Dead in the Water (25 page)

“Shit,” she whispered. Turned—

—gasped—

—her own reflection.

Shit. Scowling, she reached behind and grabbed the dress’s zipper and pulled it down. She’d be damned if she’d tiptoe around like some bimbo afraid of the dark. Battle fatigue, that’s all it was. Hell, twenty-four hours in a lifeboat was enough to shake up anybody.

Pulled off her bikini underpants and stood naked in the air-conditioned room. No wonder she was shivering. She had on hardly any clothes and the room was very cold.

She walked into the bathroom and washed her face, swabbed off her makeup. Getting old, lady; lines and wrinkles.

She padded back to the bed and regarded the pulled-back covers. Something about the angle reminded her of a mouth. She folded her arms over her elbows.

She was afraid to get inside it. Something about the way the sheets encased you, something about lying prone. Something about turning off the light.

Something about losing your marbles, Donna. Get the hell in and stop this.

Gingerly she pulled back the sheet. Her pulse thumped in the hollow of her throat. Her face tingled with prickles. She swallowed again, hard.

Put one leg on the bed, sank down on her rump, and pulled
her knees up. Reclined, heart pounding. Uneasy inside her ribs, which were uneasy inside her skin.

She set the alarm. The captain ate breakfast at seven. She should get up by six-thirty at the latest.

Hesitated a long time, and then she turned off the light. The petals of the rose brushed her wrist like a tissue of skin.

In the dark she listened, eyes wide open. It was a subtle sensation, but you could tell you were on the water; not like the
Morris
, of course, or in the lifeboat. The captain had explained about the stabilizers that made the ride smoother. Neptune’s shock absorbers.

Those poor men, out there somewhere. At least, she hoped they were out there somewhere.

What was that? Her ears pricked. Her skin tingled hard.

A creak. The ship. Footfalls in the corridor.

Something … no, nothing else.

Nothing else.

Breathed in, out. Willed her limbs to feel heavy: toes, feet, ankles, shins. Her heart beat fast and her skin prickled.

Knees, upper thighs, thighs, puss. Butt. Abdomen.

She yawned. Encouraged, she took more deep breaths. Thought about being heavier, made of lead, made of the heaviest thing on the planet. Something that dropped to the bottom like a stone and stayed there—

Christ. She tensed.

Sleep, Donna, sleep
, whispered a voice deep inside her head.
You are exhausted
.

Exhausted? She was practically dead. Every atom in her body was drained to the max.

Flexing her leg muscles, she snuggled under the covers. Big breath in, hold it, hold it, toes, feet, ankles, shins …

Yes. And sinking, down deep, plummeting down, so heavy you could never, ever come back up …

But that’s okay. That’s okay because you can’t hold it forever
.

That’s okay
.

Her lids fluttered as she melted into the mattress. Her anxiety detached itself and floated free with the tide. There
was nothing wrong, nothing whatsoever. All she needed was rest. Tomorrow would be a better day.

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
.

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
.

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 …

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.