by Daniel Braum
Steven registered movement on the dock from the corner of his eye. He walked a few yards to see better. Flicks of rain hit his face. Geckos chirped frantically. The moonlight on the lagoon illuminated a pair of yellow eyes just above the water.
At the edge of the dock, a girl was tied between two docking posts. A woman stood before her, raising her arms to the sky. Their shapes blurred like an inky thing from the deep.
Steven ran to the dock. The wind rushed past his ears, drowning the jungle sounds. The dock’s planks rattled beneath him.
Gypsy Woman stood at the edge of the dock, before the frail girl. Steven recognized her as the young girl from the boat. Her hair spun in swirls, as if in the grip of tiny storms. Wind rushed around and the air felt heavy, full of moisture.
“Go away, man from the boat,” Gypsy Woman said with a fierce calm. In the night, with her face in shadows, she was more than the exotic woman from the boat, more than the mourner in the graveyard.
Behind her, the girl slumped between the two posts, barely straining the bonds. Welts covered her wrists where the ropes bound her. Her eyes were blank and a slight mist rolled off her skin, as if she were taking in all the moisture and could hold no more.
“What the hell is going on here?” Steven asked.
Elise filled his mind, her hair swaying in the water as she drowned.
A line of water trickled from the corner of the girl’s mouth. The air tingled with the kinetic energy of the moment before a cloudburst.
“I’m untying her,” Steven said.
Gypsy Woman moved, blocking his way.
“You don’t understand! The sea must have her!”
For an instant they were close, closer than on the boat, close enough to kiss. He didn’t want to hit her; perhaps he could push her out of the way.
Pain radiated from his shins and his legs buckled as she swept his legs, sending him crashing into the fishing rods. He hit the planks and the pails fell off the dock with a splash. Lights from the house flashed on. Something hard hit him. Her elbow? Her knee? He put his arms up to defend himself.
Instead of hitting him again, Gypsy Woman lunged for the girl. Steven threw himself forward and grabbed the back of her calf. She fell and her own momentum sent her sliding off the edge into the water.
Steven stood up and began to untie the girl’s restraints. Mist poured off her as if she were dry ice. Her wet hair hung in front of her eyes and stuck to her face.
Gypsy Woman yelled from the water. “Don’t let Sandrine be free!”
Steven picked up the girl and carried her onto the boat. He placed her inside the small cabin, untied the lines from the dock, and started the engine.
The wind blew fiercer and rain spilled from the sky as the boat pulled away from the dock into the rocking waves.
****
The boat neared the reef when the rain began to come down hard. Steven wasn’t sure what to do, so he stopped.
The girl lay on the floor among a length of fishing line and a few empty beer cans rolling from the swell. Her features were Mexican with a bit of the Mayan nose, though she was thin and lanky. Mist continued to pour from her skin, as if from her pores and her cuts. Inscriptions and characters in black marker or grease-stick ran up her arms and around her neck. Steven recognized one, spiral arms around a circle, the icon for a hurricane.
Steven watched her for any slight rise and fall of her chest. If she was breathing it was too faint for him to tell. He took a deep breath himself and realized the boat was perfectly still, the wind quiet and the rhythmic lap of the waves gone.
The boat’s lights flickered, then blacked out. A faint glow emanated from the girl like moonlight on mist. Steven sensed movement in her, then a gust of wind blew from inside the room, stirring the beer cans.
The girl sat up. She turned her bruised body as if to see the room better, then held out her hands and looked at them. A sound like the wind through palm trees escaped her awkwardly moving lips.
She rubbed her arms, erasing some of the markings.
“Something is very wrong for us to speak this way.” Tendrils of thin, almost transparent mist wafted from her nose. Her hair lifted from the growing wind around her.
“I do not mean to hurt, yet I care not if I do,” she said. “I need to blow, to move, to pour. All I know is to storm.”
Steven heard Gypsy Woman’s voice in his head, yelling to kill her. Despite the moisture everywhere, his throat was dry and constricted. The mist rolling off her looked natural, almost beautiful, yet he knew he looked upon something not meant for him to see, not meant to even be.
The girl shuddered. She looked at her shaking hands. Slowly she curled her fingers, stopping short of a fist. As she did, her neck tensed and the shaking moved to her jaw.
“This is so strange,” she said, fluttering her fingers slowly. “It is time to go. Already this experience fades.”
Steven pictured rubble and wrecked houses, all the people on the island, the headstones beneath palm trees stripped of leaves.
The girl fell back to the bench with a soft thud. The faint glow from her skin faded. Mist rolled off and away from her. Steven put his hand over her mouth. No breath. He searched for a pulse and found nothing.
As Steven checked her mouth again, a steady exhalation of moist air left her with a hiss like air leaving a balloon. He put his head to her chest and heard movement in her lungs. The hiss became a whistle, then a roar.
Wind rushed from her open mouth, blasting out windows and pushing Steven to the wall. Steven saw the girl thrashing about like an airborne scarecrow as the storm escaped her body. The boat lurched as if cresting a huge wave and Steven slid across the floor and slammed into the other side of the cabin. His ears popped from the building pressure. He felt blood drip from his ear and roll into his hair from the wind.
Mist streamed from the girl and whisked out of the windows, then in an instant all was still. The girl dropped to the floor, limbs splayed. The lights flickered and came on. He stuck his head out of the window. Above, moonlight streamed down from the clear sky. A ring of clouds raced away from the boat.
The storm was taking form around him. The boat bobbed in the calm, in the gentle eye. He pictured the destructive spiral arms, like the symbol on the girl, moving over the island.
He heard Gypsy Woman’s words in his head, “The sea must have her.”
He picked up the lifeless girl, took her out of the cabin, and tossed her over the side. She seemed to tumble gently, head over heels, as she disappeared into the depths. Steven hoped the sea, or whatever forces wanted the hurricane, would be satisfied with her, or her empty shell.
He tried to speak but could barely move the air out of his throat.“Stay away from the island, please,” he managed to whisper.
Steven started the throttle. He hurt all over and needed to get to shore to warn everyone; the nameless tourists, the young girl on the swing, all the divers, Ricardo, his kid helper and Angie. There was no high ground to run to.
He steered the boat back to the main dock where he had arrived in the morning. The water level had dropped so much that the dock was above his head. The boat bottomed out with a screech. Fredrico’s words echoed in his head, “We didn’t stick around to see the water come back.” The storm and inevitable tidal wave were coming.
Steven jumped out and sloshed through the last fifty feet of knee-deep water to shore. Front Street was empty. He ran to the lights of the Lazy Iguana. He could hear the reggae and the sound of the crowd.
The wind beat against the roof, ripping up brown fronds.
He reached the stairs and pushed his way up, knocking a beer out of a laughing diver’s hand. At the top, Steven yelled, “Take cover! The Hurricane is coming!”
Those near him who heard, laughed. A man pointed to the fronds swirling like out of control kites in the strong wind.
Steven leaned over the railing and saw a wall of water rolling over the reef. He watched the man’s drunken smile leave his face a
s he saw the water racing towards them.
The man yelled and ran to the bar. Within seconds the blasting music was cut and the catwalks and stairs filled with people running. Steven could hear the rumble of the water above the screams. He stood still. There was nowhere to run.
The wave rushed over him, pushing him into the frame of the Lazy Iguana and tossed him about with the dirt and palm leaves, uncaring, as if he were a stick. It forced itself down his throat as he tried to breathe. As the air left him, he thought it was a fitting revenge for depriving the sea of its prize that it should have him.
Despite the turbulent thrashing, he felt calm, the calmest he had felt since losing Elise. He saw her face in front of his, in the spinning water. She kissed him and he wondered if he were still alive. He saw her eyes—swirling green and blue and black, like the ocean, as he lost consciousness.
****
Steven woke up on the beach to the shining sun. The remains of the seaside graveyard and the Caribbean Paradise’s cabanas littered the shore. The palm trees were stripped bare and a few coffins jutted out of the ground. The white cross marking Gypsy Woman’s grandfather’s grave defiantly stood. Steven looked up. The Lazy Iguana’s thatched roof was gone but the twisted framework somehow still remained.
“Ha! Hah!” a voice said. “Bob has protected this place.”
Steven rolled over. A few yards away sat a diver, who he recognized from the party, trying to light a water-logged cigarette with a lighter that wouldn’t spark.
Further down a half dozen people walked along the shore, apparently looking for survivors among the debris. He recognized Gypsy Woman’s long hair and sparkling rings even from far away.
One of the men saw Steven and the diver and yelled.
Gypsy Woman came closer, stopped, then ran to Steven.
“You,” she yelled and began hitting him. Her blows were wild and had no force. She turned her head to the white cross and began crying.
“Go slow,” the diver said. “We’ll rebuild.”
It seemed a hollow consolation but then Steven realized it is all you can do when everything is washed away. In his mind’s eye he saw himself painting the Caribbean Paradise with flourishing palm trees, and white cabanas with new roofs. He closed his eyes and saw Elise, not drowned, but diving deep in the blue where she was happiest. Kicking her fins gracefully, she descended from the blue, into the black. When he could no longer make out her form he opened his eyes to see Gypsy Woman’s tear-soaked face.
“The world works in strange ways,” Steven said, aware he was feeding her own words back to her. “Who are we to think we can interfere or understand?”
“I hate it. I hate it,” she said with her last punch.
Steven inhaled, grateful that the gentle humid air not the turbulent ocean filled his lungs. Like a spirit given substance he felt the air’s unseen bond. The same air he took inside him, had been or would be inside Gypsy Woman and all the others. He pictured it in his painting, swirling colored lines from everyone’s mouth, meeting and mingling in the palm trees. He exhaled. Sandrine was gone. The only certainty now was the sun and sand, the wind and waves, and his next breath.
MYSTIC TRYST
Bright tropical fish circled the coral head picking at colorful fans swaying in the current. Through the crystal water I saw my favorites: the lemon-yellow butterfly, the tomato-red clown with three black-lined white stripes, and the little iridescent green one that shimmered pink and orange in the light. Seeing them again felt good, like I was back with Kendra but before all the fighting. Clouds of darting fish broke up and reformed in syncopation to my heartbeat. The three fish just floated and stared.
I knew from hours of watching the little guys that they had only one expression, a cute almost-smile. Now, from how they regarded me, mouths eerily opening and closing, they actually appeared distressed and unsettlingly aware.
Go on. Pick at some nice seaweed, I thought, and swam closer. The shadowy crevices and caves in the coral were full of murky dark shapes. One of them shifted and I felt its hunger. My heart raced, jolting out of time with the rhythms around me. I swished at the fish in warning, but they weren’t concerned. I felt myself lifting and I rose through long streaming beams of grainy sunlight. The sandy bottom receded, the fish tiny flitting dots. I floated up and up, the presence in the cave watching me. The lap and burble of the waves above grew louder and louder…
****
I followed the fountain’s murmur from somewhere in the depths of sleep to that eyes-closed-half-awake state. I could still feel the dreamy warm water and sun on my back. I blissfully re-settled into the couch. The session from hell wasn’t till eleven and I had no intention of waking or even thinking about the drums until I heard my watch-alarm’s nasty little beep.
A familiar tingle bloomed on the back of my neck; the prickly feeling I was being watched, by the cat no doubt about to wake me with a gentle paw to the face.
I reached for her and opened my eyes but she wasn’t next to me at all. She was with Kendra, in her new place across the park, along with the juicer, the bread maker, the salt-water tank, plasma TV, our bedroom set, and the Pilates machines.
Dim streetlamp light filtered in, keeping the long sparsely furnished room in haze and shadow. The heat hadn’t come on for the year yet and the late September nights were already foreshadowing the cold to come. As my eyes adjusted, I wondered where my new kitten, Nicholas was. I got him a week after Kendra and I split. I had kept the apartment, which, along with peace of mind and my share of the Lotus songs’ rights, was what I wanted.
I clinked my nails on the empty Heineken bottle on the coffee table, a sound he couldn’t resist. I could squeeze in another twenty minutes of lounging before I had to get ready. “Nikkie,” I called, surprised he hadn’t come running.
I spotted the little devil across the room, standing in the corner next to my cymbal bag, his paws all perfectly tucked in. His tail twitched like he was tracking a fly.
I clinked the bottle again. He acknowledged me with a chirp, and went back to watching whatever he was watching.
I propped myself up to take a look just as the phone rang. Was I late? I’m sure the corporate record company puppets they called a band these days wouldn’t care, but Morty was producing and he had always done me good. I fumbled for the phone.
Kendra’s number flashed on the screen and a pang of fear hit me.
Why would she call? The papers just became final and it’d been about a month since our last rendezvous, after the big Zildjian party.
I thumbed talk. “Hey. Is everything alright?”
“You took them,” she said.
She sounded okay. Pissed, but okay.
“Took what?” I asked. What the hell had I taken? She had everything she wanted. Nothing of hers was here anymore.
“You know,” she accused. “It’s our destiny. Every wrong I try to right you throw a monkey wrench into.”
I pictured the moment I saw her at the party. Black slacks and a sheer top hugged her tall, lean frame. Her long hair was back in a single braid, streaks of natural brown growing in beneath the last bleach job. A simple turquoise choker brought out her deep green eyes. She stared at me when I entered like the night we first met backstage on the Mystic Tryst tour. Two hours and three times that many drinks later, we were back at the apartment ripping our clothes off like it was twenty years ago, feeling the exact opposite of what I felt from her now.
“I’m half asleep,” I said. “And I gotta get ready for a session, for Morty. I’m going to hang up unless you tell me what you’re talking about.”
“The fish,” she said. “They’re with you.”
Funny, I was just dreaming about the fish. Kendra was incredibly smart and had killer instincts, but this time she was just plain wrong. I had watched the movers take the neglected and green-crusted thing myself.
“You have the tank,” I said as calmly as I could, though I was getting heated. Despite all her yoga and enlightenment bus
iness she could really sock it to you when ticked off. “We just can’t keep going back and forth like this. What about our clean break?”
I braced for her to remind me that I hadn’t been clamoring for a clean break after six cocktails courtesy of Zildjian.
“Joe, don’t hang up,” she said. Her voice resonated like the long decay of a thick hand hammered earth ride. Using my real name caught me off guard. She was the only one who did. Even old Morty still used my stage name.
“I’m not wrong about this,” she said. “Look across the room.”
She was crazy. Beautiful. Impulsive. Complicated and crazy. But when the smoke cleared she was usually right. Usually.
I rubbed the sand from the corner of my eyes and took a look. Nicholas was still there. What the hell was he so fascinated with? I waited a bit and saw nothing.
“And…” I said.
“You don’t see them?” she asked.
“See what?” I called the kitten again, but he didn’t even turn his head.
“Turn off the lights, and try again,” she said.
Every wishy-washy pie-in-the-sky thing Kendra had ever done sprung into my mind. The Feng-Shui consultants. The astrologers. Chakra readers. Aura aligners. Where had it gotten us? Split apart and across the city. My stomach shifted and I felt woozy. I had walked around feeling nauseous and dizzy like this for months after the split. I wasn’t looking forward to it returning.
“Kendra, I gotta go.” I slammed the phone down, hunched back into the couch, and tried to relax. Maybe I could recapture a few minutes of my dream before I had to get ready.
I shimmied into position and let my eyes close. The room blurred into a hazy, soft focus.
Nicholas chirped, and I opened my eyes for one more glance his way. Shimmering in the dark above him was a glowing ball. I squinted and it came into focus. A puffer fish. Exactly like the spotted one I bought Kendra for our anniversary two years ago, except it was a washed out, almost translucent white like an underexposed black and white image. I sat up and saw the corner was crowded with glowing shapes. The seahorse. The lemon-yellow butterfly. The tomato clown. The little green one. Every fish we had ever tried in the tank was there.