Scorpion in the Sea

by P. T. Deutermann

  She nodded, and fished in her purse for a coin. She got out, and went to the pay phone. Mike got out and went inside to call the base police to report the Volvo. The rain on the tin roof of the gas line sounded like hail. The attendant wrote up the towing order, which Mike signed. By the time he came back out, she was standing at the edge of the office apron, with her back to him. He could see her shoulders shaking. Alarmed, he went over to her. She was crying silently, her arms folded over her stomach, her chest heaving in short gulps. He put his right hand on her shoulder.

  “Hey. What happened?”

  She did not turn around, but stood there, trying to get control of herself. He remained silent, his hand still on her shoulder, until she could speak. The attendant was watching through the window of the office. A car pulled into the gas islands, saw that there was no power, and pulled out again, its headlights sweeping across the two of them for an instant. Finally she spoke.

  “He said—he said that I’m to stay here until they get the car out. He said I should have waited for the rain to stop before leaving the hospital. He said—I should have taken my car, and now that you’ve destroyed my Volvo, you get it fixed, and don’t come home until you do. That’s what my dear husband said. Among other things.”

  She closed her eyes in frustration. Mike shook his head.

  “Hey, Diane,” he said, speaking to her left ear over the noise of the rain on the roof. “They’re probably not going to get that car out of there until tomorrow morning—they won’t work those ditches in the dark. You can’t make it happen any faster by hanging around here. I’ll run you home—just give them a credit card, and let’s get out of here.”

  She half turned towards him, leaning into him a little bit, her face still wobbly. She smelled of damp cotton, that perfume, and wet hair. He suddenly ached to take her in his arms. He steered her instead towards the office. They went in and she handed over a credit card for an imprint. The rain continued outside, but it was now a steady, Florida rain instead of a tropical monsoon. The attendant was obviously trying to figure out why the card said Captain, but the man with her was a Commander. He started to ask, but then looked at the woman’s face and decided to mind his own business.

  When they were finished in the office, they walked back to the Alfa. He started off again, headed for the back gate. Diane remained silent as they left the base and made their way towards the Jones Point bridge back across the St. Johns. She fussed in her purse for a comb and made a desultory pass through her wet hair before sighing and giving it up as a lost cause. He watched her out of the corner of his eyes; her dress was plastered to her lush figure. He concentrated on keeping his eyes on the road.

  “I can’t go home,” she declared minutes later, as they turned north on A1A after crossing the bridge. “Not after what he said. I just can’t.”

  He was silent for a long minute, and then took the plunge.

  “I can offer a hot shower, a washer and dryer, and a drink back at the Lucky Bag. I’m the guy with the houseboat, remember?”

  He kept his eyes on the road. What the fuck was he doing. A voice in his mind was telling him that he was being incredibly dumb. A second voice said, you want her. Her husband doesn’t. You’ve rarely wanted a woman as much as you want this one. She can always tell you to take her to a neighbor’s house.

  “Thank you. I think I’ll just take you up on that. It sounds like just what the doctor ordered,” she said, her voice neutral.

  It was her turn to keep her eyes on the road. They remained silent, alone with their thoughts all the way back to Mayport. A new band of heavy rains swept through as they arrived at the marina parking lot. They made another dash through the downpour to the boat. He was glad that it was raining, that no one would see him with this woman. His heart was pounding as they climbed aboard, and it was not all from the quick sprint across the bulkhead pier. He flipped on lights and showed her below to the main lounge. She stood in the middle of the room, soaked and uncomfortable, looking around. Hooker roused himself on his perch when the lights came on, and stared at Diane. He bobbed his head back and forth a couple of times, and then gave a long, loud wolf whistle. Diane smiled.

  “That bad, hunh, bird?” she said.

  “That was a compliment,” Mike laughed. “This way to the amenities.”

  He took her to one of the forward guest cabins, produced a full length, terry-cloth bathrobe and showed her where the bathroom shower was, checked towels, and handed her a Navy style laundry bag. She took her purse with her, gave him a brief smile, and closed the door. He went aft to get out of his own wet clothes and to shower. He dried off in his bathroom, and then paused for a moment, wondering what to put on. She would be in a bathrobe; it wouldn’t do for him to get dressed up. He pulled on a pair of swim trunks, and then his own terrycloth bathrobe. He was setting up the bar when she reappeared a half hour later. He tried mightily not to stare.

  The white bathrobe came down demurely to her ankles. She was carrying the laundry bag with its limp, wet contents. The bathrobe was made of a thick pile material that revealed nothing, but the flash of white lace in the laundry bag confirmed what he already guessed. Her dark, wet hair was pulled straight back in a limp mass covering the collar of the robe, accentuating the fine arch of her eyebrows, the lush contrast between her creamy, white skin and her dark eyes. She smiled tentatively before glancing away, clearly reading the interest in his eyes.

  “I think I’m going to live,” she said.

  “You look—marvelous.” He almost blushed. “What’s your preference?” he asked, nodding towards the bar.

  “A brandy, I think,” she said, coming closer. “Yes, a brandy. It’s not cold, but it’s been a brandy sort of day.”

  “Brandy it is. There’s a washer-dryer set in the galley, just back there, if you want to get that stuff going. Soap’s in the cabinet above the washer.”

  He poured two snifters of Courvoisier while she attended to the laundry, and started to take them over to the leather couch.

  “Goddamn,” said Hooker. Mike diverted to the perch.

  “Yeah, Bird. Goddamn is right. You want a hit?”

  He tipped the snifter so that the bird could get his beak in the glass, but at the last moment he shook all his feathers and backed away from the fumes.

  “You don’t really let that bird drink alcohol, do you?”

  She came over to the perch, where he handed her the other snifter. They stood side by side, watching Hooker as he weaved from side to side to keep them both in view. Mike was very much aware of her nearness. He could smell her wet hair, and a trace of perfume that had eluded the downpour outside. Part of his mind did a whirlwind comparison between this woman and the occasional dates he had brought home from the Jacksonville Beach bar scene. Diane projected the self assurance that all attractive women have, exuding a mature awareness of sexual competence without the coy trappings and flirtatious devices of the young single set. She was looking at Hooker, who continued to shift from one leg to the other, looking back at both of them.

  “This parrot is a natural born boozer,” Mike said. “But he mostly likes fruity sort of stuff—wine, gin and tonic, rum and tonic.”

  “Doesn’t it make him drunk?”

  “Absolutely. Once he starts to weave around, I have to put him in his drunk bird box until he sleeps it off.”

  She reached out to pet Hooker on the head. Mike held his breath. Hooker was into amputations. But this time the parrot bent his head sideways, looking at Diane first with one eye and then the other, and then, miraculously, bent his neck forward and let her scratch the bright green feathers on his neck.

  “He must like you,” said Mike. “Normally you would have been chomped by now.”

  “Where did you get him?” she asked, sampling the cognac.

  “Bought him in Norfolk two years ago. Always wanted a parrot, but they tend to bond to their humans, and you can’t leave them. When I found out I was coming to a ship that didn’t deploy, I fig
ured it was safe.”

  “What happens when you go out to sea for more than a couple of days?”

  She sipped her cognac carefully, using one hand to hold the snifter, and the other to run a fingernail lightly through the bright plumage on the parrot’s neck. Hooker kept his head down and made small sounds. Her robe was partially open at the top, revealing the swell of her breasts. Mike was torn between looking at her breasts and watching that fingernail slide up and down the parrot’s neck feathers.

  “He goes along.” He smiled down at her. “As Captain, I can get away with that; couldn’t do it before.”

  They stood together by the perch, not touching and yet within each other’s personal space, she stroking the bird’s head, he trying to tamp down a sense of building physical excitement, trying hard to pretend that something wasn’t happening between them. A sudden burst of heavy rain drummed on the cabin roof. The boat moved slowly in the wind sweeping off the intracoastal.

  She watched the parrot for a long minute, and then stepped away from the perch, walking towards the after end of the lounge, towards the couch. She stood before it for a moment, as if trying to decide something. He watched her carefully, excited by the way the robe clung to her hips. The muted grind of the washing machine in the galley tried to compete with the noise of the rain overhead. She gave her head a little shake, and then sat down, pulling the robe modestly around her legs. Mike discovered that he had been holding his breath. He relaxed, and moved to join her on the couch.

  “Aw, shit,” croaked the parrot.

  They both broke up, laughing a little louder than necessary. He sat down and looked at her. She smiled.

  “For a moment there …” she said.

  “Yeah. Me too. It’s the cognac, I guess.”

  She looked at him. Her eyes were almost purple in the dim light of the cabin.

  “No, it’s not the cognac. I wanted—I mean, we’re both grownups here. You’ve been very nice to me, and J.W., my husband, is not very nice to me. It’s kind of complicated. I’ve just recently made a discovery: my husband has a girlfriend.” She lowered her eyes in embarrassment.

  Mike did not know what to say, so he kept his silence. She looked back up at him.

  “You’re an attractive man, and over there, standing next to you, I felt—something. Part of me would very much like to indulge my desires for a while, but the part that’s been married for sixteen years keeps surfacing the usual consequences.”

  She looked directly at him for a moment before continuing, her eyes luminous.

  “I don’t think I have what it takes to have an affair, to sneak around, to manage the deception. I’m the type who would just come right out with it one morning, admitting all, and I’m not prepared to put up with what would follow. That’s what I meant by consequences; I’ve seen it too often in the Navy.”

  She looked away again. He started to say something, but she put a finger to her lips.

  “Let me finish, before I lose my nerve. I wanted—I still want, actually—for you to make love to me. When we ran into each other at the O’Club, and again when you gave us the tour of the boat, I felt the attraction. I think you feel the same thing.”

  He waited, his mind whirling.

  “As you’ve guessed,” she continued, “my marriage is not, I don’t know—working? Is that the word these days? No, that doesn’t quite describe it.”

  She tossed her head impatiently, and sipped some cognac. She continued to keep her eyes averted from his face.

  “J.W. and I are at the going through the motions stage. When we first got married, he explained to me that his career in the Navy would come first and foremost, that he was determined to make Admiral, and that getting to Flag rank would take a hundred percent effort. I went along with that. I was supposed to have the family, and do what was required to support his career. We tried hard to have kids, but that didn’t work out. Which meant that the career became everything. And even that was pretty interesting, at least for a while. He was on the fast track, and people seemed to think he was a comer.”

  “But—?”

  “But. I found out that his career didn’t leave much of a role in life for me. I tried a couple of things—real estate in Washington, going back to school, and that filled in the empty space for a while, but J.W. made it clear that I could do anything I wanted as long as it didn’t interfere with my support role.”

  “And, of course, everything you tried did just that.”

  “Yes. That was made clear, always in a subtle manner, but clear. And now, I find out he’s been seeing some woman on his trips to Norfolk. I realized that I was an important part of the frame but not part of the picture. I should have guessed, of course; the wife’s the last one to figure it out.”

  Mike wanted to reach out for her, to hold her. Her discomfort was palpable.

  “Is the woman someone you know?” he asked.

  “No. I found out quite by accident. I almost wish I hadn’t. She’s in the Navy, of all things. A Commander, on the Fleet Commander’s staff in Norfolk. J.W. goes to Norfolk to meetings all the time because the Admiral hates to go to conferences. She has a condo out in Virginia Beach. He gets a room at the BOQ, but stays with her. It’s apparently been going on for nearly two years.”

  “How did you find all this out?”

  She laughed, a short, bitter sound.

  “At one of those awful receptions at the O’Club. I was in the ladies room, and two women came in while I was in a stall. They were talking about J.W., how good looking he is, and all about—her.”

  Mike leaned back in the couch, unsure of what to say. He was sorry for her pain, but at the same time aware that the fact of her husband’s infidelity somehow changed the equation. He remembered the aviator’s comments that she was scouting. He wondered if she was, behind all the protestations, ready to have an affair of her own. She looked across at him and smiled a bittersweet smile, as if reading his thoughts. He felt himself beginning to blush.

  “Does he know you know?” he asked, trying to divert his own thoughts.

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I was very hurt for a while, but I’m not sure what a confrontation would prove. He has his career, his nice office, the staff at his beck and call, a mistress, and a presentable wife. I have my volunteer work at the hospital and at the Navy Relief Office, the nightly round of receptions, a very nice set of quarters on the beach, and a presentable husband. Most women in America would think I was pretty well off. But lately it’s gotten pretty lonely inside; I keep thinking that there’s something else—you know the song, is that all there is?”

  She smiled ruefully and sipped her cognac again.

  “And then I say to myself that I’m being stupid, that there are thousands of women who have not one tenth of what I have and to grow up and shut up. Maybe even he will grow up one day.”

  She shook her head again, as if to clear away the complexity of what she was trying to say.

  “I think that what I desperately need is to be, well, wanted. As a woman, as a wife, as even a friend. And now, here I am, on a bachelor’s boat, with nothing on under this robe, and a very attractive and considerate man a few feet away, and part of me is saying, Diane, he wants you, you want him, do it for God’s sake, let go, and the other part is saying, don’t be an ass—married women who fool around always, but always, get nothing but pain out of it, even when their husbands are cheating on them.”

  She shook her head again, slowly.

  “I’m not doing this very well. Maybe I better just get the hell out of here.”

  He moved closer to her on the couch. He leaned across the space between them, reached out and brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers. She turned her face slightly.

  “You must live right,” he said, softly.

  She looked at him, a question forming in her eyes. He cupped her face in his hand for a moment, and then leaned back.

  “My turn. I was married briefly to a girl I thought I knew; came ba
ck from a deployment to find out she’d left me for a lawyer, for God’s sake, and that I didn’t know anything, not anything, about her, and probably not about women in general. I’ve been single now for, what, almost as long as you’ve been married, sixteen years; in all that time, I’ve made it a hard and fast rule never to go after another man’s wife. I have this superstition, see: if I take up with another man’s wife, it will come back to haunt me. One day, maybe, I’ll fall in love, and get married, and then some evil bastard will come along and seduce my wife, and I’ll find out, and there won’t be shit I can do about it, because I will have been guilty of the same crime. It’s silly, probably, but there it is. And it’s a bitch, lady, because when an attractive, married woman sends out that ‘I want’ signal, all the sweet young single things get blown right out of the room. I don’t know what it is, exactly—basic biology, I guess.”

  He threw up his hands in a gesture of exasperation.

  “So, yes,” he continued. “I would dearly love to take that robe off, but, right now my stupid conscience would get in the way. But not for lack of inspiration.”

  They looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment. She made a small sound, deep in her throat as tears welled up in her eyes. He slid over then and held her while she wept, great wracking sobs, punctuated after a few minutes by the beginnings of hyperventilation. He patted her on the back and calmed her, telling her that it would be all right, to breathe slower, until she quieted. He left her on the couch and went to the bathroom, returning with a cold cloth. He wiped her face gently, erasing the smudged remains of mascara, and reducing the blotches of color on her cheeks. She kept her eyes closed while he did this; he was glad that she did, because he did not think he could restrain himself from loving this woman whose need was so strong. He Continued to smooth the skin of her face with the cloth, tracing her features, marvelling at the folly of a man who could ignore this woman. He suddenly found himself to be ravenously hungry.