by KT Morrison
He turned the station wagon to the right, in some strange effort to hide from the bike that he knew would be pulling in behind him shortly. The main parking had been straight ahead, when pulling in most cars went to the wooden boardwalk that lined the building. Geoff curled right, hid behind a double decker steel-roof hangar, filled with boats, stacked on top of each other on metal scaffolding. He looked up, saw dangerous looking propellers looming above him. His heart pounded in his chest and he felt his head vibrating with his pulse. He watched now in the rear view for the bike. His heart beat and beat, ten powerful thumps and, just when he thought he might be mistaken, the bike lunged into the gravel yard, kicking up a cloud of dust. He heard the rumble of the motor in his bones.
“Shit,” he said.
The helmet turned left and right, saw him, then the bike rolled away, leaned and did a circle around, the rider’s long leg out, boot heel dragging through the stone. It revved, growled like an animal, put a fear in the centre of his heart. He came to the side of the Volvo. It was Geoff’s turn to look left and right, searching the cabin of the station wagon for something to defend himself. There was nothing.
He threw the door open and clambered out of the car, kept himself against the silver paint and shuffled along towards the back hatch. The muscular tanned man on the fat black-painted hog had both hands up on either side of the helmet, pulling it off. Geoff got himself to the back door and opened it in a hurry. The back was empty. His eyes darted to the left, saw the man put the helmet down, he looked up. It was Dino, his thick greasy hair pushed back from his handsome face, staring at him. He had black jeans and a black T-shirt, his big sculpted arms peeling the sleeves up so they sat at the crest of his biceps where they met the ridge of his shoulder. Geoff looked away, his shaky hands smoothing over the velour-carpeted formed inset that sat over the spare. Some primitive part of his brain working like crazy to save his life, making his hands work on their own to get a weapon. Grab the tire iron, smash his white teeth out of that tanned face. Smash him before he smashes you, Geoff.
Dino walked to him now, his chest thrust out in an arrogant strut, his eyes half-lidded, head cocked lazily.
“H-hey, Dino,” he said. He flipped open the cover, saw the spare, a tire iron, saw they were locked in place with a turn key. Dino was next to him, leaning against the back of the Volvo, arm up above, hand gripping the opened hatch over their heads. “What are you going to do?” he said.
“Is she okay?”
Geoff narrowed his eyes, feeling an unwarranted confidence, feeling like today was the day he could go down fighting. “What the fuck do you want with me?”
“I want to know where she is, you fucking idiot,” he spit at him.
“And then what?”
“And then what?” he repeated. “Then I'm going to go fuckin get her.”
“Where?” he said.
“Jesus, Geoff, what are you doing here? Did he call you?”
“Rocco?”
“He called you. He has her, doesn’t he? I know where he is. If you're here, I know where he is.”
“What do you mean?”
“Geoff, how is Nia?”
“I don't know...”
“You don't know?” he said, looming forward, not angry—a worry twisting his face. “Did you talk to her?”
“No, he said she was okay.”
“Fuck,” he sighed. He shook his head, lost in thought, his gaze across the parking lot and out towards the lake.
Geoff felt suddenly stupid thinking that Dino would harm him here in the parking lot of a marina in the middle of the sunny day. All these witnesses around, people come to get their boat fixed, head out on a day trip, rent...
Dino left, didn't say a thing, just launched off the back of the Volvo and marched across the gravel towards the doors to the marina.
“Where are you going?” he called after him, but he didn't answer. “Dino?”
He slammed the hatch shut, hissed Fuck under his breath, followed along towards where Dino had headed, cursed, Shit, turned and went back, opened the car and got his iPhone out of the passenger side. He locked up and went along to the marina again.
Dino was inside, standing at the counter. He leaned on it, arms folded up under himself. The man at the counter pushed a paper across to him, clipped onto a board. He smiled to Geoff, said “I’ll be with you in a minute,” nodded to Dino.
“I'm with him,” Geoff said.
Dino looked over his shoulder at him.
“Right,” the guy said, taking the board and looking it over, standing with his back to a broad window that looked silently out across the bay. Dino got his credit card back and took a set of keys from the guy with his yellow marina polo shirt stretched over his beer belly.
He set off for the outside, heading past the aisles stocked with inflatables and life rafts, and preservers. Geoff followed behind.
“Dino, hey, Dino,” he said, waving his phone now. Dino stopped and turned outside the door, under the cover of the porch.
“What?” he said.
“He wants me to call him when I get here.”
Dino rested his hand on Geoff’s shoulder and sighed as he looked away and down, thinking again.
“Geoff, don't call him,” he said.
“Don't call him?”
“No,” he said. He looked out toward the lake, squinting, casting his gaze far off. He pointed out towards the horizon. “I know where he is.”
“You do?”
“He called you here, I know where he's at.”
There was a twinkle of light reflecting off something out in the water, very far off in the hazy distance. “He’s out there?”
“They’re out there,” he said, squinting into the distance. “Rocco said she was okay?” He didn’t look around.
“He said she was healing.”
“God, that girl,” Dino sighed and he shook his head, his long fingers curled over his forehead into his hairline as he bent to cradle his pained face. His hair fell forward over his eyes. “Maria...she get her good?” he said into his palm.
“Dino, it was awful.”
“She’s okay, right?”
“He says she is.”
He stood upright again, his face firm with resolve, he swept his hair back into place. “Fuckin Maria,” he said.
“What about Stacy?” he asked him.
“Stace? She’s with Maria right now. They’re off with each other.”
“Does she know...”
He turned, said, “Know about us? Me and Nia? No. She fuckin thinks I knew about Rocco or something, though...I was covering for him...who knows what the fuck she thinks...what the fuck Maria will have her thinking...”
“Is Nia in danger?”
“From Stace? She believed you a hundred percent, Geoff. And Stace would kill me, not Nia. Stace isn’t Maria.”
Geoff felt unconvinced. Felt like his wife would still be harmed. He crossed his arms and stared down at Dino’s big scuffed boots, wished he could keep her safe. Wished she would feel safe with him.
Dino said, “You didn’t call the cops.” Firm, not a question. Looking for confirmation.
“No, I didn’t.”
“That’s good, Geoff.”
No, people like Dino and Rocco didn't call the cops. Nia wouldn't either. They took care of their own and they hated cops. People like Geoff and his parents would call the cops.
He didn't call them, not because he didn't want to get Maria in trouble—he didn't call them because he couldn't face them that night. Couldn't face the humiliation. Two officers in his kitchen, him telling them this woman came in and attacked his wife. Who? Oh, her boss’s wife. Could picture their solemn faces as they assessed him as a man with the new revelation that his wife was stepping out on him with her boss. Looking for another dick that would satisfy her because this meek little fellow in the button-down wasn't giving it good enough. No, he didn't call them. Maybe he should have. Instead he mopped up her blood. Wiped the walls do
wn with Clorox. Did it quietly with funereal glumness. Then he went and he held his daughter until she cried herself dry in his arms and they both fell asleep under her protective veil.
“You followed me so you could find her?”
“Yeah. I knew he had her. I fuckin knew it. I was watching your house. Waiting for her to come home. Waiting for you to go see her. I took a fuckin week off work.”
“You love her?”
He folded his arms and looked away at the bay. “Yeah, I do. I love her.” He kicked at a knot in the decking with the toe of his boot. “Not like you do. I don’t want to take her, you know? I just...fuck, I just love her and I don’t know why. I love my Stace, love my family...you know, I can tell you what Nia wore the first day I saw her in high school. Could tell you every item in her closet when she was eighteen. I...I could tell you so much...I know you don’t want to hear it though.” He shook his head, opened and closed his hands, holding them so he could look at them. “You’re good for her. But she means so much to me...”
“You know why she didn’t call me?”
“She didn’t? At all, eh?”
“No.”
“Fuck, I don’t know,” he said and he slapped his arm and headed out into the sun, past a picnic gazebo, heading to the docks. Geoff followed him and they walked between the boats that lined the cedar plank way. He stopped at four jet skis that bobbed side by side. He looked at the flotation key ring the guy at the counter had given him, matched a number on it to the right jet ski and then hopped from the deck down on to it, his boots stomping on its foot boards.
“Want me to come with you?”
“What? Yeah, Geoff, fuck,” he said, turning the key to start the machine’s motor. Geoff stood a moment, looking out to the water, but he couldn't see the glint out there any more.
“Geoff...”
“What?” he said, turning back and seeing Dino straddling the wave runner, looking back over his shoulder at him, arms flexing with his hands on the grips.
“I have to fuckin hold your hand or something?”
“No,” he said, and he sat down on the edge of the dock, reaching his foot out to see if he could make it to the jet ski. “On the back?”
“Let's go.”
He slipped himself down onto the machine, his arms mildly windmilling to keep his balance.
“Sit down, okay? Hold on to me if you have to,” he said loudly over the rattle of the motor.
“Okay,” he shouted. Dino sat down on the padded saddle and Geoff got behind him and put his arms around his waist. Dino revved it, shot water up around them. Geoff’s face got wet with a mist, then they launched out of the dock, swerving and leaning into a broad circle, nosing the machine to point it out to the centre of the bay, heading towards the deep part of the lake itself beyond. He squeezed himself to Dino, felt his trim hard muscle, felt the flexing and bulging of his body as they bounced and crashed on the waves and the wind whipped their hair.
NIA
He hated her and he wasn’t going to come. Rocco had lied. He’d told her Geoff was coming but that was hours ago.
She squeezed her wet hair in a beach towel Rocco had given her. Some fluffy kid’s thing with Minions printed on it. The shower stall in the boat was tiny, but she’d started to get a dirty smell to her and she needed so badly to be clean. She cleaned for Geoff. Bumping her knees and elbows in the narrow space, wondering how the fuck someone who was six-five, three-hundred-plus pounds would ever get himself showered in there. Every part of him must be pressed up against the walls.
Now she stood naked in the cabin, by the back deck that looked out over the lake. Rocco was up top on the roof, sitting in the sun, she assumed. Waiting for Geoff’s call. If he called. She sighed. Wondered what it would be like to not have Geoff in her life. Not as her husband and not as her friend. He was the single most powerful and positive thing that had happened to her. She knew the sun raised and set on her for her loving husband but he was seeing the truth now. Seeing the real her. He'd wanted to know her darkness and, like a fool, she showed him.
The T-shirt Rocco gave her was flapping on the railing edge at the back of the boat, held in place by a clothespin. Her panties too. She went out bare in the sun and took the shirt and smelled it. It had her body smell but it wasn’t bad. She didn’t check her panties. Put them both on, scooped her hair back and tied it with a band. Her skin had taken a real bronze glow, sleeping and healing in the sun for the last few days. She wasn’t quite sure how long she’d been here. Her head was feeling good and clear now but her time here sometimes seemed like hours, sometimes seemed like months.
Her left ring finger showed a white line from her wedding band, her Goddess stone on the right. The rings had been laid out on the kitchen table for her shower and she slipped them back on, nervously squeezed at the metal and turquoise, eking strength from it. She looked up to the ceiling of the cabin, imagined Rocco up there. Why hadn’t Geoff called? She spun around quick, walked briskly outside, taken with the notion that Rocco had left to pick up Geoff while she was in the shower, but she saw the dinghy bobbing back there, below the deck.
She climbed the ladder and got herself on the roof. It was a flat top with an aluminum railing that went around the perimeter and in the centre was a bump-up, as high as her chest. It had been a sleeping cabin you took a step down into, a penthouse Rocco called it. About ten feet square. It was a bedroom, but the bed and furniture had been pulled out of it a while ago. No one had used his houseboat for a year and a half, he said.
Rocco was sunning himself, sitting on a deck chair perched on the roof of the penthouse, the highest part of the houseboat. There wasn’t a railing around it and he told her his Rocco Jr. used to love jumping into the water from it. The edges didn't drop straight down, he would have to have gone to a far edge and then run and jumped and cleared the space between the roof and a walkway, then the aluminum railing. His sons were rambunctious boys though, she imagined. Just like Rocco and Dino were.
There was a three-step ladder and she climbed the rungs to join him up top.
“Hey,” he said, turning to watch her come to him. There was only one chair up there and he sat straight and waved her closer. His dark skin glistened with sweat. He was shirtless, just a pair of blue swim trunks and nothing else other than a gold chain around his neck.
She set herself in his lap. Plunked herself down on one of his big hard thighs and sat hunched, her hands pressed between her legs, her bare feet rolling on their outside edges.
She said, “He didn’t call?”
“No, baby,” he said, and he brushed her ponytail off her shoulder so it hung down her back. “He could be late. Tied up. Maybe he had other things to do...”
“What did he—”
“Baby, you might want to consider he might not come.”
She stared at the roof of the deck, royal blue, painted in no-skid roughness. It was true.
“Don’t be sad, Nia. It’s what’s best.”
“He’s my husband, Rocco.”
“Just let him be, Nia. If he needs—”
“No, I’ll go to him.”
“Nia, if he doesn’t want to see you what are you going to—”
“He has to want to see me, he’s my best friend.”
He didn’t answer. Just watched her face as she stared at nothing. She could see the worry in him from her periphery. He rubbed her back and right now his touch, his strength, felt so good.
“Nia, please, lay on me,” he said, guiding her to lean against his chest. She let herself fall into him, lay her ear against his heart, felt the tickle of his chest hairs in her nose and that made her smile for some reason. She put her hand up on his chest and she lightly scratched him while she stared out at the horizon.
“Hey, Rocco?”
“Yeah, Nia?”
“Where do you shower? You don’t fit in that stall, do you?”
Her head bounced on his chest as he laughed silently. “No, I don’t fit in there. The lake.
Soap and the lake.”
“Of course,” she said. She laughed too.
“Nia, I want you to be mine.”
“I know.”
“I mean it. Look at me.”
She sat up again, holding herself upright with one loose fist pressed to his chest. He looked up at her intently. Not sad or hoping to be accepted. He looked at her with passion and resolve. He meant it. He wanted her. His black eyes shot through her, his gaze stalwart. He was handsome and tanned and strong and so much of him—everything about him—was what she wanted in a man.
“Leave him, Nia. Don’t hurt him any more. Do it for him. I’m everything. I’ll give you everything. I mean it. I’ll always protect you. I’ll care for you. Buy you a big house...” His hand came up her thigh and he settled it on her flat stomach under her shirt, very low, his little finger slipping under the waistband of her panties. “I want a family. I want to put a baby in you that’s mine. That’s ours. Lots of babies, Nia.” She felt herself droop. Her hand came to rest over his.
“Rocco...”
“Not now, Nia. I know not now. I want to have fun. We’re young. I’ll take you away. Fuck, we’ll go to Italy for the winter. Get away from all this shit.”
“What about your kids, Rocco?”
“She’ll take them,” he said, his body stiffening. Right, Maria. There was no way she’d give up custody.
“My Odie?”
“We can bring her.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do, Nia.”
“Rocco, we’re not kids. We have complicated lives.”
“I love you.”
“Rocco, I—”
His head had turned, cocked like he was hearing something. He frowned. She heard it too now, a motor, a resonant buzz, a small sound that cut through the big wide space of sky and water. Next to the chair he had binoculars set, lens down on the deck beside his phone and his rye and coke and he reached for them.