Chapter 13 Monique #2
“There they are,” Tommie hollered, drawing every eye to their approach. “We thought you two ran off somewhere.”
“Cut it out, T.” Maurice’s voice conveyed no nonsense, and Tommie sobered.
From the boat launch, the guide announced, “We’ve got five boats tonight. One for los viejitos, and one for each of our tortolitos.”
“The who and what?” Maurice asked as they inched along the queue.
Monique laughed and shook her head. “Basically, he called them”—she pointed at the old folks being helped onto a boat that easily sat twenty—“his old friends, old buddies. And he called the rest of us lovebirds.”
Maurice made a choking kind of sound but recovered quickly. “You’re pretty fluent, huh?”
“I live on the West Side of Chicago, and my mail route is in a predominantly Latine community, so I’ve picked up some things over the years.” She didn’t add the used to be part. She missed her route and those stoop-sitting elders still standing guard against the siege of gentrification.
“No wonder you seem so comfortable here.”
“You seem comfortable here too.”
He stiffened, his attention drifting far off into the darkness.
“What happens when you do that?” she asked.
He furrowed his brow. “What do I do?”
“You don’t know? That… what can I call it? Disassociation? It’s like you short-circuit for a minute.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize to me. I’m just trying to get to know you, Mo.” She listened to the guide’s instructions, pulled on a life vest, and climbed aboard, catching Aldonia and Tommie grinning stupid at them.
Their boat was small. Intimate. Two bench seats facing each other and a guide at the rear. They all shoved off in a flotilla of lives lived together.
And then there was her and Maurice.
They floated along in the quiet. Just the soft splash of the oars against the water and their breaths. The melodic rhythm of the blades against the sea joined the chorus of animals in the bordering trees, creating a symphony of sounds.
“The bay is home to thousands of species of fish and crustaceans. We have used these waters to sustain ourselves for millennia,” their guide said.
The boat rocked gently, and the world faded away into the black water.
“Are you upset?”
“Hmm? Upset about what?” Monique asked.
“Them. This thing they’re trying to pull with you.”
“You mean them trying to get us together?”
He nodded, cheeks a pink-bronze in the lantern’s glow.
Shrugging, she said, “Yeah, a little.” Deb and Don were mere silhouettes ahead of them, glowing like beacons. “But it’s obvious they love you, love us. I can’t be mad at them for that.”
“Can’t say I’d be as forgiving if I were in your shoes.”
Monique scoffed. “Really, Mister ‘Man of Faith’?” She turned her camera toward the water, watching for the glow the guide had promised.
“Maybe something’s changed for me, but I’m tired of being mad when people show me they care.”
The guide stopped rowing and let them drift.
“My kids, my girls, my neighbors, as annoying as it can sometimes get, they’re just making sure I’m okay. It’s tough for me, though. But it’s also kinda proof.” Her fingertips grazed the water, slicing open a vein of electric blue.
“Proof of what?”
“That I was here, that I matter.” Monique gasped. Water dripped from her fingers like liquid stars. “Are you seeing this?”
The water around them began to glow. Just sparkles here and there at first. The guide swished an oar along the side of the boat, and a neon wave crested.
“My God.” Maurice leaned over the edge, fingers reaching tentatively at first toward the water.
Light bloomed. When he pulled his hand back, awe spread across his face.
He stretched to the water again, reaching deeper this time, like a child.
“The water is so warm and silky. It’s… magic.
” Wonder replaced his tight mask of control.
“It’s plankton,” Monique said dryly, yet smiling at his openness.
“Dinoflagellates,” the guide said. “Tiny lifeforms that glow when disturbed.”
Maurice looked from Monique to the guide and then back to the water. “What was that?” he shouted and jumped back, snatching his hands from the water.
Their guide laughed under his breath.
“What is what?” Monique looked closer, pressing her shoulder against his. A school of small fish darted back and forth under and around the boat like silver-blue comets streaking through the darkest reaches of the galaxy.
He leaned closer, reaching an arm over her back to brace himself in the small boat to look over her shoulder. He was pressed there against her. Even with the inches of nylon and foam between their bodies, his heat surrounded her.
Breath stolen, she whispered, “Magic.”
They sat side by side as the guide steered them toward a mangrove tunnel where the bioluminescence intensified just beyond the natural archway. Every movement burst with light. Like this was a sacred place.
They approached an alcove. “The water is very warm here and not very deep. It’s safe to swim if you’d like.”
Maurice looked shocked.
Monique smiled and kicked her sandals off. She shimmied out of her skirt and stood before Maurice and the guide, in biker shorts and the T-shirt she wore under the life vest. “I’m going in,” she announced. Maurice’s eyes went wide. “What?”
She swung one leg over the side of the boat and then the other. Swishing her feet around, part marveling at the glow and part waiting for Maurice to choose. “You comin’?” she asked him one last time before slipping over the side and into the warm, glowing water.
Her body was alight. Every muscle, every movement, was a dance of billions of light pulses of life.
Every stroke and kick created galaxies and streaks of constellations.
She gasped and laughed as she whirled through the water like those synchronized swimmers in the old movies she used to watch with her grandparents.
Monique watched herself glow.
“Dear God—”
She looked up in the direction of Maurice’s voice. He stood at the side of the boat, staring at her like she was magical.
“You praying…” She splashed him, and the water droplets covered him like fairy dust. “Or are you coming in?”
Monique could say he jumped, but he fell over the side in an explosion of light. Thanks to the life vest, he didn’t go under. He flapped his arms and legs to steady himself, making giant arcs of star-infused water.
She swam over to him, laughing to cover her worry. He’d told her that he didn’t swim.
“This is—” He was laughing and glowing as he quickly figured out how to control his movements, as he sparkled and gleamed through the water.
She reached for him.
He caught her hand and brought it to his lips. Where they touched sparked electric, and her skin danced.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
“For what?”
“For…” He gestured around them, at himself, at her. “All of this.”
They bobbed there in the glowing waters, life vests bumping, legs kicking, eyes fixed on each other, with something more potent than magic flowing between them.
“Maurice,” she began. “I really wanna kiss you right now, but I need to say this…”
He blinked slow, faint blue sparkles clinging to his lashes and beard. She reached out a hand and stroked his face.
“You really are beautiful,” she said in a breathy whisper.
He pulled her closer, and the water between them surged with color. His hand found her waist under the water and held her to him as he leaned forward.
His lips were soft. Just like she knew they’d be. They tasted like the sea, salty, sweet, and vast. He cupped her face like she’d done to him with a tenderness that made her chest ache.
They bobbed there, surrounded by darkness and light. Each spark infinitesimally small alone. Together, they illuminated the entire bay.
In the distance, someone sang softly in Spanish about love and blessings and joy.
Eventually, they pulled apart, breathless, laughing, glowing, and not just from the waters. She reached for him again, and he welcomed her.
The guide ended his serenade and cleared his throat once. Then again. “Perdón, mis tortolitos. We must return.”
Maurice helped Monique back onto the boat where the guide handed them soft towels. They laughed as they blotted the water from each other’s bodies. Him touching her so freely, without analysis or fear, made her lower belly twitch. She flinched.
“You okay? Is it your hip?”
She looked up at him, curious. “My hip?”
He looked sheepish but also determined. “I notice you rub your right hip and your left shoulder. But you stop when you think someone’s watching.”
The boat continued to move forward through the mangroves and then arced around toward open water. The moon had never been so big to her.
“I’m recovering from cervical cancer, Maurice. That’s what I wanted to tell you. Technically in remission, but…”
She felt exposed, small, out there, but his hand was on hers. Maybe she would be okay.
“My mom died at fifty. Stomach cancer. I’m forty-seven. I thought I’d beaten it once. It came back, and they cut out everything that was left. Pumped me full of so much poison that I questioned if it was worth it. But my kids need me. I’m all they’ve got.”
He didn’t say anything right away.