When Mike had finished his own dinner, he wondered if he should stay at his table until they were finished and had left, or just leave. Despite the glow of anticipation he felt
whenever he looked over at Diane, he was not sure he wanted to encounter her in the presence of the Commodore’s senior staff officer. He wondered where the Chief of Staff was, and then remembered that Captain Martinson was also supposed to go to this big meeting up in Norfolk. But why would he leave on Saturday? An instant later he remembered and knew the answer.
His waiter appeared with the bill, and a few minutes later came back and politely but pointedly asked if there were anything else he could bring. Mike could see a line of people in the foyer waiting for tables, so he paid the bill in cash, and followed the waiter across the dining room. He thought he heard Diane exclaim about something out on the waterway, attracting her table’s attention out the window as Mike started across the dining room. And then Commander Barstowe saw him.
“Mike Montgomery: come say hello,” he called.
Mike changed course and walked over to their table. Commander Barstowe’s wife interrupted her monologue to gush an effusive greeting.
“And you know Diane Martinson, I’m sure,” said Commander Barstowe. “The Martinsons are neighbors and the Chief of Staff had to go up to Norfolk this weekend, so we convinced her to join us for dinner. We’re almost finished —join us for a cup of coffee?”
Mike hesitated. Diane had smiled an impassive greeting, but he was not sure of what he should do. The Commander’s wife insisted noisily, and their attentive waiter brought up a fourth chair. He sat down, facing the Commander’s wife, with Diane on his right. His knee bumped hers as he sat down, and, once again, he thought he saw the glimmer of a smile in her eyes. The Commander’s wife had started up again, so Mike was spared the necessity of saying anything right away. Commander Barstowe gratefully turned to Mike to ask about the week’s operations, leaving his wife to train her gossipy prattle exclusively in Diane’s direction. It was Mike’s turn to suppress a smile as he watched Diane’s eyes begin to glaze over. The waiter brought Mike a cup of coffee.
“So no submarine, hunh?” inquired Barstowe.
Evidently the Commodore had not shared the morning’s revelations with his Chief Staff Officer.
“Nothing to write home about,” responded Mike.
“Damned strange, all the same,” said Barstowe. “Guy reports seeing a U-boat, and then a fishing boat goes down for no apparent reason. The Group PAO said the local press were really trying to make something of it.”
“I’m sure they did,” said Mike, recalling his run-in with Christian Mayfield’s sister. “Problem is that people get to believing it, just because it’s in the local news.”
At that instant, Mike became aware of a soft, probing sensation along his right ankle. Diane was playing footsie with him under the table. He almost missed what Commander Barstowe was saying.
“—checked with our own sub ops people, of course, and they said they had nothing going down this way. Sounded like they thought we were a little bit out of it. You know how the staffs in Norfolk view Mayport.”
Mike laughed, partly in sympathy with Mayport’s reputation as being in the sticks when compared to the big base in Norfolk, and partly as a nervous reaction to Diane’s playful ministrations under the table. She was rubbing her stockinged toes up and down along the back of his right calf. Mike wondered if the tablecloths were long enough to conceal what was going on. He glanced at an adjoining table, and saw that they were. Diane saw him look and smiled again, nodding as if she were paying close attention to the other woman’s conversation. Mike struggled to pay attention to the Chief Staff Officer’s opinions on the likely sources of the submarine story. He was fervently hoping that Commander Barstowe would not become aware of the interplay going on literally under his nose. Diane finally relented, and Mike made good his escape a few minutes later.
He hurried into the foyer. There was indeed a crowd of people waiting for tables. He lingered in the foyer, feeling a little ridiculous and not sure that he should wait, but hoping Diane might come out to the foyer. The restaurant had
a raw bar off to one side of the foyer which was surrounded by illuminated tropical fish tanks all along the walls. Mike wandered into the raw bar area and pretended to examine the vividly lighted tanks, while keeping an eye on the entrance to the actual dining room.
The blonde hostess saw him looking and smiled at him. After five minutes he was rewarded by the sight of Diane stepping through the entrance. His heart rose and then immediately fell when he saw that the Commander’s wife was with her. They went directly to the ladies’ powder room; Diane gave no sign of having seen him. He mentally muttered a silent curse, and walked out of the restaurant. The young hostess, who had been watching him out of the corner of her eye from the reservations podium, glanced at him curiously as he left, shrugged and called the next party of four.
The Mayport Marina; Saturday, 26 April; 2300
Mike reclined in his chaise longue on the back porch of the Lucky Bag and watched the occasional boat go by, its red and green running lights twinkling across the dark water in time with the light chop. The onshore breeze had come up when he had returned from the restaurant, and he had switched off the air conditioning and opened the boat up. He had turned all the lights off in the houseboat except for a tiny night light at the top of the companionway leading to the lounge, and was sitting in darkness. The only visible light on the stern porch came from the dim walkway lights along the piers between the rows of boat moorings. There was music coming from a party two piers over, but the people having the party were being considerate for a change and not sharing their musical tastes with the entire world.
Mike had shifted back into shorts and tennis shoes when he first got back, but then had shucked all of his clothes when he came out to the humid darkness of the porch. He
lay naked on the cushioned chaise, his long, bulky body filling the length of it. He could feel the cushion buttons pressing indentations into the skin of his back as he waited. The night air moving across his skin was pleasant, and the apprehension he had been feeling subconsciously about what was about to happen seemed to peel away with each passing moment.
If she came, when she came, it would not be for talk. The breeze was cooling except when it faltered, and then the humid heat of a Florida night pressed back in, burdened with the briny scents of the river and the waterway.
He deliberately let his thoughts drift, smoothing over the earlier tension of the day. He had banished the mysterious submarine out of his mind, along with the embarrassment of being rebuked by the Commodore in front of his own Exec. He thought now only of Diane, how she had looked earlier, the hint of a smile playing on her lips at the table, and the promise he had seen in her eyes in the parking lot the night before. He had made himself a wine cooler, and absently ran his fingers up and down the sweating glass, oblivious to the condensation dripping on his bare chest.
His skin tingled like a freshly shorn pelt, and all the muscles in his body seemed to be poised for some great exertion. The Lucky Bag dipped slowly in response to a passing wake, and he could hear the slap of waves under the broad hull. Occasionally he could hear women’s voices across the marina, but his hearing focused now on another sound, the sound of a woman’s leather tipped, high heels coming across the pontoon piers, carefully, but deliberately, up the single step between pontoon and pier, and then down again, coming closer until they stopped at the Lucky Bag’s diminutive gangplank. He had left the railing unlatched back at the top of the gangplank, and the doorway leading down into the main lounge was also open. He thought he could feel the boat shift slightly when she came aboard, followed by a moment of silence, and then she appeared in the doorway of the porch, a slim shadow that perfumed the night air with a tendril of Chanel and perhaps something more elemental. He felt like he was barely
touching the chaise as he looked over at her in the darkness, the excitement building in his chest even as he remained motionless and silent on the chaise.
She walked slowly over to the chaise, and stood at his feet, her face a pale blur as she looked at him. He heard her breathing change when she realized that he was naked. She reached behind her and unhooked her dress, slipping out of it in a fluid, two step motion. She wore no bra, and he could sense rather than see the sway of her heavy breasts in the darkness. Her panties were visible only as a white triangle across her hips until she slid them down over her thighs. She stepped over the chaise, and then lay down full length on top of him, her arms stretching out over his head and her mouth closing hungrily on his even as he wrapped her in his arms and joined her to him in one powerful movement.
Much later, as they both lay spent on the chaise, he awoke to the sound of her gentle snoring in the hollow of his shoulder. He shifted slightly, and ran his fingers across her forehead, clearing the damp hair out of her face, touching her cheek gently. She murmured something unintelligible, and tried to snuggle closer. He carefully extricated himself from her warm body, and then gathered her up in his arms and took her to the cabin below, where they made love again.
The morning intruded with the long blat of the St. Johns ferry leaving the slip for her first run across the river. Bright sunlight streamed through the windows in the cabin as Mike rolled over and sat up, rubbing his face, smiling at the memories of the night. Diane was curled in a ball in the middle of the bed. He reached down and kissed her cheek, and then got up, pulling the sheet over her until only her face showed. He watched her sleep for a few minutes, marveling at her beauty and his great fortune, and then went into the bathroom to make his morning ablutions.
He went into the galley to make coffee, slipping into a bathing suit on the way. He carried the coffee up topside to the porch, and waved hello to his neighbor across the pier, an elderly and very dapper retired lawyer from New York
named Nathan Goldstein. Mr. Goldstein was very New York and very funny in a waspish, big city manner. He lived for his Sunday New York Times and his pot of coffee laced with Schlivovitz that he enjoyed with some style on the fantail of his fifty foot Bertram yacht.
The waterway was already teeming with boat traffic of all descriptions making their way down the channel to the St. Johns river junction and the sea five miles downstream. The sailboats pitched and bobbed in the crisscrossing wakes made by the more numerous powerboats. Mike was exchanging criticisms on their sea manners with Mr. Goldstein when Diane appeared on the porch, fresh from the shower, her dark hair done up in a twisted coil high on her head, and the rest of her wrapped in a full length terry robe. She poured herself a cup of coffee. The sleep was disappearing rapidly from her face, leaving only a visibly contented glow.
“Oi-veh,” called Mr. Goldstein appreciatively, when he caught sight of Diane. “You found yourself a woman for a change, Mikey, instead of one of those little girls you bring home from the beaches!”
Diane smiled archly at him and then went over to one of the cushioned deck chairs and sat down. Mike, not knowing what to say, joined her, leaving Mr. Goldstein to try to read his paper while stealing surreptitious glances at Diane. Mr. Goldstein, long a widower, was reportedly a heavy hitter among the local Sunday bingo set.
“Morning, Sunshine,” said Mike, taking in her freshly scrubbed face. He suddenly wanted to take her back down below. She smiled at him, and he was ready to forego even going below.
“We would give your friend over there a heart attack, Captain,” she said with a grin, once again reading his face.
“He’d go out a happy man,” replied Mike, grinning himself despite his sudden attack of desire.
“And you? Would you go out a happy man?” she teased. She rearranged her robe, letting Mike have a look at a luxuriant length of thigh. Mr. Goldstein rattled his coffee cup over on the Bertram.
“Happy, but not satisfied, Madam,” Mike replied. “I need to go to the well again a couple of hundred more times. This morning, that is.”
“My, how we do go on,” she simpered. “Does that mean I can stay all day?”
Mike’s face lost its playful cast. “You can stay forever, as long as you stay with me,” he said.
She looked at him over the rim of the coffee mug, her eyes fathomless. “Don’t go falling overboard, Captain,” she said softly. “It’s bad for appearances.”
He leaned forward. “I’m not sure I care about appearances just now,” he said. “Your husband is with another woman right now, and you are here with me. I’m officially sorry if your marriage is a wash, but I’m not embarrassed to tell you that I want you. After last night—do you realize how extraordinary that was? We didn’t just click, lady, we welded. I know I’m not being practical or wise or even very smart, but there it is. I-want-you. I’m also falling in love with you.”
Diane looked down into her coffee for a long minute. The light mood of the morning had been replaced by something else.
“Can we just try this one day at a time, Mike?” she asked, looking up. “I’m very new to this, and what I would really like to do is to sit around the boat all day and do not much of anything. You have to understand that just being here is pretty heady stuff for me. I’m not sure I can deal with freedom and love and your very warm desire all in one breath.”
She saw the concern in his eyes.
“That’s not a no, Mike,” she said quickly. “That’s not a turndown, or a put off. Last night was—fantastic. Right now you, the boat, last night, how we loved each other—it’s like a puzzle I’ve worked on for years and I finally got the whole thing together on the table. I just don’t want to break it by making a wrong move. OK?”
He sat back in his chair, feeling more than a little foolish. “Well, can I make you breakfast instead?” he said.
She laughed aloud, a bright peal of pure pleasure. Even
Mr. Goldstein, thirty feet away in the bright sunlight, nodded and smiled when he heard that sound. It was the best sound in the whole world. Good for Mikey.