Moondogs - Alexander Yates [7]
Benicio shook his head. “I’ve just owned it for a while.”
The man seemed pleased by this. “Good for you. Well, she takes a round six-volt. I had to mail away to a third-party in Singapore just to get it. Came in this morning.” The man patted the back of the device with affection and handed it to Benicio for his approval. Benicio felt the almost forgotten heft of it in his hand. He pressed the round black button below the screen and numbers sprang to life. His depth was zero and his pressure was zero. His nitrogen level was safe. “Go often?” the man asked.
“Not really, no.” He became aware of the fact that Alice was standing very close behind him and glanced back to see her staring at the jumbled mess that was his gear. “It hasn’t been too long, though.”
“Well, the battery should last your next trip, probably a few more after that. But if I’m in your shoes, I consider an upgrade. Especially if you’re serious about returning to our sport.” The man stepped sideways to an ancient-looking cash register. He continued speaking as his two bent index fingers worked ponderously over the numbers. Apparently the direct feed—which ferried air from the tank to the buoyancy control vest—was corroded and needed replacing, as well as his regulator’s dust cap and all of its O-rings. The final price came out much higher than the quote he’d gotten over the phone, but Benicio didn’t doubt it was fair given the admittedly shabby state of his gear. He paid the man—including a few extra bucks for a bottle of Sea Drops for his mask and a tube of silicone jelly for his rusted dive knife—and collected his gear to leave.
Back outside Alice helped him hoist everything onto the bed of her pickup. “So,” she said, her voice a little thin, “it’s been how long since you did this?”
“Just about five years,” he said. “I took my last trip the summer before I moved down here.”
“And, you still know how? You’re not getting in over your head?” Alice laughed a bit as she said it.
“Getting in over your head is kind of the point.” He took a light hold of her arm, just above her elbow. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
“Who’s worried? I’m just trying to keep my options open. What with the affairs and trysts.”
He released her arm and closed the back of the truck. “I’m done playing for today,” he said. “It’s safe. And we’ll take it slow. Dad hates current and he gets seasick on overnight boats, so nothing but easy, shallow dives for us all summer.”
“Your father dives also?”
“I didn’t mention it?” Benicio knew of course that he hadn’t. In the year that they’d been dating he’d mentioned very little to Alice about his father. “Yes, he does. I mean, he used to.” He opened the door and got back into the passenger seat. “We used to do it together.”
ALICE HAD ONLY MET HIS FATHER ONCE, on the day of his mother’s funeral in Chicago. She accompanied Benicio to O’Hare, and while they waited in the torn leather chairs of the arrivals lounge he gave her the bare bones. His father’s name was Howard and he was in the hotel business, work that kept him on the road most of the time. It used to be he worked mostly in Costa Rica, but as Benicio grew older his father’s interests began to expand to higher-end resorts in Southeast Asia. His firm provided boutique-style management services for locally owned hotel franchises. Howard even owned a few establishments himself—some sushi bar in Bangkok, as well as a little wine lounge in Manila. “Quiet little places,” his father called them, on the rare occasions that he brought them up at all.
Howard started spending a lot less time in the States after Benicio graduated high school. He didn’t tell Alice that was also the summer they’d stopped talking. Benicio was always cordial—he acted like nothing was wrong when the family was together at home—but he stopped making calls