Suliet

When I woke in the morning I went topside and stood on the stern of the boat looking out over the water. It had cleared and there were no clouds over the sea. The Avalon had anchored in a narrow bay protected with mangroves on two sides. Across from us was a wooden boat, sunk to the bowline, that had floundered during the last hurricane. On top of what was once the wheelhouse was a jutia, the large, brown, rat-like rodents that are almost extinct in Cuba. The jutia stood up on his hind legs and stared at me for a moment before scampering down the side of the sunken boat and jumping in to the water. He paddled slowly, his nose towards the sky, like a dog retrieving a bird, to the mangroves and climbed up a branch and disappeared.

It was still cool outside in the early morning and the sun had not yet dried the dew on the deck making it slippery. There was a light breeze. I hunted around in the upstairs galley looking for the coffee and milk. The table had been cleared from breakfast except for one spot. Everyone else had gotten up hours ago, had breakfast, and had gone out diving with Idelvis. I couldn’t find the coffee but I poured myself some orange juice from a pitcher in the chest-high fridge that contained mostly beer and plastic bottles of water. I was in no hurray for breakfast. In fact, if I didn’t have breakfast, that would be just fine. There were always three very large meals on the boat, with eggs and bacon and cold cuts and cheese and fruit in the morning, and multiple courses of fish and chicken, rice and beans, tomatoes and pineapple both in the afternoon and in the evening. And, of course, there was always lobster. At least once a day. So there was no shortage of food and one had a tendency to drink and eat too much simply because it was there.

Just when I was thinking of going back to bed, Suliet came up from the crew quarters. She was surprised to find me at the breakfast table. “You did not go out diving this morning, David?” she asked.

“No. I slept.” I liked the way she said my name: Dah-veed. It sounded pleasant coming out of her mouth.

Suliet is 27 and has brown hair which she wears mostly tied back, off her smooth, white neck, and dark, liquid eyes and a crooked smile. She is one of those women who can wear khaki shorts and a clean t-shirt and look better than the average woman in a little black dress. Her ears are small and pinned close to her head and the only jewelry she wears is a simple pair of gold hoop earrings. Suliet’s husband works on one of the other boats but she seldom talks about him. She seems happy to be the only woman on a boat with eight male crew members.

I asked Suliet for one egg, over-easy, and two slices of bacon and some toast. She took the order down to the cook, Eduardo, and then came back up with a carafe of coffee and a pitcher of hot milk. When she brought back my breakfast she sat down in the teak chair across from me.

“How old is your boy now?” I asked.

“He just turned two,” she said. “Would you like to see?”

She disappeared in to the crew’s quarters and came back with a small digital camera and searched through it until she found a photo of her son kicking a soccer ball.

“Es muy grande para dos años,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, laughing. “He’s much bigger than other boys his age.”

“Like his dad?”

She shrugged and lost her smile.

“¿Cuál es su nombre?”

“Ricardo,” she said, smiling again.

She asked me if I had any children and I told her I did and that they lived in San Francisco.

“And a wife?”

“Yes.”

“Is she very beautiful?”

“Yes.”

After breakfast I felt groggy and went back down to my room and opened the portal window to let in the fresh sea breeze and laid on my bunk reading a book. I was just about ready to fall back to sleep when the door to my room opened suddenly.

It was Suliet. “Lo siento,” she said. “I came to make up the bed. I thought you were still upstairs.”

I sat up in bed. “No, please,” she said. “Do not get up. I can do it later.”

She stood at the doorway looking at me and not moving. “If you have clothes you would like washed, just leave them on the floor.”

“Gracias.”

Still, she did not move. Her eyes were moist and her face pale.

“Do you feel all right?” I asked her.

“It is nothing,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “I am sorry I disturbed you.” She closed the door behind her.

When the boys came back around ten-thirty, I had fallen asleep again. Fletch knocked on my door and then came in. “Have you been sleeping this whole time, you slacker?”

“No. I’ve been reading. How was the diving?”

“Excellent. We saw a six-foot-long lemon shark and Nick ran out of air returning to the surface. Lots of adventure. But we’re getting ready to go out fishing now. Are you coming?”

I told him I was. I was feeling rather rotten and would have been happy to just stay in my room but I knew I’d never hear the end of it if I did. I took a cold shower and gathered up my fly case and tackle bag and went topside. Greg was waiting for me. The others had already gone out. Keko got my number eight fly-rod and an extra tarpon rod Hardy had brought as well as Greg’s rod and put them all in the Dolphin skiff. Jorge, the spy, handed down a bucket of ice which I dumped over the beer and water in the hold in the middle of the skiff. The beer, Cristal, was already icy cold. I took one and sat down on the bench in the back next to Keko. “Jesus,” said Greg, climbing into the skiff. “What time is it?”

I looked at my watch. “Five until eleven. Want one?”

“I think I’ll wait,” he said, “but you go ahead. Maybe it will help your fishing.”

Jorge untied the line in the front and pushed off and Keko started up the outboard and we flew through the mangroves, banking left and right to keep the propeller out of the turtle grass in water no more than two feet deep, as the water went from pale green to cerulean to a dark blue and we were beyond the reef, speeding along the glassy water to an island miles away.