Float Plan

by Trish Doller

  We are not the only boat in the anchorage. More than a dozen others dot the crescent-shaped bay when I scramble up to the bow to lower the anchor. It’s late, so most of the boats are dark, their anchor lights like extra stars.

  “Do you want to go for a swim?” I strip down to my bikini and step over the stern rail.

  “From one to Bimini, how drunk are you?” Keane asks.

  I laugh. “About a three.”

  “I’ll be right in.”

  I dive off the boat into the water, where I float on my back, looking up at comets streaking across the night sky and trying not to wish for Ben. From the corner of my eye, I can see Keane, floating beside me. We stay that way for a long time, not speaking. Not even when a tear trickles from the corner of my eye into the ocean.

  My fingers are pruned when we climb back onto the boat. I go below and fill the bucket with water for Keane’s residual limb, then change into my pajamas. I’m already in bed when he comes down into the cabin.

  “Thank you for bringing me here,” I say. “Especially when you’re not thrilled with the plan.”

  “I’m fine with the plan,” he says. “I just hope it lives up to your expectations.”

  * * *

  Ben was wildly excited about the pigs. Some stories say they were left by sailors intending to return to eat them. Others say the pigs swam ashore after a shipwreck. Either way, they escaped domestication, and I think that’s what appealed most to Ben. He went to Princeton, studied business, and went to work at his family’s logistics company to live up to his parents’ expectations. I was an aberration. His mother hated that he fell in love with a girl who worked in a tits-and-ass restaurant. I was too blond, too pretty, and too common for a wealthy young man with a Future. Sometimes I wonder if our relationship would have survived his family’s expectations. Sometimes I wonder if he killed himself to be free.

  As I row to shore with my five-pound bag of potatoes, there are already people on the beach. Some came by powerboat this morning, anchoring in the shallows. Others came by dinghy from boats in the harbor. A small tour boat arrived about fifteen minutes ago with some people from a resort on a nearby island. People seem to be having fun, taking selfies and shooting videos of the pigs. Maybe Keane is wrong.

  I reach shallow water and a large brown-spotted sow places a hoof on the side of the dinghy, bellowing at me as she tries to scramble up. Overwhelmed and a little frightened, I toss a potato and she retreats to gobble it down, crunching through the skin and the raw white flesh. Some of the other pigs see this new source of food, paddle over, and swarm me. It takes no time at all to empty the bag.

  The food exhausted, the pigs abandon me, swimming off in search of someone else to feed them, the way Keane predicted. I want to cry. Not because he was right. Not because the pigs aren’t adorable. But because Ben was wrong. There is no real freedom here. Only an illusion built with rotting fruit, bits of bread, and five-pound bags of potatoes.

  I left Keane sitting in the cockpit, clanking and swearing over the outboard motor, adding and subtracting parts in an effort to get it running. I’m not ready to go back yet, not quite prepared to admit he told me so. I drag the dinghy up onto the sand and walk the tide line, gathering stranded starfish. Splashing the living, keeping the dead. Someone at his funeral told me that Ben will always be alive in my memories, but it’s not the fucking same at all.

  The morning sun arcs upward on its path toward noon and a lizard of unknown origin scurries past my feet when I return to the dinghy. The pigs don’t bother me as I row back out to the Alberg.

  “Doing okay there, Anna?” Keane asks as I come up the swim ladder. The outboard has been cleared away and I wonder if he’s managed to fix it, or if all those fucks were sworn in vain.

  “I don’t know.”

  He spreads his arms. “Need a hug?”

  I laugh and cry as I step into his embrace. Into arms that know exactly how tight I need to be squeezed, against a warm shirt the smells like salt and engine grease and comfort.

  “On another day I might have loved the pigs,” I tell his shoulder. “But today … you were right.”

  “I didn’t want to be.”

  “Can we leave?”

  “Absolutely. Yes.” Keane releases me, and part of me wishes I could have stayed a little longer in the shelter his arms provided. “Whatever you want.”

  amplified (9)

  Port Howe, at the southern end of Cat Island, is a welcome reprieve after more than sixty sloppy miles of motor-sailing from Pig Beach. The water is calm, the day barely past sunset, and only one other boat rests at anchor in the bay, a large ketch-rigged sailboat called Chemineau. Old-school rock and roll drifts across the water, accompanied by laughter, a faint hint of cigarette smoke, and a female voice that sha-la-las along with Van Morrison.

  “Hello!” a big voice booms across the distance, and three sets of arms go up, waving at us. In one of the hands I see the glow of burning ash. This is the first time we’ve been welcomed into an anchorage.

  Keane cups his hands around his mouth and calls back in greeting as I wave. We position the boat close enough to be friendly, but not so close that we run the risk of colliding.

  “Come on over!” the big voice calls when our anchor is set.

  After spending the past couple of days in a blue funk, I’m a little sick of myself. And even though being excited about meeting new people has never been my default, I’m ready to get off this boat. Keane swings down into the cabin and rummages through his duffel.

  “Will you be coming?” he asks, sniffing and discarding a gray T-shirt.

  “Yes.”

  Both of us are windblown and steeped in sunscreen, but I scrub my face and replace Ben’s old white button-down—my unofficial sailing uniform—with a red floral halter top. I leave my feet bare and spritz on perfume to cover the sweat. Keane changes into a pair of jeans and I wonder if he’s trying to hide his prosthesis.

  “Makes meeting new people a bit less awkward,” he says, reading my mind.

  “I guess I’m a little surprised. You don’t seem self-conscious about it.”

  “I’m not, but I don’t always want it to be the first thing people notice about me.” He takes a bottle of Guinness out of his bag. “I’d rather they notice my charming personality and devilishly handsome face.”

  “What charming personality?”

  “So, you admit, then, that I’m devilishly handsome?”

  I tilt my head back and squint. “Nope. Not seeing it.”

  Keane places his hand over his heart. “You’ve cut me to the quick, Anna.”

  I laugh. “Come on, honey, let’s go meet the new neighbors.”

  Together we launch the dinghy and I hold the bottle of Guinness while Keane rows us to the other boat. Their main boom and the mizzen boom are strung with Chinese paper lanterns, and the music has switched to Crosby, Stills & Nash. It reminds me of Ben’s collection of old vinyl records, locked in a Fort Lauderdale storage unit with the other things his mother took from me. Ben would love rowing over to meet new people on a boat dressed in light. He’d say the whole point of this trip is to experience a bigger world. I miss my small world that revolved around him, but tonight I refuse to let sadness get a foot in the door.

  Keane tosses up a line to a large man with a broad neck and hair the same color as moonlight. His skin is tan, his face wide. Everything about him is big. And when he smiles, there’s a gap between his front teeth. He looks much older than I am, older than Keane, and he welcomes us aboard Chemineau with vigorous, crushing handshakes and an accent that is flat and unfamiliar when he tells us his name is Rohan.

  “These are my friends,” he says, leading us to the center cockpit, where a woman sits with her arm draped like a cat over the second man’s shoulder. Smoke curls from a cigarette between his fingers. Both have dark hair, but his skin is white while hers is dark. “James.” Rohan gestures toward the man. “And Sara.”

  Keane introduces us and p
resents the Guinness as though it’s an expensive bottle of wine. “A modest gift, I know. But I brought it from Ireland on my last visit home, so you can be sure it’s the genuine article.”

  Rohan invites us to sit then disappears inside the cabin. Keane takes a seat opposite James and Sara. I move to sit beside him, but Sara pats the empty space next to her.

  “Anna.” The neckline of her white peasant top slithers down her arm. Her lips are red, and her black eyeliner is perfect. She looks cool and sophisticated, while I feel like a sweaty milkmaid. I don’t look to see if Keane is staring at her, but I’d be surprised if he’s not. She’s so beautiful that I can barely keep my eyes off her. “Do you dive?”

  Ben bought us scuba lessons last year for Christmas, but we hadn’t redeemed the gift certificates before he died. “I’ve snorkeled.”

  “We’ll have to remedy that,” she says, as if we’re old friends instead of brand-new acquaintances. Her accent is British, which raises her glamour factor by a million. “It’s what we do. We dive.”

  James—all dark eyes and brooding mouth—explains they’ve spent the past six months exploring the bays and reefs of the Bahamas. Diving caves, swimming with whales, and fishing for lobster. Like Sara, his accent is British. “On paper, Rohan runs dive charters out of Nassau, and we are his crew,” James says. “But he takes only enough business to keep us in beer and nitrox.”

  Rohan returns with icy bottles of Heineken while I’m explaining that Keane and I are sailing from Florida to Puerto Rico, and how I’ll be continuing on alone to the Caribbean. It makes me sound far more experienced than I am. I leave Ben out of the story in the same way Keane conceals his prosthesis. I don’t want their first reaction to be pity.

  As we talk—and James chain-smokes cigarettes—I learn that Rohan’s accent is Afrikaans by way of his South African homeland. James is a former professional surfer from Cornwall. And Sara is a British-French-Algerian influencer on Instagram who gets paid to take pictures of herself. Like Keane, all of them are widely traveled, and the deeper they delve into their adventures, the more provincial I feel. Sara reminisces about a dive vacation she took with friends to Pulau Perhentian Kecil, an island I would never be able to locate on a map. James talks about the year he spent teaching English in Japan. And Keane shares a story of doing the Sydney to Hobart regatta aboard a seventy-foot racing yacht. They step on one another’s stories where they find common ground, and I’m embarrassed that I’ve only ever been to the Grand Canyon.

  “I’ve always wanted to see the canyon,” Sara offers, and I’m grateful for her kindness. “But that’s the thing about America, isn’t it? It’s so big that it’s impossible for Americans to see all of their own country, let alone visit others.”

  Ben would fit in so much better than I do. His family was wealthy enough to travel the world, and Ben went solo backpacking through Central and South America when he was in college. He would have adventures to share, while I have squabbles with my sister in the back seat of the family car.

  After a couple of beers, I excuse myself to use the bathroom. Compared to the Alberg, Chemineau is huge and, despite a mess of dive gear and discarded clothing, very well equipped. The V-berth has a bed big enough for someone Rohan’s size, and the galley is like a proper kitchen, with a microwave and a washer/dryer combination. When I come out of the bathroom, Sara is waiting beside the door.

  “So, Keane,” she says. “Is he yours?”

  “What?” The question catches me off guard.

  “I’ve been trying to work out whether the two of you are in a relationship.”

  “Oh. No,” I say. “We’re just traveling together.”

  Sara smiles. “He’s a bit of a dish I’d like to sample.”

  In my head, Keane is the man who saved my ass in the most literal sense, but seeing him through her lens brings him into sharper focus. God, how did I not see him? “Yeah, I guess he … is.”

  Her laugh is low and smoky. “Did you only now realize?”

  “No. I mean … maybe?”

  Her perfect eyebrows arch. “Does this change your answer?”

  I don’t want to lay claim to Keane Sullivan, but suddenly I feel a fierce protectiveness when I think about his leg. Will Sara feel the same when she finds out? Or will she see him as flawed? “No. He’s not mine.”

  Back on deck, it’s as though Keane has been amplified and I notice everything. How his smile always looks like he’s on the brink of laughter. The expansiveness of his gestures when he talks, as if the whole world is invited to his personal party. And his shoulders are … perfect. Looking at him is like looking at a bare light bulb and when I close my eyes, I can still see his outline.

  Sara doesn’t take up her old space beside James. Instead she moves closer to Keane, and it swirls up a storm of unease in me. Not jealousy, but a sense that she had better be worthy of him. And I feel ridiculous because their affair is none of my business.

  It is past midnight when James stubs out his last cigarette and unfolds from the seat and waves. “I’m calling it a night. Pleasure meeting you both.”

  “Where are you headed next?” Rohan asks me. Sara touches Keane’s arm and laughs. He’s telling her a story about another sailboat race, and her smile, her undivided attention, has made him angle his body toward hers.

  “We’re hopping our way toward the Turks and Caicos,” I say. “Rum Cay tomorrow, then Samana and Mayaguana.”

  Rohan takes a long swig of beer. “We’re going ashore at Port Howe in the morning,” he says. “Perhaps you could join us, and we can travel together to Rum Cay the following day.”

  “I love that idea,” Sara says, interrupting Keane. “Anna, you and I could sail together on your boat. Leave these boys behind.”

  “What do you think?” I ask Keane, trying to telegraph my concern that Cat Island is not a part of Ben’s plan. But Keane doesn’t pick up my signals, and says, “Sounds grand.”

  “Then we have a date.” Rohan says it like an official proclamation. He stands and begins gathering the empty green bottles that litter the table. His arms full, he wishes us a good night and heads off into the cabin. We are down to three and one of us does not belong.

  “I think I’ll head back to the boat. If you, um—” I stop, not wanting to sound like I expect them to fall into bed together the moment I leave, even though I’m pretty sure that will happen. “I can come back in the—”

  “No sense in that,” Keane says. “I’m ready to go.”

  If Sara is disappointed, she disguises it with good manners, kissing us on both cheeks and telling us how happy she is to meet us. “Anna, seriously. The two of us sailing. Consider it. And call over in the morning if you want to go ashore with us.”

  “We will.”

  Keane leans toward her, and whispers something that makes her lips curl into a sly, sexy smile, and we leave.

  “Nice crowd,” he says as we row the short distance between boats. He faces Chemineau and I wonder if Sara is still standing on deck, if he is looking at her.

  “Yeah.”

  “Everything okay?”

  I nod, but the truth is, I’m not sure. Now that I’ve seen Keane in a different light, I can’t go back to seeing him any other way. He is a man—an exceptionally good-looking man—and we are together on a small boat. The thought makes me nervous in a way it didn’t before. “Long day. A little too much beer. But it was fun.”

  “Do you want to stay another day?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Whatever you want, Anna, is what I want,” he says. “But for what it’s worth, there are sights on the island you might like to see, including a plantation in ruin and a beautiful abandoned monastery.”

  Even though this island is not on Ben’s route, I would like to see it. “Okay, let’s stay.”

  ghosts (10)

  Keane is wearing jeans again when we climb down the swim ladder into Rohan’s inflatable, and Sara shifts to make room for him. They smile at each other
first, like the rest of us aren’t there.

  “Good morning!” Rohan booms in a voice too loud for such an early hour. “Sleep well?”

  My dreams were about Ben, leaning forward to whisper something in Sara’s ear. About Ben sailing off with her, leaving me on a beach full of pigs, desperately flailing my arms and going hoarse from screaming for him to come back. I woke up crying and my throat hurt, as if I’d really been screaming. But out in his bunk, Keane was sleeping soundly. I crept up on deck and finished the night wrapped in my comforter, waiting for my racing heart and shaking limbs to realize it was only a dream.

  “Yeah,” I lie. “Thanks.”

  It’s a short trip to shore and we drag the dinghy onto the beach near the Deveaux mansion. Keane explains the property was deeded to Andrew Deveaux to use as a cotton plantation, a reward for his role in resisting the Spanish at Nassau in the 1780s. Most of the house is still standing, including a few thick roof timbers, but the inside is a hollow shell, littered with plaster and old wood. James kicks through the rubble, a burning cigarette in hand, while Rohan uses an expensive camera to take photos of a tree that has grown through the wall. Every window facing the bay has a gorgeous view and I lean in the open door frame, looking at the blue-green water and the pretty blue boat that brought me here.

  “Some of the islanders believe the spirits of those who once lived in a house remain among the ruins.” Keane moves up beside me. “They’ll build new houses beside the ruined ones so as not to anger the spirits. It’s a lovely way to live, don’t you think? Letting the present peacefully coexist alongside the past.”

  He steps from the doorway and heads toward the beach, where Sara lies on a towel in the sun. He sits down beside her and trickles a bit of sand on her bare stomach until she lifts her head to look at him. I turn away and move on to the kitchen house, where the bricks of the hearth are exposed, some blackened by cooking fires, others green with moss. If there are spirits here, I doubt they are any happier than when they were alive, with fortunes built on their backs and at the tips of fingers bloodied from picking cotton. I feel haunted, but I’m not entirely sure I haven’t brought my own ghosts.