Chapter 45. Serena of the Marina (pt. 2)

I moved in with Serena and we were up that whole night with nothing but our own sexual vitality to keep us awake. Still sitting up in the forward cabin, as twilight loomed beyond Sterns Wharf, we walked out over to the end of the breakwater to greet the sun breaking over the horizon down the coast. I had hungered for someone to empty my heart out to over the last year. I especially wanted to tell Serena about what had happened in Florida. I had this gnawing urge to confess everything, but I held back, telling her only about my adventures up to Jamaica.

What was I going to say anyway? “Look honey, I’m a rapist and, though I might seem like a nice guy, you’d best not have anything to do with me.” Rape doesn’t make for nice bedroom chats.

I secretly wished I had a priest or padre with whom to make a formal confession. I thought of this Chuck Pope character and wondered how to approach him on the matter. Something in my heart told me that it was important to tell someone of my past… a psychologist perhaps? For reasons obscure to me, I felt better about talking to a shepherd of winos at the Rescue Mission than trying to explain myself to a clinical practitioner. Finally, one evening at the Rescue Mission after the “Sing for your Supper Service” I approached Chuck Pope, “Do you have a minute?”

“I’m on my way to another service but…”

“Yeh, it won’t take long… I just need to get something off my chest and perhaps some advice.”

“Sure, come on into the Prayer Closet.” The prayer closet was exactly that. It was a small room big enough for two chairs with a picture of a praying Jesus, like the stained glass behind the dais, the only decoration on the wall.

Once inside I fidgeted but jumped right into the topic. “I have some… oh, whatchacallems, sins to confess.”

Chuck surprised me with the answer he gave before I even had a chance to say anything, “We don’t need another human being between us and God, son. You can confess directly to Him.”

“Oh? I wasn’t sure of the protocol…”

“I can help you to get it out, but I am not a priest. Are you Catholic?”

“Well, I was raised that way.” Then I thought I might probe a little before getting into the meat of the matter. “If what I tell you is… oh, man, if it is bad enough, do we have a deal for… you know, confidentiality?”

“Like I said, we aren’t priests, and this is between you and God. But if I believe you need to make it right or others might be hurt because of it, I might be compelled to advise you to take care of it.” Chuck realized he was losing me on this count and interjected, “However, I’ve rarely heard anything severe enough to break confidentiality in all the years I’ve been doing this.”

I figured I’d better buy time and change the subject. I was going to have to think this over. “Hmmm, well, I am sleeping with a girl and I know…”

“I’m sure that this isn’t what’s bothering you, Max.”

 “Of course, I know enough of the Bible,” I went over Chuck’s probe going straight for the diversion. “It say it’s better to marry than to burn, right?”

“You are right. But Max, please don’t jump into things right away. God will make it right when the time is right for you. When you are ready to tell me what is on your mind I’ll be here. Just don’t put it off too long for your own sake.”

I left the Prayer Closet feeling worse than when I went in. I went back to the harbor wondering what to do. I should’ve just let it drop. She was there on the aft-deck talking to a man on the dock when I got back.

“Injun, this is Max.” I reached out to shake hands. Injun just stood there expressionless. He didn’t lift a hand to meet mine.

“Injun has helped me out a lot in the harbor. He has an Ab-boat.”

Injun turned away, walked up the ramp and out the gate to the marina. He was barrel-chested with a heavily pockmarked face and I could easily see that this was no one to mess with.

“Ab-boat? He doesn’t talk much, eh?”

“Abalone boat. No, he’s jealous. He has been trying to get in my pants since I first got here.”

“He looks dangerous.”

“Yeah, he is… did time for murder… he’s only been out a few years.”

“I’ll take note of that.”

   We took a walk to Ledbetter Beach. It was another beautiful February day. The quality of light was so clear it was as though I were seeing the Channel Islands through a giant magnifying lens. The Santa Ynez Mountains were majestically poised as a backdrop to the city with pure white, puffy thunderheads forming above them. The city itself seemed to sparkle like a jewel with orange tiled rooftops over bleached white cubicles of houses. I looked at Serena and was overcome with a bliss that only a new love can know.

“Look,” she bent over and picked up a piece of clear hose out of the sand that had been cut off the size of a ring… “It’s an engagement ring.”

I held my hand out to let her slip it on my pinky finger, “Yes, I will marry Thee.”

Serena lifted my hand above her, “Before the Eyes of God, I pronounce you man and wife!”

I then took the piece of plastic and put it on her ring finger. It fit perfectly, “There now, it’s final. Now let us consummate before God and man a sacred vow.”

Under the cliffs on the rocks below Shoreline Park were a few semi-private places where we were able to do exactly that… consummate, that is. We went back to the harbor to the Sea Breeze and consummated some more. Though we had been joking, I took our jests seriously. I had been so very lonely and now… well, now I had somebody to hold.

That afternoon I decided to make my Act of Confession with Chuck Pope, even though he wasn’t a priest, and I walked back to the Mission. Bob-O was there, sitting at the curb at the front door,  and talking with one of the Mission Stiffs, Frank. Frank was on his day off and had a few bucks in his pockets and Bob-O had been talking him into buying a jug. I had an overwhelming desire to have a drink and felt that I had gone without one for long enough to have another. Frank had become convinced it was a good idea too. We went up a few blocks up State Street and got a jug of Red Mountain and went back down to the boat. What the hell, I figured I wasn’t as bad a wino as Frank and he was okay with it. Besides, I reasoned, this Jesus business and Serena had cured me of alcoholism. Serena was there but wasn’t all that happy to see us with a jug. But she was ready to have a sip or two also. Drinking didn’t agree with her epilepsy, so she would only have one or two cups of wine. Bob-O assured her that it was okay… as if he knew… and the four of us sat at the galley table sipping wine from cups.

It was a happy little holy communion, at first, with laughter and talk about the Bible and this spiritual moment we were enjoying: of how it must have been for Jesus and his disciples in the old days of dusty Palestine. We exclaimed ourselves as modern-day disciples of Jesus, lifting our cups as a sacramental gesture.

“Take this cup and drink, for it is my blood.”

Serena lifted a loaf of baguette bread above us and tore off some pieces, “This is my body, eat me.”

Frank exploded at this perceived sacrilege, “This ain’t right! Leave Jesus out of this. I get all the Jesus I can stomach at the Mish. When I get a day off I don’t want to talk about the Bible or…”

Then, after saying this much Frank gulped down the rest of his wine and passed out. He fell right over onto the floor and started to snore. I had thought of myself as having a pretty heavy drinking problem; however, I had never really witnessed someone with advanced alcoholism. I was later to learn that there are stages of alcoholism. Towards the end, the liver and kidneys can’t process the juice and it goes straight into the bloodstream. Frank turned out to be one of those people who, after only a few drinks, blacked-out, and/or, went berserk. He lay there snoring on the floor.

Serena decided she wanted to go to Sambo’s for coffee but asked, “What do we do with Frank?”

Bob-O looked down at Frank and nudged him with his foot, “We could leave him… he’ll be okay.”

Serena’s eyes pled to my better judgment as she spoke, “I’m afraid he’ll wonder where we are and try to look for us… he might fall into the harbor or something. We can’t leave him on the floor.”

Bob-O and I carried Frank into the forward berths where we could lock the door to the cabin. We left Frank thinking he would sleep until we got back. We walked to Sambo’s where we drank ten-cent bottomless cups of coffee and jabbered back and forth about all the great things we were discovering in the pages of the Bible.

I was starting to become perturbed and felt some jealousy that Serena was paying more attention to Bob-O than me. It was as though Bob-O and I were competing for her. I made a mental note of it and decided to tell Bob-O to back-off whenever I got a chance to do so. What’s going on? My road-dog pal is seriously hitting on my girl!

We eventually had our fill of coffee and went back to the boat. What we found there was a horror. The door to the cabin from the forward berths was hanging on its hinges in splinters. The cabin had been trashed. The bow hatch from the forward berth bore signs that a serious attempt to kick it open but it was dogged down. The two-way marine radio had been torn off its mount on the bulkhead and was on the aft deck. Frank was nowhere around.

“Oh, shit… Oh, shit! Shit! Shit!” Serena wept. “Where’s Frank?” She peered over the side as though she’d been thinking, she’d find him floating there.

Bob-O took a swig straight from the jug, “Don’t worry, it is all God’s will.”

“Shut the fuck up Bob-O!" I heard myself saying,"You won't get in Serena's pants that way!”

“No, Max, you shut the fuck up!” Bob-O countered, “Either God is everything or God is nothing!”

“Don’t try that spiritual one-upmanship with me!”

Serena turned on me, “This is all your doings, Max. You brought the wine on board and you brought that wino! What were you thinking?””

“Shit, why are you turning on me? You had as much to do with it as I did?”

Bob-O hadn’t let go, saying, “God is everything or God is nothing…”

She spun around and yanked the jug from Bob-O. “And you, Bob-O, Frank was your friend. You said it would be okay!”

I was relieved that she was finally laying into Bob-O too. My heart sank when she chucked the wine jug into the harbor. It was almost empty and floated. I thought about diving in for it but thought better of it when I saw the fire in Serena’s eyes.

Bob-O left, repeating, “God is everything or God is nothing!”

I sat down at the galley table. Serena slid in on the bench next to me and purred, “I’m sorry… is this our first marital spat… eh?”

We went to bed, sleeping until sunrise. There was nothing else to do that night.