Dark Light

“So I see.” The blouse was pasted against her skin, and I cupped my hand around her warm ribs. “This material, when it’s wet—I like the color better.”

The color of her skin, I meant.

She did not look up as she said, “We should get back to the house, and find towels. We’ll catch our death.”

I placed an index finger beneath her chin and lifted. Her face was dark, then abruptly illuminated as lightning crackled in the treetops. For an instant, her eyes incandesced blue as a welder’s torch…then vanished into shadow as the gazebo vibrated beneath us, our ears ringing.

“My God, that was close! What a peach of a storm, though, Doc, huh?” She turned away, instantly changed, her voice friendly, conversational—herself again.

The air was a mix of ozone and smoke. I’d felt a tingling through my wet shoes. Storm light had, once again, transformed perception, and all the potential it implied.

In a similar conversational tone, I replied, “That was too close,” as I, too, attempted to return to normal. “Do you know how many people a year are killed by lightning in Florida? Chessie, it’s not safe to be on the beach when a storm is so close…”

I continued talking, listening to myself as if removed from the room. Something unexpected had happened between us. What? Why? Tomlinson’s ridiculous theory about sexuality and seesawing barometric pressure came into my head, and was dismissed just as quickly.

I’d held a woman in my arms. My body had reacted. My eyes and modern brain had cooperated by creating a preferred reality. As an explanation, it was…rational.

There are certain rare people, however, who are born with a pheromone signature so potent that, even in a crowded room, every member of the opposite sex is aware when they enter, or exit. Maybe it came down to that. Sensuality is more subtle than sexuality; beauty is more complicated than bone structure, elastic skin, and an assemblage of hydrated cells. With certain women, I realized, age did not matter. Mildred Chestra Engle was one.

“…Chess, when you feel that blast of cold air? You should head for cover fast. Weather’s volatile around salt water. When unequal pressure systems collide, it’s more like an explosion than a storm.”

Jesus, was I as stuffy and bland as I sounded?

Chestra’s smile said Yes, but it was okay. She was the good hostess once again, ever polite. She had her arms folded modestly across her chest, hiding herself, but freed a hand long enough to motion me toward the door. “I know about dangerous storms. I made you a proposition, remember? A business proposition concerning a boat that was lost in a storm a long time ago. Come on, I’ll show you.”

It was an excuse not to be alone in our sodden clothes. We both knew but played along. The gazebo was already filling with the scent of her. The September air was body-heated.

She led, I followed. I thought we were going to the house. Instead, she led me to the family cemetery where I’d first heard her voice. Chestra knelt by a marble crypt that I recognized as the grave of Nellie Kay Dorn. She used the flashlight to illuminate the headstone next to it.

“This is my godmother,” she said and placed her hand upon the stone, an affectionate, familiar gesture. I got the impression Chestra came here often.

She held the flashlight steady. In the harsh light, I read what the stonecutter had engraved:

MARLISSA ARKHAM DORN

BORN FEBRUARY 7, 1923, VARGUS, AUSTRIA

DIED OCTOBER 19, 1944,

SANIBEL ISLAND, FLORIDA

WHOM THE SEA GIVES UP, GOD EMBRACES

October 19—she’d died in the hurricane Arlis had told us about.

Chessie stood. “It’s an old line, but I mean it: Let’s get out of these wet things and into a dry martini. What a night! I’ll show you Marlissa’s picture.”

I checked my watch: 11:20.

I told her, “Just one.”

23

There were two photos on the piano, black-and-white glossies, and I looked from one to the other as Chestra played softly. She’d changed into a lime satin robe and heeled slippers. I stood barefoot on a towel; another wrapped around my neck.

Coincidentally, she was playing the melody I’d heard while eavesdropping from the beach—a song I recognized but had yet to ask its name.

One photo was of the boat that had sunk on the night of 19 October 1944. It was a beauty—a thirty-eight- foot Matthews, according to information on the back. From the data that was noted, I would’ve known a man had written it even if I hadn’t seen the precise masculine hand.

Built 1939, Port Clinton, Ohio. Oak keel, double oak frame, Philippine mahogany planking. Master cabin and crew quarters bunks six. Twin gas engines, Chrysler straight-8s. Top speed, 25 knots, range 400 miles.

Yes, a beauty. A vessel that had been much loved, judging from the number of times it was a backdrop for family photos. But this was the first full shot of it I’d seen—taken from the beach, probably, because the aspect was from the vessel’s port side, forward of the bow.

The photo showed the boat under way, a white wake breaking beneath bow stringers, yacht pennants flying from the wooden radio mast and bow pulpit, all indicators of speed. It was a classic design from that era: low, roomy wheelhouse, three portholes forward, a stern deck that was open. Lashed to the stern was a wooden dinghy; an American flag on the transom above it, catching the wind.

The boat’s hull and wheelhouse roof were painted black or midnight blue. The decking and cabin frame were amber-stained mahogany; the wheelhouse roof was painted white.

The vessel’s name was Dark Light. It’s rare when a boat is christened with a name that fits. Most suffer cutesy double entendres, or names that are saccharine sweet attempts at poetry. I’ve never named a boat for the simple reason that I lack the imagination. Dark Light was perfect for this vessel. It celebrated her hull color, and also her quickness—twenty-five knots was lightning fast in those times. Even now, it’s fast for a boat her size. The name was subtle and esoteric, like her understated design.

It had been a tragedy to lose a craft so articulately made to a storm. But Dark Light hadn’t fallen to just any storm. Arlis had seeded the date in my memory: 19 October 1944. A hurricane had flooded Sanibel on that date. It was a storm that had killed several hundred people. Among the dead were Cuban fishermen who were buried on the same beach where the body of another victim was found: Marlissa Dorn.

I’d just visited the woman’s grave. Now I picked up her photo and looked at it closely for the first time.

I expected to be disappointed by this “extraordinary beauty,” as she was described by Chestra.

I wasn’t.

The photograph was a black-and-white glossy, eight-by-ten, framed and glassed. It was a Hollywood-style glamour shot that I associate with film stars from the 1930s and ’40s. Full length, professional lighting.

Marlissa Dorn wore a black gown that accentuated how she would look if a man were lucky enough to see her naked: long legs, sensual symmetry of hips, breasts full and firm enough to resume their natural curvature once free of the garment’s constraints.

The gown was black but glittered with sequins. She stood with hip canted to one side, her opposite hand held at eye level, a cigarette between her fingers. The woman was leaning against a black grand piano as if taking a break from performing.

I glanced at Chestra and studied her face for a moment as she sat at the piano and continued to play. I returned my attention to the photo.

Marlissa’s cigarette was freshly lit. The smoke formed a lucent arc with the same curvilinear contour as her hips and breasts. She was staring through cigarette smoke at the camera, her hair combed full and glossy to her