Dead in the Water

  The voice replied very quietly, so quietly she knew she had created it from the vestiges of her uneasiness:

  Tomorrow? Don’t count on it.

  14

  Enough to

  Shake Up

  Anybody

  And from the depth of the ocean, King Neptune whispered:

  No one else can see me, Cha-cha. Only you.

  “Right on,” Cha-cha whispered back. It had always been that way. Only now, it was more so. He had never heard the king better, since that bottle had showed up in his fishing net.

  Since the paper inside it said something like, Do it!

  “What’d you say?” Mr. Saar asked in a tight, clipped voice. His head was a glowing, broiled apple and his lips were peeling. A gash along the side of his head was like a scratch on a nickel on a sky-tray of dusty pewter.

  They’d been at sea forever, and their still to make water was broken, and something was wrong with all the bottled water and food. There was a total of sixteen men in the boat, and they were freaked out, and Cha-cha was sorry King Neptune wouldn’t appear to them and comfort them. But he’d always been the one, ol’ Chach, right on, baby, and he alone, because he was sorry about Nam. Just following orders, that’s what everybody said, like the Nazis, man, but you knew it was evil to spray little kids and pregnant women with bullets and napalm. You knew it no matter who told you to do it. He’d forgotten about that, until the boy, Matt, had come aboard. It’d been a long time since a live kid walked the deck of the Morris.

  Plenty of dead ones, though. Zonked-out, yellow kids with charred faces, stumps for arms. Wandering through the bulk-heads, floating on the overheads, crying for their mamas and never finding them. Cha-cha had watched one run begging to that police lady, that Donna chick, but she’d just gone about her business without seeing him.

  And the ghosts of the women, with blood running from between their legs and their titties slashed off for souvenirs, man; they howled and wailed and no one heard them ’cept him.

  And what they did to the Viet Nam dudes, man. Back in Nam, what they did to them … Cha-cha had the hardest time of all with their ghosts. ’Cuz there was no way you could relate to all that brutality, all that torture …

  And this was the same generation that went to Woodstock. Peace and love in the good ol’ USA, and fucking up their karma in the world’s worst way over in Indochina, and you couldn’t straighten it out no matter how many Grateful Dead concerts you went to.

  So Cha-cha stayed at sea forever on the Morris (’cept for the trips to the VA hospitals, but the ghosts cried for him and he came back, always came back), from the time the Morris was called the USNS John J. Abernathy to the time it was the Moonfish to now. He was a live ghost, man, and that was all you could do about it.

  Damn straight, Cha-cha. You were the only one who understood the evil of that ship. You were the only one I could trust to do the right thing.

  Mr. Saar was glaring at Cha-cha, so he covered his mouth and whispered, “Right on, King.”

  So far so good, Cha-cha.

  Right on, King.

  Now watch, I’m going to make something happen.

  Water rippled on the flat sea.

  “Oh, my God!” Eskimo shouted. “It’s a fish! Oh, Jesus!”

  Everyone held their breath and watched the row of fishing lines. A dozen were set with the flies that came in the survival boxes. In the entire week, they hadn’t caught anything.

  Watch, Cha-cha.

  The line nearest Mr. Saar jittered. A hushed cheer rose up; Mr. Saar motioned for everyone to stay quiet as he pulled in the line, very, very carefully.

  A grouping, gasping black fish flapped onto the deck and started to jive-dance itself to death. Open, close, open, gasping, the large fish was drowning in oxygen; its blank eye wide and unblinking, bursting with fatality.

  Righteous, Your Majesty.

  You believe in me, don’t you, Cha-cha? You believe I have your best interests at heart?

  Aye, sir. Yessir. Cha-cha saluted. Nobody on board noticed; their attention was riveted on the fish. Hands grabbed it, held it down. The men were about to rip it to pieces, and why not, dudes? It was going to die one way or the other.

  You know I would only tell you to do the right thing.

  “For sure,” Cha-cha whispered, watching the men and the smothering fish.

  And you would do it.

  Yes, sir, King, sir. You know it, baby. You know it, righteous Neptune-god. I’ll follow orders, oh, yes, I will, because you’re my karmic commander in chief.

  And if you pass this test, you shall be my new acolyte, Cha-cha.

  “Oh, far out,” Cha-cha murmured, though he wasn’t sure what an acolyte was.

  In a blaze of glory, the king heaved his beautiful sea self out of the waves and floated beside the boat, and with his trident he pierced the fish in the side. Its mouth convulsed and then it stiffened. Dead. And the men knew it, and began tearing its head off.

  Then he pointed his trident at the boatful of men and said, in his ringing sea king voice:

  Kill them, Cha-cha.

  Kill them all.

  I’m hungry, too.

  15

  Surface Tension

  It was late, too late. The handsome captain had visited Ruth hours ago. They had talked about her harrowing experience, and about Stephen, though she hadn’t meant to. Most embarrassing, she must have dozed off in his presence. Cool breezes had washed over her from the open porthole when she awakened to the night, with a terrible headache that throbbed as if the inside of her head was frozen.

  Then she must have dozed off again, and in the bathroom of all places! Or sleepwalked, for she was standing upright, staring into the mirror. A hazy shape smeared across it, distorting Ruth’s face with a series of afterimages, Vaseline on a camera lens. Something drifting away—colors, shapes, a golden radiance—swimming away, languid and lovely, so beautiful, so beautiful, up slowly, so very deliberately, and up and up, toward the—

  “Come back,” she whispered. Air rushed from her windpipe and she jerked up her head. Her lids fluttered. She blinked at the mirror,

  and saw only herself.

  Her face was dripping wet. The sink was brimming with water, the faucet not quite off, trickling into the overflow.

  “I’ve been dreaming,” she said aloud. “I’ve been dreaming.”

  She stood naked in the bathroom, with her old woman’s pendulous breasts and belly exposed, her large-boned thighs, and tried to comprehend what she was doing there. Her eyes stared back at her, bewildered. Her body was rosy and happy, as if she’d been having … as if a man—

  Stephen.

  Her hand over her breasts, she lowered herself onto the toilet seat. A drop of water hung suspended from her chin, splashed onto her abdomen. Self-consciously she covered herself, as if someone else were in the room.

  Were still in the room.

  “Stephen?” she whispered. A flutter of anticipation and fear behind her knees, at her elbows, the nape of her neck. Her heart pounded and she cocked her head, listening, attempting to sense a presence. Why was her face wet? She tried to think, but her mind was reeling, her attention outside herself, not inside her head. Washing her face? She used cold cream, didn’t put water on her face at night. Too drying.

  Water, too drying. How odd that was.

  She listened hard. Things like this only happened in books or movies. She had never believed—

  —she had always believed he was alive. Alive. She hadn’t believed in things like this.

  Things like what?

  Breathing in, her lips rippled like fins. She began to tremble all over.

  Why was her face wet?

  “I’ve been dreaming.” Her words seemed to reverberate off the tiles. “Dreaming.”

  Somewhere in the distance, the sound of dripping water. Her gaze ticked to the sink taps. Nothing. The tub. Also nothing. Then it stopped. Perhaps she should tell someone. If it was a leak …

&n
bsp; Don’t be foolish, Ruth, she told herself. Her next-door neighbors were probably showering or taking a bath. On a ship the size of the Pandora, a thousand things could be going on.

  She wiped her hands together, over and over and over.

  Why was her face wet?

  And why, beneath the anxiety, was she marvelously, soaringly happy?

  “Donny-O! Jesus, I’m glad to hear your voice.”

  The connection was not the greatest. But Donna had awakened an hour after she’d drifted off, with a major case of the willies; and it occurred to her to try Glenn again.

  His voice gave her good, deep shivers. “Yeah, well, I guess it’s pretty good to hear yours, too.” She pulled at the sheet that covered her breasts.

  “They said you almost bought it. Newspapers’ve been calling the station. Randolph’s pissed.”

  Donna closed her eyes and shook her head. “That’s our boy. One of his men nearly buys it and he gets pissed because of the extra work it makes for him.” She shifted under the covers and stuck her arm under her neck. “I wonder if they’ve been blocking the calls here. We haven’t had any. Their phone system is for shit. I can hardly hear you.”

  “What’s the tub like? They said it was a new one. It’s got an un-American name.”

  “Pandora. Like the woman with the bottle?” She paused. Oh, so that was the ship’s logo? A mermaid with a bottle? “No, wait. This one had a box.”

  “All women have boxes, Donald.”

  “Oh, fuck you.” She scratched her thigh. The ship creaked and rolled. “Listen,” she said, “they been talking about the illegal cargo?”

  “Say huh?”

  “Some kind of crap they dumped, or were gonna dump, in the ocean without permission. In the lifeboat, the first officer confessed …” She stopped herself. Screw it. She was talking to the man she loved, not her coworker. Her heart quickened and her voice grew soft. “I’ll tell you about it later. Glenn …”

  There was a pause. Glenn cleared his throat.

  “Donny, I had a talk with Barb. She …” He cleared his throat again. “I’m gonna get a new partner, babe.”

  Wham. Donna closed her eyes.

  The whiskey voice of Lady Day crooned through her veins, swirling, weeping, through the veins, no, no, no, the keening of the lost, of losing, of pain that you couldn’t even feel, it hurt so much, and you needed someone else to feel it, and that was why Billie had died crazy, junk crazy. ’Cuz you needed something to dull it. You couldn’t believe how bad it hurt …

  the pain …

  Oh, God.

  My man.

  Oh, I love him so …

  “Sweetheart?” The first time he’d ever called her that. “Donna?” First time in a long time.

  “You …” She swallowed down hot tears. Goddamn it, she wasn’t like this. She didn’t care. “You’ve got a really fucked sense of timing, Boelhauf.” Her voice cracked.

  “Donna, you know why. You almost said it yourself, when you left. You know I love—”

  She hung up, stared at the receiver.

  The world is all despair …

  It grabbed you under the tear ducts and tore you down the middle and peeled you back, so you sat there gaping, one big wound, all the hoses around your heart pumping out your life. And inside, the life-saving cut-off systems didn’t work, not too good; the pain slipped in over the flanges at the bottoms of the chambers. The sea washed over them, trailing in the things that swam and lurked beneath the surface; bringing in the stuff that made you sink, made you drown, made you.

  The phone sat there, staring back smugly. Take that, it told her. You wanted to talk to him? You thought maybe his woman would be out and the two of you could have a cozy pillow session? You thought just because you lived through a shipwreck you could have him?

  God, the pain …

  Oh, my man. My man, I …

  My man.

  Her eyes were dry as sandpaper. The tears wanted to come. They begged to come.

  But big girls don’t, and neither did she.

  Ninety-nine bottles of blood on the wall.

  Phil looked up from his drink. It was near dawn, and he was alone.

  In a storeroom, with an empty bottle of—

  —bourbon, beside his port glass. Bourbon, yes, and an odd, confusing feeling of relief washed through him as he focused in on the Kentucky Thoroughbred on the label.

  Bourbon, not—

  —anything else, and with a woman, not with a—

  —a ghost or a monster or something—

  His head pounded unmercifully. Groaning, he grabbed it in an attempt to keep his skull from fragmenting with the pain.

  Brooms and pails leaned against a wall and covered most of a poster of a woman in high heels and a bathing suit. Shelves containing large brown containers marked “Industrial Strength. USE AS DIRECTED” lined the other. Above him, a light bulb hung from a cord and fizzed like a moth.

  His head sang and he shut his eyes as he forced down a stream of upchuck. Tried to smile at the awkwardness of his thought—down, upchuck—but didn’t make it.

  Vomited hard into the nearest bucket.

  And as he did so, his hand pressed the deck, and it was covered with something bumpy and scratchy, and the room stank of decomposition, salt, rotten things. The room went dark, completely black—

  —and as he finished and squinted into the darkness, the bumpiness smoothed out, and the smell faded, but the light did not come back on.

  “Hmmpf.” He rocked back onto his butt and pushed himself up. The darkness crested around him; he rocked back and forth, teetering to catch his balance, and flailed for the wall. Grabbed a pipe—

  —no, a broom—and pictured himself in the pitch-black storage room, swaying like a damn pendulum with a broom in his hand.

  Sidestepped toward the door, found the knob, and let himself out.

  He stood on the promenade deck, right about where he had let himself into the bar. Where the moon had glowed, the yellow sun rested on top of a fluffy cumulus cloud.

  But there was no bar. Only a storage room. He must have gotten turned around. Good Lord, he’d stumbled around the ship, drunker than a danged ol’ skunk. He didn’t remember a thing. Everything past the first drink in the bar was a blank.

  Sagging, he turned left and headed down the promenade. Looked back. Darn it, the bar should be there. Right there.

  He scratched his head, and even that hurt. It hurt to think. So he put his questions on hold and walked back toward the foyer and the elevators.

  Elise wouldn’t be worried about him, but she would be angry.

  Maybe he should sleep it off in the storage room. Him and Betty Grable.

  The very deep did rot.

  Donna’s own hand, floating white beside her as she swam the black, frigid depths. The ribs of a monster—

  —no, no, of a ship. The ribs, and nothing else, nothing but the ribs and her hand. Her hand, which was nothing but bone. Her hand, around which flaps of skin, bone-white, transparent, and empty of blood, wafted and drifted.

  Bobbing and drifting, she swam within the ribs of the ship, like something that had peeled away from it. A piece of living tissue, floating inside a prison of rib bones.

  No, no, the ship wasn’t alive. Its ribs were wood, rotting wood. She narrowed her eyes. Rotting, and impregnated with worms. The ribs were a writhing mass of them.

  The worms go in, the worms go out. The worms, the snakes, the serpents.

  No, no, the ship wasn’t alive.

  And it wasn’t waiting.

  For her RSVP.

  Reply, if you please.

  Hours went by.

  In her bed, Donna cozied up to the warmth beside her. Her bare ass dipped into the valley created by the weight of his body and slid against some part of him, probably his hip. Oh, Glenn, oh, darling, please, yes, do it. Yes, do it.

  Reply, if you don’t please. Tell me what you want. Is it the man? Have I got it right this time? The boy, or th
e man? Or something else? Name your poison. Name my bait.

  Name it.

  Donna rolled over on her back.

  Ice water into her brain, freezing it. She gritted her teeth with pain, grunted, forcing herself to stop it, stop it.

  “Stop it!” She sat up and looked wildly around. Through the open porthole the sun was rising over the water, stippling the sky with turquoise and salmon.

  And the other half of her bed was warm.

  She thought nothing of it—who wouldn’t toss and turn, after a phone call like that—but despite her desolation she was struck by the irony of it: now that it was over (whatever “it” had been), she’d had a wet dream about Glenn.

  And you go on, Donna thought wearily, as she was escorted by a steward into the officers’ dining room. Wan, a little shaky, you say Fuck him and you make it through the morning, because you do. And maybe that’s why he could say good-bye to her; that inner strength of hers, or denial or whatever the hell kept her from begging, and maybe he thought that was evidence that she didn’t need him. While Barb did.

  So she tossed her hair, loaded on the makeup, went to breakfast. Good morning, heartache, take a seat in my soul.

  And jeez, she thought, better seat Captain Reade up on a dais, on a throne with a papal canopy, for all the deference the other officers gave him. He was king of the bounding main on the Pandora, sitting in state at the head of a long table, smack dab in the center of a long, narrow room. All four walls were painted white and covered with a row of dark paintings of ships and seascapes. There were no portholes; it was an interior room. Donna added another square to her mental map of the Pandora.

  The space at Reade’s right was reserved for Donna with a little white place card (OFF. ALMOND, comforting choice of words and phrases), the one across from her empty, and other officers filled the places in long double rows. So much crisp, starched white, the uniforms, the tablecloth, the napkins. She was snowblinded.

  A steward, a young black man, approached with a silver coffeepot. “We should begin,” Reade said, checking his watch. “My day usually starts earlier than this, Ms. Almond.”