Black Water (7 page)

Like
a mirror broken and scattered about them, the marshes stretching for miles.
Kelly supposed they were lost but hesitated to utter the word for fear of
annoying The Senator.

Am I ready?—it's an adventure.

In
the jolting car they did seem immune to any harm, still less to a vehicular
accident, for The Senator was driving in a way one might call recklessly, you
might say his judgment was impaired by drink but not his skill as a driver for
he
did
have skill, handling the compact car as if by instinct
and with an air too of kingly contempt, so Kelly was thinking, though they were
lost, though they would not make the 8:20
p.m.
ferry after all, she
was privileged to be here and no harm could come to her like a young princess
in a fairy tale so recently begun but perhaps it would not end for some time,
perhaps.

The bright flat moon, the glittering
patches of water so very like pieces of mirror.
A jazzy tempo to the radio music now and the beat, the beat, the beat of the
surf out of range of their immediate hearing but Kelly believed she could hear
it half-closing her eyes gripping the strap at her shoulder so hard her
knuckles were white.

Raising
her voice without seeming quite to raise it: "I think we're lost,
Senator."

The word
Senator
lightly ironic, playful.
A
kind of caress.

He
had told her to call him by his first name—his diminutive first name—of course.
But somehow just yet Kelly had not been able to oblige.

Such intimacy, together in the bouncing
jolting car.
The giddy smell
of alcohol pungent between them.
Beery
kisses, that
tongue thick enough to choke you.

Here
was one of the immune, beside her:
he,
one of the powerful adults of the world, manly man, U.S. senator, a famous face
and a tangled history, empowered to not merely endure history but to guide it,
control it, manipulate it to his own ends. He was an old-style liberal Democrat
out of the 1960s, a Great Society man with a stubborn and zealous dedication to
social reform seemingly not embittered or broken or even greatly surprised at
the opposition his humanitarian ideas aroused in the America of the waning
years of the twentieth century for his life was politics, you know what
politics is, in its essence: the art of compromise.

Can
compromise be an art?—yes, but a minor art.

Kelly
had thought The Senator had not heard her but then he said, with a mirthless
chuckle as if clearing his throat, "This is a shortcut, Kelly."
As if speaking to a very young child or to a drunken young woman,
slowly.
"There's only one direction and we can't be lost."

Just before the car flew off the road.

She heard the single expletive
"hey!" as the car
skidded
into a guardrail skidding sideways, the right rear coming around as in a demonic
amusement ride and her head cracked against the window a red mist flashing
across her eyes but she could not draw breath to scream as the momentum of
their speed carried them down a brief but steep embankment, an angry staccato
tapping against the car as if dried sticks were being broken, still she had not
breath to scream as the car plunged into what appeared to be a pit, a pool,
stagnant water in the marshland you might think only a few feet deep but black
water

was
churning alive and purposeful on all sides tugging them down, the car sinking
on its side, and Kelly was blinded, The Senator fell against her and their
heads knocked and how long it was the two of them struggled together, stunned,
desperate, in terror of what was happening out of their control and even their
comprehension except to think
This can't be happening, am I going to die like this,
how many seconds or minutes before The Senator moaning "Oh God. Oh
God" fumbled clawing at the safety belts extricating himself by sheer
strength from his seat behind the broken steering wheel and with fanatic
strength forcing himself through the door, opening the door against the weight
of black water and gravity that door so strangely where it should not have
been, overhead, directly over their heads, as if the very earth had tilted
insanely on its axis and the sky now invisible was lost in the black muck
beneath—how long, in her terror and confusion Kelly Kelleher could not have
said. She was fighting to escape the water, she was clutching at a man's
muscular forearm even as he shoved her away, she was clutching at his
trousered
leg, his foot, his foot in its crepe-soled canvas
shoe heavy and crushing upon her striking the side of her head, her left temple
so now she did cry out in pain and hurt grabbing at his leg frantically, her
fingernails tearing, then at his ankle, his foot, his shoe, the crepe-soled
canvas shoe that came off in her hand so she was left behind crying, begging,
"Don't leave me!—help me! Wait!"

Having
no name to call him as the black water rushed upon her to fill her lungs.

He was gone but
would come back to save her.

He was gone having swum to shore to cry
for help... or was he lying on the weedy embankment vomiting water in helpless
spasms drawing his breath deep, deep to summon his strength and manly courage
preparatory to returning to the black water to dive down to the submerged car
like a capsized beetle helpless and precariously balanced on its side in the
soft muck of the riverbed where his trapped and terrified passenger waited for
him to save her, waited for him to return to open the door to pull her out to
save her: was that the way it would happen?

I'm
here. I'm here.
Here.

At the fourth of
july
gathering at
buffy
st
.
John's that day there were guests arriving
all afternoon and into the evening, some of whom Kelly Kelleher did not know
but she did know and was known by Ray Annick and Felicia
Ch'en
a glossy-black-haired strikingly beautiful new friend of Buffy's who had a
degree in mathematics and wrote freelance science articles for the
Boston Globe
and Ed Murphy the finance economist at
B.U. who was a consultant for a Boston brokerage house and Stacey Miles of
course who'd been a suitemate at Brown and Randy

Post
the architect with whom Stacey lived in Cambridge and there was an ex-lover of
Buffy's named Fritz with whom Buffy remained good friends and who had in fact
taken Kelly Kelleher out a few times amicably, casually, he'd hoped to make
love to her Kelly had surmised as revenge of sorts upon Buffy who would not in
any case have cared in the slightest, and there was that tall big-shouldered
balding light-skinned black man of about thirty-five a fellow of some kind at
M.I.T. whom Kelly had met before, his first name was unusual, exotic, was it
Lucius?— a Trinidadian and not an American black and Kelly remembered liking
him and knew that he liked her, was attracted to her, so Kelly felt good about
that, she had dreaded this weekend having become increasingly uncomfortable at
parties like this where so much drinking so much repartee so much gaiety so
much frank sexual appraisal put her at a disadvantage, she was vulnerable as if
the outer layer of her skin had been peeled away since G----- and if men looked
at her she stiffened feeling her jaws tighten her blood beat with dread and if
men did not look at her, if their glances slipped past her as if she were
invisible, she felt a yet deeper dread: a conviction of not merely female but
human failure.

But
there was Lucius.
A research fellow in plasma physics.
A subscriber to
Citizens' Inquiry
and an admirer of Carl Spader, or what he knew of Carl Spader.

There
was Lucius, and Kelly was grateful for his presence, and had not shortly past
two o'clock a black Toyota turned into Buffy's drive and the murmur went up
Is it him?—is it
?—
Jesus!
the
two might have become, in time, very good friends.

She did not believe in astrology, in
the breath-
less
admonitions and Ben Franklin-pep talks of the magazine horoscopes, nor did she believe
in the Anglican God to Whom—in Whom?—for Whom?—she had long ago been confirmed.