Flat Water Tuesday (11 page)

She flushed again. “That’s not true! I’m a member of the God Four. I hate Channing as much as you guys do.”

“But it’s not like he’s ever going to cut you. And if you’re so important to the team why isn’t it called the God Five?” I was winding her up because I liked the way her eyes looked when she was mad but I could see I had gone too far.

“That’s just the sort of sexist crap I have to put up with all the time. You guys can’t see where you’re going when you go down that course. I can. I steer you. I can see the other boat. I’m the one who pushes you through them. You? What do you do, genius? You look at the back of the guy in front of you. I have to see everything, judge if the other team is dying and when we make a move. I’m the brain of the boat. Without me, you guys wouldn’t even get the boat down to the water. I give the command for hands on, to lift it, to lower it to the water and hold. I get you out there so you can do one thing: row. At the rating I tell you. And until I tell you to stop.” She was pretty riled up.

“Yeah? And what about the seven months of daily training we have to put in?” I thought I might as well go for broke.

“What about it? You don’t need to drop almost a fifth of your body weight and half starve yourself to do it, Carrey. And still be able to run with you guys in the freezing cold. You try running those miles on an empty stomach. You don’t need to keep track of the training schedules for a dozen rowers, or organize every session in the rowing tanks, or monitor everyone’s erg scores and weights records. You just have to show up.”

“Okay, okay. Channing just gave me the big teamwork lecture.”

“It’s not about teamwork. It’s about something else that’s like it.”

“Why do you do it?”

“Why do I do what?”

“Why be a cox for some retro guy’s rowing team? I mean, what’s the point if you think it’s so awful?”

“Oh, God. What’s the point in anything? I’m good at it, I guess.”

We had to get out of there sooner or later. But she was on a roll. She looked at me sideways, as if she was aiming her words. “Why do you row?”

I waited a second and it was my turn to change the subject. “I was getting tired of seeing you in class and wondering what you’re like.”

“Am I what you expected?”

“Put the cigarette in the can and let’s get out of here before they bust us.”

“Let them.”

“Do you really want to finish that? You don’t.” I held out the can.

She took one last drag, slid the rest into the can. I heard it fizz when it hit bottom. She waved away the smoke between us, as if she was waving at me, trying to get my attention and also saying good-bye. She turned and started walking away. She knew I was watching her go, too, watching her walk the whole hall until she disappeared through the door to the stairs. I couldn’t drop my cigarette fast enough into the can with hers. I felt like choking. You had to wonder what people were thinking, smoking those things.

*   *   *

Carolyn thought this might be the best work I had ever done for the channel. It consisted mostly of underwater footage I had snagged with pan-cams over the course of eight dives with some of the locals. I had also gone into the cage with a digital camera in plastic waterproof housing and stayed there as long as I could each day. The Durban water was warmer than the water near Gans Baai, where everyone went to film the Great Whites—there was so much Great White footage among the filmers in South Africa that we all traded it like baseball cards. But the Zambezi sharks look nearly as fearsome—and the tens of thousands of sardines in the water made the sea look frenzied—especially as they ripped into the tiny silver fish that swarmed around them. Each night back at the hotel I’d go over the day’s footage with the divers. They’d be pumped up, fast forwarding to the sharks. They had named some of the bigger ones that looked suitably menacing on camera: Bugsy, Mugsy and Bart. Carolyn told me that it seemed incredible that a little over a week before I had been underwater in that carnage. It may have looked exciting but I had felt at peace in the cage, panning the area for Bugsy’s next appearance or Mugsy barreling out of the dark like a jet fighter and banking around me. For every one minute of shark footage I recovered, there must have been an hour of less interesting sardine footage. And eighty percent of the shark footage was unsellable because of the light or a camera jump or the ambient sound of the edge of the camera lens hitting the side of the metal cage. Carolyn’s major job was finding the minutes of wheat in the hours of chaff.

The two of us ate in front of the computer, separating segments of the video into smaller chunks we could mix and match with the interviews and the scenery shots. By the time we were finished consuming the goodies from the SoHo House of Thai and Asian Cuisine I was bushed again. I managed to stay up until nine and then I took a shower and went to bed, fell into the dreamless slumber of a deep-sea animal.

I woke up with a jolt about three hours later and for a heartbeat had the terrible feeling I was in a hotel. I lay on my side and looked at the heavy sliding door to the bathroom in the dark, letting my eyes adjust, hoping as I did I was really back home and not in the Heathrow Hilton or a windowless hotel room in Schiphol Airport or in a Holiday Inn in Botswana. When I made out the familiar outlines of the room and the dim line of light from under the shades, I swung to my feet. Carolyn wasn’t in bed. I heard somebody shout something ugly and drunken far down below on the street. I felt my heart writhing in my chest and walked out, barefoot, into the living area, then to the suite. Carolyn’s chair was empty; the plastic pods of food were abandoned. I called her name a few times. The shot where she had downed tools was a cutaway I had snagged on the last day of filming of a mother and baby at the beach, the mother holding the baby closely and protectively, the kid squinting into the sun, pointing out at the water, a blue beach hat flopping over her chubby face. It was a close-up shot.

I felt my heart plunge inside me.

I threw on my sweatshirt and jeans, found my leather jacket in the closet and pulled on my sneakers. I went out the kitchen door into the narrow service hall and took the concrete factory steps up to the heavy door leading out to the roof. I pushed the door hard and it groaned open. The night air was cool on my face. The old police station was lit up, displaying all the yuppie apartments with incongruous dormer windows and skylights poking through the chateaulike exterior. I walked around the roof, and finally found her sitting on one of the air-conditioning units, smoking a cigarette. She had a big scotch in an insulated plastic
#1 Yankees Fan
tumbler next to her, straight up, with ice, and was already halfway through it.

“What are you doing up?” she asked. The minute she said it I figured she was working on drink number two or three. There’d be a bottle up here somewhere.

“I’ve been looking for you.”

“I’m taking a break. Is that okay? It’s midnight. I like looking at the lights out here.”

“Maybe you should drink downstairs.”

“I’m sick of downstairs. I spend my whole life in that place. God, do you snore. I always forget.”

I sat next to her, carefully, hoping she wouldn’t get up or start pacing or maybe throw something, like that heavy plastic highball we had gotten on a rare afternoon out to Yankee Stadium shortly after I moved to the city and was in the mood for the touristy attractions. That cheesy souvenir was proof that we once had shared carefree times. Carolyn hugged herself, her breasts pushed together as she shivered. She drank from the cup and set it down. “Once I thought about jumping off this roof. Right down onto Broome Street.” She was speaking to her feet, as if in confession.

I put my hand over the small of her back, my fingers just touching, so I could feel the heat off her body.

“I wanted to do it. I don’t know why. Then I thought I wouldn’t die, I’d just get really, really hurt. That was too terrifying. Maybe I should stay alive and then die from natural causes and be found alone in my studio, in front of the computer. They’ll have to pry the mouse out of my hands.”

“You’re just tired, Car. Take a day off; take two. Let’s go somewhere. Anywhere.”

“Maybe bad people deserve to die alone.”

“You’re not a bad person. You know that.”

“How can you be sure?”

I touched her gently, felt the strength there, and she leaned against me just for a moment. “I’m such a wimp.”

“You’re not.”

“I saw that footage of the woman with the baby and I thought of you filming it. I ran it about ten times. What do women and babies have to do with sharks, I want to know? I even asked you and you didn’t move. I was yelling at you from the desk. How the hell are we supposed to edit that in?” She looked at me. “Was that little moment a message to me? To us?”

“It wasn’t a message. It was me not thinking. Come on, you know that.”

“I’m so sad now. I’m sad and I’m so mad at you.” She leaned against me again and didn’t pull away. We sat there for a long time. Finally I stood her up and led her toward the door. I left the glass up there. It was part of the consideration one irresponsible drinker shows another—lifelines of strategically forgotten drinks, two years of surreptitiously abandoned glasses that would be found by other people, relics of a lost civilization of love. I brought her downstairs and locked the door while she watched me, biting her lower lip. I led her to the bedroom and left her there in the dark while I turned off the lights in the living area, left the computer glowing and pulsing by the desk. We undressed in the pale city light, methodically, in the cold apartment, each one at either side of the bed. We lay down and clung to each other and she held my upper arms, pressed her palms and nails against me like she was trying to push me away. When we were finished she asked me to sleep on the couch. I didn’t argue. She hated me to hear her cry.

8.

I woke to the sound of the phone bleating. Carolyn picked it up in the bedroom just before the voice mail switched on and I heard her mutter something and then the bed creak and she padded through into the room naked, the morning sun washing out her skin and eyes. She had pressed her nails so deeply into my biceps that they hurt. Rubbing my arms, I felt a vague sexual thrill. She held out the phone like an offering; savage morning goddess.

I gave her an open-handed look and she shrugged, dropped the handset on me and I fumbled it.

“Rob?” The voice was dimly familiar. “It’s me. Ruth Anderson. Can you hear me?”

“Ruth Anderson from Fenton?”

“Yeah. Wow, what a bad connection.”

“It’s a crappy cordless,” I said. It actually wasn’t crappy at all. It was just a little wonky because Carolyn had thrown it against the wall once or twice. Trying to hit me. “How are you doing? What a surprise.”

Carolyn, dressed now in her sweatpants and a soft, white, belly-baring T-shirt, walked past and glanced down at me, then away, making a point of not being interested. I watched her, hungry again.

Ruth asked, “Um, hey, look, did you get a letter from John Perry?”

“I read it a couple of days ago, on a flight in from overseas. I’ve been away. He sounds bad. I was going to call him.” I sat up, wrapped the blanket around my shoulders. I smelled like sex and dust.

Ruth breathed into the phone in what might have been a half laugh or an expression of mild disbelief. “So, you haven’t heard?”

“What?”

“God, I was hoping I wouldn’t have to be the one to tell you this.” I heard her take a breath. “John’s dead.”

I didn’t say anything, felt myself tear up for just a millisecond before I blinked it away. When I did speak my tongue felt heavy and sticky in my mouth and I told her that was terrible news.

“Yeah. He killed himself. About a week ago. He jumped off the George Washington Bridge. They were fixing it and some worker saw him go over. It’s too awful.”

I closed my eyes and thought of him falling. A figure plummeting off that giant expanse into the Hudson. I looked up at the grimy window framing our living area and saw the silhouette of a strolling pigeon.

“Are you there?”

“Yes. I think you caught me a little flat-footed. I don’t believe it.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I was stunned, too, when I heard. The school called me, Rob, and asked me to contact everyone on the team from our year. There’s going to be a memorial service for him at the reunion this weekend. It would be good if we all made an effort to attend. It seems his family asked for all of us to be there. You’ve been kind of out of it, though. I haven’t been able to get hold of you.”

I nodded into the phone, realized she couldn’t hear that, and said, “Yeah. MIA. That’s me.”

“I called Niccalsetti and tried about four Carreys until I got your brother or your cousin or something. He said he didn’t have an e-mail address for you because he doesn’t own a computer.”

“You got my brother, Tom. I didn’t even know his number was listed.”

“Do you think you can make it, Rob?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to John, to any of you, in fifteen years.”

There was a pause, and the line crackled. She could have moved away from her desk to speak to me, or switched the phone to the other ear. “Look, I’m not crazy about going back there either but his family has specifically asked. Fenton’s close to the city. You could just take the train.”

“I know it.” I looked over at Carolyn at her desk. “I suppose I have to, now that you’ve found me.”

“It’s this Saturday. At noon. I’ll e-mail you the information. I also have a newspaper article you can read, about, well, you know. Give me your e-mail address, okay?”

I spelled it out: [email protected].

“Wow. Do you really work for
National Geographic
?”

“When they let me.”

“Do you write for them?”

“Film.”

“Oh. How cool.” She thought about that for a beat, and then said, “At least we can catch up. Anyway, I have to make another call so I can’t chat now.”

“Ruth?”

“Yes?” She sounded like she was used to closing business on the phone. She sounded achingly professional.