IV.
The first charter week on Infinity Liquid was a soft one by design: two day trips, one overnight for a retired couple who wanted quiet and good fish and no itinerary. Destin ran the boat with the calm of a man who had seen worse weather than guests. Yara ran the interior as if hospitality were a craft with tools and standards and a refusal to confuse deference with fear. Keon learned the difference between looking busy and being useful, which was steeper than any ladder on the vessel.
Imani came down to the marina on the third morning, not because the boat needed her, but because Frank Calder had asked for twenty minutes, and because Tomas had flagged three emails from recreation-committee addresses with subject lines that used the word community as if community were a locked gate.
Frank's office smelled of coffee and binder dust. Through the window you could see the fuel dock and a boy hosing salt off a swim platform. A chart of the basin hung behind Frank's desk with pins in colors that meant something only to him.
"I'll be direct," Frank said. "Holbrook is not the only one. There are four or five slip holders who have been treating the apprenticeship roster like a temporary mistake. They talk about fit and optics and what guests expect. What they mean is they want the docks to keep looking like their Christmas cards."
Imani sat with her hands folded on her knee. She had worn the navy windbreaker again, not as armor exactly, but as continuity, a way of telling herself that the pier had not rearranged her. "And you?"
"I expect licensed crews who can do the work," Frank said. "Quaywright's people can do the work. Destin's record is cleaner than half the private captains in this basin. Keon Blake's evaluations from the yard are excellent. I am not interested in a culture fight dressed up as safety."
"Culture fights still happen," Imani said.
"They do." Frank rubbed his forehead. "I can enforce the agreement. I cannot make Grant Holbrook into a different man by Thursday. What I can do is ask you whether you want a mediated conversation with him before the meeting, or whether you want him to sit in that room and find out in public that the harbor office is not moving."
Imani thought of Keon on the bow. She thought of Yara saying they always carry it anyway. She thought of her own mother, years dead now, who had cleaned offices in Atlanta at night and told her daughter never to confuse silence with peace, and never to confuse a man's embarrassment with a woman's safety.
"Mediated," Imani said. "Not a spectacle. Not a statement for the newsletter. If he wants to apologize, he can apologize like an adult. If he wants to explain why he thought I was trespassing on a pier my company pays fees on, he can try. I am not interested in forgiving him for sport."
Frank nodded once. "Wednesday at four. My office. Tomas can sit in if you want a witness who isn't me."