Off the village of Tiputa, Rangiroa Atoll, French Polynesia
Saturday Morning
The woman sat in the sailboat's cockpit, her legs stretched out in the sun, her eyes fixed on the thatched-roof cottages that rimmed the palm-lined shore less than a hundred yards away. The sun had been up for less than three hours but already the morning air was thick and warm, and despite the steady trade-wind blowing through her hair she was already uncomfortably warm. She swatted absently at an unseen bug, swiped at a couple beads of sweat that ran down her neck and into her t-shirt. A boat loaded with scuba divers roared by on its way to the pass that led from the lagoon out to sea. She watched them for a moment, envied their mobility, envied the fact that in a few days all those smiling faces would load back onto the ATR airliner on which they'd so recently come and hop back to Papeete in a half hour or so, and then on to places like Paris or New York. She, on the other hand, would be sailing south with her husband to Papeete, and it would take days.
She was tired, tired of living her husband's dream, tired of living in a forty foot sailboat, tired of living in other people's idea of paradise. She thought, sitting in the boat's shaded cockpit, about what her idea of paradise might be now, now -- after a year and a half at sea. First and foremost, Paradise would be air-conditioned and Paradise would not rock and roll with each passing wavelet. When she heard thunder and saw lightning she would not fear for her life and if the wind stopped blowing she'd not become consumed with visions of dying of thirst, her bloated tongue black and hard, her mouth so dry she couldn't swallow. Every time she walked across a room she'd not have to worry about being flung sideways into hard furniture, and if she never had to look at a GPS readout again that would be too soon. And if someone, anyone ever asked her to start a dead-reckoning plot again... well, she'd be more than happy to acquaint the poor fool with dead, alright.
But still, there were times...
Like last night. David had miraculously produced a bottle of ice-cold Riesling to go with the lobsters fishermen had plucked from the lagoon earlier that day. He'd rubbed chilled aloe on her sun-burned shoulders and the tops of her ears, then he'd kissed her so gently on the neck that chills had run up and down her spine -- and he'd been so gentle and caring with his lovemaking that night. And she'd felt once again how the dome of the night sky out here millions of miles away from 'civilization' could be so staggeringly overwhelming. The Milky Way looked like thick white steam rising against a backdrop of infinite black velvet, and lying in the cockpit awash in orgasmic afterglow she'd never felt so connected to ebb and flow of life, indeed, to the very universe above.
No, she'd never felt more alive in her life. The whole thing was... a paradox.
If she tried to catalogue all she and David seen and done over the past eighteen months she knew she'd need hundreds, if not thousands of pages to document it all: Seattle to San Francisco, fog and logs, seeing a Great White in the Farallons take a seal pup; south to Newport Beach, where they'd spent a few weeks provisioning and making minor repairs -- and that quick trip to Disneyland; then south again to San Diego and Ensenada and Cabo San Lucas -- which had seemed more like LA than the sleepy Mexican village she'd been looking forward to. Then their first real ordeal: a month at sea, twenty seven hundred miles from Cabo to the Marquesas, the doldrums, the brief though indescribably violent line storms that pushed through with little, or at night, no warning.
But the boat always did just fine, and so had David -- in fact, he seemed to thrive more with each passing adventure. Only as the third week wore on had she begun to feel completely out of place, so stripped bare of all she'd once held so dearly. Then she'd begun to feel trapped. Trapped, like she was caught in someone else's dream, like she was just a minor, peripheral element in a vast unfolding drama that, frankly, she didn't care about in the least -- because, after all, this wasn't her drama. As the boat drifted through the doldrums she found herself looking at David and wishing she'd never met him, never married him, never borne him his child. Wishing he was dead and gone and somehow someone or something would miraculously appear in the very next instant and take her away from this never-ending nightmare of rolling seas. She needed, she told herself, to change course.
Thereafter she'd grown skittish and cross, she stopped eating and began avoiding David, even as the doldrums fell away and the wind filled-in, even as they began cracking off hundred-seventy mile days. Then one day David caught a tuna and seared steaks for dinner, a couple of land birds flew over as the sun set that evening and voila! the next morning -- right where David said they would be -- the jagged spires of Nuku Hiva lined the horizon and she'd simply broken down. She'd cried for hours and David had simply let her be. He couldn't possibly understand!
She was sure he wouldn't understand, either, even if she told him. He was just too wrapped up in his dreams, she told herself, to care about anything or anyone beyond the limited horizon of those goddamn dreams.
+++++
"Let's see, you're sixty-three years? Can you describe your symptoms?" the physician said, her French accent so thick the man could almost understand something like every other word.
"A dull, diffuse pain, back here," he said as he pointed to the back of his pelvis. "And now it hurts like crazy to take a pee. Not in that thing," he said, pointing to his penis, "but deep inside."
The physician nodded. "When was your last PSA test?"
The man crossed his arms protectively over his chest. "Oh, hell, now I'd say almost two years ago."
The physician bunched her lips and frowned, then walked over to a cabinet and took out a big tube of lubricant and a couple of latex gloves. "You know what comes next, no?"
"I was afraid you'd say that," the man said. "And this is only our first date!" He stood and pulled down his swim trunks. "Where to, doc?"
"Just lean over the table, monsieur."
'Why did it have to be a female? And a cute one at that!' the man asked as he shuffled around with his trunks around his ankles, then he leaned over, rested his forearms on the paper-covered exam table and did his level best to ignore the cold jelly that fluttered like diarrhea down the crack between his cheeks. He felt on gloved hand peeling his cheeks apart, then the cold, hard apex of her finger as it slipped through the goo seeking entry.
"Take a deep breath, and hold it..." she said -- and in it went -- pop!
"Ungh-h-h," was about all the man managed to say, then he felt her finger deep inside his gut, fire everywhere... "Oh, Jesus Christ on a fucking motorbike! Shit goddamn that hurts!"
"Has it ever feel dees way before?" she asked, yet she kept her finger up there, moved it gently around something.
"Jesus, fuck, NO!" he screamed when she hit paydirt. "What did you stick up there? A goddamn truck?!"
"Try to relax, monsieur; you are squeezing so hard you are going to break my finger!"
He tried to ease-off but his legs started shaking, he felt cold sweat break-out on his forehead, then her finger sliding out.
"Well, coming out of chute number two, it's Gonzo, the floppy chicken!" the men said in his best rodeo announcer voice. He decided passing out would be the polite thing to do about now.
"Pardon-moi, monsieur?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing." He was panting now, but the pain wasn't subsiding.
"Are you alright?" the physician leaned next to him. She had her hand on his shoulder.
"Oh fuck, that's a bad sign," he said.
"Monsieur?"
"When the doc starts sounding sympathetic you know you're up Shit Creek."
"Ah. Oui, with the paddle. I understand this."
"Without. Without a paddle. And?"
"Oui, David. I think this is about where we are. Sit down, please. We must talk now."
+++++
He walked down a smooth, sandy lane, oblivious to the beauty around him for a while, then suddenly aware of nothing but. The tide was flooding in the pass, almost roaring as the sea forced its way back into the huge lagoon. All around him people were going about their lives with an easy rhythm that seemed almost in sync with the sea that surrounded them: fishermen were coming in and tying off at little piers, shopkeepers and fish-merchants were walking down to inspect the day's catch and little boys and girls were running down to look at the fish just for the fun of it all. Such a simple thing to do. Cancer was meaningless out here. This was life. Cancer... was anything but.
And Cancer had come calling.
So what to do?
Maybe he'd pick up another couple of lobsters, another bottle of wine. When the going gets tough the tough get... what? Drunk? Hide their head in the sand?
Give up?
And as always looking at the rows of fish was a bittersweet symphony. So explosively vibrant in the sea -- and for those first few moments out of it -- the myriad fish now seemed muted and dull... dead... as indeed they were. What an odd circle of life this was, this being human. Somehow we'd made it out of the food chain, he told himself; or had we? Here he was, standing on a little pier in the middle of an indecipherable ocean, looking at men and women and children sorting and laughing and living. And loving. But we weren't on anyone's meal plan anymore, not like all these fish, unless we just happened along the wrong place at the wrong time. But sooner or later we come to the end of the line. That shark is always out there, circling, waiting.
Rangiroa: even the name was laced with potent magic! He looked across the pale blue lagoon, could just make out the slender line of treetops miles away on the far side of the lagoon. Another dive boat full of tourists cast-off to photograph the Silver-tip sharks and eagle-rays that hung around just outside the entrance to the lagoon, waiting for their next meal to come shooting by. He looked at the smiling faces as they passed, at their happy certitude and at the sense of infinite adventure just ahead. All that and more that filled their eyes, and feelings of his own rushed-in like the tide. It wasn't envy he felt, or sorrow for all the adventures he'd never have, but oddly enough, a profound gratitude washed through him. "My God," he said softly, "what a miracle to have just been what I've been... to have done what I've done. To have just been... me."
He looked among the dozen or so sailboats that swung at anchor a scant hundred yards off the village of Tiputa, then he looked for her, for her coppery hair and that defiantly bright white skin. There she was, sitting in the cockpit fanning her face with her floppy straw hat. He looked at her for a very long time, looked back over their journey, and he knew that though he loved her more than mere words could ever say the roughest part of the journey lay just ahead, and he was going to have to put her through it. There was no way around it now...
"But isn't this what it's all about?" he said out loud.
A fisherman turned and looked up at him.
"This mortal coil?" the fisherman said.
"Beg pardon?"
"You contemplate life, and death."
"Indeed I do."
