Dead in the Water

by Nancy Holder

  On a raised platform behind the aerobics class, two Asian men performed tai-chi exercises. Their faces were dark in the twilight, but serenity was evident in their sliding, meditative movements.

  Donna had on her red dress, and she was lonely, but she was sending out the signals smart men set their band widths to monitor: Don’t look at me, don’t approach me, don’t speak to me. She was thinking about Glenn, and how bitterly ironic the music was as it bopped along, a mindless counterpoint to the mindless, numbing dirge inside her. A private soundtrack that made the blues sound like Paula Abdul. She flashed on a piece of gallows humor. At least now maybe she could really sing out the pain. Get those gigs in this tight red dress. Maybe her guts hurt enough …

  No. She clamped down hard and the walls slid up; and she felt … foggy. Odd, how she could accomplish that. Big name for it was disassociation, happened to abused kids; that was how psychos and multiple personalities got born. The pain was so bad they made someone else feel it.

  My heart has an ache …

  She watched the exercises, the tai-chi men, and her mind wandered. Saw the Tahoe boy, pondered those stupid what-ifs: if Glenn had been there; if Daniel had slept through it; if she’d had one less drink and hadn’t picked him up in the first place. If she hadn’t fallen—

  —been pulled—

  —down the embankment back into that freezing water. Little boy, little boy, is there a heaven and do you spiral through it?

  Her mind shut out the questions, floated on. Christ, what now? Was she supposed to date? It took so much effort to be nice to somebody you didn’t know. Sometimes she just didn’t know how. Cops were generally emotionally retarded; they all acted so childish because they didn’t know how to behave like grown-ups, except in emergencies.

  Except then.

  A tall blond man glanced her way. She cranked up her repulso ray. Let her guard down now, she’d end up with a sympathy fuck, and he was probably some slime like Daniel.

  My heart … heavy as stone.

  Okay, so fuck a known quantity, Donna. Mentally she shook her head. John was nice, but like her, he had someone else on his mind. The captain was interesting, but he just wasn’t right. The ego there was monumental, and she felt every time she talked to him she was dealing with the proverbial seven-second delay. Earth to Cap’n Reade, breaker, breaker, c’mon?

  So. So that left the sun going down, and Donna trying to get up the energy to buy herself a drink.

  An ache.

  The sky was a neon rainbow, orange and turquoise and purple. So beautiful. Such an adventure, the Morris, the lifeboat, this. But now she felt isolated from it, like a widow, the perpetual spectator. When she got back to San Diego, things would be very different.

  But at least she could go back. At least she hadn’t died at sea. She smiled dryly, thinking what Glenn would retort to that: “Yeah, I wept because I had no hat. Then I met a broad who had no head.”

  Her darling smartass. Oh, her man, her man, she loved him so.

  She wanted to toss some flowers into the water. That’s what they did at a funeral at sea, didn’t they?

  And how thick is our sense of melodrama today, Officer?

  She sighed and leaned her head in her hands. Maybe she’d go buy that drink. Maybe she’d

  jump, jump, overboard for my love

  “What?” She straightened quickly and looked around for the joker. Paused. It must have been a glitch on the tape, somebody mouthing off.

  “Oh, one of the Morris people,” she heard someone say, in a voice tinged with awe. Two old ladies sauntered along, towing an elderly man in a golf cap. He shuffled awkwardly. Stroke victim. God, she’d never want to go through that. When she went, she wanted to go quickly. Not like the boy, though. Not unnecessarily. Not ’cuz of being stupid.

  And he hadn’t gone quickly. Oh, no. Drowning took a good while. Had taken.

  A quartet of young Japanese men took pictures of each other, of the American chicks making it burn in spandex. Their enthusiasm was endearing as one of the girls waved at them in midhop and they laughed and waved back. Life goes on, don’t it, Kemo Sabe?

  That it does. That it does. She wrapped her hands around the rail and stretched her back, lifting her face to the red sun. The seas spewed behind the ship in an impressive display, misting her face. She ran her tongue around her mouth and caught up the salt.

  Life goes on, and the parade passes you by, sometimes. Such a beautiful night, and so much romance in the air.

  With a sigh, she left the deck and took the elevator to the next deck down, the Amphitrite deck, intending to nose in the ship’s boutiques. But after she got off the elevator, it occurred to her she had no idea who or what Amphitrite was, and she didn’t even have the slightest idea how to pronounce it. That pissed her off, in her current mood. She didn’t like feeling rejectable on any grounds, and she’d never ascribed to the idea that ignorance could be an attractive trait in a woman.

  She stomped over to the nearest ship’s map, done up like an unfurled scroll with Greek designs at the top and bottom, and located the library. It was close by. Good.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  Donna looked up from Flotsam: A Maritime Encyclopedia of Trivia.

  The captain perched on the arm of her brown leather sofa. She’d kicked off her shoes and curled her feet underneath her, realizing for the first time that they’d gone to sleep.

  “Hey, it’s your ship.”

  He smiled. “Aye, that it is.” He craned his neck and scanned the page she was on. “Ah, you’re reading ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’ ” She nodded. “What do you think?”

  She decided she might as well be honest. “I don’t like it much. A lot of the rhymes sound forced. And he just keeps throwing more and more stuff in.”

  “Oh? Such as?”

  “The woman. This Life-in-Death person he says was on the other ship. What’s she there for?”

  He looked at her strangely. Okay, she was dumb. So sue her. For every penny she had, she added wryly, thinking of Elise van Buren-Hadley.

  “She’s the one who curses the mariner,” he said. “She invents his punishment. She was gambling with Death for his fate.”

  Donna considered that. Didn’t get it. “So either he could die, or sail around forever?”

  He inclined his head; she couldn’t see his features. “Yes, with a dead crew.”

  Donna frowned. “Then what about the Spirit? The one he pissed off when he shot the albatross?”

  The captain licked his lips. A bead of sweat formed at his temple. Interesting.

  “His … strong emotion,” he said, as if he were having difficulty speaking. His eye took on a faraway gleam. “It calls the Spirit.”

  “Well, so like …” She wiggled her feet. Caterpillers crawled up her insteps. She thought about an old Star Trek episode, where a creature fed on the emotions of the crew and made them all fight with each other. Cops as a rule loved science fiction shows. She had no idea why.

  “It will give him what he wants …” And he was gone, somewhere else. Donna watched his face. A muscle jumped in his cheek and the sweat bead popped and slid underneath his eye patch. Eeuu.

  But that wasn’t what the poem said, she wanted to point out, decided against it. She waved her hand. “I see. I get it now. Thanks.” She flicked the pages. “I was looking through this, and just got to reading it because John and Ruth were reciting it on the Morris.”

  “Ah,” he said. A curious smile wiped away his dreamy stare. “They are the poets.”

  “I guess.”

  “I’m not much for that poem, either,” he went on companionably. “I prefer the exploits of Odysseus.”

  “Golden fleece?” she ventured.

  He chuckled. “That was Jason. No, Odysseus was the one who wandered over land and sea for decades. He was a great sailor, a godlike captain.”

  He sat straight and raised his chin. Saw faraway things she could only guess at: the great, godlike Capt
ain Reade, on a quest fraught with fabulous dangers.

  Donna snapped her fingers. “He was the one who tied himself to the mast so he could hear the … the mermaids.”

  His features softened, and he said, almost in a whisper:

  “ ‘I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

  I do not think that they will sing to me.’ ”

  He jerked, hard, paled.

  “Who said that?” she asked, probing. God, was he mental? He made no response. “Captain?”

  “Odysseus,” he murmured. Then he added slowly, “No. No, that was someone else.” To her surprise, he took the book from her and slapped it shut.

  “That was Mr. T. S. Eliot, and it’s too lovely an evening to coop yourself up in here, like Penelope at her loom. I’m on my rounds. Would you like to accompany me?”

  She frowned slightly. Damn it, she wanted to finish reading the book. She held her hand out for it. “I’d like to take that to my stateroom, if that’s okay with you. And yes, thanks, I’d like to accompany you.”

  She rose, her hand outstretched. He rose, too, clasping the book against his chest. They faced one another. Incredibly, it seemed he was warring with her for possession of the book. Well, fuck you, she thought stubbornly. She knew how to care for nice things.

  “Captain? The book?” she pressed.

  Saying nothing, his lips pursed, he handed it to her.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  First they walked along the outer decks. The wind riffled his hair, and as he looked out to sea, she studied him. She wondered how old he was, and why he just didn’t strike her as genuine. He could be a real charmer, then in a flash turn into a tyrant. He liked people to kowtow to him, pay him compliments. She observed the way he puffed his chest when the other passengers stopped and chatted, fawning over him. How he snapped at the crewmen, making her wait while he berated a young Asian man in a navy jumpsuit because he didn’t squeeze his mop hard enough.

  “Do that again, and you know what’ll happen,” Reade threatened him. Donna wanted to ask him, what? Would he keelhaul him? Make him walk the plank?

  The poor kid bowed and scraped and scurried off like some kind of water bug, mop and bucket slamming together at his hip.

  Reade took his hat off and ran his fingers through his hair. “It weighs me down, sometimes. All this responsibility.”

  “Ah,” she said noncommittally. Mothers who smacked their kids around sometimes told her the same thing.

  Above them, a large bird wheeled through black, tumbling night clouds; its wings cut the moon into silhouettes of pointed fingers. It cawed and perched atop the stack, then fluttered upward and hovered as if observing them.

  “I didn’t know you could get birds so far out,” she said, then realized she didn’t know how far out they were.

  “This ship is my world,” he said, not hearing her. His eyes were on the bird. His voice grew dreamy, distracted. “The years sail by us, and we stay in the same place.” He paused. “Or so it seems.”

  “A captain without a ship is like a fish without a bicycle.”

  “Just so,” he said with a quick smile as he continued to watch the bird. It cocked its head and chittered like a monkey.

  “A ship is born with a soul, and her master must learn her heart. He must learn if she is tender, or if she is stable; he must know how she does in following seas. He must know if she wants to dive. He must learn how her engines do, and if her boilers are good-natured; he must learn if she is fearful, or wrathful, in the gale. All this he must know, and that is why he is called the master.”

  “That’s nice,” she said. “Who wrote that one?”

  The bird screeched and flew away. Reade rubbed his hands together and crossed them over his chest. “Wrote it? I just made it up.”

  “Oh.” She was impressed.

  They walked on, saying little. After checking the promenades, he took her through the empty dining room, and the busy kitchens, the shops, still open; the spa, the infirmary.

  Then he led her down the bowed companionways past innumerable unmarked doors to one he selected without hesitation. Once through it, they stood in a space that reminded Donna of an airlock in a science fiction movie. He pushed a button and a door slid open; behind it gleamed the steel box of an elevator.

  “We’re going to the bridge,” he explained.

  They went up. The doors opened on a large, square room dominated by a series of flat metal control panels laden with digital readouts and a bank of windows looking out on the dark water. Five or six uniformed men bent over screens or wrote on clipboards; one man spoke into a telephone receiver. They snapped to and saluted as they sighted the captain.

  He held the salute for a moment, snapping his wrist, said, “As you were.” They relaxed.

  “Evening, sir. Miss,” said a tall man Donna recognized. Through force of habit, she checked his name tag. Lorentz Creutz.

  “How does she run?” Reade asked.

  “Like a dream, sir.” The man bit off the words, raising his chin as he gazed levelly at Reade.

  Reade stared back without blinking. Almost in a drone, he said, “Even a young ship holds many masters in her hull of many hulls; in her staterooms and holds, the captains of a hundred ships live on. And now and then, when their souls are strongest, they long for what they’ve lost, not their lives, but their commands.” His eye blazed. “It’s a fierce, good thing, to be the master.”

  Creutz thrust forward his jaw, turned on his heel and walked away. Reade chuckled.

  “He’s a hot one, that. But I’ve tamed him.”

  Donna blinked, said nothing. What could she say?

  A few moments later, Creutz returned, dragging a wooden captain’s chair beside a more comfortable-looking office chair. “Madam,” he invited, gesturing for her to sit.

  “Thank you,” she said as Reade stepped in front of him and made a show of bending over the back of it, as if there were somewhere to scoot her to. She knew he was peering down her front. Damn dress.

  “I have some business to attend to,” Reade said. “I’ll be a few minutes. Enjoy the view.” He gestured at Creutz.

  Donna settled in and tapped the book. “Thanks. Maybe I’ll read.”

  Reade hesitated, then inclined his head. He sure was hung up about the damn thing. Grinning, she opened it randomly as the two men walked toward the other side of the bridge.

  But the sight of the lights on the deck below was magical. The lines were illuminated for the night, and the crow’s nest was like a little crown of diamonds high in the darkening sea sky. People chatted and milled around the pool; others danced. Tiki torches around the perimeter burned and smoked.

  Dark gray shadows lurked on either side of the water—something under the surface? Whales? She turned to ask Reade.

  But he was staring at charts and printouts, speaking to them in sea talk about degrees and millimeters and knots. They responded in kind, garble-garble.

  She sat back and looked for a few more seconds at the deck. Then she settled back and flipped the pages of the book.

  Something caught her eye. She stopped. There was a listing for a Creutz, Lorentz. A drawing that resembled the man on the bridge. What, was he famous? She raised the book closer to her eyes, compensating for the low light, and—

  Reade slipped into the chair beside her.

  “Sorry,” he said. She shrugged and shut the book. She’d check it out later.

  Stars peeked out from layers of gray on gray. Almost as they watched, the sky blackened and the diamonds glittered. Donna found herself thinking of ice, and she shivered, suddenly uneasy. Ice, what was there about ice that could bother her?

  The Titanic hit an iceberg, she thought. The sucker cut a gash in its side like a can opener. The bisque doll’s head lolled at the bottom of the sea inside her mind. She shook herself and listened to the captain.

  “The stars are clear and bright tonight, aren’t they?” he asked. “You can see the sky voyagers. I’m
an Ophicus. The astrological calendar is actually comprised of thirteen signs. Did you know that? That was discovered some time ago, but no one’s bothered to get it right. This era is so lazy.”

  “You don’t believe in astrology,” she said with faint dismay.

  “Oh, I’m quite the occultist,” he replied. He cocked his head at her. “I think you’d be surprised how valid it is in our situation. I mean, in this day and age,” he added. “People think of the occult as some medieval nonsense, but there’s really a lot to it.”

  “Like 666 and that?”

  “Oh, that’s Satanism, not occultism,” he said seriously. “I’d never make a pact with the devil.”

  “That’s reassuring,” she said dryly.

  “I’d never jeopardize the Pandora that way,” he went on, and she wasn’t sure he was joking. “I carry precious cargo.” He leaned toward her with a smile. “Would you like something? A drink? Some champagne?”

  “Oh, please …”

  “No trouble. That’s what the crew are for.” He chuckled. “Oh, yes, that’s what they’re for.” He raised a hand.

  A man Donna hadn’t noticed before glided silently toward him. He inclined his head and for a moment she thought he was the same steward who’d walked her to the captain’s cocktail party. He bore a close resemblance, but it was a different man.

  “Champagne,” he said, and checked for her agreement. Nifty.

  “Yes,” she said. What had happened to her bottle on the Morris? And the fake bottle, with the thong in it? It seemed like years since she’d left Long Beach.

  “At once, sir.”

  The man glided away. Reade said offhandedly, “Being the captain of a vessel like this is sometimes like being a country squire.” His smile grew. “Or maybe even Odysseus.”

  “Must be nice.”

  “Oh, it is.”

  Behind them, something made a beeping noise and something else clanged. A man spoke into the telephone and said something about degrees lat and long. The helm was nothing more than a joystick, and that was disappointing. She’d expected some kind of wheel, not brass and wood, to be sure, but something more dramatic.

  The captain moved his chair closer to hers, but she barely registered it. She rested her cheek on her fist and gazed at the stars. Astrology and astronomy both were beyond her. She never saw the silhouettes of bears or bulls or archers. What she saw was what was there: a pile of stars. Beautiful in their own right, and no need to gussy them up with mysticism.