Dead in the Water

by Nancy Holder

  “Oh? You didn’t need to hold off on my account.”

  “But I wanted to have breakfast with you.” He put his arm around the back of her chair. His cheek was smooth and smelled good. His eye glinted and he smiled as if he had a really good secret.

  “What I meant was, I could’ve gotten up earlier. I didn’t … sleep well last night.”

  He looked concerned, peering at her very seriously. He said, in a low undervoice, “Has something happened?”

  “No, no. It’s nothing.”

  “You don’t seem yourself.” That single eye, like some laser beam. What was that old TV show? Battlestar Galactica. The Cylons had a single red eye that pulsed and pulsed, just before they cremated you.

  “It’s nothing, really. Thank you,” she said to the young steward as he poured her coffee.

  “Well, if there’s anything I can do.”

  “You’ve done enough already,” she said quickly as she sipped. Seeing his bemused smile, she added, “Saving us and all.”

  “It was nothing,” he answered, the hero’s ultimate cliché. “Let me introduce you to the officers. I believe most of the ones you’ve met are still on duty.”

  Bell, Jaros, Baker, Kelly, a dozen others. Nice guys, easygoing, seemed competent; and all a bit familiar, she supposed from their having been around the ship. They appeared fond of the captain, but he was clearly The Old Man, alone at the top. Didn’t seem to mind.

  “What’s for breakfast?” she asked.

  “Steak and eggs,” Reade told her. “We prefer … simpler fare than what they eat in the passengers’ dining room. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Mind?” She unfolded her linen napkin and spread it over her lap. “Can I eat here every day?”

  He also unfolded his napkin. “If you like.”

  “That’d be very nice, ma’am,” Kelly said. Hmm, giving her the once-over. Her red T-shirt was on the tight side. She returned the favor and he let her, with a swagger.

  “Ma’am, how do you like your steak?” the steward asked Donna as he refilled her coffee cup. She had trouble understanding his accent, some kind of Rasta thing, African, she didn’t know.

  “Rare.” The steward nodded and brisked away. “That’s the only way to eat meat,” Donna said.

  Reade took his arm from around her chair and picked up the sugar bowl, offered it to her. She shook her head.

  “I eat it rare, too.” He put three heaping spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee, stirred. “So rare it’s practically raw. With the blood oozing …”

  “Juice,” Donna cut in, grinning. “Call it juice.”

  “Lots of juice, then. To your health.” He inclined his head as he drank his coffee. The others raised their cups in a toast.

  “And yours. You-all’s.” She sipped. Marveled at how well she was doing, considering that what she really wanted to do was mourn the loss of what she had never had.

  “Any word on the lifeboat?” she queried as a number of Stewards put steaks and fried eggs in front of each diner. Grilled tomatoes, how British. Sausages.

  The officers looked at each other, then at the captain, as though there were a tacit agreement among them that only he should discuss the subject.

  “Not so far.” He cut his meat with a very sharp knife, slashing it; blood dribbled around the perimeter of his eggs. “I must say, the passengers have been quite civilized about it, our using up their vacation this way. This is quickly becoming a cruise to nowhere.”

  He chewed lustily, talked with his mouth full. “There are such, you know, for people who are rather jaded about cruising. They’ve seen all the ports …” He snapped his fingers at the steward. “More marmalade,” he said harshly.

  “Aye, sir.” The steward scurried away.

  “So they just sail around in the ocean?” Donna finished for the captain.

  “Yes. To play and to feed. It’s astonishing how much we go through on a ship this size.”

  “ ‘To feed’?” Donna laughed. “You make them sound like horses!”

  “Or cattle,” Jaros offered. There was general laughter around the table.

  “Well, what are you going to do today?” Reade asked her, coming close again. “There are so many things to do. We have films, and video, and of course, there are dance lessons and lectures and cultural activities.”

  Cultural activities? God spare her. “I don’t know. Maybe go swimming.” She’d get a bottle and hole up in her room, cry and scream until she threw up.

  He slashed another bite of meat and chewed it thoughtfully.

  “What are you going to do today?” she asked him.

  He made an expansive gesture with his hand. “Keep things going. Show young Matt how to steer the ship.” He looked over his shoulder. “Keelhaul a certain steward for forgetting the marmalade.”

  Donna nodded sagely. “A capital offense.”

  His face hardened into a mask of anger that set her back in her chair. The single green eye narrowed, his nostrils flared; his lips pulled back from his teeth in a feral grimace. “On this ship, it is,” he said in a low, menacing tone.

  The others stopped eating. Tension rose in the air like hysteria. Jesus. Donna sat still, feeling out the situation. Her stomach tightened as he glared; not at her, she knew, but she couldn’t help her reaction.

  And then it was over. The captain picked up his knife and severed another chunk of meat, incising it from the bone. Quick, and neat, and deft. He brought it to his mouth and a droplet of … juice … vibrated on his lower lip.

  Everyone began eating again. Donna raised her brows and scooped egg and toast into her mouth. Damn. How bizarre.

  “Have the newspapers been calling the ship?” she asked, trying a new tack. “TV? My partner back home said they’re flooding the station with calls.”

  Reade shook his head. “We’ve moved out of range. There won’t be any more calls for a while. Incoming or outgoing.”

  “Really? But I talked to him just a couple hours ago.”

  “We’ve traveled quite a distance since then,” he replied. “We’re trying to find the lifeboat,” he reminded her.

  “When will we get back to a port?” she asked. “I only have a three-week vacation.”

  “Oh, you’ll make it.”

  She frowned. “But I need to—”

  His smile was firm. “You’re beginning to sound a bit like that van Buren woman, Ms. Almond.”

  Donna was flabbergasted. Speechless, for a moment, and then she said icily, “I really don’t think that was called for, Captain Reade.”

  He stood his ground, lifting his chin and pursing his lips together. “It’s just that you sounded remarkably unconcerned about the fate of those aboard the lifeboat.”

  He was right. She made a moue of apology. “Point well taken.”

  He raised his brows. Her stomach caught at the sight of the left one, peering above his eye patch. So to speak. But it reminded her of other hidden things behind it. “Oh, I wasn’t trying to score points off you, Ms. Almond.”

  “Donna, and I know.” For something to do, she grabbed a Danish and tore a section of it off. “It did sound pretty shitty.”

  His laughter burst out of him, a surprise. He scratched his chin and cupped it with his palm, leaning on the table as he regarded her.

  “You’re not the usual fish one catches out of the sea.”

  “I guess most cops like to think they’re pretty unique.”

  “And unpredictable?”

  “Oh, I think once you get to know me, I’m fairly predictable.”She popped the piece of Danish into her mouth.

  “You’re difficult to read, then. Very difficult. I’m having one hell of a time.”

  She posed. “That’s because I have a metal plate in my head. From Nam.”

  His mouth fell open. Christ, he believed her! She guffawed—Glenn called it braying, said she sounded like a donkey—and was about to tell him it was a joke when a bleary-eyed man in uniform appeared at the dining-room do
or.

  “Sir, the watch would like a word with you,” he said.

  The captain half rose from his chair. “The lifeboat, Hunt-singer?”

  “No, sir, nothing like that.”

  Reade sighed and touched his lips with his napkin. “I’m sorry.”

  Donna cut herself another piece of meat. “No problem. Thanks so much for inviting me.”

  “Perhaps we could do it again tomorrow?”

  She shrugged. “I’ll have to check my busy social calendar. Can I let you know later?”

  He shook his head in amusement. “Don’t forget to wait an hour before you swim. And watch out for sharks.”

  She gave him a mock-salute, which the other officers seemed pleased with, half-hidden smiles going around. Brother. Get a life, boys.

  You know of oysters, Cha-cha, how they lie panting in their iced half shells. Fresh, not rotted, you know when men swallow them, their hearts still beat, and they dissolve slowly, painfully, in stomach juices.

  These men must be our oysters, Cha-cha. And you must harvest them for me.

  Fresh.

  From his seat in the lifeboat, Cha-cha made a half salute and murmured, “Aye, sir.”

  “For God’s sake, what the hell are you mumbling about over there?” Mr. Saar demanded. His fingers stank of fish guts and blood; they’d devoured everything, even the eyes. One fish among sixteen was not enough, not nearly.

  Think about the Indianapolis, Cha-cha. She was in the Second World War. One thousand men aboard her, and they all went down. Some drowned. Oil fires raged for weeks.

  “Oh,” Cha-cha whispered, twisting his fingers around each other. “Oh, man.”

  Schools of sharks attacked them, Cha-cha. Ripped off their arms and legs and their heads, Cha-cha. Tore open their stomachs.

  Think about that, Cha-cha. The blood in the water. The bloodred water. And then think of Nam, and the Morris, and if only you’d known me then.

  “Oh, oh.” Tears welled in Cha-cha’s sunburned eyes. “Yeah, man.”

  “You’re always fucking mumbling and muttering.” Mr. Saar’s face was shriveled with sunburn; his arms swollen and covered with blisters. The other men were skulls painted red.

  “You crazy old bastard,” Eskimo said. “We ought to …” His eyes narrowed as he looked at the others. His teeth were yellow and sharp as a weasel’s, and his fingers were black talons. “We oughta throw your skinny ass overboard.”

  As one, they leaned forward, suddenly alert, suddenly cruel. Cha-cha swallowed and scrabbled into a corner at the stern, kicking a box of flares with his heel and tangling himself in a coil of line.

  Fear not, Cha-cha, I am with you.

  I will help you.

  Think of this, me hearty hardy: They are nothing but oysters. Blood-rare belly timber.

  All of them.

  All.

  Even your precious Officer Donna, and she is delicious.

  16

  Cracked in

  Four Places

  Alone, alone, all, all alone

  Alone on a wide, wide sea!

  And never a saint took pity on

  my soul in agony.

  John tiptoed onto the veranda of his and Matty’s suite (the Odysseus) and shut the sliding glass door behind him. The moon flamed as it set, bleeding through the water. John stared at it as his heart beat fast, faster, too fast. He bit his knuckle until he drew blood. It was always darkest just before the dawn.

  Yes, it was. It was pitch-black; you couldn’t see anything, black as a gunshot wound, as a grave hole, as the future without … without …

  The sobs burst out of him. He held his blazing stomach. His torso convulsed and his head missed the rail by a quarter of an inch as he fell to his knees and stuck his face between the slats.

  Matty was getting sick again. He didn’t need tests to tell him that. John had awakened and rolled over, and seen him, and it hit him all at once, really hit him for the really truly very first time, that his boy could die. Like a shaking slaughterhouse calf, he had come to the fact that there was something worse than chemotherapy, or radical surgery, or the whimpering of his child, too weak to cry. No one ever wanted it. When they said they wanted it to end, they meant the pain.

  No one wanted to die, ever. Least of all his baby.

  It was a punishment for daring to believe it was over. For going on a vacation out of reach of their medical safety net. The sin of pride, of daring to believe God’s hand didn’t fall on those in peril on the sea.

  “Oh, please. Please.” His glasses fell off his face and clattered on the tiled flooring. One hand clutching his stomach, he buried his face against his arm and lost track of words and prayers and sank into abject fear. Drowning in it. He couldn’t anymore, he couldn’t, couldn’t.

  Matty. Oh, Matty.

  He couldn’t.

  It was just a panic attack, he told himself, over and over. It wasn’t real. Night terrors. It was always darkest …

  He shook.

  He couldn’t give him up. He would never give him up. Oh, sweet Lord, sweet Jesus, please.

  He cried until he was out of tears, but not out of grief. Then he lay curled on the chill tiles, his glasses twisted beneath his side. His chest rose now and then with an exhausted sigh, like a dying fish.

  Matty. Matty. He reached for the bottom of the door, as if he could will himself through it and touch his son.

  The moon drowned. The sea oozed red, persimmon, chartreuse. It gleamed with silver, the underside of a rotten fish.

  Then the world shrank into a pinprick. His senses alerted him with a sudden, sure knowing that he was not alone on the balcony. Someone actually stood behind him, within the railing. Not Matt, though. He knew that as well. His child lay sleeping.

  It was John who was in danger. He felt it creeping through him like ice water. Something very wrong, menacing. Something that watched, and …

  … and wanted. It wanted something.

  The world spun on the head of a pin, a needle; John’s attention focused to a point at the back of his head. Somehow he knew he mustn’t look, mustn’t turn his head to look at it. That if he did …

  … what?

  Nonsense. He tried to roll over, or even to move his head, but he was paralyzed. His lips moved, but he could say nothing. Many thoughts rushed through his head: of fleeing, of confronting the intruder, of doing something to protect himself and his son.

  And another thought, that had begun before the feeling that he wasn’t alone, and that continued despite it: I will do anything, I will do anything, I will do anything.

  And another sure sense:

  Of the intruder replying, I know. “It is natural for men to indulge in the illusion of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren ‘til she transforms us into beasts.”

  Your Patrick Henry said that, John, Father John, and I am saying it to you now.

  And you are listening, Father John.

  You are all ears. And heart. And ripe for reeling in, yes, most ripe and ready.

  And Ramón, what do you want?

  What is your desire? What calls you to me?

  “Hey!” Ramón yelled again, pounding on the door of the dim cabin. He couldn’t believe they’d locked him up. What about you had to be proven guilty first? Chinga tu madre, Donna Almond. It was her fault, the bitch, for sticking her nose in his business.

  He wiped sweat off his forehead. He was worried. Hell, he was scared. They were going to get him no matter what Captain Esposito had promised. Pin the whole thing on him, boot him out of the merchant marine, damn it to hell, coño, macho, and probably throw him in prison. Real prison, not juvie. With fudge-packin’ bench-pressers and dudes who had nothing to lose.

  This would kill his mother.

  He got up and paced the cabin. The floor was dusty; there was the same poster of Guns N’ Roses on the plain white wall that one of the Ordinary seamen had had back on the Morris. A rack, and that was all
. Hard to believe there was spare cabins on this ship; he’d never been on a vessel before that wasn’t packed to the gills with freight and bodies.

  Where was someone with some food? He was starving. And he had to piss like a racehorse. Chingada.

  Hijo, he didn’t even know what had been in the barrels. Never had. He just untied the lines and rolled them overboard. He’d done it a dozen times, gotten the extra thousand a dozen times. Twelve thousand dollars, and now his ass was in a sling, hombre.

  He put his head in his hands. “Big man,” he could hear his mamacita taunting him. She would stand before him in her white ruffled apron, her hands on her hips, and shake her head at him: “Big man, you think you’re a big man now, Moncho?”

  Now that you’ve belonged to a gang?

  Now that you’ve been busted for drugs?

  Now that you’ve been arrested for breaking and entering?

  Now that your blood has trailed through your mother’s house, and the boy who knifed you lies in a coffin?

  Now that you have ruined your career with the merchant marine, and ruined your life, and broken your mother’s heart?

  Big man. You always wanted to be a big man, eh? Like some Viking warrior on those stupid movies of yours?

  Ah ha.

  17

  Red Sails

  in the Sunset

  The second day aboard the Pandora was almost over. The sun was a dark red ball that shimmered as it drowned.

  As she leaned against the rail of the Nereus deck, Donna let the sunset breezes waft through her hair. The water churned, dark green and orange, purple and scarlet, deep and unfathomable. Water, water, everywhere.

  Her gaze flicked now and then to the aerobics class on the far side of the varnished deck, separated from her by a pool tiled in blue and green; a scattering of men among mostly svelte women, although there were some real sad cases. A towheaded child in pj’s bouncing up and down with a teddy bear in her arms. Beyond, an impromptu group had gathered to dance to the taped music, Jump, jump, for my love. Bouncy, peppy stuff. Fuck you, cellulite, and the thighs you rode in on. Oh, and have a nice day.