Exposure

by James Lockhart Perry

  "Don't start with me on the fucking stars!" And out of nowhere, she burst out bawling.

  "Hey, hey...," he soothed her. He held onto the wheel with one hand and turned her into him with the other. She let him hold her, then reached around and hung onto him like a vise. They stood there like that, faintly ridiculous, slickers, vests, and all, with Rudy having no clue what had hit her. And then, just like the other storm, this one passed. Sheri blew her nose into her hand and wiped it on Rudy's slicker.

  "Yecch! Disgusting!"

  "That's what you get for bullshitting me."

  Rudy adjusted the sails, engaged the autopilot, and took Sheri below. They were both soaked, and so was the cabin by the time they finished undressing. He put her to bed and told her he would be in as soon as he checked things over.

  To his surprise, it looked like the ketch had come through untouched. A few of the stays felt a little weak, but that might have been his imagination. One of the lockers behind the cockpit had filled with water, but when he went below and checked the bilge, it was no wetter than usual. The masts felt solid, and none of the sails had torn. Thank Donny's Lord for Donny, he thought.

  Only when he had laid out the gear to dry and returned to sit in the cockpit, did he finally admit to himself how close they had skirted the edge. It had nothing to do with the boat, and everything to do with him. Donny might have taught him well, but there were still huge gaps in his experience. Like navigation. After four days, he was pretty sure they were off the coast of Mexico, but how far out he had no idea. The GPS was an old and cranky piece of shit, and in any case, wasn't designed like the one in his car to find the nearest Burger King. You had to know charting as well, and Professor Donny, who already knew the Baja like he knew his own bathtub, had never got around to teaching Rudy that.

  Rudy had steered them away from land and outside the twelve-mile limit to avoid complications like rocks, shoals, and coast guards. But this far out, he was putting a lot of faith in an old heap of fiberglass that hadn't been tested in years. A lot of faith in what he now realized was aping his uncles without their years of experience to fall back on. He brought the boat around on an easterly course that would at least bring them within sight of the shore. He just hoped he wasn't replacing one set of worries with another.

  Truth was, Sheri's fear had infected Rudy. After years of sailing with his uncles, he had hoped this lay behind him. Donny's theory had always been that he would keep kicking and shoving the boy into the drink, until the ocean became no more threatening than a walk across his living room floor. That way, if things ever really fell apart, he wouldn't have some panicked young fool on his hands. "Fuck it, you're just gonna die anyway," Donny had insisted every time Mischa hauled Rudy back in from an unscheduled swim. And Donny was right—for a gangster who made a living with his fists and a juvenile who thought of car theft as a career choice. But these days, Rudy was over all that. He was so over it.

  By the time Rudy went below, the sea had mellowed to a soft, restless blanket. The heavens were still a little thick and dark for his taste, but some residue from the storm was to be expected. He undressed and climbed into his side of the bed. A quiet beat, then Sheri moved over and snuggled up to him.

  "Hey," she said softly.

  "Hey." Rudy lifted her head into the crook of his shoulder and smoothed her hair across his arm.

  "Tell me something," she said sleepily. She ran a lazy hand up his chest and across his shoulder. "Can we get to the sex part now, or do you have to kill me first?"

  Chapter 22

  Yes, they could get to it, and no, he didn't have to kill her first. They made love in the bed in the back of the rolling boat, until Sheri wiped away the passive fear of the last few days. Or that was how Rudy read it. He let her take over and thrash and pound him until she fell back exhausted. Neither of them said a word. None of the usual self-satisfaction on his part, none of the usual slipping back into her cave. They just lay there together, and it all felt pretty damn good.

  Afterward, Rudy lay awake and listened to the ocean on the hull and thought about plans. He had never been the planning kind—no need for it in the muddled drift of his life—but now he found himself in the strange position of thinking for two. It might not last ten minutes after Sheri's feet hit a dock, but even so...

  Rudy figured they had at least a hundred thousand in the tightly wrapped wads hidden with the weapons in the cabin. In Mexico, with a boat to live on, that much money could last for years. And they didn't need years anyway. Just enough time to figure out where to go next, to come up with a place where Rudy could make some kind of money photographing babies and weddings and all that shit Lydia was pushing.

  Rudy was pretty sure Los Angeles was out for the foreseeable future. The Inglewood fuck-up had taken place in broad daylight on a Sunday with almost no traffic. Even if no one was watching, there were all kinds of surveillance camera possibilities, from traffic—doubtful—through narcotics police—possible—to the dealers themselves—almost certain. The crazily painted building was just too big an operation not to be protected twenty different ways.

  What most nagged at Rudy was Lydia. He hadn't mentioned it to Sheri—she would go ape-shit on him if she knew what he was thinking—but if the dealers did get a license plate, then it wouldn't take a lot of questions to bring them to the studio. Rudy didn't know much about the old lady, but he couldn't picture her fighting off a vicious big-city drug gang. Especially not with her husband on his medical ass.

  So Rudy and Sheri would cruise in and find a small harbor along the coast. They were only a few days from running out of food anyway. Rudy seemed to remember something about a pilot's license for a boat this size, but if they were still in US waters, no one would ask him for it, and if they were in Mexico, he had the money to cover any nit-picking officials. When they got in close enough to get a cell phone signal, he would have Sheri call Lydia and tell her to close up the studio, if she hadn't already. Nothing dramatic or hysterical. Just take a vacation for a little while.

  Rudy lay there, puzzling his way to a semblance of equilibrium, working things out, feeling better about where they were headed, when a hiccup in the roll of the boat caught his attention. Nothing serious, just enough of a change to drag him up to a porthole to glance out. One thing about an old boat sitting in a harbor for five years—the tiny plastic windows were fogged up and useless for anything except guessing the time of day. Rudy groaned all the way through dragging himself out of bed naked and through the galley up to the cockpit.

  The dawn to the east still slept another half-hour away, but the vague glow ahead on the horizon caught his attention. It looked jagged. Tiny but definitely jagged and land-like, not smooth like water. Sheri had been after him for a year to start wearing his glasses, but they wouldn't have helped him now. Nevertheless, the boat had apparently strayed closer into the rocky Baja shore than he would have liked.

  And the waves were definitely starting to kick up, but that didn't have to mean a storm. This time of the morning, the ocean tended to wake up and stretch its legs anyway. Rudy waited for his myopic eyes to adjust to the distance and the subtle shades of nighttime. And then it registered that the stars had all vanished. And then it registered that, in all the blackness ahead, massive clouds were forming. What the fuck, Rudy suddenly realized. They were sailing into the mouth of a hurricane.

  As if on cue, a wave slapped the side of the boat and spilled into the cockpit. Nothing scary, but enough to point out that Rudy had the boat headed east toward land with the wind and waves coming up from the south. One good hit, and they would be on their sides. He brought the boat around and headed into the weather.

  Rudy couldn't make up his mind. Partly it was the fact that, in the night, you could never be sure what the sea was telling you. Partly it was the dread of waking Sheri, getting her all panicked over nothing, then having to deal with her jumping all over him again. Partly it was the uncertainty last night's squall had introduced into his thinki
ng. All of a sudden, Rudy the master handler felt his grip slipping away. But then a zephyr slammed into the boat and punched him awake.

  "Sheri!" he screamed. "Wake the fuck up!" He rushed below and snatched up the clothing and gear where they had left them. "Sheri! Come on! Move it!"

  Sheri stumbled out of the stateroom, still naked, rubbing her eyes. "What—"

  "Come on!" He shoved half the gear into her hands and pushed her up the stairs to the cockpit. He grabbed the wetsuits out of one of the lockers.

  "What's that for?"

  "Never mind. Put it on!"

  The first huge wave smashed over the bow while Rudy was still strapping on Sheri's life vest. Both of them fell and slid into the corner of the cockpit in a confused jumble of arms and legs. He got his own vest over his wetsuit before he realized the slickers had vanished overboard. Fuck it. He hooked Sheri's vest to the canvas safety strap and attached the other end to himself. He was reaching with the other strap for the hook on the helm, when another huge wave hit. Water poured through the still open hatch into the cabin below. Rudy got the hatch closed and turned and pulled Sheri to her feet out of the water filling the cockpit up to her neck. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! The storm must have been on top of them already.

  Finally, Rudy got control of his panic. He knew what Donny would do in this situation. He would point the boat out to sea, drop the sails, toss out the storm anchor, lock himself below, and ride it out. Fuck it, you're just gonna die anyway.

  Rudy hit the furler switches, and the jib and mizzen rolled up, but the main stuck halfway. Fucking electronic bullshit! He leaned back and released the storm anchor into the water. The boat snapped around, fishtailing for its natural balance. He tried the main again, but nothing happened. No fucking way was he going up there to reef it manually. But it didn't matter. Just as he unhooked himself from the helm and reached for the hatch to shove Sheri through, a wall of water dropped onto them and blew them both clear out of the boat.

  Chapter 23

  If Rudy didn't shut up and leave her alone, Sheri was going to kill him. He had been babbling at her non-stop for more than a waterlogged day now. Nonsensical shit, stuff she didn't need or want to know. He had told her about every car he ever stole, every woman he ever fucked, paid and unpaid. How he made so much money after the Rodney King riots hawking stereos and TVs, how other assholes ruined the market by unloading inventory before the cops caught up with them, how he was so smart, holding on until the prices recovered. Every fucking useless detail of his life in juvenile hall, every crooked cop and trustee, every fistfight, knife fight, even what the powdered scrambled eggs tasted like in the canteen.

  And Vera, his fucking mother Vera, how much he missed her, even though he would have let her drown if she came swimming with them now. All the Vera boyfriends, the pimps and dealers, his getting hooked and unhooked, his darling fucking uncles, the guys who got them into this mess—that was Sheri talking, finally getting a word in edgewise—his doting Mischa who picked him up out of his mother's gutter and led him straight.

  Straight to Sheri who loved and understood him like nobody ever had, if only she would stop hating and misunderstanding and biting his head off for every other fucking word he said to her. He went back over every argument he could remember, provoking her awake, bullshitting her all over, explaining every one of the wrong things she had said and done. And the word fuck. Yeah, he knew it bugged her, but he would fucking well use the fucking word in every fucking sentence if that was what it fucking took to keep her the fuck awake.

  If he told her to kick, if he told her to keep moving her limbs one more time in the thick, bitterly cold waters, she was going to smash her fist right into the chatter of his teeth. She had had it with him, and had she forgot to mention? When she was done, when she was done, she was...

  Why wasn't he paying attention to her? She had listened all day and night to his stream of crap. She slapped him, shoved seawater into his face, kicked him awake. Fucking hypocrite, it was her turn to piss him off! It was her turn to whine on about her life, the people she screwed up, the communes and Woodstock and VW busses, the men she fucked, all the secrets she kept, like how she deserted her poor pathetic mother not once but twice—twice! But no sooner did Sheri launch into it, than Rudy woke up and started over—and from the fucking beginning! Cars he had stolen, chop shops he had worked for, brands, years, models, stuff she didn't give a flying fuck about. And she told him too, but he didn't care, so she ignored him and babbled right back in his face.

  And somewhere in there, she noticed the safety strap she was hooked onto pulling her up out of the water, hands grappling and yanking her like a prize fish up over a fiberglass gunwale into a heap in a cockpit exactly like hers. Like hers—that was rich, as if she would ever be stupid enough to let a second-rate hustler talk her onto a boat.

  Blinded by salt and sun and blue to the core with cold, Sheri thought she heard voices, Spanish voices, then hands shoving her aside, and Rudy's annoying whine all over again. They could have the boat, he didn't want it any more. It was stolen anyway, so why would Rudy tell anyone that they had hijacked it while he and Sheri were out swimming? And the Spanish voices apologizing, hands grappling again to throw them back into the water where they had come from. And Rudy—fucking Rudy!—telling them to go ahead and toss him, but why her? All they had to do was shove a taco down her throat, and she would fuck all three of them. She just looked like a little kid. She was better than a hooker once she got going.

  And next thing she knew, she was tossed down into the living room—whatever she was supposed to call it—dropped onto a wooden floor she dimly remembered now, like a big wet catch they were saving to gut and filet for dinner. From out in the cockpit above her, the sounds of jeering laughter and then a Rudy fuck-you scream, a huge splash, and her lover gone to sleep with the fishes.

  Sheri must have lain there an hour, patient, blinking her eyes, moving what little she could, fingers and toes, hands and ankles, working it slowly, knowing she couldn't just lie back and go to sleep. Something she had to do. Had to. No choice in the matter.

  Arms started moving, twitching and spreading, then crowding under her flat little chest to push her up off the floor. Not a groan, not a peep of weakness out of her mouth. This was Sheri proving to the world what she could do, what she could handle. Finally—a half-hour at least—she was up on the seat cushions, holding on with one hand and feeling for the hidden latch with the other. Her blue fingers found it. The wood panel clattered to the floor behind her.

  Someone had heard her, she knew it. Damn! She reached up and wrapped both hands around what Rudy had told her was a loaded Uzi. She hadn't wanted to know, even turned away when he tried to show her the safety, the clip, the trigger, the barrel, the whole vile business she was too good and righteous to ever need.

  Booted legs appeared in the hatch, cheap baggy jeans coming down backward, wallet on a chain in the back pocket. Sheri wrenched with her hands—the damn gun wouldn't budge. The plaid shirt turned into arms and a neck, then a head bending over and turning her way. But then Sheri's fingers figured out the geometry, and the Uzi came out of its clips.

  The man hesitated, surprised. Not the nastiest guy she had ever seen. "Get your friends down here," she said. "I want to see all of you."

  The man called over his shoulder in Spanish. Another man climbed down the stairs, but held up his hand to stop the third.

  "What you want, chica?" he asked.

  "Get him down here, or I'm shooting both of you. I've got a question for all three of you."

  The man hesitated, then shrugged and called his friend down. The three of them crowded together under the hatch. Not particularly worried by the hotheaded little chica with the machine gun.

  "My boyfriend. When you threw him back in the water, did he still have on his life vest?"

  Instead of answering, the man smirked. It was the wrong thing to do. "Sonofabitch!" Sheri swore and emptied the Uzi into all of them.

 
; Part III

  Sheri

  Chapter 24

  It took Sheri the rest of that day to recover. First, she dragged herself to the galley and spilled a gallon jug of water into her mouth, drinking until she gagged, then drinking more. Then she dragged herself to the shower and let it pour hot over her, spilling out into the living room, until it ran out of heat. Then with the jug of water back at her lips, for the first time, she heard the engines chugging away and realized she wasn't under sail.

  She stumbled over the three dead bodies at the hatch and up to the cockpit to find out why. The main mast was gone—just like that, vanished, a jagged hole in the center of the boat where it had stood. Wires here and there lay jumbled about the wreckage of a deck. The autopilot was taking her south, too close in to the land for comfort. She turned the boat out to sea and crawled below again. In the galley, she found a bowl, a box of cereal, and a carton of milk. She stood there and ate half of the box, staring at the bodies and the blood, not feeling a damn thing either way about them. Another long shower until the water ran out altogether, then she dressed herself in the warmest clothes she could find and went to bed.

  She needed to sleep—she knew she would be useless until she slept—but couldn't force herself. She had wrapped her mind around a few ugly items in her life, but a dead Rudy just didn't make the list. Not after everything he had done for her. And if she had learned anything in the day or two she spent drifting in the water with him, it was that her Rudy Spavik was one indestructible dude. Any other outcome would have taken her to the handgun still clipped to the wall to spatter her own brains all over this godforsaken hulk.