Ghost Lights (10 page)

Heading for the dance floor, he was recalled to reality—the reality that he was a flat-out embarrassing dancer. Among the worst. He had almost forgotten. He was a finger-snapper and a head-nodder. He had no other moves.

“Wait. Only if it’s a slow song,” he added, and hung back. “I’m really bad.”

“What’s important is to have fun,” said Gretel, taking him by the arm. “
Express
yourself.”

“You don’t want to see that, believe me,” said Hal, feeling the silkiness of her fingers. “Self-expression is a young man’s game.”

“Oh, come on,” she said.

They were on the dance floor, other people around them. She started to move, a couple of feet away. Lithe and elegant, as would be expected. He could not do anything. He was stuck. Then desperation washed over him. He had to cling to some self-respect. He reached out and grabbed her, clamped her to his person.

“Sorry,” he said into her ear. “This is all I can stand to do.”

She drew back, a bit confused, and then smiled. After a few seconds she balanced her arms on his shoulders and let him hold her and sway.

Leaning into her he let himself believe, for a moment, that others caught sight of them and assumed they were a couple. Yes: he was a party to this assumption, he welcomed it. Possibly they surmised he was some kind of businessman and Gretel was his trophy wife. Only for a moment of course, for a fraction of a second. As he felt her back under his hands, the swell of breasts on his front. Then the gazes passed over them and fastened elsewhere. But it was better than nothing.

Hans was tapping his shoulder officiously.

“Susan wishes to speak to you,” he said. “She is waiting on the telephone. But do not worry, I have the blood type. Fortunately, Mr. Stern is O-positive.”

Gretel stepped back from him and took Hans’s hand with a light, casual gesture, twirled herself around as she held it. Hans danced with her, stepping primly back and forth; plainly his heart was not in it. Hal’s own heart had been in it, very much so.

As he wandered listlessly toward the phone, which the maître d’ was holding out to him, he could not recall ever resenting Susan like this. Not when he had seen her in the office with the paralegal; not even when they were young and interrupted by Frenchmen.

“So it’s really happening,” she said, when he picked up the receiver. “You’re going to find him. I know you are.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Don’t get your hopes up, though.”

“Casey sends her love,” she said. “She’s here with me.”

He softened, feeling homesick.

“Can I talk to her?”

“Daddy.”

“Case. How are you, sweetheart?”

“An army? The Coast Guard or something?”

“Apparently.”

“You’re my hero.”

•

L
ater the cornboys came running in from ping-pong, the smaller one bleeding from the head. In a doubles game with two other kids the wooden edge of a paddle had cut him upside the eye socket. Hans and Gretel were not overly worried, but Hans plied a white linen napkin to the wound, filled it full of ice from a nearby table’s champagne bucket. He got the kid to hold the ice against his temple and then announced it was the boys’ bedtime. Putting his hands on their shoulders to steer them to the room, he looked back at Gretel, but she shook her head and grabbed Hal’s arm. She would be there in a few minutes, she said, but she was going to take a walk on the beach before bed, and Hal would escort her.

Hal was tired and ready for bed himself: he felt slack and let down. After the last drink he had turned a corner. There was an art to drinking and he had not mastered it. But Gretel was determined; she tugged at his hand, so he shrugged and agreed to go along. After all, due to the Germanness there would likely be a midnight swim, a shucking of clothes and plunging into the waves. It would not surprise him.

A vicarious thrill in it anyway, or at least a view of her naked ass. He could pretend there was more, that it was for his benefit.

“Leave your shoes,” she urged, when she took off her own. Obediently he discarded them, balled up the socks inside the shoes and left them beside her sandals underneath a hammock. She walked a few paces ahead of him.

There were few stars—no visible cloud cover, but still the stars were obscured and the moon was high but not bright. He followed her, hearing the wash of the tide as the small waves curled in and feeling the water on his feet. They passed a dock and left it behind, passed a row of canoes on the sand. His jeans got wet at the hems and he bent over and rolled them up. If Susan could see him, walking by moonlight with a lovely young woman. Along a seam of the Caribbean.

“Look out for jellyfish,” he said. “Washed up I mean. You wouldn’t see them.”

“I’m going to go swimming. It is so beautiful!” she cried, and idly he gave himself points for predicting.

“Of course,” he said.

“You have to come in with me!”

He was flatly opposed to this. He would be cold and wet. He had no interest in it.

“OK,” he said.

Wearily and without haste he took off his clothes. Who cared, after all, who would ever notice or give a shit? No one. Gretel herself wasn’t even looking. The air was black around them and the blackness gave them a loose kind of privacy. She stepped out of her own skirt as though it was nothing, pulled her shirt over her head and dropped it on the sand too. No brassiere. He had a glimpse of pertness, the sheen of skin.

She left the clothes in a pile without casting a glance at them, bounded forward into the surf and dove. Submerged.

He watched the water, holding his breath. Shivering. Now he had to go in after her. That was how he was with the Germans—he acceded to their demands and then he had to summon the wherewithal. When in fact he did not have it. He was afraid of dark things in the water, surging up from the deep.

Where was she? She should have resurfaced by now. He waded out, up to his knees, up to his waist. Where was she?

She came up with a splash, laughing and shaking the water off her head.

“I love it!” she cried.

“Nice,” he agreed, nodding, and dropped in up to his shoulders, dog-paddling. She went under again.

He remembered a scene from one of the British nature shows featuring famous, avuncular naturalists—wry, witty men who casually stepped down from helicopters in the African veldt and talked companionably to the camera in their Oxbridge accents as they walked through the tall, waving grass in their safari outfits. Such men were at home with the animals, picked them up and showed them to the camera as though there was no trick to it. They said
this little fella
as they described a mating behavior or trotted out a surprising factoid. But the scene he remembered had been part of an episode devoted to bioluminescence. They had shown deep-sea fishes that looked like spaceships, myriad lights rimming their graceful, pulsing bodies. Marine biologists had descended in a bathysphere like something out of Jules Verne. In the depths near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, in the bathysphere’s headlights, they caught luminous creatures undescribed by science.

Casey had cried when she saw that. But she hid it from him. She pretended she was crying for another reason, pain probably. She was embarrassed to be seen crying out of sheer emotion.

In the dark he saw mostly the glitter of the waves, Gretel, porpoise-like, diving and coming up again. For a few seconds she stood on her hands in the shallows, her legs and feet sticking out straight, toes pointed like a ballerina’s. There was a breeze across his chest and shoulders and he threw his weight backward and floated on his back, water skirting his bare chest. He could not help but think of sharks and other predators, sluggish and ominous beneath him. Awakening. Tendrils or tentacles or rows of sharp teeth . . .

Above him he saw the moon, but not with clarity; just a blurred scoop of white. He closed his eyes. It was reassuring to have Gretel nearby. Nothing would befall her. No shark would dare. By extension he was also safer. Wasn’t he?

Something brushed against his back from beneath and at the same time he panicked and he knew it was her. Her sleek, wet head emerged beside his own and she was spitting seawater on him and laughing. He sank down a little, coughed and sputtered and righted himself, feet searching for the sandy bottom and sinking in.

Without warning she kissed him. Their bodies were touching all over, under the water and above it, solid and inflaming. Her nipples were against his chest. At once he was both frozen and pulsing with current. Even as it happened, and then continued to happen, it was completely impossible.

He would have to pay for this, he was thinking. And he would pay. He would pay. Gratefully.

6

T
hey were clean-looking guys with brush cuts, looking intently ahead of them and carrying the smell of fresh sweat and what he suspected was pine-scent deodorant. The armed forces weren’t as Caucasian as he’d imagined them, more Latino and black, but just as muscular and young. He stood in the sand beside the dock watching as they filed past, he in his shorts and tattered old sneakers, they in stiff uniforms and bulky black boots. He felt unarmored, a tiny pale civilian.

They dismounted from the dock in rapid succession, boots thumping into the sand, and ran past him and up the beach, leaving their two powerboats tied to the dock. A few hundred yards out on the water the mother ship was anchored, a line of flapping flags flying over her gleaming white bulk. He recognized only the Stars and Stripes.

“
Nantucket
,” he read, off the side. “Wow. She’s big.”

Hans, a few paces off with his hands clasped behind his back, shook his head with a
tut-tut
noise. “Smallest patrol boat in the fleet, except for the Barracudas,” he said. “A 110. Island class. 155 tons full load. Two diesels, two shafts, 5,820 bhp and about 30 knots. For guns, a 25-millimeter Bushmaster low-angle and two 7.62-millimeter MGs.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Hal.

Hans laughed joyously, as though Hal had told a good joke.

“I thought you did airplanes,” Hal added.

“Tactical sensor networks,” said Hans. “I like boats though. Kind of like a hobby.” He waved at a man standing on the powerboat’s massive bridge. Hal squinted to see him better; he was a small stick figure.

“I don’t get it,” said Hal. “How did you manage this?”

“They were already here. Humanitarian assistance,” said Hans. “This mission falls in the category of hurricane casualties. Even though technically it was only a tropical storm. Your friend is an American citizen, no? And an important businessman also. An asset. I impressed them with this. They are based in an operations center in Miami. The ones in light-brown are the Belize Defence Force cadets. They are just here to learn.”

“I didn’t think anyone would show up,” said Hal, still stunned and failing to adjust. “I really didn’t.”

“Of course,” said Hans, and grinned. He put his hand up for a high-five.

Dazed, Hal slapped it compliantly and then felt stupid.

Hans consulted his waterproof digital watch, which he had worn diving the day before and of which he seemed to be quite proud. “We weigh anchor at 10:00 hours,” he said. “So you have exactly ten minutes for preparation.”

“Oh. I’ll go get my shit, then,” said Hal after a few seconds, and struck out for his room at a jog.

He was dizzy and almost trembling from too little sleep and too many margaritas and lying awake in disbelief remembering the recent past—Gretel’s mouth, thighs, and hands all over him. They lay on their shucked clothes on the sand; they had to be careful not to get sand inside her, between them where it counted. He brushed it off her thighs and stomach, off himself . . . but she was lighthearted and playful so he had tried to seem lighthearted too, though he was dead serious.

After they finished he had walked her to the flight of stairs outside the room she was sharing with Hans and the cornboys. Salt-encrusted and shivering, he had gazed up at her back and legs, flashes in the dark as she went up. Probably he had been beaming the whole time, he thought. He had felt like beaming. The room door had closed softly behind her and he had almost run back to his own room, bounding forward giddily. Like a kid.

He was not without pride, lying there, he had to admit it. He even fell asleep proud.

Then first thing in the morning Hans found him at the lobby coffeemaker and rushed him outside to watch the patrol boat cruise in.

Back in his room he drank thirstily, a whole bottle of water he found standing on the dusty metal lid of his air-conditioning unit. He grabbed his green backpack and a baseball cap, filled the water bottle again from the sink and took a fresh one from the shelf. You weren’t supposed to drink the water here but there were filters on the taps in the rooms . . . he should feel guilty in the company of Hans, he thought, but curiously he discovered his conscience was more or less clear. Maybe it was Hans’s automaton quality.

The armed forces were present; he had flown down here on a whim and somehow now there were armed forces to do his bidding. Fortunately Hans would lead them, Hans would manfully take the reins. Hans would assume the armed-forces leadership. He, Hal, had no interest in armed-forces leadership.

He checked himself in the mirror. He had a tan, he noticed. Would Gretel come with them today? Would she see him by daylight and cringe?

He could hardly blame her. He had seen her as in control, seamless and perfect, mostly because she looked that way. But in fact she had been as drunk as he was, if not more, and she had the upper hand—laughably so. She was far younger, far better-looking, and married to a kind of Germanic Apollo who also happened to be an avionics genius. She must be regretting her rash act, her fleeting impulse. He could almost imagine the knot of remorse in her stomach.

He would respect that remorse. He would comport himself with discretion. Lowered eyes, deference.

•

B
ut she was not there. It was only Hans, the armed forces, and him. The two of them stood with an officer on the forward deck of the
Nantucket
.

“Gretel is spending time with the boys today,” said Hans when Hal asked. “They are going to see manatees. In the lagoon.”

“Manatees,” said Hal, and nodded.

“It is also possible to observe dolphins, crocodiles and sea turtles,” recited Hans dutifully, as though from a brochure. “There are hawksbills, green sea turtles and loggerheads.”

It was high above the water, which Hal was not used to since the few boats in which he had been a passenger before this were small boats. Except for a ferry once, past the Statue of Liberty. In the ferry there had been kids running and eating hotdogs, gum stuck on the undersides of benches and vomit in the bathrooms. Overall it was none too clean. The
Nantucket
,
by contrast, smelled only of bleach. And she was moving fast. Easy to see how in the armed forces, wearing a clean authoritative uniform with a machine like this beneath you, you might come to believe you ruled the seas.

On Hans’s other side was someone named Roger, who was apparently in charge.

“Now in the event we get a Medevac situation,” Roger told Hans, “that’s going to be at least an hour out for the Dolphin. Minimum. Sorry we couldn’t bring reconnaissance airpower on this one. Woulda been nice to have all the new toys to play with. But you know how it is. All dollars and cents. With UAVs, too much bureaucracy.”

Hal moved away from them, stood at the portside rail and gazed out over the ocean, the white-blue curl of froth rolling away from the ship. He could see fishing boats dotting the waves out toward the atolls, though they were too far away for him to make out the fishermen. But he imagined all their faces were turned toward him, in awe of the leviathan. Or resentment, if the engine noise was driving off the fish.

He was finding it hard to relinquish his doubt. To get past his own skepticism that this was real—the vast boat, the gunmen—he had to remind himself he did not need it to be real. Accordingly he could take it lightly, as though it might easily be nothing more than a drunk or a delusion . . . if the hurricane had brought humanitarian relief, for instance, in the form of these men, such relief seemed to have missed Seine Bight with its muddy field of shanties. He recalled the light-brown earth dried in right angles where it had flowed around the corners of buildings that were now gone. He thought of sheds the size of closets whose particleboard walls were held to the plastic roofs with what looked like duct tape—sheds that apparently housed whole families, because half-naked kids were running in and out of them in every appearance of actually living there.

He had not seen any sign of officials or their vehicles, a vast white prow looming on the water or brand-new supplies being offloaded into eager hands. Maybe the humanitarian assistance had gone to settlements up the coast. Or maybe the humanitarian assistance had been the duct tape.

But clearly his information was incomplete. He glanced over his shoulder at Roger, who was nodding, close-mouthed and sanguine, at something Hans was saying. He had a humble, sun-chapped face with a beaklike nose. Such a face was homely and workmanlike. It seemed trustworthy.

Appearances were often deceiving.

The engines thrummed beneath Hal’s feet. Their noise was deep and steady, their vibration relentless. He was silenced. He felt he had left his personality on dry land. He should ask Hans how to address the men; their uniforms flummoxed him. When he felt the urge to ask a question his instinct was to preface it with “Officer,” timidly and with a sycophantic tone, as on the rare occasion when he had been pulled over for speeding. He did not like policemen; neither did he enjoy the company of soldiers, but he felt more respect for them. Many came from poor backgrounds and were lured by the GI Bill.

Safer to say nothing.

When one of them walked past him he received an impression, in the quickness of the step and the forward-looking, dogged progress, that the walking itself was in the service of a greater business; the detail, the formality of personal transit was a small machination for the sake of general welfare.

And the bodies of the men were budding, strong, confident.

Yet Gretel. Gretel had picked
him
.

Maybe she was simply unaware that there were other options. Much could be ascribed to ignorance, in the world.

And anyway the fitness of these bodies was only partly a reflection on the men themselves. It was a fitness achieved by the state, in a sense, or at least the cost of the fitness was borne by the state. Also the state-sanctioned deployment of the fit and muscular bodies (which were in no way similar to Hal’s body, sadly for him) was further augmented by a wide variety of complex and powerful weapons, explosives, and multimillion-dollar, high-tech delivery systems for same. When the state chose to spend roughly the same on its military as on all other things combined, the owners of these now-fit and muscular bodies were the beneficiaries.

True, their occupation could also bring sudden death. But so could many occupations. Sewage work, for instance. No one wept for the sewage workers. Or the electric-light-and-power men. Life insurance companies hated them. Were they needed? They were. Were they acclaimed as heroes when they died? They were not. Same with miners, truck drivers, roofers, all the guys with high premature mortality rates, or PMRs, as the insurance industry called them. Even doctors had a high PMR, the cause being suicide.

In Hal’s line of work, which was also conducted in defense of the state, a fit, muscular body was not required. As a result employees of the Internal Revenue Service often suffered from a wide range of their own work-related ailments, including migraines, coronary artery disease, chronic obesity, and carpal tunnel syndrome. These were admittedly less glamorous than battleground injuries. Yet the discomfort was real. And like the sewage workers and the electricity guys, if Hal were to be killed in the line of duty he would not be mourned as a fallen hero. Despite the fact that he had toiled not for private industry but in the unflagging service of his country and all that it stood for, no Taps would play for him.

IRS service did not, however, happen to carry a high PMR.

But finally it was hard to sustain resentment toward the Coast Guarders. Armed forces personnel were not as bad as cops, when it came to the aggregate probability of antisocial personality disorder. They had a different makeup. They were not homicidal so much as Freudian; they liked to feel the presence of a constant father. And their fringe benefits included fit and muscular bodies.

Still, one or two might be behind on their taxes.

He smiled privately at the horizon, a hair-thin line between two shades of blue.

•

T
he armed forces took small powerboats from Monkey River Town, loaded with personnel so that they lay low in the water. Roger was not coming with them. There was a Coast Guard guy of lower rank, in blue, whose name Hal did not catch at first. Hans told him he could call the guy “Lieutenant.”

There were others in camouflage, some in berets, all wearing mirrored sunglasses through which it was impossible to establish eye contact. His fellow Americans were bedecked in chunky black equipment, belts and holsters and field packs and canteens and knives; they wore headsets and spoke to each other in clipped undertones, as though everything they said was both highly confidential and extremely important.

The sheer weight of their accessories, Hal thought, could capsize the boat if they all moved at once.

The local cadets had no veneer of soldiery and hardly any gear either. Their beige uniforms hung loosely on them and Hal thought they looked eighteen or younger, thin and lost.

“How come they need all those guns? We’re just looking for someone in the jungle,” he whispered to Hans.

They rounded a curve in the river, which was so brown it looked more like mud than water.

“They are active-duty military. Of course they have guns.”

“What are they going to do? Shoot the trees?”

“They’re treating it like an extraction. For training purposes.”

“Uh huh.”

“By the way,” said Hans, close to his ear, “no photographs are permitted. This is an unofficial mission.”

“I didn’t bring a camera,” Hal protested, though at the same time it occurred to him that he probably should have. Documentation; proof. For Casey and Susan. “Are you kidding?”

Then the men hunched around maps, Hans among them. They appeared to be tracing routes on the maps with markers and pushing buttons on their watches. The Americans took a paternal air with the local cadets, who nodded eagerly at every directive. Hal tuned them out and gazed into the foliage growing over the stream banks. It was bushy and disordered, thick, unruly—it could hide anything. A wave of dismay rolled over him. There was no way they would find Stern.