The Shell Collector (12 page)

Ness leads me across the beach and to the boathouse. At the end of the dock, a metal ramp leads down to a floating platform. The ramp is hinged on both sides so it can move with the tides. There are cleats here for smaller boats to dock up. We set the bags down, and Ness flips a smaller ramp into the water. It’s a beach entry for launching kayaks and the like. I imagine we’ll be walking down this ramp and into the bay.

“A few safety rules,” Ness says. He starts unpacking his bag, and I follow along and do the same with the gear in my bag. “You don’t dive deeper than sixty feet, and you don’t stay that deep for more than ten minutes.”

“How will I know?”

He shows me a fat wristwatch with a black rubber band. “You’ve got one of these in your bag. It shows your depth, how much air you have left, and how long you’ve been diving. I’ll teach you how to use it. Don’t worry, it’s simple.”

“Sixty feet. Ten minutes,” I repeat. I really don’t want to die. I don’t want this story to turn into an obituary. My heart is racing, and it occurs to me that I’m placing my life in the hands of a man I barely trust.

“The most important thing is not to be nervous,” he says, like he can read my mind. “If you’re nervous, you’ll breathe heavy, and you’ll go through your tank in no time. Stay calm and breathe deep, nice and slow, and you’ll be able to enjoy the dive longer.”

I nod. This feels a lot like a piece I wrote years ago, which got me into surfing. I was terrified at first, but I eventually found my footing. The root of a good interview is to throw yourself into someone else’s world with wild abandon. Seek new and scary things. It occurs to me that I could’ve been a better spouse if I’d approached my marriage the way I tackle my work.

Inside the dive bag, I find a black steel tank. The one in Ness’s bag is bright pink. I like that he doesn’t ask to switch, just begins showing me how to hook up what he calls the first stage of the regulator to the tank. He then teaches me how to check the small rubber ring on the tank, make sure there’s no sand or debris there, how to crack the main valve and listen to the hiss of air, and how to blow out any water that might be in the valve. We then begin to hook up the tangle of hoses to the tanks.

“Mine feels loose,” I say. Everything is a worry. A possible danger.

“That’s good. You want it a little loose. It’ll tighten when you open the tank. The air will blow that rubber gasket out.”

That doesn’t sound like a good thing, but I crack the valve, and sure enough, the regulator stiffens where it’s attached to the top of the tank. Ness shows me how to test the air flow from what he calls the “second stage” or “regulator.” I press the button, and the mouthpiece hisses. Ness puts his in his mouth and takes a deep breath. I do the same, not knowing what to expect the air to taste like. It doesn’t. Maybe a little metallic from the tank, or a little plasticky from the hose, but that could be my imagination.

“Okay, second safety rule. When you ascend, you’re always exhaling, okay?”

“Ascending is going up,” I say, knowing this is right but seeking confirmation just in case. My temples are throbbing and it’s hard to think. I really don’t want to die because I assumed something or because I didn’t want to look stupid in front of someone I barely know.

“Correct. When you go down, the pressure of the water around you will compress the air in your lungs and make it take up less volume. But you’ll be filling your lungs with new air. So when you come up, that air is going to expand. As long as you’re breathing out the entire time, that expanding air can’t hurt you.”

I start to say something, but Ness continues. “Don’t worry, we won’t be going deep enough or stay down long enough to get the bends.”

That answers my next question.

“There are a few things that can freak you out when you’re diving, and that’s the regulator coming out of your mouth, your mask filling with water, and losing your sense of which way is up. We’re going to put our tanks on, walk down this ramp, and I’m going to show you how to deal with all three. Twenty minutes of instruction, and you’re going to be a pro.”

Ness smiles, and I believe he’s being sincere, that he knows what he’s doing, that I’m going to live through this day, which started out a bit too perfectly and would be nicely balanced by a gruesome death. In fact, this would be one quick way to put an end to my questions about the shells. I flash to an image of a police boat there at the dock, blue lights flashing, my inert body being hauled up from the break wall, Ness saying he doesn’t know what went wrong. I think back to how calmly he crushed shells that should’ve been worth a fortune. Getting rid of me would be like getting rid of more damning evidence.

“Don’t be scared,” Ness says. I refocus to find that he’s watching me, a look of genuine concern on his face. What I assume is genuine concern.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Just spaced out. What’s next?”

Ness shows me how to attach the tank to something called a BC, then shows me my weight belt, which explains, besides the tank, why the duffel bag was so heavy. I take off my sundress, thinking as I do that at least my sister and Agent Cooper know where I am. Henry, too. No matter what happens, Ness won’t get away with it. And anyway, I’m being paranoid. Unreasonable. Whatever Ness is, he isn’t a killer.

I drill this into my head as I squeeze into my wetsuit, which is an act as awkward and oddly intimate as getting re-dressed past airport security. But Ness is donning his own suit, and he doesn’t glance my way once. He’s either uninterested or a gentleman. And there’s a vast gulf between the two.

“I would’ve thought you’d hire a dive master to be here, doing all this for you,” I tell him.

“I
am
a dive master,” Ness says.

“No, of course, I assumed you would be, what with your shelling experience. I just mean—”

“You mean hiring someone else to do half-ass what I can do for myself.” He smiles at me.

“I guess. Yeah.” What I really meant was:
If you’re trying to murder me, it’s smart not to have witnesses, and I’m on to you, buddy.

“If it makes you feel better, I have Monique packing us a picnic lunch. And Vincent, who takes care of my cars, is going to get the boat ready for us. I don’t do everything around here.”

“Monique?” I ask.

“My housekeeper. You’ve got your valve on? Air flowing?”

I press the button on my regulator, and there’s a loud blast of air. Ness lifts the BC—which is like an uninflated vest that the tank straps to—and helps me get my arms through. There’s a hose that runs from the top of the tank to the vest. Ness shows me what to press to inflate the vest and how to let the air out. With this and the right amount of weight around my waist, he says I can stay level at any depth. And if I need to get to the surface, I can just inflate the vest and enjoy the ride. “Just breathe out the entire time,” he reminds me.

I wonder if I should tell him that when I panic, I tend to either not breathe or hyperventilate. Instead, I tell myself, over and over, to always breathe. To exhale.
And to stay fucking calm, Maya, you’re not going to die.

“It’s not deep at the bottom of the ramp, so remember that you can always stand up if you’re uncomfortable for any reason. And I’ll be right there beside you.”

“Okay,” I mumble around my mouthpiece. I get my mask situated. Ness has me leave my fins off for now. Walking carefully—all that weight on my back threatening to topple me over—I follow Ness down the ramp. I don’t understand how people enjoy a sport that involves so much heavy and bulky gear. I feel exhausted already, and I haven’t even started doing the actual diving.

I’m so nervous shuffling down the ramp—the water creeping up my ankles and then my knees—that I don’t notice Ness is holding my hand or that I’m holding his. Or that he’s steadying me, another hand on my shoulder. All I feel is the coolness of the morning sea rising up, the initial shock before my wetsuit fills with water. It takes a moment until the water is trapped and warmed by my body, and then it’s no longer so bracingly cold. I also notice how the weight of all the gear disappears now that I’m in the water. It’s only awkward on dry land, like a fish staggering along on its poor fins.

“When you’re ready, just lower your head beneath the surface and take easy breaths,” Ness says. “It’s just like snorkeling.”

This is not like snorkeling
, I want to say. But I can’t scream over my pounding pulse, can’t talk with the regulator in my mouth. Snorkeling is breathing through a plastic tube sticking up in the air. No physics involved. No warnings needed. A child can sort out how that works. This is me strapped to a contraption, a deflated vest on, tubes hanging everywhere, a bulky watch on my wrist blinking with all kinds of numbers. This is not snorkeling.

I descend until my feet leave the ramp and find the sand. The water is up to my chest. Ness is watching me. My visor has already fogged from the nervous heat of my cheeks. I take the mask off, dunk it into the water, consider spitting inside it to keep it from fogging, would normally do this, but not in front of Ness. I put the mask back on. It’s now or never.

“I’m right here,” Ness says softly. “You’ll be fine.”

I nod, gather my courage, and remind myself that people do this all the time. I’m already breathing through the contraption, aren’t I? I realize that I’m breathing a lot. Huffing and puffing. I hear the hiss of my exhalations. I remember what Ness said about being calm, about breathing easy, and I try. I really try.

“Here goes,” I mumble incomprehensibly.

I bend my knees, lower my body, and the water comes up to my neck, and then my chin, and then over my mouth, up my visor, the weights around my waist helping me sink under, until I’m seeing the sand and the rocks and the ramp through my mask. A silver fish flits past, chasing after some unseen breakfast. And I hear a hiss as I breathe in, see bubbles as I exhale, and I’m doing it. I’m breathing underwater. Tears blur my vision. I blink them away. There are clams or some kind of bivalve growing over the rocks that make up the breakwater. Small fish peck at the algae along the rocks, signs of life clinging where it can. An entire world of feeble life surviving here.

And I’m among them. Floating. Face-down. Under the water. Ness’s hands are on my stomach and on my shoulder, steadying me, and I’m breathing. I scoop the water ahead of me, swim forward, allowing myself to drift a little deeper, and even though I’m slowly sinking, it feels like I’m flying.

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.