The Nautical Chart Read Online Free PDF

someone was waiting for her somewhere, or whether she was from this city or from out of town. He said what he thought he had to say and then stood there, moving nervously and holding his breath, like a child who had just recited a lesson and was waiting, without much hope, for the teachers verdict. She looked him over for another ten seconds, and again tilted her head so that her hair brushed her cheek. And then she said yes, why not, she too felt like having a drink. They walked toward the Plaza de Cataluna, and then toward the Ramblas and calle Tallers. When he held the door of the Boadas for her he caught her aroma for the first time, vague and subtle, a scent that came not from cologne or perfume but from skin dotted in tones of gold, skin he imagined to be smooth and warm, with the texture of a peach. As they headed for the bar against the wall he noticed that all the men and women in the place looked first at her and then at him, and he wondered at how men and women always look first at a beautiful woman and then shift their gaze toward her companion in an inquiring way, to see who that fellow might be. As if to decide whether he deserves her, whether he's up to the test.

    " ANDwhat does a sailor without a ship do in Barcelona?"
    She was sitting on a tall bar stool with her bag across her knees, her back against the wood bar that ran the length of the wall beneath framed photographs and bar souvenirs. She wore two small gold balls in her ears, and not a single ring on her fingers. Almost no make-up. At the open neck of her white shirt, which revealed hundreds of freckles, Coy caught the gleam of a silver chain.
    "Wait," he said. Then he took a sip of gin and noticed that she was studying his old jacket, that she may have hesitated at the darker lines on his cuffs, where the missing stripes had been. "Wait for better times."
    'A sailor ought to sail."
    "Not everyone agrees."
    "Did you do something bad?"
    He nodded, with a sad half-smile. She opened her bag and took out a pack of English cigarettes. Her fingernails were short and wide, not carefully filed. She must have bitten her nails at one time, he was sure. Maybe she still did. One cigarette was left in the box, and she lit it with a match from a pack that bore the logo of a Belgian shipping line he was familiar with, Zee land. She protected the flame in the hollow of her hands in an almost masculine manner.
    "Was it your fault?"
    "Legally, yes. It happened on my watch." "You ran afoul of another ship?" "I touched bottom. A rock that wasn't on the charts." It was true. A sailor never said "I hit a rock," or "I ran aground." The common verb was "touched." I touched bottom, I touched the
    dock. If you cut another ship in half and sank it in the midst of the Baltic fog, you said, "We touched a ship." At any rate, he noted that she had used the marine term "ran afoul," instead of "accident" or "collision." The cigarette pack was tying open on the bar and Coy looked at it—the head of a sailor framed by a life belt, and two ships. It had been a long time since he'd seen a pack of unfiltered Players, cigarettes he'd seen his whole lifetime. They weren't easy to find, and he hadn't known they were still producing them in the white cardboard box. It was funny that she was smoking that brand. The auction of naval memorabilia, the Urrutia, he himself. LAC: Law of Amazing Coincidences. "Do you know the story?"
    He pointed to the box. She looked at it and then looked up.
    "What story?"
    "The one about Hero."
    "Who's Hero?"
    He told her. He told her about the name on the ribbon of the cap worn by the sailor with the blond beard, about his youthful years on the sailing ship that appeared on one side of the picture, and about the other ship, the ironclad that was his last berth. About how the elder Player and his sons had bought his portrait to put on their cigarette boxes. Then he sat while she smoked— the cigarette had been burning down between her fingers—and looked at