The Real Thing Page 10

  I am looking at the perfect shot for Personality. “Um, don’t move, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I run to the guesthouse, wrestle my camera from its bag, and return, snapping away before Dante knows I’m there. When he turns, I stop. There is sadness on his face I haven’t seen before.

  “Um, could you walk out there?” I say. “The, um, the sky is…”

  He stands and drifts to the edge of the outcropping. I keep firing away, capturing him from his waist up, that vulnerable, sad look in his eyes, his body framed by the bluest sky I’ve ever seen.

  “You do not have to swim across the lake with me,” he says.

  I stand next to him, peering over the edge. “How far down is that?”

  “Twenty-five, thirty feet.”

  I can see the bottom! “How deep is it?”

  “The same. Maybe deeper.”

  If I can survive the jump, I know I can make it across.

  “Andiamo,” I say.

  He looks me up and down. “But you are not dressed.”

  Shit. I don’t have a swimsuit. I hope Evelyn has one in there. I cringe inside. If she does…Oh, man. I can’t wear another woman’s swimsuit! I mean, I can wear her clothes, but her drawers?

  “Are you ready?” I look at his shorts and T-shirt.

  He nods. “I just need the weights.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  As I run to the guesthouse, I realize something: I haven’t gone swimming in years.

  That left hook must have knocked me senseless.

  Chapter 13

  The only swimsuit I can find is too small. It would almost be like wearing a thong, not that I’ve ever worn one. I know I’d look behind and see my crack smiling up at me, and in front, I’d see my breasts squirming to be free. What did I do when I was a kid? Oh yeah. I wore an oversized T-shirt to cover me.

  I look at what I’m wearing. A T-shirt, bra, and shorts. They’ll just have to do.

  When I return to the outcropping, Lelani and DJ have joined Dante, who now wears the heavy backpack.

  Lelani’s mouth drops when she sees me. “You’re going with him?”

  “Sure,” I say. “How much is in that backpack?”

  “More than sixty pounds,” DJ says.

  Whoa.

  Lelani pulls me aside. “You have any idea how cold that water is?”

  “I’m in Canada, Lelani,” I say, straightening up my T-shirt. “I’m sure it’s very cold.”

  “Girl,” she whispers, “it’s the kind of cold that can stop your heart. Are you crazy?”

  I nod. “I’m from Red Hook.”

  I leave her and stand next to Dante.

  “It is a long way down,” Dante says. “You must jump feet first.”

  I pray that the lessons I took at Sol Goldman Pool will come back to me. “Feet first? You dive out.”

  He smiles. “I tried jumping in, and the weight took me very deep. I dive out so I do not sink.”

  I look down again. If I jump feet first, this T-shirt will fly up over my head and strangle me, my bra will fly off, and the shorts will shoot up my crack and become a thong. I take a deep breath and look at Lelani. “Maybe I should use a life preserver or something.”

  Lelani nods and takes my arm. “I’ll get you one.” She pulls me toward the stairs.

  I pull away. “I’ll wait up here.”

  She ducks her head close to me. “You can’t dive or even jump off wearing a life vest.”

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Ever use a bobber when you fish?”

  I see a bobber hitting the water and popping up to the surface in my head. “Yeah. So?”

  “At that height, the life vest could strangle you or at least make your girls very uncomfortable.”

  I like my girls. “I’ll, uh, I’ll just swim around then, huh?”

  She nods. “Come on.”

  Down at the boat, she fits a life vest to me. It’s snug, but I feel a lot more confident now. She points around the outcropping. “Swim around to the bottom, but watch out. You don’t want an Italian landing on you.”

  Oh, but I do. Repeatedly. “I’ll try not to drown.”

  I dip my big toe into the water. Ow. It’s so cold I wince. Instead of wading in, I drop off the dock feet first. The second I hit the water, my heart skips several beats. Lelani wasn’t kidding about the cold. I check myself for anything missing, feel one breast bobbing out of my bra, secure it, and start to swim around the outcropping. As I turn the corner and look up, I hear a bell ringing, see a flying Italian, and hear an earsplitting splash, as if a whale’s tail just struck the water.

  “Are you all right?” Dante asks, swimming beside me.

  “Yeah. Andiamo.”

  I keep pace with him for about ten seconds, eventually settling in to a decent freestyle rhythm. I just want to finish. I look up and see Dante’s arms flashing in and out of the water like dolphins, well, really fast dolphins. He gets to the island first, but instead of sprinting across to the other point, he waits for me.

  How sweet. He has stopped to watch me drown.

  “Go on!” I yell.

  He shakes his head and beckons to me.

  I pick up the pace, cruising up to him with my lungs on fire, my toes ten icicles demanding to be thawed. As I come out of the water, I look down at my toes, expecting to see fewer than ten. They’re all there.

  “Andiamo, Christiana.”

  As we pass David and his trusty stopwatch, he says, “You’re way behind yesterday, Dante.”

  Dante throws his head back and yells, “I have extra weight today.”

  Ha ha. “Don’t wait for me.”

  He gets to the other point and waits. “It is okay. You worked me out good today. I need to slow down.”

  Then…we swim together to the other side, my body so numb it isn’t cold anymore. I know that makes no sense, but that’s how it feels. He helps me up onto a dock, we take some stairs, ring another bell—

  No “You-hoo” today. Hmm.

  We swim back at a snail’s pace, and I can barely stand when we reach the point a second time. I stagger with him down the beach.

  “You aren’t going to beat Tank Washington with times like this,” David says.

  “I will beat him anyway,” Dante says. “You will see.”

  I am so tired I can barely put one foot in front of the other. “You go on,” I tell Dante. “I need to catch my breath.”

  “I will send DJ back with the boat,” he says.

  He points across to the rocks. “The rocks are tricky. They would hurt your feet.”

  I won’t feel the pain.

  We get to the other point of the island. “You are shivering,” he says.

  I hadn’t noticed. I thought I was just having a seizure.

  I look across. What is that, a hundred yards? It’s not that far. Okay, it’s far, but I didn’t come this far to quit now. I didn’t fish, hike, clean fish, cook, work out, spar, and swim to stop three hundred feet from my goal. “How far is it?” I ask.

  “Hmm, maybe a hundred meters,” Dante says.

  I step into the water, and for some reason, it feels warmer. “It’s warm.”

  “Sì,” he says. “The air temperature is dropping. It is best to be in the water.”

  So…I start swimming to the rocks as the sun starts to set, mainly doing the breaststroke, occasionally floating on my back. He helps me navigate the rocks, boosting me higher and higher. At the top, I want to fall flat on my face and die, but his strong hands hold me up.

  “Go ring the bell,” he says.

  I peel off the life preserver and ring the hell out of that bell, using that little string to keep me vertical. I return to the outcropping to survey the distance I just traveled. I had to be completely out of my damn mind to do that, to do any of this. I should be in traction.

  Dante raises my right arm and says, “You are the champ.”

  I raise my other arm about halfway and stare into the s
unset. I am Nike, goddess of victory. Hear me roar!

  All I can manage to say, however, is a feeble, “Yay.”

  But when I turn and look at Dante’s face, at the sun shining off him and those dark, dark eyes, I know I am looking at a god.

  I sneak a peak down at the prodigal breast and find it’s out and now has a twin.

  But Dante isn’t looking at my breasts. He’s looking into my eyes.

  I am now a nearly naked, frozen, exhausted goddess.

  I see his hand in mine as he lowers his arm.

  I’m holding hands with a god.

  This…I could get used to this.

  Chapter 14

  “Now, we ski,” Dante says, squeezing my hand and barking commands in Italian to DJ.

  I pull his hand, and Dante turns. “You have to be kidding.”

  He shakes his head. “I do not kid. I am from Brooklyn.”

  Lelani wraps me in several towels and a quilt for the ride back down the lake to the beach below Old Baldy. While DJ and Lelani ready the boat and the ski rope, Dante helps me into a fancy ski vest and the skis as we stand in three feet of water.

  “I’ve never done this,” I say.

  “It is easy,” Dante says. “I will be with you in the water.”

  He slides behind me, putting a bright yellow handle in my hands, the rope stretching off toward the boat.

  “The key,” he says, “is to stay crouched and let the boat pull you up.”

  I feel his hands moving down my sides.

  “I will hold you as long as I can,” he says. “Until Lelani is ready, you can lean back.”

  I lean back and feel all that granite. I also feel his frisky hands cupping my buttocks.

  “Sorry,” he says, and he moves them to my hips.

  Put them back! “Um, Dante, what if I fall?”

  “You fall,” he says. “It happens.”

  I have to see if he’s noticed my wandering breasts. “I mean, I’m afraid I’ll lose what I’m wearing if I fall. My bra was not made for swimming.”

  “I have noticed,” he says.

  My wandering breasts, um, pucker up when he says that.

  “The vest will keep everything on,” he says.

  I turn my head slightly and see his lips. “I’m not worried about my top.”

  “Oh,” he says. “But it is getting dark. No one will see if that happens.”

  The ski rope tightens, and both Dante and I float away from shore, his hands firmly holding on to my thighs.

  “Ready?” he asks.

  “I guess.”

  “Just hold on and let the boat do the work.” He moves his hands to my hips again, yelling, “Hit it!”

  The first time I fall isn’t as bad as the fifth time I fall. On tries one through four, I wasn’t even close to getting up, the handle flying away from me and me biting the water face first. Dante would swim out to me, hold me again, and I’d…I’d fall again. The fifth time, though, I am still in my crouch and almost standing when the right ski just…flies away behind me.

  I do a spectacular cartwheel.

  And lose my shorts.

  It is an interesting feeling to be floating in a cove without one’s shorts on as the sun sets completely. I’m sure my plain white underwear most likely leaves nothing to anyone’s imagination. Although I am glad that I shave down there, I am sure young DJ doesn’t have to see a strange woman’s, um, bald chicken under her sheer white panties. Yet when Dante swims out to me, I don’t tell him I’ve lost my shorts because I sort of want him to discover that on his own.

  “One more time?” he asks.

  “Sure,” I say. I am so sore and achy my body is going to file for divorce from me, I just know it.

  I feel his hands go down my thighs, I rotate my hips just enough, and…

  “Oh,” Dante says. “Your…”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I don’t think I should make another attempt.”

  “What should I do?” Dante says, his hands gone from my body.

  “Just bring the boat over,” I say, taking off my only ski.

  Dante signals for the boat, and Lelani drives it to us. “Tired?” she asks.

  “Yeah, um…” I look at Dante, who quickly looks away. “I’m going to need one of the towels.”

  DJ points to the ladder at the back of the boat. “Just climb in.”

  “Um, I will, Lelani,” I say, widening my eyes, “just as soon as I get that towel.”

  Lelani mouths, “You lost your…”

  I nod.

  She throws in a towel. I wrap it around my waist tightly and slowly climb the ladder onto the boat.

  As soon as I sit, I see my shorts floating nearby. “Dante,” I whisper, nodding toward the water.

  He looks, takes an oar, hooks onto the shorts—

  I guess there’s no discreet way to rescue one’s shorts from a lake without everyone on the boat and several folks out on docks knowing it. Dante raises the oar, and those shorts flap a little like a flag in the wind.

  They’re still laughing about it at the dinner table ninety minutes and a long hot bath later.

  “You were supposed to let go, Christiana,” DJ says. “When you’re flying like Superman—”

  “Superwoman,” I interrupt. “And Lelani drove the boat entirely too fast. We don’t go faster than thirty miles per hour in Brooklyn.”

  “I was only doing twenty,” Lelani says. “What I don’t get is why your, um, bottoms didn’t go to the bottom!”

  “Yeah. Nice dinner conversation.” I bite into a leftover filet. “Why don’t we talk about these fish and how I caught them all? That would be fun to talk about.”

  DJ turns to Red. “Dad couldn’t even get his line in the water, she was bringing them in so fast.”

  Dante looks away, but I can see a smile. “I was busy with the anchor. It had a tangle.”

  “Tangle, my eye,” I say. “You were stunned. Admit it.”

  “Why should I be stunned?” Dante asks. “You are a Red Hook girl. Fishing is in your bones.” He turns to Red. “She is also crazy. We are stopped for an instant, it is pitch dark, she cannot know where to cast, she throws into the fog, and over rocks.” He shakes his head. “She is crazy.”

  “I prefer ‘fearless,’ thank you very much,” I say. “Dante, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Why do you use a lure bigger than the fish?”

  He scoots his chair closer to mine. “I only want to catch big fish. Big lure. Big fish.”

  I smile. “Little leech catch big fish yesterday.”

  “Because I take you to the right spot at the right time,” Dante says. “Fishing is about timing, always timing.”

  I look at Red. “Like I timed that weak jab of yours today.”

  “Oh, weak, you say?” Dante stands and waves a filet at me. “I was holding back.”

  “So was I,” I say. “Like you said, I’ve had a long layoff. Give me four, five weeks, and you’ll see.”

  “What will I see?” he asks.

  I have him so bad. “Oh, that’s right. You’re old. You can’t see the punches coming anymore. I guess you won’t see.”

  Dante laughs and sits. “How is your face?”

  I ignore him. “Five pounds, three ounces. Isn’t that a record for this cottage?”

  He shakes his head. “Luck.”

  “Skill and fearlessness,” I counter. “Is that why you use a top-water lure? So you don’t get stuck?”

  “It is where the fish feed at five in the morning.” He taps the table.

  “Not yesterday morning they weren’t,” I say. “How big was that little minnow you almost caught?”

  Dante smiles. “Again, how is your face?”

  I throw a crust of bread at him, he throws it back, DJ adds a little lettuce, and Lelani hits me with a cherry tomato.

  Dinner is a success.

  Red pulls me into the kitchen to help with the dishes, and though I just want to curl up on a couch and sleep for a few months, I help
him by scrubbing the platter.

  “You’ve certainly brought the table back to life, Christiana,” he says. “I’ve always thought there was something wrong when there was no conversation at the table.”

  “Amen.”

  “When Evelyn is around, it’s even quieter than it was last night.”

  That’s hard to imagine. “Why?”

  “Because,” he whispers, “she is not of this earth. She has the ability to freeze mouths in midsentence and minds in midthought. ‘Dinner is for eating,’ she used to say. ‘Dinner is only for the finest conversation.’ It’s good to have noise at that table again.”

  “Sorry about the bread,” I say. “I couldn’t resist.”

  He leans on the counter and looks at the ceiling. “Nope. We have never had a food fight up here before.”

  “It was an unfair fight, though,” I say. “Lelani hogged the salad bowl.”

  He taps me on the shoulder. “Go on. You earned your interview. We’re all leaving for the night.”

  “Really? All of you?” Where can they go?

  “DJ has a Risk tournament on Turkey Island, and those usually go all night. Lelani and I are going to repair to our cottage for a quiet evening at home.”

  “Repair?”

  “I read it in a book once. Anyway, you’ll have your privacy.” He raises his eyebrows.

  “Are you insinuating something, Red?”

  “How shall I say this? Hmm.” He looks down at me. “I watched my best friend’s eyes today, and though he seemed focused on his workout, he couldn’t keep his eyes off you.”

  Whoo.

  He turns me toward the door. “Now you go and get your pen and paper, and when you come back, you and Dante will be all alone.”

  In the guesthouse, I take stock of my situation. I have just completed four tasks out of five, not necessarily with flying colors, but I finished them. I outfished a fisherman, kept up on a hike, cleaned some fish well enough to eat for two meals, lasted three rounds with a former middleweight champion, survived a left hook, swam a mile, skied for the first time, lost my shorts, and started a food fight at the dinner table.

  All in a day’s work.

  And now I learn the subject of the interview I’ve earned has been making goo-goo eyes at me all day. I know he has seen my breasts, felt up my booty twice, and likes to be behind me for some reason.