Liquid Lies

by Lois Lavrisa

  I waited until we got past the dock that was under construction. There was a rope, with bright orange flags strung around it, to keep people out. The thing was an eyesore, and dangerous at night with dodgy visibility. But then most of the water activity ended when the sun set.

  I got Annie prepared to do a jump. She had practiced several times without anyone on board except Mark, Samuel and me. She seemed to get the rhythm of how to time the leap on the dock and how to run to jump back on and grab the boat’s handrail as the boat pulled away.

  “You ready?” I asked Annie.

  “It’s so much pressure with all those eyes looking at me,” her voice quivered. Annie was about as tall as me, but a slighter build, almost waifish. Short curly dark hair framed her round face.

  “You can do it. Remember when we practiced? Just pretend the passengers aren’t here. Concentrate on your footing. You’ll do great,” I cheered her on as we approached the next dock. “You’ve got to launch in a second. Remember, land firm with two feet. Find your balance.”

  “Sure,” her voice still shaky. “I can do this.”

  Annie leaped off. She hit the dock with one foot sliding and one foot up in the air. Her footing looked uneven as she skidded, arms flailing. As though she was on a sheet of ice. She slid across the dock, then flew off and crashed into the water.

  “I see our new jumper just got a nice morning dunk. Let’s stop for a minute to get her.” Mark said over the intercom, and then cut the engine.

  I put a ladder down and Annie swam to it. I helped her on board. Samuel brought her a towel. The audience applauded.

  “They love it as much when we fall off as when we make it,” I said to Annie. “If you only knew how many times I missed docks or the boat. I’m not kidding. The first summer I trained, I was a solid bruise from shoulders to ankles.”

  I told Annie to take it easy and sit with the passengers while I finished.

  Two hours later, we arrived at the last dock on our route before we’d head back to the pavilion. This particular dock was always the trickiest because it jutted out at an odd angle. The rest of the docks pointed straight out into the lake.

  After closing the mailbox, I turned around to make a run for the stern. My heart raced. The gap between the boat and the dock spanned almost double the distance I normally would jump. After a quick assessment of the jump, I decided to back up further and increase my speed to clear the chasm. Readying myself, I ran and leaped, barely grabbing on with one hand to the side bar as my left foot dipped in the chilly water. A surge of energy pumped in my body as I caught my breath.

  The tourists who saw my near mishap gasped in unison. Then they clapped.

  My heart raced and my legs shook as I climbed over the back rail onto the lower deck. I took a bow.

  “Well folks, that was a close one for our CiCi. She nearly took a morning dip in the lake like our Annie did. Sorry about that CiCi,” Mark said from the loud speaker.

  I shot Mark the evil eye. Why had he pulled so far away from that last dock? Behind the glass captain’s window, he smiled and gave me an okay sign. I would have shot back my own hand sign, but there were children on board.

  Finished with the mail delivery, I strode toward the control room. Mark steered into the middle of the lake to head back to the pavilion from where we had started. The passengers remained seated and attentive as Mark and Samuel narrated the details of the last mansion on the tour. Earlier I had noticed that a corner of the banner strapped to the back of the boat was unclipped.

  Signaling my intent to Mark and Samuel, I crossed toward the stern. They nodded. At the back of the enclosed control room, a corner of the banner had come unfastened. The banner read: ‘Summer Weekdays, 8 a.m. Mail Tours: Tickets at Pavilion.’

  The lower clip of the banner was stuck open causing the corner to flap up in the wind. I reached over to grab the corner of the banner so that I could clip it back onto the rail. The boat jerked and my wet shoe slid, causing me to do a split.

  A Jet Skier whizzed by, nearly hitting the boat.

  As I righted myself, the boat jerked the opposite way, and I was airborne. My head hit the rail as I plunged over the side and into the darkness of the water.

  Chapter Three

  My body slammed into the cool surface of the lake. Pulled by the weight of my already soaked clothes, I plunged deeper. The water swirled around me like I was tumbling in a blender. With blurry eyes I saw my hundred and fifty dollar Maui Jim sunglasses sinking away. What a waste. I only got to enjoy the sunglasses, my college graduation gift, less than a month. Now they’ll be on the bottom of Round Lake.

  Clawing at the water I suddenly realized it was getting murky. The bubbles floated up, as I sunk deeper down. My chest tightened. Instinctively I exhaled. Then I realized it was my last bit of air. My next breath would be all water.

  Shouldn’t my life be flashing in front of my eyes now? Shouldn’t I be thinking of all the wonderful people in my life instead of plotting to kill Mark? He jerked the damn boat. But maybe I shouldn’t have been leaning over the back railing.

  My lungs were aflame. I inhaled. Water rushed in my nose, stuffing up my head. A calm filled me as I detached from my body and let go. I knew someday the trucker’s death would catch up with me. It was karma. Time to pay up. I was heading to hell where I belonged.

  ***

  “CiCi, wake up.” The voice came from far away.

  Someone’s warm hands were on my shoulders shaking me.

  “Hey, get up.” The voice sounded close.

  I blinked and tried to push away the blanket of mental fog that suffocated me. My head felt as heavy as a cement bucket on my shoulders, pulsating with a low, painful beat. Nauseated and dizzy, I turned my head. Water gushed out of my mouth and nose, making me cough. I flipped on my back. Water trickled down my face. The sun overhead emerged from behind a cloud and blinded me. I took a deep breath. The smell of algae gagged me. Whizzing Jet Skis were like jackhammers in my head.

  “Are you okay?” Mark leaned over me.

  As I focused, I realized we were on a dock not far from the pavilion, and a large group of tourists surrounded us. The murmurs from the crowd swarmed around me, humming like bees.

  “Please give her some air,” Mark said.

  Curling on my side, I tried to regain my memory. “What happened?” Reaching up I felt a spot above my left eye. It was tender and sore.

  “I’m so sorry. I think you fell when I jerked the boat. A Jet Skier cut in front of me and I didn’t want to hit him,” Mark explained.

  “As long as the skier is okay,” I said as I reached out and held his hand. “But I’m still going to kill you for almost killing me.”

  “Hey, I’m soaked too,” he said, glancing down at himself. “Plus, I abandoned my ship for my best friend. I violated an age old captain’s creed.” Mark draped a towel over me. “I jumped in after you and left Samuel and Annie in charge.”

  “They’ll be fine. It was about time to let them take over anyway,” I said. I went into a coughing fit for a minute.

  “I’m telling you, you sure are heavy when you’re wet and limp. I had to swim you all the way over to shore,” Mark said.

  “Sorry about that, next time I’ll be more careful,” I said. Then I felt bad that I was being sarcastic to him, after all he did save me, although he caused me to fall in the first place.

  “CiCi, I’m so sorry. Really I am. I don’t understand what happened. You’re a great swimmer,” he said.

  “I’m a great swimmer, just a crappy faller.” I pulled the towel around me.

  “Please move aside, we need to take a look at her.” A lifeguard knelt next to me. “I’m going to check your vitals. How are you feeling?”

  “Terrific.” I sat up.

  “That was an awesome flip you did,” he said as he took my wrist and felt my pulse.

  “You saw it?” I asked.

  “Yeah, a whole group of us did. I give it a ten,” the lifeguard replied.
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  “Good. I was going for Olympic Gold.” I smirked. “I’m glad I could entertain you.”

  “And we needed it. Nothing exciting happens around here,” he said. “The paramedics are on the way.”

  “That’s why I like it here, the sheer boredom,” I said as I glanced around at the crowd and the sea of unfamiliar faces. Then, in the back row I saw Francesca. My first impulse was to run and hug her.

  I’d longed for her to be back in my life as much as I’d wanted to stay away from her.

  She looked at me and smiled. Then a guy with long dark hair, faded jeans, wearing a tool belt with a hammer hanging from it, yanked her away from the crowd and began shouting at her. Everyone turned toward them. Francesca pushed at his chest. Then he stormed off dragging her with him.

  “Okay people, it’s under control,” Mark said to the crowd. Then he said to me, “Hey was that the mayor’s daughter that guy was screaming at?”

  “Francesca? Yes, it was.”

  “She’s super hot,” Mark said as he helped me stand up. “Is she single?”

  “I have no idea. She’s been in Europe a while,” I said as I held onto his arm. “Let me get over this massive pain in my head, and then maybe I can fix you up.”

  “Great,” Mark said. His smiled faded. “You’re being sarcastic, huh?”

  An ambulance, a fire truck, and two police cars pulled up, causing sheer commotion for an hour or so while they checked me over, filled out reports and dispersed the crowd. All my vitals registered as satisfactory so I declined any more medical treatment. When the excitement died down, the crowd filtered away, leaving just Mark and me. We began the walk back to the pavilion.

  “Are you really okay?” Mark asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Why don’t I take you to the hospital, just to make sure? I’m worried.”

  “End of subject, please?” I interrupted. “As far as I’m concerned, my fall’s now in the past. Done and over, never to be thought of again.”

  “Fine.” Mark added, “So Francesca’s back from Europe?”

  As I walked, squishing sounds came from my soaked gym shoes. I think I even felt a minnow swimming in my undies. Keeping up with Mark’s long strides, I shot back, “Apparently she is. I don’t keep up with her. We’re not exactly friends okay? Let’s leave it at that.”

  “But you told me that you and she were once best friends.”

  “Were.”

  “Do you think she’d date me?”

  “Please? I’ve got a splitting headache. Can you lay off about Francesca?” I wasn’t mad that he asked about Francesca. I just felt out of sorts now that I had seen her again. It dug up too many memories I’d rather leave buried, as well as a plethora of memories I cherished.

  “You know, you were a lot nicer before you almost drowned,” Mark said.

  “Weird how something like that can change a girl. Can we talk about something else, like your internship at the dead people place? How’s that going?” I asked.

  “It’s great. I’ve got the embalming down. It’s the makeup I’m tanking. Men don’t naturally have that glamour gene.”

  “Neither do I. It takes practice.”

  He turned and pointed a long skinny finger at me. “Great idea. I’ll practice on you.”

  “One problem.” I gently pinched his arm. “Feel that? Corpses don’t pinch, and you need a corpse.”

  “A mere technicality.” He rubbed his arm. “There are no extra corpses lying around. But you, you’ll be perfect.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll buy you dinner.”

  “Forget it.”

  “A Reuben on rye at H&K’s, with crispy chips and a beer?”

  “No.” I picked up a rock and tossed it in the lake. “Mark, don’t you need somebody without blood in their complexion?”

  “You know, you’re looking kind of pasty.”

  I rolled my eyes and looked up at him. “Flattery will get you nowhere,” I said, although I knew I’d let him do the makeover on me. He had me at Reuben.

  Mark stopped and knelt on the ground, put his hands in a prayer configuration and fluttered his lashes over his big aqua eyes.

  “Please? I have my final exam tomorrow, and I really need the practice. If I pass this last exam, I’ll be that much closer to fully fledged mortician status.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and huffed. “To get you off my back, fine. But you better not make me look like Bozo.”

  He jumped up. “You’re in luck. I haven’t learned clown corpse makeup 101 yet. But I know how to make non-clown corpses look animate.”

  Mark wanted to make me look like a cadaver after he saved me from being one. Something in the universe was twisted today.

  “So we’re on?” he asked.

  “You bet,” I said.

  “First, I’ll wrap up with Samuel and Annie, make sure that everything is in order. Meet me in the locker room in ten minutes. I have all the stuff with me.” He winked. “I knew you’d let me practice on you. You can’t resist my baby blues.”

  Whacking him in the arm, I said, “If you screw up my makeover, you’ll have black and blues.”

  After Mark left, I paused by the public dock, calmed by the sound of the water gently splashing against the rocks on the shoreline. I liked peace.

  Since seeing Francesca, something felt out of whack.

  Turning from the lake I walked over to the ticket booth at the pavilion and approached Hazel, who had staffed the booth from the creation of time. As though trapped in a 1950’s time warp, she wore her hair in her signature platinum beehive. She wore turquoise eye shadow from her eyelids to her brows and bright ruby lipstick lined her cupid bowed lips. Her petite, soft, plump body was squeezed into pedal pushers two sizes too small for her girth. And she topped off the outfit with a skimpy midriff sleeveless blouse, under which the folds of her pale white tummy spilled out. Being around Hazel made me feel as happy as being in the front row at a parade.

  “Hello Hazel.”

  “Hi ya, CiCi!” Hazel glimpsed up from counting her money drawer. “You look like hell.”

  “I took a swim in my clothes.” My khaki shorts, white polo shirt and jacket were still damp and wrinkled.

  “Swim my ass.” She reached out and touched the cut on my forehead. “I heard you almost drowned and Mark saved your skinny butt. He blabbed it to me before he ran into the locker room. He was all excited about doing makeup. I never thought he was…” Hazel rocked her hand back and forth. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that whole alternative lifestyle but…”

  I smiled at her. “He’s straight as an arrow in that department, but warped otherwise.”

  She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Anyway, no more near death, by drowning or otherwise. I can’t handle that. Okay?”

  “Too bad, I was going to try it again tomorrow.”

  Pushing a glass of water and two aspirin my direction, she said, “Motor Mouth also told me you had a headache.”

  I popped the two aspirin in my mouth and chugged the water. “A dip with the Grim Reaper can cause that.”

  She shifted in her chair. “Why don’t you take the rest of the day off, go home and convalesce? Mark can finish up.”

  “There’s nothing to recuperate from. I’m completely back to normal.” I fiddled with the keys on the back of the ticket booth door.

  “Fine then, Ms. Normal. Are you hungry? Here’s a tuna fish on rye I made for you.” She dug into large canvas sack slung over the back of her chair and pulled out a brown paper bag.

  “Thanks. You’re the best.” I could eat anything on rye bread.

  “Now go to the locker room and change out of those wet clothes before you catch a cold.” She handed me the sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

  “Thanks. See you later.” I unwrapped the sandwich as I walked over to the bulletin board inside the ticket booth. I grabbed the schedule for the rest of the week and headed over to the locker room.

  As I
exited the ticket booth, I heard the beeping of a trailer backing up. It went down the cement ramp next to the pavilion and then unloaded a red boat into the water. White letters on the back read, ‘I Sea You.’ Ken’s new boat. I wanted to take a closer look, but my makeover from the mortician-in-training waited.

  As I rounded the corner of the pavilion my black Labrador, Skipper, almost knocked me over. “Hey there.” I bent down and scratched him behind his ears as he enthusiastically wagged his tail. Skipper looked up and licked my face. I tore off a big chunk of the sandwich and handed it to him and he gulped it down in one bite. I gave him the rest.

  My aunt Estelle walked over and kissed me. “I thought I would take him for a walk. What happened to you? You’re soaking wet. And you’ve got a cut above your eye.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Wait a minute young lady. Were you the one that nearly drowned? The whole town is talking about it. Oh my goodness. What happened?” She held her hand to her heart.

  “It was nothing at all. I just slipped off the boat,” I said, trying my best to act nonchalant so as not worry her.

  Her eyes narrowed under her wire-rimmed bifocals. She pulled a handkerchief from her basket and held it to the cut on my forehead, “I think you need to get that looked at.”

  “I got checked out and have a clean bill of health. I don’t want you to worry one second. Promise me?” I gently pushed away her handkerchief from my head. “So what’s in the basket?”

  “A letter from some attorney I got a while ago. I’m giving it to Hazel to look over. Oh, and some cookies for her to sample. I made them with a special ingredient: capers.” Estelle’s broad smile pushed her plump rosy cheeks to a full mound under her bright hazel eyes.

  “Wow.” I was at a loss for words. Estelle thought she was a Midwest version of Paula Deen. I’d never had the heart to tell her that her creations, like her sausage and fish tacos, her jalapeño infused chicken Cordon Bleu, and chocolate carrot cake, although full of enthusiasm and zest, were mostly unpalatable.

  She pushed a chunk of the cookie in my direction. “Open up.”

  I automatically opened my mouth. The salty and bitter taste battled each other. Both flavors lost the war of edibility. I winced.