Trouble comes from too much talk-Chinese proverb

JUST ADD TROUBLE

1

"John Steinbeck was a sissy."

Jenks grinned at me and went back to varnishing my rails. Well, not my rails, my boat's rails.

I shook my book at him. "He writes here, in his Log From the Sea of Cortez, that the Sea of Cortez is a dangerous body of water." Waggling my fingers at the glassy bay waters we were anchored in, I vamped, "Ooooh, I'm skeered. Save me, my hero!"

"Sorry, Hetta, gotta finish this varnish. It's drying as fast as it hits the teak. I'll save you later. And by the way, we've only been here three weeks, and I'm sure Steinbeck spoke from experience. A totally different Baja experience than we've had so far."

"Ya think?" I padded inside to the galley, made us both an iced tea, and returned to the sundeck.

The fiberglass was a tad toasty on my bare soles, so I did a little quickstep into the shade and wiggled into a deck chair. Jenks noticed and teased, "Nice moves, Red. The Texas tenderfoot two-step?"

"Watch it, Yankee boy," I mock-growled. He smiled and went back to his bright work while I took in our surroundings with a deep, contented sigh. The air and water temperatures matched at seventy-five, Jenks was with me to enjoy this nearly perfect November day in paradise, and I was as euphoric as a puppy in tall grass.

Anchored all by our lonelies at San Francisco Island, an uninhabited piece of nirvana north of La Paz, we were suspended on glassy, colorless water that was also, mysteriously, a stunning turquoise. Behind us lay a pearly crescent of beach, bordered with lava rock and cactus. Beyond that, barren hills jutted into an almost impossibly blue backdrop. If one were to come across a true-to-life painting of the scene, it would look artificial, garish. In real life, the diorama was simply stunning.

Adding to my pleasure an added bonus that, for a change, there wasn't a bunch of goons out to off me.

It's those little things that count.

We hadn't seen another boat or person in three days. If there is a heaven on earth, I was certain this was it. Jenks finally put down his paintbrush and joined me at the table, where he took a test sip of tea to see if I'd added enough sugar and lime. He declared it, "Perfect."

"So's this part of the world. When I quit work, I want to live here. Forever and ever."

"Sounds nice, all right."

I let that hang. I had just handed Jenks a huge opportunity to say something like, "Let's do that." Or even, "We should." But noooo, what he said was, "Sounds nice, all right." Followed by, "But you have to go back to work soon." He didn't even work a "we" into that sentence.

I was tempted to empty my glass over his head, but I was running low on Splenda. Besides, the day and setting were much too beautiful to let my insecure little demons spoil it. After all, Jenks was here, we were together for now, and he had flown halfway around the world, for the second time since we started dating, to bail my ass out of a mess of my own making. He'd saved me, my boat, and my best friend, Jan, from some unsavory and heavily armed characters who had taken a distinctly crappy attitude toward us.

For his valor, Jenks had earned a free pass from my distinctly crappy attitude, so I left his head intact and said, "Spoilsport. You used the W word. But we can stay until Christmas, at least, head back to Cabo for New Year's Eve, and then cruise on up to San Francisco. If I get back to W by the end of January, I'm good."

"I can live with that, although Lars is grumbling some about getting stuck on his own in Kuwait City while I'm yachting on the Sea of Cortez."

"Your brother will live. And speaking of Lars, does he even acknowledge that his lusterless, or shall I say, lust-less attitude and lack of commitment drove Jan into another guy's camp?" I mean this literally; Jan had moved into a beach hut bio-nerd encampment with a marine biologist by the name of Doctor Brigido Camacho Yee, a.k.a. Chino. Chino specializes in whales. Jan specializes in serial monogamy, and Lars was her latest ex-monogamous partner. This time she'd come darned close to committing polygamy, but managed to get a very long distance "Dear Lars" call in before jumping Chino's bones three minutes later. I didn't feel one bit sorry for Lars, though, because it was indifference that steered their romance into a ditch.

If Jenks noticed my not-so-subtle allusion that he just might be heading us for that same disastrous ditch, he sure didn't show it. He shrugged, "I don't think Lars would tell me, even if he was upset. He plays his cards pretty close to his vest."

Must be genetic. Dense, these Norse. Handsome, but obtuse. I gave up trying to have a meaningful conversation. Men hate those anyhow. I sighed. "So, wanna go snorkeling?"

"Nope."

"Nope?"

"Nope, let's go skinny dipping. Last one in makes lunch." He began peeling off his clothes, then mine. For a guy who couldn't commit, he sure makes the time we spend together mighty worthwhile.

We didn't quite make it into the water.

* * *

I stretched out full length, enjoying the sun's sting on parts of my body rarely seen in the light of day. Freckles be damned. "I think I've died and gone to Shangri-la, or whatever place represents perfection on earth."

Jenks, lying beside me, teased, "And here I thought that was Texas, the way you talk about it, but I notice you don't live there anymore."

That's true. Although I love my native state, I moved to San Francisco years before and put down roots. I have a one-woman consulting firm: Hetta Coffey, LLC, SI, PI. Just kidding about the PI part, but even though I am not a private investigator, my snoopery does seem to get me into dust-ups far beyond the pale of your average civil engineer. Also kidding about the SI: that's my little play on phonetics for Civil Engineer.

Perpetually single, I live aboard my boat, a forty-five foot Californian motor yacht I'd christened Raymond Johnson, after my beloved and departed yellow lab. When RJ died, I sold my house, moved aboard and found a whole new life. My work takes me anywhere I can earn a buck, which recently was the Baja peninsula of Mexico. And now I had granted myself a little leave of absence between jobs, intent on enjoying the magnificent Sea of Cortez with my whatever he is, Jenks Jenkins.

"Too hot in Texas."

"Speaking of hot, let's hit the water."

"Oh, yeah, that's what we were gonna do. I'll get the snorkels and fins. You know I gotta have my fins."

"Probably not. This water's got a high salinity content, so I know you'll float real good."

"Are you implying that my abundance of buoyancy has something to do with me chunky dunking instead of skinny dipping?"

His blue eyes twinkled. For some reason, unfathomable to me, he finds me vastly amusing, and not chubby. But then, he is myopic, a sterling attribute in my book. Knowing he would save me if I sunk, I cannonballed into the water before he could find his glasses, and before I remembered that seventy-five degree water is not all that warm. I came up spluttering.

"How is it?"

"Fantastic. Come on in." Okay, so I lied, but chunky dunking is such a rare and liberating experience, who am I to deny Jenks such exhilaration? I mean, if I can risk stripping all the L'Oreal Red Penney from my locks, Jenks could withstand a little chill. He hit the water, came up screaming obscenities and threats, but after a few minutes even he, of the ten percent body fat, adapted. And he was right, I could float, but for insurance I slipped on fins. Can't be too careful, you know.

I have a long standing love-hate relationship with water. I revel in warm clear water. I celebrate snorkeling in crystal clear seawater, spending hours watching jewel-toned fish dart in and out of coral and kelp. Once, scuba diving off the coast of Aruba, I was escorted down eighty feet by four professional divers who watched me like a hawk while I swam amongst graceful sea fans, gurgling happily into my regulator and wasting valuable air with giggles. Yep, I'm a real water baby, until something goes wrong.

That dive in Aruba ended abruptly when I made a critical error. Instead of looking down, I looked out. Out into the abyss of the unknown, beyond the blue, into the black. Short of a toothy megalodon suddenly materializing from that void, nothing could have terrified me more. It took all four of my instructors to keep me from a panicky zoom upwards to the safety of the boat, and a long and painfull stint in a decompression chamber. I no longer scuba, just snorkel.

The upshot of that little Aruban episode is that I will not swim in water that does not reveal its bottom, or in an environment I cannot totally control. I guess that's why I'm partial to swimming pools and hot tubs. And ever since my ex-fiancé turned up parboiled in my last Jacuzzi, I'm not all that keen on those.

This setting, though, was perfect for me. Eight feet of glassy water, within a few yards of the boat and beach. I paddled around Raymond Johnson once, inspecting the hull for green stuff and other gunk along the waterline, then grabbed my snorkel from the dive platform. Jenks was already headed towards a rocky outcropping, so I followed, checking out the sandy bottom as I went. Okay, so I was also checking out Jenks's bottom. Is it just me, or does watching the south end of a naked man swimming north strike anyone else as downright comical?

I started to giggle, then stopped dead, all of my water demons coming to rest. Ripping off my mask and snorkel, managing to gulp salty water in the process, I gasped, "Jenks!"

He turned around and, with his long and lanky legs and arms, was by my side in four easy strokes. "What is it, Hetta?"

I coughed up water. "The," gag, "bottom! The sand. It moved."

"Yeah, I know. Cute little buggers, aren't they?"

"They?"

"The garden eels. As you swim over them they-"

I didn't hear the rest. All it took was "eels" for me to turn tail and streak for the boat. Oh, did I mention that, along with my affinity to panic in water, that I can't swim? Under normal circumstances I sink like a rock, but in the salty Sea of Cortez, with fins on, and eels on my heels, I probably overturned some Olympic record. All modesty forgotten, I belly-slid onto the swim platform in a move that would put Sea World's Shamu to shame. I'm certain there was a resemblance.

By the time Jenks reached the boat, I was sitting on the swim platform, wrapped in a towel. He treaded water and grinned. "I'll give that slide a ten. What a chicken! My chicken of the sea. And here I thought you were a certified sea wench. Those little garden eels are totally harmless. They just bury themselves except for a few inches, and when you swim over them, they sink into the sand. I think they're cute."

"Cute and eel do not belong in the same sentence." I peered down. "They look bigger underwater."

He reached up and ruffled my damp pixie cut. "So did your retreating butt."

"Watch it, Buster. My butt is a touchy subject."

"I like to touch it."

You gotta love him, he loves my butt. "Sweet talker."

"That's me. I'm going to check on the set of our anchor." He swam underwater towards the front of the boat, and I followed on deck. When he surfaced, he saw me, slid his mask onto his head and grabbed hold of the chain. "She's buried good. We ain't gonna move."

"That, in my book, is a really good thing. So, Jenks, you say these eels are harmless?"

"Absolutely." Water trickled from his mask, into his eyes. He swiped at them, only managing to rub in more salt, but the tears cleared his vision. As clear as his gets.

"And how about other kinds of eels?"

"Perfectly safe."

"Even really big morays?"

"Long as you aren't trying to take a lobster from them. It's their favorite food."

"Sooo, that six-foot bugger right behind you? The green one with the blue eyes? Perhaps you should remove your lobster from his line of sight."

"I don't have a lob&ldots;oh, crap!" I didn't realize a body could climb an anchor chain so quickly. As Jenks practically sailed over the rail, an obviously disappointed monster turned a blue eye his way, still ogling what he had hoped was a quick meal.

"Nine and a half," I declared as Jenks got to his feet. "Half a point off for form."

We watched the eel nuzzle the chain, probably hoping for a lingering taste of Jenks, then give us a snaggletoothed-emphasis on the toothed-grin, and began circling the boat. It was then we saw his big brother.

My skinny dipping days were at an end.

And it wasn't long before we learned that giant morays weren't the only sea serpents plying the waters of the Mar de Cortez.

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