68 Knots (28 page)

“Good Goddess,” she said softly. “When the counselors walked out, he decided to die rather than admit failure and work for his little brother.”

Arthur shook his head. “It was worse than that,” he said, his breath gently fogging in the chill air. “He would have had to admit that he had been a failure at everything—the restaurant, the magazine, the
Dreadnought
—and he would have had to admit that his brother—his
younger
brother—had done better by working his way up through the ranks at a lumberyard. And he would have had to admit that he had been lying to his mother about his success at business. It obviously was more than he could face.”

“Does he say more?” Dawn asked.

Sorry—I had to put this letter aside for a few days so I could hire the crew for the Dreadnought. They are a fine bunch of young men and women. They're skilled sailors, compassionate counselors for young people, and they're absolutely loyal to me. When you're sailing around the North Atlantic trying to whip a bunch of teenagers into shape, it's good to know that your crew is behind you 100 percent.

After I get a few more ships in my fleet, I'm going to set up an around-the-world cruise. I'll take the Dreadnought, and I'll sell berths on it for a handsome price. The teens who go with me on that trip will have the experience of a lifetime. And I'll make sure to save one cabin for you, Mother. Maybe the nice one in the bow, with the extra-large porthole and the private bathroom.

“What's he talking about?” Dawn asked. “No one has a private bathroom, and the portholes are all the same.”

“McKinley had a strange relationship with the truth,” Arthur said.

Well, I have to go now. I'm expecting a call from some financial backers who might want to buy into my latest venture. I get a lot of these calls, but most of them aren't worth bothering with. People always wait until something is a success, you know, before they're willing to invest in it.

Give my best to Peter. And please don't tell him about my cash-flow problems. If things go as planned, I'll be able to buy his lumberyard in a year or so.

Howard

“Why do you suppose he never mailed it?” Dawn asked. “Sheet in the main, please.”

Arthur tugged on the main sheet and sat back down. “Maybe it was too full of lies, even for him,” he said. “I don't
think I could send something like this to my mother. It would feel so . . . pathetic, I guess.”

“I have an idea,” Dawn said. “When this summer is over, we should write to McKinley's mother and tell her what a wonderful commodore he was. It might make her feel better.”

Arthur shook his head. “I don't think so,” he said. “From the sounds of things, she's been lied to enough.”

Around one o'clock, Arthur took the wheel, and Dawn walked briskly around the deck to warm up and keep herself awake. She jogged in place for a bit, taking tiny little nowhere steps while her ponytail flopped behind her, and she beat her fists against her shoulders. Her feet thumped on the deck with a hollow bass note. She went below to get an extra sweater, and when she returned, she had a strained look on her face.

“What's the matter?” Arthur asked. The ship had passed the first red marker, and Arthur was keeping an eye on another one, dead ahead, that was flashing a regular twice-then-once pattern. He was supposed to keep that marker to port as well, but not by much; the ship was nudging through Two Bush Channel, a narrow passage with ledges and small islands littering the water on both sides.

Dawn sat down on the stool. “Maybe I shouldn't say anything, but you're bound to find out sooner or later,” she said.

“What?”

“It's Marietta. Everything is dark and quiet down below, but Marietta isn't in her bunk,” Dawn said.

Arthur groaned. “She's probably in the captain's quarters.”

“She
is
in the captain's quarters,” Dawn answered. “Logan was in there, too. They left the door open, but I think she was trying to talk him into spending the night with her in there. Kinda in your face, isn't it?”

Arthur was silent for a long time. He watched the red light flash twice-then-once, twice-then-once, and he felt the gentle rocking of the deck as the
Dreadnought
rose and fell with the swells.

“It didn't work, though,” Dawn said. “Logan left in a hurry, all red-faced and glancing over at Crystal on his way out.”

Arthur chuckled. “Hey, it's not like I'm in charge or anything,” he said. “She can go after anyone she wants. Marietta and I were close in certain ways, but it never felt like much of a relationship. I was probably an idiot for even spending time with her.”

They sailed on for almost ten minutes without saying a word. The only sounds were the whisper of the wind and the creaking of the ship.

Then Dawn kissed him lightly on the cheek. “It
is
a magical night, isn't it?” she said.

At three o'clock, Dawn had the helm, and the night seemed endless. She and Arthur had talked about many things during their long sail alone, and the conversation turned to the hazards of ending relationships.

“So what's the worst you've ever been dumped?” Dawn asked Arthur.

“The worst?” he said. “Hmm, I'd have to think about that. Wait—I've got it. Her name was Christie. We'd been dating for about two months. This was maybe a year and a half ago. But she was seriously into drugs and heavy partying, and I wasn't, so it got to be tough after a while. I was about to break up with her, but she beat me to it. At least, I think she beat me to it. I'm still not totally sure.”

“What happened?”

“Well, we went to a restaurant for lunch one Saturday, and we met up with one of her friends there. This friend had a magazine with her—
Cosmo
, or something—and the next thing I knew, the two of them were pointing at pictures in the magazine and giggling. They were clearly enjoying some kind of joke that I wasn't allowed to see, but I tried to pretend it was cool. Apparently, this wasn't the response Christie was hoping for. So she began to point to pictures—still without letting me see them—and whispering to her friend that the people in the picture looked like me. She whispered it loud enough for me to hear, and the two of them kept on giggling. They even got into a pretend argument about which of the pictures looked more like me. Then they giggled some more.

“Finally, I figured I'd been polite long enough. I told her to stop, because this wasn't very fun. She kept on doing it. So finally, I grabbed the magazine and took a look for myself. There were two pictures on the page. One was a little baby, and the other was a painting of a pine tree. That's when it struck me that the whole thing had been set up—Christie had asked her friend to meet us at the restaurant and go through this little drama just to make me angry.”

“What did you do?” Dawn asked.

“I took my cue and left the restaurant, and the next night, I asked someone else to go to the movies with me. I saw Christie a little while later with some other guy, too. It was all pretty stupid. I don't know why we couldn't just talk about the fact that we weren't working out. Anyway, about a year later she got pregnant and dropped out of school, and I figure I'm better off without her,” Arthur said. “How about you? What's the worst dumping you've ever gone through?”

“Okay,” Dawn said, “let's see. Yes. Robert Amadeus Thompson. Notice how his initials spell ‘rat'? Anyway, he and I had been seeing each other for more than half a year. Then one day, we're at his house, and no one else is home. Which was cool—we had been there alone before. Well, he told me there was something in his room that he wanted to show me, and he asked me to wait in the living room for a few minutes first. He went to his room, and a couple of minutes later, he called for me. I went in, and he was lying on top of his bed, absolutely naked. I said, ‘What is this?' And he said, ‘Come here, baby—it's time.' Well, I had never slept with anyone before, but I wasn't all uptight about sex. But I was
furious
that he thought he could simply declare that ‘it's time' and expect me to rip my clothes off on his command. I told him to forget it, and he told me that if I didn't go through with it, he would go out that night and sleep with one of my friends. I told him to remember a condom and think about baseball. Then I left his house.”

“What happened next?”

“Well, I found out later that he had tried to hook up with three different friends of mine, and they had all turned him down,” Dawn said.

Arthur shook his head. “Doesn't count,” he said. “I'm not sure whether you dumped him or he dumped you. So you owe me another story—what's the worst job you've ever done of dumping someone else?”

Dawn nodded and told Arthur about the time she wrote a “Dear John” letter to her boyfriend but accidentally stuck it on the wrong person's locker at school. Arthur told the story about how he called his girlfriend, broke up with her, then was so upset by her crying that he changed his mind. A week
later, things still weren't working out, so he had to do it all over again—and he changed his mind again. The third time worked, though. “I broke up with her just before my family and I took a four-week vacation to the Rockies,” he said. “By the time I came back, she was dating someone else and had told everyone that she had to break up with me three times to get me to go away.”

He also told Dawn about the couple he had seen on the dock when he arrived to board the
Dreadnought
in Rockland. “I keep flashing back to them, when I let my mind wander,” he said. “They weren't kissing or anything. Just holding each other—and staring more deeply into each other's eyes than I thought was possible. I don't know why they got to me like that, but they did. It's like they were seeing a part of the universe that I didn't know existed.”

Dawn smiled. “Maybe that's what love does,” she said. “Makes your universe a little bit bigger.”

Arthur and Dawn were still awake and on duty at five o'clock, but their perceptions of the world were suffering from the long chilly night. The
Dreadnought
was cruising through open water between Matinicus and Vinalhaven, crossing an open stretch of the Gulf of Maine. The swells were higher, and navigation was simple. Still, it seemed like the night would never end, that there was no one else alive on earth, and that the ocean was all that was left of the world.

“I have an idea,” Dawn said, stepping aside as Arthur took his turn at the helm. “I played this game at a party once. It's a lot of fun.”

“At this point,” Arthur said, “I'm ready for anything. Especially sunrise. But a game sounds good, too.”

“Okay, here are the rules. We can talk about anything we want to, but we can only talk in questions. Get it?”

“No,” Arthur said.

“Don't you understand the rules? How could they be simpler? Can't you see how easy it is to talk only in questions? Do you want to give it a try?” Dawn said.

“What if I don't?” Arthur said with a grin.

“Do you think that'll bother me?” Dawn said.

Arthur glanced at her. “Am I correct in believing that you aren't bothered by much?” he said.