Monday, October 11, 2010
waterlogued
I was at the start of something big, and I even thought I knew what it was going to be. It wasn’t LA Law but but that was an obsolete destiny by that time anyway. I’d looked for work for months before landing a dogsbody gig with a probate litigator in the ‘burbs halfway between SF and SJ. It was a start, a place to go every day to build my impending towering legacy of jurisprudential hotdamn. LA Law was not in the cards for me; I was bound to break new ground- or, so my legend would surely someday read.
The office was small but I had a big desk, my name in gold letters on the door, and a handful of ancillary perqs - the occasional two glasses of wine with lunch, the stressful weekend hours, and the junket. Actually, the junket only started out ancillary. In the end, it was the most central of all.
The junket was not an exclusive party for professional staff - it was a small office and there were no other attorneys beside me and my boss. Rather, it was an off-site team-building event, and the whole team was invited. There was no sense that any one of us was special. Except, of course, for my boss. He was part of the original Tahoe scene - old money, exclusive parties. His family had a delightful cottage just off the water and they kept a couple of classic wooden speedboats. In the winter they skied the slopes, and in the summer they water skied. My boss was up at the lake as often as he could manage. What was for us a junket, was for him just another weekend in paradise - he’d just brought us all along for the ride.
We all got a commemorative polo shirt (with firm logo), a comfortable room at a mid-range lodge, two suppers and a brunch. Beyond that we were invited to enjoy the splendor of the Tahoe region as we were so moved, but there was an understanding that my boss would at some point pull out a Chris Craft, and we’d all put some wood on the water.
This man’s boats were truly works of industrial art - shimmering with exotic inlays and chromed winches, every curve begging for a caress, bows curling with the pride of a lingerie model. The outboard motors were vintage too, with fins and runnels and stylized intakes. Everything about these craft bespoke elegance and exclusivity. They have for years taken part in Tahoe’s annual “Concours d’Elegance” classic boat regatta; every winter they’re hauled out for dry storage, the motors detached and submerged into barrels of oil to preserve them during the harsh Nordic season. These were not boats for regular people. Anyone could go to Tahoe, but to ride a boat like these - for that, one had to be someone special. The boss had brought us up to walk on water by virtue of the glory of the power of his craft. It wasn’t mandatory that we do so but only a fool would have passed it up. I was a litigator at the launch of my career, ready to ride high on my boss’s gorgeous boat. I was, by definition, nobody’s fool.
Thus it was that, come a perfect cloudless Saturday afternoon, I clambered with my coworkers into a classic speedboat on Tahoe’s sapphire waters. It was my destiny and I felt obliged to fulfill it; I was ready to embrace it; I was primed to ride. Above all, I did not want to mess anything up. I didn’t want to scratch the glossy finish on the wood; I didn’t want to get sunblock on the leather seats; I didn’t want to fall over or overboard or anything stupid like that. And yes, I’d never water skied before, but that didn’t signify. I’d never taken the bar exam before, either, but I’d bested that test. I didn’t water ski, but I was no idiot. Somehow I twisted this into a syllogism that justified the conclusion that I’d obviously be able to water ski. Failure never entered the equation.
With a roar like a prep school lacrosse team the Chris Craft’s motor was roused into action. The stern dropped as the prop bit the lake, then the bow surged forward, prow slapping the surface like the palm of a playful but masterful lover. We were away, the wind in our hair, 1500 feet of crystal depths beneath us, riding high atop the food chain, the cultural chain, the professional ladder, the quality of life merry-go-round. Everything was perfect. In retrospect that should have put me immediately on my guard.
In short order we were well into wide-open waters. “We,” in this instance, was me and my wife, a paralegal, two legal secretaries, and my boss. In other words, most of the office and my whole household, in a boat so beautiful as to appear sentient. A sky of high-altitude blue overhead; the lake below me shifting from aqua to turquoise to the pure deep blue of forgotten dreams.... and I was on the first step of my legendary career, about to drink deep the draught of sybaritic living to which my future triumphs would undoubtedly entitle me. I glistened - with sunblock, yes, but more so with the essentially golden quality of the moment. All was aligned. But for what?
One of the secretaries went first. She’d had some previous experience on skis and fared very credibly - knees bent, arms relaxed, eyes focused, the lake undulant and maternal beneath her, uplifting her over its inconceivable depth. After a few minutes there was an exchange of handwaving between her and my boss; she dropped the tow rope and we circled back around to pick her up. I watched carefully to see how she avoided scratching the boat as she hauled herself and the ski aboard again.
The tow rope was open. I was there to use it. I’d go next. I’d already gotten plenty of advice on what to expect and how to handle the ride. I’d been mentally rehearsing it for days. I was visualizing success. There was no room in my mind to imagine that anything could go wrong. Which is to say, there was no room in my mind.
I did have a little trouble getting the ski on - a single large smooth board with rubber boots bolted to the top. The boots felt clammy; it was clumsy and heavy and I may have sort of scratched the boat with it a little. Wearing the ski, I no longer felt quite so inevitably triumphant. I felt flustered and hobbled. I maneuvered to the platform at the stern and lowered myself into the water. It was cool and heartwrenchingly clean. The clumsiness I felt back in the boat dissolved. This was my element. It was here I’d show the world - and myself - what I could do. I assumed the position - upright, oriented, rope slack, hands tingling with anticipation. I waved my left hand - the signal to my boss to hit the throttle.
In waving, my perfect orientation went awry and I began to topple. As I noticed this, the rope went taut. My right hand clenched around it instinctively; my left hand barely entered the water in time to make the grab. I was by now seriously off-balance - my body had been pulled forward over the ski, the tip of which had dipped below the horizontal. I couldn’t get my feet beneath me. My head dropped beneath the water as the boat accelerated rapidly. My arms were yanked out in front of me; my legs trailed helplessly behind as my feet were torn from the rubber boots and the ski was abandoned in my wake. My shoulders hunched with the strain. My head bucked back up out of the water and I pulled myself by sheer force of will into a line with the nylon cord from which I was being dragged. The lake’s sweet water belled up over my shoulders, then swirled under them. I was fighting my way to the surface, pushing against the depths, but I wasn’t going fast enough to stay topside. I started slipping down again, chest dropping, face splashing. They were slowing down and circling back to me.
The folk on the boat were waving, shouting. “Drop it!” Oh, the rope. I let it go. It floated. So did I, a speck of jetsam on the massive lakeface. Within a few seconds the boat was back. Everyone on board was laughing; my boss was shaking his head. I was still trying to clear the Tahoe from my sinuses, sputtering my way back to what was left of my dignity in my orange flotation vest. I clambered back onto the platform like a drunken otter and rejoined my colleagues as the boat moved on to retrieve my wrested ski. They were all tearing with hilarity. I felt like I no longer deserved my seat on that beautiful boat.
My boss had spared me a scant glance as I reboarded, and then turned his attention to the ski floating a surprising distance away. He looked out past the bow, eyes distant, a smirk dangling from his patrician lips. The others were just starting to regain their composure, congratulating me for my comedic chops and unexpected grip strength. I sat with my reddened elbows on my pale knees, panting and letting my shame puddle around my feet.
Someone pulled in the ski with a gaff and I put my faith in time’s eventually carrying me forward, out of this humiliation. I was concentrating on being somewhere else when I heard my boss speaking to me. The boat purred under his tiller hand and the lake reflected all its glory back up at him; bare mountaintops surrounded us, providing a rough shredded edge to the cosmos. His voice was breezy and non-nonchalant. “I should have mentioned - if you fall you should let go. I suppose I considered it obvious. But at least I know now that you’ll never give up a fight. No matter how hopeless.”
It took me seven years to figure out I didn’t want to practice law. Nobody ever circled back to check on me, but at least I didn’t drown.
