Blue Field(14)

She checked and rechecked her gas supply and then, little option left, finally began her ascent. No rapture, no glory. Just ninety and then seventy and sixty feet. At fifty she reached her first decompression stop according to the display on her computer. She held onto the rope, hovering face first and parallel to the now-invisible bottom, while she off-gassed some of the surfeit of nitrogen in her bloodstream. No getting bent. At least there was that. A few dazed minutes and she continued to her next stops, resting in ten-foot increments for increasingly longer periods. At twenty she swapped her air for the O2 reg the crew had run out from the boat and clipped to the line to aid in swabbing the unwanted gas from her circulation. She performed her air breaks at fifteen-minute intervals, changing from one reg back to the other. Her computer cleared her for ten feet. Last stop, more than an hour’s worth. Hang time. She jiggered unthinkingly in the eerily glowing water, vacantly observed sunlight spindle down. So the weather had improved though rumbles and slaps echoed from the tug as steel battered waves. She needed to pee, badly. She switched gases like clockwork. Finally her computer cleared her. Open wide, she thought as she broke the surface and entered the burning sky.





13


She entered another maze.

She’d f*cked up. She was f*cked up. In his view, which he didn’t hesitate to elaborate, cutting her off mid-stammer, shouting over the diesel roar. Port side? Try starboard, dear. And try this. She’d trashed the viz when he finally found her in back of the corridor. When he tried to stir her stupefied butt back to life and surprise, surprise all hell broke loose. Imagine his surprise—all that trouble to hustle her down there and keep her from ape-shitting all over the place. Remember the plan? Which she’d f*cked with from the start. Did she not remember that as well? Sinking to the bottom off the bow and staring at the mud like a total whack-job. He was not f*cking joking.

She was not f*cking laughing. She planted her legs widely beneath her, beside her rig lashed to the hull with bungee cords—which she could hardly see in the explosion of sun off the white deck of the ram-jamming boat. Her sinuses streamed. The f*ck? He was confused. She knew where she’d been.

The tug trenched and soared and his craggy face swung near then farther from her. Behind him she glimpsed Jane, blond hair like a sparkler in the ravenous light—in high relief to the cabin’s extinguishing shade where the other divers and the crew had slunk the second Marilyn scrabbled aboard.

At this point, I think you don’t know squat, he declared. What are you, a tourist? Where was your safety line? If you can’t do a dive like this, dear, you should hang up your fins. Stay home and bake cookies.

You’d like that?

He mashed his palms together and arrowed his fingertips at her. You, he said. Fucking. Do not. Get it.

She tried to dodge him and her calves smashed against a storage box—hers, she saw when she hazarded a glance. He un-tented his hands and jabbed a finger inches from her nose.

One, he said. You didn’t know where you were.

I did know, but so what? That’s not the point here.

He held up two fingers. You didn’t follow the plan, he said.

Forget the plan, she protested. Unless you planned what really happened. What you did.

His face reddened in patches around his pale scars. I’ll tell you what never really happened, he raged, sticking three fingers at her. You never ran a line. Never used your f*cking safety reel.

It seemed as if the tug’s movement suddenly ceased. A white wing hung motionless in mid-flight against the sky. Smell of diesel and creosote. Out on the expanse of water, small islands like wells of rock in a vast liquid field. Silence on board, though she knew the tug’s engine was near-deafening. Jane’s dazzle near the cabin door. Then a cloud sailed in front of the sun and somehow restarted the keel-pounding boat-toss. He waved both arms now as if dismissing her. She stood her ground though his jaw and neck bulged and his lips curled as if he were chomping hot stones. Get your head back on, he shouted. What happened to your training? To all that time I f*cking wasted on you.

She felt as if she were shooting through a million-mile tunnel. Stop, she bellowed. Stop threatening me.

He gasped then retreated a few feet. Threaten? he yelled. Are you insane?

You hit me in there, she cried. That’s what happened.

His eyes rolled upward briefly, all whites. Then he handled her aside and staggered to the boat’s railing, wrestled a set of doubles out of the way so he could lean over the water as if he might spew.

Am I right? she called after him.

He turned painstakingly on the railing and over-slung his rear. Don’t get me started on what your fourth screw-up was, he said. What you did. Get it? What you did to yourself. Your little freak-out in there. So this is the last word I’ll say on the subject. Wake. The f*ck. Up.

What were you trying to do? she said, horning in. Kill me?

He lifted his huge head. Blank-faced now, he gripped the railing and leaned backward away from her over the water—so far she thought he might let go. But then he pitched forward and opened and closed his mouth a few times. Me? he finally choked out. You almost killed yourself. On this piece-of-shit wreck. Which I’m only diving because of you. Because you needed the practice inside. Remember that? I should never have let you talk me into another trust-me.

The sun flashed from behind the cloud and she shielded her eyes. Good, she said. Because obviously I can’t trust you.