The fight resumed the next morning, with the captain still bleary-eyed from drink and the boy rasping but fresh on the high of righteousness. The captain threatened to hit him if he didn’t shut his goddamned mouth, and the boy, at last, quieted.
The silence that followed was much worse, like a windless day in July, when even the sails were saturated with damp and listless. When the seas were flat, and no one, not even the birds, were content with their lot in life.
The captain turned on the baseball game and drank beers, one after another. The boy paced, losing items of clothing to the heat, until he wore only his underwear. He cooled off in the bathtub water of the intercoastal, but it felt gross to him, and dirty. It was nothing compared to the clear, turquoise waters of the Caribbean.
“You’ll get better and we can sail again,” the boy said, changing tactics.
“I won’t get better, and you need to be in school.” The captain had made sacrifices, in his own way, so that the boy could attend college.
“I don’t give a fuck about school when you’re down here in this miserable hellhole, dying.” He hadn’t meant the boat, or even Florida. He’d meant the stillness of it all. The hopelessness. The captain was landlocked and stagnant. The two were essentially the same.
“The doctor gave me six months. All I want to do is set my things in order and die on this here boat.”
“The doctor said chemo and radiation could prolong your life.”
“But not save it,” the captain said. He’d never said the word “cancer” himself. But the disease had already begun to spread. It would take a lot just to eradicate it in the places where they knew it lived.
“You’re being selfish,” the boy snapped. He rarely slung accusations, but the moment called for it.
“Aye,” the captain said, and then, after another beer, “Why don’t you make yourself useful and take us over to Anclote Key?”
It had been a long time, nearly a year, since the boy’s last sail, but he knew the drill. He checked the water and propane tanks, and the oil and fuel levels, determined to fill up with diesel before they got too far out. He asked how the engine and bilge had been running.
“Same as ever,” the captain said, which meant poorly. Either because of poverty or frugality, the captain seldom replaced anything, only patched up what he had, usually with his own spare parts. It was a frustrating way to live but one the boy had come to expect. When the boy learned of the power of credit cards, he wondered why the captain hadn’t taken advantage over the years, but he supposed he knew. The captain was indebted to no man. It was a lesson the boy had not yet learned, but he would.
The boy sailed them up to Anclote key, then Honeymoon and Caladesi Islands. The trip took a week in all, and it would become a familiar circuit as the captain got sicker, as his body weakened, and he performed fewer duties on their sails, until all he could do was sit on the steps off the side deck, cradle a cigarette in his shaking hand, and stare blankly at the horizon, alternating between nursing a beer and vomiting his meager nutrition into the water.
Their fights continued, but they lessened in intensity as the boy realized he was losing, had already lost. The captain’s will was as indomitable as ever, and their parting more inevitable with each passing day. He was bitter and angry, and neither running as fast as he could on the packed sand, nor screaming his frustrations underwater could soothe him. Some days, and especially toward the end, his anger was all he had to sustain him.
19
the aftermath
I’m not proud to admit it, but I spent quite a lot of time wallowing in those few weeks after Arden ended it with me. I hardly left my apartment or even got out of bed. I ordered delivery when I bothered to eat and fired off one-word responses to all those inquiring about my mental health and well-being. The contract for theCold Lake Chroniclesoption was still in my inbox, awaiting my review. If I didn’t address it soon, Bitzy would have my head. Or worse, involve my father.
I was staring at a defunct cobweb on my ceiling on one particularly bleak morning (or was it afternoon?) when I decided that if I couldn’t kill Matteo in real life and win Arden back, then I could at least do it in fiction.
And so, it was vengeance which ultimately motivated me to pull myself together.
I went out to the kitchen and made myself a pot of coffee, drew back the curtains to discover construction across the street had (finally) moved inside, and noticed the flowers Arden had last purchased for my apartment were wilted and brown, and the water was growing new lifeforms.
I threw out the flowers and scrubbed the vase along with the other dishes that had been piling up on the counter. I took out the trash. But that was where my housekeeping ended. I couldn’t manage to put away the robe Arden had worn or the personal effects he’d left lying about the house, not even his silly stockpiles of single-use creamers, ketchup, and soy sauce packets that were cluttering up my kitchen drawers. I’d never even seen him take them. He must have filled his pockets when no one was looking.
A thief of inconsequential things.
I put that thought to bed because the nascent threads of a new novel were calling to me as though whispered through a cottony shroud.Speak up, Muse!I had pages upon pages of material with which to draw upon for a beguiling, and also maddening, love interest. One who was terribly sweet, a little bit tragic, and entirely perplexing.
I sat down at my desk and began to write.
I calledArden one night when I’d had too much to drink. It wasn’t the first time I’d tried him, but it was the first time he answered.
“Michael,” he said. My name in his airy cadence was like being spirited into the woods with the fairies and the nymphs.
“Arden,” I said and wondered if it was a similar effect for him. Probably not. I was the ballast and boulder. Trying to make him more practical, telling him to think about his future. Did he miss the structure I’d provided him or was he relieved to once again be skipping between daydreams? More importantly, did he miss my cock?
No,my inebriated inner voice warned me.Do not mention cocks.
“Fair warning, I’ve been drinking,” I said.
