Red Tide (Billy Knight Thrillers 2)

“Yes,” I said.

She didn’t flinch. She looked back at me without blinking.

“There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s what two people do for each other. They fill in the blank spots, help each other heal. I’m not sure I can do it alone this time. I don’t think you can, either. I can help, Anna. We can help each other. What else do you want from me?”

“But we are neither of us knowing, this is just the thing. This is why I say, is too much and also is not enough.” She put my hand carefully back onto the bed and stood up. “And so,” she said. “I am thinking one more thing.”

I closed my eyes and let it all whip through me. Through the layers of pain and frustration and medicine I could just barely make out that she was saying something about how we needed to find a way to be ourselves without distractions and be very sure and not jump into something that trapped us and on and on. Sure, Anna, I thought. Let’s be friends. I waited for her careful words of rejection, knowing they were coming, but not really listening. I couldn’t take it, not now.

And then she stopped talking and stroked my hand and what she had said finally filtered through. I blinked my eyes open and looked at her. She was smiling a funny smile I hadn’t seen before, and blushing bright red at the same time.

“What?” I said. “What did you say?”

“I say,” she said, trying hard to meet my eye, “perhaps we are knowing better if we try to be together with nothing else, and so can you get from your friend for a little while a sailboat?”

Chapter Thirty-Two

November brought cool winds down from Canada and the awful heat of August was finally gone. People started to remember why they lived in Florida. It was a time of long and mild days, spectacular sunsets and crystal clear evenings cool enough for a light blanket, a real luxury after the sweaty misery of the summer.

We left Miami in another of Bert’s rebuilt sailboats, a 36-foot Hunter this time. The first days were just for relaxing. We didn’t push it. We both had some serious sorting-out to do, and this was the first chance we’d had to do it. I was still troubled by a few short spells where I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do. I’d look down and see a rope in my hand and be filled with terrible anxiety. The feeling would fade after a few minutes, but it was bad while it lasted. The doctor had said it would probably go away, but he wouldn’t say when.

So we sailed, we ate simple meals, we slept side by side without touching in the big double bunk, and we tried as hard as we could to wake up from the nightmares we had come through, wake up to each other in the small separate world of a sailboat.

Our fourth day out was beautiful, but this was Florida. By noon a smudge of black clouds had appeared low on the horizon. By 1:30, the wind had gone from a pleasant ten knots to thirty, gusting higher, and the buffed green surface of the water had turned choppy grey, carpeted with white caps. We dropped the jib sail. The clouds blew closer, and soon we heeled far over under the surge of wind known as a squall breeze, which was just Nature’s way of saying, “Here I come.”

Within moments we felt the first stinging drops of rain, and then abruptly everything forward of the mast disappeared into a sheet of rain. We were leaning at a dangerous angle and taking on water from the rain and the waves. I shouted at Anna to take the tiller and jumped to the mast to double-reef the mainsail, something Betty had explained to me but I had never done before. It left us with only half the sail area for the wind to hit. We slowed a bit and lost the worst edge of our heel-over almost immediately.

For the next hour we fought the squall and couldn’t have seen the Queen Mary if it was lashed to the mast. According to the chart we had plenty of open water and good depth, so I wasn’t worried—until a quick break in the squall opened the sheet of water pouring down on us and I saw a sandy beach straight ahead.

Trying hard not to scream, I put the boat about and ran parallel to where I thought I’d seen the island. The storm tore at us, and even with our tiny scrap of sail we flew across the water like a foam cup. I saw breakers flash off to the right, put her over again, and suddenly the water was calm and the wind was about half the strength it had been. I turned our nose into the wind, ran up to the bow, and dropped the anchor.

I let the line play out fast, trying to gauge the depth; between ten and fifteen feet. I gave us enough scope, set the hook with a hard yank, and looked around, straightening my creaking back and taking my first breath of the last two hours.

We were lying in a lagoon sheltered by two fingers of sandy beach, each with a row of pine trees stretching back from the shore. The squall still blew furiously, lashing the waves with stinging rain, but inside our lagoon I would have felt safe riding out a hurricane.

The storm didn’t last very long. Another fifteen minutes and it had blown itself out, moved on to hassle Cuba. I went below with Anna and pulled on a dry shirt and waited it out. When the sun broke through we went up on deck to look over our harbor.

It was a small island, just big enough for a game of catch. There was a good sand beach, trees to block the wind, and a line of shrubbery and weeds leading into the interior. Off to our left a spit of beach curved around to form the sheltering arm of the little harbor. I couldn’t see any litter on the beach; no soda or beer cans, no broken coolers, old T-shirts, oil containers, pizza boxes, plastic bags, coffee cups, six-pack holders, candy wrappers—nothing.

“Paradise,” I said.

“Hmmp,” said Anna. “And if so where is ice machine?”

That night we made a driftwood fire on the beach and as it died to the embers we watched the sky, counting six falling stars and one moving light we couldn’t identify. We talked, sitting close but not touching, passing a bottle of wine back and forth between sentences. We hit an easy tone and just rambled, saying whatever popped into our heads, playing out mock debates about things that didn’t matter, just for the pleasure of hearing each other.

And with the gentle breeze, the dying fire, and the enormous Florida sky above us, everything that had happened on the Black Freighter started to seem like last summer’s blockbuster movie. When we finally rowed the small inflatable dinghy back to the boat Anna was giggling and I felt my face stretching into a smile for the first time since August.

• • •

In the night the snake came for me again and rattled my bones, bearing down on me with its huge rubbery grin. I tried to fly away but it ate my wings and as I smoldered and fell it moved closer, smiling, smiling—

“Billy!” Anna said. She slapped me and I blinked awake. She moved to slap me again.

“I’m okay,” I said, but she hit me anyway.

“Of all damn-ness,” she said. “Wake now!” And she moved her hand back to hit me again.

I grabbed her wrist and held it. “I’m okay,” I said again.