by Robbi McCoy
That’s what all this was about, after all. This houseboat scheme. She was used to sailing on the San Francisco Bay and knew how calm she always felt on the water. To live on water, she had decided, would be a way, perhaps, to find some peace of mind.
CHAPTER NINE
Pouring herself another glass of wine, Jackie glanced at the wall clock. She and Gail had another hour before Pat came by to take her home. They were playing cards at Jackie’s dining room table, listening to a contemporary pop music station on the stereo. From the living room, the fish tank gave off gurgles at irregular intervals. Rooster was asleep under the table, curled up next to Hobo, Jackie’s old white cat who was easygoing enough to sleep with any of the other animals, including guinea pigs or hamsters, and whom Gail often called “Ho” because she shared her bed indiscriminately.
Jackie examined the cards in her hand, then said, “Do you have any threes?”
“Go fish,” Gail replied. “Speaking of fish, somebody called me a ‘fish cop’ today.”
“Who?”
“Some drunk I gave a ticket to for taking too many bass. He was an asshole. He asked me, ‘What kind of gun is that? Hasbro or Mattel?’”
“You could have shot him with it and showed him.”
Gail shrieked with delight at that idea. “You got any kings?”
Jackie frowned and handed over her two kings.
“People don’t take us seriously,” Gail complained. “They don’t realize we do more than give tickets to disobedient fishermen. We arrest people. We run undercover operations. There are some dangerous situations out there, like that abalone poaching ring over on the coast. Don’t think those guys wouldn’t have killed a couple wardens if they’d had the chance. And we have the same training as regular cops.”
“I know.” Jackie had heard these complaints before.
“But the pay sucks. Combine that with the public perception and it’s no wonder we’re always hurting for people. Anytime we get a good warden, he’s off to join some police department as soon as there’s an opening.”
“But not you.”
“No.” Gail held out her glass for a refill. “I love my job. Fish cop or not.”
Jackie poured more wine into both their glasses.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Gail said, “I saw that chick again the other day. She was at the hardware store. Pat and I were there getting a new flapper for our toilet. Flushing great now, by the way.”
“What chick?”
“That chick we saw when we were kayaking last week. The hot mama with the dog. She was buying a cartload of stuff. I said hi, but I don’t think she recognized me.”
“Even if she did, she wouldn’t have been friendly.”
“Why not?”
“She’s arrogant as hell!” Jackie realized that had come out a lot more forcefully than intended.
A small, suspicious smile appeared on Gail’s face. “Jacks?” She laid her cards down. “What do you know about sexy dog lady?”
“I paid her a visit,” Jackie admitted.
“No!”
Jackie nodded. “I did.”
“You’re a sneaky one, aren’t you?”
“Just being neighborly.”
“Uh-huh, sure. So tell me all about it. What’s she like? What’s she doing here? Is there a husband? Wife?” Gail’s eyes bugged out with the possibility. “Is she gay?”
Jackie laid her cards down and considered her answers as Gail leaned in with an anxious, almost comical look on her face.
“She may be gay,” Jackie said noncommittally, remembering the incredibly luxurious kisses they had shared. Despite what it felt like at the time, it had turned into a shameful memory. She didn’t want to share her humiliation with Gail. “She didn’t have much to say about herself. Her name is Stef. Just Stef. Not Stephanie or she’ll bite your head off.”
“Stef, yeah, that’s kinda butch. What else?”
“She’s living in Compton’s houseboat on Baylor Road, trying to get it fixed up to get back on the water. She’s planning to sail away into the sunset.”
“By herself?”
“Just her and the dog.”
Gail looked impressed. “Nice reconnaissance, Jacks. What makes you think she’s gay?”
Jackie balked, unprepared for the question. “Uh, you know, the usual things that add up. She’s got the lesbian lope, for instance.”
“Lesbian lope?”
“You know. That gait that when you see it, you just know.”
Gail pressed her lips together thoughtfully. “Hmm. Do I have that?”
Jackie hesitated, considering. “Yeah, you do.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t think so. But it’s not something you can see in yourself. You have to be observing. So you’d have to tell me if I did.”
“I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a lesbian lope. Sounds funny. Lesbian lope.” Gail pronounced the phrase with an exaggeratedly low tone, making it sound like something cowboys might do in a rodeo. “Can you demonstrate so I’ll recognize it when I see it?”
“I’m not sure I can. Why don’t you have Pat videotape you walking normally and play it back?”
“If I walked normally, there’d be no lesbian lope now, would there?” She laughed.
“Very funny.”
Gail leaned back in her chair, smiling. “You must be ecstatic.”
“Why?”
“A single gay woman with a luscious body, passable face. Yours for the taking.”
“Passable face?” Jackie was incredulous. “She’s gorgeous!”
Gail laughed, and Jackie realized she’d been tricked.
“But don’t get ideas. I admit I was…intrigued.”
“Intrigued? You’re so cool, Jacks. Anybody else would say they were drooling.”
“Whatever. But after talking to her a couple of times—”
“Oh! A couple of times?” Gail slapped the table with both palms and stared in amazement.
“Yeah, yeah, a couple of times, briefly.”
“Now the truth comes out. You went back for more.”
“She’s not for me,” Jackie stated flatly.
Gail’s grin faded. “Why not?”
“She’s extremely conceited and rude. She’s a loner. She made fun of me just for trying to be welcoming.”
“No kidding? She didn’t go for Stillwater’s best and most respected veterinarian? Only vet, actually, but still the best.”
“She doesn’t care who I am. She practically threw me out.”
“Maybe you need to put a little more wiggle in your waddle.” Gail blinked coquettishly.
Jackie sighed.
“A livelier worm on your hook?” suggested Gail.
“She’s not going to bite, regardless of what I dangle in front of her. She doesn’t want to be friends, even, let alone…”
“Lovers,” Gail pronounced in a sultry voice, making bedroom eyes.
“Yes. Definitely not. I can’t even imagine going there.”
“Well, I can.”
“That’s because she hasn’t spoken to you. I think she may be nuts. She actually threw a knife at me.”
“For real?”
“For real.” Jackie realized she wasn’t giving a completely accurate picture of her encounters with Stef or her feelings about her, but this version of events was the one that suited her current opinion, that Stef deserved to be left alone, just like she wanted. “Barely missed my head.”
“Wow.”
“She’s a menace.”
“Maybe I should go out there and arrest her.” Gail nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll go arrest her, cuff her to her bed and teach her to be polite...and obedient…and ladylike.”
Jackie giggled. “Fantasize all you want. The real thing isn’t worth the effort.”
“Okay, then, if you’re serious. Too bad. For you, I mean. You know I want you to be happy.”
“I am happy,” Jackie
protested.
“I mean really happy. Like clothes in a wad on the floor, skin covered in sweat happy.”
“My God, Gail, all you think about is sex.”
“And I suppose you don’t think about it?” She took a drink, looking over the rim of her glass skeptically.
Despite her anger at Stef, Jackie’s own fantasies had been progressing nonstop ever since that day, becoming increasingly graphic and salacious and often starting where the real-life incident had abruptly ended. Instead of stopping, Stef’s kisses had become more intense, turning Jackie into a quivering mass of sexually-charged protoplasm. In several of these daydreams, Stef had been unable to control herself and had torn off Jackie’s clothes and taken her right there on the sofa or the little table or the floor. In another version, instead of stomping out indignantly when Stef pulled away from her, Jackie had said, “Oh, no, you don’t. You’re going to finish what you started. Down on your knees, woman.” Stef obediently did as she was told and it just got better from there.
Jackie glanced across the table to see Gail watching her suspiciously. She felt flushed and hoped the look on her face had no resemblance to her thoughts. She picked up her cards and said, “Do you have any twos?”
In a challenging voice, Gail drawled, “Go fish.”
CHAPTER TEN
“Not bad, huh?” Stef asked Deuce after tossing him a bite of grilled crawdad.
Deuce licked his chops, looking expectantly at her in case any more treats were forthcoming. But she reserved the rest of the shellfish for herself, shaking a couple drops of Tabasco sauce on each bite. She sat in her picnic area beside the boat, relaxing after a frustrating morning. Nothing was going right today. Having no luck getting the engine running, she’d moved on to the broken propeller, but hadn’t been able to remove it. The nut was fused onto the bolt with rust. WD-40 hadn’t helped. She didn’t have a big enough wrench to apply the kind of torque necessary to break the nut free. She’d been running into complications from the beginning with this craft. It was fighting her all the way.
She turned her grandfather’s knife over in her hand absentmindedly, trying to decide what to tackle next. At least everything on the inside worked. When she’d moved in, there’d been no hot water, but that was now fixed. Hot showers never felt so good. Thankfully, the cold showers of that first week coincided with warm spring days. The interior was in good shape, considering. Now that the leaks were patched and the rotted wood replaced, everything left to do inside was cosmetic, and all of that could wait.
Thinking back over the last month, she could see she’d made some progress, but now she was wondering how likely it was that she’d ever get this bucket floating again. She was beginning to have doubts.
She remembered Jackie’s offer to help. Help would be good, especially from somebody who knew something, like a boat mechanic. But Jackie wasn’t one of those and hiring one would be a last resort. She had practically run out of money. She’d spent her savings on the boat and the new pontoon had cost a bundle. She had one more paycheck coming, then she wasn’t sure what she was going to do. At least her expenses would be small once she got on the water. No rent, just gas and groceries, which she figured she could supplement with fish. And maybe a few crawdads. She stabbed the last piece with the tip of her knife and ate it. Then she sat back in her lawn chair, leaned her head back and watched some fluffy clouds drift across the sky.
Her mind returned to Jackie. She recalled the sensation of kissing her, of holding her close, of how good that had felt. She’d been completely surprised at Jackie’s reaction. She’d expected protestations, shock and recoiling. Cursing, maybe, like, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” or whatever Jackie’s equivalent was. She had never expected to get as far as their lips touching. But once they had, it had been a tremendous challenge to stop.
Stef kept asking herself why she’d done that, why she’d kissed that woman. Just trying to shake her up? Mess with her assumptions? Scare her off? All of the above? But the move had backfired. Stef’s own assumptions, one being that Jackie was straight, had apparently been wrong. She hadn’t expected Jackie to kiss her back. She hadn’t expected the inviting pressure of her body and the eagerness of her arms. It wasn’t Jackie who’d been shaken up after all. Stef still wasn’t sure what all that added up to…if anything.
Though Jackie had seemed very eager to be friends, when she had stomped off the other day, she was steamed. She wouldn’t turn up here again anytime soon. Which was fine, Stef thought. That was the idea, to chase her away. So everything was great. Just quit thinking about her.
She sat up straighter in her chair, aimed at a shadow on a nearby tree, and threw her knife. It hit the target and stuck. She stood and stretched, reluctant to go back to work.
“I wonder if we could catch some of those tasty critters,” she said to Deuce. “There’s probably some here in our creek, don’t you think?”
Deuce lifted one ear and tilted his head, as though perplexed.
She decided she’d had enough frustration for one day, so she rummaged through the hold looking for a long-handled net she recalled seeing, and after several minutes of digging, she pulled it out. After locating a plastic bucket plenty big for a mess of crawdads, she whistled for Deuce and they walked through the rutted field to the creek.
Walking along the bank for a short distance, she found a good perch on a tree root at the edge of the water where she could look directly down into the shallows and watch for any crawdad activity. Deuce went poking around the grass and leaves nearby, exploring. Every so often, he would run through the water at the edge of the creek, gleefully sending up a spray. He was a happy dog with a puppy-like disposition, innocent, playful and sometimes dopey. He was easy to love.
Once Stef got accustomed to the look of things in the water, she could see the muddy bottom two feet below and a school of minnows swimming back and forth through the filtered sunlight. She sat peering at the mud for as long as she could stand it and saw nothing other than minnows. Maybe crawdads weren’t as ubiquitous as the town’s obsession with them implied. Or maybe they’d been fished out in preparation for the crawdad festival.
After a fruitless half hour, she stood up and looked around for Deuce. Not seeing him, she listened, but the only sound was the rustling of tree leaves. She climbed up the bank to look around the field. As she reached level ground, she heard him barking and followed the sound, scanning the landscape for a sight of him. The barks were the sort that suggested he had cornered a toad or something—joyfully excited.
As she reached a barbed wire fence, she caught sight of him hunkered down beside two beautiful brown horses methodically eating dry grass. He lunged toward one of them and barked at its back legs, then tore around in a circle and came back to his original position. He was trying to play. The horse tossed its head and swished its tail, then returned to pulling up grass. Stef didn’t know much about horses, but she didn’t think it was likely they’d feel like playing with a dog. Deuce had probably never seen a horse before, but assumed, as he did with all animals, they were potential friends. Despite their size, he didn’t seem the least bit frightened of them.
“Deuce!” she hollered, standing next to the fence. “Come here, boy!”
He looked her way, his tongue hanging out, his eyes gleaming with excitement, and ignored her, then ran at the horse again.
“Deuce!” she yelled in a firmer tone, then realized he wasn’t about to obey her. This was just too much fun. She’d have to go after him. She examined the fence to see how to pass through it. Going under seemed to be the safest bet. She put down the net and bucket and got down on the ground, on her back. She held the lowest row of wire up with her hand and wriggled under and clear of it.
As she got to her feet, she located Deuce barking at the heels of one of the horses. Then her heart leapt into her throat as the horse’s leg shot out behind it. Its hoof connected with its target. Deuce let out a terrifying yelp and tumbled backward in a clo
ud of dirt. Stef took off running. The angry horse turned to face Deuce, rearing up over him. He lay in the dirt, immobile. Dead or alive, Stef didn’t know. She knew she couldn’t reach them in time to prevent the horse from mauling her dog if that’s what he was planning. She reached for her knife, but let go of it immediately, realizing that was no option. The horse came down, its front hooves inches from Deuce’s head. As the horse reared again, Deuce shook himself and attempted to stand. He was alive! Stef yelled loudly to get the horse’s attention, then she picked up a large dirt clod and hurled it at the horse, hitting him on the flank. He turned and ran. The other horse followed.
Yelping in rhythm with his footfalls, Deuce came running, seriously limping, one side of his head covered in blood. Stef knelt down to receive him, holding him tight against her, feeling the shivering of his shoulders in her arms. He whimpered quietly, his bloody head buried against her chest.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “So, so sorry. It’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. You’re safe now.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jackie had finished giving Precious, a well-loved and well-fed Persian cat, her shots when she heard a commotion from the reception area, the muffled sound of tense conversation. She finished with Precious and scratched behind her ears, fearing the scene out front. By now she knew that excited voices like that usually heralded an emergency. “Please, not another pet to put down,” she whispered with eyes closed.
She picked up Precious and held her against her white smock, then hurried to the waiting area to find Niko speaking in his calmative tone to a woman with a golden retriever on a leash. The dog had dried blood on his snout, around his mouth, and on the fur of his neck. He also had mud caked on his flanks. The woman, whom Jackie instantly recognized as Stef, was in a similar condition, dirt all over her clothes and blood across the front of her shirt. The two of them presented an alarming scene.
“He needs to see a vet right away,” Stef insisted.
“No problem,” Niko said. “Just let me get some information.”