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Two and a Half Weeks
A Tale From Blacktip Island
Tim W. Jackson
Copyright by Tim W. Jackson 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and critical articles. For information about permissions, please contact the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
A version of this story was originally published in The MacGuffin Volume XXX, No. 1, Fall 2013.
Devonshire House Press
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Naperville, IL 60653
ISBN: 978-0-9910332-5-6
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Table of Contents
Two and a Half Weeks
About the Author
Two and a Half Weeks
Gage Hoase was in a jam. Gabi was back for two and a half weeks and they were perfect together. If he had any doubts, he could ask her. Or wait five minutes for her to tell him again.
It had started innocently enough. Gage, new to Blacktip Island, running from a tinderbox relationship and an explosive break-up. Watching the other divemasters troll the island's resort. The local sport, it seemed. Gage watched from the shadows, intrigued and daunted at the same time.
Then Gabi had stepped onto the boat. Her dive vacation a last-minute thing, she said, a quick escape as far as possible from Vienna, a bitter divorce and a crushing psychiatric practice. Her blonde curls, blue eyes and sunny laugh drew Gage out of his shell. They had drinks the first night, then dinner the next. Her accent and garbled syntax only added to her charm.
"Together we are wonderful, no?" she said.
"Yeah." Gage had laughed. "This is pretty damn good."
They had sidestepped anything that might spoil the fantasy. She would fly back to Austria Saturday, after all, back to her life and her practice.
That changed her last night on island. Sitting on the Eagle Ray Cove dock, watching tarpon surface beneath their feet, Gage worked up the courage to kiss her. They spent the night at his one-room cottage, and he ran her to the airport on his scooter the next morning. They swapped phone numbers, email addresses, then she was gone.
Gage floated through work that day. He and Gabi each had had the emotional boost they needed, no messy strings attached.
Gabi called that night to thank him for a wonderful time. The next day she messaged how perfect he was. The next night she called again. "Just to talk, no?" Gage, more pleased than ever. He'd found a kindred spirit who eased his island isolation. And her Austrian accent crackling through the international phone lines gave their talks an exotic air.
Then had come the e-mails, each longer than the last, telling him how much he meant to her. Then more calls. Gage had been polite, careful of her feelings. Long-distance flirtations died quick, after all. Yes, of course she was beautiful, he told her. Of course it would be nice to see her again.
In a vague sort of way.
Then the phone had rattled his nightstand at two o'clock in the morning.
"I have bought tickets!" Gabi's voice crackled in his ear.
"What time's it?" Gage, not sure if he was asleep or awake or somewhere in between.
"It is 8 o'clock in my morning and I have just bought my tickets!"
"That's great." A vision of the Vienna opera house danced behind Gage's eyelids. Morphed into a circus tent filled with elephants and clowns.
"I will be coming to see you for two and a half weeks! Is that not wonderful?"
Gage rolled, broke off the dream, went back to sleep.
But in the morning there was an email from Gabi with her flight information.
"You're in trouble, bud," Jerrod at the Eagle Ray Cove bar had said. "Rule Number One: Never let a fling come back. Ever."
Island cynicism, Gage told himself. The sort of thing Gabi would save him from.
The next week Gage kissed Gabi at the airstrip. He pulled her overnight bag from the luggage cart, headed for his scooter.
"Oh! There is more!" Gabi pulled a hard sided suitcase from the cart. Then another. Then another. "Here are all the things we need to be perfect!"
"Except a moving van."
On the scooter, Gage jammed the carry-on between his knees, tied another bag on the back rack and had Gabi hold a wheeled suitcase to either side, wheels on the limestone roadway. They sputtered up the coast to his cottage, her slim legs clamped warm on his hips.
Inside the cottage, Gage pulled Gabi close, tried to kiss her. She spun away, groping at her luggage.
"Look!" Gabi threw open the largest of her bags. "I have brought curtains for your house!"
"Um, OK . . ."
"And so! Here is a matching tablecloth. And candles, each with a matching candleholder!"
"I . . . don't have a table." Gage gestured around the room.
"Oh, we will get one! Then we shall have romantic dinners together!" Gabi tore through her bags, blind to Gage's stunned face. Out flew linen napkins, cutlery, bubble-wrapped wine glasses, and a framed photo of herself that Gabi immediately set on the bedside nightstand.
"And look!" Digging ever deeper into Bag Number Three, "I also have brought you a proper shirt! And a tie!" Gabi held up a brown button-down dress shirt and a black silk tie. "I have also for you shoes, because you have no proper shoes!" She held out a pair of patent leather wingtips.
"Yeah." Gage swallowed as well as his dry mouth would allow. "We don't have much cause to dress up here on the island."
"Oh! But now you do! This is perfect, no? And see, I also have brought a dress for me to match your tie!"
She spent the rest of the evening cleaning the room, floor to ceiling, rearranging his futon, his few dishes, his books, his pile of unfolded t-shirts and the food in the refrigerator.
"You see? Now all is perfect!" She threw herself into his lap, arms around his neck.
Gage, happy at last. A clean house wasn't a bad thing. And with the place clean, Gabi now needed attention. Romance. He spent all night addressing that need, with Gabi barking constant instructions and corrections.
He sleepwalked through work the next day, Gabi clutching his hand whenever she could. The diving guests grinned.
"Am I not beautiful?" Gabi, setting aside her jerk chicken sandwich at lunch.
"Of course." Gage had told her often enough the night before.
"Then why do you not tell me I am beautiful?" She waited, eyes locked on his. "When someone thinks a person is beautiful, he must tell her!"
"Sure. You're beautiful."
"Ah! So!" Gabi said. "And we are perfect together! No?"
Gage nodded, his mouth full of jerk chicken.
"Oh! We will teach you to eat politely! If you will change these this, you will be perfect."
That night Gage addressed Gabi's insecurities again. Fell asleep somewhere near dawn.
Another zombie day on the boat, and another lunch filled with etiquette lessons. By the time they returned to the cottage that afternoon, he had stopped listening to her, nodding when it seemed appropriate. Inside, she went silent for a moment, then dug into Bag Number Four and came out with a bound photo album.
"I do not like
to talk about this, but before I was a doctor I was a model. See? Here is my portfolio!"
She flipped through the album full of glossy glamour prints, lingerie ads clipped from magazines, artsy semi-nudes. All showed a teen-aged Gabi intently aware of the camera, despite her unconcerned expressions.
"You see? I was beautiful, was I not?"
"You bet," said Gage.
"Oh! How can you say such a thing? Am I not beautiful now?"
"That's what I meant."
"Then you must say this if you mean it. Not, 'you bet.' What does it mean, 'you bet?'"
They spent the rest of the evening arguing semantics and slept on opposite sides of the futon, somehow managing not to touch each other. Gage couldn't take two weeks of this. But what to do?
The next day on the boat was worse. After the first dive Gabi made a show of draping her mask, fins and wetsuit over Gage's dive gear far forward on the boat, in the area reserved for the crew.
"This way everyone knows we are together!"
The guests laughed.
"Yeah, I don't think there was any doubt of that," Gage said.
The man nearest him slapped him on the back. "So how long's your girlfriend here for?"
"Two weeks." Gage tried to smile. If he jumped overboard now, he could be ashore in five minutes.
"Oh! I am here for two and a half weeks!" Gabi said. "And we have had already only three days together."
Lunch was more of the same. Gage should iron his t-shirts. He should wear 'proper shoes,' not flip-flops. He needed a haircut and should shave twice a day. She reached across the table, squeezed his hand. Guests around the dining room snickered. Gage had had enough.
"Look, Gabi, all this hand holding, it's not, well, it's not . . . professional."
"And why should I not touch you? Everyone