Outside their cottage, Zoë practiced Tae Kwon Do on a bare patch near the main building. She’d pulled her hair back with a plain silver clip and wore a tank top—sans bra—and black Lycra bicycle shorts. Although her face was free of makeup, her bare feet revealed deep-red polish on the toenails. There was no mistaking her physical strength. As John leaned against the rough stucco wall watching, she put her well-trained body through its paces, gracefully and forcefully lifting her legs in a variety of kicks that he’d seen knock expert martial artists on their butts. She breathed heavily and her skin glistened. Several minutes passed before she noticed him. When she did, she bowed toward him before bending over to grab her sandals off the rocky ground.
John stayed against the safety of the wall. “Morning.”
“Hey.” She squinted at him, smiled. “Ready for breakfast?”
“Sure.”
Together, they walked to the main building’s lobby where a continental breakfast had been laid out on a long table. They chose several items and sat out on the patio where they could look out over the canal while they ate.
“It’s nice to get yogurt and coffee for a change,” John said as he sat down. “I don’t mind sleeping at the beach, but I’m getting tired of eating peanut butter sandwiches or dry granola for breakfast.”
“No wonder you’re looking so skinny.” Zoë put a hand under his t-shirt and rubbed his chest. “Do we have enough time before we need to be at the dock?” Her voice sounded husky.
“’Fraid not. It’s the first time all week that a rooster didn’t wake me and I slept in a bit. We need to get going, actually.” He hoped that she couldn’t hear the relief that threaded his voice.
“Too bad.” She leaned over and nibbled his neck.
“Zoë, please.” John pulled away from the fiery touch of her mouth, but he regretted the reflex at once. He put a conciliatory hand on her forearm. “Let’s just eat and go, okay?”
She sat back and looked at him, frowning. His cover was blown, no doubt about it. “No problem, chief. I guess snagging a flailing fish is much more enticing than boning your girlfriend, who you haven’t seen in two weeks.” John winced at her crudity.
They ate in silence and Zoë, who finished first, stood up without waiting for John and cleared off her dishes. John finished his coffee without hurrying. He found Zoë a few minutes later waiting in the Samurai, her profile stormy. As if answering her mood, it rained as they drove into Dewey—enough to wet the pavement on the highway and lighten the air. During the brief shower, a single cloud paused as it glided overhead and then the sky was bright, without a trace of cumulous. Afterwards, there came renewed birdsong along the coast, vigorous and joyful after the storm’s interruption. What had seemed dry and tired in their surroundings only moments before was simultaneously sharper and softer, more vivid.
By the time they’d reached the dock and boarded their fishing boat, Zoë appeared more relaxed than she had at the outset of their drive. John hoped that she’d let his insult go. Several damp strands of hair, not used to being confined for long, had escaped the silver clip and now softened the angles of her face. She asked John to rub some sun block on her shoulders and upper back, sitting patiently and relaxed while his hands worked it into her skin. He was required to wait upon her to redeem himself. If fortune smiled on him, no more would be asked of him on this outing.
It wasn’t likely she’d handle his infidelity with such equanimity, however.
John watched half a dozen seabirds—dark filaments against a bright sky—fly high overhead. If he could escape into the heavens with them, would he? No. The gravity of his conscience anchored him here, with Zoë. Once he’d managed to tell her about Raimunda, adding the insult of an extended leave from grad school would probably suit her just fine.
They were met at the gangway by their captain, Captain Joe, who had the mien of a New England lobsterman: taciturn, angular, and tanned. He didn’t look as though he belonged on a Caribbean island skippering a boat for green-gilled landlubbers out on a sporting cruise. John couldn’t help wondering what had brought Captain Joe to Culebra—a cheating wife? a drinking habit? a lobster boat lost in a storm?—but he also didn’t have any doubts that the silent skipper would take them straightaway to the best fishing available in the waters off the coast. Captain Joe, true to appearances, said little beyond the necessary once all the would-be anglers had boarded: life jackets were to be worn at all times, no one was going to risk his life trying to reel in a big one, and he, Captain Joe, was the sole arbiter of what was and wasn’t safe on his vessel.
Two other couples joined them. After several minutes, it became clear to John and Zoë that these two couples had planned their vacations together—and that something was going on between two of them that the other two didn’t know about. John wasn’t tuned into such things, but shortly after they’d gotten underway Zoë poked him with her elbow and whispered in his ear to watch the furtive manner in which the man in the baseball cap touched the dark-haired woman’s elbow, shoulder or hip. The first time it happened, John wondered why Zoë would think that such a small, light touch meant anything. Then he realized that the man wearing the baseball cap seemed to be obsessed: he touched the dark-haired woman so regularly that his actions resembled a reflex or a tic. Even still, that wouldn’t have struck him as odd if the man hadn’t been sitting most of the time with his arm draped around his wife’s shoulders. Watching them, John wondered if unfaithfulness is always so obvious to outsiders.
To John’s surprise, Captain Joe headed straight for Amberjack; he hadn’t realized that amberjacks were a sport fish during his diving session there last week, and he said as much to Captain Joe.
The skipper squinted at him, his left eye nearly shut. “They ain’t too flashy, not like a marlin or a shark, but they ain’t too easy to catch, either. Any number of hotshot fishermen from the States come here and guffaw over what looks like an easy catch. But the jacks, they tax your tackle and your stamina like few other fish do. If you hook one, you’ll have the fight of your life.”
John’s question had elicited more than Captain Joe’s usual elliptical phrases and nonverbal grunts. He took this as a sign of the crusty old man’s respect for the fish and not him, a “hotshot fishermen” by virtue of his origins. He didn’t have a problem with this until Zoë, not he, won the fight with one of these pez fuerte, earning a high spot in Captain Joe’s hierarchy of regard.
While they were still underway, but not more than five hundred yards from Amberjack, the captain baited a forty-pound test line off the stern of the Sakitumi with some squid. When one of the other passengers asked what he was doing, he said that the squid was leaving a downside scent, much like an erratic, wounded baitfish on the retrieve would. With any luck, he’d snag one of the jacks and then some of its comrades would follow it to the surface where they’d all have a better chance of catching them with their lighter tackle.
After he’d set anchor at the site, Captain Joe came around and helped them bait their rods with frozen chum, then demonstrated the appropriate way to hold a deep-sea rod and reel: the end of the rod placed under the left armpit while the right hand reeled in the line. Zoë, who was left-handed and used to reversing all instructions, slid her rod under her right armpit and waited for something to bite. It didn’t take long. John immediately felt a tug on his line, but just as quickly he lost the jack without setting a hook. In the process, he himself was hooked. For a while, he wasn’t aware of Zoë’s efforts to handle her own tackle; it wasn’t until he heard Captain Joe’s sharp intake of breath and a muttered “take it easy” next to him that he realized that Zoë had managed to snag something big. When he turned to watch, his own rod loose in his hands, he discovered that Zoë had found a rather unorthodox method for setting a hook: she now held her rod between her thighs.
It turned out to be an extremely effective means for catching a twenty-pound amberjack. Zoë was able to choke up on the rod past the reel, gaining better leverage, and u
se her entire body weight to fight her fish. John was so entranced by her performance that he nearly lost his own rod overboard when another jack hooked onto his line. Together, they fought their individual catches, John simply trying to keep his line from crossing Zoë’s, Zoë bent on bringing her fish to the surface to see it. His jack eventually got away, but not until after Zoë had hauled in her amazing catch.
Dripping and red-faced with exhaustion, she turned to John while Captain Joe, his foot on the line next to the jack, cut the still-quivering fish free.
“He put up a fight but in the end I was tougher.”
Seven
Tamarind hovered just under the surface of the water, watching John standing on the boat above her. She recognized the old man who stood behind and to the side of John—she’d tailed his boat countless times through the waters to the south and west of Culebra. When she’d first happened upon his boat, she grew excited at the prospect of observing a human outside of the forbidden shores of Culebra, but her excitement quickly evaporated. Many times he dropped anchor miles out from the harbor and sat on his deck alone, drinking something. Under his white hat, his face resembled the warped and weathered texture of an old tree branch that had drifted far from land, preserved from natural decay by the salt air. Even from a safe distance in the water, Tamarind could see that his eyes captured no light from the water’s surface. She no longer studied him for clues about humans. She satisfied herself with racing his boat instead.
Today he walked between John and five other humans, each holding a long stick with a glittering lure hanging from it and into a cloud of large silver amberjacks. Dead Branch, as she thought of the old man, stopped behind the woman nearest John and touched her forearm. The woman didn’t acknowledged Dead Branch’s presence, engrossed instead in flinging the lure away from the boat. Once, her lure caught around John’s and she scowled at him.
As if it’s his fault!
For a while, Tamarind refrained from swimming closer to the fish as she usually did if she found humans trying to catch them. Stupid as they were, fish of all kinds reacted to diverse stimuli, from sight and pheromones to vibration and water pressure. They probably swarmed the water around the boat because one of their comrades had already been caught and they scented a meal. Yet if she swam at their periphery, they would scatter, ignoring the lure. She didn’t do this. Instead, she wrapped the seal glamour around her and waited to see how this sport would progress.
One of the fish abruptly swerved and swallowed John’s lure. He gave a shout and pulled up on the stick he held. Dead Branch and the woman near John, whom Tamarind had dubbed Black Urchin, both moved closer. The amberjack zipped away from the boat and Tamarind saw John struggle to maintain a hold on his stick. Black Urchin leaned closer and gestured to John, perhaps giving him advice. The frown on his face deepened, whether from the advice or the battle, Tamarind couldn’t be sure. She flipped her tail and headed for the fish, trying to corral it so that she could lull it into submission with her humming, but after zigzagging against John’s line in the time that it took her to change direction, the amberjack broke free. As she expected, it wandered a bit before sensing one of its cohort and rejoining the school.
Dead Branch and Black Urchin stood side by side now. The old man spoke into her ear and she nodded, but John seemed absorbed in fiddling with the base of his stick. He hooked another glittering lure onto a line and concentrated on launching this new lure over the side of the boat. Tamarind no longer waited.
Switching her glamour to mirror the water around her, she headed toward the school. The amberjacks dispersed, but they didn’t swim far. The smell of squid and their dead comrade permeated the water in which the innocuous lures undulated. Tamarind hummed a bit and rolled, gathering up scent particles in the palm of her hands and rippling these diaphanous globes through the swells and away from the fishers. The amberjacks darted a hundred different directions as the globes burst their scents in new underwater pockets. Tamarind laughed and tugged on the nearest piece of squid. Someone at the top tugged back.
Humming and swaying on the currents, Tamarind yanked at every flashing lure within fifty feet of the boat. Several times she broke the lures off with enough line to tie them onto a necklace for herself. Then she had an idea. Swimming toward a small group of amberjacks, she hummed to keep them from leaving their safe haven. She grabbed one, which rested in her grasp without twitching, and raced back to the boat. It took her a moment, but she finally identified Black Urchin’s lure. She hummed some more and brought the amberjack closer to the wicked barb. It opened its mouth docilely and swallowed. Tamarind clutched onto the fish and sped toward the open ocean. The line followed her for several long moments before Black Urchin managed to stop her run. That’s when Tamarind swerved, diving deep and rolling right.
Laughing again, she zipped and dodged with the amberjack, which continued to lie calmly in her hands. Black Urchin struggled to slow her down, but Tamarind, who often played games with dolphins, could have swum all day if she’d wanted to do so. After a few dozen passes, she swam back to the boat, letting Black Urchin reel in her line bit by bit. When she’d gotten close enough to see John wrestling with his own amberjack, she gave one last tug on the fish in her hands and then let go. She could have broken the line at the last maneuver, but just knowing this satisfied her. Let Black Urchin think that she’d won.
Rolling toward John’s line, Tamarind saw that it floated free without amberjack or lure. She looked around, but the school had moved on. Tucking her arms to her side, she glided to the surface where she watched Black Urchin and Dead Branch grappling with the still-quivering amberjack. The woman’s wet face shone, but she exuded triumph. When Tamarind looked towards John’s face, she saw admiration and something else. Something she couldn’t name, but it made her uneasy nevertheless.
***
On the trip back to shore, an animated Zoë talked with Captain Joe, asking numerous questions about bait, tackle, the difference between amberjacks and the showier sport fish—marlin, shark, mahi mahi. If John hadn’t known better, he would believe that Zoë had softened her stance on eating any flesh, whether from a fowl, a fish, or a four-legged mammal. Scowling, he noticed how patiently Captain Joe answered her questions, how the old man offered her a soda without saying a word to the others. He saw Captain Joe’s admiring glances at Zoë’s full breasts, her damp tank top clinging to them.
The old goat. Like he has any hope of catching his own quivering trophy. His jealousy surprised and confused him. His anger, unfocused as it was, flared. He closed his eyes and breathed. Until this moment, he hadn’t understood how volatile his emotions had grown on the Island of the Snake. He wasn’t sure he liked feeling so out of control.
John swiveled around in his chair and watched the bow of the boat as they neared Culebra. His eye caught a glimpse of something in the water near their boat, something dark, which disappeared just as he turned his head for a better look. Perhaps it was a harbor porpoise, or a seal—maybe even a small whale. Whatever it had been, it was larger than the amberjack that Zoë had hauled on board and had disappeared under the boat with incredible speed. He thought about asking Captain Joe what it might have been but then changed his mind when he saw that the other man was still engrossed in conversation with Zoë.
They got back into port about twelve-thirty. John waited while Zoë posed on-board for the requisite photo documenting her catch, and then he had to wait further while she got advice from Captain Joe about where to take the twenty-pounder to have it cleaned, filleted, flash frozen, and shipped. It wasn’t right, she said, to waste something that other people would eat, startling John again. After eating a late lunch at the Dockside, they split up so that Zoë could shop in some of the little artisan boutiques that exist in the smallest tourist area, those tenacious barnacles hanging onto an uncertain livelihood derived from the whims of sporadic shoppers. John had already bought souvenirs—some earrings for Cassie, a hair clip for his mom, a fountain pen carved
from driftwood for his dad, and a t-shirt for Stefan who was chauffeuring him to and from the airport. So he headed to Señorita’s and drank several Medallas in a dark corner instead.
“Hola, gringo.” Raimunda had found him. She sat down at the table across from him. “Buy me a beer?” After the bright morning out to sea, the shadows of the restaurant turned her white blouse and brilliant-orange skirt lurid.
John nodded and raised his hand to flag down his waitress. After she left, he looked at Raimunda. “I’m afraid that this is the last beer I can buy you.”
“Why?” She leaned forward to grab his hands where they lay on the table. The neck of her blouse hung open to reveal bare breasts like an offering. “Is today your last day on this fair island?”
“Almost. But that’s not why. Remember my girlfriend? She’s here now and she’s not good with sharing.” For the first time since falling under Raimunda’s spell, John’s lust churned with disgust. He felt sick. His head throbbed. Images of Zoë practicing crescent kicks merged with her triumphant smile after catching her trophy and the randy leer on Captain Joe’s face.
Raimunda accepted the Medalla from the waitress and lifted it high, sucking half of it down in a single drink. She wiped the corners of her mouth with a delicate thumb and forefinger.
“Too bad,” she said at last. “But all good things must end.”
She leaned back and slung her right arm over the back of the chair before raising her feet to the chair next to John. Her skirt fell away to reveal her legs, brown and slender.
“I am a tolerant woman.” She smiled. “If your girlfriend should bore you, I would be happy to meet you at Playa Melones for a private goodbye.”
An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant Page 9