Just Add Water (1) (17 page)

“
They say the two of the happiest days of your life are the day you
buy a boat and the day you sell it. I guess that makes us a couple of very
happy people, Hetta. Here’re the keys to
Sea
Cock
,” Morris said, handing me two keys on a hopefully non-premonitory
miniature life ring.
 

As I stared at the keys to my new
life, he drew an iced bottle of Mumms from a silver bucket, fiddled with the
foil and wire, and bellowed, “Betty, come on up here and join me and Hetta in a
toast.”

A waft of Joy, tinkling bracelets
and the swish of silk preceded Betty’s arrival. She fluttered, aglitter in gold
and jewels, into an oversized chair. As always, she looked as though she just
stepped out of a fashion magazine, albeit one for graciously preserved
seventy-year-olds. Her eyes sparkled like the five carat stone on her finger.
“So, the deal is done? How very nice for you, Hetta. Are you all ready to move
aboard?”

“Getting there. My morning marathon
of sorting, storing, throwing and tagging giveaways is done. I own much more
stuff than any individual should. I feel like a great weight has been lifted
from my shoulders.” I didn’t mention that a very drippy, dead weight had also
been extracted from my hot tub, or that while I was packing up this morning, I
had a cop looking over my shoulder. I knew for sure Betty wouldn’t be able to
keep a prime piece of info like that from her fellow yacht club members.

“Morris and Betty, I really
appreciate your faith in my being able to pay for
Sea Cock
. I won’t let you down.” I raised my fluted crystal glass
to them and hoped I wasn’t telling a bald-faced lie.

Morris cocked his head towards his
wife. “You had a little angel on your shoulder, Hetta.”

“Let’s say Morris saw the wisdom of
my ways,” Betty cooed, smiling affectionately in his direction. “I admire your
spunk, Hetta. The yacht club needs more women who own and operate their own
boats.”

“I don’t know about that
‘operating’ part. I still have to learn how to drive it. Her.”

“My dear,” Betty said, taking a
dainty sip of Mumms, “how hard can it be? I mean,
men
do it.”

Now if I’d said that I’d be called
a castrating you-know-what, but Betty got a sweet smile from her husband. Maybe
it’s all in the delivery. Or maybe the man.

* * *

“Jan, I’ve got
the keys. Can you meet me at the yacht club?”

“Oh, this is sooo exciting. I’ll be
there in an hour. Do you want me to stay on the boat with you tonight? Or would
you rather enjoy it alone?”

“I know you’ve got plans with Lars.
I’ll be fine on the boat by myself for the night. But I wanted you to be the
first aboard with me this afternoon. We can have a little champers. I didn’t
want...I just…. ”

“I know, honey. It breaks my heart
RJ can’t be with us today, but you’re starting a whole new life and you can’t
let missing him get you down on such a momentous occasion. If it’ll help, I’ll
fart.”

Friends.
Ain’t they the best?

* * *

Sea
Cock,
her fiberglass hull agleam in the spring sun, sat alongside the yacht
club dock. Someone, probably Morris, had decked her out in full regalia with
all dress flags aflutter.

Majestic?
Nope, too dramatic.

I was preparing to step into the
aft cockpit when Jan yelled, “Stop, Hetta! Let me take a picture.”

“Why don’t you carry me over the
transom?”

“Do I look like Arnold
Schwarzenegger? You know, you haven’t been to aerobics lately and I’ve been
meaning to mention the fact that you’re getting a lit-tle tubby.”

I sucked in my stomach and posed. “Take the picture and
belay the back talk, matey, or you’ll surely walk the plank.”

“Aye, aye, Captain Coffey.”

Captain Coffey. Now that had a nice ring to it. Or did it
sound too much like an adult cereal?

I slid open the door to the main saloon
and stepped in. The aroma and beauty of a huge fresh floral arrangement—Betty’s
doing, no doubt—greeted me. The bouquet of roses, daisies and irises sat on a
high-low teak table in front of a nine foot L-shaped settee.
My
L-shaped settee.

Enthralled, touching things as I
went, I walked through the main saloon and descended, via two wide teak steps,
into a down-galley equipped with a full-sized refrigerator, three burner stove,
oven, microwave, and built-in banquette for informal dining. All the comforts
of home. My home.

From the looks of it, the entire
boat had been professionally cleaned, so all I had to do was go get my own
things. I made a mental note of what I had to do first. Like strip off the
custom made bed cover and replace it with my own ashes-of-roses duvet and
linens. Everything I needed for the boat was boxed and ready, waiting for me to
pick them up at the house. And even though my peaches and pinks didn’t exactly
match the new blue décor, I planned to live with them until I could afford new
stuff. Life is full of little compromises,
n'est-ce
pas
?

The aft sundeck, furnished in
slightly faded but freshly scrubbed Brown Jordan fake rattan with blue and
white striped cushions, sported an ice maker filled with fresh ice, a rack of
blue and white plastic stemware and a wet bar. Everything was showroom
immaculate and in its place.

Everything.

“Uh, Hetta,” Jan said, pointing to
an open cabinet over the wet bar, “isn’t that Garrison’s stereo?”

“Uh-huh. And those are also his CDs.” We went back inside,
and a stem to stern inspection revealed Garrison’s clothes in
my
closet, his toiletries in a cabinet
in
my
bathroom. Head. Whatever.

Livid, I grabbed the telephone, the one that, as of ten
that morning, was unlisted in my name. “Morris, this is Hetta. I’m on
Sea Cock
.”

“Great. How’s she look?”

“The boat looks great. It’s the
accessories I’m not crazy about.”

“What accessories, Hetta?”

“Garrison’s crap. It’s all still on
the boat.”

Silence. Then, “Is this a problem?”

“Damn right it’s a problem, Morris.
I bought
Sea
Cock
, not Garrison.”

“Hetta, there’s some kind of
misunderstanding here. Garrison assured me you two, uh, were….” His voice
dwindled off as my blood pressure skyrocketed. I opened my mouth to commence a
tirade, but thought better of it. No sense in railing at poor Morris over a
misunderstanding of some kind that surely could be easily sorted out.

I took a deep breath, battling to
control my fury.

“Let me see if I have this
straight, Morris. Garrison led you to believe he was remaining aboard? For the
record there is no
you two,
and for
everyone’s information…” As my voice involuntarily rose, I heard Morris muffle
the mouthpiece and say something unintelligible to someone in the background.
Then, after a minute, Betty’s soothing tones replaced Morris’s confused ones.

“Hetta dear, poor Morris gave me
the phone. Actually, he threw it at me as if it were radioactive. Leave it to
men to screw things up, poor devils. They think communication means something
like Morse code. But, in dear Morris’s defense, I think you should know
Garrison has given not only Morris, but everyone in the yacht club, the
definite impression you and he are having a fling. I found it hard to believe,
but Garrison as much as told Morris he expected to continue living, with you,
on
Sea Cock
.”

“That rat! Thanks for the info,
Betty. Please tell Morris not to worry. Everything will be fine. Just as soon
as I murder Garrison.”

Jan shot me a look, one reminding
me that, not twenty four hours ago, one of my idle threats had already come
back to haunt me. “Kidding, of course. By the way, the boat looks wonderful and
thanks for the flowers.” I hung up and told Jan what Garrison, Morris and Betty
said.

“You know, Hetta, I told you weeks
ago Garrison was hinting around that you two were an item. So now what?”.

My guns were still at the house, so
I examined the door lock. Not your standard Master or dead bolt. Fooey, I’d
have to hire a professional to change it. “Exorcism, Jan, pure and simple.
We’ll have the joint cleared of all things Garrison in no time.”

* *
*

I was carrying a load of Garrison’s
belongings from my cabin to the sundeck, when someone rapped on the hull.

“Permission to come aboard?” a
voice bellowed. I looked out to find an entourage of about twenty yacht club
members standing on the dock, Garrison at the forefront. He was holding a
magnum of champagne and a large bouquet of flowers. I shrugged helplessly at
Jan and invited them all on board.

32

Sea
Cock,
on Sunday morning, resembled Times Square on January one. There was
hardly a square inch of boat not littered with empty glasses, beer bottles,
confetti—white, thank God— shredded gift wrap, or soggy canapés. From the deck
speakers, Jimmy Buffet lamented bad drinking habits and cheeseburgers in
paradise. Jimmy was accompanied by loud snores emanating from somewhere in my
boat. Tracing the sonorous trail, I found Garrison in my guest cabin.

“Garrison, wake up. We have to
talk,” I yelled, the shout echoing through my own throbbing head. Garrison
snorted awake and sat up, dazed.

“Oh, Hetta. Hi.”

“Garrison, I—”

“I know,” he said, “you want me off
the boat. No problem. I haven’t had time to find a new place, and I thought you
might like me to stick around and show you all the systems. Boats aren’t like
houses, you know. All sorts of complicated stuff.”

I’d already noticed. Sometime
during the night I’d flushed the toilet and an alarming red light marked
HOLDING TANK FULL lit up. What did that mean?

“Yeah, okay, I guess it’ll be okay
for a day or two. Come on, help me clean this place up, then we’ll go up to the
club for brunch.”

An hour later, Garrison’s gear was
moved into the forward guest cabin and
Sea
Cock
was shipshape again. Except for that holding tank thing.

While I took note of the phone
number and jargon, Garrison called Privy Patrol, Inc., You Dump It, We Pump It,
for dockside pump out service. While we waited for them, we ate breakfast at
the yacht club. We had just finished our eggs Benedict when a workboat chugged
up alongside
Sea Cock
.

“Sewer rats are here, Hetta, we’d
better go down. You got any cash? Unless you’re a regular customer, they don’t
take checks.”

“I’ve got some money. How much is
it?”

“Well, being Sunday and all,
probably a little pricey.”

“Garrison, when was the last time
you had the holding tank pumped out?”

“I
don’t recall. I mean, jeez, Hetta, who knew you were gonna have a party?”

Tempted to push him off the dock, I
nonetheless bit my tongue and signed up for twice-weekly pump out service. I
carefully noted the holding tank service’s phone number and invoice amount in
my new Boat Expenses book, a gift from a well-wisher. My first entry and it’s a
crapper zapper. Who knew? But what the hey, I’d had to pay a city sewer bill at
the house. My first omen of things to come, however, should have been that
someone even
made
a Boat Expenses
book. And that it had lots and lots of pages.

Jenks Jenkins knocked on the hull
as the sewer rodents were motoring away with their toxic cargo. Before I could
say a word, Garrison invited Jenks aboard
my
boat and offered up a drink.

Mustering every ounce of grace I
had left in my soul, I said “Hello, Jenks.” After all, the man
had
sent me flowers. Gritting my teeth,
I tromped below to gingerly strip my bed. Unwilling to sleep on Garrison’s
sheets, I had spent a chilly. but luckily mostly comatose, night rolled in the
bedspread. And I wasn’t too sure about
it
.

My sheets were still in my garage,
packed with stuff I’d intended to bring to the boat the day before. Before I’d
ended up with a houseful, uh, boatful, of uninvited, if well-intentioned
guests.

Tonight I planned to sleep under my
own silk comforter, swathed in 800 count Egyptian cotton. Tomorrow, Garrison
could take his ratty old bedding to whatever lair he found to inhabit. I
stuffed his pillows, sheets and even the bedspread that was custom-made for
Sea Cock,
into a plastic garbage bag and
climbed to the main saloon. Garrison and Jenks were playing cribbage, unaware I
was royally pissed at their cavalier attitude towards
my
boat.

“Where do you want this, Garrison?”
I asked between grinding molars. If I didn’t get rid of him soon I’d have to
have a whole new enamel job.

“Oh, leave it there. I’ll stow it
later.”

I’ll
stow
you
later
. “Fine. I’ll be
back soon. I’m going to get my things from the house.”

“Need
any help?” Jenks asked.

“No,
thanks.”
Yeah, you can help. You can get
your ass off my boat and take Garrison with you.

“Sorry I missed your welcome party last
night. Everyone says it was great,” Jenks said. “Anyhow, welcome to the
wonderful world of boating.”

I looked at my watch, thinking,
gee, wasn’t it about time for his
nooner
?
But I said aloud, “Thanks.” They teach us grace under fire in the South and,
once in a great while, I even use it. Albeit reluctantly.

Already engrossed in their cribbage
game, the men mumbled a “bye” in unison. Then Garrison looked up and added,
“See you when you get back.”

Lucky me.

Sigh. Oh, well, tomorrow was
another day. Tomorrow I’d get control of this situation. Tomorrow I’d have my
fresh water pump burn out, right after I tried flooding the bathroom. Head.
Whatever. But, of course, I didn’t know that yet.