Moondogs - Alexander Yates [94]
“You’ll be all right to get down?” Benicio asked.
“Just fine,” Bobby said without looking at him. “I’ll take it slow.” Behind them a skinny goat emerged from the grass and blinked at the tracks left by the Expedition. Bobby made a puckered kissing sound like you might to a dog, and the goat swished its tail but didn’t look at him. He took out a cigarette, lit it and blew a plume of smoke at the animal. “It’s just going to be you and Katrina today,” he said. “On the dive, I mean.”
“I figured as much.”
Bobby shook his pack of cigarettes in Benicio’s direction and pocketed it when the offer was refused. “Normally I’d be going, too …” he sounded almost apologetic. “We got certified together a few years back and we try to go whenever we get the chance. I made this reservation about two months ago … I thought, hey, if Charlie wins then this trip’ll be a damn good way to celebrate. If he loses, it’ll be a chance to get wet, get drunk and get the fuck over it. A man needs a break either way, right? But lately I’ve been less,” he stabbed his cane into the long blades of yellowing grass, “graceful. Katrina wanted to cancel at first.” Bobby took a long drag and held it inside. “It’s good you came.”
“You had an accident,” Benicio said. It sounded more like a proclamation than the question he intended it to be.
“You could call it that. I sure as hell didn’t do it on purpose.” He reached down, plucked up a handful of grass and held it out to the goat in offering, making that same kissing sound. The goat eyed him with its horizontal cat pupils and shuffled backward. “I’m sorry about Katrina,” Bobby said, his tone suddenly much lighter. “She’s not bothering you, is she?”
“What do you mean?” Benicio asked.
“She comes on strong. The flirting thing can be a bit much.”
Benicio nodded slowly for a while. “She’s really nice,” he said. He wanted to be polite, but clear. “She’s not my type.”
Bobby turned to him, the ember of his cigarette a slow pulse. “No?” The word came out as smoke. It floated between them, changed shape a few times, and disappeared. Benicio returned his gaze, wondering how best to bring up the Solita thing. But Katrina was back before he could say anything. Two shirtless boys trailed behind her and they exchanged big grins at the sight of Benicio. “You see that?” Bobby asked. “They like you, too.”
“Who likes who?” Katrina asked, still panting a bit from her jog back up the stairs.
“Nobody,” Bobby said. “Nobody likes anybody else. Except for me. I like everybody else. I’m loving.”
“You are.” Katrina gave Bobby a very light pinch on the tip of his nose. “I could eat you up and shit out puppies.” She opened the hatchback trunk and handed off dive gear to the shirtless boys, each of whom donned mesh duffel bags like backpacks, hand straps slung over their shoulders. “You mind checking us all in?” she asked. “If Ben and I get going now we can probably still fit two dives in before it gets dark.”
“Go ahead.” Bobby dropped his cigarette in the grass and extinguished it with the rubber tip of his cane. “I’ll see you when you surface.”
Katrina took Benicio’s hand and, together with the shirtless boys, they headed down toward the beach.
BENICIO’S FIRST DIVE, the one with his father in Costa Rica, had not gone well at all. Not for either of them. Within the first minute he’d almost ruptured a lung and by the end of the dive his father had managed to get thoroughly drugged on the nitrogen in his tank. As Benicio thought about it now, he blamed those early mistakes on his hard-on for the Costa Riqueña dive instructor. Days earlier, when she’d lined them up beside the training pool to go through each and every piece of gear, all he’d learned was that it was nearly impossible to hide an erection in a wetsuit.
The instructor started slow. “This is a mask,” she said. “It goes on your face.” She put it on to demonstrate. She stripped down to a modest one-piece bathing suit—a few sizes