Bogart the Boat Salesman's Arc

Chapter 8 of 10

Bogart woke before the gulls and drove to the marina with a duffel bag on the passenger seat. Two names on a crew list meant nothing if those two people had never worked a deck together. If a call came in tonight, Diane and Denise would be strangers reaching for the same line. Someone would trip. Someone in the water would go under while they figured it out. He wanted a drill done before the radio decided for him. He unzipped the bag on the dock. Inside were five wetsuits, each a different color. Red, green, blue, yellow, purple. He had ordered them the week the new boat arrived and never opened the box. He laid three out on the boards. Diane came down the ramp first, boots loud on the wood. Denise followed in her purple hoodie and sneakers, a coffee in her hand. She stopped when she saw the suits. "Pick one," Bogart said. "That's your job today. Red is helm. Yellow is line and ladder. Blue is water — you go in if we need a swimmer." Diane grabbed red without asking. Denise looked at yellow, then blue. "I've been in the water more than I've been at a wheel," she said, and took blue. Bogart pulled the yellow suit on over his shorts. "Then I'm line today. You call the colors on the radio. Not names. Colors. Names get confused when someone's screaming." They ran the first drill off the dock. Bogart threw a fender into the slip and started the clock on his watch. Diane brought the rescue boat around clean. Denise went in cold and had the fender at the ladder in under a minute. Bogart worked the line and pulled her up. Two minutes forty. They ran it again. Diane came in too hot and the hull kissed a piling. She swore. They reset. By the fourth run Denise was climbing the ladder without help and Diane was feathering the throttle like she'd been doing it for years. Two minutes ten. Bogart called a fifth anyway. On the fifth, Denise slipped on the ladder and Bogart's line was already there before she reached for it. She didn't have to look. She knew where yellow would be. He stopped the clock. "That's the drill. You keep the color. You keep the job. We do this every week." Diane peeled the hood back and grinned. Denise sat on the dock, breathing hard, and looked at the blue suit like it belonged to her now. Bogart hung all three suits on hooks inside the boathouse, in order. Red, yellow, blue. Ready. That night the radio crackled at nine forty. A pontoon had lost power two miles out, four people aboard, one in the water. Bogart reached for yellow. Diane was already pulling on red. Denise was halfway into blue before the second call came in — a second boat, a mile further, taking on water.