“It was nothing,” she replied.
“We both know it was more than nothing,” I said.
“Roll over,” she ordered. “I’ll rub your back.”
“Crawl under the covers,” I countered. “And I’ll think about it.”
I saw a flash of teeth as she smiled. A moment later, she was climbing into bed, and I was rolling away.
It took a while to sleep, but finally I did.
The diving was magnificent, everything I had dreamed of and then some.
I’d read my Advanced Open Water Diver manual. This was the path to an advanced beginner diver rating that PADI dive shops required for dives deeper than sixty feet. Karen’s explanation was simple: training is important.
And so, Saturday morning we drove to a place called Well-Seasoned Divers, a small dive shop in Key West. We met Abbey and Grey Flack, the husband-wife owners of Well-Seasoned. They seemed very friendly. Lara had chartered the entire shop for our exclusive use for the duration of our visit.
Well-Seasoned had a large dive boat, big enough for all of us. We collected our gear and received a briefing from Abbey, and soon enough we were on board their boat, heading to our first dive of the day.
I’m not sure I could have been more excited, although not as excited as the pups. They loved being on the boat.
The enforcers had been tense, but they began to relax once we were away from the marina, and by the time we arrived at the dive site, they were smiling and joking around.
We anchored at the dive site, a sheltered location near a coral reef. Karen gave a briefing to Portia, Monique and me while Abbey talked to the more advanced divers. We then pulled on our gear and entered the water.
Karen led our group, collecting together on the surface before we followed a line to the ocean bottom.
It was beautiful, absolutely beautiful. The bottom here was sandy, and we would have a short trip to the coral, but even where we were, there were fish. Hanging around us were perhaps a half dozen torpedo-shaped fish that reminded me of Northern Pike, but bigger. They hung in the water, apparently not moving, watching us.
Karen moved to me. She had a small slate, and she held it up for me to see. “Calm down.”
I wasn’t calm?
Then she turned the slate back to herself and wrote some more. “Slower breaths.”
I guessed I was a little excited. I focused on calming myself. After a minute, she held up her hand in the universal “OK” sign, thumb and index finger touching to form an “Oh” and the other three fingers raised. I gave her the same sign back.
Then I pointed to the fish that were watching us and held both hands with palms up. I wanted to know what they were.
She pulled something from a pocket of her BCD — it looked like a little flip chart. She flipped through the plastic pages then turned it towards me, tapping one of the fish.
Barracuda.
My eyes opened widely, and I looked at the fish with trepidation, but she held her slate back up and tapped the words. “Calm down.”
I pointed to the fish, and she wrote on her slate, “Harmless.”
Barracuda were harmless. I shook my head, but she tapped the word several times, then tapped, “Calm Down” again.
I supposed if we saw some sharks, she was going to tell me they were harmless, too.
Then she wrote on her slate, “Trust me.”
I held my hand out, asking for the slate. She unclipped it from its tether and passed it to me. “Sharp teeth,” I wrote.
She took the slate back and wrote, “Mine are bigger.”
At that, I had to laugh, blowing bubbles in the water. But I decided to trust her. She knew what she was doing, right?
Karen had us check our air pressure and give her the “OK” sign before she led us slowly towards the reef.
It was a short swim. I kept track of Monique to my right and Portia to my left. They, in turn, were clearly keeping an eye both on me and the waters around us.
We approached the reef, and I found myself filled with wonder. There were schools of small, colorful fish everywhere, absolutely everywhere. I didn’t know what any of them were, but it was just seconds before I was looking forward to our classes on fish identification.
During our briefing, Karen had talked about swimming around the coral. In short, “control your buoyancy and don’t touch a thing”. She spent far more time than that talking about it, of course. I thought about that, and I knew I wanted classes about that, too.
Suddenly I realized there was so much to learn; I’d had no idea.
Karen brought us to a stop at the edge of the reef. She checked with each of us and used her slate to remind us not to touch the coral. Then she led us on a slow circle along the edge of the reef. Every few minutes I checked my air. The water wasn’t deep, only about thirty-five feet, and I knew in such shallow water, my air would last a long time. I also checked with Portia and Monique; Karen had taught us that good divers watch out for their dive buddies.
I couldn’t have told you what we saw, not specifically. There were countless fish, most of them small, most of them very colorful. Tucked here and there were black sea urchins, their spines sharp and dangerous. There was coral of all types, some of it looking like rocks, some like palm leaves, waving in the light current, and countless shapes in between.
We saw stingrays buried in the sand. Karen found the first one, and all we could see were its eyes. But as we drew closer, it shook itself free of the sand and slowly swam off. We followed it for a short distance.
Everything was quite magical.
According to the dive computer I was using, we were down for forty-five minutes before Karen led us a very short distance away from the reef. Then she let a little air out of her BCD and sank to the sandy ocean floor, gesturing for us to do the same. I soon found myself lightly on my knees, facing her, with Monique and Portia right beside me.
Then she had Monique and me do some of the exercises we’d done before. We practiced several things, giving us the OK sign after we had each performed properly. Finally we got one final OK sign before she drew on her slate. She pointed to me and turned the slate around.
We were working on underwater navigation. She wanted me to swim a course using my compass and counting my kicks as a means of measuring distance. The first course was a rectangle; 30 kicks on a heading of 300 degrees; turn left and swim 40 kicks at 210 degrees. After that, she wanted 30 kicks on the reverse course from 300, but she didn’t tell me what that was; I knew I was supposed to figure it out. Finally, one last turn, 40 kicks on the reverse of 210 degrees.
I gave her the OK sign.
Then she pointed at Monique, then held her fingers towards her own eyes, then pointed at me. Monique was to watch over me. Finally, Karen gestured to me with a little wave off gesture, and I gave her the OK again.
I added a little air to my BCD until I was properly buoyant then carefully aligned my compass. Turning slowly, I found 300 degrees. It was away from the reef. I triple-checked I was holding the compass properly and then began to slowly swim away. When I glanced over, I saw Monique was with me, hanging out just a little above me and to the left. I wasn’t surprised to see Portia in a similar position on my right.
At thirty kicks, I came to a stop. I turned to the left in approximately the right direction, adjusted the compass as I’d been taught, verified my heading, and began swimming.
At forty kicks I did the same thing. I didn’t bother figuring out the reverse of 300 degrees, although it would be easy enough: 300 minus 180. But the compass made it easy. Instead of having 300 furthest away from me, I had it closest to me with 120 furthest away.
One more turn, forty kicks, and I came to a stop another ten kicks from where Karen was waiting for me. Had she moved? Had I done something wrong? She was watching me then swam over to us. We let a little air from our BCDs again, sinking back to the sand. Then Karen wrote on her slate and turned it to me. “Why didn’t you end where you began?”
I didn’t know. She handed me the slate. “Did I do something wrong?”
She shook her finger, “No.”
I thought about it while the wolves watched me. Finally I turned to Monique and pointed to her, then handed her the slate. She wrote a word down then turned the slate to see us.
Current.
Of course. I bumped my forehead with the ball of my hand to indicate I should have thought of that. When I did so, I bumped the mask, so I had to clear the water from it, then offered, “OK.”
After that, Karen had Monique do the same exercise. Then we took turns doing a triangle path instead of a rectangle.
I thought it was all a great deal of fun.
When we were done with the exercises for us, we got another OK sign, then she led us back towards the coral.
* * * *
“Oh my god!” I said as soon as we were on the boat. “That was amazing!”
“Did you see fishies?” one of the pups said. I turned to her.
“You’re… Rebecca?”
“I’m Rebecca,” said the other pup. “That’s Celeste.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Yes, Celeste,” I said. “We saw lots and lots of fishies. What did you do?”
“We swam!” she said. “Nora made us wear life jackets though.” She turned and gave Nora a dirty look.
“We all wore life jackets,” I said. “Even Karen wore a life jacket.”
She cocked her head. “No you didn’t. You can’t swim under water if you wear a life jacket.”
“Sure you can. Our life jackets blow up with air. If we let the air out, then we can sink.” My gear was still sitting out, so I said, “Here, let me show you.” I knelt down next to my gear, tipped it right side up, then showed her how I could put air in it. “See?”
“Ohhh,” she said.
“Did you see any fish?” I asked.
“We saw lots of fish!” Rebecca said. She’d been avidly watching the demonstration, too. “Blue fish and green fish and yellow fish. One fish was this big!” She held her hands as far as she could stretch. Then she turned to Karen. “I want to Scooby Doo!”
“Scuba dive,” Karen corrected. She knelt down in front of the girl. “I’m sorry, pumpkin, but you need to be older.”
“I want to Scooby Doo right now!”
“Do not take that tone with me,” Karen told her, and the girl immediately dropped her eyes. “I’m sorry, Rebecca, but there’s a lot of reading and classwork before you can dive. You need to learn a lot of things in school before you’re ready.”
“Like what?”
“Reading and math,” Karen said.
“I can read now.”
“I know you can read, but you can’t read well enough.” She pulled the girl closer and whispered in her ear quietly enough the boat captain wouldn’t hear what was being said.
When Karen released her, the girl said, “Yes, Karen. May we go swimming again? I want to see more fishies.”
“We’re going to go to another place as soon as your mommies are back,” Karen said. “If Nora and your mommies say it’s okay, you can swim for a while there. You’ll see lots of fish. It won’t be today, but later this week, if you’ve been good girls, we’ll all go swimming together, and I’ll teach you the names of some of the fish.”
“Can we catch some fish?” Celeste asked. “Mommy didn’t bring a fishing rod though.”
“Well you know,” said Nora, stepping in. “Let’s go talk to the boat captain and see how the fishing is here.” Abbey was diving with the wolves, but her husband, Grey, was tending to the boat. Nora grabbed a hand of each of the girls and went in search of the captain. Karen watched after them, smiling.
Then she turned to us. “You’re going to overheat.” And so we each stripped partway out of our wet suits, letting it bunched around our waists. Emanuel and Rory were on duty, watching over things, but I saw him glancing at Portia and Karen from time to time. I had to admit; they were worth sneaking glances. Like Elisabeth, they had fabulous bodies, and I sighed.
“What?” Portia asked, sitting down next to me.
“You guys are just so amazing,” I said. “I like the view.”
She laughed. “I heard Eric was nearly enough to turn you straight.”
I laughed with her and bumped her with a shoulder. “He’s good, but he’s not that good.”
“All right,” Karen said. “Let’s debrief.”
“I have questions.” I turned to Portia. “Why didn’t you do the navigation exercises?”
“I’ve already done my advanced open water,” she said. “But I’ll be doing the specialty courses with you. I bought an underwater camera of my own.” She smiled. “The things I’ve been buying since joining-” she looked around then lowered her voice. “-the pack.” Portia shook her head. “I used to collect exotic weapons. Now I collect sporting goods equipment.”
Karen laughed. “Me too,” she said. “Keeping up with Michaela is a full time job. All right. Did you have more questions?”
“Barracuda and string rays,” I said. “You seemed to treat them like no big deal.”
“There are a lot of dangers in the water,” she explained. “The biggest danger is doing something stupid. Panic underwater is not good. The second danger is sticking your hands somewhere without looking. You don’t know what might be lurking. Very few undersea animals will bother a diver as long as you offer them some respect.”
“Steve Irwin died to a stingray.”
“Steve Irwin was a great man and did a lot for education and conservation,” Karen said. “But he also took risks with the animals he was filming. Did you ever see any of his episodes where he didn’t touch the animals?”
I thought about it and shook my head. “No.”