Elsinore Canyon (30 page)

I handed her her mask. “It’s defogged.”

She nodded at me, then moved deliberately across the boat. Everybody’s eyes following her, our gazes intersecting on her face. She started down the ladder.

“Wait,” Laurie said. “You—you’re not going to just drop it, are you?”

“No. I’m taking it to the bottom.”

“Without air?”

“It can’t be more than thirty feet.”

“But aren’t you going to, like, stay down there for a minute? And pray, or something?”

“Yes. I’m going to do that.”

Laurie squinted as if she was waiting for Dana to come to her senses. Dana held on the ladder a moment, then continued down. I rolled to the seaward rail to watch as she detached herself and floated a short distance away from the boat. Without any clumsy splashing she got into her fins and mask. She tilted her head back for a gulp of air—I gulped—then she thrust down in a mermaid turn. The tips of her fins gone. I held my breath.

I hugged the rail, compressed my diaphragm while I tried to keep my eyes on the spot where she’d submerged. Liquid, flickering. If I looked away for a moment I’d lose it. Mr. Hamlet eased up to my side. He was leaning over, too. Dana was a nymph in the water, a natural, but I hated waiting for her to surface. I would keep holding my breath until I saw her face again. As long as you’re not breathing, Dana, I won’t breathe. The seconds squeezed by. Was it fifteen, twenty now? Swimming powerfully, she would be at the bottom. Praying? Mr. Hamlet “uhh’d” and wagged his head at me. “Thanks for coming, Horst.”

I nodded.

He looked away, then back at me awkwardly. “You feeling sad?”

I pointed at my mouth and chest, then at my watch.

“Something wrong? I um, brought a gallon of Gatorade.”

I blew it out. “Nothing. I was going to hold my breath until Dana came back up.”

“Oh. Sorry. Yeah, I always feel nervous, too.”

He had placed himself right next to me, which forced me to crane my neck in order to keep up the conversation unless I talked to his crotch. I didn’t have anything to say to him.

“Will you be staying with us tonight?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, consider yourself invited.”

“Thanks.”

I’d lost track of the time, but it seemed too long now. I looked hard into the water. There was a ton of kelp about ten feet down. Dana should have used the tank, I was thinking, when suddenly her head broke the surface. She gasped and flung sheets of hair off her face, shot a blue neoprene arm up and tipped her mask. She was fine, what a relief. My little pro. She swam to the boat and was back on the deck. The crowd pressed her as water streamed from her hair and suit onto the deck. She answered. “It’s down there.” She covered her face with her hands. “With starfish!” Her father grabbed a towel and settled it against her neck.

Laurie mumbled. “So that’s it.” She glanced at Dr. Claudia, then worked her arms into her wetsuit. All business, her face blunt. She opened a bag and pulled out a small silver mug, which she turned over a few times in her hands. A tear blopped onto it. She gritted her teeth and shivered. “I’ll always remember him as a baby. This was his. I’ll never see it—or him—again.”

Again, the responses. “You’ll see him in heaven, Laurie.” “He’ll always be innocent.” “God bless you, sister.”

She climbed halfway down the ladder, and sprang into the water.

Dana skinned the top of her wetsuit down and let her father blot her—for a moment. She pulled the towel out of his hands and bundled herself up in it, and unfolded a chair next to me.

The others were watching the water after Laurie. I kept my voice low. “What was it like?”

“Sad. In a thousand ways.”

The boat tipped gently beneath us. A prayer-like quiet had come over the deck, with people clinging here and there in pairs. Miguel with Perla, Rennie at the rail with Mr. Hamlet, Dr. Claudia and Oscar biting each other’s fingertips at the bow, and Marcellus plowing through it in solitude, his utterly ordinary figure shifting among boxes and ropes. A seagull squawked, and Dana sat forward. She asked softly, “Where’s Laurie?”

I was also feeling nervous about her. I hadn’t watched the time, but she seemed to be taking longer than Dana. “Why did she decide to free-dive?” I asked Dana. “She thought
you’d
need air.”

“I don’t know. She’s taking too long.”

With her eyes on the water, Rennie mechanically unfastened a life preserver and clutched it to her chest.

Dana leaned back into me. “If she starts crying down there she might take in water.” She rose from her chair and walked calmly to the seaward rail. Mr. Hamlet and Rennie were searching the water with tense faces.

I rolled after her. Maybe whatever was happening wasn’t an accident. Three more seconds and I’d say it out loud: Laurie in a suicide attempt—real or feint. Suddenly, Rennie let out a soft “Oh!” Something was twirling below the surface where Laurie had submerged. It popped up and floated beside the boat. “Oh my God.” “It’s one of Laurie’s fins.” “Something’s wrong down there.” A subdued alarm broke out. Perla and Miguel moved in stiff-legged dread and bent in unison at the rail. In a flash, Dana zipped back into her suit, flung on her fins and mask, and grabbed a tank. “I’m going after her.” She dove.

Mr. Hamlet fell back from the rail. “Holy Christ, I’m going down.” He plunged below. A spluttery panic spread over the deck. Towels were flying around, a first-aid box was up-ended, a bottle of juice and some sandwiches rolled out from somewhere. Mr. Hamlet sprang back up in a minute, most of the way into his wetsuit. He shook Marcellus, who was sorting weights. “Zip me up, zip me up.”

Dr. Claudia had been lurching from one spot to another. “Garth, take the”—her eyes fell on the remaining scuba tank, and she gasped—“tank.” Her hand rose to her stomach. “Where’s the other one?”

Mr. Hamlet was getting into his gear hectically. “Dana took it down for Laurie. They’ll buddy-breathe.” A plastic bottle of something orange bumped his foot. “I need sugar.”

Dr. Claudia ran towards him with her fingers fanned out and her mouth open wide. “Don’t!”

He bolted half the bottle and wiped grainy drizzle off his jaw. “Save the rest for when I get back.” He stuck the cap on and pushed it against her hands. It fell to the deck.

“It was for Dana,” she whispered.

Mr. Hamlet was swinging and jerking into his gear now, with the circle of onlookers widening around him. He strapped a knife to his ankle, stepped to the rail to take a giant stride into the water—

Dana popped up. Soft cries on deck. She waved her mask and shouted up. “Dad, she’s okay!”

Groans of relief—

“She’s got the oxygen, but she’s tangled! There’s fishing line in the kelp! We need a knife and a light!”

Whip, smack—Marcellus grabbed a light out of a chest and stuck it in Mr. Hamlet’s outstretched hand. He jumped into the water with a splash, and Dana submerged after him once again.

Three people down there. “Why’s she going back down?” I asked aloud. Another voice. “Why are they both going down?” Five bodies glued to the rail, five faces staring below. Fumbling and bumping going on behind us, unheeded. Another voice. “Claudia, are you sick?” Five heads swiveled; all eyes on her now. Dr. Claudia was sitting in a heap on the deck with one leg sticking out in front of her. I’d have sworn her eyes were crossed. She seemed about to throw up or cry. Where had—? The media room. Arms and shoulders around her
again,
settling her into a chair, offering water, throwing blankets over her. Soothing words as her head rolled from side to side. Was this real?

Countless seconds had swirled away. We were into minutes now. The lines, or whatever it was Laurie had swam into, must have been invisible. How had she gotten tangled when Dana had stayed clear? Clumsy dope, she shouldn’t have tried to free-dive, she only did it because Dana had. Two sets of scuba gear down there, three divers, one of them probably panicked considering how long it was taking. I imagined bodies wrangling mutely in endless grey-green soup, a pair of slim legs seeking equilibrium and turning their owner’s body up-side-down, indecipherable masked eyes, three divers on two tanks, three on one, three on none. It had to be okay. It must be. Things just didn’t end this way. Rennie was at my side. She squatted to my eye-level slowly. “Have you ever seen anything like this before?”

I was in no mood to run through my anecdotes. “I never saw anyone get trapped. I saw a guy panic once when he cleared his mask wrong in a deep dive.”

“I mean Dr. Claudia.” I was turning to look, when there was a collective gasp at the rail. A light was swirling somewhere down in the water. Now what, an underwater flare, more equipment lost, a dying soul flying to heaven? The light widened and brightened, and the surface broke. Cries of relief—all three of them were up. Holy God. Thank you. Relief, blessed release. End this nightmare one hundred percent, get on deck and say it’s all right. Talk it down and get the whole scene back to normal—this had started as a memorial service for Phil. And no one was going back down again, no matter fucking what—not if I had to run over their arms with my wheelchair. The three heads were still bobbing in the water. Laurie was coughing and blabbering. The three of them cross-hatched themselves into a human raft and kicked their way to the ladder, where Miguel and Marcellus hauled Laurie up in a single heave and deposited her into Rennie’s arms. Then Dana was up, then Mr. Hamlet, the two of them shivering and groaning. Another rescue flurry of towels, blankets, and water flew from hand to hand while Dr. Claudia, back on her feet somehow, stepped around the edges dazedly.

Mr. Hamlet looked half dead. Marcellus stuck a chair behind his knees just in time.

“Poor baby, poor baby, warm up, warm up,” Perla lulled as she peeled down Dana’s wetsuit and rubbed her head with a towel.

I rolled out of the way to wait. Tending hands and voices were busy, and the three blank-eyed divers apparently would take a good while to come around and start cracking tentative jokes and explaining to the rest of us just what had gone on down there. Dana crinkled her nose and put her hand to her heart. Mr. Hamlet was still gripping his ribs and panting. In fact, he was looking worse with each second.

I rolled to Dana and touched her knee. “Was that rough on your dad?”

She stilled Perla’s hands on her and tried to catch her father’s eye. “Dad? You should lie down. Dad!”

That poor guy was going to take a few minutes. He slid off his chair and hit the deck with a thump, then lay on his side in a fetal position. This was too much. Had he been stung, or bitten? Stabbed with his own knife?

Marcellus was on him, peeling his wetsuit the rest of the way down. “Get him out of his suit and get him dry.” More hands flew out, a pillow was worked underneath his head, but he was groaning louder and shivering harder. Marcellus’s face and palm turned out of the crowd; he signaled Miguel. “We’ve got to get him below.”

The clutch around Mr. Hamlet parted, a chair was flung away to clear a path, Marcellus and Miguel gripped his armpits and knees and lugged—he seemed huge, unmanageable. From beyond the clutch, Oscar’s frightened voice bleated. “Anyone else know how to captain this tub?” Miguel and Marcellus lifted their lanky, muscular burden, then stopped. “Set him down!” “Get blankets!” “He’s going into shock!” He was shaking violently—he was convulsing.

Dana was bunched at his side and screaming over the grunts and cries of panic. “Aunt Claudia! He needs a doctor!” Where was Dr. Claudia?

“Hold him!” “Restrain him!” “Claudia!” Hands, knees, and taut towels were ineffectually applied to Mr. Hamlet’s flailing arms and knuckles, which were banging the deck with bone-breaking force. “Hold his head!” Someone’s nose bled. Marcellus, Dana, and Miguel fought him at his sides while the others crouched, rigid, around the suffering man. His eyes opened, cleared, focused. He grunted through gritted teeth. “What’s in the bottle?
What did I drink!”
Another grunt, and he twisted forward. He waved one hand out blindly. “Dana.” His eyes squeezed shut.

Dana had one hand woven into his scalp; she grabbed Marcellus with the other. “Is he over it?”

Marcellus flattened himself on top of Mr. Hamlet, ear to chest, pulled back, grabbed his wrist, frowned, then touched his neck. He mumbled. “Can’t be.” Ear to chest again. He pulled away slowly and shifted his eyes to Dana. His head shook, No.

The pressing, dragging hands were now laid on Dana as she pried at her father’s unmoving mouth. Her fingers clawed him as she was hauled backwards. “Nooo! What happened? What happened to him? It was just a dive! Horst, what’s wrong?”

I rolled towards her—she had crawled back to her father’s feet as the frenzy spread all over the deck. Rennie shouting desperately, “Get us back to shore, someone!” Oscar wailing, “Are we all gonna get sick?”

“No!” It was Laurie, dangling in Rennie’s arms. The two girls melted down to the deck under Laurie’s deadening weight.

Rennie tried to make Laurie look at her. “What do you mean? What do you know?” Laurie’s strange eyes sought out another, incredulous, face a few feet away.

“I believe you, Dana. I know you loved my brother.”

In the brief sliver of calm afforded by Laurie and Dana’s wordless, deepening stares, Marcellus smoothed Mr. Hamlet’s features, which had relaxed, and placed a towel over his face, the corners aligned neatly with his body.

Laurie strained out from Rennie’s arms at Dana. “How do you feel? Right now?”

“Tired.”

Laurie’s face, white with grey cracks of pain. “That tank we shared was poisoned.”

Dana stared back, her eyes demanding,
What?

“It was meant for you.”

What?

“I set you up.”

Two girlhood friends with overflowing eyes.

“Now we’re both dying, Dana! Your father was poisoned, too.”

Dana let out a little snort.
No.

Laurie’s jaws ground out her words painfully, determinedly. “It’s true. It could have been different. Just forgive me, Dana.” Hatred boiled out her throat. “Your aunt did it! She did it all!”

I closed my hand over Dana’s shoulder. “Which tank did you use?”