Caught (21 page)

Jennifer’s baby had come and her family had turned their backs.

It was astonishing to Slaney. His family was not capable of turning away. Imagine the resolve: to strike out on your own and give over everything to another person, a baby.

There had been pressure to give the child up for adoption and Jennifer had decided against it. That was resolve. That was what she wore, like a garment, and what had made him crazy horny and insane with love: the resolute independence that lit her up.

Because he felt certain he would never love like that again. They weren’t who they would become. They were too young.

They couldn’t have said, I am this or that. They had been making it up as they’d gone. They’d made it up together. But they also knew who they were better than they would ever know again.

In the morning he woke on the floor in Hearn’s living room and Hearn was making chicken sandwiches in the kitchen and he said they had to get to the airport. He tossed Slaney a sandwich wrapped in wax paper and a bottle of ginger ale.

Let’s roll, he said. Hearn got in the car and patted himself all over.

The keys, he said. They were in the ignition.

A New Velocity

Mexico

What was the
word his mother would have said: not vamp. A word that sounded like something part rodent, part Venus: a mink or sex kitten. Minx? Not minx. Something bold and fast.

This is Ada, Carter said. She’s coming with us.

Don’t leave me alone with her, Slaney thought. She had taken one of Carter’s smokes from his silver case and she was looking around the patio for a light.

The eyes on her. She had eyes that were two different colours. One was blue and the other was hazel. Black eyeliner. He tried to figure out which eye was the most beautiful, but they were both beautiful.

An old-fashioned word his mother used about a particular kind of girl.

Ada slouched in her chair so she could rest her head on Carter’s shoulder. Shaggy blond hair, a red bikini under a loose peasant blouse embroidered with red poppies. The whole patio checking her out. Slaney saw three different men patting their pockets for a match.

He thought he might punch Hearn’s lights out if he ever got near him again. He wasn’t going to Colombia with a chick on board. Forget it. Bad luck. She looked to be about twenty if she was a day.

We saw a giant squid on the way down, Ada said.

Some dolphins, Carter said.

But it’s a boring stretch, isn’t it, Cyril? We were doing maybe a hundred and twenty-five miles a day, going about ten knots.

It’ll be longer on the way back, he said.

We might have died of boredom if it wasn’t for the squid, Ada said. She ran her fingers through her hair, tugging at the tangles. The clouds of ink, she said. These long beautiful tendrils.

Very rare sighting, Carter said.

It’s a sea monster is what it is, she said.

Some kind of smoky word his mother had for women younger than herself who were too glamorous for their own good. A partly ironic word that held a glint of admiration.

I’m a pretty fair sailor, aren’t I, Cyril? Ada said.

Hearn hadn’t told Slaney about the girl. Hearn hadn’t said. They’d partied all night, and Hearn hadn’t thought to mention. He’d driven Slaney to the airport in a convertible, stoned out of his mind, passing everything on the road, nearly killing them twice.

Hasta luego, Hearn said, dumping Slaney’s blue suitcase and tearing away from the curb.

Carter had now taken the tassel from the silk drawstring on the neck of Ada’s peasant blouse in his lips. She tugged it away and limply slapped his cheek with the saliva-soaked bit of fluff. He submitted to the mock beating.

You. (
slap
) Be. (
slap
)
Good, she said. She mushed her hand all over his face and pushed it away from her and he swung it back right away, nuzzled her shoulder.

Carter was a slum landlord, amateur actor, father of four, loving husband, philanderer, and sailor. He produced the British farces and annual Shakespeare productions at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John’s. Lunatic.

He’s a good laugh, Hearn had said.

Slaney had been in Carter’s Jaguar once when they were going to pick up a stash and Carter had stopped to get the rent from a three-storey hole he owned on Bond Street. A garbage bag taped up to a broken window and an old fellow coming out to the curb with his welfare cheque.

Treats the boat like a baby, Hearn had said.

Cyril was in his mid-forties. He was a man who surrounded himself with people a couple of decades younger. People said sophisticated. They didn’t mention bald.

A beaut of a boat, Hearn had said. Wait until you see her.

Cyril had a way: you didn’t think bald. You didn’t think short.

Ada excused herself. She said she was going to visit the ladies’.

Be right back, she said. She gripped Carter’s hand and took her time letting go, the tips of their fingers touching, touching, and then she turned and walked away. The walk on her.

It’s my boat, Carter said. I’m the captain. What I say goes.

I thought you were married, Slaney said. There was a celery stick in Carter’s drink and he stirred and tapped it against the rim of the glass and laid it down on the table. I thought you dried out.

I’ll tell you something, Cyril said. But he didn’t go on. He didn’t tell Slaney anything at all. He drank down the remains in the glass, raised a finger in the air as if testing the direction of the wind. A waiter in a bow tie replaced his empty glass with a full one.

Are you kidding me? Slaney asked.

She’s coming with us, Carter said. It’s my boat. I make the decisions. Besides, we need her to sail the damn thing. Two of us can’t manage it alone. She’s a fine sailor. She can sail circles around me.

I thought you were a family man, Slaney said. The wife, the kids.

I’m leaving my wife, he said. This is love. Ada and I are in love. You know it when you feel it. I feel it. You feel it, David, and you’re helpless before it.

Call me Knight. Doug Knight.

Okay, Doug. You know it when you feel it.

The door of the plane sliding open yesterday and the heat billowing in. The heavy air, it had just rained and stopped raining in the same instant, and the warm tar smell and the rundown airport and Mexicans, shades of brown and reddish brown and olive and black, black hair.

The dogs at the luggage carousel. Two dogs had sniffed aggressively at Slaney’s jeans. He was afraid for his balls. A wet nose prodding his balls, teeth gently grazing. Manic panting and slaver.

Try to pretend nothing out of the ordinary is happening when there’s a dog’s snout driven halfway up your arse. They could smell it on his clothes from the party the night before. Or they were smelling his fear.

Guards wandering through the air conditioning with rifles over their shoulders had stopped to look. But just as quickly as they had been on him the dogs leapt away. One was on the carousel sniffing the seam of a big black suitcase and it disappeared under the rubber flaps at the end of the carousel that led to the loading zone. The other dog had a child pressed against a pillar. A tiny girl with big eyes and her tummy sucked in, holding herself away from the dog’s teeth.

He got a taxi to the hotel. They drove past four men on the side of the road lifting a squealing hog. A rope through the animal’s mouth, looped around to tie its legs, and the noise out of it. Honking more than squealing, full of terror.

The green of the ocean under his window, the hot sand. He’d checked in and splashed water on his face. It was just one night. He’d meet Carter in the morning by the pool as Hearn had instructed and they’d head to the marina right away.

Nobody said a girl.

Hearn must have known and he kept his mouth shut.

Carter picked up the celery stick and cracked it in half and crunched down on it. Then his whole face changed. It was as though years fell away, or he had sobered up. Slaney turned to look behind him. It was the girl. Ada was coming back from the john. Maybe Slaney’s mother didn’t have a word for this kind of girl.

There she is, Carter said. He drew her chair closer to him, making the legs clatter across the marble. He touched the girl’s cheek, moving a strand of hair, tucking it behind her ear. She kissed his nose. She took his hand in hers and caught one of his knuckles in her teeth and growled.

Methinks Himself would like another drink, she said. The truth was, she could have been his daughter. She was younger than Slaney.

There’s my girl, Cyril said. There she is.

I am glad to meet you, Doug, she said. What an adventure. A couple of weeks ago I was working as a receptionist in my father’s office. And now look at me. Cyril swept me off my feet.

I certainly tried, Carter said. You were the most beautiful girl in Toronto. I had to steal you away from all those other guys.

We met at a gala dinner and dance and he swirled me off my feet, she said.

Slaney didn’t want the girl on the boat. Jesus Christ. He didn’t want this beautiful stupid girl on the boat with him. He would take Carter aside and tell him to send her back on the plane. He didn’t care where Carter sent her. She was not getting on the boat. Nobody said the word anymore. Sexed or vexed or kitten. Vixen.

Hoist the Sails

The sailing was
perfect for the first two days. They saw dolphins and a whale and Carter caught fish off the side and Ada gutted and cooked them.

Carter uncorked a bottle of wine he’d been saving for the occasion.

I think you’ll find this very pleasant, he said.

We’re celebrating our engagement, Ada said.

I’d be very much surprised, Carter said, while pouring Slaney a glass, if this is not the best wine you’ve ever tasted in your life, young man.

Cyril is developing my palate, Ada said.

He’d only poured a splash and Slaney looked at it with disbelief.

You have to taste it, Carter said. Swish it around in your mouth. Slaney tasted and said it was good and Carter filled his glass and Slaney drank it down in three big gulps.

Bought this in France, Carter said, when my first son was born. Slaney saw that Ada didn’t flinch at the mention of the child. She knew about Carter’s wife and believed the woman would be better off without a husband who didn’t love her.

She had convinced herself that the wife would be better off.

Or: there was nothing that could be done about the wife.

Or: she didn’t think about the wife.

Ada was reading murder mysteries and Hemingway and she had a Fitzgerald and a really good Dashiell Hammett, she said, and when she was done she tossed them over the side. She didn’t lift her face from the pages but she’d raise her wineglass and wave it back and forth and Carter would hop up to pour for her. She’d read three Agatha Christies in two days.

Did you know she mysteriously disappeared for a while? she asked Carter.

Who did, darling?

She had a nervous breakdown, Ada said. She just disappeared. Ada closed the book and sat up straight, looking hard at the horizon as if she’d just figured something out.

The big reveal, she said. That’s my favourite part.

Why are you reading those stupid things? Carter asked.

There was a moment when Ada was at the wheel and Slaney was behind her and he had to lean in and she was between his arms and she glanced back at him to ask a question and her expression was innocent and avid.

She talked about knots and longitude and the sextant with its mirrors and spyglass. Lining up the sun, the horizon, and a star. She was quick with the math of it. She did not acknowledge his chest brushing against her spine. She was doing the math in her head. Figuring the speed and miles they had to cover.

They hit rough water around the coast of Costa Rica and they had winds of twenty knots and once the waves were ten feet.

Slaney went up every fifteen minutes to check the rigging and he had Ada go and check it while he slept. But he hardly slept. A half-hour, here and there.

Carter was drunk for the two rough days, and Ada was exhilarated. Her hair stood out like a flag and she’d had a straw hat she’d tied down with a scarf but it flew off anyway, the brim flapping like a wounded bird.

They were going very fast, smacking down hard on the backs of the waves, and Slaney felt it too: the exhilaration. Lashings of warm rain against his bare chest. He could hardly keep his eyes open on deck, the rain was so hard. The sleepless joy.

He was out he was out he was out.

What he felt was freedom. It was more potent than he had ever imagined or remembered while he was in jail. Potent because it had been lost and regained.

They should have been going ten knots at most and there were times they were going twelve. The wind was thirty knots and it felt like it might tear them asunder. They loved it. It terrified them. All the wave-sparkle and crashing down. The knocking from side to side. Carter’s empty whisky bottle rolled across on the floor and rolled back.

They squeezed past each other in the galley, Slaney and Ada, and the thrust of a wave flung her against him and she pushed him away, hard, with both hands flat on his chest.

But they’d looked in each other’s eyes and he thought:

Well met.

Hail fellow, well met. That greeting they used in old-fashioned books about robbers and rebels, anarchic and quaint, the kind of thing Robin Hood might say to his Merry Men, or the Three Musketeers.

But it was more than that. Just a brief glance that went deep. Her hands on his chest because the waves had toppled her into him. They weren’t well met at all. Another phrase, from a different kind of book: undoing.

She would be his undoing.

Whatever he saw in her eyes: it was modern and harsh and willing. It wasn’t brotherly.

On the fifth day the water was calm. The coast was so green and close they thought they could smell the earth.

Let’s go swimming, Doug, she said. Let’s get in.

Maybe Carter had drunk everything on board. He was snoring his head off.

Kicking

There were thirteen
of us, Slaney said. Would have been fifteen but two were crib deaths.

He was lying on a blanket he’d dragged up from the bunk. His eyes were closed and the sun was flaring orange on the inside of his eyelids. Seven days on the water. Carter was below deck frying the fish he’d caught that afternoon. They could smell the onions. Slaney heard the suntan lotion.

She had a suntan lotion that squirted and spat from a brown plastic bottle that was warm to the touch and the cream came out in a warm squiggle and oil seeped away from the cream on the palm of her hand. She smoothed it over her legs and she did her arms.

Want me to do your back? he said. He didn’t open his eyes. He wanted to listen to her.

I’m lying on my back, she said. She was resting on her elbows, he figured, looking out to sea. For a while they didn’t say anything and then it felt like she was going to speak. He thought he could feel that. But she lay down flat and said nothing. She lifted her back a little and settled her shoulders.

He heard Carter banging around in the galley, frying up some lunch for them.

Slaney tingled all over, the water evaporating from his skin, leaving a salty residue. They’d been diving over the side, he and Ada, and pulling themselves up on the ladder; they’d splashed each other, little splashes with their fingers, treading water, or skimming the top of the water with the sides of their hands, sending up sheets of splash and was it ever warm.