Jake cocked his own cap against the sun, relaxed and started to sing:
“‘A sailor’s wife a sailor’s star shall be!
“‘Yo ho, we go, across the sea!
“‘A sailor’s wife a sailor’s star shall be,
“‘A sailor’s wife his star. . . shall be!”
His wife climbed up behind him and kissed the back of his neck. “Is that for me, dear? Or for ‘Nancy Lee’?”
“Always for you, my darling. Besides, I can’t remember the part with ‘Nancy Lee’ in it.”
“I wonder if you ever remember a girl’s name. You call all of us ‘darling.’
“Merely because it’s true. But you are the only one I call ‘my darling.’ And I do remember your name—it’s ‘Salomon.’”
“Jacob, you must have been a prime menace when you were a bluejacket. With that Hebrew blarney you could talk your way into anything. Then out of it, with no trouble.”
“No, Ma’am, I was a sweet, innocent lad. I simply followed the ancient code of the sea: ‘When the hook’s up, all bills are paid.’
“Leaving little Jewish bastards behind in every port…and thereby improving the breed. How about Gigi? Going to improve the breed there?” She dug her thumb into a spot over his hip where his slight pot bulged out from sitting. “Some dish, eh, keed?”
“Madam,” he said haughtily, “I do not know what you are talking about.”
“‘Tell that to the Marines, the old sailors won’t believe you.’ Jacob my love, I feel certain that you know the second Mrs. Branca almost as well as you knew the first. But I have no wish to prove it; I simply offer my congratulations. Gigi is a darling, I love her to pieces. I was not throwing asparagas.” (Tell him she squeals, twin.) (I will not!)
“Woman, you get your exercise jumping at conclusions.”
(Then tell him it happened where Troy Avenue crosses Gay Street, near the Square—a neighborhood you know well, twin.) (Eunice, I want Jacob to feel easy about such things—I am not trying to harpoon him.) (You aren’t equipped to, Joan; Jake is the original Captain Ahab.) (Eunice, you have a dirty mind.) (Whose mind? I don’t have one. Don’t need one.)
Mrs. Salomon dropped the subject, opened her sextant case, took it out.
“Will you give me a time tick, darling?”
“Are you going to shoot the defenseless Sun?”
“I’m going to do better than a Sun sight, dearest. The Sun, the upper limb of the Moon, and—if I’m lucky and can spot it again—Venus, for a three-star fix. Want to bet on how small a triangle I get?”
“Even money on fifty miles for the short side.”
“Beast. Brute. Cad. And me an expectant mother. I was more than ten times that close yesterday evening; I’m getting the hang of it. I could cheat—I could get a point fix by querying Point Loma, then fudge it on the chart.”
“Eunice, why this passion to emulate Bowditch? One would think that radio and satellites and the like had never been invented.”
“It’s fun, darling. I’m going to hit that nay exam for a flat four-oh and get my limited license. After I’ve unloaded this pup in the hopper and we no longer have to stick to coastal water, I’m going to do a ‘Day’s Work’ every day all the way to Hawaii. Betcha I make landfall at Hilo under three miles. Oh, it’s not necessary, dear—but what if it turned out to be? Suppose war broke out and everything went silent? Might help to have a celestial navigator aboard. Tom admits that he’s hardly taken a sight since he got his mate’s ticket.”
“If he ever took one. Yes, it could be useful, my darling because if war broke out in earnest and we were at sea, we would not go on to Hilo. We would make a sharp left turn and go south and get lost. The Marquesas. Or farther south, the farther the better. That way our kid might live through it. Easter lsland if you think you can hit it.”
“Jacob, by then I’ll split it right down the middle. Or any island you pick. Sweetheart, I wasn’t playing games when I asked for the whole old-fashioned works—all the charts, all the pilots, three key-wind chronometers and a hack, this lovely sextant and a twin like it in case I drop this one . .and please note that I always put the lanyard around my neck. All the H.O.s and the Almanac. I’m no use as a deckhand now—so I decided to beconie a real navigator. Just in case, just in case.”