The tack was buttery and fast. The sails roared, then filled, and they were jetting forward again, away from the buoy and the sea lions, a blue plume of spray in their faces.
“Okay!” Winnie shouted. “Let’s pop the chute!”
Tess took the helm, and Winnie found the spinnaker down below. The spinnaker was blood-red with a slashing yellow stripe. In a few minutes they were in a race with the wind.
“She’s built to run!” Winnie said, tasting salt in his teeth.
The big sloop sped southeast in the sunlight, glinting like a knife, down past Corona Del Mar, where the water dramatically changed to midnight blue and the sea creatures visible in the water all wore black wet suits with Day-Glo stripes and bobbed like seals.
He anticipated a sudden wind change and decided to play. “Now, let’s drop the chute!”
“Aye, skipper,” Tess responded, moving very quickly. She could sail a boat, all right.
And then, magic! A school of dolphin flashed across the bow, doubled back and swam under the sloop when he jibed. The dolphins stayed right with him on a close reach as the boat heeled so steeply that Winnie yelled to Tess, “The rail’s in the water!”
They were playing with him! The dolphins were enjoying their day as much as he was. He took her on a broad reach again, and Tess ran to the bow and lay flat, looking over the stem as the dolphins flashed beneath her in a game of sailboat tag.
Then the lead dolphin veered off, headed toward the shore, and the others followed. Winnie saw that the wind was blowing fifteen knots and they were sailing nine or ten! A hotdog boat!
Then, a last bit of enchantment. A silvery translucent biplane took off from the sea just off starboard. A flying fish. Then another. Then three more. A good omen!
The day disappeared on Winnie Farlowe. The first time he looked at his watch, he was shocked. It was after six when he came about and sailed very close to the shifting wind, back toward the harbor.
This time, despite the speed of the vessel slicing toward them, the sea lions were not troubled. Without an engine roar, they merely watched as Winnie sailed so close to the buoy that Tess could’ve almost touched the whiskers of a jealous bull, who covered the bodies of two small females. The tapper on the buoy sounded musical! Winnie laughed out loud.
By the time they approached the breakwater, Tess was in his arms almost dozing. The sky was ablaze and the sun was getting ready for the magic hour show.
“We did everything but spot a whale,” Winnie said.
“Next time, old son,” she murmured. “We’ll do even better next time.”
But Winnie Farlowe sensed that there could never be another day like this one.
“You know, Dennis Connor’s entering the Ensenada race,” Winnie said. “He’ll sail the Stars and Stripes catamaran with a soft-sail rig instead of the airfoil wing he used in San Diego.”
Tess said, “When I was married the first time, my husband forced me to crew with him on that race. Galley slaves had it better.”
“He’ll be going after the record,” Winnie said. “Ten hours, thirty-one minutes and two seconds. I was in the race when that record was set. Nineteen eighty-three. Newport to En-senada, Mexico, in ten hours, thirty-one minutes. Of course, our boat needed another five hours, but still, that’s a hundred and twenty-five miles! Think of it!”
“And what’d you do when you got there?” Tess asked. “All my husband and his friends did was go to that ugly party they throw in a building they’d condemn if it was on the U.S. side of the border. Everybody falling down drunk and throwing up. A convention of Hell’s Angels shows more class.”
“Jist a bunch a sailors letting their hair down,” Winnie said. “Imagine what it’d be like to race this boat in the Ensenada race!”
“I simply can’t imagine,” said Tess Binder, observing the boyish glow in the eyes of Winnie Farlowe.
Tess suddenly stood up on the cockpit seat and stripped off her sweater and pants.
Winnie looked around the jetty for fishermen and said, “Jesus, Tess!”
He didn’t see anyone, but she obviously didn’t care if he did. She unfastened her bra and stripped off her panties. When she sat on his lap he looked around and saw a lone fisherman trudging along the jetty at day’s end with two buckets, a gunny sack and a fishing pole. The fisherman wore a painter’s cap with a Coors logo on the front, and had a belly that got in doorways five minutes before he did. The guy was looking downbeat and discouraged, as though he’d been skunked. Until he happened to glance over at the sailboat gliding by in light twilight air.
Tess rose up and gave him a victory sign, and the fisherman yelled, “Whooooo-eeeee!” at the naked blonde in the cockpit of the sloop.
Then Winnie lost control of everything and the boat was all over the channel. Once he giggled and cried, “Prepare to jibe!” and “Jibe ho!,” followed by screams of laughter from Tess Binder. With the naked woman climbing all over him, Winnie finally had to furl his headsail and drop the main.
By the time Tess finished with Winnie, and got herself dressed, the sun had almost set. A breeze was blowing in from Catalina where the island seemed to rise from red dusk. Winnie was sprawled back in the cockpit and caressing the tiller when they slid by the old pavilion, the Victorian dowager of the Balboa peninsula. The pavilion’s observation tower and cupola glimmered in twilight beneath a crystal sky.
Winnie felt almost sad enough to cry. He’d never had such a perfect day, not as a grown man. There were perfect days only when his father was alive. When he and his father went out on boats. When they were boys together, he and his father, on perfect days like this.
“My dad used to say her crown looks like a candy kiss,” Winnie said, and he was surprised when his voice quivered.
“Who?”
“The old pavilion,” he said. “And after dark when the lights go on, the crow’s nest on top looks like a bright shining gumdrop.”
“A bright shining gumdrop.” Tess chuckled. “That’s my boy! A bright shining gumdrop.”
When they arrived at the yacht broker’s, they found the office dark and empty. Winnie steered the sloop into the slip, tied her up, stowed the spinnaker, removed the battens, and covered the main.
“Is he gonna be mad that we’re so late?”
“Of course not!” Tess said. “Just toss the key through the letter slot. I’ll call him tomorrow and tell him we’re thinking about it. Maybe we’ll need another sea test before we make up our minds.”
“You’re amazing,” he said.
“You’ll never forget this day, will you, old son?”
“Not as long as I live.”
Tess chuckled again. Like wind chimes. Then she said, “It tickles me every time I think of it.”
“What?”
“A bright shining gumdrop. You’re my precious precious boy. A bright shining gumdrop!”
18
Two Harbors
For once, she didn’t let him sleep late. “Wake up, old son! Come on, sleepyhead!”
Winnie had been having a dream about the nymph, something that caused him to toss and sweat. The nymph had tried to speak to him at last. She’d hovered over him and he could see her gray marble eyes. Winnie jumped up, but his head didn’t. It was somewhere on the other side of the bed, and somebody was beating on it with a mallet, like a slab of squid.
“Got a busy day. Breakfast’s ready. No omelet. Bacon and fried eggs, over easy with hash browns. Come on!” She clapped her hands three times and left him alone to deal with the hangover. The echo was like rifle fire.
They’d stayed home last night. The last Winnie remembered, he was lying on the living room floor watching the old war movie where John Wayne takes Iwo Jima, actually filmed on the very spot where he now spent his nights and days: Linda Isle, then called Shark Island, a name that Nouveau Newport didn’t appreciate after the sandspit was developed for residential property. Especially since a few of the home buyers had been referred to as sharks in their time, a
s in land, loan, etc.
He’d had a lot to drink last night. He was becoming increasingly worried about that, but it wasn’t entirely his fault. Tess kept refilling his glass! He taught her how to make The Golden Orange cocktail, and every time John Wayne shot a Jap she’d be in the kitchen mixing another batch. He remembered telling her he was outdrinking her three to one, maybe four to one. She’d laughed and said she was holding her own.
His hands were shaking and he was bilious. He belched, and a sour ball erupted from a deep well of toxic waste. He’d been poisoned by too much of a good thing, too much of The Golden Orange. He tried to get up. This time, his head stayed with its body.
When he finally lurched into the kitchen, pale and shaky, but showered and shaved, Tess took his breakfast plate out of the oven.
“Sorry to roust you out of bed so early, old son, but I’ve got news!”
He said, “Tess, I don’t wanna drink anything today. I’m so sick I actually look like the picture on my driver’s license.”
“Oh, never mind that,” she said. “You’ll feel better at lunch-time. I had a slight hangover too, but it’s gone. Listen, I’ve got real news!”
“Do you have some aspirin?”
She fetched the aspirin from a cupboard and poured his coffee.
“Listen! Dexter Moody’s yacht party at the isthmus begins tonight with a picnic tomorrow! I rang him and he said he’d like us to come!”
She never said phoned him or called him. Rang him. Masterpiece Theater. Cute, but not when his head was a squid getting pounded into steaks.
“I don’t quite understand.”
“We’re going to Catalina, silly! We’ll take the catamaran to Avalon and taxi to the isthmus for the party. After which we’ll sleep at the B and B over there. And, are you ready for this?”
“With you I gotta be ready for anything,” Winnie said, picking at the fried eggs with his fork.
“Warner Stillwell’s going to arrive tomorrow!”
That got his attention. “Who with?”
“He’ll be coming with some people from China Cove. They have a big custom powerboat called Circe. We’ll be there when they arrive.”
“So tomorrow I meet him?”
“We’ll have a long talk, Warner and you and me.”
“Let’s see how it goes first,” Winnie warned. “See who’s with him. Maybe I’ll talk to him alone.”
“You’re the skipper,” she said.
His hands were trembling so much he spilled coffee on his eggs. He was not going to have a drink until this thing with Stillwell was over. In fact, he decided he’d go on the wagon for a month just to prove he could do it. He didn’t like the way he looked and felt this morning. It scared him.
“Hurry, slowpoke,” Tess said. “The Catalina Flyer leaves in forty minutes. We’ve got to pack a few things.”
“I want you to promise we’re not gonna drink anything till this is all over,” Winnie said. “My brain feels like I leased it out.”
“Whatever you say, Cap’n. We’ll drink plain orange juice.”
“I feel like I been drinking Agent Orange juice,” Winnie said, hoping his hands would stop shaking before noon. “By the way, who was Circe? A goddess or what?”
“She was a bad bad girl,” said Tess Binder.
The sailmaker was yelling at two employees when Buster Wiles climbed the stairs to the cavernous sail loft. The sails were laid out on the huge varnished floor with drawings under the Kevlar material. Six men sat at sewing machines in pits below floor level.
Woody saw Buster and growled something else at the two employees, who seemed very glad for the interruption.
“Problems, Woody?” Buster said to the sailmaker.
Woody was so weather ravaged and bald it wasn’t easy to guess his age, but Buster thought he was about seventy.
“Can’t find decent help these days,” the sailmaker grumbled, wiping his sweaty face with the tail of his green T-shirt.
Buster said, “I could hear you clear from the street. Had a sergeant once could air out a guy like you do.”
“What good is it? They come and go like grunion, these beach bums.” The ponderous sailmaker had a Frankenstein gait from a fused right knee, and practically clanked down the stairs to the glassed-in cubicle that served as his office. Designs and brochures and sail samples were everywhere. He opened the desk drawer and handed Buster a set of keys attached to a flotation cork.
“Okay if I don’t bring her back till tomorrow?” Buster asked. “Thinkin about maybe goin down to Dana Point. I know a guy down there lets me tie up all night. Sells out-boards. Name a Guthrie. Know him?”
The sailmaker shook his head and walked with Buster out to the street, where the cop had double-parked by one of Woody’s vans. “Keep it a week if you want,” the sailmaker said. “Don’t know why I don’t sell that boat. I can’t use it. Leave here for half a day and these idiots’d probably burn the place down. Can’t get decent help no more.”
The cry of The Golden Orange, from the hot mommas to an old guy in a sail shop. Can’t get decent help.
“The police department can’t run very long without me so I’ll be back tomorrow,” Buster said.
The old sailmaker looked in the back of Buster’s car. The entire seat and the floor were taken up by scuba gear. “You oughtta get a hatchback or a van. Gonna ruin your upholstery with that stuff.”
“I’m lucky I can afford gas on my salary,” Buster said. “Those two douche bags I divorced grab half a what the city pays me. They got hearts like an Iranian judge.”
“You might take some lobster and abalone around Catalina this time a year,” the sailmaker offered. “Not too many tourists, now that spring vacation’s over.”
Winking, Buster said, “I’d rather stay around Dana Point. There’s this waitress down there. She can dive without tanks. Lungs out to here.”
“Have fun, kiddo,” the sailmaker said. “Gotta go back inside or those morons’ll cut up my goods to patch their crummy jeans.”
The boat slip that the sailmaker had leased from the city of Newport Beach was only a few minutes from his shop. Woody’s twenty-eight-foot Bertram was seedy from lack of use. Two gulls and a pelican were living on the fly bridge. Buster hauled his gear to the dock beside the boat and hopped aboard. At first he was afraid the batteries were dead, but then he remembered that Woody had installed an anti-theft battery bypass. He reached into the engine compartment and turned the bypass switch on. After he ran the blowers, the engines fired at once.
It wasn’t a particularly warm morning, but Buster felt exceptionally clammy. He took off his windbreaker and began to transfer his gear from the dock to the boat: a black wet suit, mask, fins, a weight belt, two tanks, a black hood, a light, a knife …
America’s largest catamaran, The Catalina Flyer, left its berth by the Balboa Pavilion at nine o’clock sharp. The huge cat held five hundred persons, and could make the twenty-five nautical-mile crossing in seventy-five minutes, weather permitting.
Winnie had been aboard the catamaran only one other time, and for this trip he sat on the top deck forward, facing the wind. Hoping for revival.
“I need an oxygen tank, is what I need,” Winnie said to Tess, who looked gorgeous in a lime-green cableknit sweater, with her butterscotch hair blowing free. For the first time he noticed the tiny line of scar in front of her ear, when the wind blew the hair back.
“You’ll be in the pink after we get there, old son,” she said.
Tess eventually went below for coffee, but Winnie stayed put. He passed the time by breathing deeply—trying to purge every vein and artery with a fix of sea air. He avoided contact with other passengers. They were youngish couples with small children, and older people whose children were grown, people not ruled by school schedules.
Santa Catalina Island was bought from the pioneering Banning family by the Wrigleys of Chicago in 1914. The island is now mainly controlled by a conservancy, a nonprofit charitable foundation,
which was deeded forty thousand acres by the Wrigleys and is responsible for keeping its eighty-six percent of the island in a natural state forever.
The island is twenty-two miles long and eight miles wide at its widest point. Formerly a verdant paradise without large herbivores, the island has been ravaged by animals introduced for man’s pleasure. The Spanish brought the goats, the Yankees introduced feral pigs and deer for hunting, and Hollywood brought the buffalo for the filming of Zane Grey’s Vanishing American, the famous author himself being a resident at Avalon. The buffalo ended up on the cutting-room floor, but stayed on Catalina Island, where they roam the hills and, when the herds are cropped, end up in buffalo burgers and buffalo tacos.
Now, what with thousands of wild pigs eating the acorns, wild bison and deer eating the grasses, and wild goats eating everything, there is a constant effort on the part of the conservancy to keep the animals under control and the shallow soil intact. Still, Catalina is a beautiful place, and Winnie was always glad to return.
The ocean swells were three to four feet during the crossing, but Winnie knew they sometimes reached sixteen feet from trough to peak, this being a treacherous stretch of ocean. After an hour had passed, when the big cat slowed with Avalon Harbor dead ahead, Winnie was starting to feel better. He always loved the sight of the Avalon Pavilion off starboard. Tall as a twelve-story building, with art deco murals, the once fashionable casino is now used as a big-band ballroom, art gallery and cinema.
In the summer months the harbor of Avalon is under siege by an armada of yachts, and moorings have sold for more than $175,000, Catalina Island being one of the few destinations available to mainland yachtsmen. The narrow beach in Avalon is jammed in the summer, and the streets are mobbed.
Avalon is a very small town on a dot in the ocean, and doesn’t offer much variety in the way of entertainment. Winnie knew that if he lived here he’d really become an alcoholic. The thought of it made him look at his hands. They’d finally stopped shaking. He was starting to regret he hadn’t eaten his breakfast, but it was too early for lunch.
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