Dead in the Water (5 page)

The furniture felt dirty, and the carpet was an ugly dark green that curled up near the walls, and the three coffee
tables had cigarette burns in them. One was an old kidney shape that Ruth thought might have fetched a good price at an auction, if only it had been taken better care of. The other two were standard oak veneer rectangles; motel issue.

But the best part was the walls. They were papered with blue and green in a sea-kelp pattern, and over this were draped dusty dark blue fishing nets. And in these nets—Ruth had held back a peal of laughter when the sexy first mate had grandly escorted her into the room—dozens of stuffed fish bounded the waves among bright orange starfish and blown-glass bubbles of aquamarine. The taxidermist had not done a very good job: the fish looked furry and moth-eaten, and it seemed their glass eyes cried with humiliation.

And in an apocalypse of good taste, a culmination of all that seemed to be this ship, the
Morris
, the entire weepy school swam toward the room’s pièce de résistance: a three-dimensional model of the
Morris
itself, created out of match-sticks. Under glass, as it were, captured inside an oversize cutout of a bottle that rode plaster waves of Day-Glo turquoise.

“I kinda like it, honey,” Mr. van Buren said in a slow Southern drawl. He reached for his wife’s hand. With an angry jerk of her head, Ms. van Buren-Hadley crossed her arms. Yuppies. Their clothes must have cost them a fortune. They dripped good living. Ruth’s stomach growled and she eyed the cookie plate wistfully, but didn’t want to spoil the mood. She had a suspicion they’d forgotten she was there, and she didn’t want to remind them in case they got embarrassed and stopped fighting.

Her hazel eyes twinkled and she took another sip of tea. Wondered if that crazy old cook had washed the pot out within the last decade. That was likely, since the tea tasted like soap.

She looked down at her gnarled, arthritic fingers, and beyond to her bony feet in her nautical-themed espadrilles with anchors appliquéd on the tops. She had on a pair of navy slacks and a white sailor middy blouse piped in blue trim. Her grand-nephew, Richard, said she was a “hot old dame,” and she did her best, but she
was
old, damn it. Seventy-one
(though she had managed to lie her way onto the freighter by claiming she was sixty-eight; they had an age limit). There were wrinkles all over her face and her lipstick bled into the skin around her mouth; her chin was a turkey wattle, and though she was in love with her frosted blond hair, she was sure she looked ridiculous in it. Still, people were forever telling her how attractive she was, for her age.

For her age, and that selfish girl across the room had no idea how lucky she was.

Now, now, she mustn’t get into a dander. Growing old was preferable to the alternative, as she well knew. And as for that, well, fate had handed her a bad hand, but she had to stay upbeat, at least until she talked to Marion Chang.

She took a breath. Marion could be another charlatan, too. Ever since Ruth’s
Oprah
appearance, all kinds of people had been contacting her. So to speak. All kinds, with outrageous claims and convincing stories. Marion’s had been the most convincing yet.

Ruth’s hand shook beneath the saucer. She pressed her lips together and made herself calm down. The tea was the color of brine. It needed more sugar to cut the soapy taste.

She needed to know about Stephen. She would give anything, do anything, just to know. Even if he was … if it didn’t come out as she hoped.

“We’ll just cancel the AmEx,” Ms. van Buren-Hadley was saying, clipped, harsh, a foil to her husband’s honey accent.

Ruth got up noisily and took three steps to the long table laid out with tea and coffee urns, white china plates, and plastic serving trays lined with homemade chocolate chip and sugar cookies. The old guy had made these, too. They probably tasted like scouring powder.

“Wow, cool!” someone piped in a shrill little voice behind her. She turned around. Phil van Buren was rising from his chair, and his wife was fishing in her Gucci bag for something.

A small, thin boy raced past them and stopped inches from the tableau of the
Morris
. Nose pressed to the oversize bottle, he gestured eagerly to a man who was at that moment stepping across the threshold. His father, probably, and there was
something very appealing about him. Very tall, just a little bit out of shape in white pleated pants and a light blue cotton shirt. He had straight dark hair that thinned on top, but at least he’d gotten some gray before he went bald. There was a help-me, puppy-dog air about him, and his tortoiseshell glasses added to it. Clark Kentish. The child was his miniature, with darker hair, and even more fragile. He looked seriously ill.

“Good God,” the man said slowly, surveying the room.

“Precisely my reaction,” Ms. van Buren-Hadley announced.

The boy bobbed from side to side, examining the bottle picture, and flashed a bright grin at Ruth. To the man, he cried, “This is cool! How’d they do it?”

The man turned to Ruth and shook his head bemusedly. She smiled back at him and picked up a cookie.

“Hello,” Mr. van Buren said, holding out his hand. “I’m Phil van Buren. This is my wife, Elise.”

Ruth waited to see if she would add the “Hadley.” She didn’t, only lowered her invisible tiara once as she pulled out a pack of cigarettes with a silver lighter stuffed into the cellophane.

“John Fielder,” the chestnut-haired man said as he shook with Phil van Buren. “That’s my son, Matty.”

“Da-ad.” The boy glared at him.

The man cleared his throat. “I beg your pardon. Matt.”

The boy—Matt—turned back to the bottle. “How’d they do this?”

“It’s not a real bottle,” Ms. van Buren-Hadley said sharply as she put a cigarette in her mouth and flicked her lighter. She inhaled slowly, tipped back her head, and blew smoke at the ceiling. The sharp phosphorous odor, the pungent odor of tobacco, traveled on a slender thread toward Ruth.

“Oh.” Matt was clearly disappointed. Ruth picked up another cookie and walked over to him. She held it out. He took it after checking with his father. “Thanks, ma’am.”

She beamed. “You’re welcome.” Then she pointed at the picture. “They do make real ships in bottles. I mean, they’re
models, but they go into real bottles. Have you ever seen one?”

He shook his head and took a large bite out of the cookie. Crumbs dotted his face and she almost brushed them off. She had never had any children, though she had wanted them desperately.

John Fielder came up beside her. She introduced herself and told him to call her Ruth.

“Can you make those? The ships in the real bottles?” Matt asked her as he stuffed the rest of the cookie into his mouth. His gaze darted toward the table and the cookie trays.

“No,” she said. “But I bet you could learn how. Maybe somebody on the ship makes them.”

“Like Cha-cha!” the boy said eagerly. Good heavens, his wrists were like sticks. His chin must have been a couple of inches wide.

“Somehow, I don’t think so,” his father drawled. But the child wasn’t listening.

“He’ll show me. Cool! Can I have another cookie, Dad?”

John laughed. “Sure.”

“Mr. Fielder—” Ms. van Buren-Hadley began.

“My dad’s a doctor,” Matt said. He dove into the cookie plate, gathering two, three, four large ones like a cormorant.

“Hey, don’t be piggy,” his father admonished.

“
Dr
. Fielder, then,” Ms. van Buren-Hadley amended. “Is this”—she held out her arms and pivoted in a semicircle, taking in the room—“what you expected when you paid for this cruise? I mean, really, this thing can barely float!”

Elise van Buren-Hadley, master mariner, Ruth thought. Her husband looked pleadingly at John Fielder.

The man shrugged. “Well, I’m not so sure about that. Not floating.”

“Well, I don’t think I’d bring a child of mine on a boat like this.” She took a drag on her cigarette.

“It’s probably safer than smoking around one,” he teased. Oh, bravo, Ruth thought. Good for you.

“My dad hates smoking,” Matt whispered to Ruth, speaking through clumps of half-chewed cookie. “He says people who sell cigarettes should be shot.”

“Does he,” Ruth replied, amused.

“Well.” Elise van Buren-Hadley stretched her mouth into a tight, angry line. “Well.”

Two more people appeared in the doorway: the sexy first officer, Mr. Diaz, and a short woman, an Italian, with a soft, round face, a rather hooked nose, and a black perm Ruth thought was a year or two out-of-date. Her sunglasses were pushed on top of her head and her big brown eyes were heavily made-up. She wore a revealing sundress that showed off a marvelous tan and a hint of cleavage.

With a hoot, the woman stopped in her tracks and cried, “Holy shit! What the hell is that?” To Mr. Diaz’s obvious discomfort, she burst into laughter and pointed to the bottle picture. Then she caught herself and said, “Oh, Ramón, you didn’t make that, did you?”

Then she saw Matt and murmured, “Oops.” Matt giggled and glanced up at his father, who was trying not to smile as well. Mr. van Buren looked startled, and Ms. van Buren-Hadley inhaled long and hard, her eyes glittering with dislike.

“You must be the other passengers,” the woman said, flouncing into the room. New dress, and she felt good in it. Women could always tell about other women and their fashion habits.

Elise van Buren-Hadley’s eyes narrowed, snakelike. Hiding a smile, Ruth started pouring the newcomer a cup of tea.

Mr. Diaz cleared his throat. “The guy who made that is dead,” he said. “He was the captain’s son.”

“Double oops,” the woman said, not very contritely.

“So you can see,” the man went on, as a smile stretched across his handsome Latin face, “why we’re stuck with it.”

He winked at Ruth and left the room.

“I wonder if his son decorated this room, too,” the woman said, surveying it. She shuddered theatrically, opened her mouth to say something to the van Burens, and swung her head toward Dr. Fielder.

“Donna Almond,” she said. “Hi.”

Introductions were made all around. She took the tea from Ruth with a cheery thank you and made herself at home on a
green sofa, crossing her legs high on the thigh. She looked around again and laughed.

“I wonder if the captain’s son was shot for all this.”

“No, baby.” A rear door to the left-hand side of the long table cracked open and what looked to Ruth like an aged street person hung around the edge. The smell of baking wafted out with him. It was the cook.

“No, baby, he wasn’t shot, he was drowned,” the man told Donna Almond. “I was there. I seen it happen. Bad trip, way down. Worst trip for a human being. Worst trip there is.”

Something happened to the woman’s face and she set her tea down on the coffee table.

“Hi, Cha-cha!” Matt chirped.

“Love, brother. Peace. Cake’s gonna be psychedelically dee-lish.” The shabby man flashed a peace sign and disappeared around the door.

There was a pause. Elise van Buren-Hadley tamped out her cigarette.

“I’m going to see the captain,” she said, and rose. Her husband followed her out. Everyone watched them go.

“Lovely woman,” John Fielder said ironically.

“Yeah, she’s pretty good-looking,” Matt concurred, and the three adults chuckled. Ruth carried her tea to a chair at right angles with the sofa and sat carefully. Old bones, old lower back problem.

“It’s a little less than I expected, too,” she said.

“Mmm.” Donna made a face. “This tea tastes like dishwashing liquid.”

“I can’t wait to try the cake.” John Fielder joined them, stretching his long legs under the coffee table. Matt dribbled cookie crumbs in a trail as he walked back to the bottle picture.

“Me, either,” he said.

“Well, it’s just us, now,” Ruth said, and a strange feeling ghosted through her, a sense that she had just said something very true. Just the four of them—the doctor, his son, the girl, and she herself—the ship’s fools.

Beyond the door, the loading continued. Ramón Diaz had explained that the crane jennies were controlled by computer;
the operator was there mostly to make sure nothing happened. He told her this as if naturally she was apprehensive about it; and naturally, he, the dashing maritime officer, could put her fears to rest.

Now, as the cars were bolted onto the runway of the deck, and she sat with her new shipmates, she was surprised to realize she
was
apprehensive. Not much, maybe just a jot to the right of uneasy. Her fingertips tingled and she jerked like a puppet when something slammed onto the deck and something else creaked. Anticipation, she told herself. Waiting for whatever lay ahead in Hawaii.

But there was something else. Something that was creeping up the fear barometer, past uneasy, raising the hairs on her neck. Could this be a psychic experience, a real one at long last?

Listening to her heartbeat, Ruth searched the room for a clue to what had caused this sudden, intense feeling. Scrutinized the people—the man, the woman, the child. No, no bogeymen here. As for the room itself, it was a cross between a fifties’ theme restaurant and a garage sale. And that ship in the bottle—

That bottle—

As she looked at it, a tight, clutching sensation worked at her throat. It didn’t make sense that as she sat there in an open room, with open windows and open doors, she should feel so claustrophobic. But that was exactly what the sensation was.

Her breathing was shallow, her hands numb and cold. She gazed at the bottle since it had seemed to trigger her reaction. It was truly ugly, but not bad enough to give anybody the jig-jags. And those fish, weeping as they swam toward it, glassy eyeballs grouted onto rotted bodies, a most unhappy group.

A chill at the base of her spine indented her skin. She rose away from the back of her chair, her heart lurching thickly. The air in the room seemed muddy, as if something rippled through it. Ruth shook her head, squinted hard to see if she could detect anything. No one else seemed to notice. Matt had gotten up for more cookies. Donna held her teacup close
to her face and frowned at it. The young doctor was doing something to his watch, raising it to his ear.