No one spoke for hours. The storm passed, the rain never hit us, and the sun returned in the morning like a tireless demon punching in for its daily shift. We stared at our feet. What was there to say? Five dead from this lifeboat, plus dozens lost the night the Galaxy went down. The ocean was collecting us.
Lambert mumbled incoherently now and then, something about phone calls and “Security! Call security!” Gibberish. I ignored him. Little Alice was draped over Geri, squeezing her arm. I thought about the morning when Mrs. Laghari straightened Alice’s hair, licking her fingers and flattening her eyebrows, the two of them smiling and hugging. It felt like years ago.
And Nina? Poor Nina. From the moment I met her on the Galaxy, she looked to believe the best in people, and she went to her death believing the stranger in our boat would save her. He did not. He did nothing. What more proof of his charade do we require? She told me once that she had asked the Lord about prayers. He’d said all prayers were answered, “but sometimes the answer is no.”
I suppose it was no for Nina. It infuriates me. When I glare at the man, he returns my look with a placid expression. I can’t imagine what he is feeling or thinking, Annabelle. Or if he feels and thinks at all. When we had food, he ate it. When we had water, he drank it. His skin is chafed and blistered like ours. His face is hollow and bonier than when we discovered him. But he utters no complaints. He does not seem to be suffering. Maybe delusion is his best ally. We all search for something to save us. He thinks it is him.
Yesterday morning, I awoke to see Geri fussing with a patching kit.
“What are you doing?” I mumbled.
“I’ve got to try and patch the bottom, Benji,” she said. “We don’t have enough people to keep bailing. We’ll sink.”
I nodded wearily. Ever since the shark attack, which ripped a hole in the lower tube, one of us has been constantly shoveling water out of our tilted raft bottom. It’s an endless, tiring task, only tolerable because there were many of us. But Lambert is slow at bailing, and lately he has been out of it. Little Alice tries, but she fatigues quickly. That leaves only me, Geri, Jean Philippe, and the Lord. Even collectively, we don’t have the strength anymore.
“The sharks, Miss Geri,” Jean Philippe protested. “What if they come back?”
Geri handed him a paddle, then handed one to me. “Bang ’em hard,” she said. When she saw my reaction, she lowered her voice. “Benji, we have no choice.”
We waited until the sun was high, when sharks are least likely to be prowling for food. With Jean Philippe and me leaning over the sides, paddles up like two exhausted sentinels, Geri took a breath and dropped into the water.
The next half hour was like sitting in a darkened house, waiting for a killer to reveal himself. Nobody spoke. Our eyes darted across the surface. Geri kept coming up then diving back under then coming up again. She found the hole, which she said was small, but being underwater left the glue and patches useless.
“I’m going to try some sealant and stitch it,” she said.
Again, we watched the water intensely. After twenty minutes, Geri said she’d fixed all she could. Then she dove back under one more time.
“What’s she doing now?” I asked.
She resurfaced with her hands full of weeds and barnacles. She tossed them into the raft, and we pulled her in.
“There’s a whole … ecosystem … on the bottom of this raft,” she gasped. “Barnacles. Sargasso. I saw fish, but they scattered … too fast … They’re living off what’s growing on the bottom.”
“That’s good, right?” I asked. “The fish? Maybe we could catch one?”
“Yeah …” She nodded, still panting. “But … that’s what the sharks are after, too.”
Now, Annabelle, I must share one more thing, and then I will rest. The writing takes a lot out of me. Processing thought. Thinking about anything besides water and food. I helped Geri pump air into the repaired tubing. It took us an hour. Then both of us fell back under the canopy. Even that simple act was draining.
Still. Last night, in a moment of grace, we witnessed something otherworldly. It was after midnight. As I slept, I felt a sensation through my closed lids, as if someone had turned on the lights. I heard a gasp, and I opened my eyes to witness an utterly amazing sight.
The entire sea was aglow.
Patches below the surface were illuminating the water like a million small light bulbs, casting a Disneyland bluish white all the way to the horizon. The ocean was dead calm, as if it had parked itself in place, and the effect was like looking at a massive sheet of glowing glass. It was so beautiful that I wondered if my life had ended and this was what came next.
“What is it?” Jean Philippe whispered.
“Dinoflagellates,” Geri said. “They’re like plankton. They glow if they’re disturbed.” She paused. “They’re not supposed to be this far out.”
“In all my life,” Jean Philippe marveled, “I never see anything like this.”
I glanced at the Lord. Little Alice was asleep next to him. Wake up, child, I wanted to say. See something astonishing before we die.
I didn’t. In fact, I barely moved. I couldn’t. I kept staring at the glowing sea, awestruck. At that moment, I sensed my insignificance more than at any other moment in my life. It takes so much to make you feel big in this world. It only takes an ocean to make you feel tiny.
“Benji,” Jean Philippe whispered to me. “Do you think the Lord created this?”
“Our Lord?” I whispered, nodding backward.
“Yes.”
“No, Jean Philippe. I don’t think he created this.”
I saw the blue light reflecting in his pupils.
“Something must have.”
“Something,” I said.
“Something magnificent,” he added. He smiled. The raft rocked gently in the water.
The next morning, Jean Philippe was gone.
Land
LeFleur and Commissioner Sprague watched the man in the blue blazer approach the orange raft. LeFleur shifted his shoes in the sand. There was no way this guy knew about the notebook, right?
“You think anyone from the Galaxy actually made it to that raft?” Sprague asked.
“Who knows?” LeFleur said.
“Crap way to die, I’ll tell you that.”
“Yeah.”
LeFleur’s cell phone rang. He glanced at the display.
“My office,” he said.
He turned his body and lifted the phone to his ear, keeping an eye on the man by the raft.
“Katrina?” he answered, low-voiced. “I’m busy now …”
“There’s a man here for you,” his assistant said. “He’s been waiting awhile.”
LeFleur glanced at his watch. Damn it. Rom. He had told him to be there by noon. LeFleur watched the blue-blazered man lean into the raft and run his hand across the edges, near the now-empty pouch. Was he stopping? Did he notice something?
“Jarty?” Katrina said.
“Huh?”
“He asked for an envelope. Is that OK?”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever …,” LeFleur mumbled.
The man stood up. “We need to transport this thing out of here!” he yelled. “Can you get a truck?”
“Right away,” Sprague yelled back. He waved a finger at LeFleur.
“I gotta hang up, Katrina,” LeFleur said. “Tell Rom not to go anywhere.”
Eight
Sea
This is what I found in my notebook the morning Jean Philippe disappeared.
Dear Benji—
When you were sleeping, I think a lot. I reach into the water to touch the blue light. Suddenly, I see a big fish. It swims close to the boat. I take the paddle and I wait. It comes back and I hit it hard. I hit it just right. It stop swimming and I grab it.
I feel happy because there is fish to eat. But sad because I kill it. I don’t want to be in this world anymore, Benji, taking things. I want the last thing I do to be giving. You and others please, eat the fish. Stay alive. I want to be with my Bernadette. I know she is safe. I think last night she let me see Heaven. She is saying God waits for me.
I pray you get home. I leave the fish in the bag.
May the Lord protect you, my friend.