Shit. I had my own woes, I didn’t need WOE. “I can’t,” I moaned. “My house is under water.”
“That’s the worst excuse you’ve ever come up with. It’s not raining, and you live on top of a mountain.”
“It’s a long story, Jan. Go on without me.”
“Nope. Get up and get down here. Now!”
“What time are you leaving?”
“We, Hetta. We are leaving at ten.”
“Oh, what the hell, I’ll try. If I’m late, go on ahead. I’ll see you at the club later.”
I hung up and tried to think of something, anything, positive about the past twenty-four hours. The only thing I could come up with was I’d been too cheap to re-carpet RJ’s abode after the renters trashed it.
By the time the alarm guy arrived, RJ’s bedroom was all relatively dry, so I loaded up RJ and left Mr. Home Security to work his magic. I arrived at Jack London Yacht Club just in time to see the transom of Frank’s boat, Elegant Lady, motoring away, Jan at the helm.
“You having brunch?” Paul asked. I wondered when the bartender slept, since it seemed no matter what time of day or night I was at the club, so was he.
I yawned and slipped my sunglasses onto my head. “I might as well, since my ship saileth without me.” Just like my life these days.
“Then the mimosas are free.”
“In that case, I’m buying,” a deep voice said from behind me.
I turned to meet watery gray eyes. Garrison, of Sea Cock renown. His longish, steely hair was wind tossed, his clothes yachtish. Tanned boyish features and an easy grin almost masked telltale dissipation. Almost. I knows a rascal when I sees one, matey.
“Remember me?” he asked, slipping onto the barstool next to me.
“Yep. Berkeley. Almost didn’t recognize you without your boat.”
“You’re Hetta, right?”
I nodded and sipped my drink. Paul hovered. I declared it the best mimosa I’d ever tasted. He beamed and said he’d give me the recipe.
“Hetta’s strange in this day and age,” Garrison said.
“Beg your pardon?” How in the hell did he know I was strange? He’d only just met me.
“Is it a family name?” His smile was friendly, his tone conversational. Nothing in his manner bespoke come-on, but I smelled one.
“Oh. Yep, my great grandmother. She left me her shotgun, too.”
“I consider myself warned.” He laughed. A nice laugh, but a lit-tle practiced. “Are you a new WOEie?”
For a moment I wasn’t sure. Was I?
“I guess I am. Sort of. They want you to take two sails before you officially sign up. I have a temporary club card, but unfortunately missed my boat because I had a few problems at home and ran late. Are you a member here, Garrison?”
“Yep,” he pointed to a picture of himself, sporting dark brown hair, on the wall above the bar. “I was Commodore a while back. Tell you what. If you’ll agree to join me for brunch now and then later for a drink, I’ll ferry you out to catch your boatload of women. I can overtake them with one engine tied behind my back.”
He wasn’t jist awolfin’, as we say back home. In a little under two hours, I was being transferred from Sea Cock to Elegant Lady. There had to be something Freudian there, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Jan was impressed I’d finally made it and I was impressed that she, unlike me, seemed none the worse for our evening careen across the Bay Bridge with a mad man. I looked up at that very bridge and pictured a Porsche dropping onto us.
“Welcome aboard,” Frank said with a smile. We waved good-bye to Garrison as Sea Cock belched diesel fumes and roared off.
“Stinkpot,” one of the WOEies grumbled.
“Is Garrison that bad?” I asked.
She grinned. “Not Garrison. His boat. Real boaters don’t need no stinkin’ engines. We sailors call powerboats stinkpots. And as for Garrison, he’s kinda the club Don Juan, but basically harmless. Let me guess. If he brought you out to catch us, you probably agreed to have a drink with him when we get back to the club?”
“Yep.”
Another woman chuckled. “Has he gotten to the cocktail cruise part?”
I barked a laugh. “There was mention.”
The women traded knowing looks. There was more information to be garnered here, but I didn’t have time to delve, for we were told to ready ourselves. Elegant Lady was about to round Treasure Island and enter the “slot.”
For years, and from the safety of a waterfront table at our favorite Berkeley grazing ground, Jan and I had stared down the “slot” while brunching. Afforded an unobstructed view straight out the Golden Gate Bridge to the Pacific Ocean, we had especially relished those days when waves pounded against the breakwater below the plate glass windows, rocking the building and salting the windows. We had not known that alleyway of water in front of us even had a name. Now I was told it was called the “slot.” Slot, schmot. So what?
“Get ready,” Frank warned as the boat left the protection of Treasure Island.
Forewarned is not necessarily forearmed. At least not in my case. Elegant Lady, Frank’s thirty-eight foot sailboat “manned” by a six-woman, relatively inexperienced crew, cleared the protection of the island and fell over. I later learned the nautical term for what we did, but as far as I was concerned, the damned boat fell over. Quite inelegantly. Back at the clubhouse later I was told we almost broached.
Broach: To incline suddenly windward, so as to lay the sails aback and expose the vessel to the danger of oversetting.
Ain’t that the truth? I also learned that brunching is far superior to broaching.
When we broached, water poured over the rails and into the cockpit, chilling my feet and soul. Then, when I was certain we were going over, the boat righted slightly and began to lurch—probably not a nautical term, either—from one wave top to another. Lucky for me, my stomach didn’t lurch with it. I don’t get air, car, or seasick easily, but my fellow sailorettes weren’t so fortunate. I made sure I stayed upwind.
I’d seen the Americas Cup on television. Even admired those hardy souls who braved stinging salt spray and bodily injury to compete for the coveted trophy. But it never occurred to me that that was sailing. Sailing was sitting in the cockpit sipping martinis, like the boat brochures showed. I planned to sue for broach of promise.
And even though I am an engineer and I know, on an intellectual level, that the keel of a sailboat is weighted with thousands of pounds of lead to keep it from turning turtle, I was absolutely certain we were going to go tits up. I huddled and cursed.
Frank, who seemed to be having a grand old time dodging sea and lady spit, finally noticed I wasn’t tossing my cookies like the others and bribed me into reluctant service with the promise of a cold beer.
“Keep the sails full,” he said, turning the wheel over to me and going below for beer. Jan was down to dry heaves, but when she saw me take the helm, she found something more in her stomach.
Three beers, four broken nails, one minor head wound, and several boat bites later, I hauled my sleep deprived, salt encrusted body off the boat, said something ungracious, and stomped to the yacht club bar. Garrison, as promised, waited.
“Have a good sail?” he asked.
“Is there such a thing?” I growled.
“Not as far as I’m concerned. Tell you what, why don’t I take you for a nice quiet dinner on the estuary later?”
“Thanks, but I’ve had about all the saltwater I can take for one day. Besides, I’ve got to take Jan home, then get back to my home because...never mind, it’s a long story.”
“Where does Jan live?”
“The City.”
“Why don’t I take you for a nice quiet dinner in the City? We can drop Jan off.”
“The logistics and my mood are all wrong for tonight, Garrison. Can I get a rain check?”
“Sure,” he said, barely covering his chagrin. “As long as it’s for tomorrow evening.”
Too tired to protest, I capitulated. Besides, I like a man with persistence.
As I drove Jan home, she caught me up on what happened with Lars and his Porsche after I threw my full-blown, Texas hissy fit and demanded to be let out of the trashed car at the Bay Bridge toll plaza. Jan had refused to leave with me, but insisted they stand by until RJ and I were entrenched in the relative safety of a Yellow Cab. And was Jan at all put off by her late-night ride with Dr. Death? Nope, she was smitten with the lunatic.
“Lars is so much fun, Hetta,” she gushed. “You know, he drove his poor ole car all the way across Alameda, right into his driveway and he wasn’t even upset. I mean, it’s a really expensive car and he laughed it off. Most guys would have been beside themselves.”
“Most guys have at least a modicum, a tiny soupçon, of common sense. Not that Lars isn’t common. And that brother! He acted as though we were out for a Sunday stroll in the park. Did he ever say anything at all?”
“Jenks said Lars was nuts and, even though his brother was goaded into doing something so dumb, he’d probably never ride with him again.”
“So, at least one of them has some...wait a minute. Goaded?”
“Hetta, you did say it was a nice car,” Jan said primly.
“Listen to me, Miss Prissy Britches, only a psychopath would construe a compliment for his car as an invitation to commit vehicular suicide. Homicide. Whatever. It was my fault a demonic drunk stomped the accelerator on a curve and trashed his car, almost killing us all? There’s some kind of genetic defect in that family.”
“Jenks didn’t exactly say it was all your fault. He said to tell you not to egg Lars on.”
“Why are we suddenly so buddy-buddy with Bob, and since when are we calling him Jenks?” I demanded, using the royal we.
“Jenks is Bob’s nickname. You can call him that.”
“I don’t plan to call him anything. I have absolutely no intention of ever seeing or speaking to Lars, or his brother, old whatchamacallit, again as long as I live. Which, I figure, will be longer the further away I stay from your bilge brothers.”
17
I was looking forward to dinner with Garrison, even though it smacked of being a date. I don’t date. I hate real dates. I rationalized that since I was driving my own car to his boat, not waiting at home for my escort while nervously primping in the mirror like a teenybopper on prom night, it wasn’t a real date. Not that I ever had a prom night date. Boys, made apprehensive by my viperous tongue, preferred palling around with me and going steady with others. Even if someone had asked me to the prom, I’m sure I would have hated it.
Throughout singledom, anything resembling a date had seldom worked out. Actually, never worked out. Date hate was deeply ingrained in me, but I figured a quiet little dinner for two would be harmless enough, so long as Garrison didn’t expect me as his just dessert.
Sea Cock rocked gently alongside the yacht club dock, the velvety croon of Sinatra wafting from her deck speakers. I stood alongside—I was quickly picking up nautical speak—looking for the doorbell. Okay, so I’m not that quick a study. Anyhow, I heard my name called from above.
“Hetta,” Garrison yelled from a yacht club window, “go on aboard. Get a beer or some wine, whatever. I’ll be right there.” The club was officially closed on Monday nights, but I could hear the slap of Liar’s Dice cups through the open window. Every member had a key and the bar was open on a members only, write down your drinks and pay later policy, an honor system which more or less worked. Mostly less.
Settling into a deck chair on the aft cockpit, I watched tourists in Jack London Square watching me. It felt good, sitting there on the back deck of a large yacht, wondering what the poor people of the world were doing this beautiful evening. Then I remembered I was aboard a boat named Sea Cock and my smugness dissolved.
Through the open yacht club windows above, I could make out and hear shadowy figures slamming dice cups on the bar. Garrison, the only person I could actually see, waved between rounds to let me know he was almost finished playing.
He was, I thought for the second time in two days, handsome in a yachtie kind of way. Yachtsmen always get enough sun to make them look healthier than your run of the gin mill drunks, whose neon pallor is evidence of too much time spent basking in the glow of beer signs.
Garrison was a libertine, I knew, but it didn’t bother me. Knowing what he was gave me one up on him. Through vast experience, I knew exactly what to expect. He didn’t know it yet, but I had no intention of becoming another notch in Garrison-poo’s transom. I fiddled with Hudson’s key hanging around my neck as a reminder, and wondered, for the millionth time, what it would unlock. I had half a mind to jump a plane, spend money I could ill afford, to find out.
A creaking ramp and loud laughs and voices preceded Garrison’s arrival at the boat. I turned to greet him and saw Lars and that Bob person trailing behind him. So much for my vow never to lay eyes on the Jenkins brothers ever again.
“Hetta, I think you’ve met Lars and Jenks,” Garrison said.
“Oh, yes indeedy I have. We recently spent a horrible night together,” I told him. Garrison looked puzzled, so I guess his best buds hadn’t told him of the night of the Porsche. I nodded in greeting and added, “Good evening, gentlemen. You too, Lars.”
Garrison, not knowing what else to do, shrugged. “Oh, yeah, right. Anyhow, I know I said we were going to have a quiet dinner, but we were playing dice, and I invited them to join us. You don’t mind do you?”
“It depends. Who’s driving?” I asked in a waspish tone.
Lars scowled at me under his bushy eyebrows, but Jenks grinned. And in spite of my former resolve to eschew the company of the brothers Jenkins, the evening turned into a pleasant outing. We cruised over to Pier 39, picked up Jan and then voyaged on to Sausalito for dinner.
Garrison, very attentive and charming, monopolized my time. He left the operation of the boat to Jenks so he and Lars could drink and flirt with me and Jan. Only at the dinner table was our little ménage à cinq all thrown together. After Jenks finished grousing about the upscale prices, the conversation leaned towards car repairs, the rising cost of car insurance—go figure— and then meandered on to yacht club gossip. While I enjoyed both the gossip and the dinner, most of all I was delighted by the fact that we smoothly crossed San Francisco Bay and I didn’t lose a single nail. Or sustain a head injury.
When we docked back at the yacht club, Jenks departed immediately, then Jan and Lars said they were leaving as well, which was my cue to vamoose lest I be left alone with the increasingly amorous Garrison.
Faking an overly dramatic yawn, I asked Jan and Lars to wait up and walk me to my car, as it was dark in the parking lot. And it was Oakland. Then, to be polite, I added, “Unless you’re ready to leave now, too, Garrison.”
Garrison didn’t look pleased, but couldn’t figure a way to gracefully turn the situation to his advantage. “I’m not going anywhere, Hetta. I live here.”
“Here?”
“On the boat.”
“You can live on a boat? You don’t have a house or anything?”
“Nope. It’s home sweet boat for me.”
“Wow,” was all I could say. All the way home I thought about this revelation. Wow. Living on a boat, full time, on the water. Water that didn’t smell like sewage, which is what my house still smelled like when I got home.
The GITROOT folks had removed a blameful tree root from my sewage pipes for a mere six hundred dollars, the plumber returned for his sump pump and finished repairing the house pipes to the tune of five hundred. Because I had left the garage door open all day and run fans to dry out the ground floor, the stench was diminishing. Of course, I would have to repaint and partially drywall and plaster the downstairs bedroom walls, definitely put in new carpet or refinish the wood floor, and—God, would it never end?
RJ charged into the living room as soon as I unbolted the door to downstairs. Being relegated to guard duty for the
past few hours, even though it was his job, had put him in a snit. He whined and growled his displeasure, even refusing a chunk of prime rib I pulled from a doggie bag as a peace offering. An all-time first. He was doggone mad, I tell you.
By the time I crawled into my bed, RJ had quit bitching and was snoring softly in his. It worried me a little that he was so tired after an evening of confinement. And that he had turned down prime rib. Maybe he was pouting. I didn’t ponder his surliness long, for I was lulled to sleep by the aftereffects of my evening cruise.
The bed gently swayed, as though riding on bay swells, rocking me like I’m sure my mother did so many years ago. It was better than Valium. I slept sounder than I had in years and woke up with a fairly decent outlook on life for the first time in weeks.
Just Add Water (Hetta Coffey Mystery Series (Book 1)) Page 10
