On Fire
Page 50
“What are we doing again?” asks Ellie Hunter as she walks next to Ethan Edwards in the shopping area of downtown Monterey.
“We’re larking,” replies Ethan the Brit.
“What?”
“Larking. We’re on a lark. As in having fun, you know,” he says.
Ethan pats Ellie on the back. They have been friends at Stanford for years, ever since she tutored him in Spanish. Now she attends and teaches at the Navy’s Postgraduate School’s Defense Language Institute in Monterey, located in the old royal Spanish fort, the Presidio. It is so near downtown that she can easily walk there from her condo.
Ellie was surprised at Ethan’s call for sanctuary. Their relationship had never been romantic, but when Ethan explained about his friends and there being some kind of danger, she was intrigued and said he could stay. Ethan is artistic and creative and fun to be around. She didn’t need a reason for him to stay.
They step around a corner onto Prescott and suddenly the waterfront is visible.
“Monterey Bay!” Ellie declares with a grand gesture of her arm toward the bay that she has come to love in her short time in Monterey.
“Wow! Nice!” declares Ethan, wanting to dive in.
“I don’t know. Waves look up,” Ellie says warningly.
“Not that bad, really. But it’s more than I’m used to.”
Ethan figures if the equipment rents high he’ll let it go.
“Okay. Now up here is Cannery Row, called that because of John Steinbeck. It used to be called Ocean View Avenue.”
Crossing over Cannery Row are a couple sky bridges that were used to facilitate the operations of sardine companies and which still remain. The waterfront area now has modern retail and restaurants, and they wander among the new buildings and shops, until they come upon a dive store.
Ellie has never been in a dive store.
“Whoa. I hope you know what you’re doing. What is all this stuff?”
“Hey, I’m certified. It’s one heck of a lot of diving equipment, huh?” he laughs.
To one side there is a line of tanks and nearby are sets of fins, but the store is mostly aisle after aisle of different kinds of diving supplies. They walk up to the counter. Behind it is a wall posted with blue photographs, all taken underwater.
Ethan asks about renting. The counter man, in his early thirties, looks them over, paying special attention to Ellie.
“Just you?” he asks Ethan while not taking his eye off Ellie.
“Just him,” Ellie replies, smiling and not annoyed.
Soon Ethan and the counter man are engaged in a discussion of what Ethan needs to rent, and it is clear to her that this is going to take a while. Ellie starts to browse and notices two middle aged men in khakis, one Asian. To her they seem out of place. While the Asian man seems to be familiar with diving equipment, the other man looks just as lost as she is.
Ellie drifts drifts back to the counter.
“Yes, it’s a National Marine Sanctuary and we are actually a peninsula, the Monterey Peninsula,” the counterman says.
“And what are these mountains?” asks Ethan, happy to have come across so much information.
“They’re known as the Pacific Mountain Coastal Range.”
“They’re rocky,” Ethan observes.
“Yeah, it’s Big Sur to the South. Ocean cliffs. Big Cliffs,” he laughs.
Ellie is more concerned about the safety of Ethan’s dive. Something in her doesn’t want to see him drown now that he’s her guest.
“Have you seen the surf?” asks Ellie.
The dude raises his hand, palm out.
“He’ll be fine. He can take his phone down and text you.”
Ethan shakes it in front her.
“Good to 50 meters!”
“A diving phone? Really?” she gives him the eye.
“The only way to dive!”
Ellie shakes her head and looks at all the things on the counter.
“Gee, I hope you brought someone to help you carry all this,” she says wryly.
He gives her a kiss on the cheek.
“You’re an angel.”
“I’m not sure about that.”
As they leave, Ellie watches the two men she saw earlier approach the counter. Her hands, however, are full getting Ethan’s dive vest and other things out the front door, and she fails to mention the men to Ethan.
Ethan has chosen to dive at Mc Abee Beach, sometimes called Pebble Beach because of the many smooth rocks lying near the water’s edge. Ethan and Ellie walk through a shopping center named after the town’s famous writer to a concrete, landscaped path. It leads them to McAbee, a small beach wedged between commercial properties. To the North of the beach is the Fish Hopper restaurant, part of the Cannery Row shopping district. The restaurant and adjacent commercial buildings stand on twenty foot piers over the water of the bay. To the South is a protected promontory where a Mexican restaurant is located. Nearby are the remains of basement walls and poured footings for a long ago abandoned commercial project. On one of the concrete walls there is a painting of a fisherman and a boat. Ellie and Ethan walk behind a wood fence along the top of huge layers of rock that descend to the beach. The walkway brings them down to the sand, where they make their way behind the Spindrift Inn until they reach the wall with the fishermen.
Having reached his destination, Ethan drops his things. The surf is making white caps against the rocks by Cannery Pier. The sky is windswept with a light tissue of clouds. There’s a strong breeze coming off the ocean.
“I know how to sail but I wouldn’t sail in this,” Ellie states definitively. “What’s this thing?” She holds up something heavy.
“A weight belt. Helps me get down there.”
“Down where?”
“The bottom.”
“You want to go to the bottom? What for?”
“To look for harbor seals.”
“And this diving vest? Does it help too.” she holds it out.
“Sure it does. It’s like a ballast tank. But it’s called a Buoyancy Compensator.”
“Cool.” Ellie says, but she really has no idea.
Ellie takes a place in the sand and watches Ethan gear up and test his equipment. He has his waterproof phone, which will also serve as his camera, attached to a short line on his arm. This will allow it to float freely, yet always be near his grasp. They text each other to make sure that it works.
“Okay! Have a look, shall we?” Ethan says, giving Ellie a big grin.
“You’re a bonkers Brit,” Ellie replies, her blonde hair flying in her face.
“Well then, Cherrio!”
Ethan picks his way among the rocks until he reaches the water. Surging white topped waves slap against him. He swims out about twenty meters and gives Ellie the thumbs up before disappearing beneath the surface.
Ethan adds gas to his compensator so as not to descend too fast. Blue light radiates down to him from the surface as he enters an underwater forest of kelp, long fronds rising up from below. He is in thirty-five to fifty feet of water and it is not long before he reaches the white sand on the bottom. There are plenty of sea stars clinging to rocks. They come in an array of colors: red, white, pink, purple. He sees a school of silver perch, glinting in what remains of the light at the bottom. Transfixed, he almost forgets to text Ellie.
Ellie is starting to feel the chill in the strong wind. She sits contemplatively watching the cormorants and gulls swooping to the rocks. She hears a bing and checks to see that Ethan has texted her, “Awesome!” For a few seconds she gets a live feed of his surroundings.
Ethan pokes at a crab and watches it scurry awkwardly away.
In the next second he feels as if something very hard has just struck him in the side. He looks down and immediately sees blood, then the sharp end of a spear from a spear gun projecting through his buoyancy compensator. He hasn’t really begun to feel the pain yet, but the sight of his injury an
d the nature of it give him a shock. He feels a growing sense of panic as he reaches back to touch the spear sticking out of his back.
The pain begins and, coupled with his panic, he doesn’t realize that he has stopped breathing, that he is slipping away. As his consciousness starts to fade, he has the presence of mind to text Ellie on the beach.
Did he just catch sight of a diver ascending?
Ethan’s vision quickly constricts to a narrow tunnel, then goes black.
Chapter 51