He used the paddle to retrieve the lost pole, unhooked the rubber and placed it in the boat. He offered me the pole.
“No thanks.” I shook my head. “I’ll watch you. How can rubber wriggle?”
He shook with laughter, using his wrist to flick his line in the water, like an effing pro. “It was you. You werewriggling. Your hook must’ve gotten caught on something below.”
“Brando Piero Fausti.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You knew that wasn’t a fish!”
He laughed so hard that he had to set his pole to the side. He laughed even harder when I bopped him over the head with my disregarded pole. He was such a masochistic. I took a picture of him, opened mouth, head titled back, in the throes of wild laughter.
“Come to me, baby,” he said, opening his arms once he had settled.
My mouth fell open. It snapped closed when a bug flew in. “Wha— ” I choked, reaching for my water. “This boat is too unstable!”
He sighed. “I really wanted toshow you how to fish.”
“One of these days.” I echoed his sigh and then relaxed again, closing my eyes and letting him catch dinner. “Along the bank.”
I felt the camera move from my bag (I had taken it from around my neck because it was making me sweat more) and then heard the telltaleclickof the lens. I cracked open one eye. Brando had taken my picture and was about to take another one of the cypress logs.
After setting the camera back in its home, he moved from side to side some, testing the boat. No surprise, it rocked, and it made my heart flutter and my stomach drop to dark depths.
“What are you doing?” I asked, suspicious.
“Sometimes it takes a while to catch fish.”
“So?”
“So we could have some fun.” He pinched my toe.
“Brando, if I refuse to move so you can show me how to fish, there’s no way I’m going to—” I shoved my toe at him “—in this.”
His dark brows drew down and his lips pinched. A bead of crystal sweat ran down the slope of his nose, dangled there for a second, and then landed with a soundless splat against the bottom of the boat.
Something knocked against our boat. Just a tap, tap, that made the water ripple, as though a wind had blown by so fast that all we saw was its lingering presence.
Brando peered out at the water.
“There’s an alligator underneath us, isn’t there?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He reached out for the camera.
I closed my eyes and said a prayer. To think and to know are two wildly different scenarios.
“He’s curious. He’s going now.”
I caught two frog-like eyes gliding through the swamp, curious about who was visiting his home. He was half the size of our boat. Brando watched as he propelled himself in the opposite direction, far away from us, and then grabbed his pole.
Brando fished until he ran out of bait. He was going to offer Eva and Gabriel all of the dinner he caught as a thank you for having us. If they liked fish, they had enough for months. Brando hooked their gills to a line and left them under the water as he paddled us back.
Mellifluous music met us before the house came in sight, and then the house itself, its bank full of guests mingling. The smell of fiery crawfish lingered in the air, their red-shelled bodies spilled on the table, along with corn, sausage, garlic, and potatoes. My stomach reacted, making a sound loud enough to make Brando look.
“Hungry, Ballerina Girl?”
I nodded. “The sun took a lot out of me.”
Just before Brando steered the boat to the bank, I held on tighter to the sides. The boat could’ve been rocking in a terrible storm for how unstable I felt, and a big alligator underneath, holding his breath and waiting.
“Ettore,” I hardly got out.
