Of Dolphins and Desires

Chapter 1

1

Six months later… She looked out at the water. The waves were forming beyond her field of vision, rolling in unending, to curl upon themselves and disappear into a pool of white foam. When the foam was covered under the next wave, sandpipers would run onto the just-wet sand and poke their beaks into the earth looking for an elusive meal. As the water rushed at them and they scurried up toward dry land, afraid to get their feathers wet. Sea gulls circled overhead, giving a cry that echoed her loneliness.

By the time the third wave brushed her ankles, the water felt refreshing instead of cold. She sank a little deeper into the sand as the water flowed past her, back to its source. Glancing down, she saw golden flecks that shimmered in the sunlight. Nestled in the flecks was a perfect spiral shell. Pretty, she thought, and bent down to pick it up.

The iridescent pink on the inside was as pale as a baby’s cheek. The outside was a dull gray. Rinsing the sand off, she stuck the shell in her pocket, and glanced once more out at the water. She closed her eyes and breathed deep the smell of humid, salty air. Exhaling in a rush, she snapped her eyes open and saw them.

A short distance from shore, her aquatic friends were back and seemed to be feeling playful as they leaped high out of the water only to crash back to the surface with a resounding splash. Her favorite poked his head above the water, opened his mouth, and chattered at her with a series of clicks and whistles, encouraging her to join them.

She turned on her heel and raced up the sand. Rushing into the shed, she quickly got rid of her shorts and shirt and pulled her rash guard over her head. Reaching with one hand behind her to draw up the zipper, and with the other for her tank, flippers, and mask. She heaved the tank onto her back, opened the valve to check the flow of air, turning it again when it hissed, almost in an eagerness that matched her own, to be back in the water.

Encumbered with the tank over her shoulders and flippers under one arm, she walked towards the world of water that she loved. Standing knee-deep in the waves, she spit into her mask, wiped the saliva around, then rinsed it with ocean water before placing it over her eyes and nose. She stepped into the fins, reaching down to pull the strap up over her heel with one finger. With the mask in place and flippers adorning her feet, she turned toward the shed and continued into the water, walking backwards. Once the water reached her chest, she leaned back and allowed herself to sink below the surface. The brightness of the sun was distorted through the movement of the water. She placed the regulator in her mouth, turned over, and kicked hard to propel herself into the deeper, cooler water where her friends waited.

The bubbles released from her mouthpiece floated to the top and burst. She saw the dark shapes ahead of her darting back and forth. The youngest came to swim beside her on the left, his large unblinking right eye only an arm’s distance away. She smiled, diving straight down, then turning onto her back so she could watch the graceful antics of Walter, the newest addition to this pod of bottlenose dolphins.

Walter followed her down, using his fluke to propel himself through the water faster than she could ever swim. He shot past her, under her, and came up on the other side. Sally, his mother, kept close, and urged him to the surface, watchful of his time and depth below the water. The human, too, swam towards the sunlight, but wasn’t yet ready to break into the atmosphere. George, Henry, and Lefty continued to circle around and under her, occasionally sending out whistles and clicks. Looking at her watch, she couldn’t believe that it had been thirty minutes. She needed to head back. Reluctantly, she turned around and made her way toward shallow water. The dolphins accompanied her for a short distance, then, in a burst of energy, exploded from the water in their typical finale, seeming to say goodbye and good day.

The sandy bottom appeared and she placed her flippered feet on it, stood up, and was halfway out of the water. She pulled her mask and mouthpiece off at the same time, then turned to look over her shoulder. Walter’s small fin could be seen in the churning water created by the other members as they found a school of cod fish. She raised her hand partway as if to wave, but realized the absurdity of it. The lowering of her hand brought down the corners of her mouth. She toed off the flippers, shrugged out of the harness holding the tank, and dragged herself from the water. Having just reached the high tide mark in the sand, an adolescent Mexican boy came running up to her.

“Señorita, you should not be out here alone. Please, let me take the tank.” He reached for the straps, relieving her of the weight, while looking around with a suspicious eye.

With her free hand, she pushed her blond hair back from her face. “Gracias, Miguel. Doñde está Maria?”

“Maria is in the kitchen cooking up masa and carne for your special tamale dinner.”

The two of them had a deal. She needed to practice her Spanish so she could work with researchers at the university in Mexico City after her dissertation at UC San Diego, and accomplish her goal of being awarded her Ph.D. in Marine Biology. Miguel needed to learn English so he could get his citizenship in the U.S. He hoped to join the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service and work with both governments to speed up the process of gaining permission from the Mexican government to leave the country and become an American citizen, all in the hopes of putting coyotes out of business by decreasing the amount of human trafficking across the border.

He was thankful for the job and the pay the Señorita gave him, as it allowed him to continue his studies in secondary school. If he attended and worked hard, he would earn his diploma in a couple of months. He was eighteen, tall and athletic, and didn’t have much time for parties and girls. The Señorita kept him busy with various jobs, such as sitting in the Zodiac when she was doing her research, sending faxes to her university in America, copying recordings she had made of the dolphins, and fixing her 1982 Jeep that seemed to be broke down more than it worked. Miguel didn’t mind. The Señorita was pretty and smart, and he liked it when she laughed, which wasn’t often. She promised to help him obtain his citizenship and get him started at UCSD.

Once inside the shed, Miguel set the tank in the corner, checking the gauge to see when he’d have to go into town and fill it up. She set her mask on the wooden table, which was nothing more than two sawhorses and an old piece of plywood. Her flippers landed next to her mask, and she reached behind her to unzip the rash guard.

“How was your day at school?” she asked in Spanish.

“Muy bien. I mean, very good, thank you,” he corrected. “My instructor congratulated me on earning the top grade on the Calculus mid-term. I couldn’t have done it without your assistance.”

“De nada,” she replied.

She dunked the rash guard in the barrel of fresh water, then used the zipper to hang it from a nail in the wall so it could dry. Her mask and flippers followed. The salt water was hard on the rubber, and she had already gone through two masks and a pair of flippers. She pulled her shorts on over her swimsuit, not caring that they would be soaked, and tossed her shirt over one shoulder.

Miguel headed out into the sunlight, and she followed, sliding the door shut behind her and putting the padlock through the latch. She and Miguel made their way up the beach toward La Casa, its white stucco walls and red-tiled roof a sharp contrast to the blue of the ocean and sky.

They walked through the gate in the chain-link fence, around the pool, and between the potted bougainvilleas to the French doors leading into the game room. She pulled the glass door open, and the air conditioning instantly cooled her skin.

“You will rest and get cleaned up for dinner? I’ll help Maria,” Miguel said.

“Gracias. Hasta luego.”

Walking around the pool table and through the arched doorway that led to the stairs and the second floor, she was on the third step thinking how delicious a scented bath and a nap between cool sheets would be when the phone rang. Sighing, she turned and retraced her steps to the small table at the base of the stairs that held one of several phones that occupied La Casa.

Pulling the receiver to her ear, she said, “Bueno.”

The loud, deep voice on the other end made her realize that her bath and nap were now a thing of the past.

“Courtney, glad you are out of the water by this time of the day. My plane arrived early and I’m on my way there. Maria is making the meal I requested, I presume,” her father asked.

“She is. And it smells wonderful.”

“Good, good. We’ll have some time to discuss the General’s requests before dinner. Remember that Mayor Fernando Rodriguez is allergic to gardenias. Wear that dress that you wore for the reelection party. I’ll be there within the hour.” And with that, Senator William Swanson, a Republican from California, hung up in his daughter’s ear.

“Well, s**t,” Courtney mumbled as she dropped the receiver to its base. She glanced at the grandfather clock just inside the front door.

“s**t!” She flew up the stairs and down the hall as she realized how much there was to do before her father arrived.

By the time she reached her bedroom at the end of the hallway, her shorts were unzipped and around her ankles. She balanced on one leg as she drew the other out of its short pant leg, then switching, kicked the pair of shorts across the room to land somewhere between her bed and the closet. Her bathing suit followed, though less gracefully, as the elastic caught on her pinky toe and would have sent her face first to the floor if she hadn’t caught her balance on the edge of the bed.

She hurried into the bathroom to run the water in the shower, then darted out again to her dresser. Yanking open the top drawer, she dug around in her lingerie for the one thong she owned. If the Senator wanted her to wear that dress, which was more like a second skin, then she couldn’t wear the cotton panties she preferred. Wadded up in the back corner were the thong and the only pair of nylons she had ever bought. Hoping they didn’t have a run in them, she tossed them on the bed, then turned toward her closet. She didn’t have much to dig through there. Courtney primarily wore a swimsuit, a wet suit in the colder months and colder waters, and shorts and T-shirts, so the scrap of red material looked almost lonely in the closet. One pantsuit and a couple of sundresses were all that kept the dress company in that large space. On the floor was her only pair of heels. Her toes were already cramping at the prospect of being jammed into such a confining space for the next several hours.

Ducking back into the bathroom, she took a shower in record time. Not having the chance to dry her long, blonde hair, she rolled and twisted and tucked until a majority of it was in a knot at the back of her head, the shorter pieces coming loose to frame her face in wisps. She poked around under the sink until she found her make-up bag. Since she was either in the water or staring at a computer screen, she never saw the purpose for face paint. Looking over the contents of her bag, she thought she remembered the order of application her friend Alisa swore by: foundation, blush, liner, shadow, mascara. Or was it blush, liner, mascara, shadow? Well, she’d do what she could.

With her make-up applied, she shimmied into the thong, and decided that only a man would engineer putting a scrap of material in a place where most women would try to keep it out of, or so she thought. As she snapped the elastic high on her hips, she hoped her cheeks wouldn’t be rubbed raw, and was already devising ways to not have to walk a lot in order to keep the chaffing to a minimum. Next was the strapless bra, which, to her thinking, defeated the purpose. She was well endowed, and self-conscious, so she always wore something that kept her breasts from moving to their own rhythm. Gathering up one leg of the nylons, she pulled them over one of her long legs, only to discover that they seem to have more runs in them than material holding them together. Well, she’ll have to go barelegged, and hope that the guests wouldn’t be insulted by her lack of formality.

Then there was the red sequined excuse for a dress. The Senator’s assistant had it delivered for the reelection party two years ago. She supposed she should be glad that all her swimming kept her figure from showing her love of the local cuisine, including refried beans and homemade flour tortillas, both made with lard, which was what made them taste so good. She stepped into the dress, pulled and twisted, then pulled some more in order to get it into place. When she looked in the mirror, the dress covered as little as she remembered, just skimming the tops of her thighs and hugging her breasts under her arms, so she readjusted it to keep the plunging neckline and dip in the back from showing her bra. As satisfied as she was going to get with her fancy leotard, she silently apologized to her toes as she stepped into red, three-inch heels, bending over to buckle the straps across the top of her feet. She put on the ruby necklace and matching ruby and diamond earrings the Senator gave to her on her twenty-fifth birthday, and headed toward the stairs.