Pressure Drop (37 page)

Nina tried information for Washington, Connecticut. No number. She found the town on a map: a dot almost hidden in the folds of the Connecticut Berkshires. Nina estimated the mileage, called a rental-car company and reserved a compact. She was on her way out the door when the phone rang. Nina stood still in her doorway. For a few minutes, she had forgotten the fear of being alone in her apartment. It came back in waves, with each ring of the phone. She answered it.

“Nina Kitchener?” said a man; young, perhaps, although not as young as the man in the reference room at the library. And this man had an Australian accent.

“Who's calling?” Nina said.

“My name is Muller. Bernie Muller. I'm a producer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Current affairs department. That's like your public affairs. I heard about the dreadful thing that happened to you, if you are Nina Kitchener, that is, and I'd like to meet if it's not too inconvenient.”

“You came all the way from Australia to do a story on me?”

The man laughed. He had a loud, hearty laugh that made her think of beaches and beer and the fun life that the travel agencies were selling Down Under. “I was already here, love. I'm researching a documentary on missing children in America. I visited Channel Four the other day and they told me about you.” He paused. “If you are Nina Kitchener.”

“I am,” Nina said.

“Great,” Bernie Muller replied. “Then what d'you say?”

“I really don't see how an Australian documentary will help get my baby back.”

“No argument there,” said Bernie Muller. “More in it for me than for you. But I have gathered some material on child kidnappings that you're welcome to go over. I'm not suggesting a formal interview on tape, or anything like that. Just some preliminary chat. I won't take a lot of your time.”

“What kind of material?”

“Case studies. Just a few, actually. We're still in the early stages.”

“Case studies from New York?”

“None from New York. Philadelphia. San Francisco. Boston, if I remember. A few others.”

“All right,” Nina said.

“Great,” said Bernie Muller. “Should we meet somewhere? My hotel? Your place?” Nina didn't like either suggestion. There was a silence. Then Bernie Muller said, “How about Grand Central Station?”

“Grand Central Station?”

“Down below. They've got a super oyster place.”

“So I've heard.”

Bernie Muller laughed his big laugh. “Have I said something horribly tourist, then?”

“No, no. The Oyster Bar will be fine.”

“Great. I love seafood. How's tonight?”

“No. I'm … busy tonight.”

“Tomorrow?”

“That should be all right.”

“Six o'clock?”

“Fine.”

“Great. See you then.”

“Wait,” Nina said. “How will I know you?”

Bernie Muller laughed. “Big lout,” he said. “But not to worry—I'll know you.”

“You'll know me?”

“I saw your tape. Don't take offense, but aside from all the personal tragedy, you're very good on the tube.”

They said goodbye.
Aside from all the personal tragedy
. How authentically TV. Nina almost didn't bother calling “Live At Five.” “Oh, sure,” said the researcher who had come on the shoot at her apartment. “The Australian guy. He was in yesterday.”

Nina picked up her rental car and stopped at Suze's. She didn't want to drive to Connecticut alone. But Suze was gone. The note said:

Never apologize, never explain, right? But the apology is I'm sorry and the explanation is there's a deal meeting tomorrow at Paramount and I've got to be there. Stay here. The fridge is full and there's wine in the top cupboard. See you soon. Love S.

Nina thought of Jason. But Jason was at the office. She couldn't ask Jason. He'd been handling the business for weeks. And that wasn't fair, no matter what; Nina decided at that moment to go back to work when she got back. She thought of asking the Australian man. Bernie Muller. But he hadn't mentioned the name of his hotel. So Nina drove alone to Connecticut.

32

Temporary went on and on.

Component number three, out of touch with the tingling electromagnetic force and the smell of the living planet, accepted what components number one and two had to give him: nourishment he could not taste and air he could not smell. Component number three was free, free of responsibility, free of distraction, free to pursue what it now knew to be its purpose—to think, to remember. Component number three: the living brain in the carcass.

Not quite true to say free of distraction. That would leave out Dr. Robert. “Pneumonia,” he might be saying in a low voice, just outside the circle of vision. “I was afraid of this.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Mother, also invisible.

“Let's not say afraid. Let's say cognizant of the possibility.”

“But what are you going to to?”

“Be aggressive,” spoke the voice of Dr. Robert. “We've got options.” He listed three or four drugs, like a pagan priest invoking the gods.

O Hera, Poseidon, Anubis, Thor: heal me. Inject me with Venus and Mars, Herr Doktor Medicine Man. Lay the god pill on my tongue. Yes, the fever was good. It brought back the names of the gods, and much more. Fever made him hot, a hothouse where memory bloomed, and memory was his purpose. “What do you remember?” his strange little Latin-namesake had asked that very first night in Aix. “What do you remember?”

Not much, then. Just enough to get their feet wet: bad joke. Faint memories, like the stories the black fisherman had told him about fire on the water.

Now he remembered much more. He remembered all the words to “Mack the Knife.” In German. Not that he, component number three, knew German. But he had known it long ago. He had understood, perhaps even spoken it. Mother knew German. Fritz knew German. And Daddy had spoken it too, with a funny accent.

Daddy. Daddy brought him to memory number one, the memory stirred by the sight of the gaudy tropical fish on the postage stamp, the antediluvian memory, hidden in the densest undergrowth in the farthest corner of the hothouse. The cast: Happy, Nurse Betty, Daddy, Fritz. The events: first, a boat ride on baby blue water; fingers trailing in its warmth, cutting tiny bubbling wakes of white froth, indescribably beautiful, until Nurse Betty slapped his hand, not hard, and said be careful or you'll fall out and drown. Second: a day at the beach with Nurse Betty. A hot day, with iced coconut milk in a paper cup, and later Nurse Betty asleep under a tree, and Daddy and Fritz gone.

Third event: A walk in the woods. Alone. Piney woods and mushy ground under his feet. Something gleamed through the trees. A pond. He stood on its rim. Things floated in the still water. Moldy things. A wooden crate. The brass-studded top of a trunk, the brass dull green. Something white as a slug in a rotting life jacket.

The little boy stood by the pond. He looked at the floating things. After a while he noticed two ropes, each tied around a tree near the pond. The ropes led to the water, disappeared under it. Bubbles rose up beside them, two sets of bubbles. It was so quiet the boy could hear them popping on the surface. Once he thought he heard Nurse Betty calling through the woods: “Happy? Happy?” He didn't answer. He wasn't fond of Nurse Betty. Her skin was leathery, not soft like Mama's, and although she had smacked him lightly on the boat ride, that was only because Daddy had been there. She smacked harder when they were alone.

The boy watched the bubbles rising, sometimes in long strings, sometimes in fat ones and twos that made miniature splashes when they popped. Two sets of bubbles. Then, quite suddenly, there was only one.

The remaining bubbles came faster. They zigzagged across the pond. One rope stiffened, the other slackened. The slack rope floated in loose spirals to the top. The other end hung a foot or so under the water, torn and frayed. Then the second rope slackened too and something big came surging up from the depths. It erupted through the surface in a tumult of white water, driving waves across the pond. The moldy things—the crate, the trunk lid, the white slug in the lifejacket—bobbed up and down.

It was a monster, a sea monster. Lusca was its name: the fisherman had told him. It had one eye, but huge, bigger than the boy's entire head. Glistening black coils wound up from its back. The monster held them in its mouth. It looked wildly around, saw the frayed rope, grabbed it, then let go and looked around again.

And saw the boy. The sun glared off its giant eye. The boy tried to run, couldn't move; tried to cry out, couldn't utter. He was mute. He was paralyzed. He could only see and hear. He saw the monster spit out its coils. He heard the monster speak.

“
Geh veg
.”

The monster had a loud and terrible voice, but the boy remained mute and paralyzed.

“
Um himmels Willen, geh veg Kind
.”

The boy stood rooted. The monster sucked in its coils, but spat them out again. The monster screamed. “
Du Lieber Gott! Keine Luft
.”

Now the boy screamed too. The monster churned the water white. Then it plunged head first under the surface. The monster had glistening black feet, webbed and enormous. The boy ran.

He ran through the woods, stumbling, panting, falling, crying. Far away Nurse Betty was calling. “Happy? Happy? Happy?” The boy tried to answer, but could form no words. He could only stumble, pant, fall, cry.

“Happy? Happy?”

Antediluvian memories.

33

Three days before the appeal deadline, the last guests—a hard-drinking couple from Atlanta and some divers from Montreal—left Zombie Bay. Matthias gave eight weeks' pay to everyone on the staff, leaving him with nine-hundred-and-seventy dollars in the bank, and let all but Moxie go. A few went to Nassau, a few to Freeport, most just returned to their homes in Blufftown and Conchtown. Matthias understood what he should have known all along: they hadn't been counting on him.

Krio had job offers in Barbados and St. Vincent. He packed his knives. Matthias drove him to the airport.

“Smoke?” said Krio, offering him a joint as the Jeep bounced along.

Matthias shook his head. “Diving today.”

Krio nodded, puffed away. He didn't speak again until they shook hands at the foot of the stairs leading to the plane. “Be all right,” he said. “I and I.” Krio had faith.

But Matthias didn't believe in Ras Tafari or any other benign superbeing. Three days left, no money for an appeal, and despite what Ravoukian had said, no grounds. Back at Zombie Bay, he locked and shuttered all the cottages. At the dock, Moxie scrubbed the boats. It was so quiet Matthias could hear the water gurgling from his garden hose. He looked into the near future, and saw new owners unlocking the cottages, hiring most of the same people, spending too much on brochures, welcoming the first guests with a little too much intensity. Fuck them, he thought, and started toward the equipment shed. He was almost running by the time he got there.

Matthias laid out what he would need: a backpack with new twin aluminum eighties, each topped up to 3300 p.s.i., each with a separate regulator; another set of eighties with a single regulator for decompression; BC; three-eighths-inch-thick full wet suit, jetfins, mask, snorkel, fifteen-pound weightbelt; two waterproof torches, guaranteed to a depth of 250 feet; plasticized decompression tables; five hundred feet of neutrally buoyant eighth-inch nylon line on a non-jamming reel; depth gauge, dive watch, compass. He was adhering to every rule of cave diving except the first: never dive alone. Moxie was a good diver, but he had no experience in caves and Matthias didn't have the right to make him start learning now. That was the morally defensible reason. The other reason was that Matthias preferred and had always preferred to dive alone.

He packed the equipment in the Jeep and drove along the narrow track that rounded the old weed-cracked shuffleboard court and ended in the woods near the blue hole. The sun shone, making the blue hole glow through the trees. Matthias carried in his gear and began donning it.

He made two dives. On the first, he descended to the top of the red layer at 50 feet and laid the spare tanks in a niche in the limestone wall. On the second, with the other tanks on his back but free diving to save air, he dove down to 122 feet, switching on a torch when he hit the blackness of the salt water, and glided into the sloping cave to the pile of marble blocks at the end. There, before the manhole-sized hole in the wall, he put one of the regulators in his mouth, purged it and started breathing. He clicked the red dot on the bezel of his watch into place over the minute hand. Then he tied the end of the nylon line around a cylindrical outcrop of limestone near the entrance to the tunnel and pulled himself inside. His tank scraped the rock as he went through, but after a few feet the tunnel widened and he began moving freely. Clipped to his weightbelt, the reel of line silently unwound. There was nothing to hear but his bubbles flowing out of the regulator. Holding the light, Matthias walked on the fingers of one hand until he was sure there was no silt to stir up on the tunnel floor, silt which could quickly reduce visibility to zero; then he shone his light at the ceiling. No silt lined it either, waiting to rain down at the slightest disturbance. All he saw were his own bubbles, clinging to the gray limestone ceiling like tiny flattened balloons. They weren't moving: slack tide. It would be flowing soon, at his back on the way out. On the floor Matthias noticed more debris—broken china, rusty nails, a three-tined fork—but he had no time to examine it. He flutter-kicked into the tunnel.

Cave divers like to say that caves don't kill divers, divers do. But Matthias had done enough of it, years ago in Florida sinks while assigned to the Navy Mine Defense Lab in Panama City, to know that wasn't true. Caves had killed even the most careful and best-prepared divers. The official explanation was always equipment failure, dropped equipment, not enough equipment, wrong equipment, getting tangled in equipment, or: nitrogen narcosis, vertigo, getting lost, or: staying down too long, failure to understand the decompression tables, the bends, or: going down while thinking one was going up, going in instead of going out, or: getting separated from one's buddy, searching too long for one's buddy, getting caught in buddy's death grip.