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Pete sighed and drained his beer.

They were back on the Lenore.  As on the previous evening, Nick had invited Pete and Jo back to the Lenore for an after-dinner drink.  Just as before, Jordana had declined, saying she was tired but that Pete should go.  He had.

Nick thought Pete seemed restless.  The man couldn’t seem to keep still.  He tapped his feet on the deck and drummed his fingers on his leg.  His head swiveled every few seconds in the direction of the Sunset Voyager.  He drank his first beer in three swallows.

Nick didn’t understand the concern.  Yeah, Jordana didn’t look so hot, and she sure didn’t have much of an appetite, but she had explained that.  Hormones, she’d said.  Hormones…the flu…jet lag…it didn’t matter what you called it, thought Nick.  It all boiled down to the same thing.  Jo had her period, and in a couple of days, she wouldn’t.  It was just a matter of time.

“It’s just a matter of time.”  Nick said it out loud without thinking.

Pete twitched.  “What?”

“Jo…Jordana…it’s just a matter of time…you know…’til she’s feeling better, ‘til she’s over her ‘jet lag’.”  Nick put finger quotations around the final two words.

“Jet lag?”  Pete looked confused.

Nick whispered the words.  “Her period.  It can’t last forever.”

Pete stared at Nick for a moment, not comprehending.  Then his face cleared.  He nodded and stood up.  He walked to the railing and stood looking out over the water.

“It’s not…” he began.  Then he stopped and took a deep breath.  He turned back to face Nick.

“It’s not her period,” said Pete, with something in his voice.

Sadness or resignation?  Nick wasn’t sure.

After another deep breath, Pete’s voice was stronger.  “It’s not her period,” he repeated, “it’s not the flu.  It’s not jet lag.  She’s got…she’s got…”

Nick’s eyes widened.  Oh no!  Not…

Pete saw that Nick had leapt to the worst conclusion.  He waved a hand curtly through the air.  “No, no, it’s nothing like that.  It’s…it’s an eating disorder.  She’s got anorexia or bulimia or some fucking combination.  She’s been in treatment…” 

Nick tried to process the information.  “She went to Europe for treatment?”

Pete raised his voice.  “No, goddammit, she didn’t go to Europe!”  Pete shook his head to clear it.  When he spoke again, his voice was softer.  “Sorry, Nick.  I didn’t mean to snap at you.  It’s just been…”

Nick shook his head.  “’S okay, Man.  I didn’t know…”

“Of course, you didn’t know.  That’s the plan, you see.  No one’s supposed to know.”  Pete sat down and put his head in his hands.  “I wish Mickey would get here.  I can’t deal with this shit by myself.”

“Hang on,” said Nick.  He disappeared below deck and returned with two more bottles.  “Here,” he said, twisting the top off one and handing it to Pete.

“Thanks,” said Pete.  He tipped his head back and took a long swallow.

Nick sat back on the leather bench and stretched his legs out in front of him.  As he opened his beer, he said to Pete, “I can keep a secret, Man, if you wanted to…you know…get it off your chest.”

“That’s the problem,” said Pete, “at least it’s one of them.  It all has to be a big, damn secret.”  He leaned forward and pointed the beer bottle at Nick.  “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

Nick spread his hands.  Go for it!

“Jo never went to Europe.  She’s never been out of the country in her life.  She’s been in upstate New York at a rehab centre for eating disorders.”  Pete sighed and got a faraway look in his eyes. “She was in a really bad way…she nearly died.  But they got to her in time…Mickey did…Mickey saved her.” 

It was as if Pete had turned on a tap.  The words tumbled out like water.

“She was at school…college, you know…Jo, not Mickey…Jo was at school…college.”

Pete stopped, realizing that the wasn’t making much sense.  He took a long pull from his beer, trying to organize his thoughts.  Nick waited patiently.  After a moment, Pete began again.

“Jo’s a really smart girl.  That’s part of the problem.  She always expected the most from herself…put way too much pressure on herself…trying to please her parents…she was their ‘angel’, their ‘perfect child’.

It was her mother, really, who caused it all.  Jo came home from college at Thanksgiving in her first year.  Jo was always thin, you know, good thin, slender, not skinny-like…  Anyway, she came home, and her mom made some comment like, ‘you’re well on your way to getting your Frosh Fifteen…”    

Nick raised an eyebrow.  Frosh Fifteen?

Pete laughed, but there was a bitter undertone.  “Yeah, apparently when kids go away to school, especially girls, they gain weight the first year…’cause, you know, they’re eating more starchy food and junk food and not so many vegetables.  And, then there’s…”

“…the beer!”  Nick finished the sentence for him.

“Right!  I bet that’s where the guys put on weight.  Anyway, Jo hadn’t paid any attention to it…she hadn’t gotten weighed since before she left for school.  So her mom makes this comment, and Jo goes and jumps on the scales and she’s gained five pounds.”

“Just five pounds?” said Nick.  “Shit, I can put on that much with one trip to Mickey D’s!”

“Yeah, no kidding,” replied Pete.  “It doesn’t sound like a big deal, does it?  But it sure was to Jo. Something inside her just kinda snapped.”  Pete’s voice rose to a female timbre, and he waggled his wrist in an effeminate gesture.  “Omigod, if I’ve gained five pounds already, I’ll be huge by the end of the year.”

Pete’s hand dropped tiredly back to his side, and his voice returned to its normal tone.  “Of course, everyone told her that it was no big deal.  But to Jo, it was a very big deal.  Mickey and Jo were… they…okay…Mickey is prettier than Jo…she’s a real knockout…but Jo was always the thin one.  Mickey’s always run five or six pounds heavier than she should, and she’s a fairly big girl to begin with…not fat or anything, she’s gorgeous, she’s just…”  Pete put his hands in front of his chest, palms up.  “…voluptuous.”

Nick laughed.  “Lucky you.”

“Yeah, no kidding!  Anyway,” Pete went on, “Mickey was the pretty one, and Jo was the thin one, so there was no competition or anything between them.  People always made a big deal about it, ‘oh you’re so lucky, you can eat anything you want’…shit like that…you know how teenage girls can be…”

Nick nodded.  Oh yeah, that he knew!

“Anyway, Jo spent the weekend pushing her food around her plate and pretending to eat.  Before she went back to school, she got weighed…”  Pete sighed and shook his head, “…and she’d gained another pound.”

“Uh oh,” said Nick.

“And Jo being Jo, she couldn’t let herself be less than perfect.  So she made up her mind that she was going to lose the six pounds and then five more besides just to have a little leeway…”

Pete tipped the beer up and swallowed.  “And that’s how it started.  Five pounds leeway wasn’t enough…it was six, then seven, then eight.  She was away at school, so no one knew what was going on.  When she came home for Spring Break, her stupid mother kept telling her how great she looked, and that made Jo determined never to ‘get fat’ again.  Yeah, sure, thanks.”

Nick had held up his beer, offering another.  He took the empties and went below.  When he came back, Pete continued the story.

He told Nick how Jo kept it hidden for nearly two years by wearing baggy clothes…long sleeves, that kind of thing.  It was only when she was asked to be a bridesmaid for her cousin’s wedding that she was found out.  She went for a fitting, and her aunt saw her body and phoned her mother and it all hit the fan.  Jo went to counseling for the summer and then went back to school in the fall, all cured.  

“Except, of course, she wasn’t.  She’d gained ten pounds over the summer, thanks to the counseling and her mother.  That still left her about twenty shy of where she should have been…”

Nick’s eyes popped.

“Oh yeah,” said Pete, “she was literally skin and bones.  Then she became a fanatic about exercise.  She was always working out…walking, running, doing aerobics.  Any stray calorie that managed to make it into her body was burned off immediately.”

Nick nodded.  He hated working out with a passion.  But there was something he hated more…being called ‘fat’. 

“So what happened?” he asked.

Pete continued the story, telling Nick that Jo had avoided coming home her third year of college, instead getting a summer job in the town where the school was.  She and Mickey talked all the time on email and MSN, and Jo was really careful not to let on what she was doing.

“Didn’t anyone at the college get suspicious?” asked Nick.

“It was a big place,” said Pete, with a shrug.  “Jo had an apartment off-campus.  She didn’t live in the dorm.  So there wasn’t anyone…”

“But then Mickey found out?”

“Yeah,” said Pete.  “She hadn’t seen Jo in a while, and we drove up there one weekend to surprise her.”  Pete closed his eyes and tipped his head back.  Then he gave a shudder and opened his eyes.  “We were the ones who got the surprise.”

Pete stood up and started pacing.  “She looked like a corpse…a skeleton…one of those concentration camp victims you see in old movies…all eyes…she was all eyes…”

Pete was silent for a moment.  Nick didn’t interrupt him, just let him wrestle with his thoughts.  Finally, Pete started speaking again, finishing the story…the trip to the emergency room, the enforced psych examination, the hysterical parents and the sojourn in rehab.

“She got out three months ago,” said Pete.  “She was in there for a long time.  She’s kinda on parole now.  She has to get weighed regularly, and if she starts to drop…”  Pete shrugged.

Back to the slammer, thought Nick.  Eating disorder prison.

“I know I’ve only been around a day or so,” said Nick, “but I haven’t seen her eat much of anything.”

“She has to have this milkshake thing in the morning and at lunch.  It’s got protein and stuff in it,” explained Pete.  “That gives her enough calories that she can take the food thing slowly.”  He grimaced at Nick.  “Food is the enemy, you know.”

Nick mulled it all over.  He guessed it all made sense.  Jo was kinda thin and weak looking…more than could truly be explained by jet lag.  But her story sounded so real…

“Why lie?  Why say she was in Europe?” asked Nick.

Pete laughed.  “I guess it’s easier than saying ‘I’m a mental basket case’.  Especially to someone you’re never going to see again.”

And she’s a fan, thought Nick.  She wouldn’t want to look bad in front of me.  “Is there anything I can do?” he asked, after a long silence.

Pete’s head snapped up.  “No!  I mean…uh, no thanks…that’s great that you’d offer and everything, but…uh…like I said, it’s a secret.  She wouldn’t want you to know.”

“Okay,” said Nick, “I’ll stick with the jet lag story.”

Pete stood up and handed his empty beer bottle to Nick.  “Well, I better get going.  And, hey Nick, thanks for listening.  I really appreciate it, Man.”

Nick took the bottle from him.  “No problem.”

Pete extended a hand.  “Well, this might be goodbye.  Who knows if we’ll be this lucky two days in a row…and run into each other again.”

Nick shook his hand.  “Yeah, who knows…but maybe I’ll see you in Beaufort.”  He pronounced it Bee-you-furt.

Pete laughed.  “Yeah, maybe.”  He stepped up onto the dock and walked away, waving over his shoulder as he disappeared from view.

Nick took the bottles downstairs and put them in the recycling box in the cupboard.  Then he turned off all the lights and went to bed.

Beaufort.

Nick grinned into the night.

Beaufort.  Bee-you-furt.

Maybe that’s what he’d rename the boat.  Strong and handsome, Jo had said.

Jo.

Nick stopped grinning.

Jo.

Poor Jo.

Nick thought back over the times he’d spent with her, reorganizing his image of her from globe-trotting college graduate to a neurosis-ravaged anorexic who spoke a little French.

The Beaufort.

Strong and handsome.

Captain of the Beaufort.

Nah.

Nick went to sleep.