Dash in the Blue Pacific (3 page)

The plane rolled harder, pushing Dash onto his
side, right elbow in the center of the oval framing a rapidly
approaching ocean. The sound of rushing air enveloped him as the
cabin continued depressurizing. His face tingled, goose bumps
spreading everywhere else. The world outside was a giant vacuum
cleaner, and maybe his elderly row mate wasn’t wrong. Maybe the
sinners on board were about to be sucked into oblivion, some headed
to the Promised Land, others going with Dash.

Maybe someone would find Cindy.

The vacuum tugged Dash’s polo shirt, grabbed it
from the one nice pair of dress pants he owned. His seat belt was
cinched too tight, threatened to snap ribs. He reached down and
unclicked, setting himself free.

“
Against the rules,” said the lady,
and Dash nodded down that he knew.

He’d found Sarah in bed with Tommy, the raddest
and baddest guy in all of Northwest Vermont. Man of mystery and
grimy fingernails. A man’s man who would light a cigarette at the
diner counter and dare anyone in the room to speak up. The word
‘contractor’ spelled with a fucking E on the side of his pickup. He
should be on board this plane for that alone.

The fuselage tilted farther and Dash braced
against the side of the cabin, knees on his armrest, face plastered
to the wall by centrifugal force.

Fucking Tommy Chambers
. Dash lost his
job a week before the wedding. He’d driven home, unlocked the
apartment door, and then closed it quickly so the downstairs
neighbors didn’t hear the porn flick Sarah was watching with the
sound cranked. He hated those movies. The men always knew the exact
right thing to do. Touch here and bingo. Put a tongue there and
bango. Just once he wished the woman would climb out from under the
guy and call him a clumsy loser. That was how it worked in the real
world.

Dash now had an uncomfortable boner as he
pressed up against the window, which would have confirmed to the
lady holding her ankles his capacity for sin if she hadn’t been
totally absorbed in her own moment of terror. He despised every
scene his memory painted for him, but they still had an
effect.

“
Watch a real man.” Sarah’s voice
was as strained as the captain’s, equally committed.

It had been the second worst moment of his
life. Finding his father in a pool of blood was still
numero
uno
. Both made death by engine failure a cakewalk. “God bless
us all,” the captain had said. Heartfelt words even to someone like
Dash who believed as much in gods as he did Martians. The words
were profound, all-encompassing and sincere, made you feel the
speaker genuinely cared. They’d definitely play those words at the
press conference.

“
God bless us all,” Dash
said.

“
Harder,” Sarah practically shouted,
laughing and bucking her hips, nearly throwing Tommy from the
saddle. Yippee-ki-yay. Her laughter was the cruelest sound in the
world, crueler than the cry of an airplane wing tearing free from
its last bolt.

“
I need you.”
The cabin voice
was a desperate sigh, barely audible. Whiskers stroked the
mouthpiece in place of more words.

Dash pulled a hand from the fuselage wall,
reached to unzip his fly. The suction from the widening gap tugged
his penis, did the rest.

“
You’re going to hell.” The old
woman in the flowered dress sounded certain, and he was in no
position to argue.

The jetliner broke the surface of the water a
few seconds later.

D
ash sank in the froth, water
rushing up his pant legs and causing his shirt to billow. His head
was pinned to one shoulder by a heavy chunk of metal that pushed
him deeper. He twisted his face to profit from a shrinking air
cavity, breathing quick puffs. Down he slid into the darkness, the
water colder, filled with objects that deflected off his legs and
ass. He filled his lungs with the last of the air, raised his hands
and pushed with his remaining strength. He went down feet first,
kicked sideways and got free, ears aching, water pressing his
sinuses. He toed off his old canvas sneakers and swam toward an
orange light.

Two bodies danced. She was already topless,
immodest, long hair a shocking corona. He had no hair or face, one
remaining arm twisting on a thread.

Our Father in Heaven.

A girl, not quite a teen, wore a pretty dress,
an unbuttoned sweater. She had no shoes or legs.

Dash broke the viscous surface, a smoldering
cauldron of oil and jet fuel. Burning islands floated in every
direction, reflecting their hellish light in the poisoned water. He
latched onto the first object not spewing flames, not caring if it
was the Devil himself; anything to keep his face out of the toxic
mix. Deep breaths pulled in the searing heat, cooking him from the
inside. He switched to the quick puffs women in labor did on
television, climbed higher onto the demon’s spine with blind faith
in the thick smoke. The creature was buoyant, the scratchy hide
vaguely familiar.

The oven glowed for hours, Dash turning slow
rotations, a rotisserie singeing both his sides equally. The fires
eventually ate themselves and blinked out, shrinking into gray
mounds and dipping beneath the surface. The debris field spread,
the water spotted with swirling rainbows. He was submerged to his
chest, his legs being brushed by hidden things with no interest in
biting just yet. Unmerciful thirst forced a cupped hand into the
littered water. He sniffed and then drank the warm, briny liquid.
He was adrift in a sea of stale margaritas. Dash shifted more and
guzzled a bellyful, then paused when a cramp pinched his stomach in
a steel vise. A deep belch nearly knocked him from his host. The
retching began and wouldn’t stop. He vomited salty water, and every
last bit of mini pretzel and gristly meat the lovely flight
attendant had served. Tiny fish came to say hello with eager round
mouths, greedily cleaning up his mess.

Hallowed be Your name.

Up from the depths rose a human hand, a fleshy
stump with manly fingers. It arrived pinky side first then righted
itself just beneath the surface, luring away the hungry fish. The
hand didn’t seem to belong to anyone, had struck out on its own. A
dull flash showed off a gold ring.

Dash drew a painful breath. “How’s married
life?”

The hand did not answer, only stood upright
with its three middle pads tickling the oily surface.

“
I’m going a little crazy
now.”

He collapsed, leaned his cheek on a forearm,
chin stirring the water. He tried his best to ignore the hand, its
constant waving, the monotonous hellos or goodbyes. Thirst came
back worse than before, and he couldn’t fight the impulse. He
tilted forward, took noisy gulps, swallowing hard. He wiped his arm
across a burned face and cold tears, braced for the spasm building
deep in his gut. The pain subsided when his mind latched onto a
better place, in a different time, one with a more peaceful view
and better margaritas.

Your kingdom come, Your will be
done ….

* * *

The music hurt his ears even after he finished
chugging an icy thick margarita from a beer stein dipped in salt.
The Omega Psis were rich pricks who spared no expense at party
time. Live bands, top-shelf booze, a level pool table with no rips,
and juicehead goons on barf detail ushering woozy partygoers to the
front of the bathroom line.

One of the goons stopped Dash in the act of
retrieving his coat from a second floor bedroom, stepping in front
of the door, latching one giant hand to his shoulder. Sausage-like
fingers from the other hand dangled in front of Dash’s
face.

“
Waddya see?”

“
A peace sign.”

“
Not what I’m lookin’
for.”

“
I need my coat.” Dash tried to
twist away from the hand pinching his skin.

“
I think you’re an
asshole.”

“
You’re not alone.”

“
You puke in Dicky’s room and I’ll
make you eat it, asshole.”

‘
Eat the room or the puke?’ Dash
nearly asked before foreseeing the consequences. The goon let him
pass with a wave, eyes locked on the next target, a tipsy co-ed
with untied shoelaces leaning into a wall.

Beyond the door was a room that had grown two
igloo-size mounds of winter outerwear, one on each twin bed. Dash
chose to hunt the nearest pile, stomach churning from the goon’s
power of suggestion. He peeled back layers of expensive down coats
and handmade scarves, looking for signs of his Army surplus parka.
Nearing the bottom, the material shifted, came alive. He unearthed
a miniskirt with a tanned leg. Parting two leather jackets, he
found a girl with curly blond hair wearing a t-shirt with the word
CRAZY in large letters across the chest. She smelled of cinnamon
gum and fruity perfume and made purring sounds in her
sleep.

He put his full weight on the bed and she
stirred, turning to look up through foggy eyes. Her lips parted as
if to speak, but then her lids dropped and her head lolled. She
began snoring. Dash couldn’t help but notice that her skirt had
hitched up to expose the first shaved crotch he’d seen outside of
magazines. It grinned at him sideways, and he resisted the
temptation to reach down and make it talk the way he did his
niece’s chubby belly.

“
Hello, how are you?” he’d made his
niece’s belly button say. “My name is Boo Boo.”

Dash knew the sleeping girl’s name. He’d heard
the guys talk about Sarah the Fuck Machine, the school’s gold medal
tramp champ. Just wind Sarah up and watch her blow. But this Sarah
was quiet and lovely, and Dash knew how full of shit guys were
because of all the lies he’d told personally.

Did respectable girls shave their privates? He
knew for sure they tended pits and legs, but he had no experience
with hair down there. The missing panties might be an indication of
her habits, but he only had rumors to go by. He sure as heck never
witnessed her using her mouth like a Hoover on half the basketball
squad, JV included.

Her cheekbones were rounded and soft, lips thin
and fragile, meant to whisper, not service athletes. It was an
innocent mouth, nothing like a household appliance.

“
I think you’re beautiful,” he told
the lovely Sarah, whose face was nestled in black leather and
silver zippers. He leaned forward and brushed golden ringlets from
her forehead, trying his best to ignore her intriguing crotch with
its tantalizing smile.

Again she responded, opening her eyes and then
her mouth, first looking at him as though startled, and then
turning away to projectile vomit across the coats he’d stacked.
Dash glanced at the door, where he’d promised Godzilla there’d be
no such crime. Luckily, it didn’t touch any of Dicky’s stuff, he
imagined telling the goon. Not a speck hit the mattress, not a
single chunk on his tasteful shag carpet. But Dash knew it wouldn’t
fly.

His fingers touched her collarbone. “It’ll be
okay.”

Sarah’s head tilted back, eyes dancing over his
face like a moth afraid to land. She squinted, perhaps searching
for a name, or maybe his position on the basketball court. “I’m a
mess,” she said, eyelids again drooping. Her breathing turned
smooth and deep, and Dash lightly stroked her bare arm after
flicking a wad of gum from the letter
Y
over her left
breast. He pulled a high school varsity jacket from under his butt
and used its soft cuff to dab the corners of her mouth.

“
I’m sort of a mess, too,” he told
the sleeping girl, then tossed the jacket onto the floor. Fuck you,
Dicky. Fuck every basketball player who ever lived.

Dash then did something that would cause guilty
pangs over the coming months and years, shame that would haunt his
conscience late at night. He considered confessing, but there was
never the right time when Sarah might understand his loneliness,
might not turn and leave forever. He had betrayed her on the night
they’d first met, and there would be no forgiveness if she
discovered he’d maneuvered over her partially naked body, then
shifted her hips. In a total breakdown of his moral self, Dash had
gently touched her shaven parts with trembling
fingertips.

“
I love you,” Dash said, his voice
quaking.

“
I love you, too,” he made her labia
respond. Then he turned her puffy lips into a smile and kissed them
goodnight.

* * *

Dash puckered his cracked lips, tasted salt. He
determined he was floating chest deep, legs prickly numb, arms
folded over some kind of soggy cushion. His face throbbed, was full
of needles when he pressed a cheek into his forearm. He could
barely force one eye into a blurry slit. It was sunset, or maybe
sunrise. An orange ball was out there, low on the horizon. His
stomach was shit, abs strained as if he’d been throwing up all
night. Yeah, that was it. Some part of him made sense of the
situation, and relief settled in. He was in the Omega pool,
experienced enough at drinking himself into oblivion that he hadn’t
relinquished hold of the cushion. And while dumb enough to wind up
in the deep end, he’d remained at least one beer shy of
drowning.

It took mad skill.