Chapter 27: Pauline’s Surprise

Tuesday was cold and wet. When I was a young fellah obsessed with diving, I would suit up and get in the water regardless. Any ‘day off’ was a diving day, and I would drive a hundred miles to find a lee shore. These days, I’m a bit more discriminating, so when Pauline rang to ask if I was busy, and suggesting she come out for the day and stay overnight, diving was the last thing on my mind.

I was thinking more about the way her scrawny bum fitted against my belly, and her sit bones would press against the magic places in my groins as we lay joined. I was looking forward to a day in bed, exploring tantric energy moving in our bodies. In the event, it wasn’t like that.

Pauline arrived in the mid morning, bubbling over with badly suppressed excitement. The first thing that came out of her beamer was her overnight bag, but the second was a box containing an electronic gram scale.

“For the mushrooms. It weighs down to a tenth of a gram!”

“Jesus! That’s a couple of hundred bucks worth!”

“Nah – Sixty. Electronics are cheap as chips now.”

She parked the scale next to the dehydrator, grunting with satisfaction when she found the mushrooms inside were at last ‘brittle dry’, then went back out to the car. I didn’t realise that there was more to come, and was surprised to see her reappear lugging a brand new and ginormous dive bag.

“Wow! Whatcha got?”

“I toldya I had a surprise.” Pauline carried the gear through to the living room and unzipped it. The bag was ‘top of the line’, and the zip was heavy polycarbonate. No worries about corrosion there!

“Ta da!” She pulled out a full wetsuit. “Ta da!’ Vest with attached hood. “Ta da! Net bag with fins and another with mask and snorkel. I had assumed that Pauline would eventually want to get some snorkelling gear, but the next bit floored me. She grinned impishly and pulled out a SCUBA regulator fitted with all the bells and whistles. Besides the standard buoyancy compensator hose, there was a dive computer, with its own gauges for depth and tank pressure. Serious gear!

“Tank, BCD, and weights in the car”

“You want to learn to SCUBA dive?”

“I passed ‘Open Water Diver’ in the weekend!” Little Red Riding Hood was right out there. “Did the course last week. Remember? I had ‘appointments’!”

“You sneaky bitch!”

“Toldya it was a surprise!’

“I’ve had a few adventures myself. Very long story.”

“Let’s park all that and go for a dive!” Pauline looked at me closely, and for a moment looked quite uncertain. “You’re not pissed off with me, are you?”

“C’mere.” I drew her into a cuddle, which rapidly became a smooch, and I felt myself beginning to turn on. “Why on earth would I be pissed off?”

“Dunno.” Her voice was flat, and she pulled away to eyeball me.

“What would it be if you did know?” I gave her a grin – which I hoped was friendly.

“Toldya. Dunno.” I gathered my courage and pushed.

“What couldn’t it possibly be?” She started to bristle, but I kept grinning, and after a moment or two she fronted up.

“Fuckya! It’s the same old shit about loving you but not being quite sure what that means or what it’s supposed to mean. I’m not available for half a week, I keep secret something that’s really important and significant, and then spring it on you.” The words tumbled out and after a breath, she went on. “My fantasy is that you’ve been imagining I’m with a new guy, and eventually I’ll pay.” I kept pushing.

“You can afford it. You’re a ‘Rich Bitch’ remember!” Bad idea! Pauline pulled right away. The hag arrived with a vengeance and her eyes brimmed and then overflowed.

“And you’re an arsehole. You push me to front and then you tease me. Fuck you!” She spat the last words as her face crumpled, and gave a half sob as she turned and bolted towards the open kitchen door.

Pauline’s introduction to Butch was not enjoyed by either party. They both tried to avoid the encounter, but the doorway is restricted by a bench inside and a woodbox in the porch. A ‘proper dog’ is too big to trip over, but a terrier is the ideal size. Butch yelped, Pauline cursed, lost her balance completely, and careered into the arms of Stan, approaching a few feet behind the dog. He was equal to the occasion, using her momentum to execute a passable ‘pas de deux’, while Sarah a couple of paces behind him, appeared slightly bemused.

“You’re Pauline?”

“Yes. Who are you?”

“I’m Sarah. Your dancing partner is Stan.” Pauline dropped Stan’s hands and looked slightly embarrassed.

“You know this arsehole?” Now it was Stan’s turn to look slightly embarrassed, but Sarah was unabashed

“Probably not as well as you, but moving in that direction.”

Pauline looked thoughtful, and I decided to move the interaction out of the kitchen doorway.

“Please come in.” I took my attention back to Pauline. “You are right. I was behaving like an arsehole, and it wasn’t fair. I’m sorry!”

She looked somewhat mollified, and I ushered everyone through to the living room. Butch marked his elevated status as an ‘inside dog’ at my place by lying in the middle of the room. Stan and Sarah looked at the brand new dive gear spread around, but made no comment. So there we all were – well nearly all. As I put some coffee on, I thought about what, if anything, I wanted to say to Pauline in front of the Vaughans, and to the Vaughans in front of Pauline. She was talking to them about her dive course, and becoming more and more animated as she described her ‘graduation sea dive’ from a chartered boat out at the Moturangi Islands, a Marine Reserve thirty miles off shore to the North East. She had evidently had a mindblowing time with a shoal of kingfish. That gave me my opening.

“We had a mindblowing time in the weekend too.” Pauline caught on at once.

“Are you guys into mushrooms? She nodded towards me. “Did you trip with him?” Sarah didn’t beat about the bush.

“Yes and yes. Sunday afternoon. While you were getting off on fish, we were tripping.” Stan chimed in.

“Getting off on ‘Peesuboriginosir’.”

“We’ve been drying some for a week.”

“Saw the dehydrator. We never managed to get them properly dry, so we’ve always just had them in season, but we’ll probably get one. It would be nice to be able to trip all year round.”

“I’ve never done anything except dope – and that only a few times years ago. Makes me paranoid.” Sarah looked at me shrewdly.

“Mushrooms can sometimes have the same effect.” She paused and I wondered what was coming. Stan looked worried, but I was faced with another bull and grabbed it.

“I had a bad time for about 15 mins at the start of the trip. I felt a bit sick when it started to come on, and I spiralled into all sorts of imagining that we had misidentified and poisoned ourselves.” Pauline looked thoughtful, but ‘In for a penny, in for a pound’, as my Dad used to say, so I went on. “Sarah massaged my feet and legs later, and we both turned on.” Pauline looked more excited than thoughtful.

“You old dog! Did you have amazing sex?” Butch raised his head, looked hopeful and thumped his tail on the floor, but Sarah and Stan and I all answered ‘no’ pretty much together. Butch relaxed, Pauline looked slightly disappointed, and Stan explained further.

“We found out David was into mushies, and we are looking for likeminded friends up here. We saw how frequently you overnight here and sometimes come and go with the other guy, and I saw the pile of mushies you were drying and guessed that you and the other guy were involved. Pauline interrupted.