Blood in the Water and Other Secrets

by Janice Law

  She couldn’t think why she’d done that. It didn’t make much sense, but it was the sort of thing that happened to her whenever she lost the thread. According to the attending psychiatrist, she was prone to self-dramatization and delusions, but Callie felt that phrasing was inaccurate as well as unkind. Rather, she had confusions, which she accounted for with little stories and explanations that sometimes, admittedly, got both her and other people into trouble.

  With the parasail ride, though, she would be doing something unusual and a little dangerous for real. She would be going out over deep water, which scared her, and also going high, which, Philip said, would give her a different view and a different perspective. Callie agreed that might be useful, and on Thursday afternoon she showed up at the beach, just as she’d promised Philip.

  With the harness attached, her life vest on, a multitude of instructions absorbed, Callie gripped the aluminum frame and took a last glance at Philip’s smiling face.

  “You’ll love it, kid!” he said encouragingly; oh, he was a good brother.

  The tow boat started up. Callie felt the tug as the sail caught the air, then she was being jerked across the sand and over the white, curling line of the surf, where she was lifted by the invisible air, caught by a mysterious current like the ones that had taken her to the store for duct tape and to the park for disaster.

  Faster than she’d imagined possible, Callie was high above the surf with panic in the wind. “Please, please stop,” she called, but the engine was too loud, and the boat was already beginning to throw a white wake as it bounced across the breakers near the sand bar. In a few minutes, the parasail was out where the blue in-shore water turns dark green, where there are sharks and dangers, and Callie had tears her eyes as she lurched against the wind. She couldn’t imagine why Philip had suggested this crazy stunt or why she had agreed.

  She’d fall, she knew she would; the tear line would snap, and, despite the harness and the straps and the frame, she’d plummet into the surf. Or the tow-rope would break and she’d be carried up on a thermal, wafted out to sea, and never be found again.

  Things were definitely escaping her, when Callie commanded herself to get a grip, to breathe and concentrate. She had to do that now sometimes. She had to breathe in and out and concentrate until the world came back into focus, as if she was a camera with a bad mechanism.

  The first thing was not to look down. Looking down was bad, emphasizing as it did, the great height and the dizzying surge of the waves and numerous possibilities for violent death. Whenever she looked down, Callie imagined dropping like a stone and being covered in water and never breathing air again.

  But she was better. It was clear she was better, and the proof came as she was dangling from the glider frame and remembered how to rise and fall. Yes! Straighten up and she rose; lean forward and the big sail visible above and ahead began to drop. Callie started to relax over the ocean, and by telling herself, breathe, breathe, breathe, she found that she’d gotten under control. Not, maybe, the surest control, but okay.

  There she was up a couple of hundred feet in the air, and she was okay with that, which meant she was definitely better, which was what Philip had wanted her to understand. I am someone who can go parasailing and not panic, she told herself, I am someone who can look into deep water and see the world from above and still hang on. That’s progress.

  Although her arms and shoulders were getting tired, Callie was not actually scared any more by the time they started back toward the beach. The boat was still quite far out, but the wind pushed her in toward the sand bar, visible at low tide as a long, pale streak in the water.

  As the shadow of her sail swept along the water, Callie saw children playing in the shallows, and several swimmers churning along in the deeper water between the shore and the bar. A fat man with a hairy chest bobbed on an air mattresses, and, strung out along the bar itself, visitors stood up to their knees in water, staring over the ocean.

  At the farthest end of the bar, just where there was a wide breach in the sand barrier, were two men with a woman about her own age, a blond in a red tankini. The two men were tanned, one with a lot of wet black hair and the other going bald; Callie saw a distinctive little patch of hair, as neat and geometric as a corporate logo, right on top of his head. You do get a different view from above, she thought; this was the different perspective Philip had wanted her to have.

  The trio in the water were splashing and laughing and having a good time, a real life ad for a Florida vacation, when suddenly one of the men pushed the woman in the red tankini, and the other lunged to grab her feet, creating a churning patch of white water.

  Far above, Callie caught another air current that swung her back out over the open water. Dangling under her glider, she was disturbed by the scene, alarmed, even, but more annoyed than worried: men, except for Philip, could be such boys! But when the boat brought her in closer to shore, she was quick to look back at where the trio had been frolicking in the surf. All Callie saw were the two men. The woman had disappeared.

  Of course, she would have been mad at them for pushing her like that, for frightening her, Callie thought. The woman would be swimming back to shore, and Callie strained her neck trying to spot her, but there was no one gliding through the water. Well, not a swimmer, then, the woman would be wading and probably struggling a bit through the deepening water, for the tide was turning. Callie twisted her head and tipped the frame, but there was no sign of anyone in red, no one.

  On the sandbar the two men were still standing, casually, as if nothing had happened, but Callie was sure that something had happened. The woman was gone, and the water was now up well over the men’s knees.

  She called down to the boat, waved one hand, tried to get the boatman to circle back, but her time was up, he was heading straight into the beach.

  Philip was waiting to see her land, a dicey business of watching the sand and coming down at a run. Callie wobbled and almost tripped, touched one side of the frame to the ground, but came to a stop unhurt.

  “You did great!” he called. “Fun, right? Was I right?”

  “Oh, Philip!” Her voice was a wail. “A woman’s disappeared. I think she was drowned in the water. They pushed her down and held her under.” As she struggled to get out of her harness, Callie saw Philip’s smile fade.

  “No, really, really,” she said and turned to the boatman, who had hopped out to help his assistant steady the sail. “Didn’t you see what happened?”

  The parasail operator, a short, stocky fellow with a marked accent and a lot of curly black hair, shook his head.

  “When we came in close to shore near the sand bar,” Callie said urgently, “right on the bar there were two men and a woman. Didn’t you see them? How could you have missed them?”

  The man gave her brother a look and shrugged. “I gotta focus on the boat, on keeping the ride smooth. I got no time to be looking at who’s playing in the water.”

  “They weren’t playing. I thought they were playing at first, yes, but they weren’t. One pushed her, one of the two men, and the other one held her under. I saw him grab at her feet, then there was a lot of splashing and white water.”

  Philip had a t-shirt which he put over her shoulders. “You better go get changed, Callie,” he said, looking uneasy and disappointed. “It’s easy to get burned over open water.”

  “I didn’t imagine it was anything. But I saw the splashing and then nothing,” she said. “The woman just disappeared. When we came back, she was gone. Completely. She was blonde and wearing a red tankini.”

  “So are you,” said Philip, and Callie could tell just what he was thinking.

  “I’m not making this up,” she said. “We have to go to the police or the lifeguards, at least to the lifeguards. We can ask them, if you don’t believe me. They were watching the water the whole time. They’ll have noticed if the woman in the red tankini swam back in, if she came out on shore, if she’s all right. Maybe they were just hors
ing around,” Callie said, trying to let him know she was being sensible and rational. “Maybe the angle I had, maybe that made it look worse than it was.”

  “I’m sure that was it,” said her brother. “I really hoped you’d get a little clearer perspective.”

  “Oh, I did, I did, Philip. I was frightened at first, but then I got used to it, and it was wonderful until the end, until they pushed her, until they drowned her. I know they did. We’ve got to go to the police.” Callie could hear her voice rising, could feel the day slip sliding away from Philip and the boat and the latest parasail customer to the pale streak of the sandbar and the woman wearing the red tankini.

  Philip drew her over to one side and spoke quietly. “You know what the police will say,” he said. “You know how they’ll react.”

  Oh, she did, she did know. She’d be in some computer, on some record somewhere; they’d know all about her, and yet you could be right and be doubted, just as easily as you could be wrong and be believed.

  “Then the lifeguards. It won’t take us long to go down and check with them. Please, please, Philip,” she said, and eventually, he nodded and drove her back to the parking lot at the other end of the beach, because she didn’t want to go alone.

  “I don’t know how you’ll find the right life guards,” he said when they reached the wide white sand with its skein of pastel colored guard huts. “The sand bar runs nearly the whole length.”

  “I’m trying to remember the color— was it lavender or green? The guard huts are all different. I think I caught a glimpse of lavender.”

  Philip said nothing but his expression was eloquent.

  “Well, I was looking at the sandbar, at the people, at those two men. I wasn’t paying attention to the guards!”

  “My point exactly,” said Philip, but Callie refused to give up. They slogged along the soft, hot sand from one station to another. At each, she asked about a woman, a blond woman, “about my age I’d guess, in a red tankini. Out on the bar with two men. Did you see her come back in? They pushed her into the water and held her down. Yes, yes, I saw it.” And she would explain about the parasail, about the view from above, about getting a new perspective, while Philip stood a few feet away looking sad and worried.

  Callie knew just what he was thinking— and the guards, too, for they insisted they’d seen nothing. Sure, they had been watching the sand bar area, but they’d had no reports of a problem. “You’re getting one now,” Callie said. “I’m reporting a problem,” and so on until the guards would ask if she could pick out the two men. Were they on the beach? And if not, what did she expect the life guards to do?

  Then Philip would tell her she’d done all she could, and they’d move on, over his protests, to the next post, where the questions would start all over again. The beach was half deserted by the time they reached the last possible hut and began the trek back along the access road between rows of beach plum. Callie was in tears, walking fast, head down, full of bad thoughts and the sort of confused misery that had marked the last, bad stage in her development.

  “Come on, Callie, admit you were wrong. They were just horsing around. Who would drown someone on a public beach in high season?” Philip asked. “You did the right thing, but let it go. Come on, I’ll buy you lunch. A late lunch, how’s that?”

  “I want a drink,” she said.

  “Yes, and a drink, too,” he said, though early drinking was normally something he discouraged.

  There was already music coming from the waterside restaurants when they arrived at the familiar stretch of cafés, restaurants, and clubs. Philip and Callie sat at a sidewalk table and ate big salads and drank white wine and listened to a keyboard man and a percussionist who would have been too loud indoors but were about right with sound of the traffic and the crowded sidewalk.

  “I feel I should do more,” she said. “I feel I should call the police.”

  “Callie…”

  “No, look, it’s reasonable. I saw— well, I think I saw— someone killed. All right, I know, I know, I was high up, but that’s the thing, Philip,” she said, leaning forward. “Don’t you see— they didn’t think to look up. The way the light was, the shadow of the sail was much further out. They never looked up. They thought they were invisible. They didn’t see me.”

  “That may be true, but Callie, would you recognize any of them again?”

  She shrugged and poured herself another glass of white wine and thought they’d have another bottle. She wanted, she needed, to get her head in a better place altogether. “She was blond,” she said.

  “Thanks to good hairdressers, so is half the city.”

  “And the men were tall. One had long dark hair. And the other was going bald. In a quite distinctive way.”

  “Great,” said Philip. “Look around you.” He waved his hand toward the street, the other tables, where, admittedly, there were tall, dark men and balding men and a couple, at least, who looked plausible. “What good will that do the police? And Callie, it will only get you into difficulties. You do know that, don’t you?”

  She did, absolutely, but she couldn’t leave the topic alone. As she began to feel more and more irritable and depressed, Philip urged her to go home.

  “You’ll feel better in the morning,” he said, but Callie contrived to quarrel with him. She wanted to stay downtown, to walk under the trees, to lie on the sand, to dance in a noisy club, to get very drunk. She was better, yes, she was, but she’d had a bad day, a terrible day, she needed to relax.

  Eventually Philip gave up, and much as she loved him, Callie was glad to see him go. Philip was big on new perspectives, but he wasn’t always much fun. After he left, Callie wandered along the street. She had a drink with a visiting German and told him the whole story over a couple bottles of Red Stripe, but he only understood half of it.

  “I’m telling you, they pushed her under, they drowned her,” she said, loudly enough for the nearest dozen tables to hear. When he laughed and pawed her arm, Callie put down change for a tip and left.

  She stopped outside a club where she could hear the loud thump, thump, thump of Miami, the kind of beat that accelerates your heart, just what she needed. And when she saw the man with the baseball cap, the same man who’d been in the restaurant— she thought it was the restaurant, but maybe it was the bar with the dumb tourist— she smiled, because she liked chance meetings. Seeing the same people passing in the street or sitting near her in cafés gave her a friendly feeling, as if the whole city were out in search of a good time.

  The man caught her glance, winked, and gave a little wave; he’d noticed her, too, and Callie smiled again. She was sure he could dance; she was sure he could just by looking at him.

  Inside the club, lights flickered off the walls and ceiling, spattering the floor with shadows, changing the shape of the world, providing a different perspective. Thunder from the drums, the thin, rainy tish, tish sound of cymbals; Callie moved her arms, moved her hips. The man in the baseball cap was right with her, dancing in front of her, behind her, showing off fancy moves until they pranced out into a treed courtyard where there was an open air bar. Ambulating toward the drinks, Callie thought that you didn’t need a parasail to get a different view. You did not. This struck her as funny and she started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” the man asked.

  She shook her head and waved the question away. He brought her a drink and one for himself. Rum based, very strong, but when she was in one of her moods, Callie had a high tolerance for alcohol.

  “I’m getting a different perspective,” she said. “From the one I had earlier today. When I was gliding over the beach.”

  Right away, he was interested in that, more interested than Philip or the parasail operator or the indifferent and complacent lifeguards. “You should tell me all about it,” he said, and she told him some of it.

  Then Callie said, “I want to dance,” and she went back to the floor, leaving her drink on a table.

  Th
ey danced a long time, mostly together, though Marcus, that was his name, Marcus with the Yankee cap, had to make a phone call at one point, and Callie moved out alone on the packed floor and collected new perspectives.

  Late, very late, Marcus said he had to leave. He and a friend had a boat, a big powerboat, and they were supposed to head to the Keys in the morning.

  “That’s now,” said Callie, “it’s morning now.”

  “So I have to leave,” Marcus said. “Can I drive you home first? Or maybe you’d like to see our boat? It’s really beautiful. A beautiful boat for a beautiful lady.”

  “I’d rather dance some more,” Callie said.

  “No, no, the boat,” he said.

  And she laughed and said dancing, but they both knew she’d go to the boat.

  “We can dance on the boat,” he said and that settled it.

  Callie had only a hazy notion of the drive to the marina, where Marcus led her to a powerboat large enough to be called a yacht. The tide was changing, and the boat shifted gently on the swell. The vessel had several decks, and it was as gleaming white as porcelain.

  “Wow, some boat,” she said.

  “The cabins are beautiful,” Marcus said. “You want to see them?”

  Callie shook her head. “I can’t stand being below in boats. I’ve got to be on deck.” She saw a ladder leading to the top deck and climbed up. There was an oblong stretch of fine, varnished teak, furnished with the nicest deck chairs. Callie flopped down in one and looked up at the sky, dark and orange tinged toward the city, but already graying out over the Atlantic. The breeze was damp and cool. Marcus climbed up to find out where she was. “Okay?” he asked.

  “I’m going to lie here and get a new perspective,” she said.

  But really what she did was to fall asleep until the pale, early light woke her. Slate colored clouds were visible to the east, and the city was a thin gray and pink line to the west. They were at sea, and down below on the main deck, some man, not Marcus, was saying something about getting going. He seemed to be anxious and in a hurry.