"Yeah, but you'd still bitch." His own temper was unraveling. He shook the water off his arms and watched William and Clarence finish securing the minisub. "What's the matter with you, anyway? Aren't you making it with Louisa anymore?"

"I'll handle Louisa," muttered Jake. "You take care of Carla and her blowtorch."

"What do you mean by that?"

"We're competing for the same government dollars. Do the Bahamas need more conch, or statues by a white artiste from Boston?"

Mike threw down his wet suit and advanced, fists clenched. "Leave my wife out of this, 'Dr.' McCay!"

Suddenly he was a yard off the deck, feet swinging helplessly. Jake lumbered with him into the deckhouse and sat him on the chart table. He raised his finger to his nose and waved it. His eyes blazed.

"Mon, don't you never put that 'doctor' into quotes. Ah come out the bloody jungle to get that damn degree, no white Yankee goddamn skin diver gonna 'trow it in de sea!"

Mike stared at him. Awed, he murmured, "I never heard you talk that jive before."

Jake's face relaxed minutely. He seemed ashamed. "Yah, mon? Well, you never tried to put me down before."

Mike's lips twitched. "You rhymed, you know?"

Jake jerked a thumb toward his heart. "All us islanders bleed in rhyme."

Mike stuck out his hand. "Sorry, Jake."

Jake struck his hand in a high-five. "My fault, old man. Bad day on Neptune's Folly. Ministry turned down my supplemental grant. Clarence wants a raise—"

"Needs one, you capitalistic prick. He's got four kids, and one of them is sick."

"You bloody Commie!" Jake smiled. "You know, mon, there are plenty local citizens who think I should train Clarence to dive. Too many whites on this boat taking food from black babies, spending time writing Ph.D. theses at Government House expense, drawing big salaries."

"Six hundred bucks a month? Jesus Christ!"

"I can get six guys out of the palm groves for that. Don't forget it when you're down there like a tourist goofing off. Want a beer?"

"Can I get down to drink it, or do I have to stay up here?"

Jake grinned, and it was like the dawn breaking. He dived into the boat's icebox and came up with two bottles of St. Pauli Girl. They clinked the necks together.

"Fair winds and following seas," said Jake.

"Merry Christmas, Jacob," murmured Mike. Rain drummed on the deckhouse, and the stupid squall had passed.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

On Christmas Eve the aging newscaster sat back in his three-thousand-dollar Pompanette fishing chair on the stern of his sparkling forty-foot Bertram, Prime Time.

He trailed a hundred dollars' worth of Ande tournament-grade one-hundred-thirty-pound test from a Murray Brothers pole that he'd bought the previous week with a Penn reel for fifteen hundred dollars. Two similar poles nodded from a rack to starboard, in case his own broke or his wife cared to take the seat beside him.