I look at the platform. It’s only wide enough for one person at a time.
“I’m not going in first,” I say. This is a statement of fact. Not a complaint. Or question. Or suggestion. To my editor, I would say that this has been properly vetted. It is a true thing. I am not getting in this water, nearly out of sight of land, all alone.
“You’ll be fine. Ladies first, right? I’ll be in right after y—”
“No, not ‘ladies first,’ Ness Wilde. Not ladies first. I am not getting in this ocean before you do. Do you hear me? I’m dead serious.”
Ness studies me for a moment, and I can’t tell how this is going to go down, if we’ll have to take the boat back to the dock, if I’ll have to sit here while he dives alone, if I’ll end up snorkeling, which would be damn fine with me. But then he smiles, and it feels like the most genuine smile I’ve seen from him. The happiest I’ve seen him. Me telling him he’s dead wrong about this me-getting-in-the-water-first business that he’s suggesting.
“Okay. We’ll get you situated on the dive platform, and I’ll go over the side. We’ll make it work. I’ll be in the water waiting for you.”
I barely hear what he’s saying. It takes a moment to process. But my pulse eventually stops pounding in my ears, and the sun doesn’t beat down quite so hard. I realize I’m sweating inside my wetsuit, which is soaking up the summer morning heat. I finally nod and agree to his plan. He helps me cinch the heavy weight belt around my waist, then lifts my BC, and I get my arms through, do the buckles myself. Ness has me sit on the edge of the swim platform, my legs dangling in the water, and I put my fins on one at a time. I dip my mask in the water, and not wanting to take chances with it fogging, I say screw it and spit on the inside of the lens and rub it around, just like my mom taught me. I dunk the mask again to rinse it and put it on my forehead, then turn to see how Ness is going to get in around me.
He already has his BC on. Balancing on one leg at a time, Ness kicks on each of his fins standing up, the boat rocking gently beneath us. He grabs his mask, tests his air, and then sits on the side of the boat, his back to the water.
“See you in heaven,” he says. And then he rocks back, tipping dangerously, his tank and the back of his head flying toward the water, and I can’t see around the edge of the boat, but there’s a mighty splash, and I’m wondering what in the world he meant and if I can figure out how to crank the boat and get back to the dock by myself, when Ness bobs up by my feet, pulls his regulator out of his mouth, and flashes that famous smile.
“That seemed violent,” I say.
He holds the platform beside my thigh to steady himself. “Don’t try to go in slow,” he says. “You’ll hit your tank on the platform, or you’ll hit your head on the outboard. You want to fall forward. Tuck a little bit and hold your mask to your face with both hands so it doesn’t fall off. Look to the side if that makes you feel better.”
This feels dumb. Like the worst way to get in the water ever. I start to ask if I can’t just turn around and descend the ladder, but I’ve spent enough of my life in fins to understand how poorly that would work. I trust him. Maybe not with anything else, not with the fate of the world, or with the truth, but I trust him in this moment not to get me killed. I fully appreciate the insanity of this paradox, but I accept it anyway. And letting go of the boat, and a decade of fear, and all the thoughts and worries that plague me, and my concern for my mortal coil, and any connection I have with the world above the sea or with the cosmos that sustains me, I tip forward and crash into the Atlantic Ocean, and she wraps me in her soft embrace.
21
All I see are bubbles—both from the turbulence of my entry and my panicked exhalations. The regulator is half out of my mouth. I wrestle it back in. And then the buoyancy of my suit and my frantic kicking and remembering what Ness taught me by the dock about bubbles going up—and I break the surface, sputtering and cursing and spitting out my regulator to take in huge gulps of air.
“Not bad,” Ness says. His hands are under my arms. I almost feel lifted out of the water by his steady kicking beneath the surface. But from the waist up, he is still and calm. I cling to his neck for a moment, then force myself to tread water with my arms. As a defense mechanism, I remind myself that he’s done this with a hundred reporters over the years. This is new and dangerous for me but not for him.
“How the hell are we supposed to get back in the boat?” I ask. The white fiberglass hull bobbing in the sea beside us looks like the snowy face of Everest. I am already imagining us dying here, that we forgot some crucial step. Like a crane, or a handful of stout deckhands.