Ocean Burning

by Henry Carver

  The weather was always nice in Mexico. Compared to the five months of winter I had endured growing up in the Midwest, it was heavenly. Sitting on my little balcony, I turned my face up at the sun, that glowing ball of warmth and happiness, and for the umpteenth time I resolved never to have to own a winter coat ever again.

  The little radio crackled. It was a hand-held walkie, not part of my boat’s built in electronics. I only used it for communication between my slip and the marina office.

  “Conway, estas ahi?” The soft feminine voice barely made it out of the speaker.

  Stretching out one lanky arm, I dragged the walkie-talkie toward me by the rubber antenna, refusing to move from my spot in the sun. Thumbing the big green button on the side almost seemed a trial. My eyes closed again, and I pressed the button.

  “Yeah, I’m here,” I said.

  “Algunas personas estan aqui.”

  “There are people everywhere, Maria. What’s it got to do with me?”

  “They want to charter a boat, Conway,” she said.

  I opened my eyes and stared at the handset, then closed them and focused on the heat of the sun on my face. Tried to think. It wasn’t like Maria to send customers my way. And this was the off season—ten or more boats were just sitting here in the marina, every one of them aching for the business. And lately, she and I weren’t exactly seeing eye to eye. Maybe this was a good sign.

  I thumbed the stiff green button again. “Does this mean I’m off your shit list?”

  “They asking for you, Conway. Otherwise I wouldn’t even point out you exist, you mamoncete.”

  That was more like it.

  “Well, thanks anyway.” It had been on my mind to win Maria back over, but I had yet to actually take any action in that regard. I made a mental note to get it done before spring break. “Send ‘em down,” I said.

  I stood up and stretched, feeling the click and pop of joints all over, hearing the worst of them. I’d been sitting for too long, and I mean that in the broader sense. The Regal Purple hadn’t been out to sea in over a month. I’d been living on it, catching what fish I could and eating the rest of my food out of cans. Most of those cans were still down below and needed cleaning up, among other things.

  I reeled in my line and stowed my rig, folded up the camp chair and hung it on its hook, barged down the short staircase and started shoving garbage into whatever bag I could find. Once I had it tied up and sitting near the gangway, I closed the door to the bedroom and gave every flat surface a quick wipe.

  Lastly, I turned to myself.

  I pulled open the door to the head and stretched its accordion folds out into the room. A small mirror hung there, and I braced myself before looking into it. My skin was dark brown from a few years in the sun, darker still where it hung under my eyes. I wouldn’t have called them bags, but they weren’t exactly a glow of health either. I ran fingers through my patchy stubble, and wet a razor before dragging it over the lower part of my face.

  Appearance was a priority.

  For some reason, people become keen gauges of professionalism just before climbing onto a small, curved piece of floating wood and pushing off into the vast and endless sea. Worse still, they judged professionalism at a glance. Were your shirts ironed? Were your shoes shined? I’d seen tourist after tourist walk the line of boats here at the marina, and more often than not they’d climb aboard with Petey. Petey's boat—ostensibly white—matched his teeth, but Petey was a life-long smoker. His boat's hull rode alarmingly close to the water line, but old he never bothered with many repairs.

  Because Petey had an ace in the hole: his captain’s hat.

  He had purchased it years ago in a gift shop not a hundred feet from the marina. It had been blue the day he got it, but summers in the sun combined with a two-pack-a-day habit had yellowed it along with the vessel and his teeth. None of that mattered. What mattered was that it had a big anchor prominently displayed on the front. When the time came Petey would use his cigarette to light the curved pipe he kept packed and ready, plop on his special headgear, and the tourists would start lining up, desperate to experience a tour given by an authentic old salt dog like Petey.

  I knew for a fact Petey had worked a manufacturing line in Detroit until his mother died and left him some money, and he had never even seen the ocean before his fiftieth birthday. Still, the customers came. He always swore—when he was sober enough to swear to anything at all—that it was the hat. The hat was the key.

  “Try and give them a good show,” he’d say. “That’s all they want, a real life sea adventure to go home and tell their neighbors about.”

  “But it’s not a real sea adventure, just like you’re not a real captain—that’s the point,” I always responded.

  He’d snort at me. “Get yourself a hat, Frank. Or at least crawl up out of the bottle every now and then.”

  The pot calling the kettle black, I thought, still staring into the mirror, shaking off the memory.

  I splashed water on my face, discarded my aging tank top and pulled on a fresh white Guayabera without an undershirt. I combed my hair through my fingers and headed up the stairs.

  Back on deck I could see two figures made small by the distance between us. They were picking their way down the main concrete path towards my slip. I grabbed the trash bags and launched myself deftly over the ropes and down onto the wooden dock and raced away in the opposite direction, heading for the dumpsters.

  I hated to admit to myself how much I needed this charter, but visions of canned tuna and a solid month of solitaire games danced in my head. It couldn’t be denied, not even by a celebrated self-deluder such as myself. The garbage bags felt greasy in my hand, and I prayed there weren’t fish guts dripping down the leg of my only pair of khaki shorts.

  The lid of the dumpster lifted easily, and I flicked the bags over the edge before heading back the way I had come.

  My two customers had grown only slightly in the distance, partially owing to the fact that I had walked away from them down the dock. Now we were approaching the boat from opposite directions, and I judged that we would meet right in front of it. That seemed like as good a spot as any. I slowed my pace, trying to time it just right.

  Heat reflected off the white concrete. At first the two of them were shimmering balls with legs and arms. Moments later they resolved into two distinctly human shapes, and then into two figures I could with fair confidence identify as one man and one woman. The man was wearing a green t-shirt and khaki shorts that I could tell were pressed, even from here. The woman wore a rose-colored sundress. It had a bottom made of translucent lace, but not much of it: it stopped short just above the middle of her thigh.

  Something about the way she walked—long and careful steps, like she was picking her way through a mine field—reminded me of someone. She threw her head back and laughed at something the man had said. Her hair flicked though the air, catching the light, a shimmering auburn mass.

  My mind faltered.

  I lost my train of thought.

  One of my hands had been trailing along the railing, and it dropped unbidden to my side. I stopped walking.

  Stared.

  I knew that laugh. I had listened to it every day for more than a year. My eyes squinted, protection against the mid-afternoon sun, and I focused intently, trying to resolve the details of her face.

  “It can’t be,” I muttered to myself.

  She laughed again, a low, sensual rumble from somewhere deep inside her. The moment I heard that I was sure I was right: I knew it in my bones.

  Carmen.

  It was Carmen walking down past the pilings toward me.

  I used to live for that laugh, for God’s sake. Her face came into sharp relief then, high cheekbones and full lips. Her eyebrows were still too big, but I had always found the somewhat comic effect they added to her face endearing.

  She was stunningly beautiful, of course, but it was her eyebrows that made her one in a million.

 
; I realized my knuckles had started to turn white from the squeezing I was giving them. One by one, I relaxed my fingers and forced them to lay smooth. I hung my arms straight down by my sides in a way I hoped was natural-looking.

  She waved at me.

  My arms felt like dead weight, but, heroically, I managed to lift one and then move it side to side.

  She reached out and grabbed her companion’s arm, pulling him along. They trotted the last hundred feet. I froze in front of her, and before I could move a muscle or say a thing she jumped up and threw her arms around me.

  “Frank!” she yelled out. She loosened her grip and put one hand on each of my cheeks. “It’s good to see you.”

  I put my arms around her. I had sworn never to do that again. “You too,” I said.

  Her hands drifted downward, never losing contact, and grabbed me by both biceps. She looked me right in the eyes. “What has it been? Four years?”

  “Five,” I said, and regretted it. I had a weakness for her, always had. If she hadn’t known before, she certainly did now. After all, I had cared enough to count the passing years.

  A silence hung between us.

  “You haven’t changed a bit,” I said finally.

  “You think? Well, you hardly look five years older. You might even look younger.”

  “Clean living,” I said.

  “I couldn’t believe it when I heard you were down here. At first I wasn’t sure we’d be here on the west coast, but once we decided, I knew I’d have to look you up. I can’t believe you own a boat!”

  “Speaking of the boat—how much?” said the man standing next to her. I had almost forgotten about him.

  I tugged my eyes away from Carmen and her sundress, and tumbling back down off the cloud I’d been walking on, turned to face our third wheel.

  “Well,” I said, pausing to give him a quick once-over. He was handsome, I’ll give him that, with dark hair slicked straight back and an aquiline nose stolen right off a Roman bust. He wore it well, but I consoled myself with the fact that it was a bit too big for his fine-boned face. He dressed well too. There was a fine weave to everything he wore, all of it tastefully understated.

  Worst of all, he was taller than me.

  “How rude of me,” Carmen said. “This is Ben Hawking.”

  “Pleasure,” he said, and proffered his hand.

  I took it, and made sure to pour some extra power into my grip. I tried to crush him.

  He grinned affably.

  “Well,” I coughed, “the cost depends on the rental. We can do hourly or daily.”

  “What about a couple of days,” he said. “Can we sleep on board?”

  “Sure,” I said quickly, already thinking of the passenger berths currently crowded with junk. “She’ll sleep four comfortably, six in a pinch. How long were you thinking exactly?”

  Ben stroked his chin, fingered the cleft there in the middle. “However long Carmen wants. This whole thing was her idea. It’s a kind of early wedding present.”

  “Oh?” I asked. “For who?”

  “For us.”

  I stood slack-jawed, just looking at them. After ten seconds of awkward silence, Carmen couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Ben is my fiance,” she said. Then and only then did my powers of observation extend down to her fingers. My head ratcheted down and my eyes scanned her left hand.

  An elegant gold band circled her ring finger, plain as day, and the diamond setting danced in the light, taunting me.

  After that, I barely heard a word either of them said.

  Ben and I quickly agreed on a price because, somehow, I couldn’t even bring myself to haggle. We set a time to leave the next day, and Ben suggested I come out to dinner with them that night. I looked at Carmen, who was looking lovingly at Ben Hawking.

  This is your chance, I thought, to get her back.

  Dinner sounded great, I told them.

  I watched them shrink as they walked down the pier, and then they were gone, and I was alone with the burning Mexican sun.

  I climbed up onto my boat’s sundeck and let its rays flay me over the next few hours. I never felt a thing. I thirsted for water, but filled only the narrow blue glass I use for whiskey. Filled it again and a third time until my insides burned as fiercely as my skin did. By sunset, I’d made a list in my head of all the things I needed to do to make the Regal Purple guest-ready and seaworthy. I needed to make up the beds, refuel the tanks, check the batteries, stock the galley, take on drinking water.

  None of that got done.

  Instead I drank and watched the sun die a slow death by lowering itself into the Pacific. Sunsets down there are usually red, but that night it skewed toward rose. It matched the color of Carmen’s dress exactly.

  I tried not to think about her, which only made it worse. It was like when I try to fall asleep: I know the key is to not think about falling asleep, to just forget about it. But of course in the process of reminding myself not to think about sleep, or my lack of it, I would. And then I would be back to square one.

  So it was with Carmen. She danced in and out of my head, my mind invaded with memories. I’m not good with people, but she and I had been good together. Waking up next to her, morning sun bathing my cheap apartment, throwing back the five-hundred-thread-count sheets she’d insisting on buying me—all of it came back. It filled my head until I thought it would burst.

  Reaching up to rub the spot between my eyes, I realized I could still smell her on me. Carmen always smelled faintly of citrus, light and fresh. Like the infusion of orange steaming off a cup of hot Earl Grey tea, it was always in the background, adding something extra that you never even noticed.

  Until it was gone.

  I’d lived for Carmen, right up until the day she disappeared.

  Five years is a long time to harbor feelings, even I knew that. She seemed happy, and for a second I wondered if it was right to try and wedge myself between her and Ben.

  But Carmen was always happy, that was her gift. She would be as happy with me as with anyone else. My life, on the other hand, would improve ten-fold.

  I folded my sweat-stained canvas chair, corked the bottle, glanced around the boat before I locked it up.

  Things certainly couldn’t get any worse.

  Chapter 3

  I PUMPED OUT one hundred pushups right there on the deck, trying to evaporate the booze into the fading twilight. I jumped up and grabbed the overhang of the conning tower and cranked out some pullups. There was a time I could remember doing fifteen without breaking a sweat. Tonight I counted five, and the last took everything I had to give.

  Then I took a shower in the marina’s locker room, walked back to the Regal Purple, put on a breathable knit shirt, and headed into town on the bicycle I keep stowed away on land.

  I broke a sweat again, pumping my legs up a couple of hills, but didn’t think anything of it. The heat down here was omnipresent. Sweat wasn’t dirty, just a fact of life. I knew the light fabric of the shirt would do its job, wicking and evaporating. My legs had it worse, burning up in a pair of oil-soaked jeans. They started to burn and throb as I reached the top of the last hill and braked.

  The clock in the little town square was edged in adobe and read five after seven as I locked up the bike. Dinner wasn’t until seven-thirty, but I had plans for those extra twenty-five minutes. I picked a side street with promise and wandered up and down the shops, peering into windows until I found the one I wanted.

  The little store had class, but not too much; quality, but without the exorbitant price tags meant for tourists. The proprietor was a short, dark-skinned man with a drooping mustache and a bad toupee. He found me a pair of slim light-colored pants that looked like chinos, but when I slid them on the material was silky and smooth.

  “Cuales son estos?” I asked, and ran my fingers down the fold line.

  “For golf,” he said in English. I nodded, retrieved some crumpled pesos from the back pocket of the wrecked jeans, and paid
him. I asked if he had had a garbage can, and he pointed toward a cut-off fifty five gallon drum stowed behind the counter. I crumpled the jeans up and stuffed them inside.

  At two minutes to seven I strode into the restaurant, bursting with the confidence only a pair of new pants can provide. I had never been inside the place before, though I had lived here for more than two years.

  One glance around and I knew why. The place was candlelit, with waiters in tuxes and busboys in ties. I felt sure I could guess the menu price of Mahi Mahi without even looking. Somewhere in the stratosphere, I bet myself, and I could catch them by the dozens any time I dropped a line more than a half-mile off shore. Tourist prices, I thought.

  I caught sight of Carmen in a private alcove in the back. She looked resplendent in red sitting at a table for three, the light of a candle flickering off her. Alone.

  I threaded my way between the other small, intimate settings, and sat down.

  “Where’s Ben?” I asked.

  She smiled. “I told him dinner was at eight.”

  My heartbeat quickened into a two-step. “Why would you do that?”

  “So we could be alone, of course, so you could ask me the thing you want to ask me.”

  I said nothing.

  “So ask already.” She batted her eyes at me.

  The plan to play it cool evaporated. My hands clutched at the side of the table. “What happened to you? What happened to you five years ago? Where did you go? I went down to get the engraving plates, and when I came back, you were gone.”

  She reached out and put a hand on top of mine. A single tear rolled out of one of her big green eyes. “I know, Frank. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you.”

  I brushed a strand of hair out of her face, then reversed my hand and used the back to wipe her cheek. “I was worried. I mean, I was mixed up in some stuff there for awhile. I know you weren’t really involved, but I thought there was an outside chance…” I trailed off.