Just Add Water (1) (10 page)

I was looking forward to dinner
with Garrison, even though it smacked of being a date. I don’t date. I hate
real dates. I rationalized that since I was driving my own car to his boat, not
waiting at home for my escort while nervously primping in the mirror like a
teenybopper on prom night, it wasn’t a real date. Not that I ever
had
a prom night date. Boys, made
apprehensive by my viperous tongue, preferred palling around with me and going
steady with others. Even if someone had asked me to the prom, I’m sure I would
have hated it.

Throughout singledom, anything
resembling a date had seldom worked out. Actually, never worked out. Date hate
was deeply ingrained in me, but I figured a quiet little dinner for two would
be harmless enough, so long as Garrison didn’t expect
me
as his just dessert.

Sea
Cock
rocked gently alongside the yacht club dock, the velvety croon of
Sinatra wafting from her deck speakers. I stood alongside—I was quickly picking
up nautical speak—looking for the doorbell. Okay, so I’m not
that
quick a study. Anyhow, I heard my
name called from above.

“Hetta,” Garrison yelled from a
yacht club window, “go on aboard. Get a beer or some wine, whatever. I’ll be
right there.” The club was officially closed on Monday nights, but I could hear
the slap of Liar’s Dice cups through the open window. Every member had a key
and the bar was open on a members only, write down your drinks and pay later
policy, an honor system which more or less worked. Mostly less.

Settling into a deck chair on the
aft cockpit, I watched tourists in Jack London Square watching me. It felt
good, sitting there on the back deck of a large yacht, wondering what the poor
people of the world were doing this beautiful evening. Then I remembered I was
aboard a boat named
Sea Cock
and my
smugness dissolved
.

Through the open yacht club windows
above, I could make out and hear shadowy figures slamming dice cups on the bar.
Garrison, the only person I could actually see, waved between rounds to let me
know he was almost finished playing.

He was, I thought for the second
time in two days, handsome in a yachtie kind of way. Yachtsmen always get
enough sun to make them look healthier than your run of the gin mill drunks,
whose neon pallor is evidence of too much time spent basking in the glow of
beer signs.

Garrison was a libertine, I knew,
but it didn’t bother me. Knowing what he was gave me one up on him. Through
vast experience, I knew exactly what to expect. He didn’t know it yet, but I
had no intention of becoming another notch in Garrison-poo’s transom. I fiddled
with Hudson’s key hanging around my neck as a reminder, and wondered, for the
millionth time, what it would unlock. I had half a mind to jump a plane, spend
money I could ill afford, to find out.

A creaking ramp and loud laughs and
voices preceded Garrison’s arrival at the boat. I turned to greet him and saw
Lars and that Bob person trailing behind him. So much for my vow never to lay
eyes on the Jenkins brothers ever again.

“Hetta, I think you’ve met Lars and
Jenks,” Garrison said.

“Oh, yes indeedy I have. We
recently spent a horrible night together,” I told him. Garrison looked puzzled,
so I guess his best buds hadn’t told him of the night of the Porsche. I nodded
in greeting and added, “Good evening, gentlemen. You too, Lars.”

Garrison, not knowing what else to
do, shrugged. “Oh, yeah, right. Anyhow, I know I said we were going to have a
quiet dinner, but we were playing dice, and I invited them to join us. You
don’t mind do you?”

“It depends. Who’s driving?” I
asked in a waspish tone.

Lars scowled at me under his bushy
eyebrows, but Jenks grinned. And in spite of my former resolve to eschew the
company of the brothers Jenkins, the evening turned into a pleasant outing. We
cruised over to Pier 39, picked up Jan and then voyaged on to Sausalito for
dinner.

Garrison, very attentive and
charming, monopolized my time. He left the operation of the boat to Jenks so he
and Lars could drink and flirt with me and Jan. Only at the dinner table was
our little
ménage à cinq
all thrown
together. After Jenks finished grousing about the upscale prices, the
conversation leaned towards car repairs, the rising cost of car insurance—go
figure— and then meandered on to yacht club gossip. While I enjoyed both the
gossip and the dinner, most of all I was delighted by the fact that we smoothly
crossed San Francisco Bay and I didn’t lose a single nail. Or sustain a head
injury.

When we docked back at the yacht
club, Jenks departed immediately, then Jan and Lars said they were leaving as
well, which was my cue to vamoose lest I be left alone with the increasingly
amorous Garrison.

Faking an overly dramatic yawn, I
asked Jan and Lars to wait up and walk me to my car, as it was dark in the
parking lot. And it was Oakland. Then, to be polite, I added, “Unless you’re
ready to leave now, too, Garrison.”

Garrison didn’t look pleased, but couldn’t
figure a way to gracefully turn the situation to his advantage. “I’m not going
anywhere, Hetta. I live here.”

“Here?”

“On the boat.”

“You can
live
on a boat? You don’t have a house or anything?”

“Nope. It’s home sweet boat for
me.”

“Wow,” was all I could say. All the
way home I thought about this revelation. Wow. Living on a boat, full time, on
the water. Water that didn’t smell like sewage, which is what my house still
smelled like when I got home.

The GITROOT folks had removed a
blameful tree root from my sewage pipes for a mere six hundred dollars, the
plumber returned for his sump pump and finished repairing the house pipes to
the tune of five hundred. Because I had left the garage door open all day and
run fans to dry out the ground floor, the stench was diminishing. Of course, I
would have to repaint and partially drywall and plaster the downstairs bedroom
walls, definitely put in new carpet or refinish the wood floor, and—God, would
it never end?

RJ charged into the living room as
soon as I unbolted the door to downstairs. Being relegated to guard duty for
the past few hours, even though it was his job, had put him in a snit. He
whined and growled his displeasure, even refusing a chunk of prime rib I pulled
from a doggie bag as a peace offering. An all-time first. He was doggone mad, I
tell you.

By the time I crawled into my bed,
RJ had quit bitching and was snoring softly in his. It worried me a little that
he was so tired after an evening of confinement. And that he had turned down
prime rib. Maybe he was pouting. I didn’t ponder his surliness long, for I was
lulled to sleep by the aftereffects of my evening cruise.

The bed gently swayed, as though
riding on bay swells, rocking me like I’m sure my mother did so many years ago.
It was better than Valium. I slept sounder than I had in years and woke up with
a fairly decent outlook on life for the first time in weeks.

18

I woke really refreshed the morning
after my uneventful cruise across the bay on
Sea Cock
. I stretched happily, sprang from my bed, and let RJ out
through the deck door. While he went to whiz, I made mental notes for what I
would accomplish that day as I made my bed, gathered dirty clothes for the
hamper, and picked up my rings and bracelet from the bedside table. Walking over
to the
tansu
chest, I opened my
jewelry box and was stashing my bracelet when I stopped and stared. Palming the
bracelet, I was still looking dumbly into the box when the phone rang.

“Hey! It’s me. Wasn’t that a nice
date last night?” Jan asked.

“It wasn’t a date.”

“Oooh, someone got up on the wrong
side of her perpetually empty bed this morning. Now come on, admit it, you had
a good time.”

“Yeah, okay, so I did. Got me to
thinking about a few things. But I gotta ask, Jan, and you’re probably going to
think I’ve finally gone over the edge, but did you rearrange my jewelry?”

“Rearrange? Is that your sneaky way
of asking if I borrowed something you’ve misplaced?”

“No. Nothing’s missing. And you
know I don’t care what you borrow or wear. I was wondering if you’d moved
things around? Kinda straightened things up or something?”

“Not me. Maybe RJ’s taken up cross
dressing. He’s always been partial to bows and beads, you know.”

“Yeah, mayhap he’s been hanging out
with Raoul’s Catamite too much. Oh, hell, I guess I’m having a brain cramp.
Another indication that I need to
do
something with my life. Like a major, major, change.”

“Let me guess. You’re gonna get
botoxed.”

“Naw, I hate needles worse than I
do wrinkles. But I might consider getting detoxed.”

“I ain’t going to no stinkin’
meetings, Miz Hetta.”

“Some friend you are. Listen, my
house is falling apart, the piece of shit engineer I, uh, relocated in
Seattle.”

“You mean screwed over, don’t you?
Depth charged? Sold down the tubes?” Jan interjected. She never lets me slide.

“Okay, yeah, him. His name is Dale,
and the bastard’s trying to get even with me by sabotaging both me and my
project. On top of that, someone is still breathing into my phone, my house has
haints, and now my jewelry is rearranging itself. Something’s got to give. I’m
going to sell the house and buy a boat to live on.”

“O-kay, I might consider one
lit-tle meeting.”

“I’m serious.”

“You hate sailing.”

“I’m thinking powerboat.”

Silence hung heavy on the line,
then she sighed. “Hetta, do the words ‘
major
mid-life crisis’ mean anything at all to you?”

* * *

RJ ate his prime rib for breakfast,
but still kept giving me nasty looks while I munched a bowl of Total and sliced
bananas. I ignored RJ’s sulky attitude and leafed through local boating magazines.
Scanning yacht brokerage listings, I jotted down a list of desirable features I
wanted on my boat. Yacht. Whatever. Unfortunately, not one of the ads listed
the interior color scheme. I made a couple of calls. They went something like
this, with me just imagining what they were thinking..

“Good morning, Old Tub Yachts.”

“Good morning. I see you have a
fifty-seven foot Dream Machine for sale.”

“Sure do. Give me a minute and I’ll
pull up the details on her Missus, ah?”

“Ms. Coffey. Hetta.”

“My name is Ralph,
Ms
. Coffey, and I appreciate your call.”
Shit, I finally get a hit on that garbage
scow and it turns out to be a single broad. Single broads never buy anything.
“Let’s
just see...yep, here she is.
Windsong
.
Beautiful boat. What would you like to know?”
This should be good.

“What are the colors?”

This
is worse than I thought
. “White, with blue canvas.”

“No, I mean inside. What’s the
color scheme?”

Is
this a joke? I bet some of those guys over at Pristine Marine put her up to
this. Well, two can play this game
. “Lime green and hot pink.”

“What? Do you have anything in
peach? Or at least neutrals?”

“Listen,
Ms
. Coffey, you tell those guys over at Pristine to stick it where
the sun don’t shine.”

I hung up, slightly confused but
undaunted. I tore pages from magazines, got out a map, and planned my yacht
ne plus ultra
. Hey, not a bad name for a
boat:
Perfection
. Using the
organizational skills I’d developed during my career, I put together a plan, a
search for perfection. The future looked rosier, despite the fact that my dog
wouldn’t speak to me.

I cheerfully put in a few hours in
my office, then decided to give myself a reward in the form of a nice,
midafternoon, hot water soak. Dropping clothes as I went, I grabbed a towel
and, since I was alone, decided to go in
au
naturel
. My deck was not visible from any of the neighbor’s houses, and
except for the occasional helicopter, I had total privacy. I stepped onto the
sun warmed redwood, and holding the towel in one hand, flipped back the tub
cover and stepped in. And screamed. The water was ice cold. This house was
definitely
histoire
.

* * *

The unseasonably warm weekend was
ideal for the Big Boat Hunt.

Armed with a list of questions and boat data, Jan
and I began in Alameda, worked our way back to Oakland, then on to Berkeley and
Emeryville. The boats I liked were too expensive. The ones I could afford were
too small. And badly decorated.

Exhausted from a day of repeatedly
removing our Birkenstocks to board yachts, we stopped at Macys, bought deck
shoes, then headed home to meet my hot tub repairman.

Jim “Dr. Hot Water” Evans had his
own key to the dog jail gate so he could service the pumps and plumbing housed
therein. And since we had RJ with us, Jim could get to the equipment without
losing any limbs. When we got home, Dr. Hot was on the deck, fiddling with
control knobs.

“Hiya, Jim. What’s the verdict?”

“Don’t know. Can’t get in.”

“Forget your key?”

“Nope. Fuggin’ key don’t work.”

“Whaddyamean ‘fuggin’ key don’t
work’?”

“Don’t work.” Jim is a man of few
words.

I tromped down the redwood steps to
the padlocked gate, dug out my own key, and tried the lock. I tried again. Jim
was right, fuggin’ key don’t work. It slid into the keyhole smoothly, but
wouldn’t turn.

“Did you try WD40?”

“Yep.”

I looked a little closer at the
Master Lock. Something about it wasn’t quite right. It was the same model, same
make, but shinier. I hadn’t opened the lock in ages, and Jim hadn’t been over
to service the tub for at least a month. Since then, someone had changed the
lock!

I left Jim cussing and hacksawing
into hardened steel while I drove to my local Ace Hardware for a new lock.
During the short trip, my mind raced, bouncing from one question to another.
Who changed that lock? And when? And why? It was time to call the
gendarmes
.