Reefdog

by Robert Wintner

  But a photo starring me in the Room seemed more worthwhile, pertinent proof of the adventure-lust coursing in these veins.

  Soon those who bought admission to the Room were not allowed to take cameras because of safety hazards in the ocular incursion disparity or the peripheral dangle or the snag factor or some such. Only the misguided dive instructor could take a camera. Each diver was photographed in the room and could buy an 8×10 afterward for thirty bucks, with additional prints at varying prices. The photos were copyrighted, so non-authorized copies were strictly forbidden, as if by law. The fleet’s general smirk helped balance collective embarrassment.

  Another dive instructor felt the commercial pull on this rich new vein, especially with his skills as a diver and photographer. I can do this, Ravi thought. Nobody has rights to a dive site. Fleet consensus was dour—somebody would die, maybe somebody working his ass off right now, somebody seeking something beyond the daily grind, somebody weak on greed. Many fingers pointed at Ravi.

  Scoffing at warnings, the offending instructor put an ad in a tourist magazine, claiming exclusivity to the Room. If you wanted it, you had to choose him because only he knew where it was. Only he had a perfect safety record in finding the Room. Only he could get you in and out without a worry, and he wasn’t sharing. That’s what the ad said. The coconut wireless had it that he threatened to sue for infringement if any other boat tried to coax the location from a tourist who’d been guided to the Room.

  The Room was gladly forgotten within days of the death occurring there, within a few weeks of its unfortunate discovery.

  One big risk of cave diving is silt, and no dive guide enters a cave without forewarning to kick gently sideways or in an easy flutter with fins way off the bottom. A cave often has tributary caves feeding at blind angles, so coming out can be fatally confusing without noting coordinates on the way in. Just so, an eager six-pack included a man whose past, like this cave, intertwined with tributary caverns, feeding the primary drive. He seemed compensatory, driven to achieve something or other, hungry for a leading edge. He made the first turn easily enough but had only five hundred pounds of air remaining at 130 feet. But he’d come this far, and then came the little voice that urges the inexperienced or inadequate to go for it, requiring him to surface to ninety, then descend again to 130 before surfacing again with a safety stop on the way. He made the Room and actually lingered for the photo op to secure his identity. Then he hurried out. Hurry stirs silt in a cave. He didn’t come out—not for a few days, when two rescue divers found him hung up along a tributary just past the deep turn where he must have kicked too hard and gone awry, where a hose snagged on a rock to one side, which he may have thought was overhead, and where any number of problems could have ensued, all of which were likely incidental to running out of air at 120 feet in a narrow cave full of silt with zero viz.

  •

  Nobody said boo, not calling the guilty instructor a jerk or dismissing the episode with the common discount: shit happens. The instructor retired a few months later, cast permanently into the fatal column, dangerous, and worse, imprinted with murder, second degree.

  Litigation on that one lasted longer than anyone cared to follow.

  Far better to tell about the doctor who sucked his tank empty in sixteen minutes and grabbed his dive buddy’s octopus. After hyperventilating on that, he took off for the surface, dragging his dive buddy along—a guy he met that morning—till the buddy realized they were outpacing their bubbles like a hare passing a tortoise and stopped short at sixty feet, up from 120 way too fast. The doctor, a card-carrying member of the American Medical Association, went full speed to the surface, forgetting to exhale and surely forgetting a safety stop since he was about to drown anyway, which he may as well have done. He embolized with a nasty bubble in his neck and got bent to boot, leaving him screaming bloody murder, or gurgling it anyway, writhing on the surface. Reduced to a whimper, he was flown by medevac helicopter to Honolulu at ten feet over the sea to minimize further decompression. Finally, in the hyperbaric chamber, he got pressurized back down to a hundred feet and seemed to be in less pain but died a day later anyway.

  But that story was best squelched too, along with the geeks and lamebrains flopping along the back wall like clown plankton, pinwheeling, riding the bicycle, kicking heads. Realization can be tough, and the toughest yet was that this goofy shit was getting old.

  Some days were better than others, but one afternoon nineteen years in, Ravi took the hand-off of empty tanks from the boat to the parking lot behind the dive shop. First came the sixty-gallon tanks for women and children, then the eighties, then, what the hell… 160s? But they weren’t 160s, only more eighties, along with heavier bones, muscles, joints, and essential attitude, bearing down. Stooping to the burden of sheer, dead weight was a milestone. On that day, in that arduous task, he crossed the line to middle age. A moment earlier it was another working day nearly done, heading for a lazy afternoon, his to enjoy. Then would come evening recreation after a swim or some errands. Maybe he’d call a woman, though he met few women other than tourists. Tourist women felt repetitious and demanding on the glib, social side for the brief return on the other side.

  But things changed on that offload. Time slurred on a moment of knowing. Repetition and strain reached critical mass. An afternoon of rest shouldn’t seem so bad to a hardworking man, but reality had changed. A man slowed down. A nap in a shaded room with an oscillating fan went from seductive to necessary. A major bowel movement led to the gratification formerly reserved for sex.

  On the bright side, a sentient being can assess and adapt.

  Ravi Rockulz drifted into his first nap in recent memory. He was in his early thirties only a while ago. Okay, maybe mid-thirties. He woke two hours later pushing forty. Crusty used to grumble most mornings that he felt shot at and missed and shit at and hit. Ravi downed three aspirin with a caffeinated cola to ease the same feeling, then decided on dinner at a quiet cafe, to ponder options. He would list pros and cons, goals and fears. He would make a chart by which to navigate.

  After a beer and ahi poke (PO-kee), raw tuna diced to half-inch cubes and seasoned with sesame oil, black sesame seeds, cayenne, and ogo (seaweed), he felt ready. So he stared at a sheet of paper with no shimmering promise. He could not plunge into 8½×11 of arid emptiness. Who would dive here? Right out in the middle?

  How long did he sit and stare, waiting for a thought to drift into his brain, down his arm, through his pen, and onto the paper? Where to go? What to do? What to say to whom and when?

  He finally wrote:

  Being a dive instructor is not enough.

  Beneath that, in a few minutes more, he wrote:

  Hawaii. Tahiti (?) Carib (?) Indonesia (?)

  Photography.

  He waited. He finished his poke. He waited, doubting that insight would come, until it came: Okay, go ahead and decompose. Waiting didn’t help, so he ordered another round. And with it, the future arrived casually, out of the blue and into his heart, random as the first amino acid on a chance encounter with electrons—three women. Like any women can appear, these women seemed unfathomable. Such is man’s weakness for the trick of nature.

  Ravi did not visit tourist honkytonks—too loud, too weird, too tediously posed with half-drunk youth claiming identity by virtue of a six-hour flight and a few beers. Throw in some sunburn and call it experience. Those places felt alien, and though a cynical outlook can be tough, reality has standards.

  He’d heard last week that a bar in Kihei was “crawling with leg.” It seemed creepy and got worse: The light fixtures were dried blowfish, the same creatures swimming yonder who might have known a certain waterman and approached in greeting. No, not the same because… Never mind. The grimy pub bought the blowfish from Asia, but the drift was the same. The place was vile, willfully ignorant of the reef neighborhood and blind to everything but a postcard pose. Ravi ate at home; it was so much better and cost much less. And who would go looking fo
r leg when it schooled up on the home reef? Still some nights needed a change of pace.

  Yet he felt like a tourist with no local knowledge, or maybe fatigue had trumped instinct. But no… Two of these women were very good-looking and doable in a blink. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance? The third woman felt different, a cameo classic and a cool drink of water for a tired soul. Did he look too old? She had to be younger but seemed indifferent to his petty concerns.

  Minna Somayan, a hapa Kanaka Maoli (meaning half pure Hawaiian—her phrase, spoken blissfully) explained that she was of pure descent on one side and a cross of Filipino and Chinese forebears on the other. High cheekbones offset her Polynesian lips and almond eyes. Pearly whites with no cane holes or yellowing highlighted her skin—golden brown as heart koa. But features came second. First came grace in a lead from the hips, the eyes, and fingers. Oozing like lava, compelling as hula, she could take a man down, yet she mercifully flowed around him. In Hawaiian terms, she combined humanity and nature; her embodiment of the elements was a consensus of components. She smiled on the trim, fit fellow alone with his little beer, his little dish of poke, his little chopsticks, and his pen writing his little list, probably mapping out a good life for himself.

  Ravi Rockulz understood current, surge, and undertow and how these forces relate to the power of women; no matter how strong or skilled a waterman may be, he can only stay calm, ride it out, and survive if he’s lucky and smart. Great loss may come otherwise if he challenges a force of nature. He knew as well the profound scope of peripheral vision, what a waterman and women sense in the company of predators. Hard and hungry stares do not go unseen. Ravi knew the game, often picking his beauty du jour and ignoring her. With practiced indifference, he might reel her in by sundown. A beauty not gazed upon wants to know why. So he looked away.

  The trio headed for a table close by. Passing Ravi, the first two women whispered. With her eyes on him, the third woman smiled like a long-lost friend, a friend in need, not a family friend and certainly not a sister. She stopped. “Aloha.” She stated what would survive them, what would transcend what came between them, whether a brief greeting or love as durable as time.

  Keeping with tradition, Ravi said: “Aloha.” He matched her smile and met her eyes, casting indifference to the wind.

  She offered both hands at once familiar yet formal, cordial yet symbolic. Grasping hands was spontaneous, warm and natural, a first connection. What a woman. He stood, taking her hands in a reunion of sorts, like intimates meeting after time apart, after returning from the waters of forgetfulness to a reef remembered. “I’m Minna.”

  Dumb as a fence post where a nightingale just landed, he said, “I know.” But he couldn’t have known. Could he?

  She laughed. “What’s your name?”

  Ravi. “Ravi. I’m Ravi.”

  “Ravi? Is that French?”

  No, it’s not French. It’s Israeli. “People think I am French because of my accent. But it’s… Israeli.”

  “Oh, wow! That’s so cool. I mean, Israel.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re not a tourist.”

  “No. I am a dive instructor.”

  “Oh, wow. I love that. I mean I love the water. I’d love to learn how to dive and what not. I know I can.” He squinted; how did she know? “I mean I’ve been around the water my whole life. I can, you know, free dive and what not.”

  Free dive and what not? She sounded like a valley girl gone native, which is better than stupid but not by much. But then how stupid did he sound when he asked like a college boy at a frat party, “What’s your last name? Do you have a job?” Kicking himself for spewing questions so early in the game, he shut up. Not to worry. She didn’t think him stupid, just dumbstruck on her beauty and appeal.

  “Somayan,” she murmured, squeezing his hands, infusing her magic. “I work in a shop. For tourists. I got this pareo there.” She did a pirouette and tropical curtsey. “Don’t you love it?”

  “I do. It suits you. What’s the name of the shop?” Yes, another question felt stupid, but so far, so fast held no alternative. He wanted to tighten the drag and put her in the boat, and he shuddered at the thought of gaffing.

  She smiled more sweetly, assessing him for potential hazard or savoring the moment before murmuring again, “Edith’s Beach Treasures.” He knew the place. “I work tomorrow. Eight to five.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s not what I want to do for my life and what not. I’m in school to be a nurse. I work at the hospital too, as a volunteer. But only twenty hours because of my paying job and, you know, other stuff.” Ravi stared at a different kind of woman. She could only give selflessly for half a normal workweek, on top of a regular job and school. She stood apart from the standard waitress or shop clerk or tourist woman and seared his reverie with, “Good-bye, Ravi.”

  “Good-bye, Minna.”

  “A hui hou.”

  “A hui hou.” Till we talk again.

  She turned away and turned back. “What language do you speak? I mean, you know. Israeli?”

  “I speak English.”

  “Yes,” she giggled. “You know what I mean.”

  “Hebrew is my mother tongue.”

  “How do you say good-bye in Hebrew?”

  He shrugged, “Shalom.”

  “That’s amazing,” she said. “It’s like aloha.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “That’s so cool. I mean, you’re not haole.”

  “I am Caucasian.”

  She drifted. “You know what I mean. I’m born and raised.”

  “I love that.”

  She beamed on cue. “See you.”

  He sat down aching for another three beers but too dazed to remember how to get one within meters of a woman who had altered Life as He Knew It.

  Sizzling like a scorched sapling, he found the wherewithal to uproot for a transplanting elsewhere rather than risk a flame out here. Besides, he could get a twelve-pack on the way home for twice the price of a single beer here, which was like two for one and then ten for free, or some such. But even twelve wouldn’t douse this fire. Ha!

  So he went home and lay down after a tiring day and exhausting evening. He slept like a rock or a very tired Rockulz till five, waking to a cat’s tongue on his nose a half hour early. He pondered the future, Minna Somayan, diving, photography, and Minna Somayan till Skinny insisted on eats right now.

  She was everything and then some, transcending physical with spiritual—and she held up under scrutiny. Hardly thirty hours from their first meeting she whispered, “We could wait.” He shrugged. Wait on what? He could not have her any more than a person could own land. Stewardship might work; they would care for each other according to needs. But waiting wouldn’t matter. Besides, they were naked in bed.

  They didn’t wait until they had to. They craved beer, wine, and liquor to buffer the need after so long apart. The alcohol calmed things to workable levels so they could proceed directly to where they left off in the sweet by-and-by, reconnecting desire to fulfillment at the far end of a long time apart. Some buds made things misty—or foggy—never mind; immersed in beauty or dreamtime, they went deep. They resurfaced and dove again, going macro, seeking detail, until Skinny jumped off the bed like a jaywalker dodging traffic.

  This was narcosis, in which the seasoned diver and novice lover ditched his mask and regulator to see more clearly and breathe between the water, to inhale his loved one.

  Then came more, to depths where no human could survive. Appetite reduced every experience prior as nothing, as a series of strolls down empty streets. But then love never did make sense.

  At one time a two-pack-a-day man because nicotine can take the edge off so much vigor and seething energy, Ravi had quit years ago because smoking can kill you and makes you stink till then. But she lit up and offered, and he took it, inhaling the small death, a reasonable price to pay for this taste of perfection, in which every qualm is incidental to the timele
ss aftermath. She told him she knew it from the moment she saw him.

  He figured most women had the power to know whatever they want from whomever they want, but he agreed, “Yes.” He told her he saw her too as different, as a presence, so warm and commanding that he could hardly avoid the whirlpool.

  She smiled sanguinely. “Yes. My presence is regal, but I don’t say that from vanity. My family was ali’i, but we don’t talk about that. You see these Hawaiians claiming cultural rights they never had in the first place because what they claim like fishing grounds and netting privileges and what not were kapu to them. They would have been killed for those things in the day. We don’t talk about it because we lost so much and whatever anybody gets back is a good thing.”

  They smoked.

  Ravi got up for a beer for him, more wine for her. She called, “Do you think I’m stupid?”

  Only when you say what not—

  “Why would you ask such a thing? Why would you be stupid?”

  “Because we were more than ali’i. We were regal. That’s why I can say that about my presence—for generations my family was held in awe. Nobody could look upon us. People bowed their heads, or they died. But we don’t talk about that time either. Some people will kill you today for talking about those things and those times. But I think you felt it—I mean my presence.”

  “What things don’t they talk about?”

  “Inbreeding for one thing. We did that. We like to think it’s all played out. It was five or six generations ago, mostly. The royal families did it. That’s why we lost because our monarchs were mentally retarded. You can’t say that. I can’t say that.”

  “I never heard they were mentally retarded.”

  “You won’t. Maybe they weren’t.”

  “But you worry about it?”

  “Sometimes. Sometimes I think I sound stupid. But then I realize most people sound stupid sometimes. So maybe I’m only normal. Besides, I have so many other bloodlines. I think we might have had some, you know, ditzies on da kine side.”