RETURN PASSAGE

  A SAILING ROMANCE STORY

  M. L. BUCHMAN

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  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  A musician seeks inspiration on the open sea

  and finds it in the most unexpected way.

  Myles and Rose are twins. Despite the success of their musical duet, they can’t manage to break out. Myles knows they’re missing something if only he could pin it down.

  Vonda’s attempts to restart her life keep sinking beneath the waves. She needs to chart a new course.

  A chance meeting on Maui and a leisurely five-week sailboat ride to Victoria, Canada changes the future for all three of them.

  1

  The hull creaked as the submarine Atlantis slipped beneath the waves. They sat in sideways-facing seats made of plastic darker blue than the ocean depths. In front of each seat were big round portholes to observe the Hawaiian reefs in all of their glorious color. Sunbeams struck down through crystal blue waters as if they’d entered a particularly soothing space warp.

  Forty tourists sat in two out-facing rows down the length of the single cabin. The two pilots and the guide were perched up at the bow.

  “Wild!” Rose whispered from behind him. They’d chosen back-to-back seats in the twenty-meter-long submarine so that, between them, they wouldn’t miss anything.

  But Myles Lauer was too busy listening to the music of it to notice much else. The sub made a hell of song descending to cruise the reefs off western Maui.

  Ping. Ping, Creak. The hull set an atmosphere of tension as the water pressure compressed the hull. Not loud enough to be unnerving, but it let him know they were entering another world. How to translate that into a song?

  Welcome to somewhere you’ve never been before.

  He’d often couldn’t pin down the answers, but he liked to keep feeding his subconscious ideas to play with.

  The tour guide spoke with that lazy lilt of Hawaii that always made life sound so much fun. Little dabs of pidgin only added to the rhythm and the feeling.

  “Check it out, you folks on the starboard. See dat eel under the blue coral fan giving us the stink eye? He be a real moke, you go divin’, you don’t want to screw with him. On the port, remember that’s the left side, see the blacktip reef shark? He’s brown with black tips on his fins. He’s truly a sweetheart. Five feet, this is a big one. Lives on little fishes and maybe crabs. He no mess with you if you no mess with him.”

  The sunlight shifted, fading only a little as the forty-five-minute tour took them deeper. But that was Rose’s thing. She saw colors in ways he couldn’t imagine. She’s the one who brought the harmonies to their music.

  New melodies always surrounded Myles at every turn, like how the schools of fish swirled by the porthole glass. A small cluster of black-and-white-striped Moorish Idols with splashes of sunshine yellow that looked like someone had spilled the final color over parts their white by accident. A refrain so predictable that everyone’s ready to sing along, hit with a splash of Rose’s harmony? Maybe a twist in the final line of each repeat. Yeah, like that.

  A school of purple triggerfish swirled by like a high riff, scattering from the plodding bass of a solo green sea turtle, lazing over the reef. The coral offered up accent notes in orange, white, blue, gold. Sprays of fantastical fans rose above the stable touchstone backbeat of the globular brain coral.

  He barely noticed the supposed highlight of the dive. The sub company had sunk an aged steel replica of an even older wooden schooner that had been a whaling museum for years. The original had actually spent its working life as a trade ship until it was cast in the whaling role for Michener’s Hawaii. Now its replica was an artificial reef with fifteen years of growth on it. Bottom line, it wasn’t as old as it looked. Fish and coral grew on it. No rousing through-line of story or rollicking chorus, at least not one that he could find.

  As the sub circled at its lazy walking pace to reveal the ship to the passengers on the other side, he stared out across the sandy plain. Maybe Rose would see something in the wreck that he didn’t. In the midst of the busy emptiness there was a sudden disturbance. A ray flapped up out of the sand, creating a cloud of fine grit in the water, then breaking free of the cloud like a sailboat emerging from a squall line.

  Revealed, it had three-meter-wide wings of black covered in white polka dots. The beat of its wings were as slow and lazy as the turtle’s. Too slow. Myles wanted up-tempo. He wanted energy. Yet that rippling wingbeat rang clear as a pulse in his head.

  Their duo made their money in playing bar gigs. Packing the dance floors all over Seattle from the Tractor Tavern to the J&M had made them popular, but they couldn’t find the next level. They should be playing Q Nightclub or Supernova Seattle. At Bumbershoot they never got near the main stages unless they were down front with the other dancers. And national tours? They’d only done one of the Western Washington county fairs.

  “That pod of pilot whales was so cool,” Rose spoke as they filed out of the sub, climbing to the deck, and crossing over to the waiting speedboat to return them to the harbor.

  “What whales?” He actually didn’t remember anything much since watching that ray rise up out of the sand. There must be something there, but the beat was odd.

  “That pod that circled the sub three times wondering if the sub was a new kind of whale.”

  Myles looked down at the water off the side as Rose laughed at him. Nothing to see despite the clear water. He shrugged at her. His twin sister always knew that he got lost in his head.

  2

  The Dirty Monkey was prime dancing turf in Lahaina.

  They’d pre-arranged to play a three-night series here before they’d flown from Seattle to Maui. This trip was a creative break, but playing a gig also gave them an excuse to write it off on their taxes. In truth, the two-month break was because Myles was going insane going nowhere—career limbo.

  Time for something completely different.

  Two weeks kicking around the Maui paradise and then ferry a sailboat back to Victoria, British Columbia. The annual Vic-Maui Yacht Race had left BC for the two-week hustle down the trade winds to Lahaina Harbor at about the same time he and Rose had stepped on a plane in Seattle. There’d be a hell of a party after the race, and then volunteer return crews would board the boats to sail them back, while the owners and race crews hopped their flights home.

  For the return crews it was a long slow ride north to catch the Japanese Current and slide across then down to Victoria Harbor. A five-week luxury ride they’d done seven times over the years. The first time had been between junior and senior year of high school for their next-door neighbor. No need to own a boat, just deliver it home in one piece. Sweet!

  They wrote a lot of music on those long rides, yet another argument for the tax man on why it should be a write-off.

  The Dirty Monkey was anything but. It was in the heart of Lahaina and the bar filled the second floor of a Front Street building. Big windows opened onto a balcony overlooking the narrow two-lane with wide sidewalks. It was a walking kind of town, for both tourists and locals. Hopefully that meant it was a dancing kind of town.

  It had none of the funk feel of most of the places they usually played. The fake white marble bar was surrounded by steel stools. The floor had high-top tables that could seat six, or a dozen crowded around if they were standing. Behind the bar was a wide selection of beer taps and bottled liquor. Especially whiskey—they had lots of that.

  Their wood floor showed heavy wear, the kind that came from a serious amount of dancing. Tonight VMR’s music would be pumping out the windows.

  He and Rose had named their band for Very Myles and Rose. Or maybe Very Much Reality! Or… They kept thinking up new acronyms—they couldn’t even settle on their name, never mind what brand would make their careers really take off.

  Myles had loved the energy of performing since he was born, at least that’s how Dad told it. Every time he said it, Mom would rub her belly as if it hurt, Started way before birth, honey! Myles had dragged his much shyer twin sister along for the ride.

  It had all sorts of advantages beyond how their music fit together.

  They received so many compliments from strangers on what a good-looking couple they were, that they’d stopped correcting people except when it mattered.

  They couldn’t have looked much more different and still had the same parents. But at their senior prom he’d won Handsomest Prince to stand beside Beautifulest Princess. Neither of their dates had been surprised or much begrudged them that. He’d taken after Dad’s fair and blond. Big sister Rose, all of eleven minutes older, had Mom’s darker coloring and long mahogany hair framing a narrow face. Both five-eleven, they looked like blond and brown bookends.

  Another advantage was when he was about to do something stupid with a girl, Rose could snag his elbow with a, Come along, dear. If she had a guy she couldn’t shed, Myles would walk off with her hand-in-hand.

  They had a mutual support pact that had seen each through a lot of challenging times.

  And the music. Myles knew they were good. The penny had dropped, dime, nickel, and quarter too. But the silver dollar wouldn’t fall. They made a living, but it was a good thing they shared an apartment and preferred a pub meal to a steak house for the rare meal out.

  He pulled out his travel guitar. Little more than the fretboard and bridge carved out of maple with the tuning machines tucked into the small body of the instrument, it weighed three pounds and fit in the overhead bin on an airplane. Hell, it was small enough, he could plug in headphones and play on an airplane without disturbing anyone.

  Rose slung on her traveling bass, all of six inches longer. They plugged into the bar’s sound system and began to play.

  They’d had a lot of trial and error on what worked and what didn’t. Originally they’d warm up the crowd with a few mellow songs, get the audience used to the shift to live music, then hit them with a dance beat.

  Not anymore. It was early yet, but fifteen people in a bar that could hold a hundred was a thin crowd. Still…

  Myles double-checked that the doors over the street were open, and nodded for Rose to punch into one of their hotter dance riffs. It was a long thing with no words. Rose had found an irresistible heavy beat and he’d built a playful melody onto it, like a cat chasing a windup mouse. Even in an audience of two, it set people dancing.

  By the time they finished it, half the bar was dancing, which was now more like forty people. The owner was too busy with drink orders to even shoot them a smile, exactly the way he’d want to be.

  It was deep in their second set when he noticed her—dramatic as hell.

  It wasn’t her height, a leggy five-eight. Or her crazy Hawaiian head scarf that covered her hair, including her eyebrows, like she was a woman of mystery. In the dim light of the evening, there was no way to tell anything about much about her build. Slender, maybe, and far enough to the back that she kept disappearing from view.

  Still, she was incredible to watch.

  Her dance moves weren’t star-dancer amazing, but her timing was out of this world.

  With her body, she wove a counterpoint around Myles’ own melody as if he were the one playing the supporting bassline. He shifted the next verse and she wove back to his original melody as if teasing him for abandoning it. Rose looked at him, Myles could feel it, but he stayed focused on the dancer.

  Not really watching the stage or her own place in the crowd, she and Myles played a game anyway. Her knee would find Rose’s backbeat, picking out that F-sharp three-below-middle-C every time the bass ventured there. He’d written this number in G-major with a I-V-vi-IV—G, D, E-minor, C—chord progression as a tongue-in-cheek homage to the most overused sensitive female progression in pop music.

  Then the woman’s elbow would pick up the low E but on an off-rhythm accented by a head shaking G. When he moved to match, she slid into Rose’s low C with a two-footed thump, and then started building again. Rose slid underneath their melody and harmony like she was laying down the world’s oceans for their hull and sails to best ride on.

  Between the three of them, they built the night layer upon layer. No more set breaks. The floor packed tighter than a mosh pit. At one point the bartenders were up and dancing on the bar top.

  When the end came, it wasn’t planned or orchestrated, it was simply the final note of how the night fit together. They returned to that first dance instrumental, but embellished and built in ways that reflected their three-way dance to the music.

  By the last chord, the crowd was exhausted, ecstatic, and dancing each to their own beats of music as they stormed the bar.

  That’s when he made his mistake and glanced at Rose. They grinned at each other like two lost fools.

  By the time he turned back, the scarfed dancer was gone.

  3

  “I swear to God she was real,” Myles knew he was repeating himself pointlessly. His voice died flat against the cave’s walls.

  “God, Myles, drop it.”

  For a change of pace to their last day on Hawaii, they’d rented scooters and were circling Maui. Rose had turned at the sign for the Hana Lava Tube and now they were inside it and it was eating his sound. The entry fee included a flashlight and there were self-guided tour signs along the way.

  He tended to breeze by those and then plague Rose to tell him the story as she read each one to the last comma and period. She was countering that by reading halfway, laughing at something, then finishing and walking away without a word. Which meant he’d have to read it himself—and it was interesting. By the third or fourth sign, he was skimming them for himself, then his sister would laugh and he’d have to backtrack to figure out why. She was right of course.

  The lava that had formed this tube a thousand years ago had layered thickly over the top. Most of the ceiling was sixty feet or more thick and topped with soil and tropical growth madness outside.

  After entering through a narrow opening and descending a flight of stairs, they were soon in the quarter-mile long tube. Big enough that even claustrophobes wouldn’t have an issue and long enough that the other people there didn’t make it feel crowded.

  Part of that was because the wall ate up all of the sound. No long echoes in the Hana Lava Tube. Inside the vast tube, their voices were strangely dead. Whispers didn’t carry five feet. He felt as if he had to shout a little to hear his own voice at all.

  “It’s the rock,” Rose had always paid more attention in science class than he had. “It’s so porous that the sound gets lost in it like commercial baffling.”

  “Fine. I’ll use some to build our next sound booth.” They had a small three-bedroom apartment and the third room had been lined with old quilts they’d picked up at garage sales. It made for a colorful recording studio. Too bad that neither of them were yet satisfied with the music they were producing so that they could release any of it.

  “Do that!” Rose snapped, clearly sick of him. She had a point, he was fairly sick of himself. Starting tomorrow they’d be out on the sea. There he could just chill and fall into the routines of sailing, eating, and sleeping. If they caught a storm, they caught one, but there wasn’t any heavy weather predicted. If they didn’t he’d write music.

  They’d sung two more nights at The Dirty Monkey, packed ’em in tight. But they’d never hit the deep groove again. It was like he’d been offered a peek of that next-level sound, his nose pressed to the proverbial window as he hung onto the ledge by his very fingernails.

  But he couldn’t sustain it and was once again mortal. And the fall hurt as assuredly as if it had been physical.

  A good crowd but not all dancing. A happy owner, the first night’s success had spread by word of mouth, but the next night there were almost as many drinking as there were dancing. No bartenders dancing on the marble bar top.

  Not without…her.

  “She wasn’t a phantom or a phantasm or a poltergeist or imaginary or any of that.”

  Rose’s look said he’d crossed over that edge where his sister always shifted into neutral mode. She wasn’t going to react to or offer anything until he chilled. They both agreed that she’d laid down the hottest bass lines of her life, but she insisted that she’d only been taking her cues from him—if that didn’t beat all.

  “Maybe you were seeing her subconsciously…” Because if she had been, then the mystery dancer had indeed been real.

  Rose’s look told him that she’d been following his lead and he was badly overreaching. But if he had been imagining the dancer, then why hadn’t he been able to find the music again on subsequent nights.

  “Fine. I’ll just focus on the lava tube.”

  “Finally,” Rose’s tone was rich with disbelief that it might last longer than any other subject had from the last three days.

  Not another word. He wouldn’t bring up the mystery dancer—now MD in his thoughts—ever again.

  Besides, it was their last day on Maui. The Vic-Maui sailboats were in, the big finisher’s party was tonight. Tomorrow, they’d meet the skipper for the handoff to the return crews and they’d be out on the high seas. Giving up on Lahaina, they were cruising the hundred-mile loop around the island. His chances of meeting MD the mystery dancer ever again were diminishing by the minute.

 

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