2 comments/ 8479 views/ 0 favorites Still Life in Shadow Ch. 02 By: Adrian Leverkuhn She was in her outlook a simple woman, and it had been said of her for as long as anyone on the island could remember that she had never shown an interest in men. Perhaps if I'd known that I would have been surprised by the attentions I presumed Maria Louisa paid me that first night with her. Or perhaps I would have thrown off my depression and acted on them. As I walked back to my new 'home' that night under the stars, I thought about Maria and her simple life, but I had - when I considered the notion - no context for these thoughts. Maria Louisa was a mystery to me, and, as I would soon learn, she remained so to most people on the island. I didn't know then that she was regarded by everyone in the Azores as a Saint. She could just as easily have been - so little did I know then - an alcoholic pedophile or the proverbial axe murderer. I simply did not know her. She was a terrific surgeon; that I knew, that was obvious. She was full of compassion for the sick, and people took comfort from her simple presence when she walked into their hospital room. Of more relevance to me that night, I hadn't thought of Jennifer Stinson in several days, and when I saw her on the steps outside my little hotel, I was suddenly, overwhelmingly, filled with hope. Hope? Why hope? Wasn't that an odd response to one who had been the genesis of so much discord? But that wasn't fair, was it? When I look back on it now, I suspect when I saw Jennifer there in the still night air, I saw her as a link to my immediate past, and that past had come unravelled in the cool light of day. I suppose I felt hopeful that she would ground me to that past, shield me from the discontinuity I had felt under the cold, dispassionate gaze of the stars above me on my walk home. When she ran to me, when she threw her arms around me, I felt an overwhelming release of tension inside, and I kissed her hard on the mouth and held her to my chest while she cried. I wasn't aware of my own tears for quite a while. So are the mighty fallen. Portugal is a conservative nation, a Catholic nation, and the Azores are no different from their motherland. I suspect the Innkeeper had a hard time keeping her mouth shut when I walked into the hotel with a nineteen year old girl crying on my shoulder. I could see an icy contempt replace the genial acceptance she had shown me earlier that day, and in an instant I could perceive the reality I would face if I did in fact decide to settle here. It was an unsettling reality, one I had never experienced, and it left me feeling hollow inside. I walked Jennifer up the stairs to my room, and let us in the room. It was a small space, but it looked out on the harbor, and of course I could see the Sea Witch down there moored on the breakwater. A tree was right outside the closed window, and I opened it and leaned out to pick a blossom from an offered limb and handed it to Jennifer, then I kissed her again. I couldn't feel guilty about this attachment I had to her, despite all of the entangling barbs that surrounded us. She wasn't an innocent; despite her years she had had so many meaningless affairs with men old and young by the time she graduated high school I thought - used to think - that she was something of a slut. But that wasn't true, and I knew it. That was before I came to understand the competitive nature of the new world women faced today, trying to compete in a man's world, so to speak, and I saw that Jennifer had, like so many of her generation, become hypersexual as a means of expressing her competitiveness and her insecurity with this new milieu. This affair was not, I had glibly thought, an end in and of itself. Hadn't men been doing the very same thing for eons? As women moved into the workplace and competed with men for choice promotions, why couldn't they stake out their turf in the very same way men did? It was unsettling, perhaps, to be pursued by a young woman, but in the end why was that so different from men my age chasing down young secretaries and nailing them in what was, apparently, little more than a rite of conquest, a means to an end. Maybe we were all wrong. Maybe we had forgotten what it means to really love someone. In all fairness to Jennifer, I had in the beginning thought that perhaps she was just expressing independence from her parents. A little rebellion, perhaps. Hell, I'd seen 'Blame It On Rio' more than once, and I thought I knew the score, but what had at first started as a little peccadillo rapidly blossomed into a full-fledged emotional experience of the most import to me. Let's be adventurous and call it love. Sailing, I've heard, does that . . . the shared experience of the journey, the perils, the emotional highs . . . all of these contributed to the experience, I'm sure, but something more developed between us, something quite intense flowered in the belly of the Sea Witch. So, let's not mention that I'd been living with the 'Ice Queen' for the past twenty five years, and that it had been more than ten years since my loving wife expressed even a mild interest in me. And come to think of it, learning from friends that she wasn't having any trouble making it with the tennis pro at the Country Club didn't predispose me to heightened sexual discretion on this trip, now, did it? The thought took me back to an old Burt Lancaster movie called The Running Man. Life is full of so many painful ironies. How many middle-aged men start off an indiscretion with the words "my wife just doesn't understand me . . ." Yes, it's a cliché, and a ponderously bad one at that. But how many indiscretions begin with the daughter of a best friend, with a young woman who has seen your marriage unfolding in all of it's worthless glory? How many such affairs begin in an exultation of narcissistic rage, only to move forward as a sigh would accompany the inevitable hands of release that have come to claim their rightful place in the world? ________________________________ I don't know why, but Jennifer and I didn't make love that night. We talked. How very strange it is to just talk when lust has been the language of choice. Harry and Trina had laid into her viciously after my departure, and Jennifer as much as told them that the entire affair had been her doing. I couldn't believe she had said that; it wasn't even close to being true, but I guess she wanted to protect me, protect my friendship with her father. We had, after all, been the two constants in her life - for all of her life. As these trajectories came into conflict during the day, Jennifer had exploded at her mother, then gathered her belongings and left the boat. No one had followed her, her father and mother simply let her go, and in her confusion she had at one point in the afternoon felt like taking her own life. She eventually made her way to the hospital, found out where I was staying, and had been sitting outside the hotel ever since. She was broken. Alone, lost, confused. And she said she loved me. After an hour I went downstairs and got a separate room for Jennifer - which seemed to mollify the proprietress somewhat - and I helped Jennifer into her room and got her tucked in for the night. We looked at one another for a while in the dim light, and I knew I loved this girl, loved her in ways I never had my own wife, and I thought I must take care of her until she was ready to break free of her past and fly away. ________________________________ I walked up the street to the hospital and scrubbed in at little after five the next morning; Maria was looking at CT scans of an aortic aneurysm with a general surgeon who would be on hand to assist her with the repair, and we got to it. The case lasted 'til noon, and Maria and I walked to a nearby café for lunch. The afternoon was free, and she decided to take me for a walking tour of the town of Horta. We walked down to the waterfront and out to the breakwater. I was alarmed to find that the Sea Witch was nowhere to be seen; not tied up along the breakwater, not moored out in the harbor, and I explained to Maria that Jennifer had jumped ship and had come to the hotel last night. I explained as best I could my feelings for Jennifer. "So, you feel responsible for this girl? Tell me. Did she seduce you?" "Probably, but I'm sure I didn't put up too much of a fight." "So, what would you do? Marry her?" "I, ah, I don't think that would be in the cards. She'll get over this, get over me in a few weeks and move on. She's just moving out into the world, and she has a lot to learn, a lot to experience for the first time." Maria was looking at me dubiously, like I was stupid, so stupid that I didn't even know the limitless bounds of my stupidity. "And what if she attaches herself to you? If she is to fall in with love you, then what? Would that be a problem?" I looked at Maria, and I knew the answer. "Yes." "Then you owe it to the girl to tell her that. Today. Right now. Before this goes any further." "I think her parent's are gone," I said as I looked over the harbor one more time. "They do not sound like good people to me." "Before today, Maria, I might have disagreed with you. I don't know anymore." "Come. Let us find her. She can move out to my house, stay with me for a while, at least until this relationship is settled. No good can come of her living with you in town." ________________________________ We found Jennifer in her room at the hotel, and we told her of our plans to move her out to Maria's house. She seemed hesitant at first, but the longer the three of us talked, the easier she became with the decision. I told her that the Sea Witch was gone, and she said that she knew, said that her father had been by to see her this morning. "What did he say, Jenn?" I asked, now full of dread. "That he and Mom were moving on. He'd keep in touch by email and let me know where they were headed, and that I'd be welcome to rejoin them. He left me some money, too, so I guess I'll be alright for a while." "Well, come on then," Maria said. "Let's get your things and move them up to my house. But first, I need to stop by the clinic and check in with Mr Latham." "Who?" Jennifer asked. "You know, David Latham, from the Bolero," I added. "He's still here." We walked the few blocks to the hospital and Maria stopped by the lab for some paperwork. I waited in the hallway outside with Jennifer, and we small-talked about events at sea and the excitement of the helicopter rescue. Jenn had never met Latham; she had, perhaps at best seen him from a few dozen yards away. Yet now she seemed curious about him. "Did he have cancer?" she asked. "Well, you know, Jenn, it's not that I don't trust you, but that's kinda private, you know. Any rate," I added, seeing the hurt expression hit her face like a cold slap, "it's kinda between Maria and David now. I'm not in the loop anymore." Maria came out looking very grim indeed. "I need to go talk with David," she said. "Pete, you're welcome to tag along, you too, Jennifer, if you'd like." Jennifer looked at the two horns growing from my head with barely concealed glee. I think she was looking for my pitchfork as we marched off towards David's ward. ________________________________ "David," Maria began, "it looks like there are tumor markers all over the place. I would say the cancer has spread all over the lining of your gut, through the lymph, most likely. There is one procedure, only one really, to contemplate, but I must tell you it is extreme and the recovery is long. It is called retroperitoneal dissection, and would be followed by chemotherapy. What this means, David, is that we would go in through your belly and remove all of the lymph nodes in your lower body cavity, perhaps up into your chest if involvement was found there. Most likely you would never be able to have sex again, at least in the normal way, and it is quite possible that you'd become incontinent." "What the fuck does that mean?" he said as he looked back and forth from me to Maria in what I could only describe as wide-eyed horror. "You'd need to wear diapers, sport," I chimed in. "But you would be alive. You gotta look at both sides of the equation, you know." He smiled. "Yeah. I guess. Chemotherapy too? Is that what you said?" "Yes, David. And possibly radiation therapy, depending on what we found. And there is another complication. You are an American citizen. This is the EU." "Uh, I don't have insurance in the states, no medical insurance." "I see," Maria said thoughtfully. "Well, if we can certify you as unable to be transported, you'll have to stay and we can take care of you here. Let me look into this." I tried to hide the shame I felt about the dismal state of medical care back in the States. People here just didn't have to worry about such things. Maria walked from the ward and off towards an office down the hall; this was just one more problem to be solved by her. The Saint, indeed. I looked down at David; he looked shook up and disoriented. I could only imagine what was running through his head . . . One day you're out sailing, having the time of your life, and the next day you're in some weird Portuguese hospital with a couple of loopy doctors telling you they're going to basically rip your guts out in order to save your life, and, oh yeah, you'll never be able to screw again and you're going to have to wear diapers whenever you go out, but hey, you know, no big deal, cause, you know, you'll still be alive. Kinda. Life's a one way ticket, baby, and you've got but one chance to make the ride. ________________________________ Maria and Jennifer walked up the lane toward Maria's house, yet I opted to remain with David Latham that evening and shoot the shit with him. He seemed most interested in talking about what would happen if he refused treatment and just took off on his boat. Questions like 'how long will I live?' and 'how much pain would there be?' - those kinds of questions. The kid didn't have family except for an aunt somewhere in Oregon that he hadn't spoken to in ten years, and he seemed adrift in life, content to blow where the winds took him. It was an odd career choice. Or was it? "So David, why did you decide to take to the sea?" "Hmm? Oh, I was just tired, Pete. Tired of selling my soul to write a few more lines of code. Stuck in a cubicle, watching life walk by out my window." "Where did you work?" "Seattle." "Nice up there?" "Yeah, but place doesn't really matter, you know? It's what you do. I think you can be happy anyplace, and there's no place far enough away to run from your troubles. I just wanted to taste the world, you know? Not some Discovery Channel three week trip to paradise. I made enough money to buy Bolero and leave me with a comfortable nest-egg to live on for ten years, so I thought why not, why not do it while I'm young . . ." I could see the irony hit him, and he seemed to curl up inside and wither away from his words, but they chased him into this new private hell, wouldn't let him be . . . "So, would you really just bail out of here, not do the surgery?" He came back when my words registered. "Yeah. I just can't help but think no matter what you do, well, you won't get it all and I'll end up here dying in pieces. You know, cut little pieces off one bit at a time; just linger in meaninglessness . . ." "Well, without the surgery you might make it for six months, maybe a year if you get real lucky. Not the course I would choose, but then again, I'm sure we have different priorities." "Really? Why's that? I mean, what is it about life that makes the end so hard to face? It seems to me like now we're all in this race to see who can exist the longest, like the one who lives the longest wins the blue ribbon. What happened to living those years out as we were supposed to, as active and engaged in life, not just observers. That's what I hated about writing code. I was, in a sense, enabling this brave new voyeurs world. People living vicariously through their computers . . . learning more, maybe, but not really experiencing the world as we're supposed to. With our hands in the dirt, so to speak." "I'm not so sure there's a way we're supposed to live, David. Our technology is forcing us to accept new ways of experiencing life . . ." "Forcing us? Did you say forcing us?" "I guess that sounds bad, doesn't it?" "I think my cancer came from the life I led. It's just a symptom of that life. Maybe if I just go, maybe I'll live, maybe I'll die, but at least while I'm alive I'll be living." ________________________________ I sat in my room in the hotel that night and thought about what Latham had said about choices. I looked down on the little harbor below my room, looked at the handful of voyaging sailboats down there, and wondered if that's what all those souls were up to. Living life out there on the edge, trying to feel life not as a vicarious experience but as a living, breathing challenge to their very existence. Was Latham on to something I'd missed. Had Harry and Trina stumbled onto something vital? Were they searching for something beyond suburbia and the comfortable challenges of modern life. Or maybe it was all a little like 'A Clockwork Orange'; everyone was jumping out into the world trying to up their experience portfolio before they punched out at the end of the line. ________________________________ I didn't work the next day. I spent the day with Jennifer. We rented a couple of bicycles and pedaled off down a country lane with a picnic basket until we came to a little cliffside lookout, and we ate olives and cheese and bread under the warm June sun while we looked out over the infinite blue of the sea around us. I've always marveled at the way the sea breeze feels when it lifts through the hair. There's something about it that makes me feel so alive, and it worked it's magic again on me that afternoon. I looked at Jennifer not as the little girl I had known all her life but as the young woman who had awakened me from a long, cold sleep. I thought about my conversation with Maria - about my feelings for Jennifer, about my denial of this love that in my heart I knew was so true. I felt utterly confused until I felt the breeze rifling through my hair, and with this not so subtle reminder that nature always prevails, I had a sort of epiphany. Nature's music is given to us - we are born with it in our soul. The cadence of the surf below us that afternoon was not unlike the life sustaining rhythm of the heartbeat that surrounds us in our mother's womb. Life had, I felt, choked this music out of us, torn it from our outstretched arms just as surely as life - in time - rips the child from every mother's arms. We ignore this music as we grow older, we ignore beauty all around us, and our lives are diminished within our ignorance. Of course, Kant argued that one's ability to appreciate beauty is related to one's ability to make moral judgments. What then, truly, had I lost in my middle age? Not unlike the simple breeze passing through my hair, had life stripped me of the ability to feel the beauty of Jennifer's simple truth? Too many layers of technology, of politics, of impending doom from terrorists or global climate collapse - these elements force their tortured will on us all, and too soon our ability to appreciate beauty grows withered, subsumed by exigent forces intent on stripping us of our humanity. I wondered if anyone could appreciate just what it is we've lost. We can, in our blindness, no longer see even the outlines of moral problems. Truth, beauty . . . where do they go in all this madness? I looked across at Jennifer, at the wind playing through her auburn hair, at the way her nose wrinkled when the sun danced across her freckled brow, and I felt once again life in all of it's infinite capacity to inspire. How could I let this go? What was I missing? What had I been blinded to? Blinded . . . blind . . . Still Life in Shadow Ch. 02 Maybe the fact that I was 55, and she would turn twenty in just three weeks time. Maybe the fact that I had stood by her father at her christening, that I had cheered her on while she played soccer in middle school, or that I had watched as she graduated from high school just a year ago. That perhaps my life would soon all be in the past, while so much of hers had yet to unfold. She was a friend, I wanted to say, and I wanted to ignore her past, my past, the past that said she was still a child in so many ways. I wanted to cling to the woman I saw before me, to love the life I had never known, perhaps never could know, without her. She was so beautiful there in the sun. Was I really so blind? ________________________________ Latham was sick, sicker than he knew. He had decided to leave, to return to the Bolero and return to the sea from which he had just come, to resume the journey he had decided to make back in Washington. I couldn't help but admire his choice, though I understood all too well the personal implications he faced. Could I, I wondered, face the prospect of dying alone on a little boat at sea? In pain, with no one to help me, no one to console me? Was that the only choice available to him? I went to Maria, went to tell her of David's choice. "I suspect most of us confront this choice," she said, "though perhaps not in such extreme terms as his." "Well, I wonder about what happens when he gets out there, and the pain really settles in. Then what? Does he call for help again? Do people run to his rescue, perhaps get hurt trying to get to him, or worse? I keep wondering if there isn't an alternative." "Such as?" "Hell, he could stay here. Sail around here, visit the islands, come back here when he gets too weak to continue." Maria seemed to consider this for a while. "Well, as long as the boat is his residence, he can stay here for eighteen months without any problem. I don't think time's going to be an issue. Have you talked to him about this?" "No, not really." "Do you want to, or would you think it better if we both talked to him?" "Why don't we talk to him tonight?" And so we did. ________________________________ David decided to remain in the Azores, and he decided to live on his boat down in the harbor. He seemed content with his choice, and managed to get by on the regimen of mild pain killers that Maria prescribed. He cleaned up his little boat, then started stripping the teak down to bare wood. He began to varnish the wood. Everyday I walked down to the harbor I found him hunched over the wood, babying it, coaxing all the beauty out of the wood that he could. At first Bolero looked simply gorgeous, but as the summer days grew shorter the boat began to glow. Visitors to Horta arriving by ferry walked by her and stopped and stared at the boat, and at David as he worked away on her. He could often be heard down below, an electric sander whining in the confined space, and occasionally he would pop up through the companionway, his face and hair covered with honey-colored dust before walking away for lunch or dinner. Soon it became apparent what he was doing. He had no child to leave behind, no lasting works to bequeath to the world, save his little Bolero. He had decided to turn her into a work of art, into something so beautiful that all who came upon her would stop and marvel at her beauty, and perhaps, wonder about the man who had tendered such a gift with his passing. As September came, I too decided to remain in the Azores. I didn't contest my wife's divorce, and I signed everything I owned over to her, left her all of my money. I simply wanted to be done with her, done with her evil intentions, done with the sickness she had given me. The hospital managed to take me on permanently, Jennifer continued to reside with Maria, and the inevitable happened. I fell in love again. ________________________________ Perhaps it would have been a simple tale after all, had I told Jennifer that she would grow out of her love for me, that as she experienced the world - out from under the sheltering wings of her father and mother - she would soon take to that world, begin a journey of her own. It was not to be. This was not to be such a simple tale. I came to Maria's house one afternoon and found them in the bathroom. Maria was brushing Jennifer's hair, and their was tenderness in her eyes. Perhaps affection would be a better word. They both looked at me in the mirror, and our eyes held on to the moment for an eternity. I shook inside at the thought, the thought that Maria and Jennifer were lovers, and that was when tall, staid Maria took Jennifer by the hand and led her to the nearby bed. So that was why she had left Switzerland, why she had left the bright lights. I watched as Maria lay my Jennifer down on her bed and parted her thighs. I watched as Maria's face disappeared between Jennifer's outstretched legs, and as Jennifer held Maria's face to her need. Had I truly been so blind to everything unfolding around me? I was shaking. I wasn't angry; I was simply overcome. The end of a marriage, coming to terms with my love for Jennifer . . . I had no word for the emotion that pulsed through me now as I watched these two women making love before me. Jennifer, her auburn hair strewn across white sheets, her face rocking from side to side, her legs arcing magnificently in the current charged air, her feet laying on Maria's back. Lust. Lust filled the air, and I didn't know how to respond. This was unknown territory to me. "Come here," Jennifer said to me. "Come be with us . . ." I went to the bed, sat on the edge, and Jennifer turned to me and undid my belt, unbuttoned my slacks, and took me in her mouth. Maria didn't miss a beat, she slid up between my legs and joined Jennifer. The sight was mesmerizing; two women in my lap, their tongues working on me in helpless rhythms defined by needs so ancient, so forgotten . . . Then Jenn was on my face, Maria on my lap, and I could feel them kissing above me. My world, the world I had known all my life, was dissolving in the air above us. But suddenly everything felt indescribably beautiful. Pt III pending Still Life in Shadow Ch. 03 © 2007 by Adrian Leverkühn She was in her outlook a simple woman, and it had been said of her for as long as anyone on the island could remember that she had never shown an interest in love. And how could they have known, how could they have known that their Saint had chosen to live in the shadows, that her life had been stillborn so many years ago in Zurich's staid halls of medicine. She had chosen the silence of a life in exile, in the shadows, and her fires had lain dormant, smoldering, waiting for the catalyst of her release. And now, Maria Louisa Delasandro was a raging inferno, a fire banked down for far too long, and now she was breathing in the first faint tendrils of her release, and she was intoxicated. She had found her fuel in Jennifer, and soon they were both burning on the razor's edge of control. But still they waited. Waited. Waited for me . . . for only I could complete the final act of our Dance Macabre. Only then would the razor cut so deeply . . . I don't suppose I will ever forget that first time, that first afternoon together. All of the uncertainty of the past few months was . . . they were but fuel for our fire. All of the anger I felt towards my soon to be ex-wife was . . . little more than fuel for these fires. Everywhere I looked, every bit of my past that seemed to linger in the air around me became a volatile fuel, and in the flames we released there was a transfiguration. There was a fusion. The three of us became, if but for a short while, one consummate ball of lust interwoven by a celebration of our rejections. We caught fire, and we burned oh so brightly. Could there have ever been left anything but the ashes of our lust. We remained together that first afternoon, lingered into the evening, hands seeking hands, mouths seeking mouths, craving penetrations defining our every move, every expectation giving way to the uncertain flower of our experiment. We fell asleep in the early evening, only to wake in the midnight and resume our feast, and we continued in this frenzied dance all through the night. Soon I knew I was no longer in control of my life. I was consumed by this fire, consumed by the need to keep it burning, because in the light of this burning panorama I could make out a simple truth. I loved these women, and they loved me. Nothing else mattered, and soon nothing else seemed important. Only the fire . . . only the fire . . . ___________________________________________ I took to taking Max, Maria's patiently faithful old Bernese Mountain Dog, on long walks. He came to love Saturdays, as did I, for on that day of the week, come rain or shine, Max and I would take off on long, excruciatingly long walks. Ten miles was a short walk. We often walked west along the coast roads, to Atalaia and Feteira, and more than once past Castelo Branco and all the way to western shore. Max became my faithful friend, his boundless love of life easily shouldered on his broad, black shoulders. We walked and I tossed sticks, we walked ever onward, across wet rolling hills, through tall pines alive with whispering winds, and we would pause and listen to the shifting voices as they darted through the limbs overhead, our minds lost in the ancient music. I always carried a lunch for us. A sandwich for me, some scraps of chicken and cheese for Max, a flagon of cool water to share in the shade. These Saturdays were for Max and I, just as this day was for Jennifer and Maria, alone. This was their day to enjoy each other, alone. ___________________________________________ One Saturday Max and I walked into Horta, down to the breakwater, down to David Latham and Bolero. I could see his cancer taking a toll on him now, it seemed to grow in direct proportion to the beauty that now claimed Bolero as he worked away on her. Every piece of the boat seemed to glow from inside with some unknown form of energy. The exterior wood was a blisteringly bright honied-bronze, and all the topside metal was so meticulously polished that one could watch the reflections of passers-by and make out even the smallest detail. On this Saturday we approached Bolero, and saw David half way up the fifty foot tall mast. He was lacing up the spreaders on the mast, adorning them with brilliant white twine to keep the sails from chafing there when close-hauled. It was so odd watching him, knowing that imminent death stalked him every moment of every day, yet he seemed to be at peace with this future, at peace with the beauty he had promised the rest of his life to. I was taken for a moment back to Fahrenheit 451, to those lives dedicated to preserving one work of literature, and I could feel these same forces at work in Latham. He was making the Bolero his life's work, preserving her for the future. Max sat on the breakwater looking up at David, his head cocked to one side and his tail brushing the concrete; I was sure Max must have been totally confused by most things we humans did, but seeing Latham dangling from the mast must have really taken a toll on the old boy. Every now and then Max would whimper or moan as David angled out to lace-up the farthest reaches of the spreader, and after one of these outbursts David looked down and saw us on the breakwater. "Come on aboard," he called out. "I'll be down in a minute. Go fix your self some lemonade!" "I don't know, David. Max's claws might tear up this varnish." "Screw that! Get on board. I wanna hear all about these rumors I'm hearing." I hopped on Bolero - it had been a long time since I had been aboard her, and she was transformed. The last time a helicopter had taken me off, but now this was a totally different boat. Max seemed to understand the dilemma his claws presented, and hopped gingerly aboard and launched himself across the cockpit, coming to a rest on the seat. He curled himself up into a ball to ward off the chilly October air and watched David as he lowered himself down the mast. I could tell the old boy was relieved when David's feet hit the deck; hell, so was I! I poured a couple of drinks and returned to the cockpit. Now up close, I could see David's skin was now turning pasty gray, and his eyes were a little sunken and rimmed with dark circles. "Howya feelin'? You looked in your element up there." "Oh, pretty good. Some days are better than others, but all in all, you know, it's not as bad as I expected. Maybe it's the meds. I don't know." "You keeping up with the labwork?" "No, not really. I mean, what's the point?" I nodded understanding, but I really couldn't understand his attitude. "How's the boat coming along?" I knew I was going to have to come up with better questions soon, or I'd wear out my welcome. "So," Latham volleyed back at me, "what's all this stuff I'm hearing about you and Maria and Jennifer." "What stuff?" I asked, now feeling a bit uncomfortable with what I knew had to be coming. "Kind of a threesome thing y'all got going. Everyone's talking about it up at the bar." "Really." "Yeah, oh yeah. One of the old men, a gardener I think, saw some stuff. Lots of talk about it now. Pretty weird stuff, Pete. I didn't take you for the type." "Neither did I." "So, what's going on?" "Maria and Jenn, I think, started off on it, and I guess I just got pulled in to it." "Sounds pretty heavy, dude. Better watch your ass." "Good advice. Now can I give you some?" "Sure, man. Fire away." "Get up to the clinic and get some blood-work done, would you?" "Sure, Doc, sure." He reached over and gave Max a scratch under his chin, and I could see the old boys eyes roll closed as he gave in to the pleasure. It was so simple. Receive pleasure, relax, and all was right with the world. It was only when human morality entered into the equation that things got sticky. "So. You ever gonna take this tub out again?" "Tub? Did you say tub?" "Hell yes, Dave. Tubs sit around in the water. Boats sail you know, like out there, on the ocean. It's what they're for." "Shit, Pete, I didn't know you was a philosopher. Gosh dawg! Ain't that somethin'." "Shut up and answer the question?" I smiled at him, wanted to challenge him a little. "Maybe next weekend. Want to go?" "Shit yeah. Can Max come along?" "Shit yeah. Why not. You think you can keep from getting sea-sick?" "Fuck you, Latham!" "And the horse you rode in on!" "See ya next week." I started to walk off, leave David to his work, but Max went over and sat by him. He put his graying muzzle up in Latham's lap and let out a long, contented sigh. This was a first as far as I knew, and David scratched the old boy behind his ears for a while. Max's fluffy black tail swept the cockpit seat, and David looked down into Max's eyes. "You okay, buddy?" he said. Max licked his hand, then got up and walked off the boat and down the seawall. I looked back at David. There was a little tear falling down his cheek. Dogs are like that, you know. They're smarter than we are about some things. I knew David was itching to get back to work on Bolero, but I also knew something extraordinary had just happened. I turned to walk after Max. I didn't know if the girls had had enough time alone yet, didn't want to bust up there time together. Pretty weird stuff, yes indeed. ___________________________________________ When I got back to the house I could tell by the sounds I heard coming from inside that things were still pretty hot and heavy in the bedroom. I went to the kitchen and filled Max's bowl, and I drifted over to the open bedroom door. Maria had a strap-on around her waste and was driving away inside Jennifer, licking the feet that rested on her shoulders while she rubbed away at Jenn's clit with her free hand, and I came into the room and sat in the chair by the corner and just watched for a while. Maria looked over at me, clearly annoyed at the intrusion, then returned to her feast. Jenn's feet began to arc and she clutched at Maria's hand as she thrust against it to meet her need, and soon I could hear the tell-tale signs that she was coming. Her head began to thrash from side to side while Maria pounded away as deeply as she could, and soon the room was filled with screams and shouts as Jennifer exploded. It was, all in all, quite a sight. And something about it left me feeling hollow inside. I felt unclean. Like my soul was hurting. I left the room and got Max. We headed out again, and this time out we walked west along the coast road. We walked for a long time. ___________________________________________ I had, during these weeks and months, still been living at the hotel. Now more often than not Max was my roommate. We returned to the hotel that night and I gave him a bowl of kibble, then bathed and went to bed. I found in short order that I couldn't sleep. All I could see was Maria's latent hostility toward me as I had watched them that afternoon. There was something profoundly wrong about this relationship. Something that in my own confusion I had ignored, something that had gone terribly amiss between Jennifer and I. This relationship wasn't about us anymore. It wasn't about my future, or Jennifer's. It was Maria's design, her plan, her needs working themselves free from bondage after so many years pent up in repressed angst. Jenn and I had happened along at just the right time, and I had provided cover for Maria's design to take shape. Now. What about Jenn? Was she truly in love with this woman, or was she lost in the infatuation, to the attentions paid her? With what I had seen that afternoon, I instinctively knew the answer to that question. I was no longer necessary to either of them. I had written myself out of their equation. And it hurt. It hurt more than I could say as I stared at the dark walls of my little room. Max slept with his head on my shoulder, looking up at me every now and then and licking my chin. ___________________________________________ We all walked down to latham's boat next Saturday. All of us. The girls and Max walked ahead of me out the breakwater, and I was conscious of people all over the docks looking at us. Who knows, maybe they were looking at Maria and Jennifer more than me; I couldn't tell, but I could feel people's eyes burning away in the back of my neck as I walked out the dock. Latham was ready and waiting. Bolero gleamed. Once aboard, he cast off his lines and we drifted out into the little sheltered harbor inside the inner breakwater and Latham hoisted the main. Bolero caught the breeze and slipped into the outer harbor and he raised the high-clewed yankee up front and the boat bit into the wind and heeled over, began dancing through the light chop within the little bay. As seagulls flitted along behind us, I felt wonder at how much like flying it feels to sail. Latham tacked and Bolero came up on a northeast heading; we sailed past the light on the end of the outer mole and out into the straight between Faial and Pico. The distant volcano stood in stark relief that day, a clear reminder dancing under the sun, and I remembered thinking that we - Jenn, Maria and I - were all dancing on a volcano. There was no telling when it would blow, but I knew we were all going to get burned. Maria had packed a little picnic lunch and of course brought along some Sangria, and as Bolero settled into a groove and danced along she brought out the food and we all sat in the sun, lost in our thoughts as the boat rolled along as we picked at our food. Soon a bottle-nosed dolphin broached alongside us, and Max stood up in the cockpit and looked at the gray form sliding through the water, and Max jumped back - lost his footing - when the dolphin jumped high into the air off the right side of the boat. We all laughed at Max while he regained his composure, and within moments the single dolphin was joined by dozens more, and we were soon bouncing off the waves while the pod of dolphins danced and turned in the sea around Bolero. Max and I slid up to the bow together and lay side by side next to the side of the boat as the dolphins, and Max whimpered in frustration he wanted to join them so badly. Hell, so did I. I reached down and slapped the side of the hull, and one of the dolphins came very close to me, and I reached out for it . . . . . . the thought of sliding into the deep blue water and swimming quietly away was suddenly very appealing. Why was human life so complex, so full of complications . . . And why was the desire to drift away from the problems of this life so overwhelming? We continued to sail away from Horta on a northeast heading, and the sun continued to pour down on us after the dolphins left. Max looked around at the water occasionally, and it was apparent he had enjoyed the experience as much as we had; he missed his new aquatic buddies. Just after we finished eating one of the dolphins reappeared, and this one jumped out of the water alongside us and began to chatter excitedly at us. Moments later the sun disappeared. So intent had we been to sail, to journey forward, we had simply not checked the horizon behind us. There behind Horta was a wall of black cloud, and two white snakes writhed in the air, uniting cloud and sea. David ducked below and turned on his VHF; there were now gale warnings being broadcast in Portuguese and English, and we all looked aft at the boiling clouds and the malicious waterspouts. Max looked at the dolphin. I swear as they looked at each other they were communicating somehow. The dolphin was warning us, warning us of the coming danger. "Looks like we race the storm back to Horta, or we run for Pico. But Pico's a lee shore; I'd rather not risk that." Latham looked around, measured his surroundings, then made his decision. He jibed Bolero smartly and we began to beat back toward the little harbor at Horta, now about seven or eight miles away, and as we hit the swell, great waves arced up off the bow as we smashed into them, and as gusts hit Bolero she began to heel-over even more as she aggressively bit into the wind. Of all the people out on Bolero that afternoon, Maria alone had absolutely no sailing experience, and I could clearly see that as she looked at the black wall of clouds and the dancing waterspouts advancing toward us she was growing terrified. Not scared . . . terrified. Jenn was busy working the jib-sheet, helping Latham squeeze every ounce of speed out of Bolero they could. I took Maria down below and hooked up a sea-berth in the forward cabin and wrapped her in the cabin with Max, and then, as a vicious gust tore into the boat, I ran up and helped Latham tie a deep reef in the main while Jenn steered. We slipped forward and doused the working jib and hoisted a little storm jib that was lashed up there ready to deploy, then we worked our way back to the cockpit. Ahead there were now four snakes dancing in the sky, with one not so far off our course towards Horta. Then, just as things looked as if they would get truly exciting, the radio came alive: "All vessels approaching Faial, be advised the airport has recorded wind gusts over 75 knots. Please take cover immediately from this rapidly developing storm. Waterspouts approaching Monte de Guia. Take cover." Latham looked ahead at the waterspouts, then back over his shoulder toward Pico across the straights. Horta was now tantalizingly close, maybe three miles, perhaps a bit less, and I could see the gears turning over in his head. The knot meter claimed we were making almost seven knots through the water; that made it 25-30 minutes before we made the breakwater. We were going to get slammed if we made for Horta. If we turned and ran, we would probably get slammed out in the middle of the channel between Faial and Pico. I watched as Latham nodded to himself; he added a little west to his course, cheated to close the island just in case, and we all kept our eyes on the waterspouts, though they were still on the far side of the island. One of the spouts hit the ridge on the west side of Monte de Guia and came down the gently sloping grassland toward the sea, and it started to march across the water toward us. It danced a little, made a zig-zag to the west, toward us, then back to the east, and we pushed closer to the shore. We could just make out the tree-lined soccer field on the north side of town as we cleared the final point and cut hard right to make directly for the harbor entrance when the squall line hit. A white wall of rain came between us and the town - now only a few hundred yards ahead - and the red-roofed white buildings behind the stone breakwater suddenly blinked out of view. Bolero heeled over drastically, the rail on the right side of the boat slipped under water, and Latham threw the helm hard over to help her claw her way back upright. I saw Jenn sliding off her seat toward the water and held out my hand for her, and she grabbed it just as the cockpit reached an almost vertical orientation relative to the surface of the sea. I held on to the life-lines now above my head with my left hand, and Jenn with my right, and I looked down at her as her little bare feet flailed to gain footing. I could feel her fingernails digging into the flesh of my hand, yet I knew I would never let go of her. I would never let go of her. Bolero clawed her way through the deafening wind and rain, and precious moments later we could just see the outlines of the breakwater ahead, and the village of Horta behind. Bolero stood back up and pushed into the howling wind. Ten minutes later we were tied up at the dock. Within a few moments we heard rumbling down below, and Maria came up into the shimmering air and walked off the boat without saying a word. Max stayed with David and I. So too, did Jennifer. ___________________________________________ Still Life in Shadow Ch. 03 Later that week I walked down to the docks to check in on David and Max. Yes, Max. Apparently something quite untoward had happened down below in the storm, and Max now resolutely refused to go back up the hill to Maria's; in fact, he didn't want to leave David's side at all now. I came up on the dock above them, and Max's tail began to thump when he saw me. David turned at the sound and looked up at me after seeing the tail wiping the cockpit. "She want her dog back yet?" "She hasn't said anything to me about it, David." "Where's Jennifer?" "She's been staying with me this week. She's been kinda confused." "Ah." You ever realize just how many syllables are in the word 'Ah'? Or just how much meaning can be packed in that word? "So, what are you up to? See you got the boat put back together." Actually, there hadn't been much to do but check the rigging for any unseen damage done during the knockdown. Latham just shrugged his shoulders, took on a faraway look. "You doing okay?" I asked a moment later. "No, not really. Got lab results back. White counts gone loco, the AFP is off the charts, and now the prostate has gotten in on the act." I nodded my head. He was reaching the terminal phase now. He might last a month, maybe two at the outside. "Did you talk to Maria about things?" "Yeah." Max whimpered and licked his front paw while I looked at David. This was it, and we all knew the score. Max walked over to David and licked his chin, then sat down with his muzzle in David's lap. His eyes were full of sadness, and he looked tired. Pure empathy, I thought as I looked at both of them. David scratched Max behind the ears, knew where to go to give his friend pleasure, and Max knew just exactly where he needed to be, too. He knew the score, too. "What's the plan now, David?" "Huh?" "What are you doing to settle your affairs? Have you thought about that much?" "A little." "And? Anything I can do?" "I'll let you know, Pete." He rubbed Max's belly for a while, then looked up at me. "Pete? There's a lump in here. On Max's gut." I hopped down onto deck and sat across from David and Max, and reached out to feel Max's belly. He turned toward my hand and his upper lip quivered, and he let out a low growl. I withdrew my hand. David talked to Max in low, gentle tones, then asked me to check the area again. This time Max didn't move, didn't resist at all, and I palpated where David indicated. It was a broad, hard mass, and I could feel nodes around the site that were already hard and distended. Max licked my hand now that his secret was blown, and he looked up at me with those soft brown eyes while I started to cry. "This just isn't fair," I said out loud. "I've got two friends in the world, and they're both gonna die on me." "Hey, anything I can do to help, let me know." Latham smiled now, now that I had to eat my own patronizing words. Don't you just hate smart-asses. Even the ironic ones are hard to take. ___________________________________________ Maria and I took Max to the island's only veterinarian, and he just shook his head when he examined Max. "Nothing to do," the old man said to me through his thickly accented English, and Maria just nodded her head. They talked for a while in Portuguese, which I was still learning, and I could make out nice little phrases like 'put him down' and 'keep him comfortable', and I suddenly felt very sick to my stomach. I was used to people dying, but not dogs. Max would be my first. I looked at Max and thought of a world without him in it and I felt really cold and lonely inside. Like a kid again, after the first time you grapple with the idea that mom or dad will one day not be there anymore, and suddenly the world feels like a very lonely place after all. Like all the toys and candy are there to just hide a few plain facts that mom and dad don't want to talk about. Maybe that's why I had gone to med school. And why I had fallen in love with Jennifer. Maybe I was just running from death, trying to cheat death every chance I could, trying to pile experience into this empty vessel called life so that in the end I could say I had lived a 'full' life. I looked at Max, and suddenly it looked to me like I had wasted a lot of my time. ___________________________________________ I think its safe to say that in the next few weeks Jennifer and I had a tough time. She had gone to stay at Maria's in search of peace and solace from the upheaval we'd each just been through, and instead she found herself in the middle of one of the most confusing affairs imaginable. She had never, she told me later, once had any inclination to have a relationship with another woman, yet the ease with which she had slipped into the relationship - when she looked back on it - shook her up pretty bad. All of the assumptions she had taken for granted in her early life had been directly challenged. And it was funny. She didn't feel used, or taken advantage of. In fact, when I asked her about her feelings for Maria she said bluntly that she loved her, that she was sure she always would love the woman. She felt like she had been split in two; one life she could acknowledge in the full light of day. The other was a still life in shadow. So maybe we were all running from death. The problem with that, I knew, was simple. Sometimes when we run and run, we forget how to live any other way. Sometimes all we do is run . . . Pt IV pending... Still Life in Shadow Ch. 04 She was in her outlook a simple woman, and it had been said of her for as long as anyone could remember that she maintained a cool distance between herself and everyone else. Perhaps that's why she had come undone. She'd lost that cool distance from another human being when she began her campaign to take Jennifer; perhaps it was her soul's last great attempt to connect with another before the coming of night. Or perhaps she had just grown too hard inside to feel any but the most intense contact. Whatever it was, a profound change had come over Maria Louisa Delasandro, and no one was happy with the change. Especially not Max. Something had happened on Bolero. During that brief storm when they had been below together. With Maria and Max tucked safely down below, I had thought they would weather the storm with no lasting effect; I was wrong. I couldn't get Maria to talk about it, and of course Max was, in his none too subtle way, also somewhat less than reticent to discuss the matter. Dogs. Stubborn like nothing else in the world. Max was, as I've mentioned, a Bernese Mountain Dog. If you've never seen one, think about a St Bernard, only black with a little copper here and there, and a small white diamond on the chest. Their stock is a mountain rescue breed as well, so coming to people's aid was about as natural for Max as breathing is for you and me. He wanted to help, he wanted to be involved. In fact, you couldn't keep Max from getting involved. It was genetically impossible. And of course, some dogs are true empaths. They can look in someone's eyes and read the contours of that person's soul, they can see pain, feel melancholy, and share those brief moments of happiness that punctuate the human life like a shooting star. They can rest a chin on your thigh and suddenly you know, really know, that all will be right with the world if you just give it a chance. And you can rest your soul in theirs - knowing that you will be a better person in the sharing. Max was such a dog. Which made Maria's apparent rejection all the more telling. Max had seen something. He had discovered a real truth about Maria, and she knew it. When Max looked at her now, all his years of devotion to her came down like broken glass on cold stone, and for a while he seemed to give up as his cancer began to eat away at him. He took to spending a night every now and then with Jenn and I in the hotel, but by and large he spent most everyday down on the breakwater with David Latham. Those two had so much in common. Least of all their looming encounter with death. ________________________________________ While Bolero gleamed in the sun, it was fair to say that now David Latham, who was in his early thirties, looked like an old man. His gray skin hung in loose folds over his tall, gaunt frame, and his blue-gray eyes shone like sapphires against his yellow gray skin. Whenever he moved, he groaned at unseen spirits that lurked just under his skin, waiting, waiting to remind him of their advance through his body, and of the coming of night. And yet Latham approached life each day not as a stoic; rather he greeted the world with a smile, grateful, I suppose, that he had another day to tackle, another problem to solve. Grateful, I'm certain, of another day with Max. Max and David lived on Bolero now, each in their way helping sustain the other, and it amazed not only Jenn and I but everyone in town how the two were struggling together, and keeping each other's spirits up as they did. While each was positively heroic in their resolve to soldier on, together they came to represent something much greater. They came to represent hope to a town that often had that in short supply. After the storm, David resumed work on Bolero, resumed turning his home into a monument to his love for her. People in town noticed. On a Monday, perhaps, a new gallon of varnish would appear on the breakwater above Bolero. Maybe the next day some metal polish and a fresh bundle of new line would appear. Women carried down bowls of soup to Bolero when they heard David was having a tough day, and someone would always come and take Max for a short walk to the breakwater so he could do his business. In this way, the town united in their love and admiration for David and Max. Perhaps it was an irony that Maria Louisa had been relegated once again to her shadowlands. Men looked at her as she walked to and from work with a subtle leer, while the women in the village looked at her with unmitigated contempt. Whatever it was that Maria had run from in Zurich, well, it had found her now. Whatever force it was that sustained love for David and Max with the townsfolk, it had found it's antithesis in their feelings for Maria. And to an extent, Jennifer and I both shared in this oppressive realization, we both felt it's scorn. In a very real sense, the town's reaction to the affair made it very clear to both of us that we couldn't stay on the island. We were visitors, as Maria was, inevitably, and we had worn out our welcome. ________________________________________ If Maria was guilty of burying her anger and sorrow in her work, I was guilty, too, of the same crime. I walked to the hospital before the sun came up, and walked home after sunset. I hardly ever talked with Maria; we had quickly grown so embittered with each other that we couldn't make eye contact anymore. She became prickly in the operating room, and nurses began avoiding her. People talked behind her back incessantly, and the whole affair soon came to be an abject lesson in social hypocrisy. When people came to the hospital, they wanted her to take care of their ills. When she saw the same people out on the streets, they shunned her. One afternoon she asked me and Jenn to come out to her house after work. She needed, she said, to talk to us. I told her that we would come as soon as I could drop by the hotel and pick Jennifer up. That wasn't an altogether bright thing to have done, but you can never tell about these things. ________________________________________ She met us at the door; the sun was just setting on her little garden, and I couldn't help but reflect that this was apparent in more ways than one. She welcomed us, offered us drinks, but I could see a tiredness about her person that I didn't recognize. She didn't look familiar to me at all. I knew my feelings for this woman were complex; not long ago I had felt something akin to love for her. She seemed to be, like Max, empathetic and compassionate, and I had felt comfortable around her. Now I didn't trust her, at least not like I had, and Jenn seemed a little ill-at-ease too. She'd already had dinner, so offered us Port, and we each took a glass and sat in the living room and looked down at the sea as the last of the day's sun drifted below the distant horizon. "I'm going to leave the island," she said after a while. I could understand the impulse, but I thought her reaction too hasty. "This will blow over, Maria. Give it time." She shrugged her shoulders. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. It does not matter in the least. I miss my homeland, and intend to return there as soon as possible. I wanted to ask if either of you wanted to buy the house." I think I was a little shocked by that. "I don't know, Maria. To tell you the truth, Jenn and I were thinking of moving on ourselves." It seemed a somewhat territorial statement to make, but I wanted to delineate the recent past from any possible future Maria might have in mind. I was staking my claim, so to speak, and Maria bristled at the implications in my words. "Pete, have I acted in any way less than honorable toward you?" she stared at me while this question penetrated the air around us. It looked like she wanted to stir something up, and hoped I would back down, that I would avoid a scene at any cost. Did she want to humiliate me here, on her turf, so to speak. "I beg your pardon?" I tossed back at her. "Are you seriously asking me that?" "I am." "Seducing my girlfriend. Wasn't that enough, to, well - ah - strike you as something less than honorable?" "Your girlfriend? But you had told me you weren't interested in a long-term relationship with Jennifer. Isn't that so?" I could feel Jenn looking at me now, and I knew this was dangerous ground indeed. "Not quite, Maria. I said I had no intention of marrying her right now. I said she needed time to get over the dispute with her parents, and to get her bearings. I never said I wanted to end our relationship. I think, perhaps, you heard what you wished to hear. I think I understand your present difficulties. Why you came here, why you came to Horta. And I think you understood only too well the difficulties Jenn and I faced when we first got here. And, and now maybe I'm off base here, but I think you took advantage of that." Yes. I said that. And. . . . . . Her eyes turned gray and lifeless before me, and I could see her anger and hatred falling away for a moment to reveal the tortured soul within. I didn't want to feel sorry for the woman, but I did. She had faced her demons long ago, mastered them in her way, but they had stalked her over the years just as certainly as any disease might, and when they struck they took her in a moment of weakness. "Well," she said to Jenn now, "I wish you the best. I love you, dear girl, and I always will." Jenn nodded her head, but I could tell she was trying to hold back tears of her own. We stood to leave, but Maria remained seated. We let ourselves out, and I felt the lights in the room go out, and I turned to look at Maria as she sat in the sudden shadow. Jenn and I walked back to town, and we walked under the stars. I held her hand now like I would never let it go again, and we listened to the gathering silence around us. The sounds of the sea could just be felt through the hum of the town below us, and as we crested the hill we could look down on the harbor spread out below like a black hole surrounded by amber-hued diamonds. On the breakwater we could just make out the flashing lights of an ambulance. Men were jumping on and off a boat moored to a dock there. It was, we could see, the Bolero. ________________________________________ "Dave?" "Yeah? Hey, Pete!" came his faint voice through the growing fog. "I sent Jenn down to the boat to check on Max. Is there anything I can do?" "Get me out of here, Pete. I don't want to die in here. Get me back to the boat, wouldya?" "Alright, Dave. Hang in there; I'll be back in a minute." Jenn filled me in on the details: Someone had been walking along the breakwater and looked down at Max, who had seemed agitated, and they had seen Latham laying face down in the cockpit. They had called the Guardia, and the firemen had come for him. Now Jenn was down on the boat taking care of Max and straightening up the forepeak berth. I had carried a huge bag of ice down to Bolero, and some fruit juice in case David felt like drinking something, then walked back up to the hospital and arranged to have him carried back down to the docks. Some firemen and I loaded him up and rolled him out to an ambulance, and we drove down to the dock and got him moved back aboard. Jenn and I walked him up into the forward cabin, and helped him into his bunk. I opened up the hatch over his head, and a sharp late winters breeze filled the space, and it tussled our hair on it's way through the boat. "You want some juice, or some ice to chew on?" "Maybe some ice. Got cottonmouth. Where's Max?" Max was having his own troubles that night, as well. He was moving slowly now, and it was obvious to me that he too was in a lot of pain, but when her heard Latham say his name he ambled forward and sat down on the carpet next to the bunk. His tail started thumping, and he looked up at me expectantly. I leaned over and helped him up on the bunk and he scooted over and settled in next to Latham, with his chin resting on Latham's shoulder. His big brown eyes went from me to David and back again over and over, like he didn't know whether his allegiance belonged to the living or the dying, but after a few minutes of this he settled down and looked at David with a smile on his face. He seemed so full of love as he lay there. "Orion." "What's that, David?" "Up there, through the hatch. It's Orion." I craned my neck over and looked up into the night sky. Almost directly overhead I could make out the Hunter's stars: Betelgeuse, Rigel, the belt stars and the short dagger with the fuzzy patch around the middle star, the Orion nebula. "That's my favorite night sight," he said. "I wish I could've gone there." "Maybe you will." He smiled. "Fairy tales, Pete. All fairy tales." "Could be. Here, open up." I put an ice cube in his mouth and he smiled. I little runner dripped down his cheek and Max licked it off, and David smiled deeply as the familiar touch interrupted his journey through the stars. "Pete? There's an envelope in the chart table addressed to you. Instructions, you know, for later." "Sure thing, Dave. Don't worry about that now." "If . . . I . . . ah, take care of Max . . . would you?" "Count on it, David." I watched as he swallowed hard, and struggled to keep his eyes on Orion, but he gave up and looked down at Max, and he started to cry softly. "Bye, buddy. Such a good . . . " He tried to swallow again, but gave up. He breathed one last time as he reached up to rub Max's ear, then he grew very still. I put my hand on his, felt the last moments of life in him, then wished him a good journey. I looked at Max. He too seemed very still now. His eyes were closed, and he seemed to be at peace with this world, but his tail was motionless now, and so it would forever remain. After a few minutes, I moved away from David and Max to sit with Jennifer, and though the world seemed suddenly a very cold and lonely place, I knew the love I held in my heart for those two boys would sustain me. ________________________________________ Life goes on. Isn't that what you're supposed to say. Time to get on with it. Get your chin up. Get on with living. Don't you get it? I read through Latham's last wishes as I sat down below at Bolero's chart table, and it was all I could do not to laugh. I looked around at the masterpiece he'd created, at the honey-warm teak and the soothing brass oil lamps giving the space an unnatural glow, and I just shook my head in wonder at his insight. He'd thought of everything. He'd planned what he wanted done, sought approval from the necessary bureaucracies, and left me contact information for what needed to be done to settle his affairs back in the States. Max was an unforeseen complication, but it turned out nobody cared what happened to his body. But I cared. It mattered to me. And I knew it mattered to David, too. But most of all, I knew what Max would have wanted, knew what he would have wanted me to do, and in the end he was my friend, too. Maybe the best friend I ever had. I just had to pull it off, somehow. And everyone in the town looked at me expectantly that last evening as I walked out to Bolero that last time. ________________________________________ David Latham was down below on his bunk, and Max was still nestled up on his shoulder, though now they were wrapped up in one of Bolero's working jibs. I was alone in the cockpit, sailing Bolero out past the light at the end of the breakwater, out toward the open sea. I little patrol boat from the Coast Guard trolled along beside Bolero, and I looked back at the town. Most everyone on the island had assembled on the breakwater, and the people there began to light candles. The town's priest was talking to the people, and though I was too far away to hear anything, I knew what was being said. They were being told that David Latham was a kind soul, one who had come to their village in a time of great personal need, and that he had touched all of their lives in profound ways in his passage through their lives. It seemed that, in the end, Latham had turned out to be one of those so-called Microsoft millionaires, and that he left this earth with a ton of money in the bank. His instructions were simple: upgrade the hospital, the town library, the church and the schools were to be repaired or modernized. He left detailed plans on how he wanted some of his money used for local public works projects, and he wanted a statue of Max commissioned and placed on one of the headlands north of town that looked out over the sea. When the townspeople learned of Latham's gift, it was as though a miracle passed through the air all these people breathed. They knew their lives had been touched by Latham in small, personal ways, but they had never really understood what that meant, what the bigger picture was. Now they did, and now they stood on the breakwater, bathed in the glow of a thousand candles, and many of the people cried as he left the way he had come. By the way of the sea . . . I set up the wind-vane self-steering and balanced the helm, and Bolero bit into the wind and began to dance again in the waves. I fell into that trance again; that place I go when the wind streams through my hair and I feel so connected to life on this planet, and I felt the water as it hummed through the tiller, it's vibration settling into senses. I stood with the wind in my face now, the last of the days light falling off and the sky around me a deep purple streaked with orange cloud, and I felt tears rolling down my face - only to be whisked away by the wind and carried back to the sea. A dolphin broke the surface next to us, and I looked down into his black eye. There might have been an infinity between us, but we were brothers in this instant of time. The cabin below was awash in gasoline. I took Bolero's flare pistol and cocked the hammer, then called for the little Coast Guard ship to move alongside. I moved forward, moved to look at David and Max one last time, then held the pistol out and pulled the trigger. The fire started slowly, but once the elements were united in combustion they began to dance with all the fury of creation long denied. I jumped across to the waiting boat and we moved off. I turned and looked at Bolero as we headed back toward town. Bolero continued to sail perfectly away to the northeast, her interior at first trailing black smoke. Then a fierce glow down below could be seen, followed by naked flames dancing in the air around her topsides. The fire grew in hunger, waiting to absolve all sin with it's passing, and Bolero gave way to this passage. Flames consumed the deck and jumped into the drawing sails and moved skyward, toward the heavens, and I wondered as I guess we all do what awaits us on the other side of the night. ________________________________________ I made it back to the hotel later that night, and I finished packing my bags. Jennifer's bags were packed and stacked neatly in the corner of the room, but she hadn't come back yet, and it was then that I saw the note. She would, she wrote, see me at the airport in the morning. ________________________________________ But she wasn't there when I checked my bags in that next morning. And she wasn't there when I checked through security. I walked out to the little Airbus when they called the flight, and walked up the steps and took my seat. I half expected to see her running out to the plane at any minute, but it wasn't to be. The cabin door closed and the engines spooled up. Men moved around below and after a few more minutes the jet turned and taxied out to the end of the runway and turned around to charge back into the sky. I could feel the power come on, and the jet hurtled down the runway. I looked out my window as it rotated and began to climb into the sky. I could see houses below . . . Still Life in Shadow Ch. 04 Then I saw Maria Louisa Delasandro's house. She was standing in her garden looking up at me as I climbed toward the clouds, and she was not alone. In those last fleeting moments I could see Jenn standing there by her lover, and all I could do was smile. Maybe now the two of them would step out of the shadows and live as they were meant to. The Airbus jumped a little as it entered a thin layer of cloud, and a moment later burst into pure, raw sunlight. I felt content, and I didn't really understand why but somehow I thought Maria would have. The flight attendant, a really lovely woman with huge brown eyes and shimmering brunette hair, walked by a minute later, and she smiled at me as she passed. Yes, I said to myself, it's time to get back to living. I wondered what her name was. I leaned back in the seat, thought of David and Max, and wondered where on their journey they were now. I could see Max's big brown eyes, that huge pink tongue wagging as fast as his tail, and Latham hanging from the mast, working to make his home as beautiful as it could ever be. I could feel them with me as I sat there. I could feel Max's hot breath on my thigh as we walked, and Latham's contented laugh as he smiled at death. The flight attendant walked by again, and smiled at me - again. Yes. We the living have our ghosts. Where would we be without them? The sun was so strong and warm. So full of hope. All I could do was smile at the absurdity of this life. 'Everything's going to be okay, isn't it, Max? Yeah . . . I knew you'd say that . . .'