When I started working at Greene, Lapidus took me on his private plane to Saint Bartholomew and we went sailing on one of the yachts of a bank client. They had wine tastings, Thai massage and two butlers. Compared to this it was crap.
Thanks to a fog light mounted on the bow of the boat we can see through the darkness, but with the moon hidden behind the clouds, it's like driving through an abandoned field. In the distance, the ocean recedes and everything turns black. The only things that can be seen with any degree of clarity are the parallel breakwaters that run to the right and left, a natural handrail that leads us out into the open sea.
"Ready to ride the magic bus?" Gillian yells at me as we enter the ocean. I hope the speed increases. Instead, slow down. At the end of the jetty turn left again, go around the rocks, and turn off the engine.
-What are you doing?
"You'll see," she teases, heading forward.
We are a good two hundred yards offshore, but I can still hear the waves lapping faintly on the sand.
"Can people see us?" she asked, glancing toward a barely visible lifeguard station.
"Not anymore," Gillian says as she turns off the fog light. The sudden darkness engulfs us completely.
Searching for a reassuring reference point, my eyes drift to the neon pink, pale blue, and lime green signs that mark the rooftops of the Art Deco hotels that line Ocean's Drive. From this distance they look like landing lights.
Everything else has disappeared. "Are you sure this is prudent?
At that moment, the sound of something falling into the water is heard and the bow of the boat shakes slightly. There goes the anchor.
"Gillian..."
Moving quickly to the stern now, Gillian removes the Miami Dolphins cushions from the wooden bench, lifting the top of the bench, revealing the storage compartment below. She pulls out two wetsuits, masks, fins...
"Give me a hand with this," he says, struggling with something pretty heavy. I reach over and help her pull a cold metal tube out of the compartment.
Then another. Oxigen bottles. "Are you trying to tell me something?" I ask her, making a great effort to give the impression that I am not intimidated by the situation.
He pulls out a flashlight and shines it on my face.
"I thought you were up for a little adventure..."
"And I am," I say, blocking the beam of light with my hand. That is why we have come to this boat.
"No, we have come to the boat to dive. The adventure starts here. Her face flushed with adrenaline, Gillian places the flashlight in a holder on the bench and focuses on the pile of equipment at our feet. She reads the pressure gauges, adjusts the valves, undoes a knot in the breathing tubes…. She's just waiting to see him," she says excitedly.
"Gillian..."
"This will overwhelm your senses, sight, touch, hearing: boom, like a giant speaker.
"Maybe we should..."
"And the best part is that only those of us who live here know about this place." Now you can forget about all those gawking tourists in South Beach... This is for the natives only. Here, put this on. He throws me a diving suit that hits me in the chest.
Even if you lose precious points to her, this is not the best time to keep your mouth shut.
"Gillian, I've never been scuba diving.
-Do not worry everything will be OK. But it's not a movie...
Gillian unzips her jeans and lets them slide to her ankles. As she frees her feet, she removes her shirt and tosses it aside.
"Relax," she says, standing in front of me, clad only in a sheer bra and white cotton panties. I will show you.
Just above the thin elastic of her panties she wears a tiny tattoo of a purple butterfly. I can't take my eyes off him.
"Be careful, you could go blind," she teases, wriggling into the wetsuit.
"Have I ever told you how much I love scuba diving?" I ask with my gaze still fixed on the little butterfly.
With a smile, Gillian points me to the pants. I quickly take them off and put on my diving suit, which turns out to be much tighter than I imagined. Especially in the crotch.
"Don't worry," Gillian says, seeing the look on my face. He will loosen up when he gets wet.
"The suit or me?"
I hope both.
I stretch out both arms and practically rush towards her. At the back of the boat, Gillian props up the oxygen cylinders and opens them by turning a valve.
"This is your regulator," she says, pointing to the top of the bottle, where she attaches a little black contraption that has four flexible tubes that snake in all directions. And this is the regulator," she adds, handing me the short tube on the right.
Following her instructions, I take the tube to my mouth and take a deep breath. There's a slow Darth Vader hiss as a rush of cold air passes through my throat and fills my lungs.
"That's… keep it up," Gillian says as I exhale and repeat the operation. Smooth and slow... feels like you've been doing it your whole life.
It's easy to pay a compliment, but when my breath whistles through the flexible tube, testosterone begins to wane.
"What are all these other tubes for?" I ask, unable to hide my nervousness.
"Don't be fooled by such minutiae," Gillian says as she zips up my suit and pats me lightly on the chest. When you're underwater, there's only one rule, life or death: keep breathing.
—But what about the regulator and these tubes...
"All the equipment works automatically. As long as you continue to breathe, keep the air flowing and regulate the pressure. Then it's like driving a car: you don't need to know how the engine works and how combustion occurs and all that stuff, you just need to know how to drive.
But I've never driven before...
Gillian ignores my comment and motions for me to put my hands up in the air, then puts a thick yellow belt around my waist and secures it with what looks like a plastic version of an airplane seatbelt.
-How much do you weigh? she asks, stuffing lead weights into the Velcro pockets on her belt.
"Seventy-five kilos, approximately." Why?
"Perfect," she says, closing the last pocket tightly. That will take you to the bottom like a mob snitch.
Refusing to slow down, Gillian falls in behind me. I turn to follow her, but the extra weight on my waist and the rocking of the boat throw me slightly off balance.
"Shouldn't I have learned earlier to do this?" -I ask.
"You love rules, don't you?" Hers," she replies, putting on her lead belt. The only thing they teach you in those classes is how not to panic. Then she lifts my arms to put on a red inflatable life jacket. The oxygen bottle and its tentacle tubes are strapped to the life jacket. As I bend over, she lifts the vest over my shoulders, and I'm about to fall backwards from the excess weight.
But Gillian is there to hold me.
"You can believe me," she promises, making sure the vest is securely in place. She wouldn't take you down there if it wasn't safe.
"What about embolisms?" I don't want to end up in one of those sci-fi decompression chambers.
"We'll only go down to ten meters deep." Embolisms do not represent any risk until you have reached at least thirty meters.
"And we'll only go down to ten meters?"
"Only ten," Gillian repeats. Fifteen maximum. Kneeling down she throws her vest and the bottle over her shoulders. Little more than the length of this boat. When she's finished adjusting the vest, she takes one of my four tubes and presses a button on one end. There is a high-pitched hiss. The vest fills with air and tightens around my ribs. If all else fails, you still have the life jacket," she says, making it sound like I'm afraid I'll drown in a wading pool.