Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings

dived every sea, been attacked by sharks, survived malaria and Malaysian pirates, ridden in a titanium ball with a window five miles down into the Tonga Trench, and still he blushed.
    Clair, Clay's girlfriend of four years, a forty-year-old Japanese-Hawaiian schoolteacher who moved like she was doing the hula to a Sousa march (strange mix of regal order and island breeze), backhanded a hang-loose shaka at the cronettes and said, grinning, "She just along to pour buckets on his reels girls, keep him from burning up."
    "Oh, you guys are so friggin' nautical," said Amy, who was wrestling with a huge Pelican case that held the rebreather. The case slipped out of her grip and barked her shin before she caught it. "Ouch. Damn it. Oh yeah, everyone loves your salty friggin' charm."
    A chorus of cackles from the charter booths wheezed into coughing fits. Back to the cats, the cauldrons, the coconut oil, the sacred Jimmy Buffett songs sung at midnight into the ear of drunken, white-bearded Hemingway wannabes to make that rum-soaked member rise from the dead just this one last time. The leathery bar girls turned back to their business as Kona passed by.
    "Irie, Sistah Amy. Give up ye burden," said Kona, bounding down the dock to sweep the heavy rebreather out of Amy's grip and up onto his shoulder.
    Amy rubbed her arm. "Thanks. Where's Nate?"
    "He go to the fuel dock to get coffee for the whole tribe. A lion, him."
    "Yeah, he's a good guy. You'll be going out with him today. I have to go along with Clay and Clair as a safety diver."
    "Slippers off in the boat," Clay said to Clair for the hundredth time. She rolled her eyes and kicked off her flip-flops before stepping down into the Always Confused. She offered Clay a hand, and he steadied her as if escorting a lady from the king's court to the ballroom floor.
    Kona handed the rebreather down to Clay. "I can safety-dive."
    "You'll never be able to clear your ears. You can't pinch your nostrils shut with those nose rings in."
    "They come out. Look, out they come." He tossed the rings to Amy and she deftly sidestepped, letting them plop into the water.
    "Oops."
    "Amy's a certified diver, kid. Sorry. You're with Nate today."
    "He know that?"
    "Yeah, does he know that?" asked Clair.
    "He will soon. Get those lines, would you, Amy."
    "I can drive the boat." Kona was on the edge of pleading.
    "No one but me drives the boat," said Clay.
    "I'm driving the boat," corrected Clair.
    "You have to sleep with Clay to drive the boat," said Amy.
    "You just do what Nate tells you," Clay said. "You'll be fine."
    "If I sleep with Amy can I drive the boat?"
    "Nobody drives the boat," Clay said.
    "I drive the boat," Clair said.
    "Nobody sleeps with Amy," Amy said.
    "I sleep with Amy," Clair said.
    And everyone stopped and looked at Clair.
    "Who wants cream?" asked Nate, arriving at that moment with a paper tray of coffee cups. "You can do your own sugar."
    "That's what I'm saying," said Clair. "Sisters are doing it for themselves."
    And Nate hung there in space, holding a cup and a sugar packet, a wooden stir stick, a baffled expression.
    Clair grinned. "Kidding. Jeez, you guys."
    Everyone breathed. Coffee was distributed, gear was loaded, Clay drove the Always Confused out of the harbor, pausing to wave to the Count and his crew, who were loading gear into a thirty-foot rigid-hull Zodiac normally used for parasailing. The Count pulled down the brim of his hat and stood in the bow of the Zodiac, his sun umbrella at port arms, looking like a skeletal statue of Washington crossing the Lethe. The crew waved, Gilbert Box scowled.
    "I like him," Clay said. "He's predictable."
    But Amy and Clair missed the comment. They were applying sunscreen and indulging in girl talk in the bow.
    "You can talk like such a floozy sometimes," said Amy. "I wish I could be floozish."
    Clair poked her in the leg with a long, red-lacquered fingernail. "Don't sell yourself short, pumpkin."
    * * *
    The ersatz Hawaiian stood on the bow rail like he was hanging ten off the twenty-two-foot Mako, waving to the Zodiac crew as they passed. "Irie, science dreadies! We be research jammin' now!" But when the Count ignored his greeting, Kona gave the traditional island response: "What, I owe you money?"
    "Settle, Kona," Nate said. "And get down off of there."
    Kona made his way back to the console. "Old white jacket givin' you the stink-eye. Why, he think you an agent of Babylon?"
    "He does bad science. People come to me to ask me