Pressure Drop (11 page)

Matthias felt the swells raising and lowering his body; he might have been a microbe on the chest of a giant. He looked for the anchor, saw it had hooked itself in the orange forest of elkhorn coral at the edge of the wall, forty feet below. It was the same coral head that
Who Cares
had been anchored to when Moxie came out to see why it was overdue and found Hiram Standish, Jr., floating in the water and the Frenchman gone. Matthias took his deep breaths, stilled his body, then jackknifed down.

In a moment he had left the surface turbulence behind. Matthias kicked with long slow strokes and kept his hands by his sides. The secret of deep diving was using as little oxygen as possible. That meant diving down in a straight line and getting the most power from the fins with the least effort. Matthias glided down past the coral head, out to the edge of the drop and looked into the deep blue of the Tongue of the Ocean, deep blue as far as he could see. He glanced at his depth gauge—45 feet—sensed Brock behind him and kept descending along the face of the wall. It unreeled upside down as he went by.

Sea fans, yellow and pink, grew out of the rock, and at 70 feet there were lacy branches of black coral. Fish felt the currents his body made and ducked into their holes—tiny fish like purple-headed royal grammas and big ones like Nassau groupers with their thick lips and stupid stubborn eyes. At 85 feet a green Moray stretched its head out of the wall to watch him go by and then curled back out of sight.

Now he could see the big shelf, overgrown with staghorn coral, that stuck out from the wall at 100 feet. He had seen it many times in the days following the accident, when he had put on tanks and dived the wall over and over, all the way to 300 feet, the scuba limit, looking for evidence he never found, answers to all the questions unanswered at the trial: who was the other man? where was his dive card? how had tank ZB-27 come to be filled with poisoned air?

Twenty feet below was a smaller shelf, about the size of a king-sized bed. A big brown nurse shark was resting on it now, its still body curved gracefully, like something Henry Moore might have worked on. Matthias hung at the 100-foot level, watching it. He felt a tap on his shoulder.

He swung around. Brock hovered beside him. He pointed toward the surface. Matthias nodded. Brock was an excellent free diver, especially for a man his size, but he didn't have Matthias's bottom time. Brock kicked away; the first stroke of his fins sent a surge of water around Matthias's head. Looking up he saw the surface, a circle of light far above, and Brock rising toward it, his enormous homemade spear gun hanging from his belt. Brock was an experienced ocean diver and the best divemaster Matthias had ever hired, but like a lot of divers who had learned on the Great Barrier Reef, he dove armed.

Matthias felt the cough reflex tickle the back of his throat. He controlled it and it went away; this was the dangerous time—the time when carbon dioxide buildup would have forced most people to take in a breath. There would be no other warning, just unconsciousness. Matthias peered down into the blue-black chasm. He saw nothing that shouldn't have been there.

Matthias flicked a fin and started up. He passed a big grouper on the way. Each grouper had its hole. This one had probably lived in the same one for years. Matthias looked into its dull eyes, wondering what it had seen on that September day, wishing science could dissect its little brain in some way that would tap into its memory.

He broke the surface, blew the waste air out of his lungs and sucked in a huge breath. Gold sparkles ignited all around him. He had been down too long. He lay on the surface, inhaling long slow breaths through his snorkel. The dizziness passed.

Matthias climbed into the boat. Brock, standing behind the console, studied his watch. “Three fifty-two,” he said. “That was a long pull.”

“Yeah.”

Brock looked at him. “One day you won't come up.”

Matthias, taking off his mask, said nothing. He already knew that the sea, free diving especially, was like a drug to him. He didn't want to get into a discussion about it.

“See anything?” he asked.

“Of course not,” Brock said. “What would be left to see by now?”

“The other tank.”

“Right. It's five thousand feet down, Matt. And if you found it what would it prove?”

Matthias had no answer. Brock hauled in the anchor. Rain started to fall, first warm then cold. It washed the salt from their bodies, flattened the sea and leached all the color out of Zombie Bay. Matthias and his divemaster rode home in a gray silence.

11

Business had never been better.
Living Without Men and Children … and Loving It
was still on the bestseller list and bidding for the reprint rights had reached the high six figures. Dr. Lois Filer, with her new body, teeth and haircut, had been on Donahue twice, Oprah once, and local shows from coast to coast. She had even appeared, as the last guest and for only four minutes, on “The Tonight Show,” but she had managed, in her sweet contralto, to get off a little joke that may or may not have invoked similarities between politics and fellatio, which brought down the house and made Johnny toss his pencil in the air.
Washington Post Book World
had run twenty-two column inches on womynpress, accompanied by a photograph of Brenda Singer-Atwell and M. brainstorming at a famous disco. Word of Nina's role in all this had spread. Now when she rode her stationary bike, which wasn't as often as before because she couldn't get her belly in a comfortable position, Nina worked at the same time, talking into a dictaphone or reading a manuscript.

Late in October, on a Saturday perfect for tailgate parties on Ivy League campuses, Nina, in the city, worked on a proposal from a small magazine publisher who wanted to start a periodical devoted to the care and feeding of exotic birds. The proposal consisted of thirty pages of enthusiastic but vague text, five-year-old data on the numbers and demography of exotic bird collectors, and color glossies of gorgeous birds. At seven she hurried downtown where she joined Suze and a few dozen other spectators in a basement theater.

“God,” said Suze as Nina squeezed into her seat, “how much weight have you put on?”

“Shut up.”

The house lights, already dim, dimmed a little more. A ragged curtain parted on a tiny stage. On the stage lay a stuffed, sleeping or dead pig. Big hooks hung from a wire above.

“What's this?” Nina asked.

“Le Boucher,” Suze replied. “She's incredible. She going to be the biggest—”

“Shh,” hissed someone behind them.

A naked woman entered from stage right. She had bulging muscles, a shaved head, thick hair under her arms and over her vulva. She began singing the old Cream song “I'm So Glad.” Then, holding one hand behind her back and not looking at the audience, she strode to the stuffed, sleeping or dead pig and squatted beside it. She drew her hand out from behind her back, revealing a long butcher knife. Still singing, she proceeded to butcher the pig. The knife rose and fell to the rhythms of the song. The pig showed no signs of resistance, so it hadn't been sleeping. On the other hand, there was a lot of blood, so it wasn't stuffed either. Le Boucher, her magnificent body splashed with red, pirouetted in a musclebound way to hang the pieces of meat on the hooks, her feet squishing audibly in the intestines that had begun to spread across the stage.

“Oh God,” Nina said.

“Strong stuff, huh?” said Suze.

“It's not that,” Nina replied. “I think I'm in labor.”

“Oh God,” Suze said. “How do you know?”

“Because I just had a cramp like I've never had before. Kind of twisting.”

“Maybe it's just a bad period.”

“Suze, you asshole. You don't have—” Nina stopped talking. She felt something give inside her. The next moment warm liquid gushed out between her legs. She rose. “Let's go.”

Nina hurried from the theater, Suze close behind her. They didn't attract any attention. On stage the performer was winding pig intestines around her body, and lots of other people were hurrying out too.

There was a taxi parked outside but Nina was too slow and the theater critic of
The New York Times
beat her to it. Nina stood on the dark street while uterine flow dampened her legs and Suze hopped up and down beside her.

“I haven't even got my fucking ditty bag,” Nina said.

“What?” said Suze.

Nina's womb churned again, a sudden, utterly involuntary movement that didn't hurt, exactly, although Nina wouldn't have wanted to make a night of it.

“Oh God,” she said again, realizing that she was about to.

“What's a ditty bag?” Suze asked. “Maybe we can get one on the way.”

“On the way where?”

“To the hospital. Aren't we going to the hospital?”

“I guess so.” Then she remembered that she was supposed to call Dr. Berry first. She had his home number. There were two public telephones in front of a warehouse on the other side of the street. Nina walked toward them. Suze ran to the corner to find a taxi.

Someone had ripped the receiver off one of the telephones. A man was talking on the other. “I don't know,” he was saying. “What do you want to do?” With his free hand he hitched up his pants, wriggling his flabby hips to assist the process. “Naw,” he said, “I don't want to go there again. They're all a bunch of assholes.… All right, all right, not Charlie. Charlie's not an asshole. He's a douche-bag.” The man laughed. “Just kidding,
paisan
. Charlie's a real
paisan
. You're a
paisan
. I'm a
paisan
. We're all a shitload of fucking
paisans
, just itching for a little you know what, right? Am I right or am I right?” The man listened to the reply. Then he said, “So, you're bored, I'm bored, what do you want to do?”

Nina tapped him on the shoulder. “I need to use the phone,” she said.

The man turned very slowly and looked down on her. He had long greasy hair and needed a shave. “Unlax, Fuddsy,” he said. “No, no, Zimmy, I'm not talking to you. I've got a very impatient customer here who doesn't give an apparent shit for my constitutional right to converse with you.”

“I'm about to have a baby, you jerk,” Nina said.

The man's eyes ran down her body. They widened. “Zimmy? I'll call you back.” He hung up, ran his eyes down Nina's body again and walked rapidly away, glancing back once, but briefly—lest he be turned to a pillar of salt, or something.

Nina dialed Dr. Berry's number. A woman who might have done the voice-overs for Betty Crocker answered. “Just a minute please, dear,” she said, and called, “Jim. Jim.”

Opera played in the background. Dr. Berry came to the phone, humming “Salut Demeure, Chaste et Pure.” “Hello,” he said.

“It's Nina Kitchener, Dr. Berry. I think the baby's coming.”

“When's your due date?”

“Next Thursday.”

“No problem,” said Dr. Berry. “How far apart are your contractions?”

“How far apart?”

“Approximately.”

“In time, you mean?”

“That's right. You're not timing them?”

“I forgot. But I think my water broke. I know it did.”

“Splendid,” said Dr. Berry. “Get to the hospital. I'll meet you there and we'll see what's what.”

Nina hung up and looked around for Suze. There was a squad car parked halfway down the block. Suze was talking to the driver, gesturing wildly. When Nina arrived Suze turned to her and said, “There are no fucking cabs. And this guy's balking at doing his sworn duty.”

The cop inside peered up at Nina. He'd been shaving for maybe three months and still had adolescent pimples on his cheeks. “I'm on a stakeout,” he said in a high voice. “I can't just up and leave.” He regarded Nina more closely. “Maybe I can radio for an ambulance.”

“Stakeout shmakeout!” Suze screamed at him. “And an ambulance could take an hour. You know it, I know it, the whole fucking town knows it. What are you, from Omaha Flats, for Christ's sake? Now open up and get us to the hospital pronto.”

“But it's my first crack bust,” the cop pleaded.

“Sure, sure,” Suze said. “But tomorrow the paper will say ‘Mom Has Baby on Street While Rookie Cop Panics.' And then we'll sue you and the city up and down till you can't even get hired by the goddamn Sanitation Department. Your life will be over, boychick, with a capital O.”

The cop unlocked the doors, let them in and sped off. “Hit the siren,” Suze commanded.

He hit the siren. They flew uptown on a wailing carpet of sound. Nina had another contraction, much stronger than the ones before. This time the line between discomfort and pain was approached. She took Suze's hand. When the contraction eased, Nina said, “You're behaving like the ditziest father in the worst screwball comedy ever made.”

“Screwball,” said Suze, giving Nina's hand a squeeze. She raised her voice. “Screwfuckingball. Doesn't that just say it all?”

The cop glanced back at them in the rearview mirror. Nina had never before seen naked terror in a man's eyes. She saw it now. Then her womb twisted again. “Jesus,” she said. She felt sweat pop out on her brow.

“Is it on the way?” Suze asked.

“Of course.”

“I mean right now.”

“I don't know.”

The cop put the pedal to the floor.

“Oh shit,” Nina said.

“What now?”

“I forgot to look at the time.”

“What difference does that make?” Suze asked. “Anything on your schedule will have to go on hold, for God's sake.”

“Here comes another,” Nina said. This time she kept her eyes on her watch. The contraction lasted thirty-one seconds. The next one began two minutes and forty-three seconds later.

Suze pounded on the bars that separated them from the driver. “Can't you make this shitbox move?” she yelled.