Blue Field(30)
Finally he showed. He hefted down the ladder and, in a few strokes, reached her. He immediately vented the air from his wings and dropped. Old times. She plunged after him only to wait on the muddy bottom as he tied line from his main reel to a thigh-sized root. Then he ran the line inside and down. Inside and down she went. Catfish trolled the cave’s large vestibule. She and Rand turned on their primary beams and swam farther in. Where daylight yielded to twilight he clipped his reel to the previously installed permanent line. Okay? he signalled. Okay. From here she led beyond all natural light. Not swimming—flying, shedding the vertical inclination of the species, the usual upright terrestrial posture. Her respiration deepened as if honeyed. Despite her suit she felt denuded, skin-sloughed. Alert-minded. Loosed into a tunnel fifty-five feet below the surface and thirty feet in diameter. Buff-coloured walls, deckle-edged like expensive invitations. Off the main passage layers of rock doorways and windows like infinitely replicating prosceniums and feints of perspective hinting at rooms hidden behind rooms. She knew that other mapped passages intersected this fenestrated promenade, but as planned she continued on the main route, flying her body, marvelling at rock-lunettes and false oculi in the ceiling. Twenty minutes in, the cave offered a set of curved ribs jutting from the fine silt bottom. Marilyn played her light over the remains. Once upon a time a turtle. Hungry and searching for food or curious and hankering for new sights but either way, run out of air—out of time. Reminder of rock’s indifference to the mortal razzmatazz, the sticky particulate, of those trapped in its vast slow yawn. Cave-time, creaturely time—best to keep them straight.
Seventy-five minutes from the start of her descent, she reached her turn pressure, having exhausted a third of her air supply. This left a third for her return and a third for a possible emergency. More-skilled Rand, who slid through the water with greater ease, hadn’t breathed down his third yet, despite his greater physical size. But he was accompanying her and so her restrictions governed. What was the body, she thought as they began their exit, but a sad breath-counting machine animated and simultaneously limited by each respiration? Not flying. Never free.
Nearing the entrance again, the backlit mouth of the cave was an azure stain. They spent their brief deco slow-bumping in the water’s gentle wash.
Then it was up and out. Leaves glowed like lanterns in the motionless trees.
30
That afternoon they made love in Bowman’s trailer. They touched each other carefully as if in touching they could put themselves together piece by piece. Later they drove again to the dive centre and dropped off their doubles for a refill. She grabbed a quick bite to eat from the cooler at the front of the shop which she wolfed in the lot and then they headed in the truck to the same river she’d soaked her foot in the previous night. They entered the basin in wetsuits and, packing single tanks and otherwise far less gear than usual, swam down and entered the large cavern. No need for a line—the entire grotto lit by natural light from the surface. They ascended to the sponge-work ceiling—like a limestone Swiss cheese—and removed their fins, storing them blade-first in a long narrow crack. They pumped their wings full of air—this pinned them to the ceiling. There they pushed onto elbows and knees and wobbled to their feet—upside down as if the ceiling were floor. Or an upside-down ground where their exhaust ponded and, off to one side, streamed the rock wall in silver waterfalls. She and Rand took a seat on a bumpy outcropping. They were like an old couple on a park bench in another world. If they waited here long enough, soon there’d be ducks, kids playing tag, another couple, arm in arm, out for a twilight stroll.
After, she lingered in the basin, lazing among the mullet and gar, face still in and hands grasping the bottom rungs of the ladder to the riverbank. Someone rapped on her head. She broke the surface. Her mask induced a tunnel vision apparent only on land and in that tunnel now was Bowman, munching potato chips. The clack of her reg filled the air and she spit it from her mouth and dunked her chin to clean it of drool. Two raps, knock-knock. Who’s there? she grouched.
He threw his head back. Got yourself a live one Petrie, Bowman yowled.
What the f*ck? Rand protested a little later. A f*cking cavern dive.
Doesn’t matter, cowboy. Always do it right. Long hose over and under her shoulder. Not around the tank valve.
Bowman, Rand said.
Bowman kicked at Marilyn’s discarded set-up lying on the grass. I mean what kind of total cluster is this? he said. The modified Yugoslavian method? Very. Fucking. Dangerous.
Rand, barefoot and loose-limbed in his board shorts, was grinning like a gorilla in a regular thump-fest. So? he said. Anyone drowns on this shit-box dive would deserve it. Fuck’s sake.
She swabbed her arm across her nose to remove any post-dive snot and began unzipping. She might take issue with Rand’s choice manner of expressing himself but his larger sentiment she took as a compliment. She might also take issue with Bowman’s challenged sense of contemporary geopolitics but she figured a low profile was her best bet with him.
Bowman kept at it though. Whatever you do, princess, don’t listen to this guy. He’s got you all wrong here. You do what’s right and forget about him. Take care of number one.
Fuck you, Rand said, smile dimming.
Am I talking to you? Bowman growled in response without taking his eyes off her. I thought I was addressing the lady.
She turned her back and draped her wetsuit jacket next to Rand’s on a nearby picnic bench. Her ears felt plugged and she hopped on one foot and then the other to shake the water free. No way would she allow the old cycle of infections to set in. Not now.