Back home in Detroit one last time before joining Weary in Sydney, he had attended the wedding of one of the members of his old platoon. It was a typical wedding, he supposed, except for the bachelor party. The best man had taken his duties far too seriously. There had been three strippers, oceans of alcohol, and stag movies galore. Most of the evening had passed in a thickening haze. None of the college-boy highjinks had appealed to him, but he had followed along rather than break things up. After a few hours, in a motel room out on the interstate partway to Grand Rapids, he had gratefully fallen asleep.
Some hours later he had woken again to find himself still in that crowded hotel room facing the TV set. On the screen in front of him, clear as crystal, writhed a maze of naked bodies. A hollow maze. A circle of bodies, at whose center lay a bed. On the bed, alone, a girl lay, stretched out and tied down with ropes. And as Hood had watched, something leaped over the writhing bodies and up onto the bed with the girl. The girl’s face had reared up and he had reared up in answer to destroy the screen and spoil the party after all. But he had acted too late. For he would never forget that face beyond the rapist’s shoulder, nor its expression. Try as he might. For the rapist had not been a man.
Like many seafaring men, he liked reading sea stories and he had started one last year. It had turned out to be less about sailing than he had hoped but he had enjoyed it well enough. One of the characters in the book had been a pornographic film star and a line of hers had been the last thing to trigger that most unwelcome memory. “If you’re fucking people, you’re still okay,” she had said in this book. “But if you’re fucking animals, then you’re dead.”
And glancing back, up out of the cockpit he saw again, but in real life this time, the face he had seen on the screen that night in the hotel room. The girl from the pornographic video.
He looked away at once, simply too stunned to know how to react. Then he heard her move. How carefully he must have been listening to hear anything at all over the sound of the wind in the sails and the rigging. The thought twisted his face with self-disgust. And that was the expression he was still wearing when he turned suddenly to find her standing immediately behind him. Her expression was impossible to gauge. Hood, normally supremely confident with women, felt out of his depth now. He schooled his face and tried to control his eyes. But the cool lotion had brought her honey skin out in gooseflesh. The points of her breasts showed plainly through the silken bikini top.
“You’ve seen some of my early work, I think?” The dry tone, so formal, so chilly, so Four Hundred, Vassar, Bryn Mawr. And what was she talking about? Pornography. Filth.
“Yes, ma’am, I believe I have.” He kept his tone as dead as hers. As though he were talking to the Queen of England. But the atmosphere crackled around them.
“Magazines? Movies?”
Lord above! Did she really want to know? But there was a ritual air about the inquiries and he suddenly saw the hand of a psychiatrist here. Confrontation. It would be a good way to go, if you had the strength. Every time you saw that expression on someone’s face, ask the questions. Bring it out into the open. Deal with it.
“I saw it on a video, ma’am. At a bachelor party. I smashed the set and then I left.”
A fractional movement of her head. Almost a nod. She turned and went below. Her back was long beneath broad shoulders and her skin so pale as to allow the down of fine hair that covered her thighs to gleam like gold dust. He watched the way her bottom moved as she swayed slowly down the steps.
And then he felt dirty.
And then he asked himself how he would have felt if he hadn’t seen the video. He would still have watched her, probably, enjoying the sight of her. As though she were a centerfold. But then the fact that she had been a centerfold of the most degraded sort came and smacked him in the face. Made him feel even more dirty. And he began to wonder how much of this was his fault — and how much of it was hers.
Doc didn’t need much sleep. He could get through a full, active day on two hours’ shut-eye if he had to, but he preferred four. It was when he slept too deeply or for too long — or woke up suddenly — that his memory went. This morning he still knew who he was when he awoke and strolled into the cockpit just after nine.
“You alone?” he asked as soon as he saw Hood standing morosely by the helm.
“Looks like it.”
“Where’s the sheila?”
Hood was so preoccupied that for a moment he wondered what Weary was talking about — there was no one called Sheila aboard. Then he remembered the name was Australian slang for any young woman. “Gone below.”
Weary’s wide eyes narrowed. He picked up on the atmosphere at once and he didn’t like it. “Anything I should know about?”
The confrontational method again, thought Hood, unable to get Christine out of his mind, discovering the unwelcome fact that everything seemed to revolve around her now. But he couldn’t bring himself to tell Doc the truth. It wasn’t actually his secret. Nothing to do with him at all, really. “No,” he said. “Nothing.”
Weary nodded, his bright eyes still speculative. He knew his friend well enough to trust his judgment. If Hood wanted to let it lie, then that was okay. He forgot about it and went to take the wheel, checking the feel of her through his fingertips as she self-steered toward the top of the tack. She was running gleefully across a steady breeze, every line of her alert. Not stretched yet, it took quite a wind to stretch her, but she was tail-up, and running like a hound to a strong scent. And as sometimes happened, Doc was overcome by an enormous sense of love for his creation. It overwhelmed him, and he enjoyed the feeling too much even to try to control it. He stood like a child awed by the strength of his creation and the emotion she brought up in him. He did not know it, but he was transfigured in that moment. The natural good looks of his open, cheerful face attained a kind of masculine beauty as though lit from within. He seemed to gain stature. The sun glinted off the wind-tumbled profusion of his hair and his dazzling eyes became luminescent.
When he looked down, unaware of how much time had elapsed as he stood in his reverie, he met the eyes of the girl he had just been discussing with Hood. She was standing in the companionway looking up at him. She had pulled her hair back and tied it in a ponytail. She was wearing an old pair of jeans and a baggy plaid shirt. Her face was devoid of makeup and looked as though it had just been scrubbed. He couldn’t read the expression in her eyes but he was so overcome with a feeling of the goodness of life that he simply beamed at her and said, “G’dday.”
And she smiled back. Against her will and better judgment by the look of things, but a smile nevertheless. “Good morning,” she almost whispered, as though she couldn’t trust her voice.
“I would’ve thought you’d have brought a bikini. To catch a bit of sun.”
“No.” Her voice was stronger. She came up into the cockpit. Beneath the rolled cuffs of her jeans she wore a well-used pair of topsiders, the same as the brand he had on himself. Sensible girl, he thought. “You want some coffee?” he asked. “Sam’s getting some from the smell of things.”
She shook her head and went over to the weather side of the cockpit where she perched on the coaming, looking away forward toward Queshm. The wind made her ponytail frisk about her shoulders and molded the shirt to her body, but Weary didn’t notice. Twenty knots! He was thinking. With this rig. In this breeze. Christ! What’ll she do in a decent blow. With the spinnaker up.
But this thought darkened his mood a little. They still hadn’t had time to repair the top of the mast. If they were going to put a spinnaker up at the moment, he’d have to climb up there with a block and tackle first.