ninety-three feet for twenty-four minutes. That calls for a safety stop at fifteen feet. Three minutes ought to do it, but we stayed for five — all but one of us. So we’re within safe limits, and I don’t anticipate problems. Still, anytime we dive outside our plan, we take precautions. Okay?”
He waits for the translation and the group murmur to rise and fall, then he turns to the thickset man. “You will be reported to the police for terroristic endangerment of every person here. Good luck with that. We have your hotel and credit card number, so don’t worry about the authorities being able to contact you. Now, as far as you and the bends, I think you’re at risk. Are you feeling any stiffness or soreness yet?”
The big brow bunches to the center of the big head.
“Well, you’ll know soon enough. Remember, no physical exertion. No beating off in the shower. Okay?”
The bigger man turns to his tormenter quizzically, subdued yet with growing concern.
A woman leans forward. “Is it okay to walk on the beach?”
Ravid shrugs. “You should know. You may have nitrogen in your system. If it seeps out too quickly over the next few hours through the tissue of least resistance, like joint tissue, you get the bends. The variable is stimulation. How much stimulation? You tell me. Maybe you can stay calm. I don’t know. If your blood pressure goes up, and you got too much nitrogen in your bloodstream...” He shrugs and pouts. “Capiche?”
With a crooked smile, she nods.
Ravid moves forward. The helmsman regards him with a glance and a smile to indicate satisfactory completion of a difficult day at the office — and maybe relief that he’s not the only fuckup in this outfit. The second dive is shallow, brief and boring, but completes the task.
Back at the dock farewells are perfunctory with small doses of forced humor; and no, the frogs don’t tip. Ah, well, the crew share a laugh at any rate when the meatball lumbers cautiously up the dock, pausing to rest, leaning on the handrail, mumbling what must be epithets in an unfamiliar language.
Moeava murmurs to his new partner, “Hey. That guy. Do you think he will bend?”
Ravid smiles at this new and more delicate form of pidgin. He shrugs, “He could. I’d give him fifty-fifty.” Then he turns to his partner with a rhetorical but specific question: “Would you like to find out if he does?”
So they put the boat to rights and hose off themselves and drive the twelve miles around to the hotel that faces the channel near the motus. They have a few beers in the bar till dusk, reviewing the dive and how to make it better and the godforsaken current that somebody local should have known about, which is why they call it local knowledge, which is an oxymoron in most cases but can make or break a dive business. Moeava reminds Ravid of what went right, and they review different sites for tomorrow’s dive, not really discussing the evening’s outing except for casual reference to checking things out.
Three beers in, the hugely breasted, heavily rouged woman who was the thickset man’s date a few nights ago takes a seat at the bar. Ravid nods and gets a receptive smile for his efforts, so he nods again to the bartender. She orders “the usual,” which looks like the working girl’s favorite toddy: top-drawer vodka, make that a double, straight up. It may be a prearranged deal, with the bartender serving water with a kickback, but who cares?
More importantly, she agrees in mere minutes to remove her clothing if requested and provide sexual relief to anyone for fifty thousand francs, or five hundred dollars, whatever comes first. Okay, she’ll do it for three hundred — okay, one fifty, because it’s not for Moeava, no offense, but anybody that big can’t get a discount; come on. She balks on learning that the friend is Oybek, her fairly recent date of not so many dates ago. She gives in to coaxing and a pledge of additional work in the future.
Ravid then visits the hotel sundries shop for two bottles of sparkling wine at the low end, La Vie en Chartreuse, bottled in Cambodia, and a small container of hot muscle liniment, because any stimulant or stimulation can trigger the bends in a diver who has absorbed too much nitrogen. He instructs Charisse to visit Oybek’s room, get the bubbly into him and then do him up like no tomorrow — “Like a Wild West bronco buster, baby. Can you do that?”
“Can I do that? I am professional. I can do more than that.”
“Good. Get him excited. He’s been depressed, and we really want to snap him out of it.”
“I don’t feenks he is depressed. I feenks he is...how you say, malade.”
“That would be ‘sick.’ Tonight will be a surprise, on us, and he can’t know. After the hoochie coochie you get him into a steaming shower and rub this stuff all over him. Make him feel good. Oh, he turns into a pussy cat when you do that.”
“You know this?”
“Yes! He broke up with his girlfriend — he didn’t tell you? A lovely woman. She looked like you, in the, you know, face and such. He stopped taking his hot showers and using the liniment, so, he got depressed.” Charisse is confused, till Ravid shrugs. “They are the things he loves in life. We want him happy. When he’s happy, he’s a wonderful fellow.”
She rolls her eyes. “I feenks one hundred fifty will not — ”
“Okay, two hundred. But, when you get him in the shower and get him rubbed all over, then give him the...you know.” Here Ravid makes the vulgar gesture, jamming his tongue into his cheek while pursing his mouth around an imaginary shaft grasped in one hand. But Charisse is a professional and accustomed to charade as euphemism for commonly ordered services.
Ravid and Moeava don’t doubt that Charisse will do the work, but Ravid stipulates a hundred dollars up front and the balance on fulfillment. Then they go to see if the recipient is in. It’s fun, a prank, and yes, it’s good to act out. Communication is difficult with Oybek, but Charisse gets into the goodwill spirit of generosity and healing.
Oybek is pleasantly surprised and willing to receive. God knows he spent enough. She says it’s a slow night for her and she can’t stop thinking about their amazing night and his generosity.
He demurs in Slavic slur, with charades showing that generosity comes from his heart. She eases in.
Ravid and Moeava relax against a tree, close enough to hear voices through the louvers. Ravid whispers that Charisse is either offering the freebie or a discount.
Moeava laughs. He hadn’t thought of that but feels that he would also maximize profits if he were in a position to sell pussy. “Why not? I would like to fuck every night and get paid. But why not make more?” As a boat whore he can only charge once. They laugh in another moment of male bonding, and Moeava lights a joint from his pocket. He smokes a third of it before holding it out with the question, “You like marijuana?”
“Yes. I believe I do.” Ravid inhales his first removal from challenging, brief moments since leaving everything behind, and is returned posthaste to a doper’s homecoming.
They soon hear small arms fire — the corks popping — and a few minutes after that come the grunt and grind, the call for more, yes, more, don’t stop, don’t stop, yes, more, now there, there, there, and so on.
The nap is next, then Charisse rouses Oybek for the hot shower. He grumbles that she should go, let him rest. She smears the hot sauce all over, and he moans. They hear the shower and Charisse tittering that it’s sooooo nice, and she has an idea how to get him ready for another go. Her singsong is as lilting as a cabaret singer’s. She wants his big, delicious self over here, and bring the bubbly. Then the louvers give up only the sound of cascading water.
Ravid is very stoned. He wonders aloud whether they have wasted their money by providing liquor and sex for a menace to society. Moeava shakes his head. “No. Not my money.”
Ravid shrugs. “Yeah. Well. Maybe it’ll be a good lesson for a reactionary prick.”
“Yes. That is what I think also. He is a reactionary prick.”
“Not him. Me. Maybe it will teach me to lay off the revenge thing and spend my money more wisely, like on pussy and liquor for me.”
“And me.” They laugh at the aging joke.
“Not your money...”
Then comes a withering lament wringing itself like a rag, and not one caused by sexual satisfaction. The two rise and step to the window. They see Charisse open the door and run out, quickly dressed, dabbing with her towel, which she drops a few steps out.
Moeava turns for a quick exit but Ravid says, “Wait.”
He ducks through the passage between the bungalows to the door and sees the big man on the cheap sofa, not exactly in convulsion, but quivering on the verge, in thickening steam. Moeava steps closer to see. Ravid says, “Medium case. I’ve seen worse. I think he won’t die. Unless he’s got other problems. Hard to say. I think muscle guys like that show it worse than normal people. Come on.”
“Should we call somebody?”
“I don’t think so.”
Oybek moans and mutters what could be gibberish or the Ukrainian national anthem, breaking into staccato yelps. Ravid tells Moeava to lend a hand, and they roll the helpless hulk toward the back of the sofa, to better muffle the sound. They turn off the shower and stroll back to Moeava’s small truck.
Ravid suggests another beer on the way back. Moeava pulls onto the road and says, “You really something. You get that guy. For good. Now you want more beer.”
“That guy got himself.”
“I like that. I like how you do that. You all American.”
Ravid declines. “No. I’m not American. I never was. I only like what it stands for. What it stood for.”
Moeava giggles and slaps the steering wheel. He giggles that he wants to be more American, like Ravid; it was just so fucking perfect, man. C’est fucking parfait!
“Hey, look,” Ravid says. “It’s not great. It’s a personal problem. It’s never been great. Okay?”
“What ever you say. Okay?” They ride in silence, till Moeava slaps the wheel again. “Man!”
Ravid says, “I wish we hadn’t done that.” Because it’s bad enough that he behaves like a psychopath, let alone teaching someone that it’s cool. Or satisfying. Or acceptable. So regret sinks in for a few more miles.
“You know what I think?” Moeava is reflective.
“No. Je ne sais pas quoi tu penses.”
“Pas quoi; ce que. Je ne sais pas ce que tu penses.”
“Mais oui. I don’t know what you think. But I wonder what you think.”
“I think you got no regret. I think you say regret, so nobody think you crazy. Nobody but me is think anything anyway. Je pense que tu es mal, et tant pis. I think you crazy no matter what you say. That guy got the bends is crazy aussi. Everybody un peu mal, but he much worse crazy. Il est trop mal. Il est mal, froid. I think deep down inside, dans ton coeur, you want to hurt that guy. You need to hurt that guy. May be kill that guy. You say, il est mort, peut-être; tant pis. I think you would not be so good at hurting him, if you did not want to hurt him. It was good. Man. It was very good.”
“And why do you think I need to hurt people?”
“I don’t know. But I think I find out pretty soon.”
“I think I need help. And pretty soon you will too.”
“I think you help yourself already. Not so bad. Don’t worry. We don’t need no stinking regret. Ha! Hey. You see that one, with the guys all farting?”
Moeava is a contradiction, an oaf on the one hand, incisively insightful on the other — as if the one is a ruse, a clever pretext by which to highlight the other. Maybe he’s stupid like a fox. Lingering distrust compels Ravid to double-check most of the big man’s work, especially where life and limb could be at risk. Another uncertainty lingers on personal assessment: Ravid is a waterman of renown at home, but he’s far from home with no renown. So what has he become? What’s become of him? What continues to well up from deep inside? Home can be anywhere with friends and a family forming up, and maybe this is it. But surely more will come.
Well, the path is simple enough. Ravid thinks himself a stand up guy who swung at a curve ball — make that a meatball coming out of nowhere, emissary from a screwy world requiring screwy responses. That’s all. Yet Moeava’s correction hits with a twinge of realization that among Ravid’s primary developments is a superior skill at revenge.
Moeava can move at depth with surprising alacrity, supple as a bull walrus and just as graceful, submerged. On the surface he splashes, his outsized limbs too heavy for sleek movement only minutes into a swim. Out of the water he lumbers, bulky and self-conscious. Resigned to the fact that nothing will improve his swimming skills short of losing a hundred pounds, he slowly opens to hints here and there.
“Look.” Ravid coils a line in slow motion, verbally dismissing the idea of laying a figure eight to better avoid tangling on a rapid payout. “If you lay it right, it won’t tangle, and it looks better, and you won’t trip on it. If it’s a dock line, look...” He throws the quick half hitch, the braking half wrap, the trucker’s hitch for securing big stuff with no slack. Finally comes the indispensable bowline that won’t tighten under load. This one should be practiced a few thousand times, till it’s mindless, and the hands alone can tie it without engaging the brain.
Ravid swims near Moeava from the boat to the drop. Grasping Moeava’s deflator he deflates the BC, settling the big man a few inches deeper in the water. Moeava catches on. On the bottom he can move the anchor and twenty-four feet of chain more easily than two smaller men, moving the bottom tackle away from the coral to give it a wide berth, setting the anchor in a sandy patch. Moeava tacitly understands the importance of preserving that by which a livelihood is derived — that for which love should be felt and returned.
When the big shark stays gone, Moeava swears that the beast appeared four or five times in the week prior to Ravid’s arrival. Ravid hesitates to elaborate on what might be magic, which seems natural to him but to others might sound strange. He says the big tiger may have had a food source nearby and hung around till it was gone. It’s their pattern, what they do. Ravid asks if Moeava knows his animal spirit. Moeava laughs and thinks it over. Then he shrugs, “Je ne sais pas, mais... je sais qu’il n’est pas Ma’o.”
“Pourquoi pas?”
“Because. He scare the shit from me. I mean she. She scare shit from me.”
Ravid nods. “Moi aussi, mais...that’s the point. That’s the test. The magic. If your animal spirit was the Easter bunny it would be easy. And you’d get money under your pillow for every tooth that fell out of your head.”
“That would be la petite souris.”
“Same difference. It would have no power. Rien! It would be warm and fuzzy, great for a kid, but not for you. It would present no fear and require no faith.”
Moeava ruminates. “Why must my spirit guide be fearful? What’s wrong with the Easter bunny?”
“Fearsome. And yes. The Easter bunny is a rabbit. It hides colored eggs.”
Moeava is skeptical. “So what? I was happy then. I like the Easter bunny. I want to take the Easter Bunny for a boat ride. Not Ma’o. Fuckeen’ haoles. Always try to change things around to their way, with the fear and the guilt... Hey. No offense.”
“None taken. I’m not haole.” Moeava squints through one eye. “I’m Jewish.” Moeava huffs. “You scoff. But it wasn’t the Jews who came here or to Hawaii to steal resources or convert native people to the correct religion.”
Moeava ponders, then goes to the cooler that was stocked before sunrise. Holding the lid open, he says, “The Jews did something wrong. You know this. Everybody pissed off at them.”
“Not everybody. Only those in need of a scapegoat.”
Moeava shrugs. “I don’t know. I think it has to do with the money. You know how everybody talk about getting Jewed.”
“Are you getting Jewed?”
“Hmm... I don’t think so. But I don’t know. Am I?”
“I don’t think so too. But don’t worry; you can’t help yourself from offending me. So I take no offense. Haoles. Jews. It makes no difference who you blame for your troubles, as long as it’s not yourself. Right?”
Moeava chews this bone and finally agrees. “I think you are right. It is the others who are most to blame.” Then he makes his final dive of the day, under the ice, colas and juices to the bottom and the Hinano six-pack sunk there hours ago for this moment. Done with glad-handing and with clearing and rinsing the gear and the boat, sorting and stowing the stuff, Moeava comes up with the common treasure of the charter trade. He pops two and offers one, “It is good that you understand these things. In the future we will work better together because of your understanding. I like to say many things that could give you offense. But they won’t, because you understand.”
They glug two thirds on a synchronized inhale that seems ceremonial. They sigh on absorption of life itself. “I understand,” Ravid confirms with a raucous belch.
Moeava ups the ante by belching a scale and two chords. They laugh like men, bonded.
So the friendship develops with the stone-ax simplicity of their forebears. As inveterate heterosexuals they likewise understand that this bonding is different from romance, which may be as fast but is more complex, often involving sexual contact and intimacies of the heart in a delicate exchange rife with pitfalls, minefields and bad taste — with gaffe, omission and too much or too little, too late.
None of that here.
Moeava woofs his fried bananas and farts out loud. Ravid tells him he’s disgusting, then dribbles poisson cru on his white T-shirt, at which Moeava observes, “You eat like an animal.”
“I am an animal.” They laugh. They drink beer. They get high and tell jokes. It’s easy.
Romance can be easy too. At times it’s insensitive, selfish and seemingly mean-spirited. Like when Cosima comes around out of the blue, lolling casual as Ma’o from a hundred feet out. Cosima is different in her way, her casual cruise more of a pose than a reprieve from hunger or fear. She seems hungry for more of something undetermined and fearful of losing it — maybe it’s her power over those under her spell, more or less.
Her slink and saunter is a natural thing for two men to watch, though not a bonding event in this application. Moeava laid claim a few days ago; Ravid acquiesced, because he had to, because he really needed a job. But now he wants this childish woman, Cosima, in the worst way, with an ache in his chest and groin. This short-circuit in spiritual development affects his self-esteem. Because he had a woman, and what a woman, and can never have her again. He’s no wiser than the dog with the juicy bone, who saw his reflection in the stream below and dropped his bone in the water, because the dog in the stream had a bigger bone, which every dog wants.
Not only that, he has a woman, a spicy beauty with seasoning and a zest for life, minimal bitterness and zero inhibition, yet here he is salivating at the mere hint of a new dish nearby.
Well, Ravid still wants a few bones, no argument there. And he can dive into the stream for the old bone if he drops it, down to eighty feet free in a pinch, two-eighty with a tank on a bounce. Or three-twenty with a rebreather on mixed gasses, though that seems like way too much equipment and technical stuff just to fetch a bone. Besides, why bother in the first place when you can just chew on the bone you got?
Which brings us back to self-image and esteem. Cosima may be the juiciest bone a man or dog could want — maybe as juicy as a bone gets; any juicier and she’d be a cartoon, which she is in a way, and she lays herself right in his lap. Not much a man can do about that, except decline the offer, which is easier said than done. But what can he do, risk everything? Hurt a friend? Not that the friend needs to know, though everyone does sooner or later on every island. Not that getting in on the ground floor of a dive business in French Polynesia is everything, but it’s solid footing instead of treading water. So you want to risk it? For some parsley?
Well, maybe not. Let’s face it: parsley, like so many things, is more appetizing on the plate, maybe sitting in the butter oozing off the baby red potatoes. Then you eat some, and it’s bitter and chewy. So Ravid Rockulz needs to see this garnish for what it is, more decorative and fun than edible.
So he ignores Cosima. He will not double take at her sheer gauze blouse and what it fails to conceal. Moeava grew up with women going topless, and here he is bug-eyed.
Ravid ignores her, so she strolls between them. Moeava squints like an astronomer at a little man on the moon. Ravid mumbles over the tedium of cleaning rental regulators.
Returning Moeava’s gaze, Cosima says, “Have you been swimming lately?” She casually scratches an itch on a breast, making it jiggle.
Moeava is paralyzed.
She tells Ravid, “Not you. You don’t have to swim. Just him, because he can’t.”
Ravid will not look up but asks, “And why is that? Do you want him to drown trying?”
She thinks it over and says, “He can drown in water, or I can drown in blubber. He will have a better chance than me. No?”
“So what? I get a freebie?” She giggles. “I thought it was a magic spell, and you are the prize. You start giving it away with no long swim; that leaves only second prize to the big winner. You know?”
No longer humored, she walks away, huffy as a waterspout and just as ephemeral. Stuck on a shrinking view, Moeava concedes, “That’s no good. Second prize.”
“Wouldn’t be so bad,” Ravid says. “She’s plenty prize to go around, you know. But she might be crazy. You don’t want to be number one if she’s crazy.”
Moeava does not appreciate the suggestion that he be anything but number one, so he fetches another beer. “You girlfriend or wife or whatever she is got used up by a...malade, before you met her. You don’t mind? Why you here?” He lumbers up the dock, away from what could go sour very quickly. Ravid stares at the gizmo in his hands. Did Hereata tell him everything? Moeava has no doubt that Cosima could be the juiciest morsel a man ever tasted. Does he doubt that Ravid could pluck and eat her in a heartbeat with no regrets? Loyalty goes so far, Mr. Moe. You pay an honest wage for an honest day’s work — and I throw an honest lifetime of dive experience into the bargain. Minimum wage at my age with my know-how, and it’s not only mechanical and nautical, Mr. Moe; it’s social and touristical too. I throw in a little loyalty because that’s the kind of guy I am, to a point. I think I have a sore spot on my tuchas, and I think it’s that point we have reached.
Well, Moeava thinks himself a loser who doesn’t stand a chance. Moeava can’t swim the bay, night or day, so what’s he straining over? Why doesn’t he ask her for some leg, just a little bit to calm him down? Does he really think he should taunt me?
Except that it wasn’t a taunt but self-defense. Ravid knows this and that he would regret eating the peach Moeava most favors. Well, he would enjoy the peach but would regret the sticky aftermath. It doesn’t matter, because she’s not stable. Not that many women actually show symptoms otherwise, at least not consistently. Even Basha Rivka is a bit off center, with her chronic anxieties. Still, it’s no harm in wondering what a skittish little woman might do — not Basha Rivka but Cosima, Vahineura, whatever her name is. Ravid wonders if she’s eighteen or thirty, or if the frogs have laws about that stuff, which doesn’t seem likely. They’ll eat anything.
Them and the Japanese. Except that the Japanese eat jellyfish and puffers, and the frogs like pussy and oysters, which are better, less hateful and more appetizing.
He blows out the regulator, screws the case back on, shags another beer and sits on the cooler. Day is done. Not a bad day as these things go, and not so different from the old days, except for missing the old crowd and late afternoons, with options forming up. Well, weathering the slow time during a transition in life is all part of settling in, getting connected, learning to enjoy less as a means of achieving more.
He’s not looking death in the face and is well-fed and secure in his own room, with a sixty-watt bulb near enough the bed that he can read till his back hurts or he nods off. Or he could read if he had a decent book. Well, he can walk up the road in the dark, keeping an eye out for careening cars so he doesn’t get run over. He tried it once and won the walk-up-the-road-in-the-dark lottery. So maybe he should cop another ticket.
Or maybe he should redeem his first ticket once more, since it’s certainly still valid. Or maybe he should let it freshen for another day or two.
Or he can have a nice tin of sardines with some saltines and mustard — he’s already had the beer — then walk across the street to Taverua for another beer. Maybe he’ll meet a recent divorcée in reasonably good condition.
Or maybe he’ll sit right where he is on into the night and following day, patiently waiting for the future of substance to begin, with its wonders fulfilled as promised. Well, those things are promised only by himself, but who else should he trust to deliver days of artistic endeavor rather than manual labor, followed by nights of love instead of boredom?
He remembers a similar funk, sitting in his old beater Tercel — of course that funk was worse, with the girlfriend, make that wife, revealing her instability and insanity — and look what that funk led to, a night and day sizzled onto his memory like a scar. This, on the other hand, is nothing but a slow time in the middle of slow times. Things are working out, shaping up.
He perks to the scent of reefer and rises to see a group of boys under the big tree over the picnic table, laughing it up and passing spliffs, smoking like a small factory to celebrate the end of another beautiful day. He moves more slowly than only a few years ago — well, maybe it’s been twelve years or fourteen. Still he’s spry and game for a hit or two. That should let a few hours pass warm and fuzzy as a padded cell, in slow motion, if the marijuana is any good. Moeava had good bud, and this is likely the same issue.
The boys are game too, passing the spliff to the new guy — the old guy — who steps into the circle like it’s the wheel of life, surrounded by kindred spirits speaking a universal language of no words, with meaning facilitated by this stuff that is smoked and passed. The padded cell is soft as cashmere, and the metronome slows to forty beats to the minute...
Good and stoned for better or worse, Ravid thanks his benefactors who may become new friends, too, in the near future, when they’re all restored to more verbal communication. For the moment, he drifts back to finish securing the cooler and equipment. He looks up as if at a peripheral vision as the metronome picks up to double time, and sure enough, the waterspout woman is back, calmer now, with her colorful pareo in hand and her sweet, soft explanation: no dance show tonight means she will work the late shift in the gift shop. On that note she removes the see-through blouse he has chosen to ignore, along with her skirt. She stands more thoroughly and achingly revealed in her panties, which he can’t help but watch and ponder, but they will not be removed, in keeping with modesty and tabu. After all, breasts are acceptable, normal, de rigueur, even in nubile effusions of succulence and daring.
She cups and releases them a few times like a boxer punching his own face against the pain just ahead. She watches them blush and bounce then smiles up at him. He watches them as intended, realizing the trick nature and Cosima play, stealing the better sense of mankind over these globs of dough. She picks up the pareo and wraps herself, tying off to maximum advantage. Stepping toward him she lays hands on him to tell him that her gift shop job is menial and pays a pittance.
He says he too is waiting for more, that he hopes to develop the dive business with Moeava and engage his cameras very soon. So they exchange the material rudiments of who they are, what they know and what they seek, like urban professionals in a chic bistro, laying the foundation for meaningless sex that may be the only uplift of the day or week or life.
But this is different, tropical and removed. She repeats her special dispensation that he need not swim the bay, because she knows he can, and the whole point of the swim is the proof. He looks perplexed, dumbfounded and dazed, as in very stoned, and uncertain of what comes next. He would like to duck into somewhere for quick sexual relations and then pretend it never happened, except of course in solitude, when the imagery would be so refreshing to remember.
Instead, he reminds her that giving herself to him without the swim across the bay would undermine the spell she lives under and has cast upon many men. She responds that she did not mean to excuse him from the swim but rather that he is welcome to have her whenever he wants, as long as he knows that he’ll need to make the swim afterward.
How about having some right now?
But he still can’t ask the easy question, even as she answers yes, because it’s not so easy, because he doesn’t know where they could go for horizontal privacy for ten minutes. Besides that, ten minutes or twenty seems like a terrible waste of a golden opportunity that should run three hours minimum, so make that an hour and ten minutes in an emergency. Besides that, she’s nuts, make no mistake, and that puts him in the crosshairs yet again and may help remove him from temptation, even as he ponders a harmless grasp of the lovely chichis and perhaps a tender suckle, which she might deem worthy of a return suckle, and so Jack in the box peers over the rim and out the lid to see if he’s on deck for action — but no.
No, even though this time his nemesis won’t be a psychopath cousin from the east side but a harmless blala who may soon be like a brother, who can’t get along without him and may be his salvation. Front and center is the devilish rack ready to poke his eyes out with sheer, raw beauty — along with the guilt of casting that blala into despair and love sickness...
“How about right now?”
“Not now! I have to work! I already told you. Maybe after that. I get off ten thirty. All finish by eleven. Okay?” She accepts his dumbstruck silence as affirmation and meanders into the waning light as time itself winds back down to forty beats...
Just so comes the clop, clop, clop of high heels on decking from the opposite direction. Their timing is a bit uneven since the step is adjusted to avoid the cracks. Hereata rounds the corner with a familiar smile now transformed from radiant morning to satisfied sunset. She steps up, takes his hand and says, “Come with me. Smoking that stuff will make you stupid. I want to feed you. Then I want to show you something.”
So he sighs over the quarter inch to spare on the sideswipe. And he goes, glancing sideways at Moeava watching out the window. How long has he been watching? Not to worry — Moeava’s half smile and matching half nod affirm nature’s correct course and assure that his fantasy of the future will remain intact for a few more hours.
Ravid shrugs. Well, most men know what they’ll do, which is what they’ve done since forever, which is follow their nose to the scent of what urges them in life. The multifaceted scene with its convoluted dilemma and singular drive reminds him of the one about Whodaguy and his best girl, Fayreeva, a month before their marriage. Whodaguy can’t take it anymore, waiting for their wedding night. Never mind. No time for joking, this.
Because a man knows what became of himself surely as his hand is grasped on the way to the older woman’s lair, with its soft comfort and exhilarations. No, this is not the future a boy or young man foresees, nor is Hereata a likely candidate to claim the waterman with the notable Speedos. He will come to learn, either by chance or because Moeava leaves documentation where he will surely see it, that Hereata is fifty-three, which is not so old, not even fifty-five and a relief, considering the average age of most grandmothers with grandsons aged twenty-six.
But her age is incidental on the way to feeding, and seeing what she has to show, though he can guess what’s on the menu, even with a few new courses, some hot and steamy, some grimly exotic. What’s good is the honeymoon bungalow over the reef that stabs at his heart for a brief moment, imagining the insensitive frogs who cleared and dredged this reef in order to build this bungalow, then dragged a few coral heads back over in hopes they would grow again to generate top dollar year-round from your most discriminating travelers.
The bungalow itself is a dream come true, with a rack rate of a grand a night with tax, meals included, which Hereata and her man will take as room service for absolutely free, which fits the dream nicely, along with the six hundred count sheets, the fluffy towels, marble bath and beautiful little fishies swimming just below the floor, with a viewing window and spotlight, so cute.
What’s grim is minimal but consistent, like Hereata’s inflamed, swollen gum that won’t stop hurting till she removes her top right incisor and the bridge along with it and sets it in a glass by the bed. Or the top third of her hair, which she removes to a lamp shade on the escritoire. Or the sound of her nail clippers hacking away at a stubborn overhang, big toe, left side, thick as laminate with a crusty brown underlayment.
But all that stuff, both the good and bad, are manini in the moment of knowing that we have a pattern — that given a choice, a man will choose sex and room service over patiently awaiting a sublime future every time, no matter what. Are you kidding? He could be dead tomorrow. Or the next day. Or surely some day. Then he’ll wish he’d taken the opportunity granted.
That this woman is nearly fifteen years his elder and presumably past her prime becomes incidental to her most generous presence; she still has a bevy of moves to share, along with the aforementioned soft comforts and a mini-fridge. This scene trumps the can of sardines and two beers waiting up the dark road — and the sleepy book and whatever else might be available there. Better to jump like a green and bumpy pond dweller into princedom, given the right mix of rhubarb rhubarb mumbo jumbo, which this appears to be.
You want to swim the bay in the dark? Have at it. I’m hunkering down with a hostess from the pro circuits. That is, what we have here is a pattern that fits. This is not like the other night, with the thrilling adventure of getting laid by a new woman with splendid tits. Nor is this a game second go, which of course it is, but the point is that it’s so much more, a groove or a rut or a little of both, which all romance requires any way you slice it, establishing a routine that will not easily be broken.
But why the hell must anything be broken? She rides like seasoned foredeck crew, her truly extraordinary melons flopping delectably to the ocean swell...
A long time later, but not too long, after the aftermath and quick fall to deep sleep, he wakens as if by instinct to see the clock says 10:30 — time for Cosima. He watches it parse minutes, pondering how different minutes can be, or could be. Having two women in one day could make a young man proud. Viewed in that dim light the aging process feels like a blessing. Besides, sexual relations with Cosima will be much better in a day or two, when they’re fresh. As it is, he feels liberated from the drive for a cock-a-doodle-two and all that silly, immature, macho stuff.
He feels honest and sincere that this fundamental session of tits and ass is world class, plain and simple. Oh, he could rise and excuse himself to go for something or other — not beer, because it’s in the mini-fridge, and so are the snacks. He could go for a walk — that’s it, a walk in the dark. Then he’ll be back.
Yet she grasps the leg sliding to the edge, finding the other leg and then the last leg. She secures him, oozing over, her warm and friendly fingers plying up the back muscles to the neck and shoulders as she pins him down to better put him back to sleep. Who is she kidding? Or so he thinks; and ten long minutes later he descends to the depths again at 10:42.
Many hours later, the sun rises on a most pleasant deprivation of senses. A nameless man with no coordinates feels the luxuriant comfort before he sees it or can fix himself in time or space or circumstance. Pain free, worry free and free of want or desire, he floats weightlessly, indefinitely and anonymously in another realization: it’s a top-drawer bungalow, complimentary, thanks to what’s-her-name, um, Here...Hera...the unusual woman who got him up four times in one night, which hasn’t happened in a while, especially with one so, shall we say, elderly. How did she do that? Unless conditions converged on optimal performance potential in a stallion suffering from improper management.
His eyes open on cue as his hostess with the mostest looks up from the old stomping grounds with a weary grin. Reality is fixed on comfort and jams into overdrive. Her mascara runny as erosion rivulets on a hillside and her missing tooth give him pause; Oy vey... Yet oblivious to all but happiness shared, she bows her head to redeem his ticket on a brand new day.
In acceptance of what destiny has brought his way, he throws the sheet back.
Why?
Why to watch, of course. Ah, Paradise. This is what became of me. It seems excessive and pathologically focused, but you know it could be much worse. Coffee and Danish served at the front door are up to those standards of excellence established here and now, and without ceremony he bids her a most wonderful day and adieu, which makes her happy, perhaps because he does not hesitate or cower like he did the first time.
No, because the future warrants acceptance, whatever it decides to be, and if this is it, so be it. So he kisses her on the lips, thanks her for another full boat and tells her he’ll take it easy tonight at his place, but he’ll see her bye’mbye, tomorrow.
She smiles sadly, caressing his cheek. “No. You are right. Tonight is Thursday. Buffet dance. All you can eat. Very late. But you are wrong. Tomorrow I leave. You will not see me.”
“Where are you going?”
“Away.” Hereata turns away, sits on the bed and hangs her head. “I’m going away.”
Okay. So the pattern will be short-lived. Some patterns are brief like that. This one was a nice respite from the rigors of transition, of making new friends in a new place, which process has not really begun, except for Moeava, maybe, but look at the progress made in a very short time. Things are settling into place. With Hereata gone tomorrow, maybe some time will open up to find a real place to live, a place with a kitchen and a TV. Except that it would only have French programming. Okay, scratch the TV, except that it would serve as a good teacher of the French language, or could if the shows were any good.
“I’m going away. You won’t see me.”
“Yes. I heard you.” Ravid isn’t sure what to say next; she apparently doesn’t want to elaborate, or she wants him to ask. “Are you going to Papeete?”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask you where you will go from there?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“What are your choices?”
“I don’t feel that it’s up to me.”
Oh, no — what should not, must not, cannot be asked at this juncture is whom, in fact, it is up to, unless this little volley is part of the pattern. Hereata’s many comforts and charms feel so ineluctable around dusk, only to be counterbalanced soon after dawn with tough, demanding questions.
“I said it’s not up to me.”
“Yes. I heard you. What are the choices of whomever it is up to?” Well done, asking the obvious yet avoiding the trap.
“I suppose one choice is to have me go away and stay away. I suppose the other choice is to have me come back Saturday and see what I have to show him then.”
This too is a skillful parry; what can he possibly ask back, whom is him? So to avoid the knockdown drag-out repartee that could well establish this other, avoidable pattern, Ravid says, “Very good. Then we’ll meet again on Saturday?”
She turns to him with her most loving smile. “Yes.”
“Here?”
“No. The over-water bungalow is rare and will not happen often. We will be at my house. You can move in at that time.”
“It’s too small.”
“No. It’s just right. Moeava will be living at the dive shop.”
“He can’t stay at the dive shop.”
“It was his idea.”
“I won’t be the reason he has to move out of his own house.”
“It’s okay. It’s time. He’s twenty-six already.”
“He told me twenty-nine.”
“He lies you know. He needs psychiatric help, but it would cost more than the lies. Who cares how old anybody is anyway?”
“Well, you make a good point. But I’m not ready to move into your place, even if he wants to move out. I want my own place. I just got here. I need to get my life in order first.”
“Qu’est-ce que c’est premier? Qu’est-ce que c’est vie? Is this not the life? A very good life, I might add. A life many people all over the world would envy a lucky man for having. Tahiti. Me.” She sits up and turns his way.
“You sound like my mother.”
“She must be a smart woman.”
“Yes. She’s neurotic too. Always insisting, you know?”
“She only wants what’s best for you.”
“Yes, well, many people do. But I’m not nearly so dumb as I let on. Trust me on this — we will get along much better, you and I, if we come together as often as we want but not every day and every night. I know a few things, like my appreciation of what you have to show me, and how to keep that appreciation fresh.”
“I think you want to chase girls.”
“Maybe. Who knows? Maybe not. You impress me as a confident woman who doesn’t need to worry about that, not with your hospitality resources.”
“Yes. It’s true. You would be foolish to give this up. You might think me old and fat, or uncouth and unkempt, any of those things that men think once they get rid of their stuff — oh, they think they can do without for an hour or two. Then it’s honey, baby, sweetie, darling, where are you? Yes? Am I right?”
“Yes. I think you are right. And so am I. I think we’ve reached a wonderful understanding. In our love.”
She turns to him. “Don’t say that.”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t say that.”
“Unless you mean it.”
“Okay. I’ll be more careful.”
“Come here.”
“No. I have to go. We’ll fuck again on Saturday, if we don’t get a better offer.”
“I hate that word.”
“It’s better than love, n’est-ce pas?”
“Fool.”
“Toujours, ma cherie.”