this fucking pole comes slamming around and catches me under the chin. Next thing I know I’m in the water—the ocean. Miles from shore. I can’t even fucking swim that good, and I’ll tell you”—he was holding my eyes—“snakes may be your thing, but mine is sharks. I’m scared shitless of them. I don’t even go in over my head at the beach because I’m afraid some saw-toothed monster is going to rip my legs off. Really, I don’t care how I go, just so long as I don’t wind up as shark shit.”
I watched as Gesh extracted rolling papers and an envelope of pot from the pocket of his dungaree jacket. He rolled a joint thin as a Tootsie Pop stick and passed it to me. I lit it, took a drag, and passed it back.
“So anyway, Denise jumps up and starts wringing her hands and screaming and whatnot, and then runs back to the wheel and tries to swing the boat around. Meanwhile, I’m churning up the waves like Mark Spitz—it’s amazing what you can do when you have to—and the boat is drifting away. Drifting? Imean it was flying, really moving out, sails humming and everything. I wasn’t in the water ten seconds and it was already fifty yards away. Then it was a hundred yards, two hundred, and then it was gone.
“Christ. I was in an absolute panic. For about the next ten minutes I swam for all I was worth, the chop of the waves crowding me in, gulping water, stopping every few seconds to kick myself up as high as I could and try and see something. Water, that’s all I saw. No land, no boat. Nothing. It was cold. There was salt in my eyes. It was then, completely by accident, that I blundered into a life preserver—
The Christina Rossetti
, it said in big red letters. I felt like I’d been saved, right then and there. I hooted for joy, heaved myself up on the thing and waved my arms. She’ll be back any minute, I thought, soon as she gets the goddamned boat under control. She’ll be back, she’s got to be.
“I was in the water for six hours. Shivering, praying, scared full of adrenaline. I kept making deals with the Fates, with God, Neptune, whoever, thinking I’d trade places with anybody, anywhere—lepers, untouchables, political prisoners, Idi Amin’s wives—anything, so long as I’d be alive. I remember I kept looking down to where my feet disappeared in the murk, feeling like they were separated from my body or something, sure that at any moment they’d be jerked out from under me. I thought about
Jaws
and
Blue Water, White Death.
Thought about the guy who got hit by a white shark off the Farallons and was dragged down about a hundred feet by the impact and said the happiest moment of his life was when he felt his leg give at the knee.”
The joint had gone dead in Gesh’s fingers. He was staring down at the floor and seeing waves, his face sober with the memory of it, nobody laughing now. I wondered why he was telling us this, what the point of the exercise was. At first I thought he’d been boasting, letting us know how tough he was, how hip and cynical and experienced with the ladies. But now, looking at the way his face had gone cold, I realized that wasn’t it at all.
Phil got up with a snap of his knees and fed a bundle of pine branches into the stove. There was a fierce crackling and an explosion of sparks as he slammed the door and eased back downon the blistered linoleum. “So come on,” he prodded, “don’t keep us in suspense—finish the story.”
I made some noises of encouragement and Gesh relit the joint.
“I spotted seven boats that day,” he said, shaking out the match, “and I shouted my lungs out, tried to throw the fucking life preserver up in the air—anything. But nobody saw me. That was the worst. You’d get your hopes up, thinking, I’m going to make it, I’m going to live, and you’d start paddling for the boat, screaming like a wounded rabbit, and they’d just coast right by as if you didn’t exist, as if you were dead already. Then the sun went
I watched as Gesh extracted rolling papers and an envelope of pot from the pocket of his dungaree jacket. He rolled a joint thin as a Tootsie Pop stick and passed it to me. I lit it, took a drag, and passed it back.
“So anyway, Denise jumps up and starts wringing her hands and screaming and whatnot, and then runs back to the wheel and tries to swing the boat around. Meanwhile, I’m churning up the waves like Mark Spitz—it’s amazing what you can do when you have to—and the boat is drifting away. Drifting? Imean it was flying, really moving out, sails humming and everything. I wasn’t in the water ten seconds and it was already fifty yards away. Then it was a hundred yards, two hundred, and then it was gone.
“Christ. I was in an absolute panic. For about the next ten minutes I swam for all I was worth, the chop of the waves crowding me in, gulping water, stopping every few seconds to kick myself up as high as I could and try and see something. Water, that’s all I saw. No land, no boat. Nothing. It was cold. There was salt in my eyes. It was then, completely by accident, that I blundered into a life preserver—
The Christina Rossetti
, it said in big red letters. I felt like I’d been saved, right then and there. I hooted for joy, heaved myself up on the thing and waved my arms. She’ll be back any minute, I thought, soon as she gets the goddamned boat under control. She’ll be back, she’s got to be.
“I was in the water for six hours. Shivering, praying, scared full of adrenaline. I kept making deals with the Fates, with God, Neptune, whoever, thinking I’d trade places with anybody, anywhere—lepers, untouchables, political prisoners, Idi Amin’s wives—anything, so long as I’d be alive. I remember I kept looking down to where my feet disappeared in the murk, feeling like they were separated from my body or something, sure that at any moment they’d be jerked out from under me. I thought about
Jaws
and
Blue Water, White Death.
Thought about the guy who got hit by a white shark off the Farallons and was dragged down about a hundred feet by the impact and said the happiest moment of his life was when he felt his leg give at the knee.”
The joint had gone dead in Gesh’s fingers. He was staring down at the floor and seeing waves, his face sober with the memory of it, nobody laughing now. I wondered why he was telling us this, what the point of the exercise was. At first I thought he’d been boasting, letting us know how tough he was, how hip and cynical and experienced with the ladies. But now, looking at the way his face had gone cold, I realized that wasn’t it at all.
Phil got up with a snap of his knees and fed a bundle of pine branches into the stove. There was a fierce crackling and an explosion of sparks as he slammed the door and eased back downon the blistered linoleum. “So come on,” he prodded, “don’t keep us in suspense—finish the story.”
I made some noises of encouragement and Gesh relit the joint.
“I spotted seven boats that day,” he said, shaking out the match, “and I shouted my lungs out, tried to throw the fucking life preserver up in the air—anything. But nobody saw me. That was the worst. You’d get your hopes up, thinking, I’m going to make it, I’m going to live, and you’d start paddling for the boat, screaming like a wounded rabbit, and they’d just coast right by as if you didn’t exist, as if you were dead already. Then the sun went
Similar Books
