Loving Eyes

The water was calm, with gentle waves and no rip currents. The uniform support on his body felt good. Floating on his back, he heard splashing and raised his head to look shoreward. Backlit by the hotel lights, he saw a tall, slender girl running into the water before falling forward into a racing start and stroking out to sea. By chance, she stopped near him.

"Good evening," he said.

She turned, startled. "Oh! Hello. I thought I was the only one out here. Just flew in from the University of British Columbia. It feels so good to get out of the cold, I couldn't wait to get into the water."

"So you came here on spring break for the water sports? I'm Jim, by the way," he added. "Snorkeling and scuba?"

"Hi. I'm Vicki. And yes, I'm looking forward to the diving. I just got my open water ticket and there are some great sites to dive here, or so I'm told."

"Perhaps we'll see each other, then. I'm down from New York – "

"Ah, the Big Apple, eh?"

"No, from about 2 hours north of there, though I go down to the city for the weekend now and then. Kaplan's located upstate, you see. There are boats out of Long Island that will take you out diving in Long Island Sound and offshore. I've had my open water certificate for a couple of years."

"Perhaps you'll be able to show me a few things, then."

"Perhaps," he smiled. To himself, he thought, "This is going not at all badly."

"Vicki! Are you out there?"

Jim looked toward the beach. A tall boy was standing there, waving. Vicki kicked to raise herself out of the water a bit and waved back, then struck out for the shore. Jim followed. She got out of the water, showing a nice figure, and trotted over to the fellow and exchanged a kiss, turning to look at Jim with her arm around his waist.

"Jim, I'd like you to meet my boyfriend, Paul. He's a diver, too. We go to uni together."

"How do you do?" Jim said politely as they shook hands. He was thankful that the darkness hid what he was sure was a hangdog face. As usual, he had run across a pretty girl he had something in common with, only to find she had a boyfriend, significant other, or fiancé on the line. They chatted as he put on his shirt, she wrapped a skirt around her waist, and both put sandals back on. They wandered back to the hotel where they could hear the thumping of a bass line coming from the club down the corridor past the lobby.

"Listen, we're going to hit the club for awhile before we turn in. Care to join us?" asked Paul. "Lots of girls came down with us from UBC."

"Thanks, but not tonight. You flew southeast and crossed one time zone going east, so it's early for you. I crossed two going west, so it's late for me. Some other night, perhaps."

"Some other time," Vicki agreed. With a wave, the pair headed off to go dancing. Jim looked after them, sighed, and walked to the bar adjacent to the restaurant, where he picked up a bottle of tequila extra añejo to take up to his room. He had learned during Hell Week freshman year the difference between the kind of tequila called "tequila blanco" in Mexico (which in his jaundiced opinion should have been called retampago blanco and run through the hills of Mexico in a souped-up flathead Ford with the federales in hot pursuit) and the good stuff favored by Sir Warwick. Perhaps after a couple of stiff drinks he wouldn't remember having gotten his hopes up.

Over the next five days, each morning Jim and the other Spring Break divers boarded the boat and descended on one of the well-known sites in the area. Almost all of the divers were Canadians. As Vicki and Paul had said, there were lots of attractive girls in the group; the trouble was, almost all of them were attached, either to fellow scuba enthusiasts or to male undergrads from UBC. He had hopes for four girls that traveled in a pack who seemed to find him acceptable company. He made discreet inquiries as to their availability of Vicki, who promptly threw a bucket of cold water on the romantic fire he had been hoping to kindle.

"You're wasting your time trying to hook up with Peggy, Sonja, Tammy or Moriko, Jimmy. Peg's seeing Riko, and Sonja and Tammy are an item. Can't you tell they're gay?"

That night, Jim killed what was left in the bottle he'd been nipping at since he'd arrived in Manzanillo, going on a solitary drunk. It seemed that not only couldn't he tell which girls were attached and which not, but he couldn't even tell the gays from the straights! How mortifying!

"Maybe I really should do what I told Warwick and Fiona I was going to do," he thought. "Forget about trying to find romance – or sex, anyway – and just try to have a good time." He slowly slipped into a drunken sleep he was sure would be filled with female devils with heavenly bodies flaunting themselves before him, mocking him as unwanted, unattractive, undesirable, and unlovable.

He slept through the alarm next morning, rousing only when the maid made the door boom like a bass drum. The air conditioner was doing an excellent impersonation of a tornado, and when he stumbled into the shower he found himself transported to the deck of the Queen Mary in a howling North Atlantic gale. Three aspirins washed down with a bottle of San Pellegrino didn't seem to help.

He took a table in the shadiest corner of the dining room he could find, motioning to the waiter for a cup of black coffee. Before it arrived, Warwick slipped into the chair next to him, and a long-legged Indian girl in short-shorts and a pullover blouse with a vee neckline that ended somewhere south of her sternum slid onto his lap.

"You look like a bad job of embalming," chuckled his mentor. He waved the waiter over and told him, "Juan, a Morning After for my friend the Professor here, and huevos rancheros with Mexican rice on the side. Get it all down you; you'll feel better."

"Be cheerful quietly, milord," groaned Jim, wincing. "Who's your friend?"

"This is Pooja. We hooked up water-skiing yesterday and went clubbing last night," Warwick explained. "We didn't see you out, but you must have really had a good time to end up in this condition!"

"Not as good a time as the two of you obviously had," riposted Jim, causing Pooja to blush. "She have any friends as good-looking as she is?"

"None who are not attached, sorry," said the girl, her fingers twining a lock of Warwick's hair. "Surely you don't have any trouble finding a girl to keep you company?"

"The Prof's kind of shy," interposed Warwick, sparing Jim the necessity of answering and possibly poisoning the well with his habit of answering questions fully and honestly. Changing the subject, he said, "I know that you brought your fishing rods with you. Have you signed up for a boat yet?"

"No."

"Great! I'd like to go out fishing myself, and so would Tarpals, Ohnaka and Hayes. Can I trust you to make the deal for us? Who knows, honey – " this to Pooja – "I might catch something we can have for dinner!"

The food that had been ordered arrived. Pooja and Warwick watched with amusement as Jim warily eyed the Morning After, which appeared to have a tomato juice base, steeled himself to the necessity, and with resolution grabbed the glass and knocked it off in three long swallows, eyes squeezed shut. He shuddered a couple of times, and his eyes opened slowly as it dawned on him he just might live.

"After I eat, I'll go make a couple of phone calls. You're in 531, right? When I have the deal made, I'll call you with the details. You relay it on to the guys, okay?"

"Okay. I think we'll be staying in this afternoon," said Warwick, caressing Pooja's arm and collarbone with a stroking finger, eliciting a purr from her. They got up and with arms twined around each other's waists, walked toward the elevators. Jim looked enviously after them.

The eggs and rice plus the Morning After did perk Jim up. Back in his room, he took out the note Graciana had given him and used his satellite phone to dial the number.

"Hola?"

"Buenas tardes. Tengo el honor de hablar con el Capitán Emiliano?"

"Si. And," Emiliano said, shifting languages, "I speak English."

"Far better than my poor Spanish, I am sure. My name is Jim Powell. Your cousin Graciana gave me your number. A group of friends and I would like to charter the Ojo Grande for a day's fishing, if you have a day free."

"How many of you would there be in your party, Señor Jim?"

"Five, including myself."

"Do you all have fishing tackle?"

Jim frowned. "A good question, Captain. I have my own, but I don't believe my friends do. Can you supply them?"

"Four? There will be no problem. Now, what sort of fishing did you have in mind? Sharks, sailfish, something of that nature?"

"No. Something we can eat for dinner. Can you accommodate us?"

"At this time of the year, you are lucky. We have reports of albacore and yellowfin tuna, yellowtails, madrigal, bonito, sierras – how do you say, mackerel – and dorado. I am sure we can find something for you to catch.

"Now, about the cost of the charter ..."

The two bargained back and forth and eventually settled on a price that included fishing tackle, bait, snacks, a couple of cases of beer, and delivering any fish caught to the hotel kitchen. Along the way, they acquired respect for each other.

"That's it, then," Jim finally said. "What time should we meet you at the slip?"

"Five o'clock in the morning, my friend. You can nap on the way to the fishing grounds; it's about a three hour trip."

"We will be there. Please give my respects to Graciana when next you speak to her, Captain. Goodbye."

"Buenas tardes, mi amigo."

Five A.M. found the Tri-Sig fishing party standing on the dock looking at the Ojo Grande. She was nowhere near new, but had an air about her that spoke of careful maintenance and many battles fought and won with the sea. She was a prewar design that looked like a cross between Quint's Orca from Jaws and the Queen Conch that Humphrey Bogart drove as Captain Harry Morgan in To Have And Have Not, with a pulpit jutting ahead of her bluff bow for spotting when billfishing and a pair of fighting chairs mounted by the transom for those going out after the big ones. The overhead extended partway over the after deck, and there was a cabin ahead of the helm where fishermen could shelter from the rain, make coffee, or nap going to and from port. They trooped aboard, and after stowing their gear headed for the beer, the coffee, or a couch bench to nap, as the mood moved them.

When he woke up four hours later, Jim looked at the navigating screen by the helm station from which the boat was controlled. Emiliano, at the wheel, turned in his seat.

"You are surprised to find a GPS system aboard?" he asked.

"Not at all, mi capitán. GPS receivers went first to ships and ocean-going boats when the military released the technology to the private sector. When the cost dropped enough for them to go into cars, you know the technology had arrived, as the gossip columnists say. Now, smart phones have it."

"True. But, my friend," said the charter boat skipper, suddenly looking sad, "it's been the death of good piloting and celestial navigation. I go back far enough to remember when Loran-C and piloting was all we had, and you had to really know what you were doing. Today, you could take a monkey from the jungles, teach him to keep the dot in the middle of the screen, lay in the course tracks, and have the ape get you to where you want to go. And I tell you truly, some of the so-called skippers out here know just about as much navigation as that monkey!

"But not me. I still keep my paper charts and coastal pilot books up to date, just in case. I haven't needed them yet, but if, God forbid, the GPS satellites ever stop working I will be ready. And again, that puts me ahead of some of these skippers who are more interested in seducing girls like my baby cousin Graciana than in navigating safely."

He looked at the screen and throttled back. "May I suggest you get your friends up on deck? According to the talk, this is where we can expect to find schools of bonito. And where there are bonito, there may also be yellowfin and albacore."

The Tri-Sigs got themselves organized. Shortly afterwards, there were lines in the water, and before too long they had all the action they could handle. As Captain Emiliano had said, they were tied into a school of bonito. A variety of tuna, bonito are good fighters when hooked but not the sort of fish one brings home to the cook if there are albacore about. After a couple of hours of catching bonito, taking pictures and then releasing them, Jim's line took a hit powerful enough to bend the rod.

"Señor Jim, I think you have an albacore on!" said Julio, the stocky mate who had been helping the college students bait their hooks, boat the fish, and release them. "Let him run, don't lock down the drag!"

The albacore put up a good fight. He ran, was pulled back as Jim pumped the rod and cranked his reel, stripped more line off as he ran again, lost it when he ran toward the boat and Jim reeled it back in, but after half an hour of dashing to and fro the fish was finally heaved out of the water onto the deck.

"That is a big one," said Emiliano, expertly assessing the catch. "85, 90 pounds if it's an ounce. That's enough tuna to feed this party and your girls two or three dinners, with enough left for sandwiches. Julio, while you're taking care of it, I'm going to run north for a while. There may be more albacore up-current from here along the canyon lines."

The fishermen left the deck, going below to open beers, relax, and congratulate Jim on his tuna. He accepted their praise modestly, and had just put down an empty cerveza when an ungodly whine and thumping came from the after deck. They poured up the companionway just in time to see the captain shut down the engine and Julio yank the section of the deck that concealed it open. A cloud of smoke rose out of the compartment, but no flames followed. What looked like a pump of some kind was smouldering.

"That will be a problem," said Emiliano grimly. "The intake pump and filter are damaged. I would love to know how the mujer perra got to this state."

"If you have a ladder and a safety line and there are no sharks about, I'll go over the side and take a look," volunteered Jim.

"I would be grateful."

Jim kept a swimsuit, a mask, a snorkel, and a dive knife in with his fishing gear, just in case. He changed while Julio broke out a ladder the Ojo Grande had aboard in case it became necessary to disentangle fishing lines from the propeller shaft, an occasional hazard of the game. Jim climbed down the ladder and took a deep breath before disappearing beneath the surface. He reappeared a minute later. Taking the snorkel out of his mouth, he called, "Give me a bucket and a long screwdriver."

Julio handed down the requested items and he submerged again. This time he stayed under for almost two minutes before surfacing and climbing out of the water. He handed the bucket to Emiliano.

"I think this is the culprit, mi capitán."

Small chunks of a dark, tarry substance sat in the bucket. Emiliano looked at it with loathing.

"Where did you find this?"

"I pried out of the cooling water inlet. I don't know what it is, but it's pretty stiff; it took some digging to get this much out. If it got into the intake pump, we aren't going anywhere."

The captain loosed a torrent of explosive Spanish profanity, glaring at the gunk that had stopped his beloved boat. Jim couldn't understand more than every third or fourth word and some were not in his vocabulary; but from what he did get, Emiliano was damning the captain and crew of the ship that had dumped this crap overboard to the deepest depths of hell with red-hot pitchforks stuck up their asses. When he wound down, Jim looked at him and said, "With respect, now that we are past that we have to figure out how to get cooling water to the engine so we can run for the beach. You have an intake pump that feeds filtered water to the water jacket and then over the side after one pass through the engine, yes?"

"Yes. The water goes from the centrifugal filter pump to the circulating pump."

"So all we have to do is rig up a filter and let the circulator pull water directly into the cooling system." Jim's eyes went a little out of focus as he looked at the engine, around the deck, and then wandered down into the cabin muttering to himself.

"Has he gone mad?" asked Julio quietly.

"Not at all," said Warwick. "I've seen this before. He's one of the Scroungers on our fraternity's Junkyard Challenge team. A few times a year, some of the Greeks field teams to build something, a challenge using nothing what's in a junkyard. The teams have 24 hours to build whatever it is, and then they race them in front of a crowd. The money raised goes to a charity of the winning frat or sorority's choice.

"When Jim gets an idea he pursues it to the end, and his ideas are usually worth pursuing. He's got one now; I know the signs."

Jim came back from the cabin holding two coffee cans and a mesh shirt of Ohnaka's. He was looking past Emiliano at a blueprint only he could see.

"Captain, I think I have a solution to the problem. I can build a filter out of these cans and this shirt. I attach it to the hose Julio was using to wash down the deck, and shove that into the intake of the circulating pump. It won't pull as much water as usual, but if you run the engine slow you should be able to limp to a port of refuge."

"How will you keep the filter down?"

"We use all the fishing sinkers you have, mi capitán."

The Mexican considered, and nodded. "We'll try it. Use whatever you need that isn't attached to the engine or the steering. It's better than sitting here adrift."

An hour later, the wash hose had been transformed into an intake line, tied into the circulating pump. The filter – the coffee cans perforated into a sieve and nested, with the cut up mesh shirt threaded and tied onto stiff wire bent into two spirals inside to catch anything that got through the holes in the cans – was on the end of the hose about eight feet below the surface, held out from the side by two fishing rods. Lead sinkers wired to the can weighted it down so it would not rise too much in the wake when the Ojo Grande was underway.

Emiliano shook his head at the inelegant improvisation, but reluctantly started the engine and watched the temperature gauge like a hawk. After three minutes idling, the gauge was still in the green. Crossing himself, he engaged the propeller and the charter boat gathered way. Slowly he worked up to four knots, the most Jim thought his jury rig would stand. The temperature climbed some, but stayed in the green. At the captain's direction, Julio hoisted the ball – diamond – ball signal of a vessel restricted in its ability to maneuver. At such a slow speed, the nearest port was a long four hours away.

The sun had long since set when the lights of Chicalo, a little village 120 miles north of Manzanillo, came into view. Chicalo was among the well-kept secrets of Mexico's Colima coast. Off the beaten track from Manzanillo, Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco, although it was on the Mexican coastal highway that wound its way down to Guatemala few tourists ever came by road; the easiest way to access the place was by boat. Tycoons, producers, directors, and movie stars who enjoyed fishing had been using Chicalo as a getaway since the days of Rudolph Valentino, Gloria Swanson, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, and Ramon Novarro. During billfishing season, it wasn't unusual for a dozen or more yachts to be anchored just offshore, but at this time of the year the town looked like any other sleepy Mexican fishing village. The passengers and crew gave a collective sigh of relief as the Ojo Grande came alongside the dock and Emiliano cut the engine.