Such a Pretty Fiction: Chapter 4
This is the fourth chapter of my novel, Such a Pretty Fiction. Chapter 3 is here.
The forward part of the boat was a deck that formed the ceiling of the cabin. The deck stopped three quarters of the way aft, where it opened into a sunken cockpit. At the rear of the cockpit was a large steering wheel, and along either side was a pair of benches. An awning of weathered green canvas stretched overhead so you could steer without being battered by the sun and the rain.
Sophie and I stood in the cockpit. Rafa stuck his head out of the companionway leading down to the living quarters.
“Cervezas?” He lisped the word in a Spanish accent and held out two brown bottles.
“Oh Rafa, I could not,” Sophie said.
“They’re already open! Bad luck to waste beer at sea!”
Muriel shouted behind him, her voice muffled. “We’re not at sea yet!”
“She’s right,” Rafa smiled, “but it’s still bad luck.”
I took the beers and handed one to Sophie.
“There’s a sailor!” Rafa said. He ducked back down below. I could hear Muriel laughing.
“Logan, you must help me with this,” Sophie whispered. “If I drink it I am going to have too much. At least we are not on the water. Alcohol and seasick.” She groaned.
I poured a little of mine over the side. She opened her mouth in horror and promptly did the same, pouring out half the bottle.
“Much better,” she smiled.
Rafa and Muriel climbed the ladder out of the cabin. He hopped down to the dock and tossed a line onto the floor of the cockpit. Muriel began coiling it. Another line slapped the deck at the bow of the boat.
“Watch him,” Muriel said. She peered at Rafa on the dock. “He always does this when we’re casting off. One day he’ll fall in. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”
Rafa grabbed one of the stanchions ringing the prow and put a foot on the bumper dangling against the hull. Using it as a step, he sprang over the lifeline onto the boat.
“Made it!” he called back to Muriel. “You can stop crossing your fingers.”
“One day!” Muriel laughed. “There’s a reason you’re not supposed to do that!”
“No one else is a man of wind and water like I am!”
Muriel laughed again and pushed past Sophie, stepping out of the cockpit onto the deck. Rafa took her place, swinging down under the awning.
“We’re going out?” Sophie asked.
“Of course we’re going out!” Rafa plopped down behind the steering wheel. He fiddled with some controls by his feet and the engine coughed to life. “It’s bad luck to be on a boat and not go out. Boats are made for sailing!”
He put the engine in gear and we slid away from the dock. I sat on the starboard bench, opposite Sophie. She raised her eyebrows at me and leaned back, stealthily pouring more beer over the side. She laughed and looked toward Muriel in the bow.
“Muriel, can we help you?”
“You wouldn’t know what to do!” Muriel shouted over the engine. “We’ve done this hundreds of times, don’t worry. I don’t even have to think.”
I leaned back to watch her around the awning. In the sun her sandy hair was bright, like it had been in the restaurant. She stood on a peg sticking out from the mast, doing something with the mainsail.
A jetty protected the marina from the ocean. Rafa spun the wheel and the long pile of black rocks swung to our left. A row of seagulls watched us pass. When we cleared the jetty, we rose and fell on the swells rolling in from the sea. We puttered away from the marina. Ahead of us were two giant container ships.
Rafa cut the motor. The world rushed back to life around me. I could hear gulls, men working on the pier, metal rigging clanging against masts in the marina. Muriel came back into the cockpit and hauled one of the lines, spinning a metal winch. The rope whirred through a pulley and the mainsail began to rise, improbably, seeming too large for one person to haul up on her own.
She locked a line in place with a clamp. The sail filled and the boat heeled slightly to one side, cutting through the water, angling toward the pier.
“Ahoy there, captain.” I tried to sound ridiculous to soften my question. “You do see the pier on the right?”
“You mean off starboard? I see it.”
I looked at Sophie. She shrugged her shoulders and smiled, trusting Rafa.
Muriel sat next to Sophie. The voices of the men on the pier grew louder. Still Rafa did nothing. I turned around. We were too close. I had to look up to see the top of the pilings.
“Rafa?” I tried again. He sat behind the wheel, head raised slightly, looking out past the bow of the boat. “A little close on this side.” I could hear the urgency in my voice.
Someone shouted overhead. A man stood at the open back to one of the net sheds, trying to get our attention.
“Rafa…” Muriel said. Sophie was wide-eyed next to her. More voices shouted from the pier. “Rafa!”
Suddenly he spun the wheel. The sails shuddered and snapped over our heads. I turned to look one last time, first over my right shoulder then my left, past Rafa as we turned away from the pier.
The men laughed at his stunt. The boat heeled gently to port. Sophie and Muriel dipped down and my own bench rose up.
We sliced through the water. Rafa smirked. I was annoyed at myself for being taken in.
“You had me,” I admitted, loudly so that no one could miss it. “I was looking for life jackets.”
“Good to get a bit of excitement first thing on the water,” he said.
He tacked back and forth out past the end of the pier, past the cargo ships. As he turned the wheel, Muriel worked the lines, easing the boom from one side of the boat to the other. The rollers grew bigger. It made me uneasy moving away from the shore.
“And where are we going?” Sophie asked.
“There’s an island Rafa’s been wanting to visit,” Muriel said. “It has an abandoned cannery. We’ll anchor there tonight.”
“What?” I said. “We’re staying out here?” I had imagined lounging around the boat in the marina, safe behind the jetty.
“Nothing to worry about, Logan,” Rafa said. “Only a few hours of easy sailing. We’ll never be out of sight of land.”
“What about food?”
“On a boat it’s provisions. We’ve got plenty. Plus a hibachi.” He motioned to a metal orb bolted to the railing behind him. “I’ll even cook.”
“Oh!” Sophie said. She was looking at her phone. “Soledad is coming to Valparaiso! She is leaving Viña now. Muriel, can we wait for her?”
Muriel looked at Rafa. “I don’t see why not.”
“What?” Rafa snapped. “Did you know she was coming?”
“No, of course not,” Sophie said. “Or I would have told you. I suppose she finished her presentation early.”
Rafa said nothing. There was no sound but the wind.
“I can tell her we have left. It is OK.”
“Wait Sophie,” Muriel said. “Of course she can come.” She said it like a challenge, with a hint of the animosity we had seen at breakfast.
“If we go back now we won’t reach the cannery by dark,” Rafa said.
“I can tell her we are not free,” Sophie repeated. “It is OK.” She started typing.
“Sophie, no.” Muriel put her hand over Sophie’s fingers. “It’s fine. We’ll go back to the marina and wait. We can still make the island by dark. Tell her it’s fine.”
“You are sure?” Sophie asked. “I am sorry I did not know she was coming, but it is true I would feel bad to tell her no. I am sorry Rafa.”
“Yes,” Muriel said. “We’re sure.”
Rafa sat stolidly behind the steering wheel. Without warning he spun it hard to the left. The bow careened toward the shore.
Over our heads, the boom slammed from one side of the boat to the other, like a gunshot. The boat shuddered under the force.
“Rafa! You idiot!” Muriel shouted.
He was smirking again.
“If you break something I’m not paying to fix it!” She leaned out of the cockpit and peered at the rigging.
“What happened there?” I asked Rafa. I wanted to let him talk about the boat.
“Nothing to be afraid of, Logan. Sometimes the boat makes noises. We’re not going to sink.”
“That was a jibe,” Muriel explained. “If you’re not ready, jibes are dangerous.” She looked at Rafa.
“Oh it’s fine, Muriel. How many times have I told you? The boat is made to do this. You sound like Logan.”
“I’m telling you again, Rafa. If you damage my boat, you are going to be the one that pays to fix it.”
“No problem.”
We sailed back to the marina in silence. When we were in the slip, Rafa went below without a word. A door closed in the cabin.
“Muriel,” Sophie said, “I am so sorry. I did not know Soledad would be coming.”
“It’s fine,” Muriel said. “Rafa is just sulking. I’m happy to meet Soledad after all you’ve said about her.” There was a clunk below deck and the sound of grating metal. “Rafa, what are you doing?”
His voice floated back up from the companionway. “Since we’re not going anywhere, I figured I’d work on the engine.”
“What!?” Muriel shouted. “You’re being a child!”
“I’m going to run to the bathroom back at the club,” I told Sophie.
She nodded rapidly. “Yes that is a good idea. I will come with you.”
I came out of the bathroom and waited for Sophie at the edge of the restaurant. The dining room had cleared out. Only a few tables were occupied with people eating a late lunch.
“Logan!”
I turned around and there was Soledad in the doorway. She wore shorts and a t-shirt, a small backpack over her shoulder, brown hair framing her face.
“Hey!” I said. “I’m glad you found it. We had some trouble.”
“Sophie gave me directions. It’s pretty well tucked away in here.”
Sophie came out of the bathroom, and the three of us walked back to the boat. She warned Soledad that things might be tense.
Muriel sat in the cockpit, fuming.
“He’s an absolute child. We can’t go anywhere now. He took apart the filter.”
I was embarrassed for Soledad. She was quiet, her brow furrowed. I wanted to smooth things over, for Soledad’s sake, so I stuck my head into the cabin. Rafa sat at a small table, tinkering with a device I assumed was the filter.
“Still time to make it to the cannery?” I asked.
“Too late to get started now.”
“It’s three. If the factory’s only a couple hours away, we should get there with plenty of light, no?”
“Two hours with perfect sailing, and we need to leave time to find an anchorage. Too late now.”
“Can we just sail around? Like we were doing before?”
“Not without the filter.” He looked up, daring me to ask again.
I held his gaze. “Can you put the filter back together?”
“Not before I’m finished.”
I turned back to the cockpit.
“Such a child,” Muriel spat again.
“How long does it take to fix a filter?” I asked her.
“As long as he wants it to take.”
“In that case… There’s some beer onboard.” I shouted into the cabin. “Hey Rafa! Anymore beer down there?”
He didn’t reply.
Soledad spoke to Muriel. “I’m sorry to have interrupted your sailing. It was rude to invite myself. I’m sorry.”
“Oh it’s not you.” Muriel sighed. “There’s just always something with him.” She stretched her hand across the table. “I’m sorry for being so rude. I’m Muriel.”
Rafa stuck his head out of the cabin. “Yeah there’s some cerveza,” he lisped. “Who wants one?”
“I’ll take one!” Soledad said.
“My kind of girl.” Rafa smiled at her. “I’m Rafa.”
“Soledad. Sorry about inviting myself.”
“Happy to have you aboard.” He smiled at her a moment too long. “Anyone else?”
Muriel and Sophie declined.
He reappeared with the beers and a trash bag. “Look what I pulled out of the filter.” He drew out a plastic grocery bag. It was coated with algae and slime. “I’m going to hit the head at the club. When I’m back I’ll put the filter together and we can go back out.” He stepped past Sophie and was gone.
“That was really in the filter?” I asked Muriel.
“Oh, probably,” she said. “The engine has been running hot and that would explain it.”
“Oh thank god!” Soledad laughed. “When he said filter I thought that had been soaking in your drinking water.” A mischievous smile crept across her face. “Why don’t you put the filter back while he’s gone? Teach him you don’t need him the next time he’s going to sulk.”
“Unfortunately,” Muriel said, “when it comes to the engine I do need him. Before Rafa I always hired mechanics. My dad didn’t believe in engines, so I never learned.”
“Oh that’s right,” Soledad said. “Sophie told me you learned to sail from your dad?”
Muriel nodded.
“And you grew up on a boat?”
She nodded again. “This boat.”
“Oh my god, really?” Soledad looked around as if she was seeing the boat for the first time. “What an amazing childhood.”
Sophie straightened and glanced at Muriel.
“Sometimes.” Muriel said.
“So your memoir is about growing up at sea?”
“Partly. Growing up at sea. Going to school at Harvard, with my father as a professor. He—”
“Muriel!” Sophie said. “I was going to tell Logan last night the story of the chocolates. But you should tell them. You tell your stories so well.”
“Oh there’s not much to tell,” she said. “A boy falls in love with a girl. The girl doesn’t love him back. The boy tries to murder the girl with ricin-laced chocolates and goes to prison. A tale as old as time.”
“What?” Soledad shrieked. “Is that true?”
Muriel gave a small shrug and leaned back against the railing. “More or less. I was at Harvard. This is before going back for my master’s. My first time at Harvard. Harvard has a lot of creepy guys. This guy was in my chemistry class. We studied together, and he thought that meant I was into him. He asked me to be his valentine—”
Soledad scoffed.
“I know, right? He asked me to be his valentine. I said no. Then on Valentine’s Day he sent me a box of chocolate hearts with a note telling me to call him when I ate them.”
“Oh my god,” Soledad said. “So how did you know?”
“I was creeped out, so I didn’t eat any. But apparently I wasn’t the only girl who’d refused to be his valentine. Someone else actually ate them. Thankfully, he’d botched the extraction of the ricin, so she survived. He’s in prison now.”
Soledad held her beer bottle up to the light. “Should I be concerned that you didn’t take that beer from Rafa?”
Muriel laughed. “Rafa doesn’t have it in him to murder. He’s more the passive aggressive type.” She craned her neck to peer at the restaurant. “Like right now he’s stalling in the club so we won’t be able to go out again and he’ll prove his point.”
“Well let’s not give him the satisfaction.” Soledad stood up. “Let’s put the filter back.”
“I don’t know how,” Muriel said.
“Soledad grew up with a mechanic,” said Sophie. “She is good with engines.”
“Are boat engines like car engines?” Muriel asked. “Are you sure you know how to do it?”
Soledad moved to the companionway. “Close enough.”
We followed her down the ladder. Immediately to the right at the bottom was a small kitchen. Just a sink and a stove, a gimbal over the burner. In front of the kitchen was the small table where Rafa had been working. Resting on top was the filter.
Muriel pulled out a panel behind the ladder. Inside, the engine was squeezed into a cramped space that looked too small for it. The cabin had been homey, and the engine felt like an intruder.
Soledad examined the filter, selected a wrench from the toolbox, and kneeled down in front of the engine. A moment later she was finished. “There we go. Let’s start her up.”
We climbed back up the ladder into the sun. Soledad sat behind the steering wheel. She studied the controls and pressed a button. The engine puttered to life, throbbing in its alcove beneath our feet.
Muriel smiled, her eyes wide. “You’re amazing! Rafa’s not going to believe it.”
Rafa appeared as if summoned. “Hey! Hey!” We turned to look. He ran toward us along the dock. “Kill it! Turn it off!” As he reached the boat he stretched in to get at the controls. The engine died and we were back in silence.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he shouted. He looked first at Soledad, then Muriel. “What’re you doing letting her start it without the filter? You’re going to ruin the engine!” He looked crazed, peering up at us from the dock.
“Calm down, Rafa,” Muriel fired back at him. “The filter is fine.”
“What, like you put it in?”
“That’s right,” Soledad cut in before Muriel could reply. “Made it look pretty easy, too.”
Rafa glowered up at Soledad, perched above him behind the steering wheel, then at Muriel. She stared back at him defiantly.
“I’d better check it, then,” he grumbled. He climbed into the cockpit and down the ladder out of sight.
I thrilled at the audacity of Soledad’s lie. It was perfect.
“Does he always act like that?” Soledad asked Muriel, loud enough to be heard in the cabin.
Muriel shrugged.
Rafa came back up the ladder. “It looks OK,” he told Muriel. “You were right. You insist you can’t work on the engine. I’m sorry.” He turned to Soledad. “No, I don’t always act like that. The boat is how we travel. It’s where we live.”
“Maybe you should treat Muriel as well as you treat the boat,” Soledad said.
She had gone too far. “Well…” Muriel began. “It’s true that I don’t usually work on the engine…” She looked at Soledad to see if they should come clean.
“Well you did today,” Soledad insisted. “Maybe you don’t work on it because no one believes in you.”
Rafa inhaled slowly, arms hanging at his sides. “I apologized. And I’ll apologize again—” he turned back to Muriel “—to you, Muriel. I was wrong to shout. I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted,” she said quickly. She reached out and took his hand.
Soledad let it go. Sophie asked her about the presentation. The five of us began to talk about meaningless things. The sun, the boat, life on the water.
“Anyone want to go out again?” Rafa asked after a while.
“To the cannery?” I said.
“Too late. We’d never make it. Just around the marina.”
We replayed the same scene from several hours earlier. Rafa sat behind the wheel. He didn’t encore his trick with the pier. Instead Muriel hoisted the sail and he turned into the wind.
The boat heeled over like it had before. Soledad laughed with delight. Muriel explained what the boat was doing. Why she pulled and released the lines that she did. Soledad listened attentively. Rafa interjected, but only to support something Muriel said, never to undercut her.
The sun began to set. The long shadow of our boat sailed along beside us. When the last sliver of sun disappeared, lights began to wink on toward the horizon. “Boats waiting to come into port,” Rafa said. They had been invisible during the day. Without the sun it was cold. We sailed back to the marina.
The residue of the afternoon conflict was gone. Muriel and Rafa worked as a team. I wondered if it was the sailing that kept them together. Quarreling, then forced to slip back into a routine where Muriel needed Rafa, and Rafa needed Muriel.
Rafa took Soledad to the restaurant and they returned with bottles of wine. He served us in bright plastic tumblers. “Water tastes different in different colored glasses,” he said. “Hopefully the same isn’t true of wine.”
Muriel said he picked up that line visiting Pablo Neruda’s house. Neruda had been a poet with a house full of knickknacks in Valparaiso, and he liked to drink out of different colored glasses.
“Nonsense!” Rafa said. “I’ve always said so.”
Muriel rolled her eyes.
Rafa was good on the tiny grill. He cooked steak and shrimp in batches. The night crept in around us. Muriel flipped on the lights. Soledad popped out of the darkness looking beautiful, dark hair on her pale skin, long fingers wrapped around a bright red cup.
We moved into the cabin and crowded around the table. It was warm and close. Rafa uncorked a third bottle of wine. Soledad hadn’t finished making trouble for him. She asked how he spoke perfect English if he was born in Spain. His father had sent him to a boarding school in New York. “What a nineteenth-century childhood!” Soledad laughed. “Did you miss your servants while you were away?”
Rafa didn’t laugh, but Muriel found it very funny. She said that in fact, yes, he did. His father was a famous member of the Spanish Parliament, and Rafa missed his dad’s driver terribly. Rafa didn’t find it funny.
“Fine, fine,” Soledad teased. “I guess some wounds are still too raw. Muriel, tell me more about your memoir. What was it like growing up on a boat?”
Muriel sat straight up on the other side of the table, rigid. Rafa reacted immediately, recognizing something. He moved to put his arm around her. She batted it away, staring straight ahead at the wall.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Soledad began. “I…”
Sophie, sitting next to Muriel, reached out to take her hand. “Muriel.”
Muriel’s eyes were distant. “It just…” Suddenly she began squirming past Rafa off the bench. The table was set close to the wall, making it hard to escape.
Rafa slid off to make room for her. Muriel opened the door in the front of the cabin. Inside, a triangular bed was nestled into the bow of the ship. Rafa stepped in after her and closed the door. I heard muffled sobs and Rafa’s voice trying to soothe her.
Soledad looked from me to Sophie. “I had no idea. She was proud of the memoir this afternoon. What happened?”
Sophie made the best she could of an explanation, the same she had given me. “Things are not so easy for Muriel. Perhaps it is worse with the wine.”
The evening was over. We walked to the bathrooms to give them privacy. The marina was a different place at night. Ghostly voices floated over the water.
Inside the restaurant, two men sat with a bottle of whiskey speaking Spanish in low tones. I brushed my teeth and thought about the strange way that Rafa and Muriel seemed to be in love.
We went back to the boat. The door to their cabin was open. Rafa sat on the bed and leaned against the wall. Muriel lay with her head on his chest, her eyes closed. He held her, speaking softly. I put my hand on the knob. He nodded and I pulled it shut as quietly as I could.
Sophie and Soledad shared the cabin off the kitchen. I stretched out on the couch. I fell asleep in the dark listening to the murmur of Rafa’s voice and the sound of the water against the hull.