Beware the Mermaids Page 8

  “Nancy Hadley. The last time I saw you, I only had two ex-wives and three kids! Ah, the good ole days.”

  Brad was the quintessential California beach boy all grown up. He had an easy, laid-back vibe about him, a natural charm that made women feel comfortable and men unthreatened. His blond hair was permanently tousled, as if he had just stepped off a yacht, and his skin was perpetually tanned. He also had an encyclopedic knowledge of boats. Sail, motor, historic vessels, aft cabins, racers—he knew who’d built them, who’d designed them, who sailed them, even the best years to purchase or sell them. Learning about yachts had been his love from boyhood, and now buying and selling them had cemented his stellar reputation in Southern California—not to mention it had secured him a very handsome living.

  “I’ll take a Cazadores with two limes, Doris,” Brad said to the bartender, who nodded rather affectionately at him. “Where’s Rog?” he asked Nancy.

  She vaguely remembered his love of tequila. “Well, you’ll be the first person I tell outside my best friends, but Roger and I are separated.”

  “Whoa.” Brad looked at her a minute, then did his shot of tequila, squeezed both limes into his mouth, and shook his head. “I did not see that coming.”

  “You’re not alone there.”

  “So, I take it this wasn’t some slow decline from lovers to roommates to strangers but a rather more dramatic ending?”

  “Yes, something like that.”

  “Dirtbag,” Doris muttered from the other end of the bar, where she was cleaning dirty bar glasses.

  “I’m sorry, Nance. It’s gotta be tough. You guys have spent most of your lives together, right?”

  “Thirty-six years,” Nancy said, then downed her entire drink. “One more, please, Doris.”

  “So, I take it you’re looking to sell Bucephalus? Because I can have three buyers lined up tomorrow.”

  Doris delivered Nancy’s drink in record time and added, “On the house.” Nancy took it as an empathy drink, on the sisterhood.

  “Actually, I’m here because I want to buy a boat. Something I can live on—and race on.”

  “Oh, I see,” Brad said, as he accidentally knocked his tequila glass over. He took a minute and looked at the bar. Then he asked, “Are you sure you want to live in a marina? Most marinas are filled with nothing but men. Crabby old men to boot. Old salts, divorcees, and loners. Some pervs, even. A woman living on a boat in a marina is a truly rare thing.”

  Doris delivered another shot of tequila for Brad and said, “Goddamn refreshing, if you ask me.” She went back to cleaning her bar glasses.

  “I know it’s unusual. But my best friends and I are going in on this plan together. Granted, I’ll be living on it by myself, but I have a pretty ferocious cat.”

  Brad just looked at her.

  “And I’ll buy a Taser. For the pervs.”

  Brad took a swig of his tequila but didn’t say anything.

  Nancy suddenly seemed unsure, as if the whole notion was batshit crazy. Maybe this wasn’t smart; maybe it was foolhardy and steeped in revenge instead of reason. Maybe she should stay at Ruthie’s until she could move into Bali Hai Gardens, where potluck dinners served as hunting grounds for lonely tenants.

  Brad must have read her uncertain expression, because he interrupted her momentary anxiety spasm. Finally smiling, he said, “I think it’s brilliant.” Nancy looked up at him and held her breath. He continued, “I was just thinking about who I know in King Harbor marina that lives aboard. Someone who I trust that could look out for you. But honestly, I think you’ll be fine, Nancy. You’re one of the best sailors I’ve ever had the pleasure to crew with. If anyone can do this, you can. Plus, you have your friends. But buy that Taser, just in case.”

  “It’s about time those boys in the marina had a woman in their midst,” Doris piped up. “If you need advice on Tasers, I know a guy. Also, good to have one of these.” Doris produced an aluminum baseball bat from somewhere behind the bar and gripped it with two hands.

  “Thank you, Doris. Good tip.” Nancy smiled at her.

  “You got it, Tootsie.”

  Nancy looked at Brad and raised her glass. Brad toasted. “To your great new adventure.”

  With that, Nancy and Brad got down to brass tacks. They talked budget, appropriate beam width, which boats had the least displacement so they’d run fast, and which boats had the highest livability factor. Brad took quick notes on his iPhone.

  Finally, he put his phone down. “Okay! I think I’ve got all I need. I’ll have several boats for you to see in two days. Either here or in Long Beach, or possibly up in the South Bay.”

  “Whoa, that seems fast,” Nancy said, a hint of uncertainty in her voice. But then she swallowed hard, tightened her grip on her glass, and said with a bit more confidence than she felt, “Perfect.”

  * * *

  Two days later, Nancy waited on the landing that led down to the docks in Port Royal Marina. She instinctively gripped her purse tightly to her body to protect the enormous check inside. She was meeting Brad at the Port Royal Yacht Club, just south of the King Harbor Yacht Club where Bucephalus was moored. But as close as the two neighboring yacht clubs were in geographical terms, Port Royal was light-years away in status. Though its charter didn’t exactly state so, it was widely known as the “new money” marina. Instead of the old salts and colorful characters who haunted the King Harbor side, Port Royal’s slips were filled with gleaming, ultraexpensive yachts owned by tech millionaires from Silicon Beach a mere eight miles north. They were young, slick, and shiny. And so were their boats.

  So, when Brad led her down to a rather shoddy thirty-four-foot Catalina, Nancy was surprised to see such a humble boat in the nouveau riche marina. The vessel was structurally in good shape, but the paint was fading and chipped in places. Her sails were old and yellowed. This boat stuck out like a cotton-topped grandmother at a rave. On the transom, she could see the faded named. It read Gypsea.

  “What gives?” Nancy asked.

  “The owner of the Gypsea is the last holdout in Port Royal. He tried to fight the good fight against the tech-startup crowd, but I think he’s just had enough. Between the ever-present smell of avocado toast and the reckless disregard for basic sailing etiquette by the entitled Millennials, he’s opting out. He bought a one-way ticket to Florida, where he put in an offer on a fishing boat in the Keys. It’s a contingency buy, which means he can’t close on his new boat until he sells this one. So, he’s motivated.”

  Nancy stepped up onto the deck of the Gypsea and made her way to the cockpit. The cushions were cracked and old, but the navigation equipment was newer and well maintained.

  “Everything that matters has been updated,” Brad told her. “The Yanmar diesel engine has just been rebuilt, there’s new navigation tech up front and down below, and all eleven batteries were replaced last month. You could probably use a new cooktop, because I doubt it’s been used since the early nineties.”

  Nancy headed below to inspect the galley, salon, and other living quarters. To her right was an L-shaped galley with a sink, a rusty cooktop, and a refrigerator. She checked to make sure the fridge worked. It was cool and clean inside. Then she made her way to the head and pumped the toilet twice to make sure the nauseating smell of septic flowback didn’t permeate the boat. Smelled fresh. She turned on the shower to check water pressure, opened and closed every single hatch and window on the boat to make sure they sealed properly. The cabinets all looked to be in workable shape, nothing a little paint couldn’t spiff up. The aft cabin was serviceable, although the cushions needed replacing. The only real concerns she had were the quality of the aging sails, the paint job, and the cooktop, of course. But in the big scheme of things, those were small details. She liked it. When she opened the starboard cabinet in the main berth, hanging inside, nailed to the door, was a brass sign that read Warning: Mermaids. Nancy smiled and took it as a good omen.

  When she came up from the salon, Brad was waiting f
or her, seated in one of the captain’s chairs at the stern of the boat, his blond hair tousling easily in the breeze.

  “What do you think?”

  “Well, if he could come down about five grand in price, that would leave me enough money to replace the sails, the cushions, and even put a spinnaker on.”

  Brad nodded. “Seems reasonable. I’ll see what I can do.” He hopped off the captain’s chair and clapped his hands once. “Excellent. I’ll make a call.”

  Nancy remained in the cockpit.

  She moved behind the ship’s wheel. She grabbed it with both hands and looked out over the water, as if already sailing, and took a deep breath. How long had it been since she’d made a decision completely on her own? Years? Decades? Ever? In her marriage, consultation and compromise had been a daily, unending slog, whether it was over what to have for dinner or where to go on vacation, with neither party ending up entirely happy about the result. But not today. Nancy was the sole decision-maker. It was both empowering and wildly nerve-racking. So much could go wrong. She took another deep breath, closed her eyes, and searched her gut. Not her head, where cold, hard reason reigned, nor her heart, where emotion and fear beat a steady drum, but her gut. Her gut was never wrong. She opened her eyes, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, she stood behind the wheel of her boat and everything felt right.

  Brad came jogging back down the dock and jumped effortlessly onto the deck of the boat. He saw Nancy standing behind the wheel.

  “You look like you belong there.” He smiled, then added, “I told you he was motivated. I got it for ten grand less than what he was asking. Sixty grand. As long as we can have a check today, it’s a done deal.”

  “I have a cashier’s check for seventy in my purse.”

  “You’re not messing around! Great. Once I get the all clear from you, I’ll deposit it, pay the owner so he can catch his flight to Key West tomorrow, and transfer the extra ten grand back to you by end of business tomorrow. I’ll also email you the contact info for the best sail guys on the West Coast,” Brad said. He added, “Nancy, I think you’ve found yourself a fine boat.”

  * * *

  It was two hours before sunset, and Nancy stood on the dock in Port Royal in front of her new boat. Brad handed her the boat keys attached to a float key chain in the shape of a seahorse.

  “This is really happening,” Nancy said as she took the keys.

  Brad produced a bottle of unopened Veuve Clicquot champagne.

  “For when you christen her.” He smiled and handed the bottle to her.

  She was so grateful for Brad’s help in making this happen that tears sprung to her eyes, but no words came out.

  Brad smiled at her and then gave her a strong, reassuring hug.

  “You’re going to do great, kid,” he said. He was at least ten years younger than Nancy, but she took it as a term of endearment, which had the cheerful effect of making her feel giddy as a kid.

  “Thank you, Brad.”

  “Bah, it’s nothing for my new favorite client. Okay, I’m going to get outa here and let you get going. I expect an invite to sail soon!”

  “You bet,” she said. “One more thing, Brad, I hope you don’t catch hell from Roger for helping me.”

  “Ah, a smart pirate never tells his secrets.” He smiled and walked down the dock. She watched him jog off in the direction of his car.

  It was time.

  Nancy threw off the bow lines of her thirty-four-foot Catalina, raised the mainsail, eased her way out of the slip in Port Royal, and quietly motored out into the channel. All she had to do was head over to the King Harbor side of the marina, where her new slip waited. Brad had acquired it as part of the deal. She decided to take a slight detour and turned left for a short sail along the coast of Redondo Beach to Palos Verdes. She wanted to get a feel for her new boat and how it sailed. As the Gypsea motored parallel to the break wall, Nancy readied the lines to unfurl the jib once she hit open water.

  As she passed the harbor entrance buoy, the seals who were napping and sunning themselves barked loudly. Nancy let out the jib and killed the engine just as a warm gust of wind filled her sails. The boat heeled to one side, and she felt the Gypsea settle into a steady and confident course. For a brief moment, she and her boat were all there was. Just her, the wind, and the water. There was no Roger, no divorce, no pain, or grief, or fear. There was only the power within her and the power of nature. They seemed symbiotic, working and shifting together seamlessly. She felt the warmth of the fading sun on her face, the wind gliding over her deck, the tension in the lines that held the sails, and the salt water spraying her cheeks. She easily reached Point Vicente and decided to tack and head back toward her harbor, her new home. She let loose the jib against the wind, turned the wheel to come about, and tightened the jib to catch the wind back home. While it wasn’t totally flawless, Nancy gave herself a B-plus for having done it alone.

  On her way back, she was rewarded with some company. She looked up at the mainsail to discover a small monarch butterfly fluttering alongside her, keeping pace. The butterfly was way too far from land, and Nancy could think of no logical explanation for how this lone, fragile butterfly had found itself way out here. But she was happy for the company.

  Once she neared the marina, the little butterfly, now safely near land, hovered above Nancy for another few seconds before flying toward shore. Nancy couldn’t help but think about her mom as she watched it go.

  Fifteen minutes later, Nancy smoothly navigated Gypsea into her new slip. Once she secured her lines and double-checked that the fenders were in place, she caught a glimpse of something at the end of her dock. It was a gift basket wrapped in blue cellophane. She hopped off and went to retrieve it. She picked it up and noticed a bottle of wine inside along with a variety of cheeses and crackers. She lifted it on board and then sat down and opened the card. It read:

  To our Skipper on her new voyage

  Love,

  Judy, Lois & Ruthie (and Otis)

  She felt high from her sail and from her new path on the water. She sat on the captain’s chair, watched the last rays of the sun gently play on the water, and toasted to her new horizon. She looked around and took a deep breath before heading back to Ruthie’s. A pelican was resting on the end of the dock, seemingly quietly observing his new neighbor.

  “I hope you like cats,” she said.

  * * *

  The next morning Nancy awoke early, brewed herself some strong black coffee in Ruthie’s kitchen, and began gathering the rest of her stuff. All together, she had two rolling suitcases, a plastic bag full of new bedding, a coffeemaker, and two bottles of rum. Suzanne the Cat sat warily, watching the flurry of activity. Once the cat was safely locked inside the confines of her carrier, Otis mustered the courage to amble over to the screen window and sniff at her as a means of saying good-bye. Suzanne hissed at him, and Otis scurried back into the safety of the bedroom. Ruthie came out of her room, rubbing her eyes and yawning.

  “You’re up early, my newly minted captain.”

  “I’m just anxious to get settled.”

  “Totally get it. You need some help?”

  Nancy smiled at her and then gave her a hug. “Nah, I got this.”

  “That’s right,” Ruthie said encouragingly. “You do.”

  Nancy gave her friend a big thumbs-up. “Call me later.”

  “Will do.”

  She pulled away from the curb and drove down Catalina Ave to the marina. Within five minutes she had pulled into King Harbor and was driving all the way down to M dock. All the docks were alphabetically appointed. She was in the last dock on the left side, which was shaped like a big horseshoe. The bright morning sun glinted off the water, and a warm, steady breeze kept the sea gulls aloft as they squawked their welcome. Nancy turned her face toward the wind and smelled the sea, a heady, glorious mixture of salt, bird poop, and engine oil. Bliss.

  Nancy fumbled with her new key card and opened the gate to t
he dock ramp below. The rumbling of the suitcase wheels on the boardwalk ramp woke up two seals who were lazily sunning themselves on the dock down by her boat slip—number thirteen. They grumpily shoved off into the water after a few barks of protest as Nancy walked up to her not-so-new, somewhat banged up but lovingly purchased 1989 Catalina sailboat. She might not be the prettiest boat in the harbor, but she was home.

  Nancy set Suzanne’s carrier down on the dock and then put one foot on the dock platform. She found it harder than she thought to hoist her heavy suitcase onto the boat. She tried once more, but her fifty-seven-year-old biceps were no match for the thirty-five pounds of clothes and gear stuffed inside. She made a final heave, but the bag slipped and the suitcase fell back down on the dock on its wheels. She tried to jump down but stumbled and landed face first as she watched the suitcase roll inexorably toward the water.

  “No!” Nancy cried.

  Just then she heard footsteps running, and in a flash she saw a large, tanned hand grab her suitcase just before it skidded off the dock.

  The figure that had saved it from a watery grave walked over and stood above her. All she saw was a warm smile blocking the bright sunlight.

  “Whoa, there, I gotcha. Take my hand,” the man said in what sounded like a faint Cuban accent. He held out a hand to help Nancy up from her fall.

  She immediately found herself face-to-face with familiar sea-green eyes that sparkled under a navy-blue tam. It was Santiago.

  Santiago was the talk of the entire female contingent of the King Harbor Yacht Club. They called him “The Marina Fox.” Rumors swirled, but the prevailing story was that he had come to America during the sixties from Havana, or Colombia, or Key West. The details were sketchy and always changing. He had allegedly been married once, lost his wife either to tragedy or betrayal, and the rest of his history was unknown. This, of course, made him a constant topic of conversation among the women, who fantasized him as an ex-pirate, a famous bootlegger, or Cuban royalty. No one knew. When he came into the club, he always sat on the same barstool by the window, and he always sat alone.