by Hugh Howey
“Yeah, well, it’s almost as good as how your parents met. Just a bigger spot in the sea than an oil rig. My dad went to Antigua for a destination wedding. It was for one of his frat brothers, who got hitched right out of college. My mom was a server at the place where they had the reception dinner. One of the other frat guys had too much to drink and came on to my mom, and my dad rescued her. Or as he used to tell it, he stole her away and was only able to do so because of the favorable comparison he made to his drunk friend.”
“So you’ve got island blood in you,” Ness says.
“Yeah, and Boston is a sea town if ever there was one. I think that’s why I feel lost when I’m away from the water.”
Ness nods and smiles. “That explains so much.”
“Yeah? Glad it was that easy for you to know the entirety of me.”
“Not the entirety, but what drives you. Most of us have simple passions at the core of who we are. Those passions might change over time, but at any one moment, I feel like there’s a striving inside us that frames our decisions. The shame is that most people never ask themselves what their passions are, much less look deep into others. They just do whatever feels right at any one moment, bouncing from thing to thing.”
“So is redemption your passion? You mentioned that in the sub.”
“Maybe,” Ness says. “I have a lot of passions. Too many, perhaps.”
“Well, just so you know, I understand trying to atone for a father’s sins. I totally get that. My dad wasn’t perfect either.”
“Yeah? How so?” Ness brushes the hair off my face, then rests his hand on my shoulder. I see worry in his furrowed brow.
“Oh, he wasn’t bad to me,” I say, reassuring him. “Nothing like that. My dad and I were real close. He just had … he did some things that I later learned weren’t very good.”
I eat a strawberry and take another sip of champagne, feeling dangerously honest.
“What did your dad do?” Ness asks. “I mean for a living. You don’t have to tell me any of that other stuff if you don’t want.”
“It’s hard to tease those two apart, actually. I thought my dad was a spy when I was really young, some kind of superhero private investigator. But he mostly followed people around and took pictures of them without their crutches, or with other women, and then handed that info off to lawyers so they could rain hell down on people.”
“Sounds like they were the kind of people who deserved what they got,” Ness says. He pulls the comforter over my bare legs when he sees me rubbing the goose bumps away.
“Yeah, that part of his job I understood. I mean, I do now. But I used to sit with him in his car when he had me for the weekend, just like you have Holly sometimes—”
“So your parents were divorced?”
“It’s … complicated. They split up, but they stayed married. My dad moved back in with my mom when she got diagnosed with cancer. Anyway, when I was young, they lived apart, and my dad would take me on these jobs with him. Side jobs. He would have me sit in the passenger seat and run the laptop while he took pictures of people with this great big lens.” I shake my head, remembering.
“Jeez, now you have to tell me.”
“You have to promise not to tell.”
“I get confused,” Ness says. “Was that a teaser or a cliffhanger?” He laughs, but when he sees I’m dead serious, he raises one hand. “Off the record. I swear.”
I readjust myself on the bed, holding my champagne flute so it doesn’t spill. “Okay, so keep in mind that this was back when facial recognition software first got really good but before people knew it was getting good. You know what I mean? Well, Dad was one of the first in his trade to see the potential. So he would park outside brothels, strip clubs, seedy massage parlors, places like that, and shoot everyone who came out. I mean everyone. Then he’d run the pictures through the DMV database, which a friend on the force got him access to. That was my job, running the laptop and switching out the memory cards. I was better at it than he was. We’d get a name from the DMV, do a Google search, and see if anyone had a high profile, if they were worth anything—”
“Blackmail,” Ness whispers.
“Yeah. Basically, instead of waiting for someone to get suspicious and hire him, Dad started sampling the crowd to drum up more business for himself.”
I feel like shit admitting my role in it all. It took me years to come clean with Michael. I have no idea why I’m telling Ness.
“That’s fucked up,” he says.
“I know. It’s not something I’m proud of.”
Ness’s face lights up. “You know, I’ve heard about scams like this. There was a senator from Connecticut who got ruined by something like that. Claimed he thought it was a regular massage parlor—”
“Senator Hutchins,” I say. And then, sheepishly: “I was with Dad that weekend.”
Ness leans back to study me. “No. You’re kidding, right? That was your dad?”
I feel a flush of heat on my neck, remembering the weeks after the incident. “I thought I was going to go to jail or something. I was too sick to attend school, couldn’t even tell my mom. It was the first time in my life that I started reading the paper—the physical thing. Which probably led me down the path I took, career-wise. Not just from reading the paper, but seeing the difference between telling the truth in print and all the sneaking around my father did for a living.”
“You took down a United States senator,” Ness says. “Hell, I wish I could do that to a few of them.” He shakes his head. “You were more powerful in third grade than I am now.”
“And I don’t even know how many other people I helped ruin like that. For me, it was just a game. It felt like the kind of video game my sister liked to play on her computer. Maybe that’s why I don’t have the stomach for them.”
“You know, what you did is right up there with destroying the world’s oceans and wrecking a billion miles of shoreline,” Ness says.
I know he’s joking, but neither of us laugh.
“I don’t know why, but it feels good to tell someone without building up to it for years and years, without dreading the conversation. I haven’t told many people. Not sure why it feels safe to tell you. Maybe because you’ve shared things with me that I have to keep to myself. Like mutually assured destruction.”
Ness runs his hand down my arm. “I like you, Maya Walsh. I like that you challenge me, make me think. I like that you’re complex. I even like that you don’t like me.”
“You’re one of those guys who falls in love easily, aren’t you?” I ask. I don’t mean it to sound harsh, but as an honest question.
“Maybe,” he says. “Is that a bad thing?”
“It depends. Do you fall out of love just as quickly?”
Ness considers this. Looks sad for a moment. “I don’t think so. I love my work. I have a lot of passions in life. The people who’ve left me recently, they haven’t wanted to share me with those things.”
“As long as it’s not someone else, I can share. I get lost in my work as well. Michael used to have to stand in front of me and shout my name to pull me from whatever article I was working on. It drove him nuts. He couldn’t understand my ability to disappear like that.”
“No one disappears like I do,” Ness warns me.
“Challenge accepted,” I say, offering my hand.
Ness takes my hand, but he uses it to pull me into him, nearly spilling my champagne. “Close your eyes,” he commands. And I do. Ness kisses me and tells me I’m beautiful, and then he says, “Close them tighter.”
I squint until not a sliver of light comes in.
“I win,” Ness says.
34
When we land, I can tell that we’re not back in Maine. The flight didn’t feel long enough, and the temperature and the humidity are too high. I feel both before we get to the front of the plane. I glance back at Ness, who is smiling guiltily.
“Detour,” he says.
“Where are we?”
I ask.
“The nearest thing I have to a home.”
Outside, the midday sun has heat waves shimmering up from the tarmac. It’s stuffy, but the faintest of breezes wafts through, bringing relief. I look around for an airport. There are no other planes. A single hangar and a small cluster of structures the size of outhouses, a few silver tanks streaked with rust that I assume hold fuel. Or used to. The pilot hands Ness our two bags, which he throws on the back of a nearby golf cart. There’s another cart nearby. Two islanders help the flight crew with their bags.
“Get in,” Ness says. “You drive.”
I jump behind the wheel of the golf cart. When I hit the accelerator, the silent whine of a strong electric motor rockets us forward. Ness clutches the oh-shit handle and laughs. “I took the governors out,” he tells me.
“Of course you did,” I say.
“Take a right past those bushes.”
We cruise along white sandstone-paved roads, seeing nothing and no one. The golf cart’s windshield is down, and the breeze feels nice. Now and then, we pass twin ruts of sand that jut off into the scrub brush, trails only golf carts and feet have been down. Ness is gripping the cart with one hand, has the other on my thigh, and is watching the world zip by. He doesn’t tell me to turn, and I don’t ask.
Ahead, I see the road bend to the left. Scanning the low island that direction, I spot a structure beyond a stand of palm trees. The palms here remind me of the ones along Ness’s driveway in Maine. He said this place feels like home to him. I wonder if that’s why he has the trees transplanted, if the cost is justified by the longing he feels.
Supporting this theory is the fact that this house looks a lot like the one in Maine. Wood siding, the same bright Caribbean colors, open doors with flowing white linens. Small and cozy. The central part of his Maine estate without all the wings and additions.
“Pull around the back,” Ness says.
I swing around the end of the house, and the view on the other side causes my foot to slip off the accelerator. I find the brake pedal and bring us to a jarring stop. Ahead of us, a tiered patio steps down toward a pristine white powder beach. I barely see the cabanas and the pool and the amenities. It’s the water beyond the titanium sand that draws me in. Not blue, not even the bright green of a clear lagoon, something more like sea foam. A green so bright it has a tint of yellow. The color of clarity. Of shallow water over white sand.
“If you don’t start breathing, I’m going to have to kiss you again,” Ness says.
I tear my eyes away and lean over to kiss him. “Where is this?” I ask.
“The Bahamas. Tara Cay. And yeah, the water here is unbeatable. I’ve been to more beaches than I can count, and when I saw this one, I never wanted to leave.”
“Why do you leave? Why would you ever leave?”
“Work,” he says. And I’m reminded that he leaves a lot of beautiful things behind for his work. “Let’s put your stuff away and see if anything’s washed up.”
“There are shells here?”
“Not on this beach. Too shallow. But we’ll take the boat out and hit the ocean side. I haven’t been here in a few weeks, and there’s been a good storm since then, so we might get lucky.”
“I feel lucky just to see this. Is this one of the islands your dad bought for you?”
“No. Those are down in the Caribbean. I gave them back to the countries that owned them, and they put them in a preserve. And yes, the tax benefits were enormous. Make sure you put that in your article.”
I’d forgotten about my article. I’d forgotten that I’m a reporter. I’d forgotten about the fact that the FBI is looking closely into Ness and those shells. Right then, I’m not sure I could find my apartment if I were dropped a block away from it.
The rest of the day is just that sort of discombobulated blur. I try not to dwell on all the nagging doubts and fears, choosing instead to just enjoy where I am. Ness lets me pilot his center console around the back of the island. It’s a big thirty-foot Contender, nicer than the one at his other house, but sun-beaten and salt-worn. Well used. Amid the rocks on the Atlantic side of the island, we find fighting conchs, sozon’s cones, and a horse conch. My life feels complete when I turn up a scotch bonnet in a tidal pool, the shell in very good or excellent condition, and Ness has to assure me ten times that it wasn’t planted there. That it is a real find. I don’t even dare put it in the shelling bag I borrowed from the house. For the rest of our expedition, I carry it with me in my palm. I know even then that it will be the one shell I walk away from this experience treasuring. I have this, even if everything else is taken from me.
Back at the house, we take turns showering. With towels wrapped around us, there’s a feeling of familiar intimacy but danger as well. We haven’t yet been completely naked in front of each other. He must expect it as much as I do, the inevitability, but not knowing when it might come is like holding a grenade with the pin pulled. We both dance around it as we get dressed while the other isn’t looking.
Dinner is on the patio. A fire in a raised metal pit crackles. We watch the sun go down as dinner arrives. I meet Gladys, the chef, and her husband, Nick. Ness introduces them like they’re family. When he tells Gladys that my mother was from Antigua, she shrieks and cups my face in both her hands, like an island hundreds of miles away is somehow next door. For the rest of the night, any time I catch her looking at me she bursts into a wide smile.
“I wish I had my laptop,” I say after dinner, while enjoying a glass of wine.
“Party foul,” Ness proclaims.
“To write,” I say. “I feel inspired to write some fiction. Make something up. Something less impossible than this, so people would buy it.”
Ness sips his wine. “Ever written a novel before?”
“Started a few. Meandered. I vacillated between feeling silly and feeling pretentious. Like some parts weren’t serious enough and other parts I was trying too hard to be profound.”
“Sounds like me learning to play the guitar. I would go back and forth between teaching myself chords and trying to learn complex tunes one contorted note at a time. I think that, with a lot of art, you just have to be bad at it a long time before the magic happens. And I suck at being bad at things.”
I laugh at the play on words. “Me too,” I say. “I mean, I’m really good at being bad at things, but I hate it. So I avoid it.”
“Dangerous habit,” Ness says. “Life is too short. And you’re lucky you don’t have your laptop.”
“Why is that?”
“Because if you pulled it out, I’d toss it into the sea.”
I laugh at him.
“I’m not kidding,” Ness says, even though he laughs with me. “Speaking of the sea,” he continues, “it’s warm enough to go for a dip. You wanna?”
“I would, but someone told me a whole bunch of things not to pack, and one was my bathing suit.”
Ness lifts his hands in defense. “I didn’t know you were going to jump me in the sub and that I’d be bringing you here!”
“I totally didn’t jump you. You took advantage of me in a weakened state.”
“Whatever. I’m going for a swim. If you wanna come, it’s dark enough that I won’t see anything. Not that I’d be looking anyway. And not that I haven’t already seen your breasts.”
“The lights were out. You didn’t see anything.”
But Ness is already up and out of his chair. I refuse to move, electing to enjoy my wine, the stars, the sound of the gently lapping water before me, the crack and pop of the fire, and the distant hiss of waves crashing on the other side of the island.
Ness sheds his shirt before he gets to the sand. I study his silhouette as he drops his shorts and then heads out into the water. Gladys appears beside me, gathering the dessert dishes.
“You a mad woman,” she says.
“Oh, we were just playing,” I tell her.
“No, you crazy not being out there with that man. He insane for you.”
“He barely knows me,” I tell her.
“All right then, tell me why he never bring no woman here. I say you mad.”
She laughs on her way back to the house, and I hear her talking with Nick, realize the two of them are probably gossiping about this last-minute arrival and this mysterious woman with half an island in her.
“Fuck it,” I say. I leave my wine and head down the tiered patio. At the sand’s edge, I pull off my shirt, take off my bra, drop my shorts and then my underwear. “No regrets,” I say. And by the time I get to the water, I’m running and laughing. I’m remembering what it feels like to be free again.
35
The best kisses in the world take place at night, in the ocean, with two naked bodies coiled around one another, only the stars to keep them company. Weight disappears, and our bodies with it. Ness stands on his toes, me clinging to him, my arms wrapped around his neck and my legs around his waist, our lips tasting the salt on each other.
The water is warm enough that I barely feel it, heightening the sense of my loss of self. And when we move, microscopic sea life blooms green and gives off an ethereal glow. Above us, a path of dense light reminds me where the Milky Way got its name. The stars are intense. Like the sky is as alive and excited as every cell in my body.
We stay in the water until I can barely feel anything with my fingers, they’re so pruned. Our bodies hardly ever came apart the entire time, so that when the water flows between us, it chills my breasts and stomach, which have been against Ness for what feels like half an hour. I think I stayed pinned to him to avoid access to other parts of our bodies, and so he couldn’t see me in the bright starlight. As we exit the water, there’s no avoiding it. I can feel his eyes on me. Holding my hand, he leads me down the beach where a blanket has been laid out.
“Did you plan this?” I ask.
“No,” he says. “Gladys did, I guess. I saw her out here arranging something.”
“So you were kissing with your eyes open,” I admonish him.
“Guilty.”
There are towels on the blanket. Ness and I dry off. He wraps his towel around me and rubs my arms. The breeze is soft, but it chills my skin where it’s still wet. We lie down on the blanket, huddle under one of the towels, and Ness runs his hand over my hair as we watch the sea slide toward us and then away, over and over.