“We have a boat, but we don’t own the boat. We use the boat. Why you want to know?”
“I want to get a job. That’s what I do. I take tourists diving from a boat.”
“Ah. Yes. I remember. Yes. I know the dive program manager, who is also the boat captain. You met him, very briefly, but I’m sure he will remember you.”
“I did? You mean last night?”
“No. Not last night. This morning. Moeava is the manager. Or the captain. It’s his boat.”
Ravid’s rueful smile is aimed at his continental breakfast. Moments ago it seemed remarkable for its exquisite blend of simple ingredients — sugar, flour, butter and a masterful touch. Now the dough balls slump, gooey and sickeningly sweet. He looks up with regret and loss. She touches his hand, and assures him that Moeava’s boat is the biggest and fastest dive boat around, with the best reputation and a full manifest daily from the best hotels, whose guests are more likely to tip most handsomely.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because!” She takes his hand in both of hers. “It will be the very best boat for you.”
“But he’s your husband!”
“My husband? Tu es bête, mon pauvre Ravid. He is my son.”
“Your son? But he’s... What?”
“What? He’s my son. What what? Believe me, no son wants to see his mother do what I did for you, but he wasn’t made to watch, and besides, every son wants to see his mother satisfied, so she can relax and calm down and be nice for the people around her. You did that for me. And for him. So why should you not have a job on my son’s boat, after what you did for the whole family, after all?”
Ravid’s slow nod indicates difficult acceptance of the strange ways of random events; they seem so inevitable, so much a result of prior events. Another cup of rich coffee underscores the meaning of the moment, and a big bite of pastry tastes like it did only moments ago. She watches him till he laughs and asks, “Does he need somebody like me?”
“Mais oui! Of course, we need somebody like you! I thought I just told you that. I’m not saying that I haven’t been nice, but it’s been difficult, with that strange little female taunting him with her little parsley patch. I know it’s not my place to tell him what not to do or chase at his age, but I can’t help it. I’m his mother, after all. Not that I would care a fig, but I worry for his safety. Who needs to swim a bay at night if they don’t need to?”
The short answer is nobody, unless he does need to swim a bay at night because it’s the only route to feasting on the sparse parsley of his dreams. Moeava could be nineteen or thirty, but ignorance may be bliss on this one — and the better part of salvation. What if he’s thirty-five? He looks to be thirty-five from some angles, which would make Hereata thirteen at the time of his birth. Unless he’s thirty-five and she had him when she was twenty.
“Come. Finish. I have a cot in my office.”
Ravid takes a brief moment to register her meaning and intention, causing his eyes to bulge over his bulging cheeks. Not to worry, she reaches across to ruffle his hair with great good cheer. “Hey. I’m joking. You rest. Okay? Till later. Later tonight. Okay? Maybe this afternoon, if I can get off early, you know, but don’t worry, even if I can’t. We’ll get an early start tonight so you can get your rest. I know you are tired, and really, my needs are very simple — I already have a job and a place to live, unlike you. I need only love, which isn’t always simple, but it can be. It should be. I think you may be l’homme gentil to make it so. Maybe you will see. You know the French know so much when it comes to simplicity. I am not French. I am Tahitian, but the influence is unavoidable. You know?”
“I can only imagine.” He smiles with resignation: Whether facing big seas or demanding women, his life will endure these challenges, or it won’t. At least the choice this time will not be life threatening. Will it?
He sighs with the fatigue a young man should not feel in the evening or morning after caffeine and sugar, unless he’s already dead but doesn’t yet know it. But this isn’t that. This is simply fatigue, a demoralizing failure to motivate because futility is standing on his throat. He’ll know when he’s dead, because then he won’t fear anything. Then he might wish for another fuckfest at Hereata’s. He laughs short at the other prospect remaining to the living, of begging off more sex in deference to exhaustion, in favor of sleep. But the words won’t come, as if they too sense an indefatigable force.
She ruffles his hair again, her strong fingers moving deftly into a scalp massage, as if to knead the worries away. Then comes the other hand, moving about the vessel of too many thoughts, squeezing and rubbing till thought and worry are set aside. In a minute she takes his hand and tells him they can still catch Moeava at the dock, if they hurry.
Ravid follows like a good pup — or a fogbound man with fuzzy cognizance that momentary drift may be incidental to the course plotted on the big chart.
But few courses lead to nowhere. Her son? The best boat around? He shoos sand flies and pesky doubts. She squeezes his hand. He feels awkward and untrue, fulfilling a fantasy for her that cannot last. But these steps feel necessary — they are without alternative — and they may be harmless. So why not?
The picture perfect morning is charged with energy and scudding clouds nose to tail to the north and the south, linked weakly with distant squalls that hardly threaten; they’re so far away on the far rim of the deep blue dome, with aquamarine out front. Flat as a slowly cooled soufflé, the bay undulates with no froth, ruffles or wispy cat’s paws. The surface shimmers and clears on darting cardinalfish just below, along with other species carousing in the water column and close to the reef that borders this eastern side of the bay. He laughs short again, resigned to magic and autonomy in many things.
“What? Tell me what is funny.”
Swim this bay? I could drift this bay. “Nothing is funny. I only laugh at how things go.”
“Yes. It will go.” She squeezes his hand. Hers is now damp, but she won’t let go for the walkway past the over-water bungalows. “Eight hundred dollars US per night,” she says, waiting for his eyebrows to rise. “Plus a hundred dollars per day per person for meals.” Here too is a dramatic pause. “Plus tax.” She laughs. “This tax and that tax. And the other tax.”
He’s not interested in luxurious accommodation because he’ll not soon move in those circles and fortunately doesn’t want to; it’s lucky that he prefers the squalid fundamentals up the road, across from Taverua and the shallow reef there. Surely she senses his simple tastes —
“We can stay here,” she says with a squeeze to underscore the fun times ahead, as if to assure: You are not yet dead, and this is no dream but the true Paradise, which is different than the one you fled...
Turning from the top-drawer bungalows they walk the shoreline past the hotel grounds and across a vacant lot to a dock with a scuba shack at the end. The boat sits opposite the shack, across the dock. Moeava is aboard, sorting lines, shackles, bumpers, anchors and the endless hardware of boating. She stops short with another squeeze and leans intimately close to moan, “Nous sommes ici. Bonne chance, mon amour.”
When she steps back and beams, he asks, “You’re not coming along? To introduce me?”
“No. You are a man. He is a man. You make your introduction. He will hear you. He will see. No need for Mommy. No more.”
That’s not what you said when he wanted to swim the bay for skinny pussy. “Yes. Okay. If you think it best.”
Moeava stops arranging so he can better watch the lovers up the dock. She takes her leave without a kiss, leaving Ravid relieved and alone with nothing to lose. Anyone with sea time knows that if the best boat doesn’t work out, there’s always another best boat in need of services.
No sweat, except for the beads forming in their usual places. And rolling. It’s last night’s liquor and hardly any sleep and general stress, not to mention the strange bed and aftermath of a woman of indeterminate but advancing age and boundless effu
sions. Hereata’s heart is big, with largesse to match.
Though here she leaves me to face the fiddler alone.
I’m really in no mood for this.
Ah, well, it’s time to buck up and face the future, which is here and now, its moments falling away wasted, into the past, even as we contemplate the first day of the rest of my life and all that blah, blah, blah. Okay, time for a first impression — no sweat, figuratively speaking, but what the hell; it’s hot. Every tomato on this rock is sweating under Sol’s big grin. Never mind. This is it, new life on a chance, first dots connecting, something to separate a man of potential from a loser. Make the best of it.
So Ravid drags a hand across his forehead and through his hair. Given a choice he’d shower and change, and a major morning dump wouldn’t be too bad and will demand attention directly, but not right now. Right now it’s focus on opportunity and adaptability. Besides, few people notice grooming details as much as the person who’s missed his shower and toothbrush. Imagining a telltale scent is merely a symptom of anxiety; nobody knows what his mother’s estrus smells like, except maybe in deep psychiatric terms, but even that is sheer mentality, because it can’t be smelled any more than it was back then. Besides that, this won’t be the first job interview to happen on the fly, and adaptation succeeds when the self and its petty foibles are forgotten.
Confidence is second nature for anyone with potential, especially anyone with sea time and firsthand experience in freedom, beauty, blue skies, sunshine and a wealth of stimulation that converts to no other currency...
There. That’s the stuff.
Besides, many frogs stink and don’t brush. So? “Hello. Bonjour,” he offers, a few steps out.
“Hello.” Moeava is ponderous and soft-spoken, his movement and attitude those of a grazer. Ravid wonders if mermaids have sons. Moeava’s downcast eyes indicate humility verging on shyness, or maybe he’s focused on the line he coils, so it will lay precisely, with no twists, in coils of consistent diameter. A waterman sees. A waterman knows that coiling can occur in the dark — during sleep, if you will — though from time to time it’s not a bad thing to watch. So maybe it’s shyness along with uncertainty. Why else would Moeava be coiling a bow line when the stern isn’t even tied off?
Ravid knows the difference between American and French, between gregarious cheer and a casual meeting with the man who bagged Mom last night. As if pathological timidity is not enough for the big man to bear, here is the ultimate obtrusion on the family scene.
Moeava is more palpably powerful in the clear light of day. Big as most big men get, he casts a bigger shadow. He’s obviously young, hardly twenty-five. Certainly not forty.
“Your mother is a character,” Ravid offers. Moeava’s smile tweaks up or down; it’s hard to tell which. “She’s a lovely woman,” Ravid clarifies, ready to lead the younger man through the social graces to the clearing just yonder, where mutual benefits might await a dive boat and a dive instructor.
“Do you love her?”
A seasoned waterman is acutely familiar with sudden challenge, yet he gasps, clearing his regulator, as it were, blurting, “Well, we only just... I mean, I think she... She’s...certainly...”
“She’s not my mother.”
“Oh... I thought she was...you know. I mean, I assumed...” She may be an aunt, or maybe the big boy was adopted, or maybe she simply raised him, one of the surrogate or hanai parents common to tropical latitudes. At least we’re past the brambles. Now we let the path open gently; don’t force it. That’s how a thicket is penetrated with minimal thorny scratches.
“She likes to tell people she’s my mother. But she’s not. She likes for people to think she’s younger. But she’s not my mother.” Moeava drops the last two coils and stares down at them, as if daring them to twist again on the recoil.
“You can’t blame her for taking the credit. It’s not easy raising a son.”
“I told you, I’m not her son. She’s my nana — my grandmother. I’m her grandson. It’s different.”
“Ah... Yes...”
“What is it that you want?”
Well, this is not the clearing just yonder, unless it is, and we arrived on a bold step. The terse question warrants a straight answer. “A job.” Moeava looks puzzled. “I’m a dive instructor.”
“You have no job?”
“No,” Ravid laughs with the humorless and humbling deference of applicant to potential employer. “I only arrived yesterday. I want to work.”
Moeava smiles, equidistant from mirth. “I think you work fast, no?”
Ravid shrugs off the apparent implication that the humble applicant hustled a quick piece of pussy from the potential employer’s grandmother. Best ignore any unfortunate reference and focus on the task at hand: “Fast, slow; it doesn’t matter. Sometimes you have to go fast — like now, with these squalls pressing in.” Ravid nods up to the clouds, as if Moeava hasn’t seen them. “They’re closer than a few minutes ago. They close very slowly, so you won’t notice their approach. They’re feeding but don’t want to look hungry. You’ve seen it many times. In a few minutes or an hour or two they may move away, or they may bump and pounce. So, what can you do?”
Ravid feels good, showing his stuff with insight, experience and a cool head, yet he doubts this giant lump will comprehend subtlety or threat. Moeava fairly stares, perhaps wondering what he can do, or should do. He breathes with his mouth open, which seems natural in a big man, for more air intake, but it does make him look dim; and the heavy lower lip hanging lower still from its own weight doesn’t exactly help. “What I got to do?”
Ravid shrugs. “You got a boat load of paid divers, you want to get them in the water, you know, so the cash register can sing its little song. You know, cha-ching cha-ching?” Moeava gets it now. He smiles at the sound of money. Ravid sprinkles water wisdom on their new understanding: “Sometimes, blue sky, sunshine, flat seas, a few big tippers on board, you go slow. The important thing, fast or slow, is safety with attention to detail. You want to make the most money fast without losing more money even faster.”
The big head nods. “I think you are right. I think you have experience in this area. I saw you, with your attention to detail. I saw you with my nana. For her, I wish happiness, but if she chooses you, it’s for her to have those concerns. My concern is for what is mine. Cosima is mine. Mine to love. Mine to have. Not for you. Mine. Do you see this as clearly as you see what serves you?”
Ravid shrugs with indifference for the meshugena putain with the little parsley patch who now stands between him and livelihood. He shrugs again to indicate his innate independence. Which is not to say that the big man or any man can take his job and shove it up his ass, but only to remind a potential employer that Ravid Rockulz is required to take no affront without a response in kind.
He is, above all, a natural man — a man of integrity — who speaks truth to power, or to potential employment at any rate. So he ditches the deference if not the grace and makes his best effort to set the big man straight. “I’m not interested in taking what is yours. Or what you think might be yours. I’m interested in a job — not any job but a job on a boat. I’m told your operation is one of the best.”
“You’re too old for her.”
“You’re too fat for her.”
Moeava steps up. “I am not fat. Not too fat.”
“Then why don’t you swim the bay?”
“I will swim the bay.”
“Okay, I’ll help you.”
“I don’t want your help. I don’t need your help.”
“Okay. I’ll still help you. I’ll give you a week to swim the bay. I won’t even try. If you can’t do it by one week from today, I’ll do it — backstroke. Okay?”
“What is it that you want?”
“A job.”
Moeava looks down, burdened by a new worry, a new challenge. He looks up. “How can you help me swim? You can’t help me. I still have to swim.”
“Why
haven’t you done it?”
“I will do it.”
“You haven’t done it for one of two reasons. The first is that you can’t, because you’re not a good swimmer. The second reason is fear. That’s what your...nana said. I heard it.”
“I am not afraid!” Here Moeava yells on another step forward, underscoring his fear along with his ability and willingness to crush it, especially if its source is the skinny fellow before him. He still grasps the coiled bow line in one hand, as if the boat is a dog on a leash.
“Tell me, Moi... Moiv...”
“Moeava.”
“Tell me, Moeava: What creatures live in this bay?”
Moeava’s eyebrows rise quickly, then collapse inward on the crux of the situation. “Creatures? We got...fish.”
“Shark?”
Moeava nods gravely.
“Big shark?”
Moeava tilts his head with gaining gravity.
“Tiger?”
Moeava pumps a single nod. Ravid smiles. “Mano.”
“Why you laugh?”
“I no laugh. I mean, I’m not laughing. Mano is my guide.”
“Mano?”
“Shark.”
“Ah. Ma’o.”
“Yeah, her.”
“What you mean, guide?”
Ravid shrugs, tentative as any reflective person will be on the meaning of spirit. “Spirit guide.” He smiles again, though his brow bunches. “Ma’o is scary, yeah? But...not to worry...”
“Yeah. You no worry.” Moeava walks the coiled line to a dock cleat, where he’ll need to uncoil it in order to tie it off. Moreover, he moves away from his skinny tormentor, as if perfunctory tasks are easy two at a time.
“I worry too, like you do. Because I sometimes forget to have faith. The faith is the hard part. You know Ma’o is around, so you want to be scared. Ma’o is a scary fish. That’s the catch — if you get scared, Ma’o will get you. You no scared, Ma’o leave you be.”
Moeava nods again in concession to fear and understanding. He looks up at the dirty scud piling closer in ominous grays, gunmetal to ashen, like predators cautiously gathering, circling, seeking weakness or death, or an opening to test with a nudge or a little taste.
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