Surface Tension Read online

  The water was shockingly cold. I let my body go limp, my heavy wet clothes pulling me down. When I didn’t move, the pain was less—maybe, I thought hazily, I should just stay down there in the cold agreeable depths and sleep.

  Then my lungs started to burn. My arms were nearly useless. The blackness was closing in, the world was a tunnel. It hurt like hell, but I kicked and flailed my ineffectual arms to struggle to the surface.

  Pulling air into my lungs hurt, yet it tasted so sweet.

  The Top Ten was about fifty feet away, and the gap was widening. I was thankful for the ebb tide that was sucking me out to sea, away from that fire extinguisher and madman. The fight in me was gone. I just wanted to drift away. The bulky figure on deck pulled the ski mask off, and I didn’t need to see the spiky hair to know who it was. Esposito. He spun around and ran for the gangway.

  Because of my sore left shoulder and bruised or maybe broken right wrist, my legs were having to do all the work of treading water to keep my head up. My sodden sneakers were weighing my legs down. I kicked them off and let my legs float. I knew the tide was carrying me alongside the jetty, but I had to rest before I could swim.

  Then I heard the high-pitched whine that an outboard makes underwater. Thank God. Some crazy guys are fishing at this hour of the morning. I saw the boat headed out in the middle of the inlet, and I began to raise my arm to wave at them, when I realized the boat looked very much like a certain white Sea Ray I had seen before, only then there had been two divers aboard. Now, a lone man stood at the center console, and he seemed to be slowly searching the surface of the water on either side of him.

  Damn.

  I ducked my head underwater and pushed my hair forward over my face to cut down on the reflection of the shoreside lights on my white skin. I raised my head just enough to breathe through my nose. And I watched.

  He didn’t appear to have seen me, but nonetheless, he was coming straight for me. I waited as long as I thought was safe, slowly hyperventilating. Then I dove.

  I don’t usually open my eyes underwater, but I wanted to try to see when it would be safe for me to resurface. But it was just all blackness, everywhere. It made me feel disoriented, as though I didn’t know which way was up, and which was down. Like most women, if my lungs are full of air, I float, so I had to struggle to stay under. Even moving slowly as he was, it should have taken him only a few seconds to pass over me, but the whine of his outboard surrounded me in the water. I had no idea which direction it was coming from. My chest was already starting to constrict. There hadn’t been time to get a proper breath before diving. I swam in the direction that I thought would take me away from the boat, but the outboard whine only grew louder then overpowering. I thought I was going to get hit by the prop. In my imagination, I could see the whirling, slicing blades all around me in the water. Going against every fiber in my body that was screaming out for air I tried to swim deeper or at least in the direction that I thought was down. In a flash, I imagined this was how my mother had done it, walking into ever-deeper water until it closed over her head, the sheer force of her will refusing to answer all the cues and calls and demands of her body. But deep in the cerebral cortex, at the simplest levels, before thought, perhaps even before instinct, resides the species’ imperative to survive. My self-preservation autopilot took over and reversed my direction. The hell with the props. I needed air. Desperately. Now.

  I broke through the surface of the water no more than fifteen feet behind his churning outboard. The engine noise was much louder at the surface, thankfully, because I was making a hell of a lot of noise gulping down air in rasping breaths. He seemed to be moving faster, the gulf between us was broadening rapidly. I turned around to swim away from him, thinking I would be swimming back into the inlet, but I saw nothing but dark black sea and sky. The reason he had seemed to be coming from every direction at once above me was because he had been turning his boat around right over my head. Esposito was motoring back into Port Everglades. I was drifting out to sea.

  XVI

  I could see the lights of Hollywood Beach appearing as I drifted past the end of the breakwater. I estimated the current was running at least two knots. The water grew rougher as the outgoing tide ran into the incoming wind chop. Several waves broke over my head, and I swallowed a mouthful of seawater. My eyes and nose burned, and I still didn’t have much movement in either my left arm or my right hand. There was no way I could swim against that tide.

  Lifeguards teach swimmers that if they are ever caught in a riptide to simply relax, let the current carry you out, then swim parallel to the beach and go ashore where there is no outbound current. That would not have been a problem if I had been fresh, but in the exhausted and injured state I was in, I doubted that I would make it back in to the beach. I was having enough trouble just treading water and trying to keep my head above the waves.

  On the south side of the channel, I suddenly heard an explosive puff of air, followed by a deep groan. Squinting to clear the water out of my eyes, I made out the green light on a channel buoy. It was farther away than I expected. Clearly, the Gulf Stream was already carrying me north. The buoy’s air horn moaned again as it rose and fell on the waves.

  I turned my eyes seaward. There should be another marker, the harbor entrance buoy. The light on that one would be red and brighter, and the buoy itself would be bigger. Maybe, big enough to crawl onto.

  On the crest of a swell, I spotted the red light, but it disappeared when I dipped down into a trough between swells. On the next peak, I found the light again, and was alarmed to see how fast I was drifting. I might pass the buoy before the tide carried me out there.

  I turned south and started kicking, trying to fight the Gulf Stream, that mighty current that flows with the strength of all those trade-wind seas that pile up in the Gulf of Mexico, only to spill out toward the north. The ebb tide was carrying me out to the buoy, but I had to fight the current from carrying me up the coast before I made it out there.

  Trying to ignore the pain, I began to stroke with my left arm, a sidestroke and a scissors kick, trying to hold my hand steady on the wobbly wrist. Half the time I wasn’t even sure I was going in the right direction when for several waves I wouldn’t see the red eye glowing in the darkness. Then it would appear again, I’d adjust my course slightly, and kick with renewed vigor.

  The cold water was numbing the pain in my shoulder, and I drank in the brilliant night sky awash in stars, the glistening lights of the coastal condos, the luminous green bursts of the phosphorescent plankton as I stroked through the sea. There was nothing frightening about this night. Some people probably believe right up to the last minute before they drown that they can save themselves, that their efforts will be enough to snatch them back from the precipice. Perhaps they never become aware that it isn’t enough. They fight to the end, and then there is nothing. And then again, there are those, like my mother, who never even try to save themselves.

  The next time I saw the light I was startled to see how close it was, and I heard the bell clanging for the first time. I wondered if I had blacked out for a minute or just gone into some kind of dream state. But the buoy was right there. I was slightly to the north of it, though, the stream having pushed me even farther off course than I thought.

  My arms and legs felt leaden. The water was so much warmer than the chill wind on my face. The water wrapped me, blanket-like, comfortable, appealing. I wanted to stop swimming, to rest, to sleep. Forget the damn buoy.

  A wave slapped my face and drove salt water up my nostrils. The pain seemed to explode white hot and searing in my brain. No, dammit. Swim, stroke, go, go. I’m better than this, I can do it. In an all-out frenzy of flailing limbs and thrashing water I covered the last hundred feet straight up into the current.

  The bell was clanging, deafening. Red flash, one-two-three, red flash. I reached up and grabbed one of the bars that supported the fight and the battery pack. The buoy was rocking and rolling in the swell. On
each rise, my body was lifted out of the water to the waist, and my injured hand nearly let go. It was several minutes before I had the strength to pull myself out of the water. I was dimly aware that my forearms and belly were getting sliced up by the barnacles as I dragged my body out of the water. The wind numbed my face as I curled my body into a tight ball on the narrow platform beneath the flashing red light and clanging bell. I wrapped my arms around the bars so as not to fall off as the buoy rocked in the swells and closed my eyes. I was still alive.

  Far, far off in the distance, as though down at the end of a long tunnel, I heard an outboard running at a good pace and then idling down. I had no idea how long I had been curled up on the buoy, shivering in the wind, trying to conserve body heat. I knew I should open my eyes, but I felt like the little kid who closes his eyes and thinks he is hiding. If it was Esposito, I didn’t want to know about it. There was no place I could go to escape, and back in the water meant hypothermia, death for sure.

  Even with my eyes closed, the whole world suddenly seemed to turn red as a spotlight lit up the buoy and shone through my eyelids. I lifted my head and squinted toward the light.

  “Hey!” a voice called. A deep voice, a male voice. “Hey, lady, are you okay?”

  Stupid as it may sound, I started to laugh. What was I supposed to say? No, go on, I’m fine, thank you?

  “Hey, lady?” he called again. “Jason,” he said more softly, “move in a little closer okay?”

  “Dad, are you sure we oughta? She looks kinda scary. Like, do you think she might be crazy or something?”

  I lifted up my head and tried to shield my eyes with my forearm. “The light,” I called out, waving my arms and pointed at their spot. The bell drowned out what I said, but apparently they understood the pantomime. The spotlight went out, leaving the world dark, but my eyes were still blinded by bright red spots.

  I followed the sound of their idling engine as they drew closer. Then I heard the crunch of crushed barnacles as their boat eased alongside. Out of the darkness, a hand touched my arm and pulled me to the edge of the buoy. I went willingly, still blind.

  “Thanks,” I said as someone wrapped a thick, warm beach towel around my shoulders. I began to be able to make out their faces. I didn’t think I’d ever stop shivering.

  “Jason, we’d better head back in with her.” The driver turned the boat around, and we headed for the inlet. My vision was clearing rapidly now. The man who handed me a Styrofoam cup of coffee had gray hair and a beard and looked about fifty years old.

  “Are you gonna be okay?”

  Nodding, I answered, “Yeah, now I am. Thanks to you. I don’t know how much longer I would have lasted out there.”

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  Even with only half my wits about me, I knew better than to try to explain the whole story. This guy’s son would really think I was crazy if I tried that.

  “I fell overboard,” I said.

  “Where’s your boat?”

  I pointed out to sea. “I think she went down. She was taking on water, and when I went up forward to get an extra pump, I fell overboard. I guess I kinda panicked.”

  “Well, you’re mighty lucky we came along.”

  “I sure am.” I smiled at him. I meant it.

  Then we were approaching the Top Ten, and I craned my neck to see over his shoulder. The interior lights were all on, and I saw several uniformed police officers in the main salon.

  “That sure is a pretty vessel, isn’t it?” the man said, turning to look at what was distracting me.

  On the swim step I saw a black shadow against the glistening white hull.

  “Hold up,” I said. “Could you swing by there so I could pick up that bag?”

  The kid driving looked where I was pointing, then to his dad for permission. The man nodded.

  “Sure,” the kid said, and spun the wheel.

  The father reached down and picked up my back

  pack. “Oof, this thing is heavy. Better not be cocaine or some damn thing in here.”

  I smiled at him and unzipped the top of the pack, revealing the contents. “No, just my roller skates.”

  Father and son exchanged a look that seemed to say, Son, you’re right—she is nuts.

  XVII

  Commuter traffic was thick on Federal Highway. Driving with my sore shoulder and wrist was difficult, but I was relieved to see that I was starting to get some mobility back in both—that apparently nothing was broken or permanently damaged.

  By the time I got back to the Paradise Hotel, the sun was well up. Checkout time wasn’t until eleven, though, so I closed the drapes and slept for three hours.

  When I woke up, even blinking hurt. Every muscle and tissue in my body screamed for me to stop when I tried to roll off the bed. Getting up into a sitting position felt like a major accomplishment.

  I looked up and saw my reflection in the mirror over the dresser. God, what a sight. No wonder that fisherman and his son thought I was a crazy lady. Most of my hair had come loose from the rubber band, and it stood out around my head in sticky, salty clumps. There was a nice purple bruise around the hairline on the right side of my face where that fire extinguisher had managed a glancing blow on my head, and my T-shirt was now stiff with salt and blood. My forearms were laced with bloody scratches, and the dark circles under my eyes may have been from the bang on the head or just pure exhaustion, I wasn’t sure which. One thing I knew: I needed a nice long clean shower. The hell with it all. I was going home.

  I didn’t see any suspicious dark-windowed cars parked along the road anywhere in my Rio Vista neighborhood. Nobody was following me, either. I drove around the block a few more times just to be sure. It felt a little odd driving barefoot, but I’d left my sneakers somewhere on the bottom of the Port Everglades inlet.

  Abaco was beside herself when I came through the gate. She jumped and whirled and yelped. I sat down on the grass and held her scratching her ears while she moaned and rolled her eyes back in pure canine bliss.

  I kept the dog inside the cottage with me when I got into the shower. It’s bad enough feeling like somebody’s out there gunning for you, but to have to climb into the shower after growing up watching Psycho on the late show was really nerve-wracking.

  Even the lousy pressure in my shower hurt as the jets of water hit my aching body. The barnacle scratches on my arms and belly stung as the salt washed off, and I could barely lift my left arm to lather my hair.

  I was wearing nothing but a towel wrapped around my head, and had just finished drying off my legs, when I remembered the book with the drawings in my backpack. I went out in the front room, pulled the stuff out of my slightly soggy backpack, and set the papers and photos out to dry on the bar. I was studying the photo of Neal and me in the Tortugas when I heard the knock at the front door. In an instant, my heart rate doubled. Abaco barked once, and then started whining. My great protector.

  I felt naked. I was naked. I wrapped my hair towel around me, sarong style, and looked around the living room. There was nothing remotely like a weapon anywhere in sight.

  Another knock. The dog should have been barking her head off, but she just sat there looking at the front door, smiling and panting. I picked up the cordless phone, ready to bean somebody over the head with it if necessary, and went to the door.

  “Who is it?” I asked, face to the crack in the door.

  “It’s B.J.”

  “Shit.” I twisted the dead bolt and swung open the door. “Sorry. I thought you were one of them.”

  He looked at my face, then at the phone gripped in my white knuckles, and then back at my face. “What were you going to do? Talk me to death?”

  “It’s not funny,” I said, motioning for him to follow me inside. “You don’t know what I’ve been through in the last few days.”

  “How’d you get that bruise?” He pointed to his own forehead.

  I fingered the spot I knew was purple. “This ... ow. Got hit with a
fire extinguisher. That was before I was thrown overboard and nearly drowned.”

  “Seriously?”

  “What do you think, I’m doing a stand-up routine here?”

  “You sure don’t look good.”

  “Thanks. Just what a girl wants to hear. You have such a way with words, Mr. Moana.”

  As I was speaking, he went into my bedroom, pulled the quilt off the bed, and with a big flourish, spread it out on the living room floor.

  “Lie down.”

  “What?” I said clutching at my towel. “B.J., last night somebody tried to kill me. And they came damn close.”

  “Facedown.” He picked up a pillow off the couch and set it on the floor. “Put this under your neck and let your head hang off the other side.”

  “I don’t have time for this ...”

  He put his hands on my shoulders and pressed down. I resisted at first, but the weight of his hands suddenly felt overpowering, and I bent my knees and spread out on the quilt.

  “Take off the towel.”

  “Why?” I lifted my head and looked over my shoulder at him.

  A faint smile lit his eyes. “Just do it, Seychelle. Trust me.

  I hesitated only a fraction of a second after looking at the familiar planes and angles that made up his face. “Oh, B.J. I’m just so tired.” I unwrapped the towel, and he slid it down so that it was draped across my butt.

  “Shh. I know. Just try to empty your mind.” He knelt on top of my back with a knee on either side of my rib cage and began to knead the muscles in my shoulders. His hands dug deep into the fibers of that damaged left muscle, and it felt as though electricity coursed through his fingers. A very real and palpable heat penetrated from his skin deep into the pain-wracked tissue. It hurt, but there was an exquisite pleasure in the pain.