Salty Sky by Seth Coker Read Free Book Online

until this moment.”
Where did that came from? It was almost smooth. Well, if she knew St. Christopher was the patron saint of travelers, then it was smooth. Either way, it was flattering
. They locked eyes. Joe noticed that a brightness rose in her cheeks.
    Ashley’s friends bumped her from behind as they tried to leave the cabin. Joe found a towel to clean up the coffee. Ashley made the introductions, but Joe missed the other girls’ names.
    After the shock, he learned that Ashley and her friends were traveling nurses. They were stationed in Charleston for the year, working a seven days on, seven days off schedule. They were starting their seven off. He loved the youthful looseness in their plan to get a rental car and drive home from wherever this cruise ended.
    A traveling nurse was a new concept to Joe. Apparently, they were well paid and served in the country’s most troubled hospitals, like secular missionaries, often in the country’s most exciting cities. They worked twelve-month contracts and then picked a new place to go.
    The three nurses had been parked in front of Rainbow Row’s brightly colored homes. One of the trainers had physically stumbled into Ashley’s car, leaving a dangling mirror and oversized knee imprint in the side panel. Of course, the stumbler was Gino, Joe’s nephew. The negotiation over the incident ended with the trainers offering the girls a trip up the coast on Gino’s uncle’s yacht and an agreement that $1,000 would cover the damage. None of the trainers had the money on them. Joe figured,
What’s another $1,000, given the upgrade in company now onboard?

    THE BOAT SPLIT the buoys—red on the left and green on the right. They made it to open water and turned north. The captain promised good traveling conditions this morning. He pushed the throttle down to a cruising speed of twenty-five knots. This was different from a booze cruise.
    Joe and Tony’s accents were different from the younger guys’. They said their accents were different because there were not as many first-generation Italians and Irishmen in the city or on Long Island now; most of the first generations now were Pakistani or Caribbean. Ashley wasn’t sure they believed this was the reason, but she could tell that’s what they felt was wrong with their old neighborhood. They didn’t use racial slurs or towelhead jokes, but she knew they missed the old neighborhood’s communal feel. Maybe it did take a village.
    Ashley joined her friends to sunbathe on the deck. They listened to music through their iPhone earbuds. She felt restless and sat on the bowsprit to watch the water below, trying to guess which wave would splash the boat hard enough to spray her. For some reason, that never grew old.
    Tony came to ask about lunch. “Girls, what can I make you for lunch?”
    “Tony, show us the kitchen, and I’ll fix lunch for y’all.”
    “On a boat it’s the
galley
, and youse are our guests. Besides, I can’t have you Southern girls frying chicken while we’re motoring out here. You’d spill so much grease you’d burn us down. The coast guard couldn’t get here quick enough. I will make lunch.”
    “We’re more like stowaways, and I promise not to use the deep fryer. How about you and I fix it together for everybody?”
    “Everybody but the Fabios. They have chemicals they eat to get the chemicals out of their bodies. We don’t want to get the chemistry wrong and give them pimples; they wouldn’t come out of their room for a week.”
    Tony used plates with a rubbery ring around the bottom to keep them from sliding. He threw potato chips on the six plates, while Ashley ripped apart a rotisserie chicken and mixed the meat with mayonnaise, grapes, and onion to make chicken salad. She scooped it onto the rye bread Tony gave her, peppered it, and sliced the sandwiches diagonally.
    The captain skippered the boat from the salon’s controls. Joe read a book in the covered lounge outside the main level. The