Plunge

by Mark Rogers

  PLUNGE

  MARK ROGERS

  © Mark Rogers 2019

  Mark Rogers has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  This edition published in 2019 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Author Biography

  Dedication

  For James Ruggia, Brian Major, and Ed Wetschler

  writers and travellers, good on the road

  “The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”

  Carl Jung

  Chapter 1

  Maybe I should have been scared. Taking ragged breaths through a snorkel as gray stingrays glided toward me. Floating atop the water I tried to remember the last time I’d been truly scared and came up blank. The stingrays slipped by, their bat-like wings gently brushing my arms. I shivered in the water and a wave of blackness washed over me. I tried to remember the last time I’d been excited about anything. Even my transgressions.

  I took a rattling breath through my snorkel and stared through my clouded mask at a half-dozen pairs of human legs shuffling on the sandy bottom around me. An arm plunged underwater with a chunk of squid gripped in a fist. A stingray with a wingspan of five feet swept over the hand and snatched the squid in its beak-like mouth. Maybe it was my imagination, but even underwater I thought I could hear the screams of the tourists, screams of delight tinged with apprehension.

  Surfacing, I stood in the waist-deep sea. We were a mile from shore, in the Cayman Islands, on a sandbar dubbed Stingray City. Dozens of sun-reddened tourists stood in the brilliant blue water. An excursion boat bobbed in the swell, anchored fifty feet away. I lifted my mask onto my head and wiped at the saltwater dripping into my eyes. There was my nine-year-old son, Dylan, standing on the deck of the boat, holding onto the rail as though the world would shift from its axis if he loosened his grip.

  I waved a hand through the air to get my son’s attention. “Dylan. Come on, man.”

  Dylan shook his head, and said in a voice that barely carried over the water, “No.”

  My son stood there, his white T-shirt spotless, the one proclaiming, ‘I’m Going to Hell!’ It was a shopworn Cayman Island joke. Hell was a small town on the island we’d driven through that morning. It had its own post office and the big thrill was to send a card home postmarked from Hell.

  “Come on, Dylan,” I shouted. “Don’t be a pussy.”

  This got me a dirty look from an older woman hip deep in the water. The #MeToo movement and Trump had made some words radioactive. Pussy was a word from the past, from back in the days when I was a kid, listening to Radiohead and Rage Against the Machine; when I spent nights watching reruns of Married with Children and X-Files. If I was smart I’d hit the delete key on ‘pussy’ and a half-dozen other words that had lost their currency.

  I took a few strides toward the boat. “Don’t be afraid. They won’t hurt you.”

  Dylan shook his head. “I can’t swim.”

  “It’s not deep.” I lifted my hands in the air. “Look. You can stand.”

  Timing is everything. A stingray brushed against my legs and I recoiled, splashing away from its barbed tail.

  Dylan stared, his eyes following the stingray as it winged through the water. He had to loosen his grip on the rail as a young blonde in a yellow bikini led her daughter over to the boat’s ladder. The little girl couldn’t have been much over five years old.

  The mother climbed down into the water first and lifted her hands to the little girl, who wore an orange kid-size life vest.

  “Careful,” said the mother.

  The little girl let herself fall into her mother’s arms, smiling as she clung to her mother’s neck.

  The child looked at her feet in the water. “It’s warm.”

  “Not like the lake at home, huh?” said the mother.

  A black boathand in shades and a lime green Coolibar shirt waded through the water to their side. He carried a plastic bucket brimming with fresh squid.

  “You ready?” asked the boathand.

  The girl nodded over her mother’s shoulder.

  The mother twisted and lowered her daughter into the water. “Is she old enough?”

  The boathand smiled. “She’s in the water she’s old enough.”

  Dipping his hand in the bucket, the boathand came up with a slimy piece of squid. He held it out to the girl and said. “You hold it like an ice cream cone.”

  I glanced at Dylan and saw his eyes locked on the little girl. I could imagine what he was thinking. He was nine and a little girl — a pre-schooler — was showing him up.

  I saw my son take a nervous breath and then, with a quick look in my direction, descend the ladder into the water.

  Interviews with hotel execs are a crap shoot. I’ve met general managers who were so nervous at being quoted they could barely form a sentence. Others let it flow — sometimes too much. One pompous executive let it flow for a mind-numbing two hours. I only needed a single quote for my article and the exec acted like I’d signed on to write his autobiography. It was early in my travel writing career and I’d been too green to put a halt to the torture.

  Landon Lee, the general manager at the Paradise Reef, was a pro. Over dinner, he knew enough to feed me a few quotes and then let me enjoy my fried lionfish, callaloo, and gin and tonic.

  We were in the resort’s dimly-lit dining room. They’d given us a good table seated near an open arch looking out on Grand Cayman’s Seven Mile Beach. I could feel the warm breeze, which was strong enough to ruffle the pages of my reporter’s notebook. Dylan sat next to me, poking at his plate of French fries and grouper on a bun.

  “Phase One will be a total re-do of the rooms, the porte-cochere, and the lobby,” said Landon. “We expect the whole project to be completed by the end of the fourth quarter.”

  “In time for the holiday season.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  I looked up from my notebook. “What dollar amount are we talking here?”

  “Sixty mil.”

  “The lobby bar, too?”

  “We’re converting it into a tapas restaurant,” said Landon. “But we’ll make it Caribbean tapas. Conch, jerk chicken, stuff like that.”

  “You got a name for the bar yet?”

  “Nope. I think we’re going to run a contest.”

  I write for a trade magazine called Travel Sense, based in Newark, New Jersey. Most people have never seen an issue. That’s because the magazine is sent directly to travel agents free of charge. The whole enterprise runs on advertising. In between the ads we supply info on new hotels, travel trends, destination overviews, new hires. My beat is the Caribbean. When my office cubicle begins to feel like a vise tightening on my skull, I’m usually saved by an invite to join a press trip or to cover a trade show. Then it’s a quick flight to a sunny island, where my basic expenses are picked up by whoever’s throwing the trip. Travel was hard when I was first married. Now that I’m staring down a divorce, travel is easy.

  I swallowed a bite of lionfish. “What can you tell me that you haven’t told anyone else? I know you’ve had a parade of trade reporters coming through.”

  “I tell you guys all the same thing,” said Landon, with a smile.


  I decided to give him my out-of-left-field question. “What if you had your mother coming down for a weekend? She hasn’t had a vacation in years. What room would you give her? And you can’t say the presidential suite. Which is the best standard room in the hotel?”

  Landon looked interested for the first time that night. “No one ever asked me that before.”

  “Most travel agents are women, and a lot of them are mothers. A little topspin on a simple question will keep them reading. Plus, let’s face it, Lee, you’re gonna get points because they think you like to do nice things for your mother.”

  “Not really,” said Landon, with a frown. “My mother’s not even alive.”

  “C’mon. You catch my drift.”

  Landon thought for a minute. “Number two-oh-two. It’s got the best sea views for the price and it’s quiet, being furthest from the public areas.”

  I wrote it down. “Possessory information. That’s the name of the game.”

  Dylan looked up at me and asked, “Can I go?”

  “No,” I said to Dylan. “Finish your meal.”

  Dylan went back to poking at his fries.

  “So, when is the article?” asked Landon.

  “I’ve got it pegged for the September fifteen issue,” I said, “But I don’t have final say on that.”

  Landon nodded. “The timing couldn’t be better.”

  I felt a presence by my shoulder. It was the curly-headed public relations rep for the hotel. Maggie or Margaret. Something like that. I got a whiff of her perfume — a musky scent.

  She cocked a finger at me as she passed. “Mister Caribbean.”

  I gave her a smile. “At your service.”

  I watched her walk away. She was dressed in a blue and yellow tropical print that looked good from behind.

  “Dad?”

  I looked over at Dylan.

  “Can I?” asked Dylan.

  I got up from my chair and said to Landon, “Give us a minute, will you?”

  I tapped Dylan on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  I turned and walked toward an empty corner of the restaurant. I didn’t look over my shoulder, but I could hear Dylan following a few paces behind.

  I glanced over at Landon. He was swiping his finger across his phone. Dylan stood there, looking up at me.

  “Listen,” I said. “It’s not all fun and games.”

  “I’m bored sitting here.”

  “You’re bored?” I wasn’t angry, but I was getting there.

  “I don’t even know what you guys are talking about,” said Dylan.

  “Hey,” I kept my voice low. “You want to wear sneakers from the dollar store?”

  My son looked down at his Vans. They must have cost me forty bucks, easy.

  “I didn’t think so,” I said. “Now sit tight until I’m done. And learn something.”

  “Learn what?” asked Dylan.

  “You got to take the good with the bad.”

  Chapter 2

  Modern flying is a pain in the ass. It’s stressful making your flight on time, passing through security, and boarding the plane. Once you’re in the aisle of the plane and making your way to your seat it’s a crapshoot whether or not you’ll find space to stow your carry on. Almost everything about the experience sucks. Once in a while you get one of those situations where you have to draw on all your reserves of philosophical patience — those times when you’re waiting in your seat and the minutes are ticking by and you hear the dreaded announcement, “Due to mechanical difficulties, we will have to ask you to leave your seats and return to the terminal.” Times you have to take such a deep breath it whistles out your asshole.

  With all of the annoyances of flying, it’s always a plus when I can score seats in business class. Landon had sprung for an upgrade, and Dylan and I were leaning back in comfort as the plane taxied down the runway in Grand Cayman to lift into the air toward home.

  When we were at an altitude of 37,000 feet, the flight attendants started making their rounds. I raised a finger as a female attendant approached down the aisle.

  “Can you bring me a double G&T?” I turned to Dylan. “You ready for something?”

  “A Coke,” said Dylan. “And some pretzels.”

  The flight attendant took a bag of pretzels out of her smock pocket. “Here you go. I’ll bring you your drinks.”

  Dylan did what he always did — he emptied the bag of pretzels on the tray in front of him and began counting. During past flights, he’d determined there was an average of fourteen mini pretzels in each bag. Sometimes it dipped as low as eleven and once he hit the motherlode and counted seventeen.

  Finished, he looked up at me. “Fourteen.”

  I put out my hand and my son gave me a pretzel.

  “You know,” I said. “You did good with those stingrays.”

  Dylan gave me one of his rare smiles. “Did you send the photo to Mom?”

  “I don’t think she wants to hear from me.”

  “Not even a photo?”

  I reached into my pocket and took out my phone. “Tell you what. I’ll tee up the best photo for you and you can send it to your mother with a text. That’ll work, right?”

  I found a photo of Dylan standing on the sandbar. He was holding out a piece of squid as a huge stingray glided toward him underwater. I loved Dylan’s expression in the photo — a combination of alarm and pride. Hopefully, his mother would like the photo as much as I did, although Sally and I looked at life through different lenses. When I looked at the photo I saw the flash of daring in my son’s eyes; knowing Sally, she’d consider feeding stingrays a scenario for deep psychological scarring of her only baby.

  From our first date, there was a gulf between us. Thing is, I looked around at my circle of friends and I saw their relationships were in tatters. Sally was brighter than the rest, prettier, and I found it exciting that she was a painter already showing in some of the smaller Soho galleries. As Sally and I continued to date, I thought we were a good match by comparison to my friends. Dumb. Really dumb. Sally and I went from dating to moving in together to being engaged to getting married. Along the way, we both held out hope the rough edges between us would be filed away. It never happened. Sally never stepped on a plane, never traveled. I worked long hours and traveled even more. We’d meet in a brief huddle around Dylan and then go our separate ways. Two narcissists doing their thing, needing each other less and less, until we didn’t need each other at all.

  Dylan handed the phone to me. I slipped it back in my pocket and asked, “What did you write?”

  He looked away when he said, “I told her not to worry.”

  “That’s all?”

  Dylan grinned. “I also told her she was going to get a postcard from Hell.”

  Touching down this late in the evening at Newark Airport, the traffic was light and it was an easy 30-minute drive to my wife’s home in Pompton Lakes — my former home. I always have mixed feelings when I pull up to the curb in the suburban neighborhood. I don’t even feel comfortable parking in the driveway. Sometimes a neighbor will wave and give me a commiserating look — raised eyebrows and a slight frown. I always wave back and quickly look away.

  The house was dark inside and I wondered if Sally was even home. I popped the trunk to my car and got out. Ten years ago, my red Miata was sporty. Now the bloom is off the rose, with the car showing lots of dings, scrapes, and scratches.

  I put Dylan’s aluminium suitcase on the ground and closed the trunk. His suitcase was covered with stickers of all the places we’d been: Costa Rica, Martinique, Jamaica, Aruba, Puerto Rico.

  I pulled up the handle on the rolling suitcase. “You got your Cayman sticker?”

  “I got two of them,” said Dylan, taking the suitcase from me. “One for my school binder.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Next Saturday then. A movie and pizza.”

  “When’s our next trip?”

  “We’ll see. I’ll put something together.�
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  A light switched on in the house. Dylan and I both turned as the front door opened. Sally stood there — a backlit silhouette — a shadow.

  Dylan turned to go and stopped. “What should I tell Mom about the stingrays?”

  “She already saw the picture.”

  “But she’ll want to know how I felt about it.”

  I glanced over at Sally. Standing there. Not even a word of greeting.

  I brushed my hand through my son’s hair. “That’s for you to decide.”

  The town of Clifton, New Jersey has little going for it. When Sally kicked me out, I chose Clifton because it was halfway between Dylan and my office in Newark. The simplest option was a one-bedroom garden apartment. I wasn’t going for style — not even comfort. I wanted simplicity. A place to sleep. Assigned parking. Good cable and internet.

  After the divorce becomes final I’ll consider crawling out from under the wreckage and setting up a proper home. Marrying again wasn’t out of the question. I wasn’t sour on women — I was sour on Sally. Next time around though, I’d look for a woman more pragmatic than myself. During the marriage, Sally would refer to the both of us as creatives, a term that smacked of self-satisfaction. When creatives were married to each other, they were like two kites with broken strings. Dreamers and artists need someone on the ground, holding tight and taking care of business.

  Unlocking the front door, the apartment smelled stale when I entered. I opened a few windows and turned on the ceiling fan. It was an odd sensation, to be 36 years old and feeling as though I’d been transported back to my undergraduate years. Sour milk in the fridge. Cup O Noodles. Mr. Coffee. A lineup of liquor bottles next to the dish drainer. I rented the place furnished, which on coming home from a trip sometimes made me think I was trading one hotel room for another.

  I made myself a drink and fired up my iPad. There was a folder on the device’s desktop I’d slugged CAR INSURANCE. I figured a slug like that was boring enough to discourage anyone from investigating its contents. Inside the folder was a decade of unfinished novels and screenplays — ideas that had started with a lot of juice only to sputter and stall at the halfway point. It seemed that doubts would pile up at the same rate as pages until critical mass was reached and the project died a merciful death.