“Nothing,” he answers, as he straightens his hat and tries to smile.
As they hug, she notices his hands are ice-cold and the back of his shirt is damp.
“You’re covered in sweat.”
Bjorn avoids her eyes. “It’s been stressful getting ready to go.”
“Bring my bag?”
He nods and gestures toward the cabin. The boat rocks gently under her feet and the air smells of lacquered wood and sun-warmed plastic.
“Hello? Anybody home?” she asks, tapping his head.
His clear blue eyes are childlike and his straw-colored hair sticks out in tight dreadlocks from under the hat. “I’m here,” he says. But he looks away.
“What are you thinking about? Where’s your mind gone to?”
“Just that we’re finally heading off together,” he answers as he wraps his arms around her waist. “And that we’ll be having sex out in nature.”
He buries his lips in her hair.
“So that’s what you’re dreaming of,” she whispers.
“Yes.”
She laughs at his honesty.
“Most people… women, I mean, think that sex outdoors is a bit overrated,” she says. “Lying on the ground among ants and stones and-”
“No. No. It’s just like swimming naked,” he insists.
“You’ll have to convince me,” she teases.
“I’ll do that, all right.”
“How?” She’s laughing as the phone rings in her cloth bag.
Bjorn stiffens when he hears the signal. Penelope glances at the display.
“It’s Viola,” she says reassuringly before answering. “ Hola, Sis.”
A car horn blares over the line as her sister yells in its direction. “ Fucking idiot.”
“Viola, what’s going on?”
“It’s over. I’ve dumped Sergei.”
“Not again!” Penelope says.
“Yes, again,” says Viola, noticeably depressed.
“Sorry,” Penelope says. “I can tell you’re upset.”
“Well, I’ll be all right I guess. But… Mamma said you were going out on the boat and I thought… maybe I could come, too, if you don’t mind…”
A moment of silence.
“Sure, you can come, too,” Penelope says, although she hears her own lack of enthusiasm. “Bjorn and I need some time to ourselves, but…”
2
Penelope stands at the helm. An airy blue sarong is wrapped around her hips and there’s a peace sign on the right breast of her white bikini top. Spring sunlight pours through the windshield as she carefully rounds Kungshamn lighthouse and maneuvers the large motorboat into the narrow sound.
Her younger sister, Viola, gets up from the pink recliner on the afterdeck. For the past hour, she’s been lying back in Bjorn’s cowboy hat and enormous sunglasses, languidly smoking a joint.
Five times she tries to pick up a matchbox from the floor with her toes. Penelope can’t help smiling. Viola walks into the cockpit and offers to take the wheel for a while. “Otherwise, I’ll go downstairs and make myself a margarita,” she says, as she continues down the stairs.
Bjorn is lying on the foredeck, a paperback copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses put to use as his pillow. Penelope notices that the railing near his feet is rusting. The boat was a present from his father for his twentieth birthday, but Bjorn hasn’t had the money to keep it up. It was the only gift his father ever gave him, except one time when his father paid for a trip. When Bjorn’s father turned fifty, he invited Bjorn and Penelope to one of his finest properties, a five-star hotel called Kamaya Resort on the east coast of Kenya. Penelope endured the resort for two days before she took off to join Action Contre la Faim at the refugee camp in Kubbum, Darfur.
Penelope reduces speed from eight to five knots as they reach the bridge at Skuru Sound. They’ve just glided into the shadows when Penelope notices the black rubber boat. Pressed against the concrete foundation, it’s the same kind the military uses for their coastal rangers: an RIB with a fiberglass hull and extremely powerful engines. Penelope has almost passed beneath the bridge when she notices a man hunched in the darkness, his back turned. She doesn’t know why her pulse starts to race at the sight of him; something about his neck and the black clothes he wears bothers her. She feels he’s watching her even though he sits turned away.
Back into sunshine, she starts to shiver; goose bumps cover her arms. She guns the boat to fifteen knots. The two inboard engines drone powerfully, and the wake streams white behind them as the boat takes off over the smooth surface of the water.
Penelope’s phone rings. It’s her mother. For a moment Penelope fantasizes that she’s calling to tell Penelope how wonderful she’d been on TV earlier, but she snaps back to reality.
“Hi, Mamma.”
“Ay, ay.”
“What’s wrong?”
“My back. I’ll have to go to the chiropractor,” Claudia says, loudly filling a glass with tap water. “I just wanted to learn if you’ve talked to your sister.”
“She’s on the boat with us,” Penelope replies, listening to her mother gulp the water down.
“She’s with you… how nice. I thought it would be good for her to get out.”
“I’m sure it is,” Penelope says quietly.
“What do you have to eat?”
“Pickled herring and potatoes, eggs-”
“Viola doesn’t like herring. What else do you have?”
“I’ve made a few meatballs,” Penelope says patiently.
“Enough for everyone?”
Penelope falls silent as she looks out over the water. “I can always skip them myself,” she says, collecting herself.
“Only if there aren’t enough,” her mother says. “That’s all I’m trying to say.”
“I understand.”
“Am I supposed to be feeling sorry for you now?” her mother demands with irritation.
“It’s just that… Viola is not a child-”
“I remember all the years I made you meatballs for Christmas and Midsummer and-”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten them.”
“All right then,” her mother says sharply. “If that’s the way you want it.”
“I’m just trying to say-”
“You don’t have to come for Midsummer,” Claudia snaps.
“Oh, Mamma, why do you have to-”
Her mother has hung up. Penelope shakes with frustration.
The stairs from the galley creak and a moment later Viola appears, a margarita in hand. “Was that Mamma?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Worried I wouldn’t get enough to eat?” Viola can’t hide a smile.
“Believe me, we have food on board,” Penelope says.
