He’d settled on a large rock near the sinkhole. Stripped of his tanks, he shed his muddy hood and unfolded his neck seal, breathing exaggeratedly as if to mime that he could. With each exhalation he appeared smaller—a few more and he might vanish. Unless she stared hard enough, sucked the fact of him in, nothing but him, investigated his every sinew and nerve, cupped him inside her, somehow sheltered and possessed him and him alone.
How could she? Several men were hoisting Jane’s black-clad body from the sink. At the top they slabbed it on the dirt. Marilyn winced and then remembered—she was the one who easily bruised. Someone cut off Jane’s hood and slit her seals. Released, her good skin seemed to pale by the second—no sign of yesterday’s sunburn. Strands of her wan hair curled like seahorses. Jane and not Jane. Not the desperate pregnant woman on a windswept street corner one afternoon thirteen years ago, scared defiant, abandoned by some guy, shouting, Call me you bitch. Abandoned by the very same bitch. Abandoned this morning too when despite Jane’s evident anxiety Marilyn did nothing. Don’t go, she might have said. Keep safe, I mean it. She could have warned Jane about the obsessive pride and rough lessons that bordered too closely on the fatal. Fatal—what did that even mean? The not-Jane here now? Who’d stood in for Marilyn, taken her place in diving. And in death?
Another bleating, euphoric second overcame her—still here, I’m here. And then Rand lurched from his rock and lumbered over and lowered himself to the ground next to Jane. He cradled her face in his palms and his facial scars seemed to distort and worm like living things. He rose and it was Marilyn’s turn. Menace, bitch. She dropped and mashed her lips to cold lips. She slithered her tongue, probing the cool mouth, snagging a chip on the lower front tooth, trying madly to flick the uvula, tiny bell. Calling and calling. You bitch. And shouldn’t someone be applying CPR? Until a doctor arrived and pronounced? She blew and blew, hisses and sparks. Her head whirled like a spangled top. She had sequins for eyes, a terrible glitter.
The spell broke when someone tugged her upright and crooked her to his side. Sorry, Leo said, as if sorry were for him to say.
Sheer fucked-upness. Perched again on his rock Rand wept. A cop photographer snapped pictures of the body and site. Someone—Rand—would at some point have to retrieve Jane’s equipment from the cave. He’d apparently left it inside to make the recovery easier but her gear would also require documenting and analyzing. From her parents’ deaths, Marilyn knew the after-life as another hell of details. There’d be an autopsy. Maybe an inquest. The photographer clicked and clicked and nearby the two cop divers slouched. These hotshots like to play their games, one of the spitting images said, rubbing the long-weekend stubble on his blunt mug. Yup, said his lookalike, lowering his voice to a fake-sounding baritone as if he were reading a script for a much older and wiser man. And we’re the ones that have to clean up, he said.
Leo tightened his grip on her. She considered yelling, shoving, switching him for Rand. But he was crouched next to his rock, puking for real.
The photographer said, What’re these Lone Rangers trying to prove anyway?
Beats me why some people do what they do, one of the orange glows said.
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