82 Desire

the sun for the last twenty years. He was so thrilled with the result he completed the look by getting one ear pierced, which to him wasn’t a gay look, it meant he’d sailed around the Horn. He hadn’t yet, but he meant to soon.
    Next, what to do about clothes? He wore khaki, but the new guy wore white, he thought.
    Dean Woolverton. The name signified nothing, he’d picked it out of the phone book before he left—Dean from one page, Woolverton from another. It had a good ring—sort of Italian and sort of something else. Hard to place; he liked that.
    The Pearson was a little too modest for the new persona—in fact, a sailboat probably wasn’t right at all. Given a choice, Dean would probably prefer a powerboat. But it was what Russell could get for the amount of cash he had (and he had to pay cash), plus it suited him to a T. It was a nice, comfortable live-aboard sailboat. What more could he want? (If he were Russell, that is—if Dean had to have a sailboat, he would probably want a Hatteras.)
    Dean had started to take shape only after Russell got the boat. He’d seen other guys around, looking way too blond for their age and way too tan for their health, and he’d suddenly realized he had to change everything. So he went right into the head and started cutting his hair. By evening he was a different person. People looked at him differently. Or, rather, different people looked at him. Flashier women.
    He hadn’t the slightest attraction to flashy women.
    He realized it would probably be difficult for men to take him seriously as well. He looked like a flake, and having no history certainly qualified him for one. Okay, then, he was going to have to be a former lawyer—someone who’d had a tragedy and taken to the sea. A tragedy that hurt him so severely he couldn’t bear to talk about it—not a dirty little secret he was deeply ashamed of.
    The second night after he left New Orleans, he was sitting in the cockpit sipping Scotch and water, most of his dreams having materialized, when he felt a nasty black hole in the bottom of his stomach.
    It was where his life used to be. Having no one to talk to and a loathing for television, he actually wrote down a few things that were troubling him:
    What will I do now? Who can I be, really? Should I have stayed?
    It was a bold—possibly very bad—thing he’d done. He could still scarcely believe it. And yet, at the moment, the fear was greater than the exhilaration.
    It’s the damn hair, he thought. I’ll go back to looking normal as soon as everything blows over.
    It was so odd how he came to be here. He could have said it was because of his dad, who had provided both a worthy antagonist and the money. Or because of Bebe—of who she’d become and what their marriage was.
    But really it was because of the five days he’d spent upside down in the hull of his offshore racing sailboat. The way he got in that predicament shocked him (as did much about his former life). He was a different person now, and not only because he was Dean Woolverton. Just two years ago, he’d been the kind of sailor— Oh, say it, Dean, he thought, the kind of adolescent —who liked to race offshore, risking seventy-knot winds, which indeed he’d caught.
    The boat’s keel broke off at the hull. He watched it all happen, certain that death was coming in the next few minutes. When the boat started to capsize, the boom got loose and smashed a doghouse window. Water flooded the stern, but miraculously, that much weight in the stern caused the tip of the bow to flip up out of the water. In turn, the air trapped in the bow kept the boat afloat, upside down.
    Russell was able to grab some crackers and candy bars; that was all except champagne and water. With the storm still raging, he tied himself with a fishing net to a shelf in the bow. And there he lay for five days in darkness. The dark may have been what made the difference. Because he could see nothing, he had a sense, after the storm was over, of floating not only through water, but also through space. He was nothing and he was nowhere, going nowhere—probably dying.
    At first, hearing was the most important thing in his life. Every nuance of sound could mean sudden death—or maybe rescue. But after a while the boat became a habitat like a strange house, each noise at first frightening, but soon familiar, and finally, unnoticed.
    There was nothing left then but thought. He thought for a long time only of his situation. Of