Oy, fuck! No, Oy-bek. Ha! Just checking — lens cap off. Ten four, Walter Bilko, over and out. And down. Glug glug glug. Fish guy my asshole. Move over fish guy. Big fish guy is here.
Oybek’s underwater photography career is as spectacular as he knew it could be but far shorter-lived than anticipated, beginning, culminating and ending in three shots. The first shot is a murky silhouette with haunting familiarity as Mano approaches, impromptu and insistent that she and Oybek do lunch.
The lunch is not fois gras but foible au gratis for an aspiring waterdog. The paltry fare is hardly filling for Mano, who has a bad rap for eating people when all she really takes is a taste, to see. Most sharks attack in murky water, by mistake. They have excellent vision and know the menu by heart.
But as any crew will attest, shit happens, especially with sharks, especially with a big, old, hungry mama like this one. So Mano takes a leg at the knee as Oybek retreats, expertly composing, focusing and fulfilling his artistic promise, or fleeing for his life with a death grip on his camera housing. In either event, he squeezes here and there in panic and nabs the perfect predator profile in another amazing rendition of the electric moment between life and death, open wide, for shot two.
Mano has the good taste to chomp the lower leg precisely at the tendon and ligament joinery for perfect closure. Oybek’s many friends and staff will attribute this cosmic cleave to good karma. The Cedar Sinai specialist will admit that, “I couldn’t have amputated this leg any better than that shark did.”
Oybek will confide to the doctor that the lost limb is in fact on hand, in storage — don’t worry; it’s cold.
The doctor will be nonplussed; this and many other severed limbs come to him for miracle surgery as seen on TV, after resting on ice in a cooler for most of a week. The doctor shakes his head and begins to explain. Oybek waves him off —
“No, no, no. I know you can’t put it back. But I want you see for me what will be wery waluable to know...” That is, if the severed limb shows any signs of tumor growth, because that will support the prevailing theory of divine intervention by the Spirits of the Deep. Direct ramification on secondary markets here may be profound. The doctor will ponder Oybek’s cosmic salvation briefly before taking a call confirming a tee time.
Meanwhile Mano has the culinary discretion to discard the appendage, recognizing the taste, but then she continues, out of character, to approach Oybek for another go.
What’s got into her?
Oybek’s second stroke of luck is making an offering to the higher power, a behavior perhaps learned in LA. In this case he offers the camera in the housing, along with the strobes, cords and all that other crap.
Mano accepts.
In coming weeks Oybek will learn that many veteran divers of olden times, black coral divers, spondylidae collectors and all that lusty genre of ocean harvesters with no limits on their take, would carry a broomstick or other rigid object to offer an aggressive shark, because sharks hate bones, and biting a hard object may discourage further foul behavior. Oybek will claim this knowledge as his own, saying that experienced divers know these things, good thing, because he used it to save his life. He will make the claim repeatedly on the late night circuit, promoting his life and times as illustriously told in his new book, Oybek, The Chosen One, with the amazing cover shot of Mano’s molars and tonsils, shot three.
The housing, strobes and other crap are mangled to an amusing mess and show up on the back cover, photo by Oybek. Who else? Most amazing, however, is that the digital data card was intact, enabling both art and art history in the making. Which is all good, as they say, and maybe even gets no better. Oybek opts for a peg leg rather than a modern prosthesis. He fiddles with an eye patch in the mirror — left eye, right eye, strap straight, strap cocked — and thinks he’s got it right in a blend of Moshe Dyan and the Hathaway shirt guy, which actually blends his own singular intensity with a dash of savoir faire, kind of, if you can give one motherfucking red cunt hair of willing suspension here. Really, people.
He retains a professional firm to measure market response on the peg-leg/eye-patch combo. The stats are comprehensive but less than conclusive, suggesting that the most profitable pursuit may be the peg leg for a year or two, with a revival round of interviews to coincide with the sequel, Oybek Is Back, at which point the eye patch will renew interest. Plenty of time to come up with a riveting back story on the loss of the eye — which will also convert to performance, given proper crafting.
With interest fading for what’s-his-name, the fish guy, Ravid’s peripheral sales gradually dwindle. Calendar sales cease. Book sales stall on a failure to renegotiate, but a small, independent book publisher offers Ravid a fifty-fifty partnership on subsequent editions with new plates, if the waterman is willing to keep going.
He is willing, and it’s still more money than a dive leader would bring home. Oybek makes a few bucks but then fails on his bid for a round-two revival as the glittering fish market, so to speak, gets competitive. Noah Greene takes the showbiz name of Rufus T. Watermelon and makes a splash with his racist innuendo, but he is black, after all. The jury is out on that one, with the media waiting for leadership — self-correcting between black and African American. But then Oprah features Rufus T, asking her viewers, “You want fish pitchers? I got a fish pitcher for you.” She then tells them to buy the book, Fish Pitcher from Way Back, for a riveting, blockbusting, change-your-life, no-holds-barred account of a black man from South California making his way in the alien north country — Seattle, that is — where he gets on as a fish pitcher in the open market downtown. The sequel anticipates Rufus T as a catcher — with his hands! And these salmon run slick! At twenty pounds or better!
Ravid turns the TV off and wishes he didn’t have one but knows he always will as long as he can and that it’s a better addiction than some. He longs for the olden days, when a nice skull webbing would correct this unholy mockery of nature’s noble beasts. Or slow it down, maybe.
Homeward Bound
The old neighborhood is gone. Next door used to be a thicket, home to songbirds and strutting mynahs. How sweetly it lingered, the gossamer complex of X-spiders, an occasional mongoose and a houseless person or two. Now it’s opaque, a monolithic tribute to the will, courage, vision and bankroll of Stan Goodman, who made it big, very big, in waterbeds when the rest of the nation was still sagging into box springs. Twelve thousand square feet of stucco, granite, marble, glass, steel and tiles rise in reverence to Stan. The front deck could host a bowling alley, and waving off the end is a portly, silver-haired woman, calling, “Hell-oh! Hell-oh-oh!”
Getting to know the neighbors doesn’t take long, and some of the old crowd turn up at the grocery store, on the beach or by chance. Talk is warm but sparse, what with everyone aging and the old crowd thinning, mostly returning to America or gone.
Gene is still around but not doing so well, living on coffee and nicotine. But she seems happy, and she damn near cried on seeing Ravid and then she did cry on seeing Skinny. She comes around or he stops in. It’s not like it was, but it’s something.
Crusty Geizen keeled over about a year and a half ago right in the middle of a trip — opened his mouth and bulged his eyes halfway home from a dive site on flat seas under sunny skies, on a day recalled for clarity, with viz running two hundred feet like nobody could remember. Crusty tensed up and toppled, not to worry — gone before he hit the deck, coronary thrombosis.
Crusty met his match, which is deemed a blessing in hindsight, just after he’d confided in a group of game doctors — all men of course — just up from the dive of a lifetime and eager to deepen the bonding process following the act of adventure. He’d told them that he’d reached that point where a perfect day was four hours of work, maybe a dive trip like this one — and yadda yadda to the image of an old, crusty geezer getting a blowjob, with a dash of curiosity on who might deliver, and then the punch line: not bad, I got about two more weeks of yoga to stretch my neck. Then the
uproarious laughter broke like a wave.
Maybe Crusty looked a little queasy even then; here, too, hindsight is conjectural. It doesn’t matter. He gladly gave up center arena to a surgeon from Portland, who said this Hawaii is such a wonderful place, and so full of surprises. “Why, I was in Waikiki last week — and I saw this hooker. Beautiful woman, you know. She was everything you might want in a woman, physically speaking. And she’s standing on the corner with this cat under her arm, and I got closer and saw she was holding it backward. I had to look twice, because she had it with the ass end up, and she was licking this cat’s asshole. Beautiful woman, so I says to her, I says, ‘What in the hell you wanna do that for?’ And she says, ‘Oh, that. I just blew a lawyer and I want to get the taste out of my mouth.’”
The next breaking wave took Crusty on a guffaw, what was easy for everyone to call the way he would have wanted it.
Maybe. Crusty was sixty-four. Ravid wants it some other way, wants to find an old friend or any friend to ask about things and maybe find out what to do.
Of course he knows what to do, but viz is down around twelve feet, so he isn’t clear on how to do it.
3 Dreams
To call it mid-life crisis would overly simplify; Ravid Rockulz is not materially challenged or lacking in self-esteem. He’s seen more adventure and romance than a convention of dentists or insurance agents — yet he feels bound as Icarus, needy for more and daring the sun to melt his wings on his climb to reach it. So why is he sleeping, all the time sleeping? Because refuge is taken where it’s found. A shrink might diagnose depression deferring to self-preservation, but that analysis would better dismiss the process than explain it. Yes, he sleeps more than a healthy man should, grappling with what he can’t quite bring to the surface.
The first dream seeks revenge as a means of justice. Ravid reconciles with Oybek, a misguided, misunderstood friend who brought security and comfort to Ravid and his family.
It begins on a visit, with the children jumping up from the TV screaming with childish greed at the peg-leg thump announcing Uncle Oybek. Oybek is here on Ravid’s invitation to come over and make things right. Oybek usually has something for the kids but this time he forgot, he was so distracted by falling out with his friend — make that his good friend, his very, very good friend. So he peels a twenty for each kid, because a ten won’t get you too far these days. Nearly toppling over, he swears at the Long John Silver dog and pony show he’s chosen to self-inflict. He’ll go today for a modern prosthesis. This crutch is bruising his ribs.
With pain and contrition established, he asks how Ravid can simply leave without a word. “You would not say goodbye to your friends?” You wooduntz a leave and no goodbye frienzyu?
Ravid agrees that friendship should endure, especially in light of the debt on the new beach house on Maui; he, Ravid, will need the work, if Oybek can find it, and Oybek is the best at finding what is needed. Oybek shrugs; a house that nice will take time to pay off at any rate.
“You said forty-five dollars per fish.”
Oybek laughs, “That is still some very many fish, my friend.”
“How many fish is it?”
“You must pay for the fish first, and many die in transport. The bastards who want to shut us down have no idea how hard it is. You average thirty dollars, if they live — maybe only twenty. You can go ahead and ship the dead fish too, but it doesn’t always work. That’s why I say charge money for the fish guy photo and give fish for free, no guarantee. See? If fish die, is not our business.”
“Look at this. These are masked angelfish.” The photo shows a mostly white fish with subtle trim on the tail and a golden mask. “Five thousand dollars each, wholesale. Ten thousand retail. Thirty thou for a mated pair.”
Oybek stares at the fish, then at Ravid. “How much you have pay?”
“We catch.”
“You catch?”
“Look.” He pulls another photo from which the first was a detail. It shows a coral head with a few dozen masked angels in front and above — some are joined at the hip, mated pairs, with more likely behind the coral head.
“You know this place?”
“I took this picture.”
“Where is?”
Ah, not so fast, my fine, featherless friend. So the images swirl in a plot for revenge, wherein Ravid charters a lobster vessel, available since the lobsters were removed from the Northwest Hawaiian Islands, a few days out of Honolulu — fished out, under the management of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, the marine extraction arm of the Commerce Department of the United States government. A lobster boat is perfect, with holding tanks and seawater pumps.
But the Northwest Hawaiian Islands were unprotected when the lobsters were taken, starving out the monk seals, causing the Feds to budget millions on extreme protection ipso facto — make that oopso facto — so the biggest marine ecosystem in the world might be spared. Well, whatever, but now we must poach, because now it is patrolled and observed.
Well, you can buckle under to the highbrow Henny Pennies or call it an adventure. Patrol vessels are rare. How much actual protection can you expect from the Feds for a measly few hundred million? Besides, flying a Korean or Taiwanese flag will make the lobster boat look foreign, discouraging pursuit to the west. Nobody wants an international incident.
The dream roils with segments:
The Chinese guy at the resale warehouse in Southern California argues that angelfish can’t take the slosh and roll like lobsters, and most will be lost. And he sure as hell can’t send out most of them already dead.
Oybek insists: At five or ten or fifteen grand each, you, we’ll maybe take a few more to make up for dead, and to make up for us, too.
Okay?
The Chinese guy pukes over the rail and must be shown to the lee side, where puking is more acceptable.
The other divers grow glum, questioning more as the seas build, northwest of Honolulu with Ni’ihau an intermittent speck on the horizon to the southeast. What is the target species? Why only one fish? Why can’t you tell us? Why are we on fixed pay with no bonus, for three weeks at sea? Is it the masked angel? It must be, but nobody plans to catch enough of a single species to pay for a trip like this. Maybe bandits, too. They’re only six or maybe eight hundred each but sometimes aggregate in certain areas, so maybe a few hundred bandit angels are part of the plan. For that matter, why not fill the holding tanks with whatever we find? We got three thousand gallons on either side. So?
Like sailors through the ages, they demand more information, more say in planning, more rights, more pay and better lives. Distance from land makes them more fervent, less stigmatized by poor language skills. They can ride these unruly waves, after all, and then dive deep to catch the little gems that would only go to waste otherwise. The Chinese guy selected these guys for performance, rebreathers no problem. So? How much is the best team worth?
A rebreather allows far more depth and downtime by sending far less nitrogen into the bloodstream and converting what has been exhaled back into oxygen, after removing the carbon dioxide chemically and adding something or other. More streamlined than before, the units are hardly bulkier than regular scuba and can easily accommodate tri-mix — oxygen, nitrogen and helium — to eliminate narcosis.
Mixture error can be hazardous at depth, with oxygen so fickle in the human scheme of things. Too little O2 leads to hypoxia, also known as suffocation. Too much O2 causes hyperpoxia, or convulsion, incidental at the surface but causing drowning at depth in 100 percent of incidences — all of which offers interesting potential. If this A-team had their own equipment, then rebreathers would be the way to go — two hundred fifty feet for an hour and a half on deep virgin reefs? We’d knock ’em dead! But at seven grand per unit, the benefit of rebreathers hardly warrants the cost. You want to capitalize a half-wit crew of renegades or make a few bucks for your pocket? Get out. Better to go traditional. Three, five, six dives a day. Why not? You want the big buck
s; you soak up a little more N.
So with the divers suited up and the helmsman entering the waypoint on the GPS, Ravid calls out, “Oh, shit!” Drawing smiles and scowls, he says the chili needs a dump; don’t worry, this won’t take long.
Breaking a sweat in the hot, cramped engine room behind the head, he opens the stuffing box nut by two turns, increasing the drip to a flow. He opens the seacock to the head, along with the intake valve, filling the toilet for another flush, or a few hundred flushes, or maybe a purge — or an exorcism. He comes on deck relieved, and over they go.
Surfacing from a hundred feet, they see the vessel riding low in the water and listing. The helmsman is wearing a life jacket, working over the life support unit that won’t inflate, because it’s punctured.
Adrift at sea, the divers help each other ditch their tanks and inflate their BCs manually. Their eyes burn from salt and glare, except for one, who brought sunglasses and a hat. The fuck? How did he know...
Ravid offers his hat and glasses to each of the divers, but no, they’re not the kind of crew to show weakness in the face of bad odds all day and night and day and night again, till survival looks like the tiger chasing its tail, though this time Little Black Sambo watches the butter churn with blood.
That is, the divers hold hands or tie off to each other till strength and bindings fail, and they drift apart. Sixty masked angels drift in a catch box near the surface, in case a rescue comes by, in case the helmsman got off a mayday before sinking, and the spotter planes can spot a drifting head or two.
The lead diver feels the tug of the catch box as if to remind him that the best aquarium producers in the trade might yet notch a harrowing survival on their belts. It’s just them and God — unless the Papahanaumokuakea spirits linger nearby and have God’s ear, which they fill with displeasure over their reef fish heading out to resellers in California on the way to tank life in America, Europe or Asia. The lead diver scans for a faint bottom. When it barely comes into view, he opens the catch box and facilitates the small flurry downward, joining his spirit with those of the fish and the ancients. Transitional blending to oneness is mercifully brief with Mano’s assistance, blessing and certain gratitude.
Flame Angels Page 46
