Chapter 23. Modigliani Eyes

It's no wonder that he drank
himself to death...

Casey and Anna were at the helm but they could see us inside. They’d been watching through the glass before I came out of the cabin. Her eyes were riveted on me like an assassin's while I walked back to the stern to sit and air out what had transpired and thinking of the Bratva. Russian mobs were something I’d heard of but hadn’t paid much attention to. The LSD affects were at that stage where my brain felt fried and my eyes burned from the light reflecting off the seas.

Casey’s voice interrupted the thought, “We’re goin’ to the Bay now, the Boss wants us there.”

“What?” I had begun to wonder what Ryan was doing ashore. I knew he would’ve had something planned but I'd been in the dark up ‘til then. I needed Casey to tell me everything he knew of it. I probed, “I know Ryan wants us in San Rafael but you must know more than me.”

Casey was bubbling with joy to be part of a big plan… that I acknowledged he knew more than me, “He told me you have a good friend, Gabe. He has an old boat I heard he’s been workin’ on. New canvass and paint. Benicia… in the Bay. Other than that I got no fuckin’ idea what Ryan’s up to.”

Anna interrupted, “Speaking of fuckin’ ideas, I want to know what the fuck’s going on with Doc, huh? What’s the plan with him? You want me to deal with his sorry ass? Just say the word.”

“He’s still tripping pretty heavy. I sent him below to chase the bats from his belfry, I suppose. I’m done with him though… got what I wanted. But wait... There might be more.”

Anna said, “I gotta use the head and change clothes.” She went straight through the cabin, and below, towards the berths where Doc was quietly sitting on the bunk.

I followed close behind her and called out, “Wait, Anna. I’m done with him but we… like you and me… I mean, I… we need to pow-wow.”

Casey’s boat had a layout similar to the Sherlock’s except that his was an unmodified working lobster boat with its stern open for hauling in lobster traps. The two boats had the same interior design, with the cabin a step up from the deck to the galley and then dropped three steps to a level accommodating a small shower and head. Forward of that space, and through a hatch, were four bunks… two on each side. The helm was outside in the weather on the starboard side but under the same canopy as the cabin.

The old lobster boat was in dire need of a paint-job and, unlike the Sherlock, there was garbage everywhere. Empty plastic water bottles, beer cans, gallon wine jugs, newspapers, doubled plastic bags stuffed with mildewed laundry, and junk (fishing line and flasher lures etc.), covered every counter and table top. A stack of skin magazines was a conspicuous exception. They were kept, wrapped in Visqueen plastic neatly bundled up in a plastic milk crate under the table I’d cleared a lifetime ago for our breakfast.

It had been noon by the time I was done with Doc but I was anxious to keep him out of reach of Anna. Once paranoia slips into one’s psychedelicized consciousness it is difficult to sort out which fears are justified and which ones are not. I knew a few Lurps (an affectionate name for grunts in Nam adopted from the initials for Long Range Recon Patrol). Some of them liked to go into the bush on acid to enhance their environmental awareness. This worked well for real reasons to be safe, “left of the bang” they say, but it might also account for some of the Geneva Accord violations against innocent villagers. Not saying that’s what happened in My Lai but it is reasonable to consider the possibility.

My paranoia told me that Anna had a motive to take out Doc beyond mere revenge. Anna’s back was to me as she stripped down and stepped into the shower. Her nudity, while my mind was sucked into a cosmic and paranoid chemical reality, evoked fascination… rather than the raptures of libido at the sight of her body. My mind raced from big questions to wondering whether women got the same depth of sensual arousal at the sight of a man’s naked body. They must, I figured, but I suspect it’s different because I never saw, nor heard, of but a few women keeping neat and bundled stacks of old skin mags like ole Casey did. But collections of that sort are not so uncommon among men. It's as though we worship them from afar... through the shiny ceramic/glazed pages of soft-core porn magazines. A million and one such ruminations passed through these transcendent musings as she slipped out of sight into the shower. I went back up to the galley table to sit with Casey… mind slipping from paranoia to awe in the time it takes for a match head to flare upon striking.

Her shout from below snapped me out of that Bardo of reflection, “Hey! There’s no fucking water!”

Casey yelled down, “I turned it off. We used to say in the Navy, conserve water, shower with a buddy.”

“How long’s it been since you put soap on your stink, Case? C’mon down and show me where the valve is.”

Casey hadn’t showered in a month but he jumped at the opportunity. He was stripping down. “Take the helm Crash. I can’t pass this up.”

He hadn’t been in that tiny closet of a shower with her for ten seconds when I heard them giggling. Then silence. The water shut off. I heard the usual expected moans. My friend must have been getting some relief.

He came up through the cabin twenty minutes later without making eye contact.

Anna followed wearing a weather jacket and nothing more. We’d been near naked together several times. My gaze wemnt to her thighs first before I looked up to her eyes. There’s a line from the Bible… hell, I don’t know where to find it. I just heard Thumpers quote it in jail. It says the eyes are the windows to the soul. Anna had been trained by someone on more than that Mac-10. Her eyes suddenly became hard to read. She didn't need to wear sunglasses because she could pull the shades off or on at will and that’s a skill known by specialists in trade craft. Only a few amateurs can do it and are unwelcome at poker tables in places like Vegas once the pit boss spots them. I knew full well when a subject’s eyes became opaque and unbreakable no matter what you do from pleas to torture. 

It was just enough to keep me distracted. I remembered marveling at her behind while hiking up from Lady’s Harbor. The jacket opened lower “Anna, you aren’t playing the school-girl whore now, are you? Isn’t Casey a bit old for you?”

“No, Crash, I’m a woman with a woman’s desires.”

“Yeh, okay, whatever you say.”

“I know you Crash. You could’ve had me but you won’t, will you?”

She wasn’t playing alright. She had become robotic and my task was to remind her that she was human; that I was human, and hardest of all, that Doc was human. I was transfixed on her opaque eyes. The painter, Modigliani studied eyes. Each portrait displayed a fascination with the deception of eyes. It was as though the painter never quite figured them out. He painted what he saw. I saw one of his paintings of a teen with the pupils blurred… there could be a three ring Picasso circus behind them but there was no way to get past that matte glaze. The girl was his mistress. It's no wonder to me that he drank himself to death with absinthe and wine.

Her eyes turned sad… full of regret and then she snapped out of it. Eyes normal again. She changed the subject, "Look Crash, this tub needs swamping out if we're staying on it for any amount of time. Let's not play cat and mouse for a while and get to work."

She sat across from me at the table, hands lying flat on it with her fingers spread as though on display. They were another work of art; long, thin and graceful, those of a Gothic saint that had just blown away a man with a machine pistol a few days ago. Transfixed by them for several minutes, then I spoke, “I don’t care what you do between your legs, Anna, but I care about what you’re up to… that you’re going to hurt Casey."