by kc dyer
“Obviously. I like roof shots in New York. The roofs are a—a different world. There’s all these mundane things like water tanks and air-con units, but up there—there’s a freedom you don’t feel down on the streets.”
His expression changes to something I can’t read. “Okay—that’s fair. And it explains a lot.”
“What does that mean? What are we talking about here? Are you trying to understand me by looking at my pictures?”
“What if I am?”
I’m so surprised by this response, I don’t know what to say. Instead, I finish my sake, and catch myself wishing for more.
He’s quiet a minute. “Can you pick one to show me? Like, maybe one of your favorites?”
I snatch back his phone and start scrolling through my site. “This is a bad idea. You get to know someone by talking to them, and hanging out, you know? Not by looking at their work.”
“So, are you saying your work doesn’t reflect who you are?”
I stop scrolling long enough to glare at him. “Well, of course it does. It’s just not all of who I am.” I pause on a more recent picture. “Okay, what about this one?”
We’ve both been careful to not use Sumaya’s face in any of our shots, but the picture I show him is a long shot, showing the refugees on the Wahash Mahat right after they were rescued.
“I’ve seen this one before,” he says quietly. “You’ve taken off the hashtag.”
“I pulled it down. I do try to learn from my mistakes, you know.”
“Well, you’re right. And I really do like this one.”
Point to Romy.
“Thank you,” I say as graciously as I can manage, considering the sake.
It’s not until later that night, in my own bunk, that I notice Dom himself is actually in the picture. He’s off to one side, slightly out of focus, a gentle, preoccupied smile on his face. And when I look closely, I realize he’s not staring down at the new passengers. He’s smiling straight over at me.
chapter fifty-two
IMAGE: Stormy Seas
IG: Romy_K [Arctic Björn, Pacific Ocean, April 23]
#Windswept #Whalers
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ExLibris Transit Report, submitted by Ramona Keene
TRAVEL SUMMARY: The Arctic Björn, an icebreaker-class ship, is less speedy than she is mighty. Currently returning to home port in Vancouver from an action against Russian whalers. Destined for a refit.
TOP PICKS TO SEE AND DO: While this is an excellent vessel for whale watching or for adventuresome souls who want to crew on an eco-active ship, I would highly recommend instead, the Nonsuch Maria, which sails direct from Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong to San Francisco. Amenities include . . .
In spite of the calendar, the onset of spring seems far, far away on these grey North Pacific seas. The Arctic Björn is no container ship—it’s not even the size of the stinking refrigeration vessel I took across the Mediterranean Sea. And maybe when we were floating within sight of the coastline of Japan, I noticed the rolling less, but now that we are out—way out—in the Bering Sea, it’s really something. The captain muttered something this morning about a low pressure area in the Pacific, which I’m hoping will help speed our journey. At the moment, I feel impossibly far away from New York City, and impossibly close to the end of April. And there’s nothing I can do to get there sooner.
“I need a breath of air,” I tell Margot one morning as she stands outside the door, effectively blocking the way.
“Of course you do,” she says soothingly. “Stomach’s probably a mess after that bumpy night, right?”
I haven’t actually been seasick since way back on the Guernsey Isle, but it’s easier to agree.
“Yes—right. Just need a glimpse of the horizon to steady me out.”
“Heh.” We both clutch the bar on each side of the door as the ship bucks over another wave. “Good luck with that.”
She points back behind my shoulder. “Gear up, and you can come out.”
Protocol on the Arctic Björn requires the crew—which includes us—to be appropriately dressed whenever on deck. This means a heavy-duty grey jumpsuit known as a “float coat” and a bright yellow helmet, tightly strapped under the chin. At the emergency run-through, I looked like a roll of industrial carpet made human.
I turn around with a sigh to find Sumaya, helmet strapped on over her hijab, grinning up at me. “I like these suits,” she says, giving a little pirouette in spite of the rolling deck beneath us. “Warm and waterproof. Also, fashionable.”
I snort and push past her. She’s belted the shapeless float coat with her floral headscarf, which means she now looks like a runway model.
“Be quick,” she yells in through the door. “I’m looking for whales!”
Ten minutes later, I join her on the deck. We’ve been relegated to the aft part of the ship, to avoid the small difficulty of being swept off the prow by crashing waves. This part of the ship is marginally less windy, and it’s exhilarating to be out on the open sea.
As long as I don’t think too hard about how far we are from land.
Clutching the captain’s binoculars, and with her legs braced against the railing, Sumaya scans the rolling surface of the seas.
“Any luck?” I yell at her, over the wind.
“Nothing yet,” she says, shaking her head. “But I’m hopeful. Margot put the mic in the water overnight, and she played me the recording right after breakfast this morning. Minke whales!”
She dangles the binoculars by the strap around her neck and looks up at me, eyes shining. “They sing to each other, Romy!”
“That’s astonishing,” I say. “Do you think she’ll play the recording for me too? I’ve never heard a whale sing.”
“Remember that bit I read you about the right whales? Margot says there may be a family group near here. She thought she could hear them on the tape.”
We grip the railing with both hands as the ship rolls across the top of another white-flecked wave. I keep my knees a little flexed and marvel at how quickly my body has adjusted to being back on the water. These waves aren’t much less than the ones that were pitching the Guernsey Isle around, and my stomach is handling things much differently.
Half a world differently, I think. More than half a world.
The door behind us slams open in the wind and Dominic steps out wearing a self-conscious smile and carrying his helmet.
“Look at you!” I say as he zips his suit up to his chin.
“Like it? It’s Sumaya’s work.”
His low ponytail is gone, replaced with neat dreadlocks.
“Very nice,” I mutter, and focus on Sumaya, so my eyes don’t give away just how great I think he looks.
Sumaya drops her binoculars again and looks at him critically. “Easier to handle this morning?” she asks, as he straps his helmet on.
“So much easier. I don’t know why I didn’t do this a long time ago.”
“Where did you learn how to make dreadlocks?” I ask her as she prepares to resume her search of the water.
They both burst out laughing at this, and I try hard not to feel hurt, since I entirely do not get the joke.
“Are you serious?” she says at last.
“Yes. And it’s not nice to laugh at people.”
She immediately looks stricken. “I thought you were joking,” she says, patting my arm like you might a stray dog. “My aunties taught me. They are very particular when it comes to doing hair. I have really curly hair, so when I was little it was in locs for as long as I can remember.”
“Mine too,” says Dom. “Until I was ten, for sure.” He points at Sumaya’s binoculars and she carefully pulls the strap over her helmet and hands them over.
“Well, you haven’t had your hair in dreads since I’ve met you,” I say to her lamely. The truth is
, I’ve only seen her hair once or twice, mostly in her first days on the Wahash Mahat, or when she’s adjusting her hijab. Every time it’s been neatly tidied into a pair of French braids, tight against her scalp.
She shrugs. “When I was eleven, I started trying new things with my hair,” she says. “My aunties were gone by then, so I practiced on any of the other kids around the camp who would keep still long enough.”
I glance back up at Dom, who is still peering intently through her binoculars. With his hair swept up so neatly under the helmet, the clean broad lines of his cheekbones stand out even further.
“I guess . . .” I begin, but Dom cuts me off with a shout.
“Spout!” he yells, pointing off the starboard side of the ship.
“Where? Where?” cries Sumaya.
Dominic jams the binoculars into her hand again and points her in the right direction.
“I see them!” she yells, bouncing like a pogo stick.
I see them too—three plumes of water shooting above the waves.
“Are you sure it’s not only the whitecaps?” I say, but Sumaya shakes her head firmly, glasses still glued to her eyes.
“No! I saw a tail, I think, and maybe a back fin?”
“Dorsal!” yells Dom, and they share a joyful high five.
As they pass the binoculars back and forth, I lean off to one side, feeling the sea spray on my face. I can taste the salt on the back of my tongue, crisp and drying in a way that makes me instantly thirsty. This is good, as it gives me something else to think about other than Dominic.
He’s the competition, I remind myself. After Vancouver, it’ll be him against me again. We have to go back to Game On.
Suddenly losing my taste for being on deck, I’m just heading inside when I spot three ships bearing down on us from the starboard side. The ships are equipped like fishing vessels, and are coming up fast. On the horizon behind them is a much larger ship. Not a tanker. Not really like anything I’ve ever seen before.
I lean back and put my hand on Dominic’s arm.
He automatically reaches out to give me a turn with the binoculars, when he catches sight of the rapidly approaching ships.
“Holy shit,” he says, and all the joy drops out of his face. “This can’t be good.”
“Should we—should we go up to the bridge to let them know?” I ask.
Underneath our feet, the ship’s engines shudder, and with a sudden roar, the Arctic Björn surges forward.
“I think they might have already clued in,” Dom says.
Without another word, we scramble inside.
Upstairs, the bridge is filled to capacity, and everybody’s busy.
“You need to go below,” says Margot as she hustles past the doorway. “We have a situation. Those ships are whalers, after the minkes.”
“But I saw spouts,” cries Sumaya. “What if the right whales get in the way?”
“We are between them and the whales, for the moment,” says Margot. The ship heaves and she clutches a railing to stop from falling. All the equipment on the bridge, screwed down or not, is shuddering with the effort it’s taking the Arctic Björn to maintain this speed.
“We’re only a few hours out from American waters,” Margot adds, pointing at a map on her screen. “If we can keep between them and this pod until then, they’ll have to back off.”
“I don’t have the kind of fuel we’re burning to keep up this speed until then,” the captain mutters, then jerks his head to the side.
“Get these three down below,” he snaps at Margot. “The last thing we need if they fire on us is a kid up here.”
“If they—what?” I gasp, but by then Margot’s swung open the door.
“Nothing to worry about,” she says, pointing down the narrow stairs. “It’s all bluff and feint, really. We have a long history with these guys, believe me.”
“Where are they from? Russia? Japan?”
She shrugs. “Not sure. The boats are unmarked. We’ll do our best, I promise. Now get going!”
Dom and I follow Sumaya as she clatters down the metal stairs, holding the rails on each side as the ship lurches. The engine is even louder down here, and it’s making a strange clunking noise I’ve not heard before.
As we head for the storage lockers, the cook pops a head out of the galley. Her face is dusted in flour.
“I don’t know what the hell they’re doing up there,” she says. “But I’ve discovered my yeast is dead, and all my help seems to have evaporated. Any chance you could give me a hand?”
Dom’s wrapping an apron around his waist before she has a chance to draw another breath. I help Sumaya step out of her float coat and then collect it up, along with Dom’s, and the two helmets.
“I’ll take these back,” I say, and he lifts a hand, already white with flour, in thanks. I close the door behind me as the cook shepherds Sumaya over toward a large bin of dried fruit, and hurry off down the hall.
Jamming the float coats into one of the storage lockers, I race to my bunk and retrieve my phone. If something’s going down with these whalers, I want a picture.
chapter fifty-three
IMAGE: Icicles on the Overhangs
IG: Romy_K [Arctic Björn, Pacific Ocean, April 23]
#InternationalIncident #Whoops
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Things I learn during an international incident on the high seas:
1. Time passes very slowly when your vessel is engaged in preventing whale slaughter.
2. Mysterious whaling vessels are small and super speedy. Whoever they are, according to Margot, they’re hunting minke whales, not right whales, which—appallingly—is legal.
3. Jurisdiction is a nebulous thing in international waters.
4. Spring storms can be really terrible in the Bering Sea in April.
5. Even one picture of a whale—or a whaler—will be worth it.
By the time I finish my notes and creep back up the stairs, it’s all hands on deck. Or, in this case, on the bridge, since no one would last on the deck for long. Huge waves are crashing across the prow, and I can’t make out a thing through the window, even with the wipers going full speed.
Outside, icicles have formed on the overhangs, and all the flags and banners on the lines are flapping snaps of brilliant color against the grey seas. I don’t know how they measure waves in the middle of an icy ocean, but these ones look as tall and colorless as the roof of any three-story walk-up in Chelsea. There’s no pattern to the waves, and they shift and heave in all directions. White foam is flying everywhere.
Inside, the captain is yelling into a phone, Margot’s on the radio, and a guy in a striped sweater is calling out readings as he runs back and forth between the various instruments.
No one has time to notice me, so I wedge myself in a back corner, out of the captain’s eye line, and start shooting pictures. A strong smell of diesel wafts up from below as I try to get at least one clean shot.
Outside the streaming windows, I watch as one of the smaller rainbow banners rips away from the flagpole and vanishes into the grey waves. The howling wind buffets the ship and rattles the windows in their frames.
Right at that moment, Margot catches sight of me. Grasping the railings, she skips around the perimeter of the bridge to the back corner where I’ve wedged myself. A set of binoculars that look even larger than Sumaya’s swing from her neck as she looms above me.
“The captain sent you below,” she yells into my face, and then jams a thumb toward the stairs. “Get going!”
I raise a hand in defeat. “Okay, okay! But are the whales safe?”
She shrugs. “No sign of them since this weather blew up, but that might be the choppiness.”
I make my way unsteadily toward the stairs, keeping my knees flexed in order to stay upright. Margot follows, obviously
not trusting me to leave on my own.
Behind me, the captain yells something at Margot, and I feel the engine thrust beneath my feet. When she doesn’t answer him, he swings around and spots me heading for the door.
“YOU!” he barks. “Get below!”
Stumbling through the door, I glance out the window just as the black shadow of one of the whaling ships veers into view. It surges into a space between the huge waves, only a dozen or so feet from the bow of the Arctic Björn.
“Reverse, reverse—all engines,” yells the captain, as the prow of the other ship rears up again, this time to the left—the port side—of us. Water streams off the ship’s prow, and both ships lurch sideways.
“What the fuck are they doing?” screams Striped Sweater, and slams all the gears back.
The Arctic Björn lurches again, and I fly backwards down the stairs.
chapter fifty-four
IMAGE: Emergency
IG: DomBakes [Anchorage, Alaska, April 23]
#RescueChopper #Hospital
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I surface long enough to discover that Striped Sweater, whose name I never catch, is also the ship’s medic. He’s bandaged the cut over my left eye, and offers to give me something for the pain. I have a vague sense of a whirling wind, and a sort of spinning situation during which I’m pretty sure I drift away again.
* * *
—
I waken to an intense feeling of pressure in my head. Opening my eyes, Sumaya is holding one of my hands and Dominic the other, but when I struggle to sit up, I find I can’t move.
“Hey, you,” yells Dom over the wind noise. “You’re back just in time.”
“In time for what?” I mutter blearily. “Why can’t I move?”
“You’re strapped onto a stretcher,” yells a woman I don’t recognize. “How are you feeling?”