I opened the teak door and went inside the air-conditioned cabin... and stopped dead to marvel at the image before me. The sensuous female form, the sweet bouquet of fine perfume, patchouli, and sandalwood incense, the soft, hypnotic drone of sitar and tamboura, all combined to evoke the notion of tantric Zen: the perfect woman, young, vibrant, sensual and desirable, in blissful harmony with her environment.
Nora was seated in a lotus position on the main cabin floor, legs elegantly tucked beneath her, eyes closed, the backs of her hands resting comfortably on her knees, palms facing up. She had moved a pair of leather chairs that completed the three-piece living room area of the main cabin out of the way, to give her as much floor space as possible. She wore flimsy black tights and a form-fitting white spaghetti top that did little to hide her magnificent figure. Where the skimpy top ended, I could see her lean obliques moving with her every breath. Her hair held back in a neat ponytail, and a thin film of sweat gleamed against her smooth, tanned skin.
I watched in silence. Not only was she beautiful and blessed with a body to die for, this was also a woman who baited her own hooks and could gaff a thrashing fish without hesitation. A woman who, despite a terrifically bad experience with an alcoholic ex-husband, was not overbearing or neurotic. Dr. Nora Burton, Wesleyan alumna, Penn State Medical School grad, fellow in good standing of the American College of Clinical Oncology, was a class act in every way; from the refined ways in which she wore her strawberry blond shoulder-length hair, her understated choice in clothing, to her minimalist use of jewelry which primarily consisted of a single strand of pearls around her perfectly shaped neck, a very basic-looking platinum Rolex Mariner on her left wrist and several delicate gold bangles on the right. Yes, she was a keeper. If I were looking for a lifelong kind of thing.
I met Nora two years earlier, during the worst period in my life. She had been one of the attending physicians in my father’s final battle with brain cancer. It had been a difficult time for her as well, dealing with her husband’s alcohol addiction and a rapidly crumbling marriage. I helplessly watched as my father’s life withered away; bit by bit, day by day, consumed by cancer. Nora endured her own version of hell; painful realizations, betrayal and intense feelings of despair born out of heartbreak. We were lucky to have met when we did. It seemed as though God, the Universe, the Ultimate Being whatever we choose to call him, her, or it just might have our best interests at heart after all.
When we first met it had been almost instant attraction, as if mutual misery was a magnetic beacon drawing us closer and closer. I saw the deep sadness in her big blue yes, her obvious kindness distorted by personal anguish. Some believe that the eyes are the window to the soul. I’m usually not a big believer; seen a number of individuals crafty enough to fool even the most highly trained interrogator. But to me, whatever hell she was silently enduring, was just too obvious to be contrived. It emanated from her every pore, from her entire being and that day, while experiencing my own version of hell, I came to crave Nora.
Some would say that we were lucky to have met when we did. I soon learned that shared misery also makes for a potent aphrodisiac. The attraction we both felt was as predictable as it was instantaneous, like two wildfires merging. That very evening, I went to her office and waited just outside. When she saw me, I saw wonder and even a glimpse of joy in her round, freckled face or maybe it was relief? We spent the night together. We clawed at each other as though clinging on to life itself, as if we might capture or possess something that could not be contained, like catching rain with bare hands. The way life works sometimes amazes me. At the most appropriate of moments, when we feel like we are past bottom and there is no end in sight, Lady Fate flicks its unpredictable wand and just like that, that which we seem to require the most, crosses our path. Maybe we weren’t forever, but for now we were important in each other’s life. And that was enough for me. I hoped it would be enough for Nora and that it would last.
I have seen so many so-called “promising marriages” fail, the participants deluding themselves into thinking that a long happy married co-existence is an attainable expectation, as if it was written in the Bill Of Rights, something else, that along with Social Security and Medicare, we are all entitled. In my opinion anyone sane enough to understand human nature could never believe a fallacy such as “happily ever after.” The human condition, with all its imperfections, is just not that easily molded. As we go through life we experience changes not just in appearance, but changes to the very essence of who we are. The rare cases in which happily ever after is attained are just singular instances rare enough to be discounted as outliers, unnatural departures from a predictable outcome, disparate oddities that stand out in a world where chaotic co-existence is the only predictable outcome. Happy married life exists mostly in fictional tales. It is a misleading notion created by authors and Hollywood types. Nothing but make believe. I had seen it first in my parents’ friends and later had the unenviable position of watching my own parents go through that hell themselves. For most of their married life they shared a loneliness that was palpable. The Silent Justice Family. That loneliness was eventually replaced by a bitterness that completely transfigured my parents. Home became a cold, stark place. As my mother’s condition worsened, she withdrew even more. The confrontations became worse. Things improved considerably once my father moved out of the house. It wasn’t long before I moved out.
To be married is to experience being singularly alone. It seems that most good marriages tend to be those in which each becomes the silent warden of the other’s loneliness. If you went into marriage with your eyes wide open and had reasonable, real-world expectations, that life is at best a never-ending series of compromises in which you relinquished your individuality and personal desires in exchange for a harmonious home life and, if you could withstand that bleak, cold reality for forty or fifty years, or more, then you stood a real chance of having an enduring marriage. For others, the not-so-lucky majority, marriage becomes a life sentence that surely makes some participants relish death’s sweet embrace. It was the trap that caught my parents. It was a trap I will do my best to avoid.
For now at least, the arrangement with Dr. Burton worked just fine. We were like friends with benefits, only better. I really cared for her, and I was pretty sure she cared for me as much if not more. But was that really love? Who knows? I am certainly no expert far from it, this being the longest relationship I had ever had but if, for some reason, we ended up going our separate ways, I knew it would hurt. Perhaps more than I cared to admit. But would I miss her enough to put it all on the line? Was it enough to warrant a trip to Tiffany followed by uttering the “M” word? I didn’t need to wonder too much. I’ve always known the answer, and it didn’t matter how many ways I batted the idea around: it is not for me.
I padded quietly on bare feet into the main salon. Nora turned up one hand, palm out, stopping me dead, then lifted her index finger, indicating she needed another moment. I stopped all movement. I felt a raindrop sliding down from my hair to my eyebrow, where it found some sort of invisible groove that took it down the side of my nose. It tickled like hell, but I didn’t dare move.
After a moment, she finally opened her eyes and said, “Hello, sailor.” She rocked up onto her feet and faced me. “You’re dripping!” She strode off to one of the storage cabinets and plucked up a pair of beach towels.
She began to towel me dry. “This is what you wanted all along, isn’t it?”
“What?” I asked, feigning confusion.
“My hands all over you.”
“Yeah, but it’s not quite right,” I replied. “I don’t remember clothes in my version. And your hands were elsewhere.”
I pushed off the towel and embraced her... and forgot all about nautical charts, tides, Gulf Stream currents, gale-force winds, channel markers, everything. Reality just seemed to meld into a torrent of excitement. I felt her kiss my cheek between giggles. God, she felt good. I was glad she was back, and I expressed it quite predictably.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” she said as she playfully pushed me away. Somehow, though I had nine inches and nearly ninety pounds on her, she was still strong enough to shove me around a bit.
I moved in on her, my hands fast and nimble, seeking. She pushed me away, saying, “No way, mister. I’m sweaty...”
“Then let’s get sweatier,” I replied, moving in again.
“There’s no way, Jason!”
“Hey, you’ve been gone five days,” I retorted. “A man has needs.”
She countered my advances, informing me she had just returned from her yoga class and had spent the hour before that at the gym. A hard workout. She was filthy, she claimed, but she had completed her assigned share of the predeparture tasks. The liquor cabinet, refrigerator, and galley were fully stocked.
“Yes, well,” she said, her hands still on my chest in a futile attempt to keep me at bay, “those manly needs will simply have to wait. We have more important things to worry about.”
As I dropped my head in mock dejection, Nora brought up the weather forecast. She had been listening to the official NOAA reports on the radio. The weather was expected to remain unfavorable for all small craft for at least a couple of days. Worse, it was expected to worsen in the next twenty-four hours. Even on a boat of this size, crossing the Gulf Stream under such conditions was a bad idea.
I gazed out the long rectangular windows framing three sides of the main salon and saw nothing outside to contradict NOAA. The rain-darkened skies made it seem as though night had fallen.
“I’m sorry.” Nora leaned in and kissed my cheek. “But hey, look at it this way, sailor: maybe we won’t have to cancel the entire vacation. Maybe we just lose a day or two.”
I sighed and sank into one of the deep-padded chairs. The blare from the radio startled both of us. From the small navigation station tucked neatly into starboard wall of the salon, a disembodied voice delivered another official weather advisory:
“Small-craft advisory is in effect. Weather is worsening. Waters east of the coast and especially in the Gulf Stream are experiencing unusually high seas and waves. Expected to continue like this for at least forty-eight hours
...”
Great. Sammy had been right after all. This whole vacation was in peril. I glanced at Nora. She gave me a sympathetic glance. It seemed nothing ever ruffled her feathers. Even in the worst circumstances, she always managed to keep that positive outlook, that bright smile that first caught my attention. It was a quality that so many of her terminally ill patients, like my father, cherished.
She gave me a shrug and said, “What do they know? They never seem to get this stuff right. Maybe it’ll blow over by tomorrow. You’ll see.”
I just smiled. It was a nice attempt to cheer me up, but the view out the windows told the real story. It was pouring, and the wind showed no signs of weakening. I ambled over to the navigation station and flipped on the Si-Tex weather chart plotter. The six-by-six color screen told the digital version of the story: the large low-pressure area and cold front extended for hundreds of miles and was now draped over the Florida peninsula. Soon it would be over the Bahamas. To make matters worse, the weather system was a slow mover, and although not a huge event like a tropical storm, it still packed quite a punch. Offshore buoys north of Ft. Pierce were reporting swells in the twelve- to fifteen-foot range not the kind of seas you wanted on a pleasure cruise.
My reverie came to an abrupt end as Nora approached me and kissed me softly. “Hey, I wanted to say thank you.”
“For what?”
“For agreeing to talk to Amy.”
“Sure,” I said. It wasn’t as if she had given me much choice. I leaned down and kissed her. She kissed me back, which once again brought those manly needs to the fore. My hands took on a life of their own and went a-hunting. It didn’t work.
Nora pushed away and declared, “You’re good, I’ll give you that, counselor.”
“What?” I had thought we were getting somewhere.
“Men like you are so dangerous.”
“Not dangerous enough, it seems.”
“What time is it?” she asked, ignoring my remark.
“Almost six. Why?”
“Plenty of time.”
“For what?”
“To clean up,” she said. “You’re meeting Amy at Duffy’s on the Waterway,” she said as she opened the door and went into the head. “She’ll be there at seven. As in
tonight
. Waiting for you. That gives you plenty of time to change and get there.”
Five
I arrived at Duffy’s on the Waterway and parked the Porsche in a corner spot where it wouldn’t be dinged by blind or careless drivers.
I was ten minutes late not too bad, considering the short notice. Privately, I hoped my “date” wouldn’t show up. Outside, the weather seemed to be going from bad to worse. The occasional bolts of lightning that lit up the clouds to the northwest were becoming more frequent, and the distant rumble of thunder echoed closer in the night. My shirt got a bit damp as I sprinted to the entrance. Umbrellas were for sissies.
The expansive restaurant was typical of south Florida dinning hangouts by the Intracoastal Waterway. It was the kind of place where good-looking kids from nearby universities waited for scarce job openings. Management was very friendly, and the place was spotless, served an enviable menu of locally caught seafood and top cuts of beef, and had a large bar that attracted plenty of well-heeled customers. In winter, when the snowbirds had all flocked down to Palm Beach County, it was damned hard to get a reservation for dinner on a weekend evening before nine o’clock. Sometimes you had to wait up to two months for a six or seven p.m. table. Tonight, even though the restaurant’s big lobby and bar lacked the usual throngs of diners waiting to be seated, the place was still hopping. The din of the crowd, the clink of silverware on china, and soft island music gave the place an air of exotic charm. I had a quick conversation with the attractive hostess, who promptly informed me, to my disappointment, that my date was already seated. Yet another young and very friendly hostess escorted me to my table.