“No.”
“Remember, the biggest mistake amateur boaters make is not respecting the ocean. They think just because they aren’t going out far or for very long they don’t need to take the necessary precautions, but that’s wrongheaded. Whether you’re on a cruise ship or a pontoon boat, it’s your responsibility to be prepared if anything should happen.”
Cece does her best to remember every detail, down to the knots tied around the deck cleats. Once Santiago has gone through his checklist, they push off and set out into the cove, the tide low, waves merely a suggestion. He puts Cece at the helm and points her where to steer—a mass on the horizon, cages floating on the placid surface. He lets her get a feel for the boat, throttling up and down. Compared to the swift machine she’d ridden earlier with Morgan, this boat feels more like a utilitarian barge, pulling against the waves like an oar through seaweed.
The rest of the morning is spent rotating racks, which ensures each oyster receives the same amount of nutrients to maximize growth rates. Santiago demonstrates how to pull alongside a row of floating bags and flip them using a long pole with a hook at the end. Once flipped, Santiago gives each bag a strong shake to clear any excess sediment. Since these oysters are in their mostmature stage, they only need to be flipped every four to six weeks, he explains. After demonstrating a few more times, Santiago hands the job off to Cece while he pilots the skiff, correcting her with a blunt directive whenever she skips a step or messes up. The oysters rattle in their cages, their shells the color of moss-covered stones. Waves slap a rhythmic beat against the fiberglass body of the boat, and Cece’s forearms burn—one hundred fire ants biting in unison. Only briefly does she dare to look up to see how many racks are left. Rows upon rows, effortlessly bobbing in the blue-green water, mocking and malevolent.
“Only flipping this batch today,” Santiago says, like he’s reading her mind. “Those ones over there,” he says, “those won’t be moved until next week.”
Cece pretends not to hear him and keeps rotating the cages, afraid that if she stops, she won’t be able to keep going. The sun is high and warm on Cece’s cheeks. The boat moves under her feet, undulating to the infinite push and pull, and for a moment, Cece wishes she could stay here, in this strange equilibrium of perpetual movement. There is no stillness, no stagnation, only the tides. The ocean—briny and sweet—fills her nostrils, and she inhales sharply, flipping her last one in the row. The floating bags don’t look like much, but Cece is overcome with a strange sense of pride. She feels foolish—but then again, why not feel pride? There’s a concreteness to the job she likes, Cece realizes, while they uncouple bags and haul them aboard, the oysters shining a dull white green in the sun.
Before their lunch break, Santiago and Cece transport the harvested oysters back onto shore where he starts up the grader and shows her how the merchandise is cleaned, measured, andsorted into specific buckets. He’ll drive these over to Mystic, where they’ll be shipped to local restaurants tonight.
“So, these are ready to eat?” Cece yells over the roaring grader, shells clattering, water spray shifting sun into rainbows.
Santiago only nods. When they’ve finished grading, he packs the oysters away in ice-filled bins and stacks them in his pickup. If he’s even mildly impressed by Cece’s capabilities, he doesn’t let on. He hasn’t cracked a smile all day.
“What should I do while you’re gone?”
“You can hose down the grader. Just don’t touch the settings. And those could use some freshening up. Paint’s in the warehouse,” he says, pointing to a pile of sun-faded buoys before hopping into his truck.
Cleaning the grader is quick, and Cece takes a break to eat the ham sandwich she brought from home for lunch. She unhooks her waders and shucks off the heavy rubber boots before walking along the dock, the wood rough and warm. Shielding her eyes, she looks out into the cove, out where the oyster bags are floating, like rows of seals sunning themselves, and even though she is tired and spent, her mind still spinning from Santiago’s breakneck orientation, she is filled with a deep sense of satisfaction, not just from a job done well, but from proving herself. She knows the work is easier now while the summer breeze is refreshing and the days are long, but even when she imagines the wintertime, the freezing white chop, the howling wind that cuts down under your layers, she can’t find any objections. At least she’ll feel alive; at least she’ll be outdoors, making her way in the world, the real world, not a cubicle or a conference room, no laptop screens or client calls, just her and Mother Nature.
The euphoric sense of self-actualization is short-lived; the paint is ancient, and it takes an excruciating thirty minutes just to pry the tops off the rusted cans. It’s obvious at this point—Santiago wants her to quit, which at the moment, only makes her more determined to stick it out. If he hadn’t antagonized her, Cece might have quit within the week, seeing the job at Rayburn Oyster for what it was, a desperate and ill-fated attempt to run away from her problems. But now. Now she wants to stay, to thrive, just to spite him.
Cece’s painted six buoys when Santiago returns. She keeps working while he saunters over to the grader and reaches into the hopper, his upper torso disappearing momentarily. There’s a commotion when he starts it up, grating gears and clattering metal. Cece’s heart is in her throat while Santiago curses and hits the emergency shutoff. The metal rollers from the conveyor belt lie in the gravel, glinting in the sun.
“What did you do?” he shouts, stomping toward her. “I told you not to touch anything.”
Bewildered, Cece rises, paintbrush in hand, legs shaky. “I washed it. Like you told me to.”
“Then how do you explain the rollers being loose? You must have hit the chain and jacked up the gears.”
“That’s impossible. All I did was spray it with water,” Cece says, surprised by how incredulous she sounds.
“How would you even know if you messed something up? I told Richie you’d screw up again.”
Something bubbles up in Cece, an indiscriminate rage pushing through her very pores. She’s been set up. Sabotaged. She knows it. “What were you doing by the grader anyway? Youwere messing with it right before you turned it on. How convenient.”
“Don’t blame me for your incompetence. Who’s Richie gonna believe? The guy who’s worked with him for the last eight years or some girl? Do me a favor: Go home before you break anything else.”
There’s no argument there. He has her beat, Cece realizes. Even if she can prove to Richie that Santiago set her up, what would he say? What could he do? Santiago is infinitely more valuable to the company than she is…“What’s your problem with me anyway?”
“No problem at all,” Santiago says, a toothy grin breaking his face. “You just have no business being anywhere near an oyster boat. You haven’t done a damn thing to earn the job, and Richie’ll see that now.”
“I see,” Cece manages to say. The fight’s gone out of her. She’ll sound like a crazy person if she goes to Richie accusing Santiago of sabotaging her. She watches him walk down to the water, his head buoyant, shoulders thrown back. Balled into fists, her hands shake, nails digging into her fleshy palms.The world’s not fair, Cece, she remembers her father saying.If you want to win, if you want to dominate, you’ve gotta go out there and take it. No one is gonna hand it to you. Winners win. Winners beat losers.The sentiment had seemed easy enough to follow in the swimming pool, but in life, without lanes and judges, stopwatches and rules, Cece is drowning in the deep end.
The tears don’t threaten until she’s halfway across the bridge. Cece fights them back, breathing through a runny nose, her vision blurring. Even in private, she can’t give Santiago thesatisfaction. The piercing trill of Cece’s phone fills the car. It’s her mother. Cece has the sudden urge to pick up and confess the truth: She hasn’t the faintest idea of what she’s doing. But she knows this won’t produce the result she’s hoping for. While Kim might offer a few banal words of encouragement, she’ll eventually circle around to something likeI told you so, and so Cece takes the call but swallows her tears and makes her voice blithe and airy.
Kim has good news. The interview at Global Risk Management is all set for Monday. “Go buy some new clothes if you need to,” Kim says, her voice bouncy and festive. “Use my card. You need to look sharp.”
“A week from today?”
“No time like the present?”
An hour ago, she would have said not a chance, but now, it seems incredibly imprudent not to take Kim up on the offer. What choice does she have? “Monday works.”
Her mother is pleased; Cece can tell by how energized she sounds, a frenetic optimism. “Thanks, Mom,” she says, concealing the welling sense of dejection in her stomach.
