Float Plan - Trish Doller Page 0,35

my eye, his mouth seems to be wrestling with itself. I look away. He clears his throat. “Actually … I could.”

The tent shrinks even smaller. Three years with Ben did not make me invisible. I recognize attraction when I see it and I understand what Keane meant. I just don’t know what to do about it. It’s been ten months and—My heart free-falls in my chest as I realize I’ve lost track.

“I don’t know about you,” I say, scrambling out of the tent, “but I could use some coffee—and breakfast.”

“Breakfast,” he echoes. “Right.”

Keane and I strike the tent, and as we motor away from the beach in silence, our equilibrium is off.

* * *

When it’s time to leave, Keane pulls up the anchor and guides me out of the harbor. I’m still afraid, but I focus solely on the channel in front of me and trust the sound of his voice, altering course only when he calls out an adjustment. We make it through the cut without incident and last night’s red sunset proves itself true—it’s a gorgeous day for sailing. A downwind sleigh ride that will push us closer to the Turks and Caicos.

“So, what’s the plan?” Keane asks, taking first watch at the helm. It’s early yet, so I sit with him, Ben’s chart book spread across my knees. San Salvador Island is believed to be where Christopher Columbus first set foot in the western hemisphere, but according to Ben’s handwritten note in the margin of the map, Mayaguana may have been the actual landing spot. “I guess I can see why Ben might want to go there.”

Keane doesn’t offer his opinion.

“It seems pretty desolate,” I say. “Kind of like Samana.”

His mouth pinched into a straight line, Keane only nods.

“Clearly you have something you want to say, so say it.”

“Mayaguana is very undeveloped,” he says. “And Christopher Columbus? He abused the indigenous peoples, introduced them to any number of lethal diseases, and paved the way for the transatlantic slave trade.”

This trip is not going the way I expected. Everything is different. “Are you saying we should go straight to Providenciales?”

“I’m not saying anything. But if I were, that’s what I’d be saying.”

I set aside the chart book and laugh. “Okay. Fuck Christopher Columbus. We’re going to the Turks and Caicos.”

“Grab the helm.”

I take over the tiller, and he disappears into the cabin, returning with the bag containing the spinnaker, a sail Ben and I never used. On the foredeck, he secures the sail bag to the side rail. As he moves, it’s clear Keane has done this hundreds of times—maybe thousands—and it makes me sad that the people who once valued him see his prosthesis as a hindrance. The spinnaker crackles like tissue paper as it goes up, fluttering in the wind, flashing bright primary colors on a field of white.

“Now head dead downwind,” Keane says, rolling up the jib and trimming the spinnaker. The belly of the sail fills with air and the boat surges forward. Fast becomes even faster and it feels as though we’re flying.

“I won’t ask you to do that.” He takes over the tiller and I shift so he can sit. “Unless you want to learn.”

“I don’t know.” The fat, colorful sail snaps in the wind, the edges curling in and billowing out. “I might.”

The hours stretch out like other crossings we’ve made, long and slow, despite the boat racing through the sea at seven knots, and we fill the time as best we can. Sailing can be romantic. It can be exciting. But it can also be mind-numbingly dull. I find the deck of cards and we play a few rounds of War. When we tire of cards, I bring up the travel Scrabble board and we argue over whether banjax is a real word.

“In Ireland it is,” Keane says. “It means to make a mess of things, usually by being incompetent.”

“We’re not in Ireland.”

“Well, we’re not in the United States, either, but I reckon if you’d just played a twenty-two-pointer with a triple-word score, you wouldn’t be arguing.”

“No, I’d be winning.”

His shoulders shake as he laughs so hard that I start laughing too. When I finally get my breath back, I say, “I have a question.”

“Ask it.”

“Do you have a home? I mean, like an apartment somewhere in the world where you keep your stuff?”

“I wasn’t joking about traveling with everything I own,” he says. “I suppose my permanent address is back in Tralee with my folks, but I’m a vagabond.