Sarah cradled her legs and began rocking. For some time she just watched the weather.
“It’s foolish,” she finally said, “but I need promises. You have to promise me things.”
“Things?”
She shrugged. “Whatever seems possible. The future. We keep doing this evasive dance together, all kinds of intricate footwork, but just once I’d like to stop the waltz. Just once. Tell me there’s a future for us. You have to promise.” She removed her hat and veil. “Do you love me?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Promise?”
“I do. I promise.”
“Say it.”
“I love you,” I said.
“More.”
“I don’t know more.”
“Make it up, then. Tell me we’ll be happy. Tell me it’s perfect love, it’ll last forever.”
“It will.”
“Swear it, though.”
“I swear. Forever.”
“Forever,” she said, and nearly smiled. “I like that.”
The next evening Ollie Winkler hit Key West aboard a sleek thirty-eight-foot Bertram cabin cruiser. He was in the company of a slim, mustachioed Cuban without a name. Compadre, Ollie called him. The man did not speak English. He touched his cap and stepped back while Ollie gave us a tour of the boat. It was brand-new and expensive-looking.
“A real attack vessel,” Ollie said proudly. “Fast, you know? All we need’s a torpedo or two.”
“And depth charges,” said Tina.
“You got it, kid. Charges for the depths.” Ollie beamed as he showed us the galley and the teak decks and the two big Evinrude engines. He was wearing Bermuda shorts and a sequined T-shirt that said MOON IN MIAMI. “No joke,” he said, “these babies cost a pretty penny. Had to shop around almost a week.”
“But?” Sarah said.
“Yeah, but.”
“A steal, I’ll bet.”
Ollie’s smile was modest. “You know me. Mr. Thrift.”
“Problems?”
“Zero problems. Compadre and me, we drove a hard bargain. You like it?”
Sarah pecked his cheek.
“It’ll float,” she said.
Then it was all action.
We had a quick dinner, packed our suitcases, locked up the house, and headed down to the boat. We spent the night on board. It was a reunion of sorts, and there was champagne and comradeship, but there was also the certainty that we had come up against departure. I slept badly. Late in the night I woke up and took a pee over the bow and then stood there for a long time. Coward, I thought. I watched the water and stars. I thought about the things I valued. I valued the love of my father and mother. I valued peace. I valued safety. I did not want to kill, or die, yet I did not want to do this thing we would now be doing. I had no zeal. For me, it was just a ride, and there were no convictions beyond sadness.
At dawn Tina Roebuck served omelets and orange juice.
“I won’t make speeches,” Sarah said. “Anyone wants out, now’s the time.”
Ollie reached for the jam.
“Love it!” he said.
“William?”
“I heard.”
“What I mean is—” She looked at Tina. “Go on, tell him what I mean.”
“Business,” Tina said, smiling at me. “Get with the program, she means. We’re tired of jump-starting your conscience.”
Ollie laughed and said, “Love it!”
It was a smooth seven-hour crossing.
Too smooth, I thought: a weekend boating party. The young Cuban manned the helm, and there was a polished sky and fair winds and the Gulf Stream running green to blue. A radio boomed out calypso. When the Keys sank away, I took off my shirt and pondered ticklish points of international protocol. It occurred to me that our passage held historical hazard—the Monroe Doctrine and piracy on the high seas. Also, in these same warm waters, the world had once squared off in preparation for expiry, causing prayer and the contemplation of final causes. What, I wondered, had happened to memory? Here, I thought. Idle musings, perhaps, but I couldn’t shake the sense that there was a pursuit in progress. The fugitive jitters, obviously. I imagined a helicopter high off our stern. A warning shot, and demands would be issued, and we would go eyeball to eyeball, and then it would happen as it nearly happened and finally must.
But no one knew.
Among the sane, I realized, there is no full knowing. If you’re sane, you ride without risk, for the risks are not real. And when it comes to pass, some sane asshole will shrug and say, “Oh, well.”
Events had their own track.
At noon we established radio contact. A half hour later a small gray pilot boat pulled alongside. There were guns and khaki uniforms.
Ned Rafferty touched my arm.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Just fine.”
“That’s good, then. Steady as she goes.” He squeezed my arm. “Clear sailing. Just us and the wild red yonder.”
We made Havana in time for a late lunch.
Afterward there was paperwork, then our hosts arranged for a bus that took us along a coastal highway, past poverty and palms and vast fields of sugarcane. The ride lasted four hours. We stopped once for water, once for fuel, but otherwise it was exactly as Rafferty predicted, clear sailing, just us and the wild red yonder.
For six days, which I marked off on a pocket calendar, we lazed away the time at an orientation compound situated beachside a few miles west of Sagua la Grande. It was an old plantation house that had been converted into a combined resort and training facility, with colorful flower beds and neatly tended grounds sloping to the sea. The rooms were spacious, the tennis courts lighted for night play. Plush, to be sure, but there was also menace. The watchtowers and barbed wire and armed cadres.
“Mix and match,” Tina said. “Half Che, half JFK. Two stars for originality.”
Then six relaxing days.
We devoted our mornings to the sun, swimming and snorkeling, idling. Tina built elegant sand castles; Ollie demolished them; Sarah snoozed behind sunglasses; Ned Rafferty taught me the elements of killer tennis, yelling encouragement as he fired cannon shots from point-blank range. A languorous time. Rum punch at sunset, dinner by lantern light in the villa’s pink-tiled courtyard, linen tablecloths and Russian wine and Swiss crystal. The service was cordial and efficient. Why? I’d sometimes wonder. Then I’d think: Why not? A holiday, I’d tell myself, but late at night I’d hear machine guns, or voices counting cadence, and on those occasions I’d find myself engaged in serious speculation.
No answers, though, just questions.
“Play it by ear,” Sarah advised. “Mouth shut, eyes open. That’s all I can say right now.”
It was no use pressing. I was afraid of the answers, no doubt, and I was also a little afraid of Sarah herself. She seemed cool and distant. Small, subtle things that added up to large, obvious things. The way she moved; her silences; a tactical precision to her love-making.
The hardness factor, too.
A power disequilibrium. She had it, I didn’t.
“You know something?” she said one evening. We were in bed, windows open, and there was the nighttime rustle of wind and ocean. “I was born for this, William.”
“This?” I said.
“Right here, right now. The whole decade. Like destiny or something. I honestly believe it couldn’t happen without me.” She made a pensive sound, then ran her tongue along my hipbone. “The cheerleading and the funeral home—all that—when I look back, I think, God, it was all planned, it was like a ladder up against a high wall, and I couldn’t see the top, but I started climbing, I had this incredible drive, I didn’t know why, I just had it, so I kept climbing, and here I am. It was planned for me.”