Working Title: “Slow Boat, Bitter End”

A Rony Boston Mystery by RJ Stewart

(Addition: To this post I‘m adding another paragraph. I would have done better to include the paragraph with the first post, because it’s so closely related. As you may know, these posts aren’t necessarily chapter divisions. That will come later with the final edits. — RJ Stewart)

(Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is incidental.)

THE SEXES do this to one another. Guys, notoriously superficial, can morph into romantics, forget about engines and football, cease their ego massages, listen to their hearts instead of their you know what. And the question they may have at such moments is elusive: How is it for the woman?  What’s in it for her? Why would Griselda remain on the deck in that circumstance? Why stay in that situation? Why even come forward in the first place when none but a troubled Rony Boston sat there stupidly? Loneliness? Possibility? Curiosity? Romance? This is the mystery, and I was not feeling up to the philosophy of it. I believe I was falling in love.

My berth was on starboard side, the most forward of the guest berths. The crew’s quarters, accessed from a level below, were ahead. It was a luxury to have my own bath, although the berth itself was cramped. I busied myself with stowing my belongings, carefully arranging my clothes and tucking my books with them to avoid a mishap should we encounter rough seas. I selected a rare volume of Virginia Woolf letters, placed it near my pillow and prepared to read myself to sleep. It was her “A Writer’s Diary” which I read in small doses because so many of her thoughts are profound. I had underlined a passage from April 9^th, 1937. It was written at a time when she struggled with her art and her depression, hoping for a stretch of happiness:

“… I was thinking between 3 and 4 this morning of my 55 years. I lay awake so calm, so content, as if I’d stepped off the whirling world into a deep blue quiet space and there open eyed existed, beyond harm, armed against all that can happen.”

I wondered if she meant to sound so desperate, but at the same time I realized this voyage, taking place some 96 years after she wrote these words in her diary, had carried me away from the whirling world. I hoped for a quiet space where my I could exist “open eyed.” I would not have counted myself depressed in a clinical sense, even though my life coach had suggested medication to calm my unproductive, looping thoughts. I felt ordinary enough, but I had noticed a change I attributed to the meds. I was not in as dark a place as I had been before the divorce, and if tonight were an example of the happiness I would be able to experience going forward, I was quite hopeful. For the moment, Griselda was the explanation for my joy, and yet I only had just met her. For the brief moments we talked I was thrilled, like a child at play. A sea of possibility seemed at hand. Not to suggest her physical presence wasn’t completely satisfying – of course, she was extraordinarily attractive -- but she had trusted me with a personal part of her recent life. I began to hope that I could share my innermost thoughts with her as well.

I plugged my iPhone and watch into the charge cords, turned out the cabin light, and snugged myself into the covers. Attending this drifting vessel were many creaks and groans, and I grew accustomed to them as the boat rocked me like a baby. But then something startled me. I tapped my charging iWatch to check the time. 1:23 a.m. There had been a sound. It was a thud, probably just something normal. I turned to go back to sleep. My thoughts curved like a cloud again to Griselda. I dozed, then heard another sound, metallic this time. Again, I thought nothing of it, but I checked the clock again. It was 13 minutes later, 1:36.

I had a deep sleep, a remarkable dream. Perhaps it was inspired by my evening, perhaps by the voyage, perhaps by the strange environs of my berth, perhaps the Virginia Woolf passage. Griselda’s face was recognizable, but not the same. It seemed to toggle between her own and my Ex-’s – and both were helping me from a container of some odd variety, like a large metallic bin. I was bewildered by the kindness they both showed me. They kept saying my name in an intoxicating lullaby. They put me into a smaller container from which my head and arms jutted happily, like a baby in a pram. I can remember my joy, my eyes bright with excitement, my arms spread against the sky.

And then I heard a man’s voice yelling from the deck. I looked at my watch: 2:47.

Man overboard! Man overboard!

I rushed into my trousers and hurried down the narrow hallway to the stairs leading to the stern. The voice now was very loud.

Man overboard!

I turned toward the bow where I saw a figure in the moonlight. He yelled for me to hurry forward and help him. In the darkness, I could make out Gungor holding the anchor chain. When I got closer, I could see his bloodied hands. None of the other crew had arrived so I followed Gungor’s frantic instructions to help him with the anchor.

Pull it up! Pull it up!

What! It’s too heavy! Isn’t there a hoist?

Why he hadn’t thought of that first I don’t know. But he heeded my instruction and began to turn the heavy crank on the capstan and the chain clinked slowly around the wildcat and coursed itself into its locker. The process seemed so stupid and awkward to me; why wasn’t it motorized? Soon the captain and crew crowded onto the bow and helped. I stepped back, leaning against the railing, my head swimming with questions. As the anchor neared the hull, Gungor and the crew fell silent, because there on the sharp points was a human body impaled at mid-section, head slumped, limbs splayed.

The other guests slowly came forward to see what was happening. I searched the faces for Griselda, but she must not have heard the commotion. I remembered that she had settled into the quiet and calm quarters in the stern. The Wyoming cowboys were there, and so were the Merry Maidens. Judith and Abra were huddled together, their bathrobes rustling in the wind. Henry and Ruthie covered their mouths in horror. The gay couple had seemed to sleep through it all. All but one of the crew was accounted for, Captain Yusef. Then I looped the crew and guests through my mind. Apart from Griselda and the gay guys, only the Bulgarian and the captain were not there.