T. Boyle - When the Killing's Done

They’re in a deep clinch, mouth to mouth, groin to groin, Anise pressed up against the bulkhead and everything in him strung tight as a bow, when Wilson’s face appears in the doorway. “Hey, hey, now, none of that,” Wilson crows in the voice of the class clown, which is exactly what he was and is, “or we’ll never get out of port.” And then, to Alicia, whose face slides in place next to his as if they’re looking down a well, “You see what’s going on down there? They’re doing a porn movie only they forgot the camera.”

Alicia has wine too, a wicker basket crowded with the necks of bottles, and she’s all legs coming down the steps in a pair of tight white shorts. Wilson has a case of Dos Equis propped up on one shoulder, a grocery sack of avocados and tortilla chips in his free hand. “Got to have chips and guac,” he announces, setting his burden down on the table, “or it’s not a party. And this is definitely a party, am I right, Alicia?”

Before she can respond, before she has a chance to hand the basket to Anise or even say hello, Wilson has her in a simulated clinch, thrusting his hips in parody. “Can’t let nobody show us up, huh, baby?”

Dave is feeling loose, or as loose as he’s able to feel because relaxation is not his long suit, and instead of shutting Wilson down he just lets him go. Smiling, one arm around Anise’s waist, he says, “We’ll see about that — knowing you, you’ll be snoring about ten minutes after we pass the breakwater.”

Wilson’s in motion suddenly, swinging away from Alicia to take the basket, set it down on the table and then spread his arms wide in an elaborate palms-out shrug. “Maybe so, Captain, but when the time comes”—a wink for Alicia—“I’ll be ready to report for duty.”

And everything’s fine, sparkling, beautiful even. They’re all smiling, all the way around, and he’s thinking how great it is to be able to do this, to get away, kick back, slow down, let life come to you instead of chasing after it all the time. Ever since he was a kid he’s been going out on trips like this, and for his money there’s nothing that can compare with the excitement of coming aboard with your arms laden and taking your sweet time to stow your gear and provisions in the ingenious motion-proof lockers designed specifically for that purpose—“Making everything shipshape,” as his mother used to say — and then starting the engine, casting off the lines in a solid pillar of sun or even a cold dripping mist or a rain that taps on the roof of the cabin like a thousand separate fingers and motoring out of the harbor with nothing but anticipation ahead. When he was in school and the tedium of routine and term papers and pop quizzes got him to the point where he felt as if he were buried in layers of mud like one of the hibernating frogs in the tricolor illustration of the winter pond in their biology text, his parents would take him and a friend of his choosing — Barry Butler, Joe Castle, Jimmy Mastafiak — out to the islands for the weekend.

Casting off was like settling into your seat on the jet to Hawaii or strapping your longboard to the top of the car to drive down to Baja, only better, far better, because the trip was part of the adventure and when you got there it was like you had your own house with you and not just a suitcase or a gym bag. And yes, he’s seen the mile-long motor homes out on the freeway with the reanimated corpses propped up behind the wheel, spewing out the fumes while they drag their earthly belongings with them from Toledo to Butte and back again, but sitting on a concrete strip in a pall of smoke with ten thousand other idiots can’t compare with being at sea, where every day, every hour, every minute, there’s something new to get your mind around and you can just flick the wheel with one little finger and go anywhere you want.

Wilson, quick on his feet and with the makings of a sailor in him if he ever wanted to go there, casts off and then joins him at the helm. The girls are down in the cabin, glasses of cold clear viognier balanced delicately in their hands while the bottle beads in the antique ice bucket Anise found in a junk shop somewhere. They motor down the long double row of berths, the Chez When , the Mikado and the Isosceles II showing them their sterns, the fog so dense they can barely make out the letters of their names. “It’s supposed to be clear around noon,” he says over the sound of the engine, “and, I don’t know, it should be nice out there the rest of the weekend. That’s what they’re saying on the radio anyway.”

“You joking or what?” Wilson has a beer cradled between his legs. He’s dressed in an oversized T-shirt, baggy shorts, sandals. On his head, canted back, a baseball cap — not black, not this time — but the tomato red of the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles. “I picked up Alicia down at her apartment on Bath? I couldn’t even fucking see the house.” The beer comes to his lips, his throat works, it sinks again. “Noon? If it clears by six we’ll be lucky. Shit, if it clears at all.”

The long looming multi-pillared structure of Stearns Wharf, with its restaurants and trinket shops and tramping lines of tourists, suddenly breaks through the mist like a giant centipede humping across the water, and then it vanishes again and they’re through the mouth of the harbor and out onto a sea as flat and scoured as a stainless-steel pan. “At least it’s calm,” he says, thinking of how the channel can look so placid when you get up in an airplane or you’re coming down San Marcos Pass on a sunny day, as if it’s nothing, as if you could paddle across it in twenty minutes.

“At least. But I’d trade calm for some sun any day.”

That’s the last thing Wilson has to say because within minutes, given the gentle rocking of the boat and the somnolent thrum of the engine, he’s gone. The beer, still clutched between his thighs, is in no danger of spilling, and at this point it’s mainly suds and backwash anyway. His head tips forward till his chin is resting on his chest. Very lightly, he begins to snore. For the next hour, Dave lets him be, content to focus on the task before him, keeping an eye on his instruments, staring out into the fog till the fog is all there is, heaven and earth and sea swallowed up and spat out again and still no sign of clearing. He’s thinking his thoughts, but those thoughts are greatly reduced, until eventually he’s thinking nothing, his mind gone free of his body the way it always does at sea. He’s just alive, that’s all. His heart’s beating. He’s breathing. And the fog props him up on a smooth cool sheet of nothing as if he’s floating — or no, flying.

They’ve just passed midpoint when Wilson wakes with a start. “Oh, shit,” he murmurs. “What’d I do, doze off?”

“More like deep R.E.M. time. You’ve been out almost an hour.”

From below, the tremolo of the girls’ voices, giggling, a snatch of music fading in the background. Wilson, adjusting himself to his surroundings, discovers the bottle clamped between his legs, raises it experimentally and lowers it again. “You want a beer? I think I need another one at this point.”

“Not till we get there.”

“Right. Steady on, Dave.” There’s a silence, nothing but the soft wash of the bow, the engine, chatter from below. “At least the girls are having a good time, sounds like. But shit, this stuff is thick. How in Christ’s name are you navigating through it — I mean, I wouldn’t know the middle of the channel from the back end of the island. Or the rocks. Or the cold briny bottom, full fathom five and all that. You going to keep us off the bottom, Dave?”

“That’s my intention. Here, just look at the chart on the screen — here, yeah, this one.”