Chapter 26 - DUELING

Cyr was bored on BALI. Locked in a cave of white light, he was forced to endure his own company, and while he felt it was of the finest, he really didn't exist unless he was performing. His audience had motored off into the murk with that clammer kid. Cyr wasn't much on reading, unless it was lines to memorize, and the only instrument he played was his voicebox.

For the first half hour after his shipmates left Cyr had done stretching exercises, then he'd brought up a fencing foil in a velveteen bag from the cabin, unsheathed it, and proceeded to duel with the air, leaping about on the cabin top, reciting lines from Rostand:

" Oh, for a rhyme, a rhyme in o?.. You wriggle, starch-white, my eel?
A rhyme! a rhyme! The white feather you SHOW! Tac! I parry the point of your steel..
The point you hoped to make me feel.. I open the line, now clutch
Your spit, Sir Scullion.. slow your zeal! At the envoi's end... I touch!"

Cyr pinked the mast at chest height with the tip of his sword, flung back his head, and laughed heartily. His laugh echoed off the surrounding shores.

"I touch," he repeated. "And a little touch of something would be nice." Smiling he returned the foil to its bag, and took it below. He returned to the cockpit 15 minutes later, rubbing his nose. Cyr pulled on a white cableknit V-neck sweater. He untied the dingy painter, drew the whitehall alongside, and climbed down into it. He shipped the oars, then rowed due east, toward the rocky shore of Big Spruce, which had been playing hide-and-seek in the fog.

A few strokes brought him close to the high sheer ledges overhung with twisted spruce. He could hear the sound of his rowing magnified by the echo. Keeping close to the rocks, Cyr rowed leisurely around the island perimeter. The dark loom of the woods receded into the fog as the ledges widened, and diminished in height. Soon he was skirting rocks barely awash, Big Spruce only occasionally visible through the blowing mist.

"The gambit is to recollect where upon we encountered these metamorphic intrusions," Cry orated to himself. Unfortunately he hadn't noticed exactly where he first struck the island. He thought about finding his way back to the boat, and shrugged dramatically. The dingy's bottom scraped over a ledge and his oars clunked on it, as gentle swells raised and lowered his boat.

Cyr rowed for half an hour, the only sound his oarlocks creaking and the arguments of some distant gulls. Then he began to hear something like shoveling. A rhythmic crunching, at any rate. He paused to listen, then followed the noise up a narrow channel between out-thrust fingers of rock. The sound soon stopped, but it was followed by a shaking sound, like a dancer's rattle. A white boat appeared out of the murk, and soon Cyr could read the name EQUAL'S. Island woods began to appear through the murk, and he could see a tent pitched by the treeline. Then he saw a bent over pair of cut-off denim shorts on a very cute ass. A young woman with her back to him was leaning over some kind of screen on a framework.

"My, my," Cry said to himself. "A vision of loveliness on this isle of Faerie." The dingy crunched on a bit of gravel, or was it ground shells? The woman whirled around, giving him a startled look.

"Fear not fair maiden," Cyr declaimed. "It is only I, Cyrano the Chivalrous, who comes to celebrate your loveliness."

Marianne was spooked, but this sudden stranger was so puffed with pompous absurdity he seemed more comical than dangerous. Dressed in a yachting outfit, no less.

"Hello," she said, standing up and facing him. "Where did you spring from?"

"Saints be praised," Cyr said to himself, admiring the black-haired beauty up and down. "From the very gates of Purgatory, if this be Heaven." he answered.

Marianne felt his searching gaze, and reached out for the reassurance of the shovel handle leaning against the sifting table. "Very full of himself," she thought.

Cyr saw the gesture, and raised both hands. "I bear no evil intent," he said.

"No, just a nasty leer," she thought.

"My vessel floats yonder in this obscurity." Cyr continued, pointing toward Bunker's Hole. "May I set foot on your isle?"

"It's not my island," Marianne said warily. Cyr got out of the dingy and pulled it up the rocks until it was secure.

"Are you a seeker after knowledge?" he asked, sweeping up the rocks toward her, unwilling to break the dramatic mood he was feeling.

Marianne was just beginning to feel depressed. She'd endured too many self-deluded men in college and grad school, who felt her beauty was intended for their personal delight, and couldn't seem to keep their hands off. "This is an archeological site," she answered briskly, "if that's what you mean."

"And do the artifacts bespeak the artificers?" Cyr asked. She looked even more luscious close to, but the muscles he could see bunched in her arms and legs might suggest caution. Not that Cyr intended to jump her, but she was definitely a damsel worth dalliance.

"You should know about artifice," Marianne thought. "There's more marine biology than ethnography in these middens," she said aloud, with a touch of frost.

Cyr wondered if he should change his approach. It was such fun to imagine the two of them as timeless star-crossed lovers who meet in a fog, but this babe seemed utterly pedantic and without imagination. He began to see her tough little body as more peasant stock. A nice schtup behind the barn, but not a princess to bring back to the castle. Still.. he might woo her with academic jargon.

"I'm Marianne Brewster," she cut through his musing, "do I call you Cyrano, or do you have a real name?"

"Maid Marion, my friends do call me Cyr. May I number you among them?"

"You off a sailboat?" she asked, ignoring his blandishments.

"A vessel of the wind, indeed," Cyr intoned, then he blew through his pursed lips. "Are you master of the elegant EQUAL'S?"

"I haven't mastered it entirely," Marianne admitted. "It's my cousin's boat."

"Ah, so you hail from these parts?" Cyr concluded.

Marianne wanted to have nothing more to do with this sweet-talking yachtsman, and didn't intend to tell him any else about herself. She just nodded abstractedly. "I have work to do," she said coldly.

"Surely you could spare a moment for a sailor in distress."

"You don't too distressed to me," Marianne countered.

"Ah, but you should see my soul." Cyr pontificated.

"Your shoes don't look bad, either," she couldn't help quipping.

Cyr gave her his "Dazzling Innocent" smile. "The Lady does have a sense of fun, I perceive," he said softly. They were now only a few feet apart, and he could smell the sweat in her clothes. Maybe he SHOULD just grab her.

Marianne nearly laughed, then caught herself. "Don't lower your guard, Mary," she warned. "This big-beaked self-dramatist still makes your skin crawl." She calmly walked around the sifting table until it was between them, taking the shovel with her.

Cyr reached out and gave the screen a small shake. "Separating the wheat from the chaff?" he asked.

"Artifacts from overburden," Marianne answered laconically.

"And I'm beginning to be the latter?" Cry queried mournfully.

"For god's sake, Cyr.. or whatever your name is.. why don't you get off it?" Marianne snapped.

"What's that?" he said, all innocent.

"Your high falute. Just because you find a woman on a deserted island, that doesn't mean she's a WOMAN ON A DESERTED ISLAND. I'm not in the market for romance out here, I'm trying to do my graduate work."

Marianne blushed a little, thinking about Dunk, and she had an upwelling desire for him to be there. Plain old Dunk, not this polished finagler of a Cyrano. She picked up the shovel and held it across her chest with both hands.

Cyr nodded, and tipped an imaginary fedora. "I shall bid you adieu, then, Maid Marion, and thank you for your hospitality."

An apology rose to her lips, but Marianne bit her tongue. "I won't be conned," she told herself. She watched Cyr's back as he gracefully climbed down the rocks, stepped aboard his dingy, and rowed back the way he'd come. He paused just before the fog swallowed him and blew her a kiss. The gesture brought a bad taste to her mouth, and she grimaced.

"Stuck up little anthro-bitch," Cyr thought. "She just missed out on a afternoon of glorious intercourse on a misty isle. Perhaps I shall return later and we'll dance together in the starlight. Then I'll straddle her on the rocks. It's time for another line, anyhow."

But it was longer than he thought before he could snort another line. Making his dramatic exit, Cyr had lost his bearings, and got turned around trying to find his way back to the ledges he'd followed. All the outcrops looked the same. He didn't want to call to the girl for help, and end up looking the fool. Before long he was out of earshot anyhow, rowing around in Bunker's Hole, looking for a familiar landmark. Only they all looked familiar now.

"HALOOO." He called. "halooo.. halooo.. halooo," his echo came back from all directions.