by Kim Hornsby
She took a ribbon out of her nightstand drawer and tied it around Obi’s collar. She was willing to try anything that would help her identify reality from this weird dream life that appeared to be stalking her. After the ribbon was fixed on Obi’s leather collar, she lowered her head cautiously to the pillows. The bed did not feel like her sanctuary anymore. Her place of solace had turned against her.
***
Jamey sat up in bed. Something was wrong. He’d been dreaming—just something frivolous about running around with the twins at the top of the Seattle Space Needle. This heaviness had nothing to do with a silly dream of his daughters. It was as if the premonition interrupted his dream with a singular thought, a sense of danger, nothing more tangible. Still, he had to make sure his daughters, his only responsibility in the whole world, were safe.
Pops picked up on the second ring. “Hey, kid, it’s 4:30, your time, and besides, isn’t it kind of early to be phoning a retiree?” His dad’s voice had a measure of concern mixed with curiosity.
“I know you need all the beauty sleep you can get, Pops, but I just woke with a funny feeling, like dread.”
“Nothing happened here, son.” The gravelly words on the other end reassured Jamey that all was well in Carnation, Washington.
Jamey didn’t want to disturb Carrie and the kids so early when all he had was a feeling. Carrie had had enough of his “crazy feelings” for a lifetime of worry. He scratched his face, his morning beard bristly. “Did Uncle Don ever feel like this?” Jamey needed to hear it was normal, or as normal as possible for someone like him.
“Donny didn’t have the full gift you have. I don’t recall him specifically talking about this, but he didn’t tell me everything. Remember, everyone wakes with bad feelings from time to time, son.” Pops always knew what to say and how to say it. Talk about gifts.
“I’ve had it before, coming out of a bad dream jump. Only this time, I wasn’t jumping.” Jamey opened the patio door and stared at the dark beach below him. The wind had died to leave an after-storm gentleness, a reprieve.
“If you think it has meaning, stay sharp.” Pops had good reason to worry. Don’s tragic death, years before, had left him anxious about his son, especially now that he was using crazy abilities against war criminals. He’d told Jamey this many times.
“Can you check on the girls for me?”
“I’d be happy for an excuse to go over. I’ll let Carrie make me coffee. Don’t forget, you’re supposed to be enjoying Maui, so don’t go getting all analytical about stuff while you’re on vacation, y’hear?”
Too many times in the last few months Jamey wished he knew someone like him who jumped into dreams. Having someone to share these anomalies would be invaluable. But as far as he knew, no one had the ability. Not even Uncle Don had everything he had. His paternal grandmother was rumored to be a dream reader, but only her husband was privy to the secret before she passed on, and now they were both gone. At the time Jamey joined Sixth Force to dream jump for his country, the army was desperate to have him on their team, knowing of no one else who entered dreams. They’d claimed that what Jamey could do and see in a dream was exceptional to anything they already had on the Force. Not only could he read emotions from across a room but he had the mysterious ability to insert himself into a subject’s dreams and participate. Having always felt like a freak, Jamey was seduced by the army’s need for his talent. With words like “brilliant”, “amazing” and “hero” he got used to being a celebrity within the Force even if he never had contact with the other members--only the support team and doctors knew who he was, and they referred to him as Freud.
Lying back in bed, Jamey was lonely for the first time in a long while. Not for love. He was used to that. But lonely for someone who understood the bizarre twist in his existence—someone who could understand and accept him as he was.
Chapter 5
When Tina came around the corner of the dive shop, she looked like shit. Her eyes were puffy and her face was drawn in an expression Jamey didn’t recognize. He and Dave were hoisting tanks into the truck for the morning charter. The roster was not full and Jamey’d been asked to join the Molokini run. He had a new underwater Nikonos camera and got some amazing shots of an eagle ray on the dive yesterday. Already he had plans to make posters for the twins’ ocean-themed bedroom. If he didn’t go back to Afghanistan, he’d bring the girls to Maui for a few weeks in the summer, snorkel the calm bays, buy them puka shell necklaces, and make sandcastles...
“Good morning, everyone,” Tina addressed the four customers. “It’s windy out there but no worse than yesterday, and we had a fantastic dive inside Molokini Crater. Underwater, it is nice and calm.” She nodded at Jamey. “Just bumpy on the crossing.” She clapped her hands together. “Let’s go diving.”
Tina sounded like a camp counselor Jamey would gladly follow anywhere. But behind the façade, he could tell she was sick, tired, or hung over. Her skin had a strange tinge of grayness and her smile was forced.
“You coming?” he whispered privately.
Tina nodded without looking at him and his feeling of dread intensified. Did his premonition have something to do with Tina? If so, he wanted to be on that boat. He’d claim sea-sickness to stay with her topside. It wasn’t worth diving if something was about to happen to Tina.
***
On Tina’s last scuba dive before the anxiety overshadowed her passion, she’d led a group of four beginners in Kapalua Bay. After motioning for everyone to surface, she’d lied that something stung her and they needed to get out of the water. But it was the vision of Hank’s decomposing body that made her shoot to the surface that day, his flesh rotting off the bone, his sunken eyes, and his black hair covered in a brown film.
Only later, when she couldn’t forget the gory apparition, did she wonder if her subconscious was trying to tell her that all hope of Hank’s desertion was foolish. He was dead. Gone.
And now she was about as good with a group of divers as a first timer. Worse—beginners didn’t see dead bodies and then have crippling anxiety attacks in the ocean.
Over the last months, both Dave and Sally had attempted beach dives with her, but when she sank below the surface, things always went wrong. Each time, Tina would feel an overwhelming urge to shoot to the top, desperate to get out of the water. And the risk of surfacing too quickly became the problem. If Tina didn’t remember to exhale the whole way up, she was flirting with a fatal air embolism. “Second rule of diving, remember?” Sally had warned repeatedly. “As slow as your bubbles,” Dave yelled at her.
“It’s easy for you. You don’t see a decomposing body. And when I do, I don’t remember the rules of diving.” Funny thing was that even on the surface, with her regulator out of her mouth, she still couldn’t get enough air.
***
Distraction and worry shadowed Tina as she backed the boat trailer into the water at Maalaea. Sally was still out sick and Dave wasn’t looking much better. If Dave was drinking again, she’d be pissed. That kind of self-inflicted illness was worrisome, but she really needed her dive instructor right now. She had hundreds of dollars in front of her and a reputation to maintain. The dive must go now that the wind had lost some power. Molokini was one of the only dive sites with any worthwhile visibility, so it was that or nothing. She parked the truck and trailer and met Jamey at the dock. “Dave’s not feeling well,” she told him, “so we might need to pick up the slack.”
“You driving the boat?” he asked.
“Yup.”
“Don’t you dive anymore?”
“I do, but not today.” Should she feign sickness to avoid questions? He was staring at her in analytical silence. It always annoyed her when he did that. He didn’t have that right anymore.
“I’m too tired to dive today.” He continued staring. “Bad dreams.” Did he know she was a widow? Or that the body was unrecovered? Tina reminded herself to avoid looking into Jamey’s face when she said stuff like this. He’d always b
een able to read her moods too well.
Jamey extended his hand to help the single nurses from Chicago onto the boat and Tina wondered if twenty-five-year-old nurses were attractive to forty-year-old Jamey. Of course they would be. Look at him. And Jamey was a wonderful flirt. His charm went a long way. She’d been a victim of it herself, long ago.
It was almost embarrassing to watch the nurses doing the conversational courtship dance around Jamey, displaying their feathers and strutting. Giggling. And Jamey was funny too.
Dave untied the boat from the dock while Jamey joked about wearing his dive mask for the boat ride. Feeling envious of their frivolous mood, she tried to concentrate on something else like how much money from this charter, she would direct towards her debt.
“Hang on, everyone.” Easing the throttle forward, they set out in the direction of Molokini. All eyes were on the small, crescent-shaped crater as they zoomed across the wavy plain to the dive site. Once Jamey anchored and geared up, he said he’d hang back with Tina, but she gave him an incredulous look that hopefully cut him to the quick. Again, he was the last to leave the boat as the customers descended into the blue expanse.
“Try to get in a nap while we’re gone,” he said before he fell backwards over the side.
What? Did he think they were all suffering because she was tired? Her brow wrinkled in anger. After switching on the CB radio, she asked Katie if Doc Chan had returned her call.
“Not yet.”
It was only 8:20. “Is that octopus still in the aquarium?” Dave was supposed to bring it. She’d asked him several times. Or had she only dreamed that?
“The octopus is looking at me right now and I’ll tell you what, it’s kinda freaky because his eyes follow you all over the room and you feel like he’s alive. Well, he’s alive, but you know? It feels like he knows what I’m doing and is watching me. Freaky.” Katie was losing the battle against unnecessary conversation.
When Dave’s head broke through the surface five minutes later, Tina was puzzled. He’d left the customers on the bottom, a big no no. “What’s up?!” she called.
Dave spit out his regulator and ripped off his mask. “I’m going to blow chunks.”
Tina could see the wavy colors of paying customers twenty feet below with no licensed instructor. If Dave couldn’t dive, they were screwed. Jamey couldn’t legally lead the dive. She had to get her butt in that water. Fast.
Dave yelled, “I might be able to follow them on top, but I can’t dive like this.” He turned his head and vomited on the ocean’s surface. Fish immediately raced in to feed.
This was the moment she’d been dreading—the one where she had to dive again, regardless of how terrified she was. “Keep your eye on them.” She slid into a set of gear. Gotta do it. She grabbed an eight-pound weight belt, a mask and fins and jumped in up-current from the floating bits of vomit and the feeding frenzy it created. If she couldn’t do this dive, she’d either die trying, or kill her customers. Or both.
Tina popped the regulator in her mouth and as she dropped below the surface and descended, she swung the weight belt around her hips and fastened her mask and fins. A speedy descent was necessary, especially because the nurses were newly certified beginners. Clearing her mask of water, she then equalized the pressure in her ears. Alternately buckling her BCD jacket and clearing her ears, she looked down to the group below her feet. The sight of Jamey provided momentary relief from her nervousness as she approached the ocean floor. So far so good, but then descending had never been her problem. Staying under was the challenge.
Landing on the sandy bottom, she made the hand signal that she would lead and everyone else would follow. Under normal conditions it felt glorious to be wet and underwater, especially after a long hiatus, but Tina knew what came next. If she couldn’t keep her panic under control, she wouldn’t be able to pull this off. She gave them the wave for ‘let’s go,’ and the group followed her to a nearby coral head that was filled with moray eel hiding spots. Turning to swim backwards, she verified everyone was following and saw Jamey’s gaze fixed on her. There was a familiarity in being underwater with Jamey, and as they gathered around the rock, she tried to concentrate on that instead of waiting for Hank’s decomposing body to present itself.
Jamey was in a perfect horizontal position, the nurses directly in front of him. Years ago, Jamey had told her that he was a butt man. “Kristina, it’s worth the price of admission to dive behind that cute little behind of yours,” he’d smirked. Jamey was entertaining himself by diving behind the nurses.
No eels lurked in the coral head. She had to find something else to make the dive worth the money. Especially before she freaked out and ruined the day. They continued on, her swimming backwards to watch the group, and once again she tried to concentrate on Jamey.
He had a perfect kick with those extra-large fins. Only divers with extremely strong, muscular legs could pull that much water. She recalled those very legs wrapped around her during their most intimate moments. Once, with Hank, when she’d lain in bed after barely adequate sex, she’d thought about Jamey’s sexual finesse and quickly chastised herself for mentally rating her lovers. Hank had chosen to stay with her, marry her. Jamey hadn’t. His love came with a price. Desertion. Still, it was hard to forget that James Dunn made love like every second could be his last, getting the absolute most out of each moment…kissing deep, touching like he was blind. He’d cherished her body every time like it was his first time.
Thinking about Jamey was a good distraction but she had to keep going. Katie had sold the morning activity to these customers with the promise they’d get to the center of the crater at eighty feet.
Divers liked to brag about going deep, even though the most interesting dives were usually in the first forty feet. Tina was determined to reach that depth. Feeling her heart rate increase, she concentrated on breathing slowly, calmly, and glanced ahead to deeper water.
First she’d show them the garden eels at seventy feet, and then she’d see if the eagle ray was hanging around like the day before. If they saw a ray, she might get away with only seventy feet and then hurry everyone back to the boat.
Doc Chan had told Tina to sing a song when panic threatened— something light and familiar. She began to hum through the regulator even before settling on a specific tune.
The garden eels were below her, waving in the current like a field of giant fingers, and she knew if the group got too close, the elusive creatures would duck back into the sand. Tina simulated applause to the divers, signifying that this was good stuff. Jamey moved in beside her, almost proprietarily, she thought.
Tina estimated the time it would take to navigate the amount of water between her and the surface at a safe clip. Feeling the enormity of the water’s weight on her, her breathing rate increased, and she wondered if anyone could tell she was on the verge of losing it. When the nurses signaled to Jamey that they were okay, Tina remembered that this was their first real dive after certification and knew that she had to pull it together. Deep breaths. She asked everyone to check their pressure gauges to make sure no one was at 1,000 psi, which would indicate a heavy breather and make it time to turn around and head back under the boat. Everyone had plenty of air. Damn it.
She kicked herself horizontal and aimed down, like a missile headed to the center of the volcanic crater, her heart pounding inside her wetsuit, her fists clenched. Jamey moved in beside her, and Tina saw the man with the next most experience fall back to bring up the sweep.
She continued into darker water. The surface would be getting farther away. Suddenly fear engulfed her like a cloud of cyanide gas. Bubbles raced by her ears on their way to the surface and she wanted to go with them, or to jump inside one and let it carry her to safety. The noise of her own heartbeat reminded her that she was seconds away from full-scale panic. It escalated, racing past logical reasoning towards out-of-control craziness. Jamey looked at her and signaled to ask if she was okay. Was it obvious to him, or anyone, t
hat she wasn’t?
Without waiting for an answer, he grabbed her arm. She gave the signal for ‘okay’ and shrugged him off. They’d reached seventy-five feet. Good enough. She swung the group around to head back to shallow water.
A truck-size boulder was just ahead. She set her sights on that landmark. Thoughts of exploring that rock in happier days calmed her temporarily. She’d bought herself time. The real trick would be to hang onto the tenuous control she clung to. Her fingernails dug into the palms of her hands. Humming frantically, she made a circle of the rock, looking for eels. She hadn’t consciously chosen a song, but what came to her was an old classic of Frank Sinatra’s. And through it all, I did something… and did it my way.
The rock usually housed a small, white-tipped reef shark nicknamed ‘Bruce’ by the dive community. Tina concentrated on finding him. Seeing any sort of shark in the wild was always a crowd-pleaser, and Bruce usually cooperated. Realizing that her humming was building to a feverish crescendo, Tina abandoned the tune in favor of a happy one. You are my sunshine…
Jamey stopped to adjust one of the nurses’ jacket buckles while the others followed Tina around to the back side of the rock. Even though Bruce always tucked under the same ledge, Tina was startled when he swerved in front of her.
She motioned that the shark was harmless and glanced up to see the surface forty-five feet away. The customers kept a safe distance from Bruce, and as Tina turned to see their reactions, she was hit with the vision of Hank swimming without scuba gear just behind the group.
He’d arrived, whole and perfect—not the dead or decomposing vision she’d been seeing on dives. His black hair snaked around his head, his red wetsuit vivid in the blueness of the underwater tapestry. This was her Hank, the man she’d married.
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. Tina resisted the urge to kick herself over to him. He smiled and her heart calmed, her breathing slowed. Please don’t take my sunshine away.