PR04 - Queen of Patpong

by Timothy Hallinan

  Through the rain she sees his head, still in the pale cap, on the deck of the boat. She hears the metallic, teeth-grating sound of the chain being wound in as he retrieves the anchor, and then the motor catches and purrs and then purrs more urgently, and the boat starts to move. Within seconds the spotlight comes on, and Rose’s hopes die.

  There’s no way she can hide from the spotlight. Even if she were a foot underwater, he could probably pick out the bright pink of her jacket. If the spotlight hits her, he’ll have her.

  But the spotlight can’t point behind the boat. She needs to swim behind the boat, following the man who’s hunting her. At the moment he’s heading to her right, parallel to the rocks, and she sees what he’s going to do. He’s going to make a circuit of the rocks, make sure she’s not on them or behind them, and then he’ll search the surrounding waters, probably in a spiral, until he catches her in the spotlight or until she’s stung by a sea wasp and he finds her floating facedown.

  She orients herself toward the biggest rock, closes her eyes, and starts to swim, expecting the fiery lash across her forehead and cheeks with every stroke. She’s surprised at how clearly she can hear the motor when one ear is in the water. She’s paying a lot of attention to it as a way of knowing how far from the boat she is, when the volume suddenly drops. She stops and orients herself again, feet downward, dark hair pulled over her face, and looks.

  She’s about halfway to the big rock. Howard has taken the boat behind the one to the right, which has intercepted the underwater sound of the outboard. There were three rocks, he’d said, the third hidden behind the other two. She closes her eyes and tries to visualize it. If she can get between them without swimming into a jellyfish, she might be able to stay out of sight. Even Howard can’t see through rocks.

  She follows the boat’s route, knowing that Howard is glued to the wheel, eyes on the spotlight, carefully steering around the massive stones. He’s going slowly, obviously dividing his attention between navigation and scanning the water in front of him. She realizes, as she lifts her head for a breath and looks ahead, that following the boat gives her an unexpected advantage: The wake directly behind the boat is free of sea wasps, pushed to the sides by the boat’s prow.

  She swims past the big rock, daring to lift her arms out of the water in an overhead crawl, knowing that she’ll be seen in a minute if Howard goes to the stern and looks back. But she risks swimming a little faster anyway; the closer she is to the back of the boat, the less likely she is to swim into a sea wasp.

  She pulls herself along until she’s gotten around the bigger rock. She’s swinging out to her right to get behind the smaller one when the engine stops.

  In an instant she’s floating vertically, hair pulled forward to mask her face. The boat rises above the low, flat surface of the rock, and in the stern she sees Howard, flashlight in hand, the beam transcribing arcs across the water. So it’s occurred to him to look behind him after all.

  Rose edges closer to the smaller rock just in case, but she stops at the sight of a cluster of sea wasps in between her and it. In fact, now that she’s near enough to the rocks to see them more clearly, she sees that sea wasps have been carried to them from all directions by the water’s motion. There’s a ring of jellyfish, like a border of solid water, maybe two-thirds of a meter wide, wherever the rocks meet the sea.

  There’s no way she can get through it. She’d be stung a hundred times.

  A hard core of certainty begins to form inside her. She will die here.

  And something bumps against her from below.

  The terror is instantaneous and all-consuming. She swims wildly, smacking the surface with her arms, not thinking about the noise she’s making, swimming after the boat as though it were her refuge, putting the smaller rock to her left now and then accelerating beyond to turn around it, following in Howard’s wake.

  Once she’s circled the second rock, she sees the boat, sliding around the far end of the third rock now, only the bottom couple of feet obscured by the stone’s low-rising surface. As she watches, Howard cups his hands to his face and lights a cigarette.

  All these months, she thinks, and I never knew he smoked.

  The thought strikes her as absurd, and she lowers her face into the water and releases a bubble of laughter. He was like a fancy envelope, she thinks, with a toad folded inside it. She laughs again and loses some of the rest of her air. With both of her ears underwater, she’s almost deafened by the grinding sound of the boat’s hull scraping over rock, and she brings her head back up in time to hear Howard screaming a sustained, unvarying stream of obscenities and to see him running the length of the cabin and repeatedly slamming the side of the boat with one of the long poles, as though he’s punishing it. Then he leans forward, facing her directly from the far side of the rock, shoves the end of the pole into the water, and grunts with effort. He throws his weight behind the pole again, and this time he lets loose with a scream that seems to come all the way from his belly, and as it dies away, the boat moves and he pitches forward, off balance, and has to catch himself with both hands, the pole slipping away from him and splashing on the ocean’s surface as the boat floats free of the rocks. Howard runs to the wheel, cranking it hard right, accelerating to increase his distance from the underlying shelf of stone.

  Rose floats there, watching him go. She thinks that he may just have opened a path for her, even if the path leads to a place she doesn’t want to go. She reclines on her side and does a gliding stroke that carries her slowly down the full length of the third rock and then around it, her eyes on the receding boat most of the time, shifting only to check the surface in front of her and make certain she’s not getting too close to the solid ribbon of sea wasps that surrounds the stones. As she swims, she visualizes the other side of the big rock, and slowly, methodically, like someone drawing a map from spoken directions, she assembles something that might be a plan. The idea, thin as it is, seems to buoy her up as she swims toward the place she least wants to go, the place she’ll be most conspicuous, the first and last place he’ll look for her. Toward the rocks.

  AND THERE IT IS. Floating in front of her, maybe ten meters from the first and largest of the rocks, is the long pole with the rusted hook at one end that Howard used to push the boat free. She grabs it with both hands, a surge of exultation passing through her, and scans the surface near her for a sea wasp. Sees one, about three meters away, between her and the rock. She kicks herself toward it and then puts the end of the pole under her arm, resting it against her rib cage, wraps both hands around a segment of the pole she can reach with her elbows slightly bent, and slices it sideways through the water, just beneath the surface. The resistance pushes her in the opposite direction, but she scissors her legs to stay in place, and the pole continues to ripple through the water until it hits the weight of the sea wasps. It takes almost all her strength, but Rose is able to keep the pole moving, shoving the sea wasps aside.

  Four or five minutes later, gasping with exertion, she has cleared a path through the band of jellyfish surrounding the rock, and she is on her knees in the shallows, only her head and her very pink shoulders above water. The boat is a few hundred meters away, making a wide turn that might bring it back. She stumbles forward, all the way out of the water, until she is facedown on the biggest rock. She stays there for as long as she dares, watching the light, gasping for breath and luxuriating in the sensation of a solid surface beneath her. Then, without much faith in what she’s about to do, she goes to work.

  Fortunately, what she wants is right at the edges. Lying down, so she’s out of sight below the crown of the rock, she rolls onto her back and pops open the pink jacket, then works her arms out of the sleeves and rolls off it. Lifting her arms as little as possible, she peels off the T-shirt, and then she unfastens the jeans. She tugs them down to midthigh and then rolls onto her side and brings her knees up so she can inch the jeans all the way down. They’re heavy and wet, and she’s sweating, despite the c
ool drizzle, by the time she scissors her ankles free. Then she folds her T-shirt once for protection, tucks her hands into it, and begins to gather seaweed. She’s worried there might be sea wasps, or at least sea-wasp tentacles, tangled in the weed, although she sees none.

  Working as fast as she can with her hands trapped in the shirt, she stuffs seaweed into the arms of her jacket and builds a mound of it in the center. She does up the snaps, looks at it for a moment, and then jams handfuls of seaweed into the jacket through the bottom. When it looks about right, she crawls another couple of meters, dragging the bulky jacket and the jeans behind her, until she hits another mass of seaweed. With one hand in the T-shirt and the other holding the jeans open, she begins to stuff the jeans, starting with the cuffs and shoving the seaweed as far as the knees, and then turning the pants around and working in stuffing from the top until the legs are full. She zips and snaps them, then pushes the remaining weed into the rear and hips, all the way up to the waistline.

  It takes her five or six minutes, with frequent peeks above the rock’s surface to track the movement of the boat, but at last she has the jeans convincingly stuffed, and she picks up the jacket and places it above the sodden pants. It lies there, arms splayed outward, separated from the jeans by a few centimeters, looking like someone who’s been cut in half at the waist. She wants to put the T-shirt back on, but it’s lighter-colored than her skin, so she leaves it at the rock’s edge as she pulls herself, flat on her belly and scraping every inch of skin on the front of her body, up the gentle slope. She drags the jacket and the jeans behind her.

  The boat is on its way back from whatever spot Howard investigated. If he keeps to his course, he’ll be roughly where they were the first time she saw the rocks in the searchlight’s glare. It seems like a lifetime ago. If he points the light toward the rock she’s on, he’ll see her, but she has no choice—for the next minute or two, she will have to be visible.

  Before she lifts her head again, she says a prayer, and it is immediately answered. The rain begins to bucket down. She can barely see the spotlight, and the boat itself is completely hidden from sight.

  She’s already visualized the pose, so she works quickly. Everything depends on where the boat will be when Howard finally looks. She’s betting he’ll begin his new survey somewhere near the original position, which seemed to be where he was heading. She turns the back of the jacket toward the boat, with both arms drooping away down the far side of the stone to mask the fact that no hands protrude from the jacket’s cuffs. She slips the waist of the jeans inside the jacket, bending them sharply at the knees and putting the upper leg over the lower so its cuff faces toward the boat. She’s almost sure Howard will focus on the jacket because it’s so much brighter, but she takes off the one plastic sandal that hasn’t slipped off and drifted into the depths and leans it up against the cuff of the jeans, hoping that the light-colored sole will obscure the fact that there’s no ankle above it.

  The rain emboldens her, and she gets up and runs, bent low at the waist, to the side of the rock where the boat will be. She needs to take a look. At this distance, which is thirty or forty meters closer than Howard will be on the boat, the clothes almost look like they have a body in them, but she goes back around to the far side, drops to her stomach again, and creates a sharper bend at the waist, pulling the top part of the jacket just over the crest of the rock, away from where Howard will be. From the boat, she hopes, it will look like her head is just out of sight on the other side.

  Either it’s good enough or it isn’t.

  Now comes the part that frightens her most.

  She works her way back down the rock, heading for the pole that she left there to mark the area she’d cleared of sea wasps. She squats there with the pole in her hands and leans forward to clear the few that have floated into the empty area. Then, her heart pounding, she wades naked into the water, flailing the pole in front of her, knowing that now she has nothing, not a single layer of cloth, to protect her from the stings.

  A moment later she is swimming slowly away from the rock, stopping and clearing the way with the pole every meter or so. Once the rocks are twenty meters behind her, she turns to her left and begins to work her way into the open water, toward the glistening masts of the squid boats. She keeps her legs drawn up whenever she stops, expecting at every moment that whatever bumped her before will come rushing up, all teeth, to tug her into the depths. The image is so powerful that she almost floats into a sea wasp and has to pull the pole back and bat the jellyfish away. She hangs there in the water, breathing heavily until she trusts herself to swim again, out beyond the point at which Howard dropped the anchor.

  The boat is gliding past her now toward the rocks, about thirty meters away, and she treads water, her hair pulled down over her face, hoping that Howard’s eyes are locked on the rocks. The searchlight is picking out the smaller of the two rocks in front, and as Howard cranks the wheel, the light slides left, but it’s too low—it’s on the water when it passes the larger rock—and the jacket and jeans are well above the center of the beam. They slide back into the dark, but then Howard shouts, and the boat powers down. She sees him jump up onto the bow and wrench the light back, stopping it on the jacket and jeans.

  For what feels like a long time, nothing happens. Howard sits there on the bow, looking at the splash of pink, at the bent leg of the jeans. At the bottom of the sandal, bone white, which Rose can see even at this distance, even with contacts washed out by the salt water.

  Howard stands and cups his hands to his mouth. He calls her name. He goes all the way to the tip of the bow to call it again. He stands there, hands on hips, staring at the rocks. He even bends forward, as though those few extra inches will resolve what he’s seeing.

  Then he turns around and goes back into the cabin. He’s out of sight for a moment, bent over to get something. Then he’s back, the pale shower cap clearly visible above the black wet suit. He leans over the side of the ship nearest to Rose and calls, “Rose! I’m not fucking around. If you can hear me, move.”

  He leans forward again, peering through the drizzle. Then he raises a hand, points it at the rock, and Rose hears a terrific noise and sees a spurt of flame from his hand, and a little geyser of powder explodes from the rock, several feet to the left of the jacket.

  Howard shouts, “Next one will be closer.”

  He waits, and then he goes to the wheel, and Rose hears the motor thrum into life. Howard halves the distance between the boat and the rocks and then shuts down the engine and goes to the rear.

  The instant she hears the anchor splash, she begins to move.

  She can’t keep the pole. It slows her progress. She dives a foot or two down, closes her eyes, and pulls herself forward, then again, and then again, until her lungs are bursting. Just as she breaks the surface, she hears the splash.

  She knows where to look, and the bathing cap on his head reflects light, so it’s easy for her to pick Howard out. He’s swimming strongly toward the rocks. Too strongly, she thinks with a jolt of panic: She doesn’t have enough time. She forgets about swimming underwater and strikes out for the boat, moving as fast as she can without making too much noise. The boat doesn’t seem to get bigger at first, but Howard is nearing the rocks, and with a rush of terror she kicks so hard her feet break the surface, and Howard stops swimming.

  She goes under again, trying to decrease the distance to the boat, pulling herself through the water until her lungs threaten to explode. She forces herself to take another stroke, and then another, and then, at the moment when she will inhale water if she doesn’t surface, she points herself up and feels a long line of flame erupt down her left arm.

  She screams into the water, emptying her lungs and reflexively sucking in seawater, feeling it pour into her throat before she finds half a pint of air somewhere to blow it out again, and then she’s coughing spasmodically, wasting air she doesn’t have, as she summons the strength to pull herself forward in a desperate attempt
not to come up beneath the sea wasp. When she surfaces, it’s floating less than a meter from her, and, whimpering, she propels herself away from it, with nothing in her mind but the pain and the sea wasp. She’s put two body lengths between her and it before she remembers Howard.

  He’s swimming again, maybe ten or fifteen meters from the rocks.

  And she looks up and finds herself at the boat.

  She sidestrokes to the rope and grabs it with her right arm, but the left is sluggish and heavy-feeling, as though the pain were lead flowing thickly through her veins. She forces the arm up somehow, grasps the rope, and gets both feet on a knot. With agonizing slowness she pulls herself up until she’s halfway in, her feet hanging over the side, the edge cutting into her stomach, and she just rolls and falls the short distance to the floor of the cabin.

  Her left arm is a wildfire of pain, radiating up into the shoulder and the side of her neck. And she’s finding it difficult to draw a deep breath, as badly as she needs the air. Her lungs don’t seem to be working right.

  In the searchlight’s beam, Howard stands up and wades onto the rock, pushing through the sea wasps in his wet suit as though they’re not there. Something glints in his hand. Rose has completed only two revolutions of the handle that pulls the anchor up when she hears his scream of rage.

  She manages one more crank on the handle and then has to stop, gasping for breath. She sees Howard sprint toward her across the rock and then arc out, his body straight and arrow-true, and he hits the water and begins to swim.

  He swims very fast.

  She manages one more turn of the handle, and then she spins and runs to the wheel. Turn ignition. She twists the key, and nothing happens. She wants to scream again, but she can’t seem to draw enough air. Press ignition, she thinks, and there it is, the button. She pushes it hard enough to shove it through the panel, and the engine powers on. The boat begins to move but then jolts to a stop, and she is flung into the wheel, her forehead hitting the Plexiglas of the windscreen. The anchor has caught on something.