“I only tell you this and go over everything so carefully because I want you to be the best sailor you can be. Understand?”
“Yes, I do,” she said.
He squeezed her shoulder and kissed her. “Now cook us one of your delicious dinners. And be careful not to use more than one paper towel. We only have three rolls left.” Regina knew they could buy supplies on Green Turtle in a couple days, but no way would Kyle pay the double prices of the Bahamas.
She stepped down into the galley and started peeling the potatoes for conch chowder. Her mind went right back to the warm place inside itself, the dim, panelled interior of the Star Bar. The jukebox was playing and Rodney was touching her hair. It was the only detail she needed.
Kyle fell asleep early that night. Regina was grateful. He was as demanding a lover as a captain.
She sat on deck. She felt the anger begin to seethe in her stomach, hotter than the Tabasco sauce in the chowder. She wondered how many more times they would have to make this trip. She’d thought last year was the end. Kyle’s epileptic seizures had recurred after years of no incidents.
“We could fly and rent a luxury suite at the Green Turtle Club,” Regina had suggested. “Take it easy for a change.”
“Over my dead body,” Kyle had shouted. “I’m not going to sit in a hotel room and be waited on.” The volume of his voice convinced her, although she’d never before noticed his opposition to being waited on.
Having built up his business, Kyle could afford to hire another computer engineer and cut his own working hours. The doctor put him on new medication, and Kyle had himself under control again. He insisted the sailing calmed him and made him forget the stress of work, the snarls of traffic, and his brother the alcoholic, who was always in need of money.
She knew Kyle would be up at first light, ready to put the outboard on the dinghy and head to the reef where they’d learned to find conch a few years ago. But she couldn’t settle down and quench the stinging resentment in her throat. She stepped back down into the galley to get a toothpick. At least she could dislodge an annoying bit from between her teeth.
She opened the box and took one pick out. The box was nearly full. Kyle had lied in order to make her feel guilty. A smug feeling came over her. She shook half of the toothpicks into her hand, and put the box back. She went up on deck and looked at the moon, a silver pearl, and flung the toothpicks away, out into the water. She heard the lightest shower as they hit. It was too dark to see, but she imagined them headed away like a little flotilla toward freedom.
Kyle wouldn’t be able to comment. There was still half a box left like he’d said.
After that she dozed right off, facing the sky on a seat cushion with a beach towel pulled over her. She was looking at the Pleiades, Kyle’s favourite constellation, imagining Rodney’s lips on her neck.
In the morning Regina awoke full of lightness and energy. She knew they’d be spending a lazy day exploring in the dinghy and snorkeling the shallows where she wouldn’t have to concentrate. Her mind could go to the warm space she had created with Rodney. It didn’t matter that she knew nothing about him, that he could be a married man or a paid gigolo.
When Kyle noted her feet were not in the right spot in the dinghy, and when she was too slow getting the anchor up, and later when she pinned the wet clothes on the safety lines in the wrong direction for optimal drying, she didn’t even care. She had freed her spirit. “I’m trying,” she said to Kyle. She adopted his ideal for her, without mocking. “I want to be the best sailor I can be.”
That evening she climbed to the point of the V-berth and took Kyle’s penis into her mouth.
“Move a little toward starboard,” Kyle said. That meant he wanted her to lie with her breasts on his right thigh. She pushed herself against him without stopping the movement of her head. She didn’t think about what she was doing. It was just her usual routine, in a boat in the middle of nowhere with a husband who had all the answers and all the questions. She felt his stiffness tighten and knew he was coming. She automatically added her hand on his “tiller” and slipped her mouth off in the last second before she pumped him out. Then she held tight until he relaxed. It was how he had trained her. She grabbed a handful of Kleenex and swabbed his deck, as he liked to say.
“Umm. Thanks. Your turn tomorrow,” Kyle said. In a couple seconds the snoring started.
Regina got up to throw away the tissues and lit one of the kerosene lamps in the galley. Kyle wouldn’t want her draining the battery by turning on a light, even though the wind generator and solar panels always provided plenty of power. Conserve, conserve. Nothing is ever enough when you can’t get more.
She sat naked on a bunk in the soft glow and closed her eyes against the burn of the kerosene fumes. She landed herself right into Rodney’s household. It was a small concrete block place on the rocky beach of West End, with no giant TV screen, no pool or Jacuzzi, no dock for a Pearson, maybe a dog or even a child running around. Whose child? She was sitting next to Rodney on a crushed velvet sofa, feeling the breeze through the screen door, watching a pink sunset out the living room window.
It was ridiculous. What would she do in West End? There certainly wasn’t any work, even if Rodney was free and interested in her. She couldn’t give up her secretary position at the community college. Rodney was only a fantasy, but she could enjoy the feeling.
She opened the locker where Kyle kept his nail clippers and unzipped the leather pouch. Up on deck she hurled the clippers as far as she could and heard a plunk as they hit the water and sank to the sandy turtle-grass bottom. They would corrode, no matter how sturdy the metal. For some reason it gave her pleasure.
The next day she woke up happy again. Kyle’s complaints couldn’t spoil her mood. Together they motored to shore in the dinghy and bought fresh conch from some Bahamians, who had brought hundreds in their power boat to clean them at the deserted dock. Regina looked at the brown arms and long, dark hair on the man who handed her the conchs. Each time she reached for a slippery, rubbery handful of mollusk, she felt the warmth of his hand.
She took her Joy bath that day in the dinghy, whipping her hair into froth with a few drops of the yellow liquid, then smearing a white sheen over her body. She was now an even brown from the last two days of having no necessity for clothes. She smoothed her slippery breasts and thought how beautiful she was.
Kyle didn’t notice the missing clippers. That night she dumped a pair of his Sperry boat shoes with socks. He had two pairs anyway. The last night at Carter she filled a medium trash bag with his visor, Swiss Army knife, the last bottle of gin, his shaving lotion, favourite Jockey shorts, and a Tupperware container with hanks of lines, all neatly looped, that Kyle had been saving up for years. The sound of the package hitting the water gave Regina a peace she’d never known before. She didn’t feel guilty. She was tidying up-less to make a mess. A place for everything and everything in its place. Kyle didn’t need any of that stuff.
He had set the alarm for six, before first light, so they could make it to their next destination, Green Turtle Cay. There they would dock to fill up on fuel and water and socialise with other sailing couples.