Chapter 1 Just Add Trouble
John Steinbeck was a sissy."
Jenks gave me a look from under his golf cap brim, smiled a tolerant smile at this outrageous challenge of the legendary author's manliness, and went back to varnishing my rails. Well, not my rails, my boat's rails.
Not one to accept mere tolerance, I shook my book at him. "He writes here, in his Log From the Sea of Cortez, that the Sea of Cortez is a dangerous body of water and is prone to sudden and violent storms." Waggling my fingers at the calm cove we were anchored in, I vamped, "Ooooh, I'm skeered. Save me, my hero!"
"Sorry, Hetta, I have to finish this varnish. It's drying as fast as it hits the teak. I'll save you later. For the record, though, we've only been here three weeks, and I'm sure Steinbeck wrote from experience. A totally different experience than we've had so far."
"Ya think?" I launched myself from the step I was perched on, and padded through a side door leading into the main saloon and galley. I made us both an iced tea, and returned to the sundeck. The fiberglass was a tad toasty on my bare soles, so I did a tiptoed quickstep into the shade.
Jenks noticed and teased, "Cool moves, Red. The Texas tenderfoot two-step?"
"Watch it, Yankee boy."
He ignored my warning and went back to his bright work-that's nautical-speak for making wood bright with varnish-thereby ignoring my precious self, so I rose and threw back over my shoulder, "I shall retire to the verandah, and I'm taking your tea with me as hostage. Make you work faster."
I sashayed up three steps to the covered aft deck, and sank into the soft cushions of a patio chair. Taking a sip of tea I let loose with a deep, contented sigh. The air and water temperatures matched at seventy-five and Jenks was here, with me, on this nearly perfect fall day in paradise. I was as happy as a puppy in tall grass.
Anchored at San Francisco Island, an uninhabited piece of nirvana north of La Paz, we were suspended on glassy, colorless water that was also, mysteriously, a stunning turquoise. Behind us lay a pearly crescent of beach, bordered with lava rock and cactus. Beyond that, barren hills jutted into an almost impossibly blue backdrop. A true-to-life painting of the scene would look artificial, garish. In reality, the diorama was simply stunning.
Off in the distance, I spotted what looked like a small boat streaking north and felt an unwelcome clench of tension. We'd had the anchorage to ourselves for days, and I liked it that way. Except for the occasional distant buzz of a panga racing by, or a shrimp boat chugging along, we could have been boating on the moon. And while I tried not tensing up when I heard or spotted other vessels, it hadn't been all that long ago when every passing boat posed a possible threat. Get a grip, Hetta, I told myself. Water under the keel.
Determined to relax and relish this special spot of heaven on earth, I took a deep, cleansing breath. Good air in, bad guys out, good air&ldots;.
Jenks stuck his head through the open door. "Hetta, are you hyperventilating?"
"No, I'm practicing breathing."
"Most of us learn that at birth."
"Wise ass."
He grinned and went back to his varnishing. I followed him, sat down on the top step again, watched for awhile, bit back my natural tendency to supervise. When the urge to comment grew too strong, I returned to my chair, laid my head back on the soft cushion, and closed my eyes.
Lulled by the slight rock of the boat, and gulls chatting on the beach, I'd almost drifted off when the drone of a distant engine sat me up. I instinctively grabbed for the binoculars, but Jenks already had them in his hand. I hadn't even heard him sit down in the other chair.
"Shrimp boat," he said. "You know, if you're gonna be so jumpy, maybe we should head back into the safety of a marina."
"You mean a safe, noisy marina? No thanks, this is too idyllic. And I'm not jumpy."
"Could have fooled me." He handed me the binoculars, which I casually set aside, even though I was dying to take a gander at that shrimper for myself.
He took a test sip of tea to see if I'd added enough sugar and lime and declared it, "Perfect."
"So's this part of the world. I want to live here. For ever and ever."
"Sounds nice, all right."
I let that hang. I'd just handed Jenks a huge opportunity to say something like, "Let's do that." Or even, "We should."
But nooo, what he said was, "Sounds nice, all right." Followed by, "But you have to go back to work soon." He didn't even work a "we" into that sentence.
I was tempted to empty my glass over his head, but was running low on Splenda and it was a good half-day cruise to a supermarket. Besides, the setting was much too beautiful to let my insecurity demons spoil it with a fit of temper that would be totally lost on Jenks. After all, he was here, we were together for now, and he had flown halfway around the world, for the second time since we started dating, to bail my substantial rear end out of a mess of my own making. Only a month before, he saved me, my boat, and my best friend, Jan Sims, from some unsavory and heavily armed characters on the outside of the Baja who took a distinctly hostile attitude toward us.
For his valor, Jenks deserved temporary amnesty from my own naturally truculent attitude. I left his blondish-gray buzz cut tea-free and said, "Spoilsport. You used the W word. Okay, let's do the math. It's the end of November now, we can stay here in the sea until Christmas, at least, head back to Cabo, celebrate New Year's Eve there, and then cruise on up to California. If I get back to W by the end of January, I'm good." Before I could stop myself, I blurted, "And Jenks, it is very important to me that we have this New Year's Eve together."
Dammit, did I say that? How sappy and clingy did that come out? I shrugged and backpedaled, adding, "It's a silly gal thing, New Year's Eve." I strove for nonchalance while still sending the subliminal message, I need to be with you when "Auld Lang Syne" is sung. We women, for some unfathomable reason, insist on beaming the subliminal to the sublimely imperceptive. Why is a mystery to me, and yet we persist, in vain, as his answer proved.
"I can live with that schedule. Barely. Lars is already grumbling about being stuck on his own in Kuwait City while I'm yachting on the Sea of Cortez."
"Your brother will live. And speaking of Lars, does he even acknowledge that his lusterless, or shall I say, lust-less attitude and lack of commitment drove Jan into another guy's camp?" I meant this literally, for Jan had moved to a Mexican bio-nerd encampment and was living in a little grass shack with a marine biologist by the name of Doctor Brigido Comacho Yee, a.k.a. Chino. Chino specializes in whales. Jan specializes in serial monogamy, and Jenks's brother and business partner, Lars, was her latest ex-monogamous partner. This time she'd come darned close to committing polygamy, but managed a very long distance "Dear Lars" phone call before jumping Chino's bones about three seconds after hanging up. I didn't feel one bit sorry for Lars, though, because it was his indifference that dumped their romance into a ditch.
If Jenks noticed my not-so-subtle allusion that he might be steering us for that same disastrous ditch, he sure didn't show it. "I don't think Lars would tell me, even if he was upset over getting dumped. He plays his cards pretty close to his vest."
Must be genetic. Dense, these Norse. Handsome, but obtuse. I gave up trying to have a meaningful conversation. Men hate those anyhow. I sighed. "So, wanna go snorkeling?"
"Nope."
"Nope?"
"Nope, let's go skinny dipping. Last one in makes lunch." He began peeling off his clothes, then mine. For a guy who can't commit, he sure makes the time we spend together mighty worthwhile.
We didn't quite make it into the water.
I stretched out full length, basking in the sun's sting on body parts rarely seen in the light of day. Freckles be damned. "I think I've died and gone to Shangri-la, or whatever place represents perfection on earth."
Jenks, one arm under my head, teased, "And here I thought that was Texas, the way you talk about it. However, I notice you don't live there anymore."
That's true. Although I love my native state, I moved to San Francisco years before and put down roots. I have a one- woman consulting firm: Hetta Coffey, LLC, SI, PI. Just kidding about the PI part, but even though I am not a private investigator, my snoopery does seem to land me in dustups far beyond the pale of your average civil engineer. Also kidding about the SI, that's my little play on phonetics for Civil Engineer.
Perpetually single, I live aboard my boat, a forty-five foot Californian motor yacht I'd christened Raymond Johnson, after my beloved and departed yellow lab. When RJ died, I sold my house, moved aboard and found a whole new lifestyle. A good thing, too, because my old modus vivendi sucked.
My work takes me anywhere I can earn a buck, and I can assure you that the C in LLC doesn't stand for conformity. It was my habit of tackling off the radar projects that recently brought me, and my boat, to the Baja peninsula of Mexico. With that project completed and everyone safely back out of jail-don't ask-I granted myself a short leave of absence between jobs, intent on enjoying the magnificent Sea of Cortez with my whatever he is, Jenks Jenkins.
"I love Texas, but the summers are," I stuck my nose in the air and waved a fey wrist, "much too hot, muggy and buggy for my redefined, sophisticated tastes."
Jenks rolled his eyes at my attempted loftiness. "Yeah, right. Speaking of hot, let's hit the water."
"Oh, that's what we were gonna do. I'll get the snorkels and fins. You know I gotta have my fins."
"Probably not. This water has a very high salinity content, so you'll float real good."
"Are you implying that my abundance of buoyancy has something to do with me chunky dunking rather than skinny dipping?"
His blue eyes twinkled. For some reason, incomprehensible to me, he finds me vastly amusing, and not chubby. But then, he's myopic, a sterling attribute in my book.
Knowing he'd rescue me if I submarined, I cannonballed into the water before he could find his glasses, and before I remembered that seventy-five degree water is not all that warm. I came up spluttering.
"How is it?"
"Fantastic. Come on in." Okay, so I lied. Chunky dunking is a rare and liberating experience, so who am I to deny Jenks the exhilaration? I mean, if I can risk stripping what's left of the L'Oreal Red Penny from my fading locks, Jenks can withstand a momentary chill.
He hit the water, surfaced screaming obscenities and threats in my direction, but after a few minutes even he, of the ten percent body fat, adapted. He was right, I easily floated. For insurance though, I slipped on fins.
For someone who lives on a boat, I have an irrational love-hate relationship with aquatics. While I revel in warm, very clear waters, and can spend hours snorkeling, watching jewel-toned fish dart in and out of coral and kelp, I harbor a lurking dark fear of the briny deep. Many years ago, scuba diving off the coast of Aruba, I was escorted down eighty feet by four professional divers who watchfully hovered around me while I swam amongst graceful sea fans, gurgled happily into my regulator and wasted valuable air with giggles. Yep, I'm a real water baby until something goes wrong.
That Caribbean dive ended abruptly when I made the abysmal error of looking out, into the abyss of the unknown, beyond the blue, into the unfathomable black. Short of a toothy megalodon suddenly materializing out of that void, nothing could have terrified me more. It took all four of my instructors to prevent me from a panicky zoom upwards to the safety of the boat, and a long and painful stint in a decompression chamber. I no longer scuba, just snorkel.
The upshot of that Aruban episode is that I will not swim in water that does not reveal its bottom, or in an environment I cannot totally control. I guess that's why I'm partial to swimming pools and hot tubs. And ever since my ex-fiancé turned up parboiled in my last Jacuzzi, I'm not all that keen on those.
Isla San Francisco's cozy anchorage was perfect for me. We were anchored in only eight feet of crystalline water, mere yards from the beach. I finned around Raymond Johnson once, inspecting the hull for green stuff and other gunk along the waterline, then grabbed my snorkel from the dive platform. Jenks was already swimming toward a rocky outcropping, so I followed, checking out the sandy bottom as I went. Okay, so I was also checking out Jenks's bottom. Is it just me, or does watching the south end of a naked man swimming north strike anyone else as downright comical?
I started to giggle, then stopped dead, all of my water demons coming home to roost. Ripping off my mask and snorkel, gulping salty water in the process, I gasped, "Jenks!"
He turned around and, with his long and lanky legs and arms, was by my side in four easy strokes. "What is it, Hetta?"
I coughed up water. "The," gag, "bottom! The sand. It moved."
"Yeah, I know. Cute little buggers, aren't they?"
"They?"
"The garden eels. As you swim over them they-"
I didn't hear the rest. All it took was "eels" for me to turn tail and streak for the boat. Oh, did I mention that, along with my affinity for panic in water, I can't swim worth a damn? Under normal circumstances I sink like a rock, but in the salty Sea of Cortez, with fins on, and eels on my heels, I probably overturned some Olympic record. All modesty forgotten, I executed a belly whop onto the swim platform in a move likely to put Shamu's famous slide to shame. I'm certain there was a resemblance.
By the time Jenks reached the boat, I was sitting on the swim platform, wrapped in a towel.
He treaded water and grinned. "I'll give that exit a ten. What a chicken! My chicken of the sea. And here I thought you were a certified sea wench. Garden eels are totally harmless. They auger their tails into the sand and sway with the current. When you swim over them, they sink, hiding themselves under the bottom. I think they're cute."
"Cute and eel do not belong in the same sentence." I peered down. "They looked bigger underwater."
He reached up and ruffled my damp pixie cut. "So did your retreating butt."
"Watch it, buster. My butt is a touchy subject."
"I like to touch it."
You gotta love him, he loves my butt. "Sweet talker."
"That's me. I'll check the set of our anchor." He swam underwater toward the front of the boat, and I followed on deck. When he surfaced, he saw me, slid his mask onto his head and grabbed hold of the anchor chain. "She's buried good. We ain't gonna move."
"That, in my book, is a really good thing. So, Jenks, you say these eels are harmless?"
"Absolutely." Water trickled from his mask, into his eyes. He swiped at them, only rubbing in more salt, but the resulting tears cleared his vision. As clear as his gets.
"And how about other kinds of eels?"
"Perfectly safe."
"Even really big morays?"
"Long as you aren't trying to take a lobster from them. It's their favorite food."
"Sooo, that six-foot bugger right behind you? The green one with the blue eyes? Perhaps you should remove your lobster from his line of sight."
"I don't have a lob&ldots;oh, hell!"
I didn't realize a body could climb an anchor chain so quickly. As Jenks practically sailed over the rail, an obviously disappointed monster turned a blue eye his way, still ogling what he hoped was a quick meal.
"Nine and a half," I declared as Jenks scrambled onto his feet. "Half a point off for form."
We watched the eel nuzzle the chain, probably hoping for a lingering taste of Jenks. It gave us a snaggletoothed-emphasis on the toothed-grin, and began circling the boat. It was then we saw his big brother.
Not only were my skinny dipping days at an end, it wasn't long before we learned that giant morays weren't the only sea serpents plying the waters of the Mar de Cortez.
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