by Robert Stone
“Now I think I don’t trust her, eh?” said Freycinet. He squinted into the sun. The Pitons, no closer, seemed to displease him now. “She’s a bitch, non?”
“I think she’s all right,” Blessington said. “I really do.”
And for the most part he did. In any case he had decided to, because an eruption of hard-core, coke-and-speed-headed paranoia could destroy them all. It had done so to many others. Missing boats sometimes turned up on the mangrove shore of some remote island, the hulls blistered with bullet holes, cabins attended by unimaginable swarms of flies. Inside, tableaux marts not to be forgotten by the unlucky discoverer. Strong-stomached photographers recorded the tableaux for the DEA’s files, where they were stamped NOT TO BE DESTROYED, HISTORIC INTEREST. The agency took a certain satisfaction. Blessington knew all this from his sister and her husband in Providence.
Now they were almost back to Martinique and Blessington wanted intensely not to die at sea. In the worst of times, he grew frightened to the point of utter despair. It had been, he realized at such times, a terrible mistake. He gave up on the money. He would settle for just living, for living even in prison in France or America. Or at least for not dying on that horrible bright blue ocean, aboard the Sans Regret.
“Yeah,” he told Freycinet. “Hell, I wouldn’t worry about her. Just a bimbo.”
All morning they tacked for the Pitons. Around noon, a great crown of puffy cloud settled around Gros Piton and they were close enough to distinguish the two peaks one from the other. Freycinet refused to go below. His presence was so unpleasant that Blessington felt like weeping, knocking him unconscious, throwing him overboard or jumping over himself. But the Frenchman remained in the cockpit though he never offered to spell Blessington at the wheel. The man drove Blessington to drink. He poured more Demerara and dipped his finger in the bag of crystal. A pulse fluttered under his collarbone, fear speed.
Eventually Freycinet went below. After half an hour Gillian came topside, clothed this time, in cutoffs and a halter. The sea had picked up and she nearly lost her balance on the ladder.
“Steady,” said Blessington.
“Want a roofie, Liam?”
He laughed. “A roofie? What’s that? Some kind of…”
Gillian finished the thought he had been too much of a prude to articulate.
“Some kind of blowjob? Some kind of sex technique? No, dear it’s a medication.”
“I’m on watch.”
She laughed at him. “You’re shitfaced is what you are.”
“You know,” Blessington said, “you ought not to tease Honoré. You’ll make him paranoid.”
“He’s a asshole. As we say back home.”
“That may be. But he’s a very mercurial fella. I used to work with him.”
“Mercurial? If you know he’s so mercurial how come you brought him?”
“I didn’t bring him,” Blessington said. “He brought me. For my vaunted seamanship. And I came for the money. How about you?”
“I came on account of having my brains in my ass,” she said, shaking her backside. “My talent too. Did you know I was a barrel racer? I play polo too. English or western, man, you name it.”
“English or western?” Blessington asked.
“Forget it,” she said. She frowned at him, smiled, frowned again. “You seem, well, scared.”
“Ah,” said Blessington, “scared? Yes, I am. Somewhat.”
“I don’t give a shit,” she said.
“You don’t?”
“You heard me,” she said. “I don’t care what happens. Why should I? Me with my talent in my ass. Where do I come in?”
“You shouldn’t talk that way,” Blessington said.
“Fuck you. You afraid I’ll make trouble? I assure you I could make trouble like you wouldn’t believe.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Blessington said. He kept his eyes on the Pitons. His terror he thought, probably encouraged her.
“Just between you and me, Liam, I have no fear of dying. I would just as soon be out here on this boat now as in my little comfy bed with my stuffed animals. I would just as soon be dead.”
He took another sip of rum to wet his pipes for speech. “Why did you put the money in, then? Weren’t you looking for a score?”
“I don’t care about money,” she said. “I thought it would be a kick. I thought it would be radical. But it’s just another exercise in how everything sucks.”
“Well,” said Blessington, “you’re right there.”
She looked off at the twin mountains.
“They don’t seem a bit closer than they did this morning.”
“No. It’s an upwind passage. Have to tack forever.”
“You know what Nigel told me back in Canouan?”
“No,” Blessington said.
“He told me not to worry about understanding things. He said understanding was weak and lame. He said you got to overstand things.” She hauled herself and did the voice of a big St. Vincentian man saddling up a white bitch for the night, laying down wisdom. “You got to overstand it. Overstand it, right? Funny, huh.”
“Maybe there’s something in it,” said Blessington.
“Rasta lore,” she said. “Could be, man.”
“Anyway, never despise what the natives tell you, that’s what my aunt used to say. Even in America.”
“And what was your aunt? A dope dealer?”
“She was a nun,” Blessington said. “A missionary.”
For a while Gillian sunned herself on the foredeck, halter off. But the sun became too strong and she crawled back to the cockpit.
“You ever think about how it is in this part of the world?” she asked him. “The Caribbean and around it? It’s all suckin’ stuff they got. Suckin’ stuff, all goodies and no nourishment.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s all turn-ons and illusion,” she said. “Don’t you think? Like coffee.” She numbered items on the long fingers of her left hand. “Tobacco. Emeralds. Sugar. Cocaine. Ganja. It’s all stuff you don’t need. Isn’t even good for you. Perks and pick-me-ups and pogy bait. Always has been.”
“You’re right,” Blessington said. “Things people kill for.”
“Overpriced. Put together by slaves and peons. Piggy stuff. For pink piggies.”
“I hadn’t thought of it,” he said. He looked over at her. She had raised a fist to her pretty mouth. “You’re clever, Gillian.”
“You don’t even like me,” she said.
“Yes I do.”
“Don’t you dare bullshit me. I said you don’t.”
“Well,” Blessington said, “to tell you the truth, at first I didn’t. But now I do.”
“Oh, yeah? Why?”
Blessington considered before speaking. The contrary wind was picking up and there were reefs at the south end of the island. Some kind of monster tide was running against them too.
“Because you’re intelligent. I hadn’t realized that. You had me fooled, see? Now I think you’re amusing.”
“Amusing?” She seemed more surprised than angry.
“You really are so bloody clever” he said, finishing the glass of rum. “When we’re together I like it. You’re not a cop, are you? Anything like that?”
“You only wish,” she said. “How about you?”
“Me? I’m Irish, for Christ’s sake.”
“Is that like not being real?”
“Well,” he said, “a little. In many cases.”
“You are scared,” she said. “You’re scared of everything. Scared of me.”
“Holy Christ,” said Blessington, “you’re as bad as Honoré. Look, Gillian, I’m a chef, not a pirate. I never claimed otherwise. Of course I’m scared.”
She made him no answer.
“But not of you,” he said. “No. Not anymore. I like you here. You’re company.”
“Am I?” she asked. “Do you? Would you marry me?”
“Hey,” said Blessington. “Tomorrow.�
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Freycinet came up on deck, looked at the Pitons, then at Blessington and Gillian in the cockpit.
“Merde,” he said. “Far away still. What’s going on?”
“We’re getting there,” Blessington said. “We’re closer now than we look.”
“Aren’t the mountains pretty, Honoré?” Gillian asked. “Don’t you wish we could climb one?”
Freycinet ignored her. “How long?” he asked Blessington.
“To Martinique? Tomorrow sometime, I guess.”
“How long before we’re off les Pitons?”
“Oh,” Blessington said, “just a few hours. Well before dark so we’ll have a view. Better steer clear, though.”
“Marie is sick.”
“Poor puppy,” Gillian said. “Probably all that bug spray. Broth’s the thing. Don’t you think, Liam?”
“Ya, it’s kicking up,” Blessington said. “There’s a current running and a pretty stiff offshore breeze.”
“Merde,” said Freycinet again. He went forward along the rail and lay down beside the anchor windlass, peering into the chains.
“He’s a cook too,” Gillian said, speaking softly. “How come you’re not more like him?”
“An accident of birth,” Blessington said.
“If we were married,” she said, “you wouldn’t have to skip on your visa.”
“Ah,” said Blessington, “don’t think it hasn’t occurred to me. Nice to be a legal resident.”
“Legal my ass,” she said.
Freycinet suddenly turned and watched them. He showed them the squint, the bared canines.
“What you’re talking about, you two? About me, eh?”
“Damn, Honoré!” Gillian said. “He was just proposing.” When he had turned around again she spoke between her teeth. “Shithead is into the blow. He keeps prying up the sole. Cures Marie’s mal de mer. Keeps him on his toes.”
“God save us,” said Blessington. Leaning his elbow on the helm, he took Gillian’s right hand and put it to her forehead, her left shoulder and then her right one, walking her through the sign of the cross. “Pray for us like a good girl.”
Gillian made the sign again by herself. “Shit,” she said, “now I feel a lot better. No, really,” she said when he laughed, “I do. I’m $$$ do it all the time now. Instead of chanting Om or Nam myoho renge kyo.”
They sat and watched the peaks grow closer though the contrary current increased.
“When this is over” Blessington said, “maybe we ought to stay friends.”
“If we’re still alive,” she said, “we might hang out together. We could go to your restaurant in the Keys.”
“That’s what we’ll do,” he said. “I’ll make you a sous-chef.”
“I’ll wait tables.”
“No, no. Not you.”
“But we won’t be alive,” she said.
“But if we are.”
“If we are,” she said, “we’ll stay together.” She looked at him sway beside the wheel. “You better not be shitting me.”
“I wouldn’t. I think it was meant to be.”
“Meant to be? You’re putting me on.”
“Don’t make me weigh my words, Gillian. I want to say what occurs to me.”
“Right,” she said, touching him. “When we’re together you can say any damn thing.”
The green mountains, in the full richness of afternoon, rose above them. Blessington had a look at the chart to check the location of the offshore reefs. He began steering to another quarter away from the tip of the island.
Gillian sat on a locker with her arms around his neck, leaning against his back. She smelled of sweat and patchouli.
“I’ve never been with anyone as beautiful as you, Gillian.”
He saw she had gone to sleep. He disengaged her arms and helped her lie flat on the locker in the shifting shade of the mainsail. Life is a dream, he thought. Something she knew and I didn’t.
I love her, Blessington thought. She encourages me. The shadow of the peaks spread over the water.
Freycinet came out on deck and called up to him.
“Liam! We’re to stop here. Off les Pitons.”
“We can’t,” Blessington said, though it was tempting. He was so tired.
“We have to stop. We can anchor, yes? Marie is sick. We need to rest. We want to see them.”
“We’d have to clear customs,” Blessington said. “We’ll have bloody cops and boat boys and God knows what else.”
He realized at once what an overnight anchorage would entail. All of them up on speed or the cargo, cradling shotguns, peering into the moonlight while they waited for macheteros to come on feathered oars and steal their shit and kill them.
“If we anchor,” Freycinet said, “if we anchor somewhere, we won’t have to clear.”
“Yes, yes,” Blessington said. “We will, sure. The fucking boat boys will find us. If we don’t hire them or buy something they’ll turn us in.” He picked up the cruising guide and waved it in the air. “It says right here you have to clear customs in Soufrière.”
“We’ll wait until they have close,” said Freycinet.
“Shit,” said Blessington desperately, “we’ll be fined. We’ll be boarded.”
Freycinet was smiling at him, a broad demented smile of infinitely self-assured contempt. Cocaine. He felt Gillian put her arm around his leg from behind.
“Écoutez, Liam. Écoutez bien. We going to stop, man. We going to stop where I say.”
He turned laughing into the wind, gripping a stay.
“What did I tell you,” Gillian said softly. “You won’t have to marry me after all. ‘Cause we’re dead, baby.”
“I don’t accept that,” Blessington said. “Take the wheel,” he told her.
Referring to the charts and the cruising guide, he could find no anchorage that looked as though it would be out of the wind and that was not close inshore. The only possibility was a shallow reef, near the south tip, sometimes favored by snorkeling trips, nearly three miles off the Pitons. It was in the lee of the huge peaks, its coral heads as shallow as a single fathom. The chart showed mooring floats; presumably it was forbidden to anchor there for the sake of the coral.
“I beg you to reconsider, Honoré,” Blessington said to Freycinet. He cleared his throat. “You’re making a mistake.”
Freycinet turned back to him with the same smile.
“Eh, Liam. You can leave, man. You know, there’s an Irish pub in Soufrière. It’s money from your friends in the IRA. You can go there, eh?”
Blessington had no connection whatsoever with the IRA, although he had allowed Freycinet and his friends to believe that, and they had chosen to.
“You can go get drunk there,” Freycinet told him and then turned again to look at the island.
He was standing near the bow with his bare toes caressing freeboard, gripping a stay. Blessington and Gillian exchanged looks. In the next instant she threw the wheel, the mainsail boom went crashing across the cabin roofs, the boat lurched to port and heeled hard. For a moment Freycinet was suspended over blank blue water. Blessington clambered up over the cockpit and stood swaying there, hesitating. Then he reached out for Freycinet. The Frenchman swung around the stay like a monkey and knocked him flat. The two of them went sprawling. Freycinet got to his feet in a karate stance, cursing.
“You shit,” he said, when his English returned. “Cunt! What?”
“I thought you were going over, Honoré. I thought I’d have to pull you back aboard.”
“That’s right, Honoré,” Gillian said from the cockpit. “You were like a goner. He saved your ass, man.”
Freycinet pursed his lips and nodded. “Bien” he said. He climbed down into the cockpit in a brisk, businesslike fashion and slapped Gillian across the face, backhand and forehand, turning her head around each time.
He gave Blessington the wheel, then he took Gillian under the arm and pulled her up out of the cockpit. “Get below! I don’t wan
t to fucking see you.” He followed her below and Blessington heard him speak briefly to Marie. The young woman began to moan. The Pitons looked close enough to strike with a rock and a rich jungle smell came out on the wind. Freycinet, back on deck, looked as though he was sniffing out menace. A divi-divi bird landed on the boom for a moment and then fluttered away.
“I think I have a place,” Blessington said, “if you still insist. A reef.”
“A reef, eh?”
“A reef about four thousand meters offshore.”
“We could have a swim, non?”
“We could, yes.”
“But I don’t know if I want to swim with you, Liam. I think you try to push me overboard.”
“I think I saved your life,” Blessington said.
They motored on to the reef with Freycinet standing in the bow to check for bottom as Blessington watched the depth recorder. At ten meters of bottom, they were an arm’s length from the single float in view. Blessington cut the engine and came about and then went forward to cleat a line to the float. The float was painted red, yellow and green, Rasta colors like Gillian’s bracelet.
It was late afternoon and suddenly dead calm. The protection the Pitons offered from the wind was ideal and the bad current that ran over the reef to the south seemed to divide around these coral heads. A perfect dive site, Blessington thought, and he could not understand why even in June there were not more floats or more boats anchored there. It seemed a steady enough place even for an overnight anchorage, although the cruising guide advised against it because of the dangerous reefs on every side.
The big ketch lay motionless on unruffled water; the float line drifted slack. There was sandy beach and a palm-lined shore across the water. It was a lonely part of the coast, across a jungle mountain track from the island’s most remote resort. Through binoculars Blessington could make out a couple of boats hauled up on the strand but no one seemed ready to come out and hustle them. With luck it was too far from shore.
It might be also, he thought, that for metaphysical reasons the Sans Regret presented a forbidding aspect. But an aspect that deterred small predators might in time attract big ones.
Marie came up, pale and hollow-eyed, in her bikini. She gave Blessington a chastising look and lay down on the cushions on the afterdeck. Gillian came up behind her and took a seat on the gear locker behind Blessington.