The Lovers by Vendela Vida Page B

“President should not let his wife wear a scarf. I learn long time ago to watch the Captain. Many year ago, I stay at home raising my children, and the Captain worked for Club Med. But I make him stop. I go one time on the boat and see many women, from Greece, from Danish, they all take off their shirts and sunbathe and eat without shirts and I tell the Captain, enough. I am going with you to keep eyes on you.”
    Yvonne said nothing. She knew this was how women spoke among each other, but she was out of practice. Since Peter’s death, her friends had avoided any mention of their own marriages. At group lunches with five or six fellow teachers, all women, the word husband was not spoken. They conjured, by omission, an imaginary world without men.
    “It is important for marriage, you know, to do this.”
    Yvonne nodded halfheartedly. Lately she had come to second-guess what she once thought important for a marriage.
    Someone on a neighboring boat blasted an ABBA song for a moment, then turned it down. Yvonne and Deniz both stared in the direction of the music, as though daring it to assert itself again.
    “This is a beautiful boat,” Yvonne said.
    “It’s called a gulet . Is special to Turkey. More deck space for eating and sunbath.”
    “Does it have a name?”
    “ Deniz II ,” Deniz said. “It is named after me.”
    “So there was another Deniz before?”
    “Yes, come, I show you.” She stood and said something to Captain Galip, who had reappeared, and they all descended the steep stairs to the narrow passage in the galley, where framed black-and-white photos of the original Deniz , a smaller vessel, were on crowded display. Deniz and Galip pointed to pictures and announced proper names of people and companies, and it soon became apparent to Yvonne that they expected her to recognize their previous passengers. None of the names was familiar to Yvonne, but she nodded nonetheless to show approval of the caliber of Deniz I ’s guests.
    “I should go,” Yvonne said to Deniz when they returned to the deck. She had already had two glasses of iced tea, and speaking English was becoming a burden to them both.
    “If you please, come back and visit us,” Deniz said as she walked Yvonne to the ladder.
    “How long are you here?” Yvonne asked.
    “Two days,” Deniz said. “We do chartered boat trips each day, yes? Tomorrow we take German group to Rhodos, next day we go to Cleopatra’s Island. Very pretty sand there. That day we have two Americans coming. Only two. Please, you are welcome.”
    “Okay,” Yvonne said, “that would be nice. I’ll join you the day after tomorrow—Friday—for Cleopatra’s Island.”
    “We leave Knidos at ten, yes?”
    “Okay.” Yvonne was suddenly excited. She felt Deniz had something to teach her about being an older woman. Also,Yvonne had once been the kind of person who sought adventures, and she wanted to be that person again.
    “Good,” Deniz said. “I am very happy now.”
    “Me too,” Yvonne said.
    As Yvonne descended the ladder, the rungs sharp on her feet, she saw the laundry Deniz had been draping by the boat’s railing when they had first started talking. Among the socks and shirts and towels hung a pair of Captain Galip’s boxer shorts, which had once been white but were now the dull, grainy color of a cheap paperback. There was nothing sadder, Yvonne thought, than seeing an old man’s underwear.
    She dove off the bottom rung, and felt the stretch in her calves. The water was colder this time in, this far out. After swimming for a minute, she adjusted, and then took her time getting to shore.
    Throughout much of her life Yvonne had made friends easily, and she attributed this to the fact that given any range of possibilities, she fell just to the right of middle: In terms of appearance, her features were neither beautiful nor harsh. Her dimples—she still had her dimples—tilted her to the attractive side of plain. She contributed to conversations