Free Fluke, Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings by Christopher Moore Page B

bar girls worked the charter booths at the harbor, smoking Basic 100s and talking in voices that sounded like 151 rum poured into hot grease — a jigger of friendly to the liter of harsh. They were thirty-five or sixty-five, the color of mahogany, skinny and strong from living on boats, liquor, fish, and disappointment. They'd come here from a dozen coastal towns, some sailing from the mainland in small craft but forgetting to save enough courage for the trip home. Marooned. Man to man, boat to boat, year to year — salt and sun and drinking had left them dry enough to cough dust. If they lasted a hundred years — and some would — then one moonless night a great hooded wraith would swoop into the harbor and take them off to their own craggy island — uncharted and unseen more than once by any living man — and there they would keep the enchantment of the sea alive: lure lost sailors to the shore, suck out all of their fluids, and leave their desiccated husks crumbling on the rocks for the crabs and the black gulls. Thus were the sea hags born… but that's another story. Today they were just razzing Clay for leading two girls down the dock.
    "Just like outboards, Clay, you gotta have two to make sure one's always running," called Margie, who had once, after ten mai-tais, tried to go down on the wooden sea captain who guarded the doorway of the Pioneer Inn.
    Debbie, who had a secret source for little-boy pee that she put in the ears of the black-coral divers when they got ear infections, said, "You give that young one the first watch, Clay. Let her rest up a bit."
    "Morning, ladies," Clay tossed over his shoulder. He was grinning and blushing, his ears showing red even where they weren't sunburned. Fifty years old, he'd dived every sea, been attacked by sharks, survived malaria and Malaysian pirates, ridden in a titanium ball with a window five miles down into the Tonga Trench, and still he blushed.
    Clair, Clay's girlfriend of four years, a forty-year-old Japanese-Hawaiian schoolteacher who moved like she was doing the hula to a Sousa march (strange mix of regal order and island breeze), backhanded a hang-loose shaka at the cronettes and said, grinning, "She just along to pour buckets on his reels girls, keep him from burning up."
    "Oh, you guys are so friggin' nautical," said Amy, who was wrestling with a huge Pelican case that held the rebreather. The case slipped out of her grip and barked her shin before she caught it. "Ouch. Damn it. Oh yeah, everyone loves your salty friggin' charm."
    A chorus of cackles from the charter booths wheezed into coughing fits. Back to the cats, the cauldrons, the coconut oil, the sacred Jimmy Buffett songs sung at midnight into the ear of drunken, white-bearded Hemingway wannabes to make that rum-soaked member rise from the dead just this one last time. The leathery bar girls turned back to their business as Kona passed by.
    "Irie, Sistah Amy. Give up ye burden," said Kona, bounding down the dock to sweep the heavy rebreather out of Amy's grip and up onto his shoulder.
    Amy rubbed her arm. "Thanks. Where's Nate?"
    "He go to the fuel dock to get coffee for the whole tribe. A lion, him."
    "Yeah, he's a good guy. You'll be going out with him today. I have to go along with Clay and Clair as a safety diver."
    "Slippers off in the boat," Clay said to Clair for the hundredth time. She rolled her eyes and kicked off her flip-flops before stepping down into the
Always Confused.
She offered Clay a hand, and he steadied her as if escorting a lady from the king's court to the ballroom floor.
    Kona handed the rebreather down to Clay. "I can safety-dive."
    "You'll never be able to clear your ears. You can't pinch your nostrils shut with those nose rings in."
    "They come out. Look, out they come." He tossed the rings to Amy and she deftly sidestepped, letting them plop into the water.
    "Oops."
    "Amy's a certified diver, kid. Sorry. You're with Nate today."
    "He know that?"
    "Yeah, does he know that?"