It’s midday, and the weather has been consistently clear and calm. We had a discussion about fishing last night, and Tenn does not believe I’m as talented a fisherman as I claim. She is correct in her assumption, but I’m going attempt to disprove her, nonetheless. So I begin the arduous task of untangling lines and rope.
“I have something that will help,” Tenn shouts from below. She scurries up with a beer, which I warmly receive.
“Can’t hurt.” I take the beer and, funnily enough, it does seem to help.
Tenn also has a beer in her hand. She props herself up on the higher part of the deck and takes a seat, looking down on me while I toil away. “That looks like a lot of work to not catch a fish,” she taunts as I pull some things apart.
“Not helping,” I shout playfully, and try to grab her foot, which she quickly pulls away.
“Are you sure there is even fishing line in here?” I ask.
“Nope.”
“Ugh.”
I continue my battle regardless.
“I’ll get this organized faster if you sing to me.”
“Sing to you? I don’t know if I have a song I want to sing right now.”
I take a sip of beer. “How about a story, then?”
“Truth or fiction?”
“Truth. How about the story of how Tenn ended up living on Crazy Lady in the Caribbean?”
“Okay, I can do that.” She shifts and looks pensively over the horizon, staying quiet for some time while I wrestle with the contents of the lazarette.
“I don’t know where to start,” she says.
“Well, when last we left off, you had a regular spot singing and dancing for crime bosses and lowlifes in some New York dive,” I remind her.
“Right.”
“It’s quite the jump from that to sailing Crazy Lady in the South Caribbean,” I say with some suspicion in my tone.
“I could say the same about being a railroader in the Pacific Northwest to solo-sailing a luxury yacht in the Caribbean,” she answers.
“Fair enough,” I say.
It’s obvious we both have lots to learn about each other. We have left out rather large pieces of our life stories, but something tells me hers is a little more unscrupulous than mine.
“Here we go!” I shout as I finally see what I’m looking for. All the fishing equipment is sitting on the bottom. It’s old and tired, but it’s better than nothing. There is even a bell that can be set up so it rings when you have a fish on the line.
“Looks like we are having fish for dinner,” I tell her as I pull everything out of the deep storage.
“Uh huh, sure,” she says, the doubt in her tone obvious.
I made a mess on deck with all the junk, so I begin to clean up before rigging the fishing line. I can’t imagine any of this junk being useful, but I stow it away nonetheless.
“I’m assuming all this stuff came with the boat?”
“She came with all kinds of junk.”
“How long have you been living on her?”
“Not as long as you might think.”
“What were you and Sylvester up to?”
“I thought we had a rule that we wouldn’t ask about our exes.”
“Right, sorry. I do like that rule,” I admit. I would rather eat broken glass than talk about Lydia.
“How about I tell you about my first time sailing?”
“I’d love to hear that story. Join me over here,” I say as I close the lazarette.
We make our way to the back of the ship where I begin rigging up the fishing line. Everything I need is here, and I’m feeling lucky. There is nothing better than catching a fish off your sailboat and having it for dinner. It’s still early in the afternoon, so it isn’t impossible to think I may get one on the line before dinner.
Tenn sits in her normal spot on the bench and puts her feet up. I hear her voice — her subtle southern accent and calm, feminine tone is like music to me.
“Unfortunately, it was a great experience,” Tenn says.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s the worst thing that can happen — having a nice introduction to sailing. I look at sailing like gambling. The worst thing that can happen is you win. The best thing that can happen is you lose. If you lose big enough and early enough, that’s what you take away from the experience, and you don’t go back. If you win, it feels great, and you’re hooked. Sailing is much the same. If your first experience is horrible, you get seasick, the weather is awful, and your crew sucks, then you’re probably not going to want to go back out on the water anytime soon.”
“So, we would be better off if we never got into sailing?” I ask.
“Of course! This is crazy when you think about it. But it’s too late for us, Stark. We’re degenerate sailors and there is no going back,” she remarks, throwing her empty beer can across the deck.
I appreciate her humor, and we share a laugh. I have some success setting up the fishing rod, the line in the water, the bait trolling far behind, and the bell set up on the rod to ring when I hook a fish.
Tenn tells her story. “Fancy summer camps were expensive, so that wasn’t something I did growing up. But one year I ended up going to one when I was about eleven years old. It must have been through the church or something. Anyway, they had little tiny sailboats on the lake. They didn’t seem so tiny to me at the time, but they were probably as small as they make them. Anyway, I got lucky. When the counselor sat me down and put up the sail, I took off slicing through the water like I had done it a million times. All the other girls were giggling and falling into the water, and I was tacking back and forth across the small lake. It was effortless. It was an amazing feeling, slicing through the water. I felt like I had found something I was good at.”
I sit deep on the bench, looking at the bell on the end of the fishing rod while Tenn tells her story. I like listening to her talk and want her to go on.
“That sounds nice.” My lazy voice cracks when I speak.
“It was. But now look at me, stuck in the middle of the Atlantic with this weirdo,” she says playfully, pointing to me.
“Clearly you made some bad choices,” I say, trying to play along.
“How about you, darlin’, how was your first time?” Tenn asks in an overly flirtatious tone.
“Well, I was a late bloomer, as they say. I was well into my twenties, living in Seattle. I got a twenty-eight-foot sailboat and learned how to sail it on the Juan de Fuca. I was alone for the most part — it was a nice way to get away from the city. I would camp out for the weekends and sail back to the city to get back to work.”
“You know, darlin’, we are about as different as two people can be,” Tenn says.
“How do you figure?”
“Just that you are such a lone wolf, and I hate being alone. If I don’t share an experience with someone, it’s like it never happened.”
“When I found you, you were alone. You seemed like a lone wolf yourself.”
“Yeah, I guess I was. I was lost. I really don’t like being alone. I think you do though.” She smirks.
“I’ve always thought that was true, but people change. I like that you are here. I hate the idea of being alone right now,” I answer truthfully.
Tenn swings her legs around and sits up, and I can tell she is up to something. “How many girls have you loved?” she asks.
“What?”
“How many times have you said, ‘I love you’ to a girl?”
“I don’t know,” I say with some defensiveness in my tone.
“Of course you do. Everyone knows that,” she presses.
I begin to feel uncomfortable. I get up from my seat and start making adjustments that don’t need to be made to the fishing rod to distract myself. I try to think of a number to say that would be appropriate. The truth is, my ex-wife is the only woman I’ve ever said that to, and what is sadder is that I didn’t love her, and she didn’t love me. Very early on in the relationship we exchanged aw
kward “I love yous” and it didn’t take long before we stopped saying it completely.
“It doesn’t matter though, does it? It doesn’t mean a thing if there is nothing behind it. Love should be felt, not said,” Tenn says, clearly sensing my uneasiness.
She speaks to my back because my senseless adjustments have messed up the rigging and I’m trying to correct it. Love should be felt, not said. That could be a line in the novel I’m supposed to be writing. I have the sudden sense that I’m avoiding responsibility. As if I have skipped out on work and people are waiting for me. No one is waiting. The idea of writing anything went down with my ship in Solitude Bay. If I were to be completely honest with Tenn, I would tell her that I have told many women I loved them, and they’d told me the same, but they were characters in my books. They weren’t real. Tenn doesn’t need to know that, though.
“Fixed,” I say to myself.
I get the fishing rod tensioned correctly and step away from it. I didn’t even realize that while I was temporarily lost in my thoughts, Tenn had retreated to the cabin. I felt as though she was just trying to have a nice conversation and I vibed her out. I sit on the steps leading down to the cabin where she is lighting some incense.
“How many times have you said it?” I ask awkwardly, trying to rejuvenate the conversation.
“You’re the worst, Stark.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. You’re making it weird.”
She isn’t wrong. I have a knack for doing that, so I try to shift gears. I make my way down the steps and sit.
“How many guys have you had sex with?” I ask bluntly.
“What?! You can’t ask that, you dummy.”
“Well, what’s more personal? Asking someone how many times they have confessed their love for someone, or how many times they’ve had sex?”
Tenn sets the burned-out match down on the wooden stand that holds the burning incense and seems to be contemplating my question. “You raise a valid point. I won’t ask again,” she says.
“Zero,” I answer with some humility.
Tenn smiles calmly. I don’t have to tell her which question I am answering. I also don’t have to explain there were a few empty “I love yous” early in my marriage.
“You know, you might not have told many girls you loved them over the years, but I’m sure you have given your share of love in different ways. You’re an intense guy, and when you’re feeling something, you don’t need to say it.”
I’m not sure what to say next.
“Stand up,” she softly orders.
I’m not sure what she is up to, but I comply. The boat’s motion is rather easy, and I can stand without holding on to anything.
Tenn takes a few steps closer to me and puts both of her hands on my chest. Her bright eyes look at me intensely, and she is smiling like she knows a secret. “Do you feel that?” she asks.
I like having her close. I always do. Her hands on my chest make me conscious of my breaths, and she looks up at me like she is casting a spell. My chest rises and falls. Her calmness is contagious.
Tenn takes my hands and guides them behind her back, and then she puts hers behind me and she pulls me in. We hold each other, feeling our breaths rise and fall. A calm easy feeling washes over me. Her face is pressed against my chest and she runs her hands up through the back of my hair.
It’s like we are slow dancing but there is no music. We hold each other tight, making small adjustments, trying to have as much of our bodies in contact as possible.
There’s an undeniable tension that has been building over the last nine days at sea that is on the verge of release. My fingers get lost in the curls of her hair. She seems to be breathing me in, and when she moves from one side of my neck to the other, our lips graze. She has me in a seductive spell; I chase her lips with mine as they breeze by, but she won’t let them land on hers. Amazingly, we have not kissed a single time on this journey.
What had started innocently enough is now changing into something more primitive. We both breathe heavily through our open mouths. Finally, I catch her lips with mine, holding the back of her head as she holds mine. Our lips lock, and our bodies tense like an electric current is passing through us. Then we relax, our lips soften, mouths opening, our movements slow and caring. Neither of us show any sign of stopping. It’s like I was starving in the desert, on the verge of death, and she is a perfect glass of water filling me with life. I take everything she’s willing to give me.
She pushes me away with the flat of her hand on my chest. I feel a gravitational force pulling me back toward her, but I respect the space she has created. She pulls off her long t-shirt and steps out of her bikini bottoms, leaving her completely naked. Her pale skin where her bikini blocks the sun contrasts with her very tanned olive skin.
She stands in front of me, so vulnerable and beautiful. I step closer to her, but she again puts the palm of her hand on my chest. Her eyes dance up and down, and her hands wave at my clothes as if she could magically remove them.
I make quick work of taking off my clothes and we continue our slow dance, naked and free. The feeling of her skin against mine makes me feel human. It’s like every guilty feeling I’ve ever had is lifted away and I’m an innocent being just doing what I’m meant to do.
It doesn’t matter that it has been so long for me. My body reacts, and I don’t have to do anything; it’s like I’m just allowing this to happen. There’s no effort; I’ve never felt so natural and alive as I do right now with this beautiful naked free spirit.
We try to make it to the bed in the aft cabin, but our bodies can’t wait. On the wooden floor of the cabin, something ceremonious happens between us, an emotional tornado takes us away and leaves us in a sweaty tangled mess on the galley floor. We kiss lightly between heavy breaths.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
The bell on the end of the fishing rod rings over and over, the sound breaking the spell we are under.
I want to brag and gloat that there is a fish on the line, but I don’t say a word. I simply smile, perhaps a little smugly. She looks up at me, her face flushed, strands of curly blonde hair stuck to her back and neck. She smiles back.
I hope we never see land again.
Sixteen
It’s day fourteen of our Atlantic crossing.
Dynamics have changed for the better on Crazy Lady. When the sun is shining and the day is warm, Tenn is naked, and oftentimes I am too. She reads, she writes, and she rests. I trim the sails, update our position on the chart, and spend a great deal of time resting on my portside bench underneath the blankets and pillows.
Our lives for the past few days have been oddly solitary. She lives hers and I live mine. It feels natural, so I don’t resist. Midday we seem to find one another and make love. Sometimes it’s in the comfort of our bed, other times we find each other on the foredeck under the hot sun. I want to hold her after, but she seems to be energized and wants to get busy with something, so I am often left lying naked alone.
I’ve decided that today is the day we will be crossing the halfway point to Azores, but I can’t be sure because of our lack of navigational equipment. My old-fashioned approach to keeping track of our position has been known to be less than accurate. It’s called a dead reckoning position, not an exact position.
Today, Tenn left me alone in our bed, my chest still rising and falling rapidly from the excitement of her selfishly rocking back and forth on top of me. I hear Tenn walking on deck above my head to her usual spot, where she likes to lie in the sun. I assume she’s writing or drawing in her book. I don’t know what she writes, but I suspect it’s poetry by catching a few glimpses of the words on the page.
I arch my back and neck to peer out the paneled transom window above the head of the bed. The water is as still as a lake. It’s a strange feeling, being becalmed in the middle of the Atlantic. I pull myself out of bed, walk through the narrow hall and into the main cabin, and take a seat on a cushioned bench in front
of the chart table.
The chart has a penciled-in line that shows the course we have taken. There are points along the line where I have marked our speed, compass heading, and time. I have nothing to update today because we have not moved since yesterday. I assume the current is pushing us north, but I can’t be sure. I’ve wished and prayed that this crossing never ends, and it seems Neptune has listened.
The boat rises and falls lazily, as if time stands still. My head swims into a daydream. Tenn and I have no plan for what happens after we reach Azores. We have discussed sailing on to explore the Mediterranean, but the conversations about our future have had an emptiness. I haven’t pressed her for the details. I don’t have the right to. We’re in this together, and we are equally lost.
But it’s hard to be lost when there’s nowhere to be. It’s funny that, in a way, my life seems to have gone sideways, but I’ve never felt more grounded. I don’t care where we sail as long as Tenn is with me.
I walk across the cabin to the forward V-berth that has become a vast storage area. I begin to feel silly being naked, so I wrap a towel around my waist before rifling through the boxes and bags. I’m looking for a bottle of rum I’ve stowed away.
“There you are,” I say out loud.
I dust off the fancy bottle of rum. The label reads: Ron Bacardi de Maestros de Ron, Vintage MMXII. I have been saving this very special and rather expensive bottle for when we crossed the halfway mark. Today is the day. Before we left, I had gathered a few things from the restaurant that Stan would have wanted me to have, and this is one of them. Another is his silly Pirate Launcher. I look at the black case and laugh to myself, thinking about how absurd it is.
I grab two glasses and climb out of the cabin to where Tenn lies naked, save her big floppy sun hat. She is writing in her logbook as I expected. The sail is dead on the mast and draped over the boom. The hot sun radiates off the wood of the deck and reflects off the ocean, creating a heavenly glow in the air.
Uncharted Waters Page 17