Float Plan(34)
“Maybe we should start by giving her a name.”
“I might have gotten a bit carried away because I’ve always wanted a dog,” he says. “Or proximity to a dog. I mean, she’s your dog.”
“We found her together. She can be your dog too.”
“Perfect,” he says, opening his wallet to pay for the dog supplies. “Because I was thinking that since we found her at the pirate cove, she should have a proper pirate name. I thought maybe we could call her Gráinne”—he pronounces it grawn-yeh—“after Gráinne O’Malley the Irish pirate queen of Connacht, who you might know as Grace O’Malley. But that’s a bit unwieldy, so perhaps we should call her Queenie.”
“You could have just suggested Queenie.”
“But how do you feel about the name?” he asks as we walk out of the building to the Jeep. Already I don’t like that I have to leave my dog behind.
“I love it.”
When we drive back to the marina, Keane and I don’t have much to talk about, aside from the dog. Without Queenie as a buffer, I feel ridiculous for throwing myself at him, so when we reach the boat, I retreat into the cabin and hide in the V-berth. The boat shifts as Keane leaves to wash his limb and rinse his prosthesis, leaving me to replay his rejection on an endless loop in my head. Why did I try to kiss him? What would have happened if he’d let me? I stare up through the open hatch until he returns.
“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,” he says quietly, leaning against the narrow doorway into the V-berth. I pretend to be asleep. “Close quarters and spending every waking moment with a person can … well, it can be amplifying.”
He continues, so I know he knows I’m faking.
“One day the stars will align,” Keane says. “And you won’t be thinking about Ben, and the next man—whoever he may be—is going to be one lucky bastard.”
The floor creaks as he moves away, and I hear the familiar sounds of him removing his prosthesis and getting into bed. He exhales softly. “Good night, Anna.”
My thoughts are a jumbled mess. Is he right? Are close quarters to blame? Am I suffering from a kind of anti-kidnapping Stockholm syndrome? Any other explanation would betray Ben’s memory and be unfair to Keane. But I can’t quell the quiet fear that trying to kiss him wasn’t a mistake.
the rain comes (17)
The rain comes as we eat homemade shrimp pizza with Corrine and Gordon aboard Patience. It begins with soft splats on the deck and intensifies into a steady tattoo. We relocate from the covered cockpit to their cabin and Gordon’s black Lab hides from the thunder in the aft cabin. Queenie—an inflatable pillow around her neck to keep her from licking her stitches—looks at me, bewildered. Yesterday she was roaming free and now she’s been drafted onto our weird little team. I wonder if we’ve done the right thing, taking her away from the only home she’s ever known, but I’m comforted by the warmth of her body as she presses against me.
Four days later the rains are still coming down—sometimes a light mist that hangs in the air, and other times so heavy that it feels as though the world is nothing but water. The idea of dry land feels like a memory. We spend the better part of our time trying to stay dry, trying to keep boredom at bay. Keane reads several chapters of Moby-Dick before declaring it “utter shite.” Corrine teaches us how to play euchre. I train Queenie to pee on a little swatch of carpet in the corner of the cockpit. I send emails to my mom and Carla, assuring them I’m okay. I don’t tell them I have a dog because how would I explain when I don’t even understand it myself?
Sometimes it feels as if I’m trying to paint over my old life and I feel guilty that Ben isn’t one of the new colors. Other times I miss him so much, I want to pack up and catch the first flight home, as if he’s waiting for me in Fort Lauderdale. As if running away from his absence isn’t the reason I’m here in the first place.
* * *
“We have a decision to make,” Keane says as we sit together in the cabin, eating scrambled eggs with leftover lobster from a second dinner with Corrine and Gordon. Today we’ve officially overstayed our cruising permit for the Turks and Caicos. If we stay longer, waiting for the perfect weather, we’ll have to pay an additional three hundred dollars. Despite the rain, I’ve grown comfortable here, maybe even a little lazy. I dread the crossing. But I’m not sure I can afford to stay.
“This is probably the end of it,” Keane says. “Once this system breaks, we should have decent weather for the rest of the trip. Maybe we should wait it out.”
“But you need to get to Puerto Rico,” I say. “This is slowing you down.”
“I am exactly where I want to be, Anna.”
My face grows warm, but I don’t have the luxury of dwelling on what that means. Not when we have to decide what to do. Not when, really, I already know. He was right about the intimacy that comes with living on a boat. In the past eighteen days, I have learned that he hops to the toilet at 4:00 A.M., especially if he’s had a lot to drink. He eats too fast from years of squeezing in meals aboard racing sailboats. And that he sleeps deepest on his back. We are tuned in to each other’s moods. We share meals, chores, and, now, a dog. Sometimes I catch him looking at me with his feelings, bare and unguarded, flickering across his face. I don’t understand why he would want a messed-up girl like me. Yet in those moments, when his longing calls to mine, thoughts of Ben always interrupt, reminding me of what I lost.