Never Have I Ever(93)

It was still a couple of hours before sunset, and Rosie B’s was pretty dead. I was sharing the place with only a couple of shaggy-headed beach boys and the bartender. I stopped by the bar and ordered, then staked out a booth in the corner. I wanted the comfort of my back against a wall.

Just as I settled, Roux appeared in the doorway, sheathed in a lime-colored sundress and strappy, elegant sandals. I shivered, as if the old air-conditioning had kicked up a notch. Even so, my inner calm held. I was doing the right thing.

I had found my third road out; it had been there all along. I’d been too scared, too angry, too caught up in Roux’s game to see it. It was an ugly, hard road, but I stilled myself and met her eyes, waving her over. I was going to take it.

Roux came and slid in across from me, distaste writ plain across her features.

“Slumming it, are we?” she asked. She’d taken a light tone, but her eyes were guarded.

“You have to go to the bar to order. No waitstaff on yet.”

She rolled her eyes, turned, and raised her hand to the bartender. Twenty years ago this guy would have been one of the beach-bum kids he was serving. He was too old to be working here, his sun-kissed curls receding to his crown and deep lines scored into his leathery, tanned skin.

Roux called, “What’s she having?”

“G&T,” he called back.

She held up two fingers, like a peace sign, and he nodded. She turned back to me. The bench seat had us close, too close for comfort. Our knees weren’t touching, but I could feel heat coming off hers.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Fine,” she said. If she felt any awkwardness, any gratitude, anything at all—none of it was showing.

“Any joint pain? Dizziness or numbness—”

“I don’t have decompression sickness,” she interrupted. “No symptoms. I had Luca take me to the ER anyway. We were there most of the day, kickin’ it with the drug-hunting oxy heads and the loudest child on earth. He’d broken something. Not a classy place, the ER. I really thought that would be today’s low point. But look. Here we are.”

As if to illustrate, the shaggy boys put quarters in the ancient Playboy pinball machine near the pool table. It burst into sonic beeps and hootings, the ears and tails on the Bunnies lighting up.

“I would have thought almost drowning was the low point,” I said, and she did not react. “You’re lucky you’re not in a hyperbaric chamber right now.” Or dead, I thought.

“I’m eighteen percent body fat, my resting heart rate is under sixty, and I hydrate like a motherfucker,” she said, waving luck away. She was about to say more, but the beach bum appeared with our drinks just then.

“Thanks,” I said.

She waited until he walked away before she spoke again.

“Is that why I’m here? So you can make sure I’m not going to fall down dead of the bends? How sweet.” Her voice was rich with irony. She reached for her drink and took a large, long swallow. She made a face. “What is that? What gin did you order?”

“I didn’t order a specific gin.”

“God. This tastes like Lysol.” But she drank again. When she set her glass down, it was half empty. It was my only indication that she wasn’t as collected as she seemed.

“Why did you go inside?” I said

She propped her head in her hands, looking up, as if the answer might be written on the ceiling. “I hate fighting with Luca. Earlier, Mark and I looked in that hole, and my light caught something glinting on the floor. Round. Looked like old brass. Maybe a compass or an antique pocket watch. I started to join you, but that fight . . . I was still mad, and I knew Luca was, too. I thought, what if I popped back down and got that compass? For him.” I felt my lips compress. It was illegal to steal treasures off wrecks. Either divers left them for the next diver to enjoy or, if an item was unattached and likely to be washed away, we brought them up to donate to museums. But considering every damn thing else Roux had done, pirating a wreck treasure was hardly worth mentioning. “It looked like an easy in and out. I didn’t see the netting up in the ceiling.” She stopped. I waited, staring her down. She had yet to apologize. She had yet to thank me. Finally she said, “What? What do you expect? Fuck you, Amy. All you did was your job. I’m glad I’m not dead. Thanks for that. Lucky me, I’m still here. And poor you, nothing’s changed.”

She was wrong about that.

“Except that I decided not to pay you,” I said, easy and cool.

We continued to stare each other down for a few more seconds, and then she picked up her drink and drained it.

“Where’s your phone?” she said. I handed it over. I’d already turned it all the way off. She checked, then put it in her pocket and stood, picking up my full drink as she rose. “Ladies’ room.”

She was stalking off across the bar before I could answer. I got up and followed her. She set my drink down on a different table, right by the women’s restroom, then went through the swinging door. I did, too.

The grungy bathroom had avocado-colored floor tile and graffiti in archaeological layers on every inch of the stall doors. She stayed by the chipped sinks, holding her hands out, and I stepped toward her, for once unfazed. I had held her body, racked with shudders, terrified. I had cut it free, carried it up into the air, cradled it until the boat came. My ownership of her body in those moments somehow negated the invasion of her hands now.