Dying For You (8 page)

No, nothing hurt; everything was numb. She’d figured on swimming up for another breath of air, but she didn’t need one now.

She brought a hand up to touch her face and missed. Were her lips gone? Or was she too numb to find them? She swam to get to the surface, and bumped into the ocean floor.

This is not good, she told herself, but really, it was impossible to get worked up over it. It was so beautiful here, so peaceful. She was almost a part of it, lying on the floor in the rich silt, a part of the fish and even the saucy ray who had smacked her by accident and gone on its way.

She pulled off her mask and snorkel. Ah! That was better.
Now she could breathe. It was a lot harder, breathing water than air, but she was up to the challenge.

It was too bad, though. She herself didn’t mind so much, but her pal Cathy would completely lose it when she heard the news.

“What do you mean, ‘missing and presumed’?” Cathy shrieked. “What does that mean? Why aren’t we looking for her? Why weren’t you looking earlier?”

“Is she dead?” Jack asked. “I guess you’d better tell us if she’s dead.”

“Of course she’s not dead, she’s just snorkeling. Right?”

“For eighteen hours?” her husband asked gently.

Cathy clawed through her hair, the curly dark hair Nikki so admired. And still did admire! Not past tense: present tense. Nikki was very much in the pesent tense, nothing was wrong, it was all a stupid misunderstanding, that was all, just a—

“…came alone, and we’re pretty casual here.…You can
keep the snorkeling gear in your room and go out whenever you want. We have no idea when she left, but she wasn’t at supper last night, or breakfast this morning, so we alerted the coast guard as well as—”

“Nobody’s seen her since last night? Well, we—we—” She cast around. “We have to find her, then. That’s all. We just have to. She’s a good swimmer but she’s not used to the ocean—we live in Minnesota—and she’ll be waiting for us to get her…” Cathy burst into tears, and was instantly pissed at herself for doing it. This accomplished nothing. It slowed everything down.

Her husband, cool as a flounder in most situations, patted her but fixed his gaze on the guide, waiting patiently for an answer to his question.

“Yes,” the guide said with great reluctance. “I think she’s dead.”

“Of course she is, she’s been dead since last night, only she was alone and no one noticed. She was
alone
,” Cathy said, and did something she had never done before, and hoped never to do again: she fainted.

She woke up in their room, their little cabana on the ocean. Jack looked calm and unconcerned, but then, he always did. He
looked
like a twentysomething handyman who had to struggle with
Body Art Monthly
, when in fact he was a hundred-year-old intellectual.

“They’re still looking,” he said, patting her wrist. She saw
he’d taken off her shoes and placed her neatly in the middle of the bed. “They’ll find her.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said, and rolled over to bury her face in the pillow. “I’ll never forgive myself, never!”

“Honey, I didn’t catch that.”

She rolled back over. “I said I’ll never forgive myself. She came down here
alone
and we were all supposed to be together, only she came down
alone
, and we should have noticed when she didn’t come back from snorkeling, we
should
have! Who dies going
snorkeling
, for God’s sake?”

“Well,” Jack began cautiously, then stopped. It was just as well; what could he have said? He had died falling down the basement stairs. Talk about senseless.

“What if they never find her?” she asked. “What if she gets…you know. Eaten.”

Jack just shook his head, and she suppressed a flare of temper. Most men would be all “There, there.” Jack knew too much, had seen too much. He wouldn’t comfort her if he thought it was a lie.

“Well, we’re not going anywhere until we find her. Hear that?”

“I hear that,” he replied.

“Thank God I quit my job last month,” she muttered, throwing a forearm over her eyes.

“I have money,” he reminded her.

A bundle. His sister, a lovely woman still living in a St. Paul nursing home, had figured out their secret, and insisted on giving half her inheritance to Jack. Or, rather, the body
Jack now lived in. It had amounted to several million dollars, and had certainly taken the pressure off. No more temp jobs for her, and plenty of money for new carpeting.

The thought of her happiness, of the
money
making her
happy
, when now her best friend was most likely shark supper, made her burst into fresh tears.

Oh this is so BOGUS.

And not a little bogus, either. Big, gooey, lame bogus. Unendurably bogus.

I hated the movie
Ghost.
Demi Moore dripping tears over everything that moved, stupid Patrick Swayze getting his damn self shot, stupid Whoopi Goldberg—well, she wasn’t so bad…

Nikki knocked on the cabin door, forgetting, again, that she was incorporeal. The ghost thing was tough to get used to. Worse than passing bio in college!

Her fist passed through the wood of the door and she hesitated. She’d been through three other cabins, looking for Jack and Cathy. This could be lucky number four. That was good, right? Right. Only, she prayed they weren’t doing it.

She stuck her head through the door. Success! There they were, Cathy sobbing (nuts) on the bed as if, uh, she’d lost her
best friend (okay, she had), and Jack sitting beside the bed, his chin resting on one fist, watching her with a glum look. He was shirtless, in khaki shorts, deeply tanned, and even in the middle of her rather large problem, she noticed for the hundredth time how yummy her best friend’s husband was.

Who was tan in March? They lived in Minnesota, for goodness’ sake.

“Sorry to ogle,” she said cheerfully, “but it’s your own fault for letting him walk around without a shirt.”

Nothing.

“Guys! I’m okay! Well, relatively speaking.”

“I’ll never forgive myself,” Cathy said, her voice thick with tears.

“You did nothing wrong, love.” Jack’s voice was a soothing rumble.

“I just can’t stand the thought of her floating around out there, all alone—Nikki hates being by herself.”

“Uh, guys?”

“Cathy, you’ve got to stop. You’ve been crying for hours. You’ll make yourself ill.”

“Guys?” She walked over to them—she might be able to pass through walls, but an old habit like walking on the floor was hard to break—and waved her hands in front of them. “Guys? I’m here. I’m okay. Relativ—never mind. Don’t cry, honey, you know how your nose swells up.”

“I can’t help it,” Cathy cried. “This was supposed to be a fun vacation for the three of us, and now what? The coast guard is looking for my best friend’s body.”

“They are? Oh, great. I guess.” She grimaced at the thought
of gorgeous tropical fish nibbling on her toes. Had she sunk? Was she floating? The salt water was going to be murder on her hair.…

“Because of you,” Cathy accused. “You just had to finish that damned painting.”

“Don’t go blaming him,” Nikki said sharply. “It was a silly accident.”

Jack’s mouth tightened for a moment, then he replied, most gently, “Love, Nikki wouldn’t want you carrying on like this.”

“Yes I would! I mean, you guys can mourn for a day. That’s all right.”

“I can’t help it,” Cathy said again.

“You must. It’s been a week. You have to try to calm down. You must think of the baby.”

“The
baby
?” Nikki almost yelled.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” Cathy said. “It was my fault, too. I wanted to stay for the doctor’s appointment.”

“Baby?” Nikki shouted again. “Oh, nice! You let him knock you up, and you were gonna tell me when? Jerks!”

Then it hit her: a week? But she’d only died a couple of hours ago! Sure, it had taken her a while to get back to the island and find their cabin, but—

“I guess you’re right,” Cathy sighed, sitting up. Jack got up at once and went to the bathroom. Nikki heard the sound of running water, and then he came back out holding a full glass. “Thanks.”

“Drink it all,” he told her. “You don’t want to become dehydrated in this heat.”

“Jerks! I’m in the room, you know. What, you’re all done mourning now?” Although, the thought of Cathy crying nonstop for a week (a week?) was sort of dismaying. Especially if she was
el preggo
. “Can you really not see me?”

She stuck her arm through Jack’s head. He didn’t notice. Didn’t even get a cold chill, like in the movies. And the guy had been a ghost himself for, like, eighty years.

She thought of
The Sixth Sense
, the most horrifying movie in the history of cinema. She had been mesmerized. That poor kid. Poor Bruce Willis.

But, what was worse than seeing dead people?

Not being seen at all.

“Jerks,” she said again. It was lame, but it was all she could think of.

“Let’s go back to the lodge, see if they found—if they found anything.”

“You mean,” Nikki said, “if they’ve stumbled across my rotting corpse.”

Jack got up again. “You stay here and try to relax.” He rested his hand on her annoyingly flat stomach, and Nikki thought,
The true, awful irony of death: I still have cellulite.
“I’ll go check.”

“Hurry back,” Cathy practically begged.

“I will. Rest.”

He walked through (yeesh!) Nikki, making her windmill her arms in surprise, opened the door, and was gone.

She rushed to the bed. “Cathy! Cath, it’s me.” She waved frantically as her friend sighed and gulped and sniveled. “Come
on, we’re—we were—best friends. There’s a bond! There was a bond. Argh. Fucking past tense. You’ve got to see me.”

Cathy groped for a tissue and noisily blew her nose.

“See me!” Nikki yelled. “Dammit! People are scared shitless of ghosts! You’re supposed to see my bad dead self and freak out!”

Cathy sighed and stared at the ceiling, tears leaking from her big blue eyes and puddling in her ears.

“Okay, remember this? I was too tall for cheerleading and you were too lame, but we learned the cheers anyway.”

She threw her arms up in a V for victory.

She leapt in the air, limbs akimbo. “Yaaaaaaayyyyy!”

Cathy cried harder. Not that Nikki could blame her.

“Dammit,” she said, and plopped into the chair recently vacated by Jack. She had so much momentum she slipped through it, through the floor, and a good four feet into the ground, which really gave her something to swear about.

She had prowled every inch of Little Cayman (or maybe
haunted
was the word) and except for the resort guests and the iguanas, there was nothing but sand and nauseatingly gorgeous beaches.

Nothing had changed. Cathy had been crying on and off, Jack had been stoic, the cook had produced magnificent meals, and the coast guard boats kept chugging up and down the beaches, sometimes very close to the dry sand (she was amazed the boats didn’t beach themselves, like whales), sometimes little dots on the horizon.

Morbidly, Nikki wondered how much longer they’d search. And where the hell was her body, anyway? Probably in the gut of some damn great white.

She had tried talking, yelling, screeching, cheering, walking
through them—nothing. Nobody else on the island could see her, either.

Was this it? No bright light? No afterlife? Just stuck watching her best friend’s misery? Even Patrick Swayze got the bright light, after a while. This—this was unbearable. She had never dreamed being dead would be so bad, but watching your friends suffer was hell.

Due to the tragedy of her untimely death, she, Cathy, and Jack were the only guests at Pirate’s Point. Everyone else couldn’t get back to the small airport fast enough. Nobody wanted to go scuba diving, either—and who could blame them? Everyone was afraid of stumbling across her body.

The iguanas, usually fed fruit by indulgent guests, were getting bad off—certainly Cathy and Jack weren’t in the mood to toss grapes at them. The boats stayed tied up; the snorkeling equipment stayed in the shed.

If this went on much longer, the tiny resort would really be hurting.

But Jack and Cathy wouldn’t go home. Nikki had no idea how to feel about that. Relieved? Annoyed? If they left, she’d be by herself. But they couldn’t keep hanging around Little Cayman until…until. That was just…

She walked through the south wall of cabin 3 just in time to see a naked Jack climb on top of her (naked) best friend. She had a horrifying glimpse of hairy ass and Cathy’s pale flailing limbs before she gagged and lurched back out the wall. Not fast enough, unfortunately, to drown out Cathy’s “Jack, Jack! Do it now!” and Jack’s rumbly “Ah, my sweet fragrant darling…”

“Nice!” she hollered. “I’m dead and you two are boning—again! Or celebrating life. Whatever. Still, take a breather once in a while, willya? It’s the middle of the day. Besides, how many times can you get her pregnant in a—a—month?”

How long had it been? Time, she had discovered in death, was a slippery concept. The sun raced across the sky, followed by the moon, and although it only felt like a couple of days, Cathy was already showing.

She decided, trudging back to the lodge, that as fine as Jack was, if she never saw his hairy crack again, she’d be happy forever.

Fragrant darling?

She put the thought out of her mind, quick.

“I think we should call a medium.”

It was chilly in the small hut—the wall unit was going full blast to combat the tropical heat outside—and Cathy pulled a blanket over her legs. “A medium what?”

“A psychic.”

“To help us find the body.” It wasn’t a question. Jack had been on the spirit plane for almost a century; it was natural that he would think of such a thing. “Maybe—talk to Nikki?”