Reefdog

by Robert Wintner

  But Ravi Rockulz spent most evenings alone with a photography book or new equipment or software or working his images. He might watch a movie or hit a bar for a beer or two. His solitary demeanor appealed to those who took note, like Minna Somayan. They engaged early and often in the spawning ritual, but that was different because just for fun never had a chance against love everlasting. So why did he worry?

  Women had stolen his heart before, but this one would be back—best to stay busy on a new learning curve called digital. Technology made his artistry more accessible—no more film expense or hesitation on shots. Now he could freely compose.

  The hot and cold social flow and tedious repetition were done. No more morning wake up to see a woman sleeping sweetly and him thinking yes, pussy is great to have nearby. Should I make breakfast?

  Now was better, but he woke alone. What was she doing? She felt like a puzzle part in a big picture, a wide angle with fisheye distortion. Her scent and smile seemed karmic and eternal, yet her absence distorted the balance. If this was love, he hated and loved it. How could anyone be so bound to another and enjoy it? And why me?

  Why not? She had her pick. He wasn’t bad looking and his manners were better than most, so maybe that was it. But he felt something more, something mysterious. They met by chance. She took the initiative, and maybe that was the odd component—anything he said would have sounded like a line. So he said nothing and sounded like a genius.

  So why am I worrying?

  It’s because she didn’t say where her family lives or how long she’ll be gone or why on earth she didn’t take me along—me, the husband in this marriage. This isn’t insecurity because I’m not. And it isn’t jealousy because I don’t suffer from that.

  Or at least he never had. Most tourist women had boyfriends at home, or husbands or children. A few had grown children, and some had grandchildren. They went home by the weekend, leaving the dive guy behind—or they took him along vicariously, for recall in the perfect tropical fantasy. Nobody got jealous.

  He counted several maids and waitresses among his friends. Here too he’d remained free of jealousy. But this was love. He wanted to know everything about her. He wanted to know her past with men and boys, maybe not down to macro because it wasn’t jealousy but curiosity. Surely she’d had boyfriends, and the pleasures she’d shown him were learned before. You don’t get those skills out of nowhere.

  Images of her with another had its doubt and pain, but it wasn’t jealousy. He avoided that rancorous emotion through reason and practicality. So what? Given her poise, would not another man, or men, of her choosing also reflect character development? I think he would. Or they would. Or did. Curiosity showed concern for her welfare. That was all it was. Did another hard-driver fail in the gentle touch? That seemed unlikely, but he did not fear some dingdong going pneumatic on his one and only because it didn’t happen.

  Hey, let it go.

  Yeah, fine, but this didn’t add up. Marriage was more than a vacation fling, and Ravi sensed the downside. Family complexity and former boyfriends could be tough. Anyone ever married dealt with transition. It takes a while and begins with sharing. But just as a sailor won’t whistle or hope for wind, so a man should avoid knowing everything.

  Why?

  Because he might find out.

  No

  Minna Somayan returned four days later, knocking on the door soon after his shower and a beer at the end of work. Who would knock at her own front door? The answer was Minna, filling the room and his heart with joy on a sweet touching of lips. “Hi, you.”

  He melted. Four hands floated like butterflies in a garden, in which buttons are flowers. They cross-pollinated, opening, discarding, breathing steadily as a healthy young woman and a dive instructor can do in a daunting situation. Naked, he laid her on the bed, at the gates of kingdom come.

  Moving slower than an old boyfriend ever could, he feasted his eyes and senses. She watched with equal fervor. He resisted his own volition, savoring the moment. He twitched, prolonging the sweet agony till tides could wait no more. In a moment, the world would be his. Why would a man so wealthy need to rush?

  So he gazed, not meaning to ask where she’d been. He meant to bemoan his days and nights without her, the distraction of it and, oh, his tarnished image on board because of errors—but it came out wrong. “Where were you?” It sounded like jealousy.

  “Oh, God! You’re not jealous?”

  “No. I don’t get jealous.”

  “What? You don’t get jealous?”

  “I told you: I don’t get jealous.” He shrugged to prove it. The delay in physical contact got strained but felt necessary. He stared up. “I’ve never been jealous. That’s a good thing, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah. It’s the greatest…” She sat up to slump on the edge of the bed. In a monotone she said she’d been home. That was it. She’d been at her parents’ place, explaining things. They wished the newlyweds well and hoped for a long and prosperous life.

  The End.

  Except that a man so seasoned at depth doesn’t need to see a thing to feel its presence in the periphery. He sat up too. She said she also used the time to recover from an episode of… well, female things, if he must know, things of a personal nature.

  If he must know? Oh, how little he knew. Why would she leave for her period, if that’s what it was? He stood up. He looked out the window and back at her snatch, as if for clues. He looked down at the old ramrod, so rudely left alone for so many days.

  And, he might as well know, she made good use of her time by getting rid of the asshole responsible for… a major part of her problems. Or tried to get rid of him at any rate, though the incredible jerk had this sick notion that she was his property till he was good and goddamn ready to let her go, and anybody who tried to take what was his would be in for a bumpy ride on a very rough road.

  Getting rid of the asshole?

  She laughed, “What a jerk. You would not believe this guy. He can’t even talk. He says, ‘You like die?’ Like I’d hang with that lowlife forever. Like it doesn’t even matter that I’m married now. Hell-oh-oh…” She smiled in the cute, pixie persona of happier times but failed on a quiver.

  Frankly embarrassed that the woman of his dreams touched his thumper in the same sentence of disclosing a former thumper, Ravi shivered in a sudden chill. Goose bumps rose like samurai from the underbrush, as she cried out, “Look at you, with the chicken skin!” She laughed again, a small, forced laugh to salvage the difficult moment, playfully prodding the other little samurai.

  “He’s… what? Your boyfriend?”

  “Was. Fourteen years. But it’s over. It was a mistake. Hey. I’m twenty-six years old. Okay? This guy, he takes advantage when I’m only twelve. Yeah, I went along. I was mature for my age. But fourteen years? Enough already. One time, I fuck him. One. It wasn’t so good. The other times were terrible. It doesn’t work with him. He thinks he owns me. He too rough is why. I get out because I want something else. That’s why. I want you.”

  “You mean he didn’t know about me, so you had to go home to tell him we’re married?”

  “Yeah, that’s what I mean. I tell him every time. I mean, not married every time. You the only one so far, married and all. Still every time he get all huff and puff, want to blow away whodaguy.”

  “Whodaguy?”

  “Yeah. This time, you da guy. Hey. No worries. He been saying that for years.”

  “You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend.”

  “I don’t. I told you. I used to. You never have one girlfriend?”

  “Why are you talking differently?”

  “Pshh. Because. I been around that guy. That’s why—hey. You been taking steroids?” She addressed the thick-necked, muscle-bound bully in her hand, which she coddled and coaxed toward testimony one more time in the face of rigorous cross-examination.

  “So what? He wants to… make trouble?”

  “He won’t do nothing. He’s my cousin, D
arryl. My uncle would kill him. My mother too. I always look up to him in school and what not, but I got so sick of him. He’s crazy. I been done with him since high school. Eight years already. Besides, we married already!”

  “He wants to shoot me?”

  “All talk. Listen. You the one. You different, Ravi. I love you. I want you to be strong. Look at you. Look how strong you are.”

  She’d spoken Standard English, with a subject and verb for each sentence. She’d displayed proper grammar, syntax, diction, and enunciation. Yet she receded to pidgin security. Pidgin is jumbled slang with marginal meaning. Pidgin communicated on da kine. Ravi asked, “Can you please stop talking like that?”

  She laughed, “Ah dunno.”

  He went mum, remembering that marriage is forever. She saw and tried to take them back to lovely times, as if the physical could preclude the regretful. But it could not. What had seemed heaven sent got reduced to wrinkled foreheads. He asked. “You tell him every time?” Skinny complained from the dresser, as if to remind. It’s not like I didn’t tell you. Yet she too sympathized for the fools before her.

  Ravi shook his head and lost the loving feeling.

  “No you didn’t.” He meant that Skinny had said no such thing, that sweetness and light had fooled them both. The strange woman between them moaned, so the pathos between them could give in to the old pleasures. She peered up, but the kaleidoscope refracted the scene to broken glass and nothing more.

  So a mover and a shaker in the charter community pondered his afternoon agenda and how to send this date down the road. She’d stayed longer than most. That’s what a pretty face can do. Maybe he could begin that evening, charting a future. Who was that guy, who’d felt eternal bonding in a world turning perfectly at last?

  Married? Fuck.

  So the world turned back from light and magic to mundane reality. Shadows stretched over the garden, where nothing took root. No more butterflies and gentle pollination. No more mystery and metaphor, where buttons were flowers. A tiptoe through the tulips was just another jizz fest—a great one at that, though a bit heavy on sentiment. The guys laughed that women were all the same once upside down. Ravi had thought different, especially this one.

  Then love ended, like life. The woman looked up with a swollen smile to watch his Pyrrhic victory, to see the difference between sweet agony and agonizing loss, and she moaned again.

  That was some pent-up mustard. But what did she expect, and why on God’s blue earth would she tell the ex-boyfriend about a marriage? Would she tell the ex everything, as if the ex didn’t know? So he asked again, “Why did you do that?”

  Glancing at the window, she asked, “You can make more, can’t you?” She underscored her familiarity with manly function, not that Ravi Rockulz would begrudge a beautiful woman her frolicking past. But this was different. This woman was his…

  Yes, many sexual helpers were married or had boyfriends. This was different, with spirit and intimacy—not like that nutcase Marcia who swore she’d keep sucking him off till they were eighty—or ninety! Because she loved him sooo much. This wasn’t like that! Minna had a reason to tell her Cousin Darryl about her husband. Maybe telling the cousin was revenge. Some women need to hurt the macho men who “own” them.

  Or maybe she wanted to egg him on.

  Some women need to win the macho game. Whatever; the beautiful wave collapsed on a strange woman he did not know.

  “Oh, God!” she said when a rattle-bucket truck roared up and screeched to a halt. Ravi peaked out at the goofy truck four feet off the ground on mongo tires, with two big trannies, sixteen shocks and a fortune in silly hardware chromed or painted red or yellow. Springs, shafts, gizmos, padlocks, exhaust trumpets, U-joints, and the works. Jumping to the ground, a swarthy man with a Fu Manchu, a potbelly, and a handgun, looked around for signs of life.

  “You little cunt! I’ll kill every bone in your body!” He fired a round in the air.

  She whispered, “Sh. He’s so stupid. He’ll never find us. What’s he going to do, knock on the door?”

  Ravi whispered back, “Why are you whispering then?”

  She giggled. “Sh. God. You think you’re jealous. He’s insane.”

  It was fun, but it wasn’t. “At least I’m not haole.”

  “Hey. You know what? I wouldn’t go out to tell him that. Okay? Aw, shit! Look! No wonder he get so mad. His windows all webbed.”

  Besides that, the irate ex then bellowed like a sad animal, “Our son needs you!”

  My Hero, I Mean, You Know?

  Wait a minute.

  “Webbed” was slang for glass that’s been fractured by a hard object. Webbing had displaced keying as de rigueur in minor vandalism. Breaking a window or windshield seemed just as hateful as trashing a paint job and more practical. Most cruisers could take a key down either side to no noticeable effect. Who cared? She still run.

  But go broke da windows. For starters, the glass dribbles out in little pieces. Besides that, if a thief breaks in, and you get robbed, that goes to shit happens. No big deal. But webbing means you did somebody wrong. A webbed window means revenge.

  Minna Somayan’s cousin Darryl couldn’t be certain if the guy who went webbing his windows was the dude on the bicycle whose ear he barely tickled with the side mirror, or was it that skinny haole suck wen try fuck his woman? Hey, that bicycle guy was just for fun, and hey, the mirror missed, not even one little tickle. It was the haole suck, he knew it because of seeing the guy walk to the place where Minna guys like go for coffee and stuff and then mumbling so the guy can hear him, You fockeen haole suck. Then he go inside for find the bitch and set her straight but she not there yet, and then he go back out not ten minutes later, get all webbed already.

  Ravi remembered Darryl too and his truck and reaching the windows with his back scratcher, which wasn’t a back scratcher but a billy club.

  Danny Blackwell gave him the billy when he quit sport fishing. Danny wasn’t even thirty and could name the boat he wanted to work on because he knew the currents, tides, shoal water, lures, baits, combos, seasonal changes, what birds worked what fish and what birds lied, hooking, gaffing and boating a fish, any fish. It ended one morning at five. Danny didn’t give notice but took his billy club and faded like a big one into the depths or what was left of the night. He didn’t want the billy club but didn’t want it clubbing the snot out of another fish, either.

  Farther down the dock, he told Ravi that he had a dream starting around midnight, with this big blue marlin swimming up alongside eye to eye and not saying anything but cruising for hours. It had to be the marlin he’d killed the day before—not a record, but a big sumbitch, six-fifty, seven hundred pounds. The deck ran red. “This fat fucker’d been shooting orders all morning, like I was his boy. That’s okay. You know it’s the fat fuckers tip good cause you took their shit. Anyway, this marlin came on playful, batting the bait, teasing us, like it was time for water polo, not fishing. The fat guy missed three times, so I took the rod and set the hook for him. He reeled for a minute and turned purple, so I got the fish to the boat. Took an hour or so, and the fish didn’t look too good, not ashy gray like they get but not much gold or green or blue left. But some, so he might have made it if the sharks weren’t around. Didn’t see any, but you don’t know. So I was ready for the measure and release happy horseshit they go through, and the guy yells, ‘Put him in the boat!’ I stood there looking at him, but it’s his nickel, and he wanted a murder one, so the fish came on board with my regular expertise, quick and safe, nobody stabbed with the bill or crushed underneath. Usually I can take a fish out with a few good shots.”

  Danny hefted the billy club.

  “But this fish didn’t want to go. And the fat fucker starts yelling where to hit him, and not so hard because he wants it to last so he can take more pictures. I killed the fish quick. I wish I’d killed that fat bastard. I wouldn’t feel so bad today, I can promise you that.”

  Danny Blackwell frowned like a
child on the verge of tears, shaking his head and blurting. “It ain’t even tired. It’s what I seen about that fish and that fat fucker. Man, that fish was my brother, and that fat fucker… that fat fucker…”

  “The fish seemed more worthy of living than the angler. I believe he had a better life,” Ravi said.

  “Yeah, man. That’s it. I’m done. I don’t want to… I won’t…”

  “Hey, Danny.” Ravi took the billy club. “You did great, man. That fish didn’t die for nothing. Think of the great fish out there that your fish saved by showing you what was up.”

  Danny Blackwell tried to see this greatness but could not, just as Ravi could not see why he got the billy club. Danny calmed down and said: “You’re from Israel. You’ll know what to do with it.” Ravi nearly made a joke about clubbing Jew baits, but he held back; the moment seemed so adequately resolved. So Danny added, “Whack some assholes with it.”

  Ravi laughed, “The world’s got way too many assholes for me to make a dent.”

  Danny liked that. “Hey, man, you’ll know what to do.”

  Ravi heard it before: Send in the Israelis. They know what to do. He didn’t respond because he knew what to do—learned what to do in military training from age fourteen in the Sayeret Matkal. A boy or man is scared shitless, dropping from a chopper forty feet over the Red Sea a few miles from Eilat. After so many times, fear becomes a petty anxiety. Training missions were good for that.

  Training taught him that reason rules the survivor’s mind. Emotion kills. A military stealth diver learns practicality—nothing personal, just business. Every mission needs a method. Adding emotion was like smoking near a fuel tank, not a behavior of the naturally selected. Nobody gets revenge.

  Danny Blackwell quit fishing five or six years ago, and the back scratcher proved handy for webbing. Why would a guy carry the back scratcher to coffee and Danish? Ravi wondered on his way out and picked up the back scratcher because having a thing on hand often precludes a need. And he felt ready to out-asshole the best of them. Hey, it was a game, harmless and playful and maybe useful. It scratched an itch now and then. So he looked both ways before crossing, then whacked a starburst. It felt like a little bang in his universe, and he felt better than usual and knew why.