Plum Gut

Photo: SC Martinez / Photoshop: FM Martinez

Publishing in Arboreal Literary Magazine, Issue 4 Fresh Hell, December 2023

https://arborealmag.com/issues/04-fresh-hell/suzanne-c-martinez-fiction/

We were pretty wasted when Gus announced his birthday wish was for us, Arnold and I, to go deep-sea fishing with him. Gus loved the water, loved to fish, and wanted to show off his new boat. I’m not a big water guy. I got seasick watching Jaws, and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t enjoy a day on the water but refusing Gus and staying behind would’ve been worse. I’d been mostly vegetarian since leaving home from conviction, as well as economics. Since I’d been in New York, I’d forgotten the source of meat or fish was a living creature. Other than a fly or a mosquito, I’d never killed anything. I hoped today wouldn’t be the first.

We left the dock at 5:00 am. Three men in a boat. None had slept more than a few hours after drinking and talking about art and life well into the night, while a late summer storm raged outside that ended before dawn. A light mist, like a Turner seascape, burned off as we chugged east toward the sunrise through the inlet at East Marion, Long Island in Gus’s new twenty-five-foot Grady-White for its inaugural voyage on the Atlantic Ocean. 

Nauseous immediately, I leaned over the boat’s side to empty my stomach into the inlet. With it went my Dramamine and any hope of enduring the journey unscathed. I should’ve taken the pill when Gus handed it to me the night before, but I’d fallen asleep with it in my tee-shirt pocket.

Gus was turning forty. He’d grown up poor in Yonkers proudly maintaining his horrible neighborhood accent. After high school, he joined the Navy before going to college on the G.I. Bill and earning a Ph.D. in Arts Education. He taught Painting and Printmaking at two local colleges. He was loud and tall with countless tattoos, big hands, and feet, and he seemed to take up most of the space in the boat.

“What’s the problem, Benny? We aren’t even out of the Sound. The water’s as smooth as a baby’s ass. How the fuck can you be sick already?” Gus rubbed my back. “You’ll get your sea legs soon.” 

Gus and his wife, Jenny were both artists who lived in a Canal Street loft in Manhattan during the week. They’d invited Arnold and me with our significant others to their sprawling house with its own dock on the North Shore for Gus’s Labor Day weekend birthday celebration. The house was a wedding present from Jenny’s wealthy parents. She’d bought Gus a new boat for his milestone birthday after his smaller one sunk in a Nor’easter the previous spring. 

“It’s going to be a great day, Benny. They say a bad day fishing’s better than a good day working. Look. Arnold isn’t sick.” Gus slapped his back causing Arnold to grab the gunwale.

Arnold, Gus’s former student, was also an artist. They’d become friends years ago, but I was a recent addition to his circle. Earlier in the year, my girlfriend, Celeste, and I met Gus through the Madison Avenue art gallery who represented him. The gallery owner hired us to collaborate with Gus to produce a limited-edition print to accompany his one-man show of Neon light paintings slated for the following year.

We both liked Gus from our first meeting and spent many hours together working on his print at our atelier. After a long day working in our loft, he’d take us out for Indian or Chinese food to talk about art until they closed the place for the night. We were eager listeners. He introduced us to his artist friends and gallery owners at openings, telling everyone they should hire us to make their prints. 

(Click number 2 to continue reading the story.)