Float Plan - Trish Doller Page 0,55
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! T-shirt, faded green and worn soft, and a red polka-dot skirt more festive than I feel.
“Anna, you are so cute! You are the Grinch.” Agda pours a glass of pink rum punch and slides it across the table to me as I sit. “Eamon has been trying to explain his job to me and I can’t get my brain around it. So, you tell me what you do.”
“Well, right now, I just … sail.” I look past her at the harbor and take a deep breath. “My fiancé died by suicide almost a year ago, and I was having a hard time dealing with it, so I quit my job, took his sailboat, and left.”
“About your fiancé, I am very sorry,” she says, touching the back of my hand with light fingers. “But it is a very brave thing you are doing.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” My laugh isn’t entirely genuine, but I don’t want to cry. “After I nearly got hit by a cargo ship on my very first crossing from Florida to Bimini, I realized I had no idea what I was doing and hired Keane.”
“See, now I know you are brave. Sullivan is a wild man.”
I take a sip of rum punch. It’s very sweet and very strong, making my eyes water. “How did you all meet?”
“We had a mutual friend who owned a dive shop on Martinique, and we happened to be visiting him at the same time,” Keane says. “I was maybe twenty-four or twenty-five, between boats—”
“You were there with that French girl,” Agda interrupts. “What was her name?”
“Mathilde.”
The people around us are evidence enough that Keane has a history, but Mathilde is History with a capital H. Her name conjures the image of another effortlessly cool girl—like Sara on Chemineau—who looks perfect in a bikini. And at that age, Keane must have been the human equivalent of a bug zapper.
“Yes! Mathilde!” Agda slaps the table. “I have to tell you, Sullivan, we hated her. She was so dull.”
“I reckon I wasn’t dating her for her personality,” he says dryly. “My personal bar was set pretty low in those days.”
Eamon laughs. “What’s changed?”
We all wait while Keane drains his punch. The ice cubes rattle in the glass and the air is filled with the sounds of birds and frogs. The legs of his chair scrape on the floor as he pushes back to stand. “Everything.”
He walks away, his mood darkened, and Eamon shakes his head. “Always dramatic, that one.”
I follow Keane.
He’s cycled back to where he was last night on the boat, but given that I’ve just struggled with my own melancholy, I can’t fault him for it. He drops into an old cracked leather chair in the corner of the room he’s sharing with Eamon.
“Well,” Keane says. “Now I can’t go back out there because I’m a fucking idiot.”
I perch on the corner of the bed closest to his chair. “If it makes you feel any better, I suffered way too much inner turmoil over wearing this T-shirt.”
“Ben?”
“Bingo.”
“You look really cute wearing it.”
“Thanks.” My cheeks warm like I’m standing in a patch of sunshine. I don’t want to be flattered when he says things like this, but I am. “You know … it’s Christmas Eve. Maybe we should celebrate what we have instead of thinking about what we don’t.”
He tries to conceal an oncoming smile. “If I had been as smart at twenty-five as you are, I probably wouldn’t have dated Mathilde at all. She really was dull.”
all is calm, all is bright (22)
If we’re not all in high spirits, we hide it well beneath our Christmas accessories. Felix has donned a navy-blue sweater knit with white reindeers and snowflakes. Agda’s short hair is pulled back in a headband with bell-tipped antlers that jingle constantly as the Land Cruiser bounces down the road. Eamon has chosen a Santa hat and announces he’ll be inviting single women to sit on his lap, earning a smack on the shoulder from Agda. Even Keane has several red and green strings of Mardi Gras beads draped around his neck.
Like most waterfront bars, Foxy’s has tables on the sand and Caribbean music in the air—and tonight there isn’t a single unreserved table in the house. As we weave our way through the restaurant to our table, Agda keeps stopping to hug people.
“Everybody knows everybody else,” she explains. “Our island is very small.”
The table is on the beach, where tiki torches burn, and a