by Kenna White
“Hello,” she called, tapping on the side of the hull near the access gate.
“Hey, there you are,” Ruth Ann said, grinning at her. She unlatched the gate and waved Dana aboard. “I wondered what happened to you. I was afraid you fell overboard.” She wrapped Dana in a warm hug. Ruth Ann was a stout woman with short gray hair that curled naturally to look like a Brillo pad. She had a middle-aged waddle under her chin that jiggled when she talked. She was wearing jean shorts and a 2004 Seattle gay pride T-shirt.
“I’m sorry. I got busy with Ringlet and time got away from me.”
“You aren’t supposed to work during Lakefair,” she scolded. “It’s party time.”
“Is that Dana?” Connie said, hurrying out to give a hug of her own. Connie was also a bit overweight but was a happy woman. Her eyes gleamed and her body language told Dana she was genuinely glad to see her. Connie was a driver for the city bus company and had learned that a smile got her more cooperation than a scowl. Her hair was a peculiar shade of brown, something between auburn and persimmon. At least it was this month. “Come in and get acquainted, honey. I have to go stir or we’ll be eating burnt hamburger. Make yourself at home. The Kewpie Doll is at your disposal. Get her some wine, Raggie.” Ruth Ann’s dearest and closest friends called her Raggie. Dana hadn’t heard exactly why but she still called her by her rightful name. The name Raggie sounded crass to her.
“Everyone’s on the upper deck watching the babes on the boats coming in. Let’s get you something to drink and you can join them.” Ruth Ann winked.
“I hope these are a decent year,” Dana said, handing her two bottles of wine.
“How would we know?” she chuckled.
Ruth Ann handed Dana a glass of wine and showed her the basic layout of the boat. It had two bathrooms, two bedrooms, a galley, a small living room, an inside and an outside dining area, and two decks, one of each level. Both decks had patio tables and chairs. The ones on the top deck had umbrellas.
“Raggie, I need a hand in here, sweetheart,” Connie called.
“Make yourself at home. The girls are up there,” Ruth Ann said, pointing to the ladder. “Be right back.”
“Can I help?” Dana said, looking toward the galley.
“Nope. She probably only wants me to get something down from the cabinet. I’m not allowed to cook,” she said and went inside.
Dana stood at the railing, watching a seagull bob in the wake of a passing motorboat. This was one of those postcard images. The water shimmered with the reflection of the evening sun. Mountains scalloped along the horizon. Tiny sailboats in the distance danced across the mouth of the harbor like white-winged moths. Dana couldn’t help but smile and drink in the beauty. How lucky was she to live in such a gorgeous place? She had just taken a sip of wine when she remembered what Shannon called a scene like this.
“Fucking nature. Ain’t it great?” she would say sarcastically.
Dana choked on her wine. It was amazing how the word fuck fit perfectly into almost all of Shannon’s conversations. When Dana displayed even a hint of displeasure at such language, she would use it all the more. Dana grabbed the railing to steady herself as she coughed.
“Are you all right?” a voice said from the deck above.
Dana looked up to see a woman leaning her elbows on the railing. The glint of sun reflected in the woman’s glasses, temporarily blinding Dana’s view.
“Are you choking?”
“No, it just went down my Tuesday pipe.” Dana tried repeatedly to clear her throat.
“What is a Tuesday pipe?” the woman asked, pushing her glasses against the bridge of her nose.
“I meant I swallowed wrong.” Dana’s voice cracked. She coughed and cleared her throat again.
“Sounds bad.”
“Dana, are you okay?” Ruth Ann called. “Do you need the Heimlich maneuver?”
Dana shook her head, afraid to answer in case she hadn’t finished coughing.
“Is someone dying?” Another woman stuck her head over the railing and peered down at Dana.
“I’m fine.” Dana had one more feeble cough before her voice cleared. “I just swallowed wrong.”
“It went down her Tuesday pipe,” the woman in glasses explained.
“Damn the Tuesday pipe,” Ruth Ann said. “Be careful, sweetheart. I don’t want to have to call the paramedics on you so early in the evening.” She smiled before going back to the galley.
“Maybe you should stick with water,” the woman with the glasses said. “The booze must be too strong for you.”
“I’m not drunk. I just choked.”
“But you don’t seem to know what day it is.”
“Of course I do. It’s Saturday. Tuesday pipe is only an expression.”
“If you say so.” She raised her eyebrows in disbelief.
“Dana, did I hear you choked?” Connie came rushing up to Dana, drying her hands on a towel. She slipped a hand around Dana’s waist and gave her a worried look.
“I’m fine, Connie. It just went down wrong.”
“What are you drinking?” She took Dana’s glass and sniffed it. “Oh, honey, don’t drink that stuff. That’s Raggie’s idea of high society.” She took the glass to the galley, pulling Dana along by the hand. “Let’s get you some good red wine. You can’t beat a nice glass of red wine.” She poured a glass and waited for Dana to take a sip. “Isn’t that better?”
“Yes, it’s very nice.”
“Are you feeding her that swill?” Ruth Ann said, carrying a tray of dirty glasses into the galley.
“It isn’t swill. It’s Cabernet Sauvignon from California.” Connie made a stab at a French accent.
“Glorified grape juice.” Ruth Ann sniffed the open bottle and raised it to her lips.
“Don’t you dare drink out of that bottle,” Connie warned, smacking her arm.
“Did I say I was going to drink out of the bottle?” She winked at Dana and set the bottle down.
“Well, you better not.” Connie shot her a stern look. Ruth Ann gave her a stern look right back then kissed her. Connie giggled.
“Have you met everyone?” Ruth Ann motioned Dana to follow her up the ladder.
“Not yet.”
Ruth Ann climbed the ladder like she could do it in her sleep, carrying two bottles of wine in one arm and an ice bucket in the other. Dana took one step at a time so as not to spill her wine. She wasn’t an old sea salt yet.
“Is that the good stuff, Raggie?” A woman in a well-bent straw cowboy hat, halter top and tight jeans met Ruth Ann at the top of the ladder and wrestled the wine bottles from her grip. Judging by the hat, Dana figured this was Bev, the cowgirl from Houston.
“Damn right.” Another woman in jean shorts and a tie-dye T-shirt raised her empty glass.
“That’s the wine you brought, Kathy.” Ruth Ann set the ice bucket on the small table.
“Hell, I don’t want that crap I brought. I want something good. What did you bring, Bev?” she asked the woman in the cowboy hat.
“I brought the best wine in a cardboard box money can buy. They were on sale at Safeway. Ten bucks a box.”
“That stuff is dated by the week, not the year,” Ruth Ann chuckled.
“We can’t call you cheap, can we Bev?” Kathy teased, refilling her glass.
“Hell, no.” Bev tipped her hat.
“Gals, this is Dana Robbins. She’s the new kid on the block. She’s the one I was telling you about.”
“Hi, Dana,” Bev and Kathy said at the same moment.
“Hello,” Dana said, shaking hands.
“I’m going to see about the grub. You all play nice.” Ruth Ann descended the ladder.
“Hi, Dana. I’m Christy.” A woman in her thirties offered her hand and a pleasant smile. Ruth Ann was right. Christy had square shoulders and was built like a husky athlete.
“Hi, Christy.” Dana noticed she had a firm handshake, almost painfully so. She made eye contact with Dana and held it tenacio
usly.
“You’re the one who draws cartoons?”
“Yes.” Dana had the strangest feeling Christy was doing something with her finger in the palm of Dana’s hand.
“Which one?” she said finally releasing Dana’s hand.
“Ringlet.”
“Oh, my God,” Bev said, overhearing their conversation. “You draw Ringlet? You’re Robinette? I love that cartoon. That dog looks just like my mother’s schnauzer, except she’s gray and Ringlet is a black Scottie. But Zoomer acts just like Ringlet sometimes. Like the time Ringlet fell in the bathtub. She’s done that before.”
“Your mother’s dog’s name is Zoomer?” Christy chuckled.
“It’s AKC registered. Her name is actually Felice de Zoom Pilar, great-granddaughter of a grand champion. She was going to call her Felice but I told her that name should only be used on poodles. So she picked Zoomer. Maybe you could put Zoomer in your cartoon. She has an attitude.”
“I’ll remember that.”
It didn’t take long before Dana felt right at home. She had been taken in by the group. Bev and Kathy seemed fascinated by Ringlet and her antics. Christy, on the other hand, seemed more interested in Dana’s blue eyes and pleasing figure. It wasn’t until the conversation moved to cars that Christy turned her attention toward Bev and away from Dana’s bustline. She also removed her hand from the small of Dana’s back. Dana took the opportunity and stepped to the railing, putting a chair between herself and Christy’s reach. She hadn’t noticed someone sitting in a corner of the deck, her face partially obscured by an umbrella clamped to the armrest.
“I take it you aren’t interested in five-speed transmissions,” a voice said.
Dana peeked under the umbrella. It was the judgmental woman with the glasses. She had her feet up on the railing and was holding a glass of something amber.
“No. I don’t drive manual transmissions. I don’t know how to use a clutch.”
“But you get better gas mileage with a five-speed.” The woman took her feet down and stood up, stretching her back. She was several inches taller than Dana and had a thin frame. Dana wondered if she was one of those tree-hugging eco-maniacs.
“It can’t be that much better if I’d spend the difference rolling backward down a hill and crashing into parked cars.”
“With driving habits like that, then probably you’re better off with an automatic.” She turned to Dana and finally made eye contact. “I guess I should introduce myself. I’m Dr. Jamie Hughes. And you’re Dana Robbins, right?”
“Yes. How do you do?” They shook hands. Jamie had long fingers that folded around Dana’s hand. It was a brief comfortable handshake, unlike Christy’s overbearing one.
Dr. Jamie Hughes had brown hair with curls swirling around the edges of her face. Just as Ruth Ann had said, she was older, somewhere in her forties. Her eyes were the most unique shade of brown, almost mahogany. They were also soft, something her wire framed glasses couldn’t hide. Eyes and eye color were something Dana noticed about people because she could use it in her cartoons to convey emotion and personality.A raised eyebrow, a slanted lid, a wide glance was sometimes the only way she could show Ringlet’s mood. This woman’s eyes were expressive and downright stunning. She didn’t appear to be wearing any makeup, but her complexion was tanned and even. She wore tan slacks and a navy blue blazer over a white T-shirt. Ruth Ann was right again. Dr. Hughes did wear professor clothes.
“How’s your Tuesday pipe?”
“Fine. I changed to red wine.” Dana held up her glass.
“Ah. Good. Red is better.” The corners of Jamie’s mouth curled slightly, revealing a dimple in her right cheek, a dimple that made her look twenty years younger.
“I should be embarrassed over that, shouldn’t I? I created quite a scene.”
“Blame it on the wine.”
“So, you’re a college professor? What do you teach?” Dana didn’t want to talk about choking anymore. It was embarrassing enough without reliving it over and over again.
“Marine biology and marine ecology.”
“Wow. That sounds very…” Dana wanted to say interesting but since she knew absolutely nothing about biology of any kind she couldn’t truthfully say marine biology sounded interesting.
“Boring? Tedious?” Jamie said.
“No. Scientific.”
“And you draw cartoons.”
“That’s right. Ringlet.”
“Sorry, but I’ve never seen it.”
“It’s carried in quite a few GLBT publications.” Dana felt the need to validate. She didn’t know why, but she did.
“Syndicated?” Jamie asked, surprising Dana with that term.
“Yes.”
“Congratulations, but if it doesn’t appear in a scientific journal I don’t have time to read it.”
“Ringlet definitely doesn’t appear in scientific journals. My readership isn’t quite that scholarly. I’m not that scholarly.”
Dana laughed and sipped her wine.
“Are you telling me I won’t see your cartoons in Microbiological Ecosystems of the Northwest?” Jamie said with a straight face.
“Um, no. I doubt it.”
“There was a cartoon in last month’s issue though. It was pretty funny. A pair of anemones were surfing the Web and complaining about the bacterioplankton’s magnetic field interrupting the reception.”
Jamie seemed to be the only one who understood the joke. She smiled as she remembered it. Dana gave a weak smile.
“I guess you had to see it,” Jamie said and took a drink.
“Probably.”
“Jamie,” Bev called. “What’s that?” She was pointing over the side at a translucent glob floating on the surface. It was the size of a dinner plate and looked like snot.
Jamie went to look.
“Aurelia aurita. Don’t worry, Bev. It won’t hurt you. It’s dead.”
“Aurelia aurita?” Kathy said, pronouncing it wrong. “Looks like a jellyfish.”
“That’s what it is.”
“Then why not just say so?” Bev said, tossing an ice cube at it.
“It’s a dead jellyfish, Bev,” Jamie said and patted her on the back.
“Look, another jellyfish.” Bev pointed at one pulsing through the water a few feet from the boat. “Stick your hand in the water, Kathy. Grab it. I want to see your eyes roll back in your head.” She giggled.
“Are you nuts?” Kathy said.
“Actually, those aren’t harmful to humans,” Jamie said, studying the specimen.
“I thought jellyfish were poisonous. Remember that movie Finding Nemo? Ellen DeGeneres was a blue fish that got stung by all those jellyfish and was unconscious.”
“Cyanea capillate are fatal to humans, if enough poison is injected. Aurelia aurita are not.” Jamie took a drink then refilled her glass at the table.
“Huh?” Bev smirked and batted her eyelashes.
“A Lion Mane jellyfish will kill you. That’s a moon jelly. It won’t.”
“I knew that,” Kathy said.
“You did not.” Bev scowled at her. “No one knows that shit.”
“You’d know it if you were stung by one,” Christy said, chugging the last of her beer.
“Have you been stung by one, Jamie?” Bev asked, dropping an olive on the pulsing jellyfish.
“A Lion Mane, no. A moon jelly, yes. Several times.” Jamie watched the jellyfish maneuver away from the missile.
“Did it hurt?” Kathy wrinkled her brow at the thought.
“It wasn’t something I enjoyed.”
“I thought divers wore suits to protect against things like that,” Dana said.
“Sometimes, when the water is cold or depending on how deep you’re diving.”
“Oh, my God,” Bev shouted, grabbing Kathy by the arm. “Picture it. Dr. Jamie Hughes scuba diving in nothing but a string bikini and an air tank!”
“What color is your bikini, Jamie?” Kathy giggled. “Transparent white?”<
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“Itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini,” Christy teased. “Do you need help getting dressed, doc?”
“Yeah. Those string bikinis are kind of complicated.” Bev winked at Jamie. “We’d be glad to offer a helping hand next time you go out.”
“I’ve seen Jamie’s swimsuit,” Ruth Ann announced as she carried a bowl of chips to the table. “It’s a black and white two-piece. Very nice, too.” She grinned.
Jamie took a drink, obviously trying to hide her blush.
“Do you fill it out, doc?” Christy gave her a playful poke.
“Of course, she does,” Bev said, flipping the side of Jamie’s blazer out of the way to expose her white T-shirt. “Even nerdy professors have boobs. Don’t you, Jamie?”
Jamie scratched her forehead as if to hide another blush.
“Okay,” Jamie said, chuckling along. “Yes, I have boobs. And yes, I wear a two-piece bathing suit but it’s not a bikini.”
“It isn’t much more than one,” Ruth Ann shouted from the galley.
Everyone roared with laughter as Jamie blushed again and grinned. Dana thought it was cute that Jamie allowed herself to be the brunt of the jokes. From what she could tell through the T-shirt and blazer, the professor had a perfectly acceptable pair of breasts. Nothing enormous but still nothing to sneeze at.
“Are you going to tell them about that time you were diving in Friday Harbor?” Ruth Ann said.
“No, I am not.” Jamie pushed her glasses tighter onto her nose.
“What happened?” Bev said eagerly. “Tell us.”
“Yeah, what happened? Your bikini string break?” Christy said.
When Jamie didn’t answer, Ruth Ann did.
“Worse than that,” she offered.
“Come on, Raggie. Let’s hear it.”
“Well, you know the old expression about the absentminded professor?” Ruth Ann looked over at Jamie and laughed wickedly. Jamie hung her head and groaned.
“What about it?” Bev encouraged.
“Jamie was doing some highly technical stuff. What was it?”