by Kim Hornsby
He nodded. “In Minnesota.”
“That’s brave.” Tina looked into his face. “I can’t do your dives, only the academics, but Dave or Sally will dive with you.”
Jamey stared, daring her to look away. “Why can’t you?” This is what he’d been waiting for.
The pause that overtook her end of the conversation told him she was trying to think of a better excuse than a rash. Jamey was ready to call her bluff, but then a wave of surrender passed between them.
“I don’t dive…because…I see my dead husband’s body underwater.” Tina stared hard into Jamey’s face. “I’m having hallucinations that lead to panic attacks.” She gulped. “Obviously I don’t want this to be common knowledge.” He nodded.
“It’s inconvenient, at the very least.” She continued disassembling Jamey’s dive gear. “We haven’t found Hank’s body and...” Tina stopped short.
He wanted to console her, but she’d probably be uncomfortable if he did that and there was little else he could offer.
Tina’s life sucked these days. Grieving widow, not sleeping, bad dreams, business in jeopardy, can’t dive…more than the average person could handle without falling off the deep end. She probably had friends who were keeping an eye on her. Still, he had more resources than the average person, including an intimate past with Kristina Greene. It didn’t go unnoticed by Jamey that maybe fate had delivered him to Maui for a reason. He believed in fate.
At the port side of the boat, air bubbled to the surface and heads popped through. The conversation was over for now.
***
The ribbon Tina had been tying to Obi’s collar each night was always still there when she woke, a cautiously good sign. But she’d been awake every hour to check if she’d dreamed or gotten out of bed. By morning, she was exhausted.
There was no logical explanation for the strange dreams. The only way to move on was to hope it had been something to do with the medication. Doc Chan didn’t have any ideas except to ease off on the Xanax. Her doctor’s lack of knowledge and imagination concerned Tina. More than once Tina considered a quick trip to the mainland to see someone who knew more about this type of thing, but, truth was, after 9/11, flying didn’t hold much appeal and she’d rather wait to see if changing meds helped.
She and the Doc had shuffled around different doses of this and that for months until they found the best amounts of the medications that would allow her to function like a normal person. And now she was trying to give up her beloved Xanax. Some days it was the only thing that kept her from curling into a ball and giving up.
As the sky lightened, bird calls broke through the silence of the Maui morning. Doves cooed from the trees in her front yard and the bird next door began its morning ritual. The dreamless night gave Tina a glimmer of hope and, for once, she felt lighthearted, free enough to move on to other problems.
Noble.
That problem was like a battle lost. One minute they were talking like always, and the next she was falling down that slippery slope to something more than friendship. And now he’d suggested himself as her baby’s father. It was tempting to imagine Noble as a wonderful father, but she suspected he wanted sex to be a starting point for something more, even if he denied it.
Obi watched the street, his head jutting out between the deck rails. She knew her dog well enough to know he was contemplating his morning wander through the yard. Surveying the neighborhood, Tina stretched and watched Obi pad down the stairs to the enticing smells below. Yellow papayas hung from three of her trees, ready for picking, as did a cluster of lemons from the tree at the south end of the property. “Small wonders,” Hank had said about their growth of fruit and vegetables. He’d loved the domestic life. And would’ve been a wonderful father. It was Hank she’d wanted to father her child. Still, Noble... Children were drawn to him like puppies to the food bowl.
In the distance, the ocean’s surface was calm, finally. Farther out, closer to Molokai, a humpback whale jumped. By now the leviathans had mostly left the warm waters of Hawaii in a parade like exodus to the Arctic, and she wondered if this jumping whale had been left behind. She knew the feeling.
Thoughts of being pregnant, then holding a baby in her arms wouldn’t be buried as Obi sniffed the periphery of his territory in the vast yard.
Noble rounded the house. “Hey there.” “Noble.” His sudden presence surprised her.
“Howzit?” His voice held none of the sexy intonations from two nights before, and Tina was relieved to think that Noble was trying to get back to normalcy between them.
“Nice day today,” she gestured.
He crossed his arms across his massive chest and smiled up at her. “Yes, yes it is.”
They stared at each other, grinning. What was he thinking with that smile? Obi broke through the trees, stopped short when he saw Noble and barked like he didn’t recognize him.
“Obi, stop. It’s Noble. Where are you going so early?” she asked the man.
“Nowhere. Wanna come?”
Everything had sexual connotations. She hated this.
***
The Barefoot Bar was still buzzing from the sunset crowd when Jamey found two seats at the counter. The funky bar was in the heart of the Kaanapali strip of mega-hotels and a great place for a drink before deciding where to eat a meal of mahimahi or kalua pork. Jamey scanned the group of tourists who were seated in clusters in a wide U around the stage. Happy groups drank and ate while their toes dug into the loose sand under their tables. A child of about five crouched at his mother’s feet playing with a digger truck, running the toy up and down little sand hills he’d made.
Jamey ordered a beer at the bar and waited for Tina to arrive. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t stand him up even though when he asked her to meet him, she’d been hesitant. Wary.
His beer arrived and he took a swig from the dewy bottle. Glancing up, he noticed that beyond the stage, Tina walked up from the beach, like she’d just gotten off a boat. Her flip flops swung from her right hand and she waved to him with her left. No smile. Still dressed in her bikini top, a stretch of fabric hugging her hips like a last-minute addition to satisfy some dress code. He chuckled.
Didn’t she own clothes? He stood as she approached. “Do you mind sitting here at the bar?”
“Not at all.” Tina swung her backpack under the tall bar stool and hopped up. When she ordered a Corona with lime, he laughed about how some things never change. “Still Corona?” The question was meant to be an icebreaker but Tina didn’t smile. Instead she nodded and scanned the bar.
“Tina, we used to be friends, more than friends, and like it or not, that gives us a familiarity that won’t go away.” She took a deep breath.
“I see you every day trying to balance your business and your life.”
She stared at him.
“I know things have been tough.” He took a deep breath and proceeded. “I wonder if I can do anything to make life easier.”
“I’m surprised you even ask.” The musicians played the opening bars to “Honolulu City Lights” and Tina’s face softened. “This is a favorite song,” she said. The beer came and she took a long drink from the bottle.
Okay, the conversation is still alive. She hadn’t blown out the spark by changing the subject. Not really. “You have dark circles under your eyes, I couldn’t help notice.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“Is it the dreams?” Color rose in her cheeks and Jamey continued. “I know you don’t owe me an explanation, but I’d like to think the closeness we shared counts for something.” He leaned forward and stared her down like he had a right to.
Tina pursed her mouth and looked sideways, as if to collect her anger. The same resentment he’d felt for days was plastered all over her face. “It’s interesting you say that, Jamey. But, I think before you start claiming that we were friends, you need to ask yourself why we were sleeping together in the first place.”
“What do you mean?” J
amey shifted in his seat, feeling her anger like a snake about to strike.
“Why did you feel free enough to carry on with me when it was only temporary?”
Shit. Jamey rubbed his two-day growth. “Tina, I’m sorry that things turned out the way they did between us. I am. I didn’t know it would be temporary.” He looked her in the eyes and shook his head. If he couldn’t tell her about his ability to jump, he sure as hell couldn’t explain that he’d jumped her dream and found out more than he wanted to know about Kristina Greene’s future. “It wasn’t meant to be.” That had to be good enough.
“Why?” Her look bored right through his heart, as if challenging him to give her the piece of information that was the final puzzle piece she needed to forgive him.
He could say that when he got home, he found out that his ex-girlfriend was three months pregnant with his child, only to find out a month later they were having twins. Did he want to? When he left Tina that day, Carrie’s pregnancy had nothing to do with why he abandoned Tina.
Tina chugged her beer like she couldn’t wait to see the bottom of it. Like they were done.
“Look, Tina. Can’t we move on? I just wish you’d forgive me.” Ukulele music wafted through the warm Maui night as the Hawaiian duo on stage sang a song about unrequited love. Waitresses scooted through the sand with trays of Mai Tai’s and beers. A bead of sweat trickled down his chest under his T-shirt.
“I gotta go,” she said, setting her empty beer bottle on the bar.
“Wait.” He laid his hand on her forearm. “One more thing before you go. Would you be willing to try diving with me sometime? I’m not an instructor, but we’ve done a bunch of dives together and maybe you wouldn’t see Hank if you were with me.” He wanted to take her hand but didn’t.
“It wouldn’t make a difference.”
“How do you know?”
“I tried diving, and it’s a disaster.” She looked at the table top and drew a circle in the droplets of water from her beer. “Fear overtakes me, even if I don’t hallucinate.”
“But we dove the other day and you stayed down for almost the whole dive. Over twenty minutes.”
“I’m not sure how that happened, but I know that it took every ounce of strength I had to not rush to the surface.” “See? Maybe you can dive with me.” She shook her head.
“Well, then, how did you stay under with me the other day?”
She thought for a moment. “You did that thing with your eyes.”
He paused. “What thing?”
“That staring thing. It helped me continue for a bit.” Tina gave the waitress her empty, nodded at the offer of another and sat back down.
Jamey held up two fingers.
“If you hadn’t been holding my hand...I can’t lead dives. End of story.”
“We could try. What does your therapist say?”
Tina looked incredulous that he’d even asked. He’d overstepped his boundaries, something he did on a regular basis when he knew someone’s thoughts.
The beers arrived and Tina smiled warmly at the waitress. How was it she could offer kindness to someone who only brought her a beer but couldn’t even talk to him? Jamey waited. Whoever speaks first loses. Finally he couldn’t stand it. “Have you tried anything like self-talk or visualization?” He would start slow, offer benign ideas, feel her out. He’d have to approach this situation so carefully, she wouldn’t see it coming. Then he’d ease into detonating the bomb he was about to drop on Tina’s life to crack it wide open.
“Kind of. My therapist is in over her head with this one.” She squinted at him. “I’m having strange dreams. Things I can’t explain.” She shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. “And on that dive at Molokini, I saw Hank floating in front of me.” She looked into Jamey’s face. “It’s terrifying, even though realistically, I know he’s not there.” Her hands were clenched in her lap. “He looks so real.” Her voice rose in intensity and lowered in volume. “He’s injured. His head is split open, his body is decomposing.” She covered her mouth with her hand.
Jamey moved in closer. His heart felt like someone had stomped on it. “I might be able to help.” He had to offer what he could. This was not a conversation for the Barefoot Bar.
“Help me dive? Or help me forget my husband, James?”
Ah, she called him James. That might be headway. The musical duo started in on a sing-along Beatles medley, making the bar too noisy for a conversation.
Jamey leaned in to be heard. “Let’s go for a walk. I want to tell you something.” He had to tell her. Now.
Chapter 10
The way Jamey looked at her left Tina wondering if he still held some tenderness for her. Or if someone who’d dumped her so easily had felt much to begin with. If he tried anything romantic on the walk, she’d deck him. As much as any petite woman could deck an over six-foot tall trained cop and soldier. “Okay, let’s walk,” she said.
They paid the bill, crossed the boardwalk and when Jamey saw a woman trying to get her husband back in his wheelchair from the beach, he stopped.
“Here, let me help,” he said. Jamey was a nice guy; that much she knew. “No problem,” he nodded when the couple thanked him, and joined Tina. With footwear off, they continued to the water’s edge.
The cold sand felt good on Tina’s tired feet. She’d been running around all day with meetings with the bank, her accountant, and others she owed money. She squished the sand through her toes. The surf was so slight that barely enough water to be called a wave lapped gently against the beach. Ripples. “Great night for a dive.” She used to love diving at night like it was a forbidden PJ party activity, like sneaking out after midnight.
“Water looks clear.” Jamey took a deep breath, only feet away from her. “I mentioned visualization because it’s a proven method used by a lot of counselors and psychiatrists, and it works. I don’t know where you stand on this sort of thing, or if you’d be open to trying.”
Tina turned north towards the infamous Black Rock, where long ago Hawaiians made human sacrifices to their god. “Visualization doesn’t work for me. I tried it and other stuff. My grief counselor has me doing these relaxation exercises that make me fall asleep and have bizarre dreams.”
He picked up a piece of coral and threw it into the ocean. “So you’re saying you’re having hallucinations while diving and strange dreams at night?”
She nodded.
“Dreaming while asleep is extremely complex and entirely different from hallucinating.” Jamey sounded like he was lecturing to a stranger. All of a sudden, this guy didn’t seem like Jamey. “Seeing your husband’s form while diving could be a recollection from a dream.” He paused and looked at her.” Do you believe in intuition?”
“Yes.” Of course she did. She had great gut feelings on things.
“I do too.” He looked so intense.
“And you have a feeling you can get me diving again. I get it, but I’m a widow with an unrecovered body for a dead husband. Not being able to dive is only the tip of the iceberg. I’m on all kinds of meds, I can’t sleep. I’m angry. I feel like that empty shell you just threw back in the ocean.” She looked into Jamey’s face. “My problems are really big.”
“Remember that staring thing I did with you on the Molokini dive?”
“Yes.”
Jamey’s face was lit by the tiki torches wedged into the massive rock at the end of the beach.
“Tina.” He looked up as if he’d find the answer in the sky and took a deep breath. “Something you don’t know about me is that I have a type of intuition that most people don’t have. It’s stronger, more reliable.”
“Okay...” What the hell?
“I’m unbelievably accurate in what I get from my intuition.”
If he was bullshitting her, she’d leave and drive home very fast with all the windows down to clear her head.
He picked up a piece of dead coral and tossed it in his hand. “I use my intuition to help people.”
&nb
sp; She shot him a sideways look. “This is a bit much, Jamey.” “It’s true.” He turned her to face him. “For instance, I know right now that this piece of coral makes you uneasy for some reason. It reminds you of something disturbing.”
It looked like the chunk she’d brought back from the dream. “Why would coral make me feel uneasy?” Could he tell?
Jamey shrugged. “You tell me.”
What was he saying? That he was psychic? “Let’s suppose you have great intuition. How does that help me?”
“I might be able to help you figure out what’s going on with your dreams.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you read minds?” He’d better not be leading her on about all this, giving her false hope. “So you just go around reading everyone’s mind and knowing more than the rest of us?” She chuckled and dug her toes into the cool sand, her hands on her hips. What a crock.
He opened his arms wide, looking apologetic. “I don’t usually tell people this because it makes them uneasy. And it sounds cuckoo.” Jamey looked so convincing that a shiver shot through her. “In certain situations I can delve deeper into my intuition than most people.” They stared at each other. “I know things I don’t necessarily want to know. Sometimes it’s like people have a sign on them that feeds me information and I can’t look away before I see it. Sometimes it’s more subtle.”
Then she saw it for what it was. He was trying to tell her to stop grieving for Hank. The psychic angle was new, though. “Jamey, stop. I know what you’re doing.”
He interrupted. “I know, for instance, that there’s something going on with you and a man. Romantically.” He shrugged.
“You’re wrong there.” She continued walking.
“And that he is very protective of you. Something happened. Thursday night, to be exact.” “There’s no one. So there.” Her arms hugged her chest tighter. “And I know you’re worried about Obi, but you can’t bring yourself to take him to the vet, because you don’t want him to die on you too.”