Dead in the Water (10 page)

Donna waited. She kept in good shape; it was part of her job.

“Well, what do you think?” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Whew, I’ve got to start going back to the gym when I get home.”

“About what?” she asked, leaning over to stretch her calves. “The fog or Cha-cha?”

“Both, actually. But I meant Cha-cha. No one seems to be very worried about him.”

“They don’t seem to be very worried about anything.” ’Cuz they’re all stoned, she thought grimly. Then, sighing to herself, she said, “I’ll keep an eye on him.” Next time she traveled, she was going to tell everyone she was a secretary.

“Thanks.” John straightened and continued down.

No problem, that’s what she got paid for. Shit.

Donna continued down as well.

The stairs, more properly the ladders, led out into a companionway parallel with the captain’s quarters and something called the “writing room,” but which was locked and had a No Entry sign on the door latch. Around the leeward corner, a row of cabins stretched toward the dining room. On the opposite side there were more cabins, all of them empty save for a single occupied by Kevin, the surfer.

In concert, John and Donna walked around the corner. Hers was the first cabin on the row and his and Matt’s, the last. John was quiet, his shoulders tense and pinched. He seemed to be noodling something around, so she kept her own counsel as they made their way.

They neared her door. Soft curls of fog streamed from beneath it and floated down the companionway.

Joining those that were streaming from beneath Ruth’s door.

The cold, white mist wrapped around their ankles and undulated with their footfalls. John grunted and lifted his foot.

“Hey.” He lifted the other one, danced around in a circle.

“It’s just fog,” she reminded him.

He looked up ahead, started to walk-run through the patches that misted by, Kleenex on guy wires.

“This stuff will be bad for Matt. He shouldn’t … he’s on the frail side.” He ducked his head.

“There’s nothing under your door,” she called to him. “I left my porthole open. Ruth probably did, too.”

Donna stepped to Ruth’s door and rapped lightly. “Ms. Hamilton? You okay?” She checked her watch. Eleven-twenty. She was probably sound asleep. This stuff couldn’t be good for an old lady.

At the end of the companionway, John unlocked his door and hurried in. The door shut.

“Ruth?” Donna said with more force. Now the fog was piling around Donna’s knees, cold and clammy like a mud pack. She couldn’t see her feet.

“Mrs. Hamilton?” After a moment’s hesitation, she tried the knob. It turned; the door was unlocked. She’d have to talk to her about that; with all these strangers around (Jesus, with Cha-cha, who looked like a member of the Manson family, around), caution was in order.

There was a funny noise, a thud of wood, or was it a clang? Donna listened. Nothing. Well, the hell with it. She opened the door.

The foghorn blared.

The cabin was laden with smoke-gray fog, so thick Donna couldn’t see a thing. It was like being in a snowstorm. She stepped forward and hit the end of the bed with her shins.

“Mrs. Hamilton? It’s Donna.” Her arms flailed as she bent at the waist and touched the bed. Nothing there but sheets.

Maybe she’d gone out, was sitting in the dining room right now, having a cup of tea.

“Mrs.—?”

The funny sound again. Not a thud, or a clang, but a long, melancholy sigh that seemed to echo past her ears. It cluttered; someone playing with a tape recorder to make spooky sounds. It reverbed. Donna swallowed and stepped sideways as she searched for the edge of the bed.

“Are you all right?”

That noise …

The edge. She walked forward, dipping to the right to feel the bedclothes. They were soggy.

The ship rolled to the left. Donna lost her balance and fell, not against the bulkhead as she expected but into an indentation. Metal jangled: clothes hangers. She’d fallen into the closet.

Then something shot forward and hit her.

She cried out and grabbed it. Laughed weakly. It was the closet door.

Stepping out, she moved on up the side of the bed.

Someone was standing on it. The faint outline of a figure glowed from a light hip-high to Donna. The source of the light must be on a nightstand, she reasoned.

“Mrs. Hamilton?” No answer.

Donna swallowed fog. She could almost feel it swimming around in her lungs, drifting up and down her windpipe.

The closet door slammed back, forward, smacked against the jamb hard enough to do some serious damage. The foghorn bellowed.

Thirst
, someone said directly into her ear.

Donna whipped her head around. Her knee smacked the night table. The things on top of it clattered. A round, heavy object fell off and hit Donna’s toe. It brilled once and bounced against the base of the night table. Alarm clock.

“Ruth?”

The figure made no movements. It stood about parallel with her head; Ruth must be kneeling at the porthole.

To her left, the alarm clock went off again, jangling discordantly. It stopped in midsound as if someone had snapped it off.

Donna climbed onto the bed, which was soft and wet and gave like a fungus as her knees sank into it. A dank odor emanated from it, of something old and unused.

The figure looked too small to be a kneeling woman. In the wavering light, she saw a head too little, shoulders too narrow. Was it Matty Fielder, hiding from his father for some reason? Or just being a mischievous kid? His father would be frantic.

“Matty? Ruth?” She touched the figure. Icy, ungiving flesh met her fingers—

—and her heart lurched as she pulled back her hand. That was a dead person; she knew it. She knew what a dead person felt like. How cold, how hard, like a block of ice.

Stupid, stupid, she told herself, as she jumped off the bed. The figure tottered, swaying left, right, faster, faster, about to fall over. Donna had a sharp, vivid picture of it cracking into a million pieces.

She covered her mouth, pulling herself together. She was acting like a rookie. Like some dumbass baby who—

“Who?” Ruth’s voice. Donna sagged with relief, clunked herself in the forehead in embarrassment. Dumbo. Of course it was Ruth. Of course she looked different in the fog.

Felt … different.

“Ruth, it’s Donna Almond. Are you all right?”

“Yes, yes,” the old lady said uncertainly. “I … I’ve been dreaming.”

Dreaming? Did she have epilepsy? Donna thought about asking, decided to let it wait. There was enough going on.

“You must be freezing. Let me help you.” Donna crawled back onto the mattress. The sheets were sodden. Already her mind made preparations for taking care of the old woman: get her to the dining room, coffee, maybe a shot of hooch.

“I was dreaming,” the woman said. She moved away from the porthole of her own volition and found Donna’s hands. “I can’t even see you, dear.”

“It’s just fog.” Donna maneuvered back to the floor and stood up, bringing the woman with her. “We sailed into it a while ago. It’s okay.”

The foghorn blared. The closet door rolled and cracked. Rolled and cracked.

“I’m so cold. My nightie’s wet clean through.”

The reason she’d said she was thirsty, Donna figured. She might be dehydrated. “We’ll get you into some warm things. How about a cup of coffee? I’m sure we can scare one up.”

“That sounds heavenly.”

The sensation of Ruth’s disembodied, skeletal fingers grabbing on to Donna’s was eerie. Ruth stood directly in front of the light as Donna slowly led her past the closet; an aureole of buoyant wisps swam around her head and shoulders, like she was some kind of winter dandelion shifting in a chill breeze.

Or something underwater, wafting with the currents.

“This is a little frightening,” Ruth said with a nervous laugh. “I literally cannot see a thing.”

“You and me both.” She paused. “What did you dream about, Ruth?”

Beneath Donna’s forefinger, the pulse in Ruth’s wrist jumped. “I don’t remember.”

Not so sure about that. Donna worked the inside of her cheek. Maybe it was too personal to discuss.

“We’ll get you some coffee.”

“That would be nice, dear,” Ruth replied. “I’m so … I’m so thirsty.”

“Yes, you said that. While you were dreaming.”

“Oh, I don’t remember. The fog just rolled in. I … I thought it was ali …” She trailed off. “I was dreaming.”

“Yes.” Donna waited a beat, in case she said more. Cripes, maybe sweet little Mrs. Ruth Hamilton had paid a visit to Dr. Feelgood, alias Kevin the Stoner.

But what about the cold flesh, and the—

She pushed her thoughts away. “Hold on a second. Let me close your porthole.” Gingerly, she moved Ruth aside and went along the other side of the bed. Good Lord, the cabin was smaller than hers. She could barely wedge herself between the bed and the bulkhead.

She pressed her hand against the cold surface, feeling for the porthole. Easily found, and just as easily shut.

Just as she latched it, something smacked against it with a wet, sloshy
thwack
. Startled, she pulled away, stared at it. Nothing but fog and the yellow glow from the night table.

“What was that?” Ruth asked querulously.

“A wave. We got it shut just in time.”

“I guess so.” Ruth sneezed.

Or a bird, lost in the fog, poor thing. That’s what it had really sounded like. But no sense telling Ruth that.

Hi ho. In Hawaii, she was definitely going to tell people she was a secretary.

If they ever got to friggin’ Hawaii, for God’s sake.

A face.

John lay beside his son, who slept peacefully through the foghorn and the slamming and the creaking, and the voices of Ruth and Donna as they talked in the hallway. Kids never ceased to amaze him. They possessed such capacities, such surprises. He should have been a pediatrician.

Right, his ulcer smirked. Then you could watch not only your own kid sicken and die, but everyone else’s, too.

He forced the thought away without arguing with it. A face. Damn it, he had seen something on the bridge. He had seen—

—his own reflection.

The foghorn blasted, and he jumped, though by now he’d heard it dozens of times. He was surprised there wasn’t any action over in the next cabin, the van Burens. You’d think she’d be bitching about both the fog and the foghorn. He couldn’t imagine they were sleeping through this.

Then again, he couldn’t imagine Matty was, either. Matty, his real reflection. John saw bits and pieces of his own features—the straight nose, the broad forehead; bits of Gretchen’s—the tender pink mouth, the chin (too narrow now to recognize, but it was hers). And then, the miracle of life: places where the synthesis ended, and something that was neither his nor hers, but Matt’s own—the broad planes of his cheeks, his blue-black hair that really was blue-black, the way they drew it in comic books.

There were other traits that were Matthew Samuel Fielder originals: his hatred of potatoes, his nervous habit of pulling on the hairs at the nape of his neck.

His disease.

If Matt died, not only would little bits and pieces of John and Gretchen die, but something that had never been before, and never would be again.

John swallowed hard. He watched his boy’s eyelids shift rapidly underneath his lids. REM sleep. His baby was dreaming.

Of what, little boy? Rocket ships? Avenging turtles? Or chemotherapy, and needles forced into his arms while he lay weeping, “Daddy, no, don’t let them”? Or sitting on the sidelines while the other boys played an impromptu game of basketball across the street at Chucky’s house?

Asking how likely an amputation was.

John swallowed hard and stared at his boy. His stomach was drowning in acid that seared the lining, and he put a protective hand over it. Stuck his hand in his trouser pocket and pulled out a bottle of Tagamet, popped one into his mouth. It wasn’t good to be morose. Matt picked it up, even when John thought he was hiding it very well. Kids were psychic. Kids were magical.

Kids were put together with gossamer wire and tissue paper, and even a mild breeze could rip them to shreds.

John muffled a groan. He ached to put his arms around his son but he didn’t want to awaken him.

Matt’s eyes flickered. More REM. Lots of REM.

Dream, my boy. Dream beautiful dreams, my beautiful little man.

*  *  *

“Wait. I want to close my porthole,” Donna said to Ruth. They stood in the hall on the other side of the old lady’s door. During the interlude in her room, the fog in the corridor had tumbled on top of itself to waist height. It stayed bunched together as if it were filling a container whose ends stood parallel with the outer edges of her and John’s doors. New bulk cargo for the
Morris
, remaining right where it was put. Shifting cargo, Donna had learned, was one of the major causes of freighter accidents.

“You wait right here and I’ll come get you.”

“No.” Ruth grabbed Donna’s sleeve. Using the Braille method, they had poked through the cabin’s built-in dresser and the closet, and dressed her in some mismatched clothes and a London Fog raincoat. “Let me come with you.”