JANUARY 1-6
1708 Words
“The what of January?”
“Just grab a bottle, cheese and crackers if you have ‘em and come along.”
Russell dug around in the cooler, found a couple of beers. The cardboard box that was his pantry had some Ritz crackers, his absolute weakness. He slapped the package against his thigh to dislodge the worst of the wood dust from the box.
He closed up his sailboat and followed Dave down onto the floating slipway. They turned toward the far end of ‘D’ dock. The thousand masts of Shilshole Marina cluttered the night sky. To the east, brightly lit houses looked down on them from atop the high cliff. To the west, Puget Sound stretched to the moonlit peaks of the Olympics. It was clear and cold enough to freeze a sailboat’s tail, or at least his own.
“The what of January?” He repeated, his breath puffing a white cloud into the night air. He had to trot down the dock to catch up with Dave even though the man had to be in his fifties.
“The ides.”
“I thought only March had ides. The day Brutus stabbed his buddy Caesar in the behind.”
“The ides. The fifteenth of March, May, July, and October, I think. The thirteenth of all the others. And today’s the thirteenth. Sounds like a good reason for a party.”
Russell didn’t need any more prompting than that.
“Lead on, Brutus. Just be careful of any desire to do some stabbing.” They arrived at Dave and Betsy’s forty-four foot catamaran. Russell had been sorely tempted to buy one of these; they were fast, spacious, and stable as could be. Unless you got flipped. In something nasty, like a hurricane, a monohull would roll under and usually self-right, sometimes without its mast, but at least it would right. A catamaran was more stable upside down than rightside up. A little too wild for him. It would also be a hell of a lot of boat to single-hand in a storm.
He’d befriended Dave just to get a look inside and they’d spent hours talking about ocean crossings and ports of call. Russell had helped a buddy do the New York-Bahamas run on his friend’s J/boat, but that was a long step from crossing one of the oceans. Dave and Betsy had taken the Lark on a four-year tour that included both capes, Good Hope and Horn and all of the seven seas.
“Ponds,” Betsy had corrected him. “Not seas. We talk about crossing the ponds, not so scary that way.”
Still scared him either way.
He clambered aboard and joined the crowd of ‘D’ dock liveaboards. Teri and Tom were curled up on one of the settees, a bottle of cheap white wine in front of them. He’d been here barely two weeks and he already knew of their reputation. It had been hard to miss actually.
They had terrible fights when running in the local races, and screamingly good, or at least loud s*x when at dock. Few secrets could be kept through a few millimeters of fiberglass hull. Even his Lady’s double-plank oak hull wasn’t going to muffle all that much if he ever had a flesh-and-blood lady aboard. Most sailors were discreet, Teri obviously didn’t care or didn’t think to. He eyed the incredibly tight sweater on the shapely dishwater blond. Or maybe she liked bragging.
Russell slid in next to Perry. The old man had a bottle of decent whiskey capped beside him, a small tumbler in his massive fist. He rarely spoke, but Betsy had told Russell that the old-timer had been born on a tugboat off Vashon Island. Had worked boats, mostly log tugs and fishing tenders, for the eighty years since. He lived on a 1904 Arrow tug, one of only four built that year, that he was restoring it a little way down the dock.
Dave and Betsy had made their money then moved to the boat and the seas. He drank Heineken and she had a glass of red wine in a short, wide glass that wouldn’t tip easily at sea.
Others he didn’t know drifted in behind him, each arriving with a cold blast of the chill January air and a muttered curse from those closest to the hatch. As the crowd grew, he refused to be nudged from the small table with Perry and Dave. Soon, people were perched on counters or squatting by the windows.
“What do you do to keep yourself busy?” Dave grabbed a couple of his Ritz crackers.
“Other than my boat, you mean?”
“Other than your boat.”
“I take pictures. Used to.” Russell thought of the images of Angelo and the lighthouse still in his camera. “Still do.”
“Any good?”
Dave had asked the question, but it was Perry who inspected him with blue eyes shaded by a black Greek sailor’s hat, the rest of his face mostly lost in a white beard and mustache that would have put Santa Claus to shame.
“Used to make a pretty decent living at it.”
Perry nodded and sipped his whiskey.
“Good,” Dave agreed. “Need something to give purpose to your wanderings. Betsy there is a marine botanist. Must’ve logged five thousand samples over the last decade. She has this little rig that lets her grab water at surface, then one, two, five, and ten meters all at once. Keeps her moving ahead. She catalogs the whole mess and ships the data to the Scripps Institute. They love her for it, though I’d hate to be staff grad student when she sends in a case. Me, I’m a writer. Spent thirty years doing technical writing. Now I’m doing the travel narrative thing and might do a fiction book set in the seaports of the world. What are you gonna do?”
“You mean about ‘moving ahead’?” Russell munched on a couple of crackers and opened another bottle of beer. “Hadn’t really thought about it.”
Hadn’t thought at all really. Back at Thanksgiving—when he’d made a joke to match every one of Angelo’s ideas about what to do with his life—Angelo had finally pulled a next-year’s calendar off the wall and heaved it at him.
“Here, you big i***t. Buy a sailboat. Sail to each one on the calendar. By the end of the year you’ll be good enough to sail outta my life and let me get some peace.” It had taken him only two days to find the Lady and he’d bought her before her hull was even wet after the boat appraiser was done with it.
Angelo had laughed when Russell told him of his purchase. “Getting pretty sick of you moping on my couch, when can you move?” Three weeks of s*****y, but he’d got her watertight and moved aboard just yesterday afternoon.
Hadn’t thought about what it meant to be a liveaboard; he simply did it.
He glanced about the crowded cabin. Liveaboards came in two main varieties: couples and single men. Not a single woman in the whole crowd. Teri had gathered a small court, all of whom she flirted with shamelessly. Tom was approaching meltdown, even though she was snuggled back against him while she flirted with the others.
“We know what those two will be doing.”
Perry and Dave glanced over and answered in unison. “Fighting.” Perry’s first word of the evening.
“Can’t imagine them making it out of the Sound, never mind anywhere further.”
“She’s a handful, that one.” Dave took another cracker. “They’ve been married and living on that thirty-two footer for two years now. Trying to pay off the boat so they can go offshore. Don’t think they’re any closer to it than when they started.”
Russell would rather go solo any day of the week. Then he looked at Betsy. She and a couple he didn’t know were lounging together against the galley counters sharing gentle conversation and easy laughs. Both women were healthy and attractive. Any lack in the raw s****l appeal that Teri radiated was more than balanced by… What was the word to describe the tableau of friends? Comfortable. They were comfortable together, with those around them, with this setting, this boat.
It just took the right kind of woman. Maybe he’d find one. If not, he’d go and trust to his journey. He’d know the right one when she showed up.
Funny to have a boat now. As a kid he’d always dreamed of sailing around the world. The streetlights that had shown up through his Upper West Side Manhattan bedroom windows had painted a map of shadow and light that he had peopled with pirates and discovery.
In all his boyhood dreams, he’d never pictured a woman on the boat. Of course he hadn’t hit puberty then either. At first, he’d imagined he and his grandfather sailing together. After he’d died, Russell had always pictured himself solo without really thinking about it. Once puberty hit, he’d thought about women and not sailboats. He hadn’t remembered the boats until Angelo heaved the calendar at his head. He tried to mentally place Melanie aboard, but it wouldn’t stick. And that was far more likely than Angelo’s wine lady. There was a laugh.
Solo. Why had he always pictured himself sailing solo?
“Careful what you wish for, buddy, you’re gonna get it,” he muttered under his breath.
Maybe he could wish for this. A couple dozen people all crowded together. Nothing more important to do than spend some time with each other. Thank god no one sidling up to discuss the next shoot, no one after his parents’ money. He definitely wouldn’t miss someone barfing while they held themselves upright with a palm in the middle of one of his ten-thousand dollar photographs.
He’d given his whole damn art-photo collection to MoMA on permanent loan. Pete, the head of the art handling team who’d come to cart it off, had practically cried on his shoulder. His diminutive wife actually had—oddly enough at a tiny tintype self-portrait by a young Bourke-White.
Russell was already closer to Dave and Perry than he’d been to most of the people at the final studio party. The people here from Perry to Dave and even Teri were more real than any of his former…associates—except perhaps Melanie.
He looked back at Perry and Dave with a shrug, “I’m just gonna sail.”
Dave looked a bit unsure but didn’t say anything.
Perry poured another short whiskey and rolled the glass back and forth between his callused palms. The surface rippled with golden light in the heavy cut glass.
“Pictures.”
He and Dave faced the old salt who continued to study his glass.
“Pictures? I dunno. Boats and port towns?” Russell offered. A real yawn once spoken aloud.
“Quiet streets and pretty women?” Dave added. That was a little better.
Perry slid back into his silence, but Russell would swear there was a smile going on somewhere behind that bushy mustache.
“What?”
The old man just shook his head and sipped his whiskey. With a wink, he took a couple of Russell’s Ritz crackers.
- Writer
