Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 45 - Rowboat

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“I can take you out there, but we didn’t have much luck getting too close to one of those things,” Charlie said. 

He stood facing the pretty young lady on the dock while Gordon watched quietly from the boat.  The woman stood nearly a half foot shorter than Charlie, who wasn’t a tall man himself, but her beauty left a commanding presence.  She’d introduced herself as an astrophysicist but looked more like a college sorority girl on summer vacation with her pert summer dress and long brown hair flowing in the wind from under a broad-rimmed hat.

“I was hoping actually to get inside one,” Becca said.  

“Get inside one?” Charlie laughed.  “Oh, I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”

“How close could you get me?”

“Based on our luck today, I’d say not very close at all,” Charlie answered.  “The one time we got close, everything on the boat went haywire.”

“I’d still like to try if we could,” Becca persisted.

“You can’t be serious,” Charlie said.  “Those black hole things or whatever they are don’t look all that safe.  And you want to go inside one of ‘em?  That’s suicidal.”

“It’s not suicide,” Becca said. “It’s research.  It’s safe.”

“Hah,” Charlie laughed.  How would you know?”

“It’s a bit complicated,” Becca said.

“You know what else is complicated?” Charlie asked.  “Steering a boat into one of those things, let alone getting close to one.”

Watching from the boat, Becca’s intensity and focus — the stoic and severe countenance from such a young face — innately intimidated Gordon.  He’d always believed his days at Hewing Grocery helped him develop a solid ability to accurately size people up — to know which customers were always trustworthy and which ones to watch with a cautious eye.  Truthfully, his last experience at Walmart made him question if he still had that ability.   As he now watched how Becca chewed at the inside of her cheek, her eyes wide and calculating, Gordon was simultaneously intrigued and cautious.

“Well, then, how about just an excursionary exploration?” Becca asked.  “I’d like to see for myself how close we get before your controls act erratically, see if we can get a count of any others out there, and make a forward-facing plan from that point.  Would you happen to have a rowboat or raft we could tow behind if I wanted to get closer?”

“That would slow us down, but I’ve got one I can hook up and bring along.”

“That would be perfect.”

Charlie glanced back at Gordon on the boat.

“You’re awfully quiet over there, chief,” Charlie said.  “What do you think?”

“I don’t exactly have any other plans,” Gordon said.

“Well, there you go,” Charlie said, returning to Becca.  “I think we can manage to take you out for — what did you say — an *excursionary exploration*?”

Becca sat on the bow with a small notebook and pencil but rarely wrote anything down. She mostly stared ahead as Charlie steered the vessel and methodically patrolled the waters surrounding the archipelagos of Key West proper, Jewfish and Waltz Key Basins to the east, and Key West National Wildlife Refuge further west.  

The boat bounced on the water, and Gordon was often distracted by the warm sun and the continuous sharp taste of salt in the humid air. All three of them scanned the horizon for signs of the randomly generated anomalies, and several times, they spotted one. Charlie would rev the boat’s engine to full tilt and race across the waves in a bee-line trajectory toward one black hole and then another.

“Dagnabbit!” he’d scream when a hole suddenly disappeared just as they were closing in on it.  “We were able to get so close that one time, but now can’t so much as see one and poof!”

Charlie hated making excuses and was embarrassed each time Becca, holding onto her hat from the wind, would wordlessly turn back to look at him before returning her gaze to the horizon.  

“Boat needs fuel,” Charlie said after hours on the water.  The sky had turned a dark orange as the sun dropped to the west.  “And so do I.”

They steered back to shore in silence and took Charlie’s truck back into town.  

“That cottage over there is unlocked,” Charlie said as they reached his house.  “I already went snooping around.  About four or five others on the street are also unlocked if you’d like a choice.  Most of the others are locked up tight.”  

“I’m already in the house next door,” Gordon said.

“I told that neighbor I’d keep an eye on the place, but he said he probably wouldn’t be back.”

“So you’ve just taken over the neighborhood?” Becca asked.  “What if your neighbors returned?”

“Well, you know,” Charlie said.  “Most rules have a bit more wiggle room these days, I think.  People took what they wanted when they left.  If they come back — and I’m doubtful they will — we’ll deal with it then.  Get yourself a shower and come back over in an hour or so.  I’ll pull some tuna steaks out of the freezer and get the grill going.”

Becca acquiesced and let Gordon pull her suitcase out of her car’s trunk and carry it into the small yellow cottage for her. She felt like she should tip him like a valet.  

Little more than four walls surrounded a small studio-like room with opened windows letting the evening breeze blow through. There was a bed in the far corner, a small desk next to a window, and a table with two chairs in the attached simple kitchen. The only separate room was the tiny bathroom with a stand-up shower, a toilet, and a sink.

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“Same floor plan as the one I’m in,” Gordon said.  “Charlie’s, too.”

Becca nodded but didn’t respond.  

Just as Gordon felt uneasy around Becca’s intensity, Becca was taken aback by Gordon’s calm. Although Gordon didn’t talk much, he was thoughtful, honest, and straightforward when he did.  

Having spent her career surrounded by the fervent obsessiveness of often narcissistic astrophysicists who spoke entire sentences rife with continuous quadrisyllabic words, Becca’s baseline was to match or exceed their intensity and vocabulary in nearly everything she did. Add to this almost a lifetime of living under the same roof as an ambitious architect determined to transform Chicago’s skyline into a modern-day combination of sleek metal and ancient Grecian influences, and you have a woman who’d spent little time with relatively unambitious people, people comfortable in their skin, people who rarely did things like drive cross country to start a new life at the beach, but then sometimes did once their lives had been tumultuously upended.  

People, in other words, like Gordon. 

It had been difficult that day for her to remain as quiet as she had. 

The three sat under the canopied table in Charlie’s backyard as dark took over.  Gordon and Becca picked at their food, but Charlie was ravenous.

“I got to thinking while fixing dinner,” Charlie said as he retook a seat next to them after refilling his plate with the tuna he’d left warming skin-side down on the grill.  “I got so caught up with us chasing those black holes that it never occurred to me what you might be up to here.”

“Up to?” Becca asked.

“Well, say we were to get you up as close to one of these things as you’d want,” Charlie said.  “I’m no astrophysicist like you, but I’m a process man.  You do X so that you can do Y.”

“Okay,” Becca responded.

“So what’s Y?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is I’m starting to think you have some sort of plan other than just exploring.   We just spent a whole day in a boat together, and we’ve given you quite a bit of the benefit of the doubt in doing so.”

“And I appreciate that,” Becca said. 

“I know you said it’s a bit complicated, but indulge Gordon and me here a bit.  What exactly are you hoping to do here?”

Becca poked at the remaining tuna on her plate.

“I think I might know how to reverse what’s happened,” Becca said.

“I thought you might,” Charlie said.  “But here’s what puzzles me:  if I was dead when all this first happened — which I’m fairly certain was the case — then what’s to say that if we were to go into one of those things that I wouldn’t go right back to being dead?”

“First off, I’m not suggesting we all go into one,” Becca answered. “And I’m not going to try to do so, either, until I gather more data.  But if your boat controls become spastic the closer you get, then for me to do any practical evaluation, I’ll need to get close enough to observe it without the use of anything mechanical.  For now, I want you to get me close enough that I can take a rowboat or a raft and paddle over to it myself.”

“It does sound like a suicide mission,” Gordon said.

“So, how will this work?” Charlie asked.

“The rowboat is one step,” Becca said.

“And that we’ve got,” Charlie said, slopping another forkful into his mouth.

“I’d like to get close enough to confirm these anomalies share similar characteristics to ones from my lab.”

“Wait,” Gordon said.  “Your lab?”

“If I’m correct,” Becca continued, ignoring him, “these anomalies react to magnetism.  To strong magnets.”

“Magnet?” Charlie said, finally pushing his plate away as he wiped his scraggly beard with a napkin.  “I got a refrigerator covered in magnets.  I don’t see how tossing a magnet at one of these things would reverse anything.”

“We won’t be dealing with refrigerator magnets,” Becca said.  “I’m talking something much stronger.”

“I don’t know where you’d find something much stronger here on the island,” Charlie said.  “And if anything on the TV is any indicator, I don’t have any interest whatsoever in going back into Miami or any other big city.  You’re apt to get shot.”

“Well,” Becca said and stood up from the picnic table.  She looked both ways up and down the line of homes on Charlie’s street.  “You’re certain these homes are all abandoned?”

“Ayup,” Charlie said.  “Hadn’t seen anyone in almost a week until you two showed up.”

“And they won’t be returning?” Becca asked.

“I guess that depends on whether you’re successful with whatever you’re planning.”

“What I’m planning is a scavenger hunt,” Becca said.  “How are you both with breaking and entering?”

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