If it weren't for the Blessed Mother my friend Andrea dragged me to on the window at 34th street, in St.Petersburg with all the traffic passing by, I might have gone on happily single. But her enthusiasm and spirituality swayed and there I was seriously praying to God for a mate and there he was practically the next morning, looming like a deus ex machina through the ground mist rising from the Intracoastal, handsome as only an Italian can be, with long curly locks, an unlined face, and one of those tinkling Indian bracelets attached to his ankle, a small set of pewter handcuffs dripping from one ear lobe. Talk about your answer to prayer. A bright shiny Harley was parked next to the hibiscus. Except for the fact that he appeared washed and shaved, he could have been cast as the leading man in a Hunter S. Thompson movie.

Jingles, as my family would dub him, was a retired DEA officer, rolling in confiscated cash, planning on the American Dream of sailing off to places with exotic-sounding names: Pago Pago, Tahiti, Tierra del Fuego. That night, when he reappeared, playing a few classical pieces on the organ I'd purchased for resale and for a pittance at the Salvation Army auction, we ended up in a clinch, rolling about on the green expanse of Bahia grass under a sky filled with stars that seemed touchable. Beneath his two hundred plus pounds, I felt small and feminine, sexier than I'd felt in years, kissing full, soft lips with such abandon that I barely noticed the flames spreading from candelabra to his imitation leather purse on top of the organ, nearly reaching the undersides of the wooden deck where we would, later, have brie and baguettes for breakfast. Like most disastrous love affairs, there were warnings.

For one thing, he already had a girlfriend whom he had promised to watch out for-a death bed promise which I thought admirable, at the time. Her mother, a prima ballerina, had once pirouetted as Giselle before the Queen of England at the Palladium, never reaching such a pinnacle again after she was impregnated by a beer-drinking patron of the arts. She'd raised her daughter alone and taught her what she knew of womanly pursuits, mainly how to catch a man and keep him, how to cook, clean, sew, and how to make a man feel needed. Heidi had never known her father and since Jingles was so much older, I judged the relationship some kind of simbiotic sickness that I was willing to outwait.

Heidi had been a child model, dimples, beautiful face, strikingly beautiful blonde hair. But when her legs didn't grow to long and lanky model dimensions, the only calls she got were for things like Ivory soap hand commercials or worse such as being the short, chunky mother of various other blonde child models. According to Jingles, Heidi had taken to drinking to excess since her mother's death, letting her figure go, making semi-nude scenes on his lawn, calling for phony restraining orders, (which they both ignored) and generally making herself one big pain in the ass.Every afternoon, after the sun had ceased its meanness, Andrea and I would meet Jingles on the beach to while away the hours, lazy afternoons I needed as a break from my dog training business. Andy had once owned a Cape Dory and had sailed all over. I could barely swim; needed to take floating lessons, in fact, in order to pass requirements for a college degree.

When Jingles showed us the picture in the Boat Trader of a 43 foot Irwin he planned to buy, visions of the British Virgin Islands swam in our brains. Heidi had picked out the boat, a girl who didn't know she had talents as an interior decorator, a gourmet cook, or anything better than glomming onto a man that was so besotted he even allowed her men on the side. Andy and I did everything we could to dissuade him from buying this boat, including accompanying him to the closing at the bank where the owner and his wife sat, side by side, co-conspirators.No one in their right mind buys a boat just from a picture, but Jingles must have been at the height of a mid-life crisis. He had a survey certifying the value and that was all he cared about. The boat had been baking in a Fort Lauderdale marina for the past two years. The lines had been rotting, the sails disintegrating, the machinery seizing, the brass corroding. When Andrea reached for the survey, the goateed Captain took great umbrage, dragging his frowning country-club wife to the furthest corner of the bank lobby while the paperwork was being prepared. For some strange reason there was an organ on the other end of the lobby. Jingles walked over to it and with his big, meaty hands began to play his favorite song. "Valderie, Valdera," he sang happily. "I love to go awandering...." Twenty thousand dollars had already been given as a deposit.

Andy looked at me. I looked at her. We're both from Boston, which had given us an immediate bond. We also knew from crooks. The way that ship captain was clutching the survey to his scrawny chest, glaring at us still. The way Jingles had just upped and left the biggest transaction he was ever going to make.... he had to be drunk or insane, or both. We intercepted the bank officer.

"You can't let this transaction go through," said Andy. "This is the man's life savings."

"And who are you?" the bank officer asked, loftily, all prim and proper, panty hose and all.

"We're his friends," I answered. "The man is insane. He can't be held to this contract. He's incompetent!"

"What court adjudicated this? What judge?" Now I knew what 'certifiably insane' meant and there was no one but us and our intuition fighting for what was right and just. Me in a T shirt covered with dog hair. Andy in short pants, in some kind of adolescent arrestment, face reddened, sputtering in anger. The bank lady in navy blue serge. "Ha-ha-ha," coming from the idiot at the organ, in preamble to another refrain this time, in German.Andy and I left the bank to confer. I had needed a cigarette.A man who could play piano stirred vague passions, but interviewing for Mr. Right had left me a bit cynical.

"What do we care? We hardly know the man. Maybe he's got moolah up the kazoo."

"This is the craziest thing I've ever witnessed," said Andy. "That Heidi should be shot. He's only doing this to please her."

The bank officer locked the door at 3 o'clock. We were personas non grata and not too happy about it, but we didn't bang on the glass or anything inappropriate. Andy pinched her pennies pretty well, but she owned two condominiums, the attics of which were filled with enough nautical kitschy things she'd picked up at flea markets, she could open a store if she ever wanted. Her husband's life insurance had made her one independent widow with plenty of time to dabble in the paranormal from U.F.O. abductee clubs to Machupichu, Egyptology, including the Coptic Church, to hot springs with rejuve nating powers and the mysteries of The New World Order. She was convinced t hat the Blessed Mother on the downtown office building had sent me Jingles who appeared a short while later making jokes about how happy he was and how happy he would be when the boat would no longer be his. No more prescient words had ever been spoken.

The other saying about boats went: 'if you have to ask how much it costs per foot to rent a space in a marina, you shouldn't be buying a boat that size.' Jingles had plans to park that 43 foot Irwin in the middle of Boca Ciega Bay, which would be perfectly legal, though unless you kept a Doberman on board, every thief with a dinghy would strip it bare. A good storm would rip it from its moorings. But first we had to get the boat from Fort Lauderdale. Worry about docking privileges later. And so, even though the dockmaster said the boat was ready when we phoned ahead, it was a good thing I'd brought plenty to read. Gracious to a fault, I never complained, even in hundred degree heat when we were in dry dock while they painted her bottom, even when the name HEIDI appeared on her bow.

"The ship," as Jingles persisted in calling it, was beautiful: all white-painted fiberglass, with royal-blue trim and jib sheets, teakwood throughout the cabin, brass plaques in the radio room, stainless steel in the galley and the heads, aluminum grab rails all around the deck and sails that furled and unfurled magnificently under hydraulic power.

Twenty thousand dollars (thanks to a second mortgage on some income property) and two weeks later, a rifle in case we ran into pirates, four hundred dollars worth of charts, a Zodiak, Danforth anchors, grommets, a Loran, a log book, a generator, a new G.P.S. and we were almost ready to roll. His son flew from Michigan to be the captain since he had a license and I stocked the refrigerator with about a hundred dollars worth of groceries, mostly bologna and stuff that didn't need refrigeration. I was a steak and lobster kind of woman, but I knew Joe's Stone Crabs was out when Jingles began grousing about the price of ice every time he hauled up a bag. A USA boat membership was charged to his gold American Express card.

"Key West, here we come, at last," I said to Andy on the pay phone in the boatyard. "Do you think we'll make it? The boat is beautiful."

"It's an Irwin," she responded, voice rising disdainfully on the name. Andrea would have been the logical choice for a crew since I'd quit the Coast Guard course after watching a few boring knot-tying videos. Andy could tie a sheepshank or a bowline with her eyes shut, but she relied upon me, I su pposed, for a certain down-to-earth quality that kept her centered. She ha d attention deficit of the highest order like a remote control that chann el surfs without the touch of a finger, all excited about what was happenin g at the 34th street miracle. "They're sending in experts from chemical companies to test the windows. And media trucks are there. So many candles and flowers, so many believers, the city has had to hire a crossing guard.

Haven't you been watching TV?"

"It doesn't work," I replied. "Wish us a bon voyage."
The next thing that didn't work was me. Shortly after we went through the locks leading out to the Atlantic, I came down with the flu, throwing up even the Dramamine I'd taken as a precaution. My temperature was so high, I vaguely remembered feeling bothered every time Jingles woke me to perform my bologna duties. I could have counted the days by the length of my leg stubble. Then we were attacked by a veritable army of mosquitoes with prickers that made welts the size of a nickel. They stayed with us for days, dark buzzing botherers clinging enmasse to the screen of the companionway, reminiscent of an Alfred Hitchcock movie, finding their way into the cabin through port holes and vents slightly more water-tight than a colander. Disgusting blood-splattered mosquito body parts all over the teak and the ceiling; itches in places no lady should scratch. I don't think I'd ever been more miserable. And then the toilet off the master bedroom quit, neccessitating muriatic acid which never quite conquered the smell.One thing I'll say about Jingles: good natured as hell, which put him way above most of the men I'd met in Florida. His son was even nicer. We stayed close to the shoreline and they took turns at the helm, lathered in bug repellant. The roll of the boat made sleeping easy and I was just about recovered when I learned to my great disappointment we were passing Key West by.

We'd taken so long in Fort Lauderdale that Jingles' son had used up his vacation. On our last night before he would fly back, we pulled into a marina, pulled that 42 foot Irwin in so that it kissed the dock and stopped. I'd hopped about like a pro, laying the bumpers, tying the lines to the cleats. Then Jingles got out to inquire of the harbormaster."No way, Jose," he said, shaking that mane of brown hair, when he returned. "There's no way I'm going to pay 200 dollars just for one night. I could have stayed in a hotel for that!"So we pulled the boat out some and dropped anchor. Took the Zodiac in and ate hamburgers in their restaurant. Swam in their pool. Bought T shirts in the marina's store. Said goodbye to his son. Jingles made a few desperate calls for another captain. No luck."Looks like it's up to you," he said, in a winsome, boyish way. Sometimes people give me more credit than I deserve.

"Are you crazy?" I asked. "I can't read charts. I don't know how to sail." The waters along Key West are notoriously treacherous. Hit one of those coral reefs just right and that fiberglass wouldn't exactly hold back water like the Hoover Dam. The boat had a four and a half foot draw. I was just getting used to not saying starboard when I meant aft. I could never or could I?

"It's simple," he said. "If I can do it, you can do it. We'll just motor. All you have to do is steer. I'll operate the Loran."

Maybe strolling around on deck in a bikini had made me cocky. Maybe I was still in that stage of life when death lurked on the dim horizon of AARP subscribers. Maybe I was so damned depressed I didn't care. Whatever. In the end, a hard core of feminist specious reasoning prevailed: If he could do it, I could do it. It was like a clarion call. Hadn't I beaten out a boy in a fourth grade spelling bee? Hadn't I cruised the Boca Ciega in my very own power boat? Hadn't I almost gone down in a yacht during a typhoon off the Greek islands in the Aegean? Hadn't I already survived all manner of tragedies from a fire to a flood and everything in between? As I examined all my close escapes and feeble victories, a charmed life emerged, as shining as Hiawatha's Gitchigoomi."Okay," I said. "But if anything goes wrong, don't blame me."The sails were up. The weather was perfect. But something kept conking the motor out. We'd go a few hundred feet, the motor would stall and the tide would push us back by the same hundred or so feet so that we weren't progressing. My friend put on his scuba gear, tied a line to his middle, and threw himself overboard backwards. Whatever was catching the seaweed-a strainer-under the boat was clogged. A few anxious minutes went by, Jingles hollering muffled reports behind his mask. And then he hoisted himself aboard.

"I'm not sure what's wrong," he said, his face all wrinkled up in worry. "As long as the wind holds, we'll just sail. Maybe we'll pull in at the next marina." He spread the chart out and indicated with a thumb-nail. "Right about here. Think you can make it? It's about 60 miles.
"We were far enough out that I didn't worry about shoals as long as I could see land plush with palm trees. I was keeping a steady course, adjusting th
e wheel every now and then, but without the motor, it was slow going. Jingles went down to turn the tape deck up. That song again. Valderee, valdera.

"I almost felt like singing, I was so happy. It was as peaceful as heaven is purported to be. Jingles came up with a Bloody Mary for me in his hands , and just as he did, the boat gave a great lurch, splashing tomato juice a ll over like blood. "Damn," he said. "That wind is picking up."

Pretty soon, it was clear, we were in serious trouble. Squalls can come up like that out of nowhere, with no warning. Jingles put the mainsail down, cranking away with all his might, leaning into the mast with one shoulder, hugging it when he had to to keep from flying. The waves came higher and higher. 6 foot swells. 60 MPH winds. Jingles literally slipped down the compa nionway ladder, breaking a toe. I could hear him screaming expletives. I'm having hard time holding onto the wheel, the force of the waves so strong, it's ripped out of my hands, spinning wildly. The boat is going in circles. The rain pounding.The wind whipping. The halyards clanging. I could hear Jingles on the ship to shore radio: "May-Day, May-Day!" The waves are getting bigger and bigger, smacking the boat hard as rocks, sounding like huge belly flops. I worry about the boat breaking in half, the hull buckling in a shock wave.Jingles rejoins me, slowly, nearly crawling to the stern, dragging a life preserver.

"Put it on," he hollered, above the roar of the waves and the flapping of the sails. I'm nearly knocked out of my perch behind the wheel when a big one hits. The Zodiac, looking like a child's wading pool, was filled with water. From the deck, Jingles struggles to right himself. He doesn't dare stand. His toe is too painful. The rocking too powerful. He'd only be knocked overboard, thrown from the pitching deck, launching him like a trampoline. He finds a line and lashes one end to me and the other to the helm, on his knees to the front of the boat, grabbing at anything he can to reach the other sails. Somehow, he manages to batten one of them down. The lines to the second sail snap in his hand just as the biggest wave of all nearly capsizes us. The top of the mast is listing so far over I can almost see the keel. Above all the noise, I think I can hear the propeller shaft groaning. I am so scared I almost forget to pray to the Blessed Mother.

But pray I did, though my mind was performing acrobatics. The heavens parted to let in the sun and the pitching and rolling lapsed. We might have been in the Bermuda Triangle, for all I knew, bobbing in that sea until US Boat came to our rescue. It was then that I knew that loneliness was better than any kind of life with Jingles, an epiphany, of sorts, that had started way back in the supermarket when I'd practically had to coerce him to buy me a jar of Macademia nuts and a bunch of asparagus. A piker is one thing I can't stand. Reading the signs can often mean the difference between life and death. No, I wouldn't mind going back to my canned Caruso, my mangroves, my dogs. Not at all. And I would light a candle at the window of the Blessed Mother on 34th Street, give thanks. Maybe I'd wear more ruffles, like Heidi. Maybe I'd wear more perfume. But if she wanted Jingles, she could have him. And if he wanted a little bird in a cage, she was his. I'd made up my mind before we left Islamorada, where the boat had to stay for engine repairs. Good old Andy came to collect us.

Months later, Heidi went down to the marina where the boat was docked. Jingles was asleep and said he didn't hear the rifle go off. The special company that cleans blood and human remains charged him a bundle, causing a domino effect. The bank that owned the mortgage on the boat and the income property, repossessed them both. The Harley went up in value. It was the only thing he had left. Andy, with that mind that churned day and night, figured there was no way Heidi's toe could have reached the trigger.