Blue Field(20)

Leo and Tim stared as if they’d never seen her before.

She floundered ahead along the footpath and entered the forest, descending a nursery-tale thicket of evergreens, dark stippled with peeling-parchment grays. Cool must wadded her lungs. A few minutes and she arrived at the rim of the four-foot-wide gash in the ground—a twelve-foot-deep vertical cleft with a small aluminum ladder attached to one side. Two hand-helds lay beside the hole. Gagging at the sulfur stench, she recalled her last time here this past spring on a whirlwind, one-day surprise visit to clumsily help Jane and Rand suit up. Marilyn had peered from this exact spot and felt the seeping chill on her bare arms. Bon voyage, she’d called down. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. And, watching first Jane then Rand at the bottom of the sink squeeze beneath a limestone ledge, had thought: no f*cking way. By their accounts no cave Marilyn had ever toured was as cramped and murky and cold as this one. So thank you and f*ck you two too, she’d thought as her friend and husband pressed past fanged cracks and into boa-tight rooms formed over eons by underground rivers carving rock. They’d plumbed rough mineral shafts with their lights while their breath-exhaust percolated around them—Marilyn knew all about it, or once knew, or knew enough, never having entered this too-bruising system herself. She’d then spent hours beside herself, lungs rilling, unable to catch her breath. When Jane and Rand had re-emerged and unsuited and debriefed, laughing and chattering, Marilyn had wordlessly stood around. Alone, lost. Dummy, after a time she’d knee-jerked into her car and veered precipitously home to take her place among arterial mazes and veinous routes like the avenues and crooked alleys of an old water-buried city.

Now a bulky shape began to crab from underneath the ledge. A whimper escaped her. She lost her footing and woodchips pressed into her knees. A huge black suit, a monstrosity of gear, laboured up the ladder. His back to her. Of course it was him. A blizzard of white moths stuttered in her brain.

When he was level with the top of the sinkhole he ponderously swung around and pushed the heavy, bottom-mounted battery pack for his primary light out of the way and sat, flashlight-spiked helmet still on. Face still masked. Lips swollen. A few seconds passed before she sprang forward. She released straps and unclipped his suit’s intake valve, the steel bolts and brass snaps stiff and hard to work. She removed the back-up regulator snagged by the choker of surgical tubing he wore around his neck. He tore a glove off with his teeth and juddered his tanks impatiently and she dodged to keep from being knocked down the hole. He worked off the other glove and ripped at the strap to his helmet and tore it off, then twisted the mask around from his face so that it perched eerily backward. He hunched over and hacked. Get me more f*cking air, he finally shouted into his belly. Now, so f*cking help me.

She launched at him again and grabbed his shoulders and he wrenched away, pressed a thumb to the side of his nose and blew. Snot sprayed and she swiped at her cheek. She felt a crackling in her chest. No, she told him. I’ll go. I can use Jane’s extra suit and gear.

Groaning, he clapped his hands over his ears as if he might pop off his head.

Something flashed in her vision then died and she dropped again to her knees. Okay, she said. But listen to me. Did you even decompress? You’ve done enough. More than enough. Let someone else.

There is no someone else, he roared.





19


Too soon the rim of the sinkhole teemed with inaction. She tottered above the foul-smelling cleft while beside her two non-experts wiped sweat from over-heating faces nearly the same lurid orange as their latex drysuits—the kind that tore easily, that no real technical diver would ever sport. To their credit the cop divers seemed aware of the extent of their uselessness, having jettisoned the rest of their crappy gear at Rand’s base camp. They evidently weren’t happy though. Shit, said one of them a few times. Yup and yup, said the other. Then the first one said, Serves her right. And Tweedle-Dee said, Yup, chick was asking for it.

Hey, *s? she said. Who’s asking you?

The melting orange popsicles seemed to melt more. Apologies, they mumbled.

The other cops came in two varieties, standard uniform with vests bulging under sweat-stained shirts, and plainclothes wielding notepads and badges semaphored from wallets. She answered to the latter though their effortful expressions said it—impossible to really explain the situation. After a while they merely appraised her as did Leo and his few other cronies who now rounded out the flurry of activity at the site. She did her best to hide the old rage she felt resurfacing from when her father died in the subway bombing and media crews shoved cameras and microphones in her face and she received calls and texts from producers. How do you feel? How do you feel? they all wanted to know. And Marilyn had only wanted to scream, Feel? Feel?

She drifted now toward the treeline, as far from the sink as she could get without leaving altogether. She stood alone, chopped some patchy grass with her heel, watched the men back until one of the cops arched his brows at her and checked his old-school watch. You bastard. Acid cut her throat. But then with a sudden heartless gobble she filled her lungs. Here, alive. Fuck yes. Then the elation passed and her skin fumed with sunburn and shame. Her mind continued to chug. The moment the air ran out, she thought. The moments before, trapped and too late and knowing it. Sickened, she clenched and unclenched her jaw. What else? She knew roughly how long the air in Rand’s fresh set of doubles would probably last. And Jane’s air?