The Daring Sail

Rain came at us sideways, the way it does on Lake Geneva when the mountains decide they're bored. I'd been a sailing instructor at Thornbury for two years by then, and I could count on one hand the times I'd hauled a dinghy off the water with weather like that coming down the lake.

"Knot it tight, then get off the dock!" I shouted, over the wind. "Line around the cleat, two turns, not one!"

Miguel was doing it, sort of. He's thirty-one, a Filipino American from New Jersey who works at the animal hospital up the road, and had signed up for beginner lessons because his coworkers dared him to. He'd told me this on day one, grinning, like it was a confession. He treated every instruction I gave him like a suggestion from a nervous aunt.

"Two turns, yeah, I got it!" he called back, hair plastered to his forehead. "You always this bossy on land, or just when the sky's falling?"

"Just when the sky's falling. Move."

He got the line secured on the second try, which I suppose is one more try than zero. I grabbed the bow handle and we dragged the dinghy up the ramp together, our feet slipping on wet planks, and I will admit the man could pull. He was stronger than he looked, which is more than I could say for most of my students.

"Storage shed," I yelled, pointing. "Go, go."

We ran. Rain hammered the gravel, and by the time I got the big door shoved open and we tumbled inside, we were soaked straight through. The door boomed shut behind us and suddenly it was quiet, that heavy quiet you get in a big room after noise.

The storage area is cavernous. Boats on cradles in rows, ropes coiled on pegs, tool benches along the far wall. And high up, an arched window with a stained glass panel in it. A schooner in stormy seas, all blues and greens and one furious patch of red. On a grey day like this one, it mostly just glowed dully.

Miguel stood dripping in the middle of the floor, arms out, looking around like he'd never seen a boat shed before. Maybe he hadn't.

"Well, that went well," he said. "Very smooth sailing, Kirsty."

"Watch the sarcasm, you nearly lost the cleat."

"I had it. You're cautious. Like, professionally cautious." He wrung out his shirt over the concrete, which did nothing helpful. "Were you like this flying planes? Check, check, check?"

"I was a pilot for thirty-five years, love. Caution kept four hundred people alive every shift." I was a sixty-two-year-old white Scotswoman, widowed two years, and I did not need a Filipino American vet tech from New Jersey telling me how to run a dock. "Speaking of which, we need a tarp for that dinghy before it fills with rain. There's a loft up there with supplies. Climb up and toss one down."

He looked at the loft ladder, then at me. "You're not coming?"

"I'm holding the ladder, aren't I? Unless you're scared of heights."

"Oh, that's how it is." He grabbed the rungs. "You know I only took this class because my coworkers dared me, right? I don't back down from dares."

"So I've heard. About forty times."

He went up. The ladder creaked, and I stood there watching the rain through the door crack, feeling that particular alive-ness I'd been chasing since Michael died. Two years of quiet house, two years of teaching beginners who mostly wanted photos for their Instagram, and here was a squall and a cocky man on a ladder. Not bad for a Tuesday.

"Tarp." A rolled bundle came down, bounced once, landed at my feet.

"Good arm," I called up.

"There's old regatta banners up here too. And a wasp nest, dead, thank God."

"Leave the nest alone."

By the time he climbed down, the storm had settled into steady rain, the kind that says you're staying a while. We stripped off wet gear, hung jackets on the pegs by the door, and I found an old club towel and a space heater that worked on the second attempt.

Miguel had a towel around his neck and was standing under the high window, squinting up. "That glass is kind of amazing. The boat, the waves. Who's the red guy?"

"That's the storm itself, I was told. Local artist did it in the fifties. Some say a club member who drowned."

"Cheerful." He tilted his head. "He's got this pose, though. Arms out, braced into the wind. Very dramatic."

"Very," I said, drying my hair.

"Bet you can't do it."

I laughed. "Bet I can't do what?"

"Stand under the red light and hold his pose. The storm pose. Thirty seconds." He had that grin again, the dare grin. It was, I realized, his whole personality.

"I'm sixty-two, Miguel. My shoulders have opinions about holding poses."

"So you can't."

Oh, he was a sly one. I dropped the towel and stepped under the window, into the patch of dull red light on the concrete. Arms out, weight forward, chin up, braced into an imaginary gale. The red fell across my chest and face, weak and churchy.

"Thirty seconds," he said, watching. "You're wobbling."

"I am not wobbling. I flew the 747 through typhoons. This is nothing."

"Typhoon pilot," he said, like it was a joke, but his eyes stayed on me a beat longer than a joke needs. "You really did that? Thirty-five years?"

"Every day, love. Now count."

He counted. Somewhere around twenty the light shifted, the storm outside breaking for a moment, and the red panel actually lit up properly, glowing right down onto me. He went quiet.

"There," I said, dropping my arms. "Told you. Your turn."

"Mine?"

"You think dares only go one way? Stand under it. Same pose. Thirty seconds, and I'll judge."

He stepped into the light patch, rolled his shoulders, and spread his arms. And I'll say this for the man, he committed. Chin up, braced, muscles in his forearms tight, and the red light came down over his brown skin and made him look like something off a cathedral wall. The rain drummed on the roof. I counted him down slow, watching.

"Twelve," I said. "You're shaking."

"That's intensity, not shaking."

"Ten. The drowned member is insulted, he braced better."

"Kirsty, this pose is weirdly hard, my arms are burning."

"Seven. Six. Good. Done."

He dropped his arms and shook them out, laughing. "You counted slow on purpose."

"Of course I counted slow. I'm the instructor."

The heater ticked. The rain kept on. He was standing there in the red light with his shirt still damp, and I was standing just outside it, and neither of us moved for a second, which felt like a longer second than it was.

"So," he said. "Dare game's on now, right? That's a thing we're doing?"

"Depends. Can you handle losing?"

"Can you?" He grinned.

I picked up my towel. We had a while yet, and the afternoon was not done with either of us.

He came back at me within the minute, the way I knew he would.

"Okay. New dare." He pointed at the old sloop on the cradle nearest the heater, a wooden beauty from some decade when boats had curves and opinions. "The brass fittings on that tiller. Touch them. Ten seconds. No flinching."

I looked at the tiller. I looked at him. "That's it? That's your big dare?"

"It's an unheated shed in October, Kirsty. That brass has been cold since before I was born."

He had a point, which was annoying. I walked over to the sloop, wiped my palm on my trousers like a fencer saluting, and wrapped my hand around the tiller's brass fitting.

Sweet heaven. It was like gripping a rail in Reykjavik. My whole arm wanted to yell.

"One," I said through my teeth.

"Flinching?"

"I am not flinching, I am narrating. Two. Three." The rain drummed on. Somewhere in the rafters the building ticked and settled. "Four. Five." My fingers had gone from pain to that deep burn cold gets when it stops negotiating. "Six. Seven." Miguel had come closer, arms crossed, watching my face like it was the telly. "Eight. Nine. Ten." I let go and shook my hand out. "There. Chop chop, as we say in the cockpit."

"That was genuinely impressive. You didn't even blink."

"I flew with a captain who drank his coffee black at minus sixty degrees Celsius at altitude. I contain multitudes." My hand was still stinging, and I was grinning like an idiot, which was the real dare, I supposed. When had I last grinned like that? "Give me your hand."

"Why?"

"Because you're next, obviously. Same dare. Both hands, both fittings, ten seconds. Fair is fair."

He hesitated a half second, which I enjoyed enormously, then put both palms on the brass. His face did something wonderful, a sort of full-body apology to himself.

"One," he managed.

"Counting's my job," I said, and put my hand over his on the tiller to feel how cold it really was, which was a mistake, because his hand was warm under mine and suddenly the brass was the least interesting temperature in the room.

"Three," I said, having lost track.

"You skipped two."

"I'm the instructor. Four. Five." His fingers shifted under mine. Neither of us moved away. "Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten." I lifted my hand. So did he. We stood there in the colored light with our separate stinging hands and I thought, well. That was a thing that happened and we will not discuss it.

"My turn," I said, maybe too quickly.

I made him do it, of course. There was a spare mast lying across two sawhorses near the wall, a slender aluminum thing, and a coil of heavy line sitting on a shelf at the far end.

"Walk the mast," I told him. "Heel to toe, arms out. And I'll be moving this rope coil from here to there while you do it, because distraction is the whole point of sailing, darling. Wind distracts. Water distracts. You don't get to just stand there being balanced."

"That's a dare with a chore built in."

"That's a Tuesday, love. Go on."

He got up on the mast. He actually had decent balance, I'll grant him that, a slow careful walk, arms out, jaw set. I picked up the rope coil, and it was heavier than it looked, thirty meters of wet-weather line, and I hoisted it to my chest and started walking the long way around the sawhorses, slow, making him track me.

"You're heavy," he called, wobbling.

"She's line, not a person, and she's glorious. Eyes forward."

"I have to watch you, that's the whole dare."

"Then watch and balance. That's the lesson."

He got most of the way. Then I set the coil down on the shelf with a bang, on purpose, and he pitched sideways off the end of the mast with a yelp, and I dropped the whole instructor act and caught his arm with both hands before he ate concrete.

For a second he just hung there, half fallen, held up by a sixty-two-year-old woman in a club sweater.

"I had you," he said.

"You absolutely did not have you. You were a sack of flour with opinions."

"I was fine until you slammed that rope down like a villain."

"It was a distraction. This is a sailing class. The lake does not announce its waves, Miguel," I was laughing now, properly, the kind that comes up from somewhere you thought was boarded over. He started laughing too, still gripping my arm, me gripping his, both of us bent slightly toward each other under the high window with the schooner throwing blue and red down the wall.

"Okay," he said, catching his breath. "Okay. You caught me. Noted and resented."

"You're welcome. Next time I'll let you concuss yourself on a J/24 and explain it to the club committee."

He straightened up but he didn't let go of my arm, and I didn't let go of his. The heater ticked. The rain had softened to something almost polite.

"Your turn for a dare," he said.

"Is it."

"Is it ever not your turn? Fine. Mine. Real one this time." He tipped his chin at his own shoulder, where the collar of his damp shirt had slipped a little. "There's rain on my collarbone. It came in through the door crack earlier. You've got better reach than me, apparently, since you're always rescuing people. Lick it off."

I looked at him. He looked at me, entirely steady, no grin now, which somehow made it worse. Better. Worse.

"Miguel. That's a bit forward for a Tuesday."

"You dared me to hold a dead sailor's pose under church glass. We're well past polite. You can say no, obviously."

Obviously. Well. That was decent of him, wasn't it, leaving the door open. And there was the stained glass, and the