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 fuck? Rand protested a little later. A fucking 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.
So Marilyn, Bowman went on. Hear you did Slater this morning. Make it to the Ant Tunnel? Or the traverse to Hermann?
She kept her back to them. On the river past the cavern a four-person team prepared to descend Devil’s Eye. Male or female impossible to tell in their drysuits and masks and sundry gear.
No, Rand answered for her. Just a little tune-up.
Tune-up? Bowman yelled. Petrie, are you telling me you did a fucking weenie dive?
She turned in time to catch, in quick succession, annoyance, sheepishness, muted determination fleet across Rand’s face. She’s got some catching up to do, he said.
I bet she does, Bowman said. You asshole.
She gaped but Bowman merely crumpled his empty chip bag and dashed a few yards and slam-dunked it in a trash can.
You’re hard to like, Rand called after Bowman. You know that?
Bowman moseyed back. Anyway, when’re we going to do Cleargate? I can pencil you in for Saturday.
You meaning not Marilyn. She turned away again and grasped the bibbed remainder of her tight suit on either side of her hips and shimmied while pulling down. Her chilled nipples poked from under the thin material of her swim tank. She decided to leave the rest of the wetsuit on for now rather than display her near-naked rump like a baboon in estrus.
Well? Bowman grunted. In or out?