Working Title: Slow Boat, Bitter End

A Rony Boston Mystery - by RJ Stewart

THE GROUP’S TEMPORARY focus on Gungor afforded me a chance to check out Griselda. She had changed for dinner, thankfully leaving behind the sun hat. For white pants, she had substituted an ankle-length dress, blue mostly but with amorphous white forms that suggested jellyfish amidst swirls of green the color of kelp. Her long neck and bare shoulders were wrapped with a scarf dabbed in teal and edged with small, blood orange dots. The colorful assembly showcased her smooth, tanned face, slender nose, delicate eyebrows, long lashes, and white teeth. Her dark brown hair tumbled like poetry. Like poetry, indeed. My recollections of her at that time are always pathetically poetic. Undeniable alluring. Magnetic. Serpent-like. Eerie, beguiling, troubling. As mysterious as Eliot or Merwin. Pretty words, seductive, intentionally vague and damned irresistible.

Her comportment and poise were palpably confident, as if she were entirely in control of the vessel, dinner, the weather, the cosmos and perhaps even a cadre of forgotten Greek gods awaiting her summons. Griselda raised her glass and fumbled with saloon-a almost as awkwardly as I, but that foreign word from her lips turned the heads of our dinner companions as they lifted their glasses and broadened their smiles. Gungor looked very pleased.

He summoned our crew for an introduction, the cook, the captain, two deck hands, a server and berth attendant, and a boy who looked little more than grade school age.

Yusef, the captain.

Yurik, a deck hand.

Aslan, a deck hand.

Mustafa, the cook.

Aylin, the berth attendant and server.

And Emir, the boy.

We call him Ataturk, said Yusef, the captain.

We collectively acknowledged the crew, as Gungor assured us we’d be well cared for “as if you are family.”

He said he wanted us to feel at ease, and for starters he offered a little of his own personal history. History buff, former disc jockey, horn player in a Turkish jazz band (of all things), a raconteur, investor in a large Turkish development corporation that has done well under the leadership of Prime Minister Erdogan, and an ardent foodie, using an American colloquialism to assure us, I suppose, that we could count on him. Smiles all around, except for the rough-looking fellow to my right. Gungor said we should introduce ourselves, and with that he turned to the man at his right, the professor type, who said his name was Henry Maldonado. His wire glasses seemed to hold his head together. He wore a tangle of white hair, largely uncombed, billowing in the sea breeze, thick, even a black hair or two sprinkled here and there to suggest a remnant of youth. Henry was a small, compact man. He may have been physically fit for his age, but I couldn’t be sure. He looked healthy at least, but unfortunately, he smiled too frequently and too broadly, because his yellowed teeth and exposed gums prevented him from good looks. Even so, it seemed odd to encounter a man of such small stature with such a mop of hair. Older men are usually losing or have already lost most of their hair, and I began to admire this old guy who perhaps held within him some super gland teeming with testosterone. Or estrogen. I wondered what his wife, if that was her sitting next to him, thought of him. Had she found him irresistible when they both were younger? Could she have found a better-looking young man or did looks matter that much to her? Maybe he was sexy? Maybe clever and knowledgeable about stuff? Maybe some aspect of him reminded her of her father or older brother? In any event, did she still find him interesting? Alluring? Did they enjoy sex? And what of old men and sex, anyway? I began to picture him naked, his crinkled skin and skinny butt; his thighs and veined legs flaking dry skin collecting on his black slippers. It was unkind of me; even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked, as Bobby Dylan sang. Where’s the humility? The mole on my own back isn’t exactly suitable for publication, and I’d surely be passed over for a swimsuit ad in Esquire. My pate is mostly bald, patched at the edges with graying hair. The bulge in my abdomen is more a keg than a six pack. Furniture disease, as my friend in Manhattan would quip. Chest slipping into your drawers. Fair enough; I had no superiority over Henry apart from what I imagined, at least until a mirror or a store-front window reminded me that more than a few years had passed. But eyeing him now at dinner, catching a glance at the woman I suspected was his wife, I wondered about the scores of years they may have had together. The idea produced in me one of those off-putting moments I have experienced from time to time when I wonder just what life is about. Unresolved metaphysical questions perhaps: Why exactly are we here? And what of the inevitable desire to live with another human who also seeks this mysterious something? Further, what exactly is the attraction of male to female, female to male, or, regarding the presences of what I suspected was a gay couple, the same-gender allure? Usually in such tangled rumination, I decide it must be merely procreation, but that doesn’t explain the gay men and women in the universe. Companionship then; no man is an island etc. etc. Who wrote that anyway? Was it Donne? And what was his point? A condemnation of the recluse? And indictment of the introverts among us? Or just a solemn recognition that we function both alone and together, a hive of humanity that grieves when it loses one of its own to death? Donne’s beautiful language and poetic style do little more than state the obvious; we are a social species. No man is alone; right? We want and need companionship. That is if we can -- unlike what I feel I must have done to my Ex -- manage to avoid sending everyone scurrying away.