The Immortal (3 page)

She had a tendency to do things to excess. We turned our backs to the bar and sipped our beers, enjoying the view.

"He could be here this summer but taking the day off," I ventured.

"I didn't expect to find him," Helen said quickly, lying.

"What was he like?"

"Funny. Smart." She added, perhaps in reference to the Ralph episode, "You would have liked him."

"Was he cute?"

"Who?" a voice asked behind us.

We turned in unison and Helen's face broke into a big grin. I didn't have to ask. Tom Brine was a cutie.

His face was pale, typical of many English young men.

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He seemed to be scholarly in a way with alert green eyes and messy brown hair that the sun was swiftly turning the color of the sand. He was thin but in good shape and stood remarkably straight, as if at attention. I put his height at six feet, maybe an inch more. He was a couple of years older than we were.

"Tom, do you remember me?" Helen asked.

He scratched his head. "You're from America, right?"

"Yeah," Helen said, a little worried. The lifeguard on duty would have known we were from America.

"You were here last summer?" Tom continued.

"Yeah," Helen said.

Tom gave a sly smile. "You break into wicked Italian while in the heat of making passionate love?"

Helen hit him playfully. "That girl came earlier in the summer! I know you remember me. You look too happy to see me."

Tom snapped his fingers suddenly. "Melon!"

"Helen!"

"We went out once," Tom said. It seemed to come to him all at once and give him pleasure.

"Twice." Helen leaned her elbows on the bar. I hadn't seen her so excited in a long time. "You had the time of your life."

"Was I sober?" he asked.

"Most of the time," Helen said. "How have you been, Tom? Oh, this is my friend, Josie. Josie, meet Tom.

He's from England."

Tom was quick to shake my hand. He gave me the once-over but was subtle about it—I only knew from
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his eyes. His accent was a delight. I had always thought English accents sounded cultured.

"Josie," he said. "You are definitely from California and you definitely know Italian."

"Just the naughty words," I said.

He laughed and nodded to my beer. "How's your drink keeping?"

I took a gulp from the bottle—some German brew. "Great."

"Hey, I'm here for a week," Helen said. "When do you get off work?"

"When the sun goes down," Tom said. He had been drying glasses as he spoke. He had big hands, skillful fingers. "I'd love to get together with you ladies later."

"I don't know if you could handle two of us at once," Helen said, her smile forced. "Do you have a friend for Josie? She's just getting over a heartbreaking affair."

"That I've already forgotten," I murmured. She might have been talking about Ralph, I think, or she might have simply been talking.

"There's Pascal," Tom said. "Do you remember him? Big? French?"

"I'm not sure," Helen said.

"You may not have met him," Tom said. "His English is only fair." Tom looked at me. "But the ladies all like him."

"The ladies might not have the same taste as I do," I said.

Helen and Tom narrowed down when and where they would meet. I felt hot from the ride in the sun
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and I was anxious to get in the water. Yet—and I am a horrible friend—I liked Tom. He seemed like a nice guy. Of course, they all do at first.

We said our goodbyes and went for snorkel equipment. Helen asked me what I thought of him.

"He's cool," I said. "I hope his friend is as nice. But big, French, and can't speak English—what are you getting me into?"

"We'll have fun," Helen assured me.

The snorkel equipment was inexpensive: the whole works for eight dollars a day. We told them we wanted it for three. Helen used her credit card this time. I had put mine down when we rented the bikes.

We would figure who owed what later. Neither of us was picky about money.

The water was warm, clean, colorful—I couldn't get over how much I loved it. With our equipment on, we paddled out to a number of docked sailboats and then swam over to the jetty. I swear, we were in fifty feet of water and I could see the eyes of the fish on the bottom eating from the long grasses that grew up from the sand. There was no coral, but plenty of interesting stone. I had a fantasy as I snorkeled that I would suddenly spot a gleam of buried treasure. But it was just a dream.

The fish, of course, made me feel kind of horny.

We had been snorkeling for close to an hour when I suddenly felt a pain in my chest. It started in the center and quickly spread in a band across my ribs. The pain was frightening, but not totally unexpected.

I was overdoing it. Ten months earlier, at the end of

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the
previous summer, I'd had a bout with pericarditis, which is an inflammation of the sack surrounding the heart. It can hit with varying degrees of intensity. My illness had been particularly severe. I was hospitalized for three weeks, ten days of which I spent in intensive care. The disease hit with incredible speed and had at first mystified the doctors. By the time I was diagnosed, I was close to death. My fever was so high I lay in semiconscious slumber for days, knowing little, except that I was in pain, horrible pain every time I took a breath.

Yet after the illness I had been happy, for it seemed that by coming so close to death I had gained a new appreciation for life. The simplest things that I had taken for granted, such as walking to school in the morning or eating ice cream, now came to have special meaning for me. I had also decided to take my future more seriously and buckled down with my studies. My grades my senior year had reflected my newfound dedication. I got almost straight
A's.

The doctors believed I had made a full recovery, without permanent damage to my heart, but they had warned that my endurance would only return gradually. Even now, so many months later, I was aware that I was not at
full
strength.

The pain hit me when I was near the end of the jetty, a quarter mile out. I briefly contemplated trying to climb onto the rocks and resting, but there were waves, battering the jetty hard enough to knock me down if I tried to stand up, and the rocks were covered with moss that looked slippery. Helen was fifty 25

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yards off to my right, swimming circles around a huge yacht. I debated calling out to her but was embarrassed. I know it was foolish. Helen was my old friend. My problem was genuine. I was having trouble breathing; I was on the verge of cramping. But I hated to appear weak, particularly in front of her. The aversion had started the previous summer, after my illness.

Slowly I began to swim toward the beach. How quickly perceptions could change. Moments before the beach had looked within arm's reach. Now it was miles away. I cautioned myself to take my time, to breathe slowly and deeply. At first the strategy worked. I was halfway in and looking good. But then all at once I tired. The pain in my chest returned like a hammer pounding. The muscles in my legs knotted and stiffened. I had been saving my arms—every good snorkeler knew the arms couldn't compete with fins. Panic entered my mind. Could I actually drown in front of five hundred sunbathers, on my first day of vacation? The thought sent a shot of cold terror up my spine. I began to thrash with my arms, trying to pull myself to shore as fast as possible.

It was the worst thing I could have done. In a minute I was exhausted and gasping for air. I pulled my head out of the water and took my mouth off the snorkel—another mistake. It was easy, while snorkel-ing, to just relax in the water, facedown, and not even paddle at all. But all I could think of was getting to shore.

I accidentally took in a mouthful of water and

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coughed. Now I was eagerly searching for help and I wouldn't have minded if it came from Saddam Hussein. But I was at the end of the beach. The sole lifeguard was in the middle, and he had plenty of naked women to look at on the shore, and I think he was asleep anyway. I didn't glance behind me, to see if Helen was nearby. I didn't want to turn away from the beach for even a second because I feared I might move a foot away from it.

I couldn't swim properly with my head out of the water, but I was too shaken to replace my snorkel and put my face back down. The pain in my chest was like the heat from a torch blowing blue flame through the lobes of my lungs. Honestly, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. The smell of the hospital came back to me then, the vapor of rubbing alcohol, the beep of the monitors in intensive care. It seemed that beep had been the first thing I heard when I had awakened from my long burning dream, a mechanical pulse in my ears, some bloodless heartthrob.
Beep, beep, beep
—you're alive, little girl. But it seemed there had been a pause—I suddenly remembered this—a short one, when the beeps had stopped, and there had been silence. ...

I felt myself sinking.

Nothing but the silent roar of cold air blowing through a wide empty space. Yes, I remembered, the beep had definitely stopped.

"Josie!" a voice spoke in my ear.

A strong arm yanked my head up.

I blinked—I must have closed my eyes.

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"God," I gasped.

It was Tom.

The shore was still a hundred yards away. Tom was swimming in place beside me. He still had his work shirt on. How he had gotten there didn't matter, not to me. His arms were around my waist, lifting my mouth and nose out of the water.

"Just relax," he said, slipping behind me, moving his arm under my arms. "Relax into me, Josie. I'll tow you in."

"I'm all right," I said, coughing.

"The hell you are."

We were in shallow water a couple of minutes later. Tom helped me remove my fins and took my mask and snorkel. He held me by the arm while I staggered onto the beach. There I collapsed on the sand, grateful for the chance to catch my breath. I was not having a heart attack. The pain in my chest began to diminish. In the space of five minutes I was almost fully recovered and terribly embarrassed. Helen came running out of the water and stopped beside Tom, staring down at me.

"What happened to you?" Helen asked.

"Nothing," I muttered.

"I think she cramped up," Tom said.

Helen was amazed. "And you came to her rescue?"

Tom shrugged. His shirt was dripping wet, along with his shorts. "I was watching the two of you from my place at the bar. I noticed Josie having trouble."

"Why didn't you call me for help?" Helen asked me.

THE IMMORTAL

"I got a little tired is all," I muttered. "I didn't need to be rescued."

Helen knelt by my side, taking my hand. She spoke to Tom. "Josie was in the hospital last year. It's easy for her to overdo it. She has a bad heart. She—"

"I do not have a bad heart," I interrupted angrily. My humiliation was deepening. I forced a smile and shook off Helen's hand. "Don't talk about me like I'm an invalid." I glanced up at Tom. "I'm OK, I would have been OK. But I want to thank you for your concern anyway."

Tom nodded. He understood I didn't want a big deal made of the matter. "I'd better get back to my job.

They're not paying me to be a lifeguard."

Helen stood up and touched his chest. "Thank you for saving my friend, Tom," she said sweetly but seriously.

"Oh, brother," I mumbled, my eyes rolling.

"I didn't mind a nice cool dip," Tom said.

"See you tonight," Helen said. She raised up on her toes and kissed his cheek. Tom nodded and turned to leave. Helen knelt beside me once more.

"Are you really all right?" she asked.

I sat up and sighed. "Yes."

"What happened?"

"Nothing."

"Why didn't you at least act grateful to Tom for saving your life?"

"My life was not in danger!" I snapped. Then I quieted down. "I got tired is all. I don't like this being made into a big production."

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Helen nodded, studying me. "You embarrass easily, Josie."

I returned her stare. "So do you, Helen." I added, "Let's not talk about this with my dad. It'll only make him worry."

"I understand," Helen said.

"Good." I got up. "Let's get out of here. Too many people are staring at me."

Chapter
2

30

The sky was almost dark when I awoke from my nap. I was alone in my room. After returning from Paradise Beach, I had lain down in bed for a quick rest. Neither Helen nor I had intended to pass out for any length of time. We didn't want to sleep during the day and be up all night. I didn't know if Helen had managed to stay with the game plan, but when I checked my watch and discovered I had been out for four hours, I realized it might take a few days to adjust to the new time zone. My chest felt fine, no pain at all.

Dressing in blue jeans and a yellow blouse, I left the room and searched for the others. I didn't go straight to my father's room but passed through the lounge area at the front of the hotel, where there was a small bar and snack shop. There I found Silk, watching a rerun of "Gilligan's Island" and stirring a bloody 31

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Mary. What a prize, I thought; she came all the way to Greece to watch bad TV. We had the lounge to ourselves.

"Where's my dad?" I asked.

"He's in the room, writing," Silk replied. She had on a suede purple pants outfit, too much makeup. With the approaching night it had cooled some, but it was still too warm for suede. Silk took a sip of her drink.

Her gaze was easy, too accepting; it had not been her first transfusion from Mary, I realized.

"What did you do today?" I asked.

"Went for a walk on the beach."

"Did you go in the water?"

"It's too cold."