Life Guards in the Hamptons (16 page)

He had his jacket on and his keys in his hand. “Maybe you can, if you can ask them where it hurts, like your mother. After the bird thing, why not? Or you could get your mother to tune in and help.”

He wanted me to connect with my mother in my head? I had enough trouble with her on the phone. I grabbed more towels and blankets—Susan and I could share what was left—and raced to his car. With the brownies.

He started to back out of the driveway.

“Wait!” I unbuckled my seat belt and scrambled out the door. “We need a bucket for fresh water.”

“I’m sure they’ll have bottled water at the scene.”

“Not for us.” I jerked my thumb to the back seat. “For Oey.”

Matt turned his head so fast I heard his neck bones creak. “Holy shit!”

“Thit?”

“Not in my car!”

I got the pail, filled it from the garden hose and set it on the floor of the back seat, where it wouldn’t tip. Oey changed, put his fish head in the pail and gave a few glubs, then changed back and purred like a … catfish.

I had a terrible thought, among a lot of worst case scenarios. “Oey, can you talk to the dolphins in the water?”

“Fith?”

“No, that is, that aren’t fish, but yes, the swimming guys who are helping the people. The special ones, from your world, I think.”

“Fwiends.”

Everyone—everything—from Unity was telepathic, according to DUE. “Thank goodness. You have to tell
them not to eat the dogs if they see them. They might look like food, but they are not!”

I flashed an image of Little Red at Oey, me holding the Pomeranian.

“Fwiends?”

“Good friends. Pets. Love. I love my pet. Someone else loves the ones on the boat.”

Matt kept driving, leaning forward as if that made the drive shorter. Grim-faced, he said, “I never thought the dolphins might eat the dogs, only that the sharks might.”

“Oey, tell them to watch out for sharks. For the dogs, too, if they can.”

“Yeth, Twee.”

I got her long tail in my face while he dipped his face in the water, maybe communing with other denizens of the deep. Maybe getting a drink.

Matt’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, his jaw clenched. “Tell me that a … a …” He jerked one thumb toward the back seat.

“Oey.”

“Isn’t in charge of this rescue operation.”

“Oey?” I asked the bird.

“M’ma. Fwiend.”

That’s what I thought. I remembered what he said about an old evil rising, for why he’d come to us. “He sent you to warn us? Or protect us?”

“Pewil.”

“Yes, because it’s his foe who’s causing the trouble?”

“Foe?” Oey held up a bright pink toe.

Matt made a choking sound.

“His enemy?”

“N’fwend.”

“No friend?”

The parrot head dipped. “Baad. Vewy baad.”

And very big.

N’fwend had to be the sea serpent from my story. The one that could make itself out of water, sucking up acres of ocean to rise to the sky, swamping ships, swallowing land. The one M’ma came here to avoid, maybe, while he went through his vulnerable metamorphosis. The one I
wrote as wanting to take over M’ma’s realm in the otherworld. I flashed a picture in my head, from my latest book sketches: a huge column of revolving water, like a water spout, only with whirlpool eyes and huge breaking waves for scales and a mouth that roared with the wind of a tornado. Like we’d had an hour or so ago.

“He’s here?”

Oey dove into my lap, wet tail and all. “Pewil!”

I tried to hug the bird part, not the fish. “No, he’s not here right now. But he sank the ship, didn’t he?”

“Thinking,” she moaned against my shoulder. “Thip thinking. Baad.”

“You tried, Oey. Your buddies in the ocean tried. And I don’t know what we could have done about it if we got the warning sooner.”

If I’d been in Paumanok Harbor sooner.

“Fwiends?”

I rubbed behind her neck until she cooed. “Luve.”

Matt shook his head. “You mean you know what caused the rogue wave?”

No, I knew who
was
the rogue wave. This wasn’t the time to explain the horrific connection between my supposed imagination and the forbidden otherworld, not when we were on our way to see its dire handiwork. Not when any sane person would throw me out of the car, then run me over five times. Me and Oey both.

I had a lot to think about while Matt gathered supplies from the vet clinic and his house. Had I brought this trouble here? Were all those lives lost or shattered my fault for writing fantasy novels?

No. I did not bring M’ma here. I did help him leave, so maybe N’Fwend came out of revenge, or simply thinking M’ma hadn’t gone. Or maybe M’ma hadn’t left and they’d moved their war here. Crap. The sea serpent I’d drawn was pure evil. I did not know how to combat such a foe.

As usual, I was in way over my head. Glub.

Instead of thinking about an enemy with no mercy, or the people in the water or maybe trapped beneath the
ship, I concentrated on the dogs. I sent mental pictures to Oey of the three breeds, and encouraging murmurs to Matt.
You never kill off dogs in your stories,
I told myself. That was the rule. I kept repeating it.

We got to the outskirts of Montauk and went through several checkpoints before we were directed to the firehouse, command central for land operations. Matt and I agreed the efficiency and the cooperation of all the different organizations was impressive, especially on such short notice.

Oey disappeared when Matt parked the car. Matt sighed in resignation at the impossibility.

We were told to wait at the firehouse, since no one had any idea if the Newfoundlands were accounted for, or which landing site might receive the small dogs and their owners.

Another vet was already there, pacing. When we got introduced, it turned out Jenny was a stand-in for Montauk’s local veterinarian, who was on vacation. She was short, young, and cute, a little plump, and very talkative, gesturing with her hands as they discussed hypothermia in dogs and how and where to treat it. Or else the gestures were to show off her ringless finger so Matt could see she wasn’t married. Hmm.

They discussed the dogs’ possible conditions, running through warm stomach lavages and hot water enemas to bring the body temperatures up to normal, and where best to treat them, on site or back at the Montauk veterinary hospital, which was no more than a well equipped trailer. I didn’t get a sense of competition or one-upmanship, more like a confident but anxious study team getting ready for the test of a lifetime.

They had a lot in common, Matt and Jenny. They loved animals and the South Fork, had shared acquaintances and educations and experiences. They were a perfect match, in fact: two normal people who could share the expanding veterinary practice, settle down, and have a litter of their own. They were already smiling like old friends.

I hated her.

Rather than watch them get better acquainted, I sought more information from the command center, in the same big meeting room where I’d been to a pancake breakfast last year.

Not one survivor had reached shore yet, I learned. Not one dead body had been spotted or picked up yet, either. The feeling was that the mortality count would go up when they got into the ship, if they could before it sank. There’d be air pockets, but some passengers or crewmen had to be trapped underwater. The retrievals had to wait. First came the living.

“And the dogs,” I put in.

I got a dirty look from the men waiting by the phones for information as it came in, so I moved over to the technicians setting up rows of computers.

Russ, the computer geek from Paumanok Harbor’s town hall, tried to comfort me with news that the Navy had a salvage vessel on the way, and submarines coming from New London. They might try to keep the cruise ship afloat with air bags, or right it with booms. They’d find the dogs.

But in time?

He shrugged and went back to making computer connections no one else in all of Suffolk County could have made, or made so fast.

The communications specialist sent by the phone company stood over Russ’ shoulder, watching in awe. “Dude, you are some effing kind of wizard.”

Of course he was. He was from Paumanok Harbor.

I envied Russ his gift that helped people, that had a valuable use in the world. Unlike me. There had to be something I could do …

I watched Russ’ fingers fly over three different keyboards and remembered there was something I could do. My fingers still worked.

I tried to find a quiet place. The ladies’ room was my best bet, so I pretended to wash my hands while I tried to contact Oey. I didn’t get a response, but I pulled the pad I always carried out of my pocketbook and quickly sketched an idea I had. Maybe Oey could get M’ma to
right the ship. Even a pod of magic dolphins couldn’t do it, but a sea god who could swim and fly and start fires and grant Matt powers—he could do anything. That’s how I’d write it in my book, anyway.

I stared at the pictures, willing someone to see what I saw.

Someone did, a stocky woman in full firefighting gear. “Do you really think this is the time for silly cartoons?” she snapped at me. “If you can’t help, get the hell out.”

I got out of the ladies’ room and went looking for Matt, the silly cartoons tucked in my sweatshirt, next to my heart.

I
 FOUND MATT WATCHING THE PICTURES flickering along a blank wall of the huge room. Thanks to Russ, all the information that came in could be accessed instantly, copied to the appropriate agency or location, and projected onto the white walls. They’d dimmed the lights to make the various images show up better.

One pseudo-screen held the passenger and crew lists, alphabetized. I knew the computers could click on any name and get the information from the cruise line’s ticket questionnaires: age, sex, next of kin, health issues, other members of the tour group or family or friends they traveled with, who they roomed with in what cabin, and if they required kosher meals. Passport photos were in the files, too, so identifying any unconscious victims could be facilitated.

Another screen showed the local news station, with its reporter on the Coast Guard cutter, one of the first responders at the scene and lead agency in the rescue.

A third section of the blank wall switched from one triage area to another, checking on progress.

As the first reports and pictures came in, we could all see how efficiently this operation intended to proceed.

Every survivor got an identification bracelet as soon as they reached one of the three triage stations: East Lake Drive, West Lake Drive, and at Second House, the big museum grounds close to the beach on Montauk
Highway, to handle anyone the dory fishermen and the surfers got into their four-wheel drives.

Thanks to Russ and the latest telecom technology, the names and bracelet numbers, conditions on arrival, means of transport and destination, were all immediately sent to the firehouse for data entry and posting on the PowerPoint screen. The names on the passenger list projection screen changed color from red to black when they got their bracelets and numbers. The crew changed from blue to green. The information also got embedded into bar codes on the bracelets that anyone with a smart phone could read. Russ had enough ’puters, printers, and trusted techs at each spot to get it right.

Paumanok Harbor had also sent a bunch of the truth-seers who kept checking the facts, lest people be too disoriented to remember their names. Which led to one embarrassing scene, right on camera, where a guy had to admit to his wife that he had a false identity, and another wife in New Jersey.

“How’d you know?” the guy demanded of Judge Chemlecki, wanting to pop the silver-haired jurist on the jaw.

The judge shrugged. “I must have seen you before. Have you ever been in court?”

The bigamist didn’t answer, just hurried after his furious wife.

“That’s going to throw off the records,” one of the techs commented. “I bet they don’t stay in the same motel room we’ve assigned them.”

But they were all right, which was what mattered for now, stamped, sealed, and sent on their way for dry clothes and hot food before boarding the buses.

Others weren’t as lucky. We saw stretchers carried to the waiting ambulances, and one helicopter didn’t stop at the landing area, just kept going to the next hospital in line. The copilot radioed in what identification he had, and someone at the communications center read back ID numbers to be handwritten on each victim’s arm in permanent marker. Those names and numbers got entered into all the computer bases.

The easternmost towns on Long Island were not going to misplace a survivor, not going to look as inept as other rescues we’d all seen. Un-uh.

They weren’t going to keep loved ones or the world waiting for news, either. Every scrap of information we had got sent to news stations and the cruise company’s hot lines and a website established minutes ago. A direct feed to the high school in East Hampton got set up for newscasters, so we did not have a thousand TV crews and trucks to contend with in the crowded Montauk facilities. One crew got assigned to each location, by lot, to share with the others. A special phone to the cruise line stayed open, waiting ominously for reports of fatalities, so the mother company could notify the families before the names got changed to another color for all to see. One name got highlighted in yellow. Royce’s cherished emeritus, someone whispered to me.