It takes me half an hour to get comfortable removing my mask underwater, putting it back on, and then “clearing it.” This last part requires breathing out through my nose while I pin the top of my mask to my forehead with both hands. The water around my eyes is gradually replaced with exhaled air from the tank. Opening my eyes without being able to reach inside my mask to wipe them feels strange and burns a little, but I survive the ordeal. Ness makes me do it two more times.
He also teaches me how to put the regulator back in my mouth underwater, press the purge button, and start breathing air instead of the Atlantic. It feels weird, the forced blast of air filling my mouth and puffing my cheeks, but I decide I can survive this as well. I feel like an astronaut undergoing emergency NASA training. I’m no longer terrified to get to the beach and do some diving. I’m almost excited. Ness helps me out of the water and up the ramp, when I hear him mention something about getting the boat ready.
“Where are we diving, exactly?” I ask. “Just off the beach, right?”
“No, we’re going a little ways offshore. There’s a great wreck I want you to see and some good shelling spots. Don’t worry, it’s not deep.”
“Sixty feet ten minutes,” I say, partly to myself. I gather my soaked hair into a bun and squeeze the water out. Ness is laughing at my worried mumbling, but he seems tickled by it rather than mocking.
“There’s Vincent,” he says.
I turn and see a man in tan coveralls standing in front of the boathouse. Olive skin, thick mustache, dark hair. He has a real cigarette between his lips, not one of those vapes. He rubs his hands with a white rag. The pointy white bow of a center console is visible inside the open doors of the boathouse, which Vincent must’ve been working on while I was learning how to not drown.
“Boat’s ready, boss,” he calls out, seeing us looking his way.
The entire spectacle of Vincent—with the cigarette and mustache and coveralls—is just too cliché. As is this calling Ness “boss.” The most annoying part of my job as a journalist is when I have to leave out details to make a story more believable. Life has a way of being both more surreal and more predictable than readers can tolerate.
Ness, of course, is oblivious to this. He just waves his thanks.
Beyond the boathouse, a slender woman in a white mid-thigh dress descends the steps from the boardwalk. She has a basket in one hand, a small cooler in the other. “Vincent will get that,” Ness tells me, as I bend to collect our dive gear. “I want you to meet Monique.”
We walk to the boathouse in our dripping wetsuits. I suddenly feel aware of the tight-fitting neoprene. It’s the two people who aren’t wearing dive suits who make me self-conscious. I shake Vincent’s hand as we meet on the boardwalk, and then he heads over to retrieve our duffel bags, tanks, BCs, and the rest of our gear.
“Hey Monique, this is the reporter from the Times I told you about.”
I shake Monique’s hand, noting that Ness has mentioned me before and that I’m “the reporter.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she says. A hint of a French accent. Another detail I would choose to leave out, but I’ve already decided to edit Monique out of the story altogether. I tell myself it’s for the sake of believability.
“Your favorite sandwiches,” she says to Ness. “Fruit. A salad. I put a selection of drinks in the cooler, wasn’t sure what your friend would want.” She smiles at me.
I try to smile back. The annoyance I feel is hard to place—might just be the infernal cattiness I sometimes sink into around women when we first meet, which usually dissipates once we get to know each other. I worry for a moment that my attempt at a smile looks more like a sneer. I’m trying, I swear.
“Sounds delicious,” Ness says, studying the supplies. “You know how famished I get after a dive.”
“Of course,” Monique says. And to me: “Nice to meet you. Good shelling.”
I’d forgotten we were going after shells. The diving and the boat and the introductions have me scattered. I try to remember that this is going to be a perfect day. Not a day for dying. Or being murdered.