The Moon Always Rising

by Alice C. Early

  “Liz?” she said. “Does that get you into fights?”

  He flashed a chipped-toothed grin. “Something does,” he said. “Did.” Nickname aside, he radiated full-on guy vibes—cocksure, ironic.

  “I’m known to all as Els,” she said.

  The captain followed her up the ladder. He took her elbow as they stepped onto the deck, but she shrugged free, saying, “I’m fine,” before stumbling into the cockpit and landing on a banquette. All around, ropes and wires slackened and tightened with the swells, much larger here than at the wharf.

  Salustrio appeared in the hatchway, a cigar in his teeth. “Don’t you just love these classic beauties?” he said. “This boat’s a legend, a phoenix. Built in the ’40s and nearly destroyed in St. Maarten during Hurricane Luis in ’95.” He stepped into the cockpit. “I tried to buy her and restore her myself, but nobody returned my calls. The owner’s probably some money-laundering Colombian drug lord.”

  The engine rumbled.

  “Mr. S, hook’s up,” the captain said.

  Salustrio flicked his eyes over the white linen shirt and floppy pants covering Els from fingertip to toe. “Let’s show Lady Eleanor what this baby can do.”

  After Liz had piloted the yacht farther from shore, he pointed the bow into the wind and turned the wheel over to Salustrio. Els was fascinated by the captain and first mate’s energetic ballet, loosening this line and fastening that one; when Jason began pulling the main halyard hand over hand, he went nearly airborne between hauls. A huge, rust-colored sail glided up the mast, flapping and cracking in the freshening breeze. The boom swished over the cockpit. Everything on the boat was in clanging motion, and then the sails filled with a loud pop. The boat shuddered and swung toward St. Kitts. Liz took the wheel and switched off the engine, and there was no sound but the waves slapping the hull and the wind thrumming in the rigging. The yacht heeled slightly, leapt forward, and began slicing toward Basseterre.

  They sailed to the southeast peninsula of St. Kitts, arid and uninhabited, and into a deserted cove, where Liz and Jason set the anchor and dropped the mainsail.

  Salustrio pulled Els onto the stern deck. “Last one in is a puss,” he said, and tossed his cigar butt overboard. “Hold the pickle.” He grinned. “Maybe you’re too much of a Brit to get my meaning.”

  “Nobody—Brit, Scot, or Yank—could miss it,” Els said.

  He struggled out of his polo shirt. Tanned flesh pooled above the waistband of his swim trunks.

  While he unsnapped a section of lifeline and lowered the swimming ladder, she peered into the water. Near the beach, it was as aquamarine as any swimming pool, but at their anchorage it was a dark teal, its floor littered with brown humps that were hairy with seaweed. Driven by some unseen predator, a school of silversides broke the surface, their splashing like coins rattling. A strange pressure began to build around her heart.

  “I’ll pass,” she said, and took a step backwards.

  “I bet you’ve got a teensy little bikini under there just begging to get wet,” Salustrio said. “If you can’t swim, Cap stocks water wings for the kids.”

  “I was my S6 champion in crawl,” she said.

  “No excuse, then.” He grabbed her elbow and heaved himself over the side. She reached for a shroud but caught only air, cried out, and tumbled after him.

  The surface approached in slow motion. Terror squeezed the air from her lungs. When she tried to breathe, the air couldn’t get in. There was a rushing in her ears. The sea closed over her. The water that had looked so clear from above became darker, thicker, as she descended. She tasted salt. Her trousers tangled around her legs and kicking only bound them tighter. It took all her strength to right herself and aim for the sunlight dancing on the surface, impossibly far away. Her lungs burning, she forced her leaden arms to pull for the dapples, and when she finally broke into the air, she inhaled water and began to cough and thrash.

  She felt the concussion of someone entering the sea. A wave smacked her face. The captain surfaced next to her, pinned her to his chest, and stroked to the ladder. He placed her hand on the ladder rail and covered it with his own. “You’re okay,” he said. She felt his voice was coming from a great distance, though he was gripping the back of her shirt and speaking into her ear. “Listen to me. You’re safe. Breathe. That’s it. Breathe.” He murmured reassurances until her panting subsided. When it did, he lifted her foot onto the bottom rung.

  She managed to pull herself up, though she was shaking so hard she had to hug the sun-warmed metal after each step.

  When she finally hauled herself onto the deck, she knelt and clung to a lifeline.

  Salustrio, floating near the foot of the ladder, looked up. “The champ’s a little out of practice.” He rolled over and pawed toward the stern.

  Liz climbed onto the deck and raked back his hair. His sunglasses dangled from their Croakies; there was a flicker of annoyance in his expression. He settled her on a banquette and draped a towel around her, and she drew it close, breathing through its folds and fighting to control her shaking.

  “Breathe in while I count to ten,” he said. “And out on ten.”

  She managed two breaths; the third caught in a sob.

  Liz sat across from her and let her cry herself out, continually reminding her to breathe, while Salustrio splashed about below the stern. She was relieved he wasn’t seeing her so undone.

  “What’s happening to me?” she choked out.

  Liz crossed the cockpit and sat next to her. “Have you ever had a panic attack before?”

  She shook her head, unwilling to trust her voice.

  “You said you’re a good swimmer. Is it something about the ocean? The creatures?”

  Fearing she might dissolve again if she allowed him to be kind to her, she said, “Would it matter if I knew?” It came out snippier than she’d intended.

  The color of his eyes darkened, like a blueberry with the bloom rubbed off of it. He looked away. She’d taken him for a younger man but now guessed he was in his late thirties. A scar interrupted his right eyebrow.

  “Have you ever been snorkeling or diving?” he said.

  “Never considered it.”

  “There’s a dazzling world down there.”

  “Is that another of your services, guided tours of the briny deep?”

  “Dare you to try it just once,” he said. “You might be too entranced to panic.” He rose and went below.

  Hugging the towel, she rocked until the sun melted her terror and her breathing, if shallow, was dependable again.

  While Els steadied herself against the galley doorframe, Liz dished up platters of lobster salad and grilled vegetables with an economical grace different from Jason’s sinewy one. He’d changed into another Iguana polo shirt, dry except where its tails wicked up the dampness from his shorts. Billie Holiday, her notes bent and aching, sang softly in the background about wanting to try something she’d never had.

  “Mr. S likes lunch on deck,” Liz said, “but you’ve already had too much sun. Get out of those wet clothes. There’s a robe in the master bath.” He pointed toward a passageway to the right of the saloon ladder.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re goose bumps all over. You’ve had a shock. Do as I say.”

  She glared at him and considered resisting, but she’d already failed so dramatically to live up to her code—never show weakness—that courting further misery seemed pointless. She saluted, strode to the master suite, and rolled the door shut so hard it bounced open a crack.

  Feeling better as soon as she’d shed her clammy bikini, she swaddled herself in the oversized robe and knotted the belt fast. When she returned to the saloon with her clothes rolled in a towel, Liz reached for them.

  “I’ll hang these on the forward lines,” he said. “They’ll be dry by the time we get back.”

  She handed them over, and he disappeared above.

  She gripped the table edge. The clench in her chest graduall
y loosened, but she was still wobbly and disoriented. When Liz came down the ladder, she forced a smile. “You won’t tell him? The tears, I mean.”

  “None of his business.”

  “Give me a task.”

  He handed her a cutting board with a baguette and knife. “You and Jason do everything?” she asked.

  “When we’re cruising we have at least one more mate, plus a sea chef,” he said. “I sent the others ashore last night, thinking the Salustrios weren’t going out today.” He set an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne on the table next to a tray with cans of Diet Coke and bottles of sparkling water. That morning, she’d rescued Coxe’s bottle from its tepid bath and stuffed it into her mini fridge, planning to toast her birthday alone later.

  “Where do you all sleep?”

  “Forward,” he said, tipping his head toward a door marked CREW ONLY. He grinned and put on a Long John Silver accent. “With the sail bags and kegs of grog.”

  “You enjoy this rental captain game.”

  “We call it chartering.” He handed her flatware and cloth napkins. “How bad could it be, getting paid to sail around?”

  “Depends on who’s paying,” she said. She laid two place settings precisely, folding the napkins and squaring the flatware. Salty air puffed through a porthole.

  “Mr. S is better than many,” he said. “I’ve put ashore more than one captain of industry who tried to be captain at sea too.”

  “Lucky you, being able to tell the likes of them where to go.”

  “Captain’s command is law,” he said. “Ancient rule of the sea. Thwart it at your peril.”

  “Aye, aye,” she said with another mocking salute.

  His hair dripping onto his collar, Salustrio lowered himself down the saloon ladder. He strode to the table, brandished the champagne bottle—Billecart-Salmon—and said, “Pink bubbles for the birthday girl.”

  “Never into pink,” she said, “but I make an exception for champagne.” Salustrio’s taste in bubbly outshone Coxe’s, but she steeled herself, guessing his agenda might be equally offensive.

  When he popped the cork out the hatchway, it pinged off a shroud and plopped into the sea. After handing her a brimming flute and splashing an inch of champagne into a second, he glanced at Liz, who nodded and climbed up to the cockpit.

  “Cin cin.” Salustrio clinked his glass against hers. “Buon compleanno!”

  She took a big swallow, hoping the wine would calm her further. “Grazie. Il dolce far niente,” she said.

  He took a tiny sip. “So you speak Italian besides Scotch.”

  “A wee bit,” she said, intentionally upping her brogue. “At one time I hoped to be able to speak it with my mother. I’m told she lives on Ischia. Maybe you’ve heard of her. The painter, Giulietta Borelli?”

  “I leave the artsy-fartsy stuff to Marlena,” he said. “Funny, I always thought you were pure Scot, and that the legendary Sir Harald had been a widower for years.”

  “She left when I was two.”

  “So your hot-blooded mama was incompatible with one of the dourest men alive?”

  “You’d have to ask her,” she said. “How do you know Father?”

  “By reputation.” He plunked into the creamy leather swivel chair at the head of the table and gestured for her to sit at his right. He levered a Diet Coke tab, stuck a straw into the hole, and sipped, his gaze fixed on that same spot on her chest. “Maybe you were especially terrible at two? I’d believe it, given the temper you conceal under all that curvy cashmere.”

  She’d never confess, especially to the likes of Salustrio, that she’d always felt to blame for her mother’s departure. Pulling the lapels of her robe closer, she gazed through the porthole at Nevis Peak and imagined the volcano’s dormancy abruptly broken, its molten core blurping up and searing a path through the rain forest until it slid, hissing, into a boiling sea.

  “Maybe I got that temper from her,” she said.

  Salustrio refilled her glass while he bragged of all the Caribbean islands he’d visited on Iguana, having chartered her every year since her restoration.

  “Do you ever think of owning something here?” she said.

  He tore off a piece of bread and tossed the rest into the basket. “You’re too smart to get bitten by that ridiculous bug,” he said. “Scratch the surface anywhere in the Caribbean, and all you find is poverty, corruption, incompetence. Governments a joke, economies unstable.”

  “You like it well enough to spend a bundle chartering this boat.”

  “The yacht’s the thing,” he said. “The setting just makes it go down easier with Marlena and the girls.” He speared and waved a piece of lobster. “Living here would never match your fantasy. Stuck in the expat community of misfits and exiles. Impossible to become friends with the natives. Just because they smile at you, don’t get to thinking they like you.”

  “I’m used to people not liking me.” She finished her second glass of champagne and shook her head when he offered a refill.

  He poured one anyway, then laced his fingers behind his head, leaned back, and thrust his splayed thighs forward in the chair. “You should have made managing director by now.”

  “I’ve been up two years in a row.”

  “They’re keeping you slaving away on a promise while they promote guys like Singh and Carmody. Now that your father’s retired from the board, you can probably kiss any hope of MD goodbye.” He looked at her over the rim of his soda can. “If Coxe doesn’t shitcan you altogether.”

  While she washed down a bite of lobster, she imagined the backbiting at work spreading throughout the City and Wall Street grapevines, the whispers reaching Salustrio and beyond. The champagne was turning her stomach acid and her head fuzzy. She pushed the glass aside.

  “Why do you work so hard when everyone knows you don’t need the money?” he said.

  “That money is Father’s.”

  “Hoping to prove you’re more than just a sacred cow, then?” he said. “Maybe you should try working someplace besides your family’s bank—a place that doesn’t owe Sir Harald anything.”

  A gust of wind rocked the boat. The view captured in the porthole panned up Nevis Peak and back down.

  “Like Goldman?”

  “If you’re hungry enough,” he said. She caught a flash of glee in his eyes. Surely he knew Goldman was one of the few shops that could lure her from Standard Heb. He stood up, hiked his bathing trunks, and shouted, “Cap, time to head back.”

  “I need the loo,” she said.

  Steadying herself against the passageway paneling, she went astern, where she took refuge in the head. She sat for a while, listening to footsteps on the deck above, a chain rattling, and the engine purring. In the mirror—skin splotched from sun and wine, hair a wind-tossed copper mane—she looked bleary, vulnerable. She tightened the belt on her robe.

  When she rolled open the door, Salustrio was on the other side, his hands on his hips and a bulge in his swim trunks. He stepped forward, blocking her way, grasped the tail of her belt, and tugged her toward him. He reeked of cigar and a musky cologne he hadn’t been wearing before. “We could both satisfy our hunger,” he said, leaning in to kiss her.

  “Get off me,” she shouted, slapping away his hand. Taking advantage of his stunned look, she planted her palms on his chest and thrust him backwards. He stumbled and landed on the foot of the bed. She yanked her robe into place, a flush racing from her breast to the roots of her hair. “I’ll never be that desperate.”

  “Can’t blame a guy for trying,” he said. “Coxe said you put out for him big-time.”

  “You lying scumbags are all the same,” she said. “I suppose you’ll brag to him now, say you banged me silly all over that pristine duvet.”

  “First chance I get,” he said. He stood up, hitched his trunks, brushed past her, and waddled toward the saloon.

  “Everything okay?” Liz called from above.

  “Ducky,” Salustrio said. “Let’s get
the hell out of here.”

  Salustrio was in the cockpit, smoking another cigar and laughing with Jason at the helm. Her fury rising, Els imagined him hosting Coxe in the Goldman partners’ dining room to trade lies of conquest.

  Fighting the yacht’s heel, she made her way back to the table, where she sat and rested her forehead on her arms. The boat’s motion churned the champagne and lobster in her stomach. Nausea pulled at her tongue. Though she took deep breaths and lowered her head to her knees, she was light-headed, and both chilled and sweaty at the same time. She prided herself on holding her liquor and never getting airsick, even in the most turbulent conditions, but here her gyroscope had lost its bearings.

  When Liz came down the ladder, she asked for a glass of water.

  His glance was appraising. “You need to go topside.”

  She straightened and pulled her lapels tighter. “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “While you’re on this boat, Ms. Gordon, I’ll tell you what’s in your best interest, and you’ll do it.” He took a ginger ale from the refrigerator and held it out to her.

  “First you bully,” she said, keeping her hands in her lap. “Then play nice.”

  “I’m responsible for everyone on this boat. Whether I’m nice or a bully is up to them.”

  “I’m going to lie down over there.”

  “You’ll keep feeling shitty if you stay below.”

  “How the fuck do you know?”

  “Twenty f-ing years at sea,” he said. “Now get up that ladder.”

  Salustrio’s laughter floated down from above and Els looked out the hatchway, wondering if the joke he was sharing with Jason was on her.

  Liz took her elbow and pulled her out of her chair. “Do I have to carry you?”

  “I’ll thank you not to touch me again,” she said. She climbed into the sunlight. As soon as she left the odor of lobster behind, she began to revive. When Salustrio glanced at her, she hesitated.

  “Go forward,” Liz said. “Away from that smoke.” Carrying the ginger ale, a banquette cushion, and a towel, he led her to the bow and kicked aside a coiled line. He propped the cushion against a hatch cover. “Lie down there.”