Daniel Gumbiner - The Boatbuilder

Nell put out the joint and rolled onto his chest. Boxers off, underwear off, slow at first, Nell on top, Berg’s feet and hands sweaty, Nell’s T-shirt still on, billowing before her like a kite. Then fast and hot, Mimi’s platform bed squeaking, Nell’s shirt off, Berg on top, his face buried in her hair, that Nell hair smell, ocean and honey and mint. An untraceable passage of time, perhaps elongated or compressed, who could say, certainly distorted, warped, sweaty and breathy and then, Nell coming, gulping in air, squeezing his arms, gasping. He finished with his head buried in the pillow, his heart beating thud thud thud , his chest uncorked.

Nell grabbed the towel next to the bed, arched her back up, and placed the towel beneath her. He slid out and she folded the towel over, wiped herself clean. She threw the towel onto the floor and rolled over onto a pillow. Berg looked out the window. A moth torpedoed into the glass, staggered backward upon impact, and then torpedoed once again.

“These are your sheets, aren’t they?” Nell said. “If we ever move in together we’re not using these flannel sheets.”

“Why not?”

“Because you always sweat so much in them.”

“I sweat in all sheets,” Berg said. “It’s just one my things. I sweat at night. I think it’s an Ashkenazi Jew thing. I know a lot of Ashkenazis who sweat at night.”

“Okay,” Nell said. “All I’m saying is you sweat more in the flannel.”

Berg disagreed but didn’t want to pursue the argument. “Maybe,” he offered. “Do you want any water?”

“Sure.”

He stood up and walked to the bathroom sink, filled two glasses. This took a long time. Mimi’s bathroom sink had terrible water pressure. The flow was so weak that it could not clear hairs from his razor when he shaved. He had to use the bathtub faucet instead, which was a cumbersome process, and made him shave less than usual. As he filled the glasses, he thought about how nice it was to see Nell, how much he wanted her to stay. If you had asked him a few weeks ago if he was lonely in Talinas, he would have said no. But now that Nell was here, he didn’t want her to go.

“It’s so quiet here,” Nell said as he handed her a glass. “I’m going to sleep so well.”

“I think you’d really like it up here,” Berg said.

“I do like it up here.”

“No, I mean, if you moved up here, with me. I think you’d like it.”

Nell sat up straight, brushed her hair out of her eyes.

“We talked about that before you moved,” she said. “I need to be in the city right now. This was our plan. I love coming up here to visit.”

“This is the first time you’ve come up.”

“And I’m loving it. I just got back. What do you want me to say?”

“I know it’s not what we planned,” Berg said, “but I guess it’s just… it’s lonelier up here than I anticipated.”

“So you’re saying it’s good to see me,” Nell said.

Berg grinned. He wasn’t sure what he was saying.

“You need to get out and meet some people,” she said, encouragingly. “I was talking about this with Jo the other day: how so many men I know seem to grow more isolated as they get older. My uncle, for example. I’m not saying you’re growing isolated. I’m just saying it seems like a challenge for men as they age, to keep friendships alive.”

Berg felt immediately defensive. Was she saying he was a loner? He was not a loner. He had lots of friends from college, and he’d had friends in the city. But when was the last time he called any of them or saw them? The only people he hung out with these days were Garrett and Simon and they were not exactly his friends. He thought about all the time he’d spent by himself the past couple of weeks, building Lansing’s coop. He was closing in on himself, Nell was right. Even when he lived in the city he hadn’t really had any close friends. A few coworkers he would get drinks with and a couple of guys, like Eugene, whom he partied with. Most of the time he hung out with Nell’s friends. They were his friends, too, but in a secondary way. He certainly hadn’t seen any of them since he moved to Talinas.

“Relax your brow,” Nell said, stroking his forehead with the back of her hand. “Your brow is all scrunched up.”

Berg tried to relax the muscles in his face, blinked a few times. Nell moved in to kiss him. It was a good, long kiss. When it was over she leaned back against the headboard, stared down at her shins.

“Man,” she said, “I really need to shave my leg hair.”

FRIDAY MORNING, BERG BIKING along the 1, his feet sore, his back sore, the specter of a headache on the horizon. The 1 ran north to south along the bay, and from there forked inland for a bit until it nosed its way out to Jensen Beach. After that it continued south, disappearing into the city, only to emerge, miles later, along the cliffs of Pacifica. Cyclists often cruised the 1, wending their way up to Talinas, where they stopped to buy coffee and pastries and admire the feed barn. On the weekend, they swarmed the town, and you would see them meandering from shop to shop, walking in the funny way the cyclists walked, on their heels, like penguins.

Berg had gotten a headache around the same time yesterday, as he was biking to work. It had lasted the whole day and into the night. The headaches made sleep difficult and, this morning, he had woken up feeling unrested, foggy, as if he’d been drinking whiskey the night before. He reached for the glass of water next to the bed, took a sip, and then spit out the water. It tasted terrible, like a dirty puddle. He’d forgotten that he’d left the glass there for the past three days. He got up and threw the rest of the water into the potted fern by the bed, walked to the kitchen. The sun was already up so he made coffee and toast. While he waited for the coffee to brew, he washed a few dishes in the sink, lathering them in lemony soap.

He thought about calling in sick, but he’d already done that a couple of times earlier in the month, when he’d taken too many Lortabs and slept through his alarm. After Nell’s visit, he’d started taking more pills again. It wasn’t until he missed multiple days of work that he realized his tapering project had failed. He decided he would quit cold turkey instead.

The next two weeks, without any opioids at all, were excruciating. Constant headaches, his whole body in a state of general discomfort. He took a lot of acetaminophen and ibuprofen but it wasn’t the same. He had very little energy and he suffered from diarrhea and nausea. At work he was always sneaking off to the staff outhouse by the water or running to the head if they were on a charter. One day Garrett saw him leaving the outhouse for the third time that morning and he gave him a pitying look.

“Whatever Chinese restaurant you’re going to,” Garrett said, “I would stop going to it. That’s my advice to you.”

So here he was today, another headache looming, biking toward Fernwood. They were scheduled to do a charter out of Pier 4 at 11:00. It was BYO, which meant that Berg would have to serve whatever kind of food and drinks the clients brought. BYOs could work in your favor or they could be terrible. Sometimes people brought almost no food and drink and Berg was able to help Simon sail the whole trip. Other times people brought twelve bottles of rosé and got drunk and Berg had to clean vomit out of the head. One time, a woman brought an elaborate fondue setup and Berg found himself heating cheese in a cauldron on the cabin top.

Berg and Simon refueled the boats in the marina and then began prepping Blown Away for the charter. They put the deck gear on deck, tested the engine, clipped in the halyard, secured all the hatches. By 10 a.m. they had cast off and were en route to Pier 4. Simon was steering the boat and Berg and Garrett were sitting below the dodger. Garrett seemed to be in a particularly buoyant mood.