The Heron Hunted The water's edge. Across the inlet the
sun's red disk settled to the rippled line of the dunes. Minnows
flickered in the darkening water, tasty silver life, quickly receding.
The heron gave all his attention to his hunting, crouching on stick
legs, head low, snaky neck drawn back for the strike.
The sailboat ghosted in on the dying evening breeze,
sails rattling softly. The heron glanced up for a moment -- sometimes
humans threw him stale bait, sometimes they tried to hit him with beer
bottles -- but the human steering the boat seemed a motionless lump,
neither promising nor dangerous.
There in the water, a twisting gleam moved slowly enough
that the heron knew he could catch it, and he moved forward with a
quick jerking stride, his neck tensing.
But as his beak stabbed, a consuming sensation broke
over him, a memory of frightening power. He found himself back in the
rookery, the night filled with the squawk and rustle of the others, the
scent of the pines, the faint purple glow of the Coast Guard station's
lights filtering through the trees.
He felt some strong emotion -- a human might have called
it happiness --remembering a thousand such nights along the bay. He
felt it with an intensity far beyond the natural capacity of his
primitive brain.
Memories flowed through him: mornings waiting with the
other herons on the concrete footings of the bridge, watching for
delicacies riding in on the tide. Walking a weathered dock, sun warm on
his feathers. Flying against sunset skies, high in the pure air. And
countless other remembrances, all clothed in some precious subtle
perfection.
He remembered the nest, a heap of sticks in the girders
of a range marker. He felt with an undiminished intensity the warmth of
his mother's down, the satisfaction of tearing at his first fish, the
fearful delight of leaving that safe haven.
At the very last he felt a suffocating pleasure, as he
broke from the darkness of the egg into the world of light and
experience.
The heron finished his strike, beak slicing into the
water. The long neck relaxed, the body fell forward, empty of life.
The boat's rippling wake rolled the heron's corpse
gently against the sand, and from the cabin came a sound like a sob, or
a laugh.
For the longest time, Teresa continued to believe she
was on the brink of glorious change. Soon. Next year, at the latest. Or
if not then, the year after.
By her thirty-sixth year, she'd grown less hopeful. That
summer she came to the Gulf and took a job waiting tables at The
Bugeyed Sailor in Destin.
Just as the sun went down an old white-hulled ketch
sailed into the harbor. Teresa watched from the outside deck of the
Bugeyed Sailor, where she was serving a pair of drunk Louisiana
businessmen.
The ketch might have been graceful once, but now it was
an old shoe, sculled and worn. It fetched up on the far side of the
harbor, so Teresa couldn't tell much about the person who went forward
to drop the anchor, moving like an invalid, with slow exaggerated care.
Over the clatter of crockery, she heard the chain rattle out. The
person stood motionless on the foredeck.
The light was fading and the boat seemed suddenly
unreal, its outlines a little misty.
"Hey, honey," said one of the Boys from Baton Rouge,
breaking into her imaginings. "How 'bout a few more of these 'uns!" He
waved at the empty beer bottles clustered on the table.
"Right away, sir," she chirped, and that was the last
notice she took of the boat, that night.
The Bugeyed Sailor clung to a piece of prime harbor
waterfront in Destin, the Luckiest Fishing Village in the World.
The Bugeyed Sailor, while it might not actually have
been the worst restaurant between Pensacola and Carrabelle, was surely
the most notorious. The food was dreadful, but the ambience was worse.
The owner was an obese middle-aged troll who worked hard
at augmenting his restaurant's notoriety. Every night the Sailorman
dressed up in his stained Popeye costume -- a costume the size of a
tent but still a little tight. He would admire the obscene tattoos on
his huge forearms, he would adjust the tiny hat that clung to his bald
head, and then he would work the room. He would move among the tables,
trailing a cloud of body odor, leering at the pretty women and the
handsome children, slapping the men on the back, asking if all was well
and moving on before he had to hear the answer. At unpredictable
intervals he would burst into song. He knew only one tune, but many
verses. "Oh, I'm Bugeye the Sailorman. I live in a garbage can . . . "
he would sing, in a fairly good tenor. Or, "I love to go swimming'.
With bow legged wimmin. I'm Bugeye the Sailorman." Occasionally some
unamused child would ask him why he didn't use the right name. "Popeye
stole my song" he would say with a ferocious, green-toothed grin,
making his eyes bug out in an illustrative manner.
He played the lunatic genial host until closing. Then he
would revert to his true form, the cunning brutal peasant. The help
called him Bugger the Sailorman . . . the phrase also served as a
satisfying epithet, to be muttered at every opportunity. The
Sailorman's employees left the instant they could land a job elsewhere,
which was why he had hired Teresa so readily, despite her obvious
inexperience. And also she was still a somewhat attractive woman, not
too old, and completely unattached -- just the sort of person the
Sailorman liked to keep under his dirty thumb. She'd have quit, but
summer -- and the tourist season -- was ending, so the other area
businesses were scaling back. Jobs were hard to find.
That night the Sailorman had devoted himself to
harassing Nancy, a waitress who was younger and prettier than Teresa.
Teresa's relief was tempered with a pang of guilt . . . poor Nancy.
Then she looked at the Sailorman and thought: better her than me.
After closing, when the chairs were stacked on the
tables and she'd given the busboy his share of her tips, she went home
to her little room at the Golden Dunes Motel and Cottages. She watched
an old movie and drank a cream soda, listening to the creaky whir of
the window air-conditioner.
After the movie was over, she performed her bedtime
ritual. With other women, she knew, this involved the application of
various beautifying substances -- but Teresa had largely abandoned hope
in that area, as in so many others. Instead she got out her inheritance
from her mother, a bottle of Nembutal. She contemplated it, while
assessing her resolve. She sighed and thought about her mother.
If only that long-suffering person were still alive,
Teresa would still be living at home, still taking the occasional
course at the local college. Teresa's faith in glorious change might
still be intact. But in fact her mother had died and left her nothing
much but the Nembutal, which was so far past its expiration date it
probably couldn't do the job anymore.
Just before she fell asleep, she thought of the old
ketch, and felt a vague envy for its crew, thinking of all the lovely
romantic places the boat must have visited.
Late the next morning she went to her part-time job at
the Shipshape Chandlery. Her other boss, Bob Johnson, greeted her
cheerfully. Bob was as attractive as the Sailorman was repellent, a
tall athletic man with white-blonde hair and the mahogany complexion of
Nordics who spend too much time in the sun. Bob would probably be
crusty with skin cancer some day, but presently he seemed
overwhelmingly healthy. And happily married. Ah well, she'd thought,
when he'd told her about his wonderful wife.
"So, how's the novel going?" he asked, as he did
faithfully every time he saw her.
"Coming along," she lied, just as faithfully.
"Good, good." He went to the back and began unpacking a
shipment of stainless fittings.
For all his regular polite inquiries, Bob no longer
attempted to engage her in serious conversation regarding her alleged
novel. She supposed that by now he understood her well enough.
In fact she owned a portable electric typewriter, a box
of typing paper, several hundred pages of notes, and an opening
chapter. At increasingly lengthy intervals she got out the opening
chapter and retyped it, but she'd long ago realized she was never going
to grow up and be Joyce Carol Oates. In the first place, nothing had
ever happened to her, so what could she write about? Also, she lacked
self-discipline. Luck. Talent. And all the other necessary stuff.
No, she was just one of the multitudes who use an
imaginary writing career as an excuse for not having a life. She'd once
said, in a burst of rare passion, to someone who didn't care: "When
you're sliding downhill toward middle age and you work at shit jobs and
you live in motels and you have no lover or child or friend, people
want to know why. It's nice to have a halfway plausible excuse. And
when you have no lover or child or friend, no one's going to care
enough about you to try to correct your delusions. It works out fine."
Early in the afternoon she took her break in Bob's
upstairs office, which had a fine view out over the harbor. As she
sipped her coffee, she again noticed the old ketch, which had either
moved or dragged anchor during the night, so that it was now much
closer to the mainland side of the harbor.
Teresa could clearly see the woman who emerged from the
main hatchway. She had short hair as white as Bob's, and at first
Teresa thought it was white-blonde like his. She seemed young, despite
the lethargic way she moved. She was thin and brown, she wore stylishly
ragged cutoffs and a bathing suit top.
She boarded an old wooden dinghy and began to row
ashore. She paused frequently, leaning on her oars as if catching her
breath; this added to Teresa's impression that the woman was ill.
Finally her dinghy grounded on the strip of dirty sand below the
chandlery.
When the woman looked up, Teresa felt a little shock,
though not of recognition, the woman was a stranger. Perhaps it was her
unusual looks, which were not entirely lost. Actually, Teresa thought,
with reluctant admiration, she was still striking, with sweeping brows
and large dark eyes. Her mouth was still wide and rich, her cheekbones
dramatic, her skin unwrinkled.
She gazed at Teresa with what seemed a wistful
expression. Teresa was abruptly uncomfortable, but she waved, and
instantly the woman looked away.
She was at the counter by the time Teresa returned from
her break.
"Can you help me?" The white-haired woman had a low soft
voice and opaque eyes.
"Sure," Teresa said. "What do you need?"
The woman fumbled a wadded slip of paper from her
pocket. She read from it, squinting slightly. She wanted a hundred feet
of half-inch dacron braid, a tube of bedding compound, bulbs for the
running lights, shaft zincs . . . and a dozen other items.
"Long list. Been out for a while?" Teresa asked, as she
measured out the rope.
"Yes . . . it seems that way." The woman's eyes went a
little cloudier.
"Where'd you come from?"
Her eyes never seemed to meet Teresa's directly, after
that first time. Now her gaze slid away, she seemed to be studying the
stuffed marlin over the Chandlery's front door. "Isla Mujeres. That was
our last port."
"Oh? Was it nice?" Teresa finished bundling the rope and
rummaged through the zinc trays. She didn't know why she kept
attempting to make conversation. The woman clearly would have preferred
an entirely businesslike exchange.
"It's nicer than Cancun," the woman answered, uneasily,
as if she feared that Teresa would next interrogate her on the
specifics of the matter.
But Teresa wasn't bold enough to keep trying. She
gathered up the rest of the items and put them in two cardboard boxes.
The woman paid, then stood looking at the boxes in perplexity. "I guess
I'll make two trips," she said.
"I'll help you," Teresa said, and took the heavier box.
Her customer seemed surprised, but smiled dimly.
"Thank you. You're very kind," she said, as though
Teresa were doing her a great favor.
Teresa helped the woman load her boxes into the dinghy,
and her uncertain movements reinforced the impression that she was ill.
She touched Teresa's bare arm lightly, thanked her again.
Teresa felt an inexplicable urge to prolong the
acquaintance, such as it was. "Are you staying long? In Destin, I
mean?"
The white head shook. "Just a few days. Until the boat's
fixed, I guess."
"Is it just you and . . . your husband?"
"Thomas isn't my husband," the woman answered, in a
voice that for the first time was almost alive. She made a strange
fierce face; she looked frightened and proud at the same time.
"Oh," Teresa said uncertainly. "Well, if you decide to
come ashore for dinner, I can give you some good advice."
"Thomas almost never leaves the boat."
"Is that right?" What an odd thing, Teresa thought. She
wanted to ask why, but couldn't. "If you change your mind -- and if you
value your stomach -- don't eat at the Bugeyed Sailor." She laughed.
"That's where I work nights, so I know." She felt oddly giddy; she was
never so easy with strangers. Only the most charming could get her to
talk, and then she mistrusted them for their charm.
"Thank you for the advice," the woman said, and pushed
the boat off the beach.
"I'm Teresa Martin," she said. She started to hold out
her hand, then didn't, because the dinghy was already sliding away from
the shore.
The woman's dark eyes grew darker. "Oh." Then just
before she settled down and began to row, Teresa could have sworn she
said, "I was Linda. . . . "
Even if Teresa had misunderstood and she wasn't actually
referring to herself in the past tense, Teresa had the very strong
impression that Linda couldn't remember her own last name.
That night, business was even slower than usual at the
Bugeyed Sailor. The Sailorman was savagely bad-tempered; he fired
Nancy, who had dropped a plate of rancid scallops en brochette. Nancy
fled the premises, weeping and cursing, and Teresa envied her the
vitality of her feelings.
She found herself out on the terrace at closing time.
The ketch rode on a black mirror, unruffled by even a breath of wind.
Light shone dim and golden from a line of portholes along the cabin and
made a soft misty fan above a skylight. Teresa wondered what they were
talking about, Linda and Thomas, those two intrepid voyagers.
The Sailorman came up behind her on light little fat
man's feet. Before she could turn and shrink into a defensive slump,
the Sailorman had pulled her against his chest and was kneading her
breasts, pinching her nipples painfully: He wore his usual colognes:
fish grease, old sweat, cheap rum. She twisted and railed her elbows
and he let her go. "Hey," he said, with a phosphorescent grin. "Where
else you gonna get some?"
"Please," she said, hating the pleading in her voice.
He shrugged and made a face, tolerant pity and infantile
reproach. "Hey, just trying to help. I don't go where I'm not wanted."
Not until the next time, she thought.
As he went back inside, he said over his shoulder. "But
you know, honey, if you don't get laid pretty soon, your pussy gonna
scab over. That's what happens to old broads who don't keep it juicy."
In her room after a shower, lying naked in the dark, she
still felt bruised and dirty where the Sailorman had touched her. The
can of soda rested on her stomach, making a disk of distracting cold
there.
"'Scab over,'" she said, feeling a shaky laugh trying to
force itself up from her chest.
She'd had chances to avoid that fate since her arrival
on the Gulf. There was the UPS driver who delivered parts to the
Shipshape Chandlery, a slightly plump man in his early forties. He was
very polite, he seemed reasonably worldly despite his grits-and-gravy
accent. He'd asked her if she'd like to go to dinner at a nicer place
than the Bugeyed Sailor. But how could she take seriously a man who
wore Elvis sideburns?
Then there was the young deckhand from one of the
charter boats. He'd developed an inexplicable crush on her, even going
so far as to risk the food at the Bugeyed Sailor, just so he could
flirt with her. He might not have been terribly bright, but he was
pretty -- tall and sinewy, with clean features and china-blue eyes. But
one night he'd suggested they go skinny-dipping in the harbor, and she
had been so appalled at the thought of swimming in that soup of sewage
and dead fish and spilled diesel that she had said something insulting,
which had driven him away.
Just as well, she thought. There were terrible diseases
now. And the whole business would certainly have been as messy and
forgettable as it had always been in the past.
She wondered about Linda and Thomas aboard their old
boat. Were they in bed, too? At least they weren't alone. She tried to
imagine Thomas. A younger Sterling Hayden, perhaps, a craggy-faced
seafarer who couldn't be happy unless he was sailing the blue water?
No, her imagination wouldn't have it that way at all. A man who would
make his sick girlfriend go ashore alone to do the shopping . . . he
must be some sort of jerk. Did Thomas ever leave his cabin? Teresa was
somehow sure it had been Linda who had anchored the boat, that first
evening.
Now she was picturing some sort of pale subterranean
creature, and she had to laugh. A sea-going vampire. But Linda hadn't
seemed anemic, exactly. Mentally anemic? No. Something else. She
couldn't put a word to it.
Teresa suddenly felt very tired. She set her soda can
aside and pulled up the sheet.
As she drifted into sleep, half-dreams floated up,
briefly vivid. Linda, naked, beautiful opaque eyes rolling, mouth open,
thin legs wrapped around an amorphous male figure, which plunged into
her as tirelessly and forcefully as a slow-motion piston. Linda clawed
at her lover, bared her teeth in a grimace of ecstasy or pain.
The image faded, and she dreamed of the old boat riding
serenely at anchor, white hull glowing in the shoreside lights. The
boat moved to the rhythm of the man-piston, the rolling hull began to
generate small ripples. The dim anchor light at the top of the mainmast
arced back and forth across the starless sky and the waves spread out
over the glassy black water of the harbor.
"Love waves," Teresa murmured, and even at the threshold
of sleep, she was envious.
Linda came into the Chandlery again the next afternoon,
and Teresa felt a strange embarrassment, remembering her imaginings in
the night.
"I need some flax packing," Linda said in her small
voice. "Quarter inch."
Teresa went to get it. When she came back to the
counter, Linda was leaning against the counter, looking as though her
eyes were about to roll back in her head. Her tan had gone gray, her
hands clutched the countertop, white-knuckled.
Teresa darted around the counter and held her up. She
was astonishingly light.
Teresa helped her to a bench in the back, settled her
there. "Put your head down," she said, and ran to fetch a paper cup of
water from the cooler.
When she returned, Linda had dropped her head between
her knees, and her trembling hands were interlaced over the nape of her
slender bony neck. After a while she took a shuddering breath and sat
up. She sipped the water, smiling wanly. "I'm sorry," she said.
"Have you been to a doctor?"
Linda looked vaguely alarmed. "It's nothing, I'm sure.
Maybe the heat, the humidity. I'm not used to it, I guess."
Sure, thought Teresa. Linda had just sailed from Isla
Mujeres, almost 600 miles south of Destin, right off the Yucatan coast
. . . definitely a cooler, dryer clime.
"Maybe you're hungry," Teresa suggested.
Bob was gracious. "Go ahead," he said, giving Linda a
brilliant smile, more charming than any smile he'd ever given Teresa.
"Take your time, have a good lunch." Teresa felt another illusion
crumble. Happily married Bob.
They walked across the highway to a ferny sandwich shop,
where Linda showed a respectable appetite.
"Are you a sailor?" Linda asked after a while, dutifully
sociable -- or so it seemed to Teresa.
"No. Actually, I've never done anything."
"Really?" Linda seemed wistful. "I always said the same
thing."
Teresa found this difficult to accept. "I guess that was
before you sailed away." Teresa felt a hot pang of resentment. By what
right did an attractive adventurer like Linda claim an empty existence?
That was Teresa's personal territory.
"Yes, I suppose so."
"But since then you've led a life of wild excitement?"
"In a way." Linda was almost whispering.
For a long time after they were finished with their
lunch, they sat there in uncomfortable silence. Teresa eventually
concluded that Linda was unwilling to return to the glare and heat of
the afternoon. "Well, I suppose I ought to be getting back to work,"
she said, tentatively.
Linda gave a tiny start, as though she had been sleeping
with her eyes open. "I'm sorry. I was just thinking about what you
said."
This was an unexpected flattery. Teresa raised her
eyebrows.
"Actually," Linda went on, "the sailing isn't all that
exciting, to be honest. Seen one wave, seen 'em all." A wounded smile.
"And I get seasick."
"Why do you do it?" Teresa was very curious. She might
have described her job at the Bugeyed Sailor in much the way Linda had
described her life of high adventure. Seen one businessman from
Louisiana, seen'em all. And the grease fumes made her sick.
Linda hesitated. "It's Thomas," she finally said.
"Oh," said Teresa, in deep disappointment. She took the
check and slid to the edge of the booth, determined to get away before
she had to hear a catalog of the mysterious Thomas's virtues. She
didn't think she could stand it; she might scream, she might gag, she
might run away and lose all dignity.
But Linda was oblivious. "Thomas made me appreciate my
life. He made me understand that it hadn't been empty at all. That it
had been as full as anyone's, as joyful as anyone's."
Teresa heard an ambiguous and eerie undertone in Linda's
voice; she was startled from her annoyance. She couldn't think of a
thing to say.
Nancy had been replaced by an ancient chain-smoking
harridan and Teresa came to the uneasy realization that she was now the
most nubile member of the Sailorman's crew. He watched her with a
more-than-usually speculative eye, and contrived to rub his grubby bulk
against her several times in the narrow aisle by the steam table; each
time he adopted an expression of lascivious expectation that would have
been ludicrous had it not been so frightening.
But at closing time he became embroiled in a near-brawl
with a customer who'd found a sauteed roach in his chicken fingers.
"You think I don't know what you're up to?" the Sailorman shouted. "You
think you don't pay? You pay!"
The discussion became so acrimonious that the Sailorman
never got around to molesting Teresa, and she slipped gratefully away.
Tomorrow would be her night off; she wouldn't have to
deal with the Sailorman for two whole days. Maybe he'd hire another
pretty young woman in the interim and be diverted. Otherwise she'd have
to quit, tough job market or not.
* * *
At the Chandlery, Bob set her to inventorying the stock
in a rarely used storeroom and she spent the morning in dusty solitude.
Occasionally she wondered about the white-haired woman and her
mysterious lover Thomas. She felt an unaccustomed optimism; she told
herself that her curiosity was a good sign. Perhaps it meant that her
vocation was stirring after its long hibernation, perhaps she might
revive her "career." She thought about attempting a short story,
perhaps a small polemic on the dependent women who sailed around the
world with their men . . . unhappy and always complaining, but never
brave enough to leave their uncomfortable adventure.
She set her inventory sheet aside and considered the
idea. Aside from the unusual setting, what would distinguish the story
from the graduate student fiction that flooded the little magazines at
the end of every semester? Women as willing victims, as whining
appendages to men.
She felt her enthusiasm wane; she sighed and went back
to counting turnbuckles.
A little later Linda came in on quiet feet and touched
Teresa's shoulder, startling her so that she dropped her clipboard with
a clatter.
"I'm sorry," Linda said, in her vague way.
"It's all right," Teresa said.
"Bob said I'd find you back here." Linda seemed quite
uneasy, but her cheeks were a little flushed, her eyes were brighter,
almost animated.
"Yes?"
"I told Thomas about you . . . about meeting you, I
mean. He . . . we thought you might like to have dinner with us
sometime. On the boat." She looked at Teresa anxiously.
Teresa found the invitation astonishing. Some of this
might have shown in her face, because Linda evidently felt a need to
explain further. "Thomas is a very good cook, actually." She looked
away. "Thomas said you sounded very interesting."
This seemed entirely false to Teresa, who could not
recall having said anything interesting to Linda. It occurred to her
that perhaps she was receiving some sort of sexual invitation; Thomas
sends the little woman ashore to fetch supplies, Thomas sends the
little woman ashore to fetch a playmate.
"Well. . . ." Teresa said, trying to find a polite way
to refuse.
But Linda, apparently sensing her reluctance, looked
stricken. "Please," she said. "It would be so nice to have a visitor.
We almost never do."
Teresa softened; how many times had she been just as
desperately lonely as Linda seemed to be now? "It sounds like fun. I've
never dined on a yacht before. It'd be an experience."
Linda smiled a bit more vividly than Teresa would have
thought she could. "That's great! Would you like to come tonight, for a
late supper? I could pick you up in the dinghy after work." She seemed
so eager that Teresa became uneasy.
"Actually," Teresa said. "I'm off tonight. Could we eat
early? Before dark? I had plans for later." She didn't, of course, but
the lie might rescue her if the mysterious Thomas was planning on
dinner and deviance. Besides, she wanted to meet him in the sunlight,
just to be sure he wasn't a vampire.
Linda seemed pleased, which didn't necessarily reassure
Teresa -perhaps the white-haired woman wasn't as sexually adventurous
as her lover.
After Linda left, Teresa felt a little silly. All this
sexual paranoia . . . what did it mean? Maybe the Sailorman had some
grasp of her situation after all, despite his grotesque turn of phrase.
What an awful idea, she thought, with a little shudder.
Bob let her off early so she could go back to the motel
and get ready. She showered, then put on a long loose white skirt and
an aqua blouse -appropriate dress, she hoped, for dinner and a dinghy
ride.
Linda met her on the beach behind the Chandlery. "You
look nice," Linda said, with such an air of satisfaction that Teresa
became uncomfortable, her suspicions stimulated again.
She got her sandals wet helping Linda launch the dinghy,
but the ride out to the boat was uneventful and silent. Linda seemed to
need all her strength to keep them moving, though the breeze was light.
They approached the old ketch and for the first time
Teresa could see the boat's name, painted in faded gilt across the
wineglass stern. Rosemary, she was called. Thomas could have had the
grace to rename the boat after his current girlfriend, Teresa thought
disapprovingly. "Rosemary," she said. "Who was that?"
The dinghy bumped the topsides lightly and Linda held
the rail. "Not 'who.' 'What.' The herb . . . you know?" She cleated the
dinghy's line expertly. "I forget the exact quote; Thomas can tell you.
It's something from Shakespeare, something about rosemary being for
remembrance."
"Oh," said Teresa, somewhat chastened but not completely
convinced. While Linda held the dinghy steady, she climbed aboard into
an empty cockpit of varnished mahogany.
Still no Thomas. But on a little table by the wheel
there was a silver tray; it held three frosted goblets and a plate of
crackers.
"This is nice," Teresa said and to her surprise it was.
Though the boat's mildewed old hull had shown a little peeling paint,
whiskers of green moss at the waterline, and the occasional rust stain,
the cockpit was beautifully maintained, the varnish mirror-bright, the
cockpit cushions a soft blue, the old bronze wheel polished to a warm
glow.
"Let's sit," said Linda. "Thomas will be up in a
moment."
Teresa settled on the starboard seat and Linda handed
her a goblet. The wine was pale and almost sweet. Nothing like it had
ever been served at the Bugeyed Sailor. Teresa took a sip, then
another, resisting the urge to gulp. Curiosity filled her.
Linda sat beside her. The white-haired woman seemed for
the first time completely at ease, sipping her own wine and gazing off
across the harbor. She wore her usual ragged cutoffs and a sleeveless
silk blouse, blue-white against her dark tan. She made Teresa feel
overdressed and dowdy, but not resentful. Linda seemed so defenseless.
Teresa had seen a face like Linda's before. The memory surfaced: Teresa
had met a blind man, years before, who had briefly courted her. Only in
his own home did the uncertainty and tension leave him. Only in a place
where every object conformed to his memory could he feel reasonably
safe.
This train of thought crashed when Thomas emerged from
the louvered doors of the main hatchway. Teresa's first reaction was
open-mouthed amazement.
She had never seen a more beautiful man, though his
beauty was quite unconventional. He climbed through the hatch with an
almost unnatural grace and vaulted into the cockpit, landing so lightly
that his bare feet made no sound. He nodded to Teresa and took the last
goblet.
"Hello," he said, in a voice so soft that she was sure
it reached only to her ears and no further. He had some sort of accent,
unidentifiable.
"Hello," she replied, in a voice almost as soft; she was
breathless, her lungs seemed to have forgotten their function.
Thomas had dark wavy hair shot with white streaks, a
shaggy mane perfect in its artlessness. Thomas's eyes were a vivid
blue-violet, the lashes so long and thick that he seemed to be wearing
mascara, and the soft full mouth contributed further to the androgynous
quality of his features. But this impression was countered by his skin,
mahogany dark, which seemed at first glance quite old, or at least
weathered, a membrane of age over the face and body of a much younger
man. The skin stretched taut and burnished over the strong bones, but
with a thousand fine wrinkles in the hollows.
She tried to guess his age; it was impossible. His hands
were well-shaped and youthful. He wore faded jeans and an old cotton
dress shirt without buttons, the sleeves hacked off at the elbows. His
bare chest was striated with wiry muscle, his forearms corded like an
oyster tonger's.
He seemed to feel no need for conversation; he gazed out
across the harbor, smiling a faint smile. Teresa felt a hot piercing
envy for Linda, and a sudden embarrassing hope that her sexual paranoia
was well-founded, after all. She tried to maintain her equilibrium, she
reminded herself that this was the man she had, with complete
certainty, dismissed as a jerk. That idea now seemed ridiculous; she
was actually ashamed to have thought it, despite the lack of any real
evidence to the contrary. The world, after all, was full of beautiful
jerks.
The silence grew less comfortable for Teresa, though her
hosts showed no uneasiness. She cast about for something to say --
something not too depressingly banal. "So. . . ." she said. "Is this
your first visit to Destin?"
Thomas fixed her with a neutral gaze. "Yes. The harbor
is good, but the holding ground is poor." He delivered this remark
without any discernible emotional coloration, and Teresa thought: this
is a very odd person.
"I've heard that," she said. "Bob -- the guy I work for
at the Chandlery -- Bob says the bottom is like thin soup. Whenever
Destin gets brushed by a hurricane, he says it's like Keystone Cops out
here. Boats dragging back and forth, lots of yelling."
Thomas's faint smile seemed like an artifact permanently
affixed to his mouth; Teresa registered the odd fact that the smile
seemed to cause no related lines in Thomas's face. "There are no safe
harbors in a hurricane," Thomas said, without heat, in fact without any
inflection that she could detect.
"Really?"
But evidently Thomas felt no compulsion to explain his
assertion. The silence resumed, until Linda said, slowly and dreamily.
"That's because of the other boats, Thomas says. No matter how well
your boat is anchored, someone else won't have been so careful, and his
boat will carry yours away."
It seemed to Teresa that Linda was speaking of Thomas as
if he were somewhere else, far away. "That makes sense, I guess," she
said. "I guess you need to be the only boat in the harbor, if you want
to be safe."
Perhaps it was her imagination, but his smile seemed
slightly wider. "An apt observation," he said.
Linda's smile bore an eerie resemblance to Thomas's,
though only for a moment, and Teresa shivered.
Thomas stood. "The air chills. We will go down to
dinner." He held out his hand to Teresa; she took it. His touch was
cool, perhaps from the wine goblet, his palm calloused hard as bone.
He helped her down the companionway ladder into the
boat's main cabin, and again Teresa was pleasantly surprised. The cabin
seemed much larger on the inside than she would have imagined.
Varnished woodwork set off white bulkheads and full bookshelves. To
either side was a settee upholstered in russet. Under a gleaming brass
trawler lamp, a table had been unfolded from the forward bulkhead. A
linen cloth was set with white china and polished silver. She smelled
lamp oil and lemons and something Savory.
"Sit," instructed Thomas, and directed her to the side
of the table set with one plate.
He served the meal. The next day, Teresa would remember
few of the details, since her attention was less on the meal than on
the cook, but there was a salad of baby lettuces and satsuma sections,
a clear soup with shreds of carrot and scallop arranged in artful
swirls, pasta with a sauce of rock shrimp and mushrooms, a crusty bread
that must have been freshly baked.
There was no conversation; Linda ate with an
intimidating concentration and Thomas responded to Teresa's compliments
with that constant smile and nothing more. Thomas ate little, seeming
only to taste each course, and Teresa began to wonder if he might be
ill, too.
No one asked Teresa about herself, so that she had no
need to trot out her literary pretensions.
Occasionally the boat rocked slightly in the wake of
some passing vessel, a pleasant motion. It was a little warm in the
cabin, and a light gilding of perspiration made Linda's face shine in
the lamplight, though Thomas seemed unaffected.
Dinner finished with a pale sorbet, a sweet fruity
flavor Teresa couldn't quite identify. "Guava," Linda said.
Afterwards, Thomas cleared away the dishes and served
coffee in small delicate cups. "I've never had a meal like that,"
Teresa said. She looked at Linda with fresh eyes. Perhaps the
white-haired woman was not so severely exploited as she had feared.
Perhaps they just had a different division of labors than most sailing
couples.
Thomas set a bottle of brandy and three shifters on the
table, and Teresa noticed that the portholes had grown dark. Night had
come suddenly, and again she felt a bit of apprehension. For all his
beauty and culinary talent, Thomas was a very strange man, and Linda a
strange woman. Still she felt a curious sense of abandon; whatever
happened, it would surely be interesting. The direction of her thoughts
embarrassed her. She felt a flush rising in her cheeks, she found it
impossible to look directly at her hosts for a moment.
Thomas poured brandy generously. "Now, music," he said,
and opened a panel, behind which Teresa could see the gleam of
expensive-looking stereo components. Sound filled the cabin, some
delicate arrangement of strings and woodwinds Teresa didn't recognize.
She leaned back against the settee cushions, holding her brandy under
her nose so that the fumes rose into her head. Closing her eyes, she
drifted into a fantasy: that the glossy wood interior of the ketch was
the heart of some great complicated musical instrument and that she
waited at its center while it played.
Perhaps she fell asleep, because when next she opened
her eyes Linda was taking the empty brandy snifter from her cramped
hand and Thomas was gone. "It's very late," Linda whispered: "Stay with
us."
Teresa felt a strange mixture of apprehension and
anticipation . . . and then disappointment, as Linda continued. "We
sleep in the aft cabin, but there's a single bunk in the forepeak,
quite comfortable. I've made it up with fresh sheets."
"Well. . . "
"Please," Linda said earnestly. "I wouldn't want to take
you ashore now, in the dark. After the restaurants close, the
transients come out of their hiding places and walk the shoreline; did
you know? I'm afraid of them; some of them seem dangerous."
"I don't want to impose," Teresa said.
"No, no," Linda said. "We want you."
But not in your bed, Teresa thought sadly.
She let Linda show her to the guest cabin, which was
small but pleasant. An overhead hatch let in the cool night air and a
candle lantern threw a low dappled light on the woodwork.
"Sleep well," Linda said. Teresa watched her pass back
through the main cabin, pausing to blow out the trawler lamp. Moonlight
shone through the skylight; the white-haired woman slid a louvered door
aside and went into a deeper darkness.
The bunk was comfortable and despite her expectations
Teresa fell asleep quickly.
She woke later, from some vague, possibly lustful dream,
a little overheated. She lay for a few minutes before she became aware
of the sounds. They were very soft: a moan of pleasure, a gasp, almost
a sob. Teresa raised herself on one elbow, turning her head, the better
to hear. The sounds grew a tiny bit louder, and Teresa remembered her
dream of several nights past. She noticed that the boat was absolutely
still, no love waves. Her imagination attempted to picture a kind of
lovemaking that wouldn't rock the boat, and at once a vivid possibility
occurred to her. She noticed that her throat was dry; she had
apparently been panting. Her hand slipped between her legs; then she
resolutely pulled it up and held it with the other, gripping it so
tightly that her hands ached.
She wasn't sure why she couldn't allow herself even that
simple pleasure. Stupidity, perhaps.
Eventually the sounds faded into silence and she fell
asleep again.
When she woke, it was to the sensation that some- thing
was moving across her face. Her eyes opened to a painful glare. It took
a moment for her vision to clear and then she was startled to see
Thomas in the tiny cabin beside her, doing something to a curtain. She
gasped and he turned toward her.
"I am too late," he said. "The tinkerbelle has already
disturbed you."
"What?"
He moved the curtain aside briefly, to reveal the sun
shining brightly through. "The tinkerbelle. So sailors call the
sunlight that comes through an uncovered port. The boat's movement
causes the light to dance about; it seems always to find the faces of
sleeping off-watch crew."
"I see," she said, and looking down at herself she also
saw that the sheets had become disarranged, so that she was more than
half-naked. She hastily covered her legs but Thomas seemed not to
notice.
"I serve breakfast in the cockpit," he said, and left.
Her disappointment annoyed her. What had she expected?
That Thomas would crawl into her narrow bunk and set to entertaining
her? Ridiculous. Besides, even if Teresa were irresistibly desirable --
a hilarious thought -- his night of revelry had probably exhausted his
erotic energies.
She dressed and brushed her hair in a mood of sour
self-criticism.
A plate of hot cinnamon rolls waited on the cockpit
table.
"There is orange juice and coffee," Thomas said in his
curious neutral voice, as earnest as a cruise-ship steward.
She took a roll and a glass of orange juice, which
seemed freshly squeezed. "Thank you," she said. "Where's Linda?"
"Indisposed."
"Oh no. What's wrong? Can I help?"
He looked at her with those beautiful eyes. She could
not describe his expression as cold, or empty -- it was simply an
expression new to her and thus unclassifiable. "No, you cannot help.
Not yet."
This seemed so strange a pronouncement that she was a
little afraid. She nibbled at her roll and sipped her juice. She
finally noticed how lovely the harbor was, in the glassy calm of
morning.
"Well," she said, when she had finished. "I'd better go;
today I work at the Chandler."
"Take the dinghy."
"But . . . how will you get it back?"
He made a gesture of dismissal. "Do not be concerned.
Perhaps one of us will swim ashore. Perhaps you will return it when
next you visit."
"I'm not sure you'd want to swim in the harbor," she
said with a little shudder of distaste. "And I have to work at the
Bugeyed Sailor tonight."
He shrugged, clearly uninterested.
As Thomas was helping her to board the dinghy, she
remembered her manners and said, "Thank you for a very pleasant
experience. I really enjoyed it."
"And do you remember it well?" he asked, which struck
her as a very odd question.
"As well as I remember anything," she said.
This answer seemed to please him; at least his faint
smile seemed stronger.
The restaurant was unusually busy, which served to keep
the Sailorman away for a while, but toward closing, business flagged.
A young couple full of romantic sighs lingered on the
deck, holding hands and gazing deeply into each other eyes. She didn't
hurry them; she sensed a big tip. She waited in the farthest comer of
the deck and looked out at the Rosemary, which during the evening
seemed to have shifted her anchorage. The old white ketch floated quite
near, perhaps only a hundred feet off. The portholes and skylight were
dark; the boat exuded an air of emptiness and disuse. Teresa fell into
a mood of vague self-pity.
The tip wasn't that big, she saw with some annoyance.
She didn't realize how late it had become until the lights inside went
out. The Sailorman came bustling out, a gleam in his bulging eyes. Her
heart sank; she wondered if she were alone with him. Had the other help
already gone home?
"You gotta bust the table yourself, honey," he said
happily. "Busboy took off. But just stack on the drainboard. I don't
make you wash. I'm good to you, right?"
She slid away from him along the deck's rickety railing,
but almost immediately saw that she had erred by moving into the
corner. There the Sailorman trapped her. He squeezed her breasts
painfully; his belly bent her backward over the rail. He fumbled with
his pants, then he pushed his hand up the leg of her culottes and dug
his dirty fingers into her. In his enthusiasm, he ripped open the
inseam of her culottes. "Now you got a chance to be good to me," he
said. "I'm a big tipper, too."
If she screamed, would it do any good? Or would he just
break her neck and throw her into the harbor with the other garbage? If
the Sailorman killed her, who would know what had happened?
A sour cheesy stink assaulted her nostrils, even worse
than the Sailorman's ordinary body odor, worse than his dead-fish
breath. Disgust overcame fear, and she tried to dig her fingernails
into his face. But they were too short to do any real damage and he
chortled tolerantly.
She was almost ready to give up, when something changed.
The Sailorman sagged against her, his weight crashing the breath out of
her. His fingers ceased their assault.
A long moment passed, and Teresa noticed that he'd
stopped breathing. Her panic, which had briefly subsided, instantly
returned. She pushed at him, but he was immovable. Would she be found
asphyxiated under the Sailorman's gross corpse, two bodies hanging over
the corner of the railing, an amazing spectacle for the charter boats
on their way out to the Gulf? What a dreadful thought. She writhed,
trying to get away.
The Sailorman drew a long shuddering breath and pushed
away from her. His eyes had gone dull, his body had slumped, his
flaccid penis hung from the fly of his Popeye costume. "Excuse me," he
said in a strange flat voice. "I just remembered something." He turned
and shambled away, staggering a little, and disappeared into the
restaurant.
She just stood there for a while, until her breath came
back. She leaned on the railing, thinking she might throw up, and then
she saw that Thomas was watching from Rosemary's deck.
He stood motionless, a silhouette against the lights
across the harbor. She had a bizarre impulse to wave, followed by a
sudden irrational certainty that Thomas had done something to stop the
Sailorman. This was so strange a thought that it superseded gratitude.
Suddenly she transferred the fury she'd felt for the Sailorman to the
man on the boat. Angry questions filled her. What was he? And whatever
he had done to the Sailorman, why hadn't he done worse? Should she go
to the police? Why should they believe her version of the night's
events? Would Thomas be a witness?
It was hard to imagine that he would; she remembered
Linda saying, "Thomas almost never leaves the boat."
She paused to pin her culottes together, then hurried
down the road to the Shipshape Chandlery, behind which the dinghy was
still beached.
The night was breezy and dark, the moon obscured by low
clouds. The harbor was disturbed by a fish-scale chop and the idea of
rowing the dinghy out to the ketch was unappealing. Also the boat
seemed to have moved away from the shoreline again; it would be a long
pull. But she still felt shaky with anger, with the need to do
something so she pushed off and began splashing her way across the
water.
The ketch remained dark when she reached it, and Thomas
was gone from the cockpit. She tied the dinghy's line to the cleat.
Wasn't there some sort of etiquette involved in boarding a boat? One
wasn't supposed to just jump on, she thought, and then was annoyed with
herself that she could still be concerned about such a trivial matter,
at such a time. Still, she rapped on the deck with her knuckles, as
though knocking on a door. The sound was muffled by the thickness of
the teak decking, but she was sure those within could hear it.
She waited, but after a while it became clear there
would be no response. She began to feel a bit foolish. The outraged
energy which had driven her across the dark harbor was fading, and she
wished she had just gone back to her room, where she could wash the
Sailorman's stink off her and where the bottle of Nembutal waited
patiently.
She looked back over her shoulder, toward the dark
shoreline from which she had come, and saw two men standing there, lit
faintly by the glow of their cigarettes. Were these the bums Linda had
warned her against? The idea of rowing back to the beach lost all of
its appeal, and she climbed aboard Rosemary, making a clatter.
The main hatch doors were hooked back, showing a
trapezoid of blackness. When she looked in, she saw, dimly, Thomas
gazing back at her.
"I want to talk to you," she said.
He nodded and came up the companionway ladder.
She backed away, sat down on a dew-soaked cushion. "What
did you do? To the Sailorman?"
He stood beside the wheel, looking off across the
harbor. "You make a large assumption, Teresa."
But there was no denial in his voice, and she began to
feel more sure of herself. "Tell me the truth," she said.
"What did he say?"
This question took her aback. "Does it matter? He said
he remembered something . . . an excuse, I suppose."
"What if it were not an excuse?"
She thought about that. She thought about the name of
the boat, and the quote from Shakespeare: Rosemary, that's for
remembrance.
"What did he remember?" she asked.
The moon broke through the clouds, so that his eyes
glittered strangely. "An unpleasant man," Thomas said. "But not a
detached one. At least this much can be said of him: he gets his
money's worth from his experiences. He is not guilty of thinking too
much."
"What are you talking about?" she asked, bewildered.
"The Sailorman was remembering a day long ago, when he
went fishing off a dock in Tarpon Springs on a day he should have been
in school. He paid no attention to his fishing; he had just been
rejected by a girl named Dorothy and he was planning, in cool blood, a
revenge."
The conversation had become bizarre. She waited, hoping
he would explain.
Thomas sat down beside her, and it occurred to her that
he seemed so odd partly because he used none of the ordinary range of
non-verbal expression. He did not shrug, or sigh, or make any other
sort of gesture. He still wore the same faint smile.
"I read many books," he said.
"Is that so?"
"Yes. I have a good library aboard -- the classics and
various serious modem writers. And then, we trade paperbacks with other
cruisers, so I get to read a good deal of ephemera as well." He said
this with no air of judgment. "Recently I read a little anthology of
science fiction stories. They were uneven in quality; most were
forgettable." He spoke the last word very softly. "There was one that
at least had an interesting line. The protagonist is in space, looking
out at a big orbital billboard. It advertises a chemical memory
stimulant. The billboard's message is: 'Now you too can remember those
important things you were too stupid to notice when they happened.'"
"What?"
"Most people do not, you know. They do not notice many
of the important things. Though it is not stupidity, that is not the
source of their failure. You are not a stupid person, Teresa."
"What does this have to do with the Sailorman?" She grew
annoyed by what she took to be a deliberate mocking obscurity.
Thomas looked at her and though his expression never
altered she had a sudden strong sense of expectation. "I am something
like that memory-stimulating product."
"I don't understand." But she was beginning to
understand; she remembered Linda, in the sandwich shop, telling her
that Thomas had shown her that her life had not been empty, after all.
"What are you?"
"Do you mean: am I a visitor from another planet? A
mutant? Some mythic creature, a vampire drinking the blood of unnoticed
experience?" Though his language had become extravagant, his voice
never changed. "I am an oyster. Or, better, a barnacle. Anchored to my
hull, my good Rosemary, I extend myself gingerly into the stream of
life, and filter from it my sustenance. And there you have it."
She had a strong impression that he had made this speech
many times before, that it was reduced to its essentials, that he was
making as clear a statement about himself as he could. "You . . . eat
experience? People's memories?"
"No. The truth is more subtle. What I 'eat' is the
difference between the richness of my victims' lives and the poor pale
perceptions they own. I notice what they did not, and this awareness
feeds me."
"'Victims?' Why do you call them victims?"
"Unfortunately, the retrieval of lost memory is a
destructive process. My victims remember with me, so at least they
regain their lost lives, but eventually, when those lives are mined
out, they die. I would like to be a symbiote, but I am a parasite. I
only touched the Sailorman. He will be a little dazed for a day or two,
his employees will enjoy it while it lasts. When we arrived here, I
killed a heron -- thin food, but necessary. My hunger was great, and I
dared not take any more from Linda just then."
"Why didn't you go ashore? Surely you could have found
all the victims you needed there."
"Unfortunately, I am unable to survive in a crowd. It
would be like drowning in soup, for me. A better metaphor: like having
a high pressure soup hose forced down my throat. I cannot go ashore,
except in deserted places. When the big charter boats pass us, I cannot
breathe."
If Thomas was a monster, he was a remarkably forthcoming
one. Still . . . she imagined going to the police with her story: yes,
the would-be rapist was deterred by a memory vampire. No wonder Thomas
could speak so freely.
"How is Linda?" she asked, seeking a diversion, feeling
an unreasonable embarrassment that she hadn't thought to ask before.
"She is dying."
Teresa tried to summon a shock she did not really feel.
Her shame deepened, as well as her confusion. "But . . . why's she
here? Why isn't she in the hospital?"
Thomas shook his beautiful head. "Would you like to see
her?"
She followed him to the companion way. From the cabin he
said, "I will make a light." An oil lamp flared gold; he reached up a
hand to help her. In the lamp's light his eyes seemed without depth,
the eyes of an animal.
In the aft cabin, Linda lay on a wide transverse bunk,
propped up in a nest of pillows. She was pale, as though her tan had
faded overnight. She looked very young. Her eyes were open, staring at
the overhead, and at first Teresa thought she was already dead. At her
gasp of dismay, Linda's eyes moved slightly.
Thomas slid the compartment door shut, leaving Teresa
alone with the white-haired woman.
"Teresa?" Linda's voice was as soft as a breath. "Are
you here?"
"Yes." Teresa said, and sat on the edge of the bunk.
"Good. I thought you would come. I told Thomas you
would."
Teresa studied the face; it wasn't the face of a
sufferer. "Is it true? That he's eaten your life?"
A spectral smile touched the pale lips. "Dramatic. I
guessed you were a writer. I could see the signs. No . . . Thomas
hasn't devoured me."
"But you're. . . "Teresa wanted to say: You're dying;
instead she said, "You're so ill."
"Thomas doesn't always explain well. Listen. He gave me
my life, he let me take from it all the joy and sorrow it held. I never
noticed, when I was actually living my life."
"Your life isn't over. You're still young."
Linda smiled with slightly more vitality. "Thomas isn't
a wasting disease, Teresa. He's very good for the body. I'm fifty-seven
years old; I have three grown children and two grandchildren. If you
stay with him, you'll look like a young girl, at the end."
Stay with him?
Linda struggled to look at Teresa directly. "No, no.
Don't be afraid. You'll stay only if you choose it. Thomas is gentle,
less dangerous than the oyster he considers himself to be."
"Why would you think I'd stay? Do you think I want to
die?" The idea was grotesque, she had forgotten about the bottle of
Nembutal.
Linda sighed, "Maybe I'm wrong about you. Maybe you're
not like me. Maybe you've been able, a time or two, to live within the
moment. Maybe you haven't spent all your life grieving for the past,
fearing the future. If you think you can really live the rest of your
life, then that's fine."
A slow weary tide of sadness began to rise in Teresa's
heart.
"But let Thomas show you what he does," Linda said. "If
you want to leave after that, I wish you well. Though I fear for poor
Thomas."
"Poor Thomas?"
"Yes." Linda's voice was very faint now. "He lives only
through us. All his life is borrowed." Her body trembled beneath the
quilt. "Leave me, now. I've been pretty lucid for a woman in my
condition, but it won't last. If you decide to stay, send him to me. I
want to finish."
When she reached the deck, Thomas had gone forward, to
sit crosslegged with his back against the mainmast. The moonlight was
brighter now, and he seemed no more intimidating than any other very
handsome man. Perhaps Linda was just a lunatic, in the last stages of
some mania-inducing disease?
But Thomas shared her delusion, or so it seemed.
Teresa went up the sidedeck and leaned against the
lifelines. How strange, she thought. Here she was with a man who
believed himself to be some sort of soul-eating life-draining monster.
And for some reason Teresa wasn't swimming for the shore. It wasn't
like any horror movie she'd ever seen. "Linda said we should be sorry
for you. Poor Thomas, she said."
An ordinary human might have shrugged, but of course
Thomas did not. "I do not understand her concern. I am as I am."
"Right. Well, listen, this has been interesting, but I'd
better go. Got to look for a new job tomorrow; I'll be a busy girl.
Could you take me ashore? You could drop me at the sandspit. Nobody
lives there, yet."
"You are humoring me," said Thomas. "It is charming, but
unnecessary. You may take the dinghy. Or, if you wish, I will show you
what I am."
She retreated a step, but he made no threatening
movement. "I don't think so," she said. "I mean, it's a terrific offer
and all . . . I could relive my crappy life and then die, it sounds
like great fun, really, but. . . . "
He looked away, out across the harbor toward the
darkened sandspit that divided the harbor from the pass into the Gulf.
"Then return to your room and your bottle of stale Nembutal." His faint
smile never wavered.
Suddenly, she believed, and she wasn't even very curious
about the source of his knowledge. "Is it . . . is it like some sort of
super drug? One taste and I'm hooked for life?"
"For death, do you mean ? In a way. Life is the most
completely addictive drug. Those who are addicts can never get enough.
They feel, all the time, as you will feel if you remember your life
through me."
"And I can't change? I can't learn to feel as they do?"
"I don't know," he said. "Sometimes people do change. My
impression is that you will not."
His words, spoken in that soft formal voice, seemed
inevitable, and they finished the erosion of her will. Were Thomas
suddenly to sprout long fangs and lunge at her throat, she thought, she
wouldn't even attempt to stop him.
"Why did you help me? With the Sailorman," she asked,
but without any real curiosity.
"You did not deserve to own so ugly a memory."
A time passed, and the breeze died.
"Show me," she said.
Thomas glanced up. "See," he said, pointing. "The moon
is about to go behind a cloud."
She looked.
The blue Gulf was a beautiful soft dream, the first time
she saw it. She parked her old car along a stretch of undeveloped
beach, and felt the sun soak through the windows, warming her. There
was an energizing tang to the air, she'd never filled her lungs with
such delicious stuff before.
She got out and looked out across the ocean, marveling
at the subtle gradation of hues, from the pale aquamarine in the
shallows to the dense metallic purple at the horizon. A gentle onshore
breeze carried a faint scent of seaweed and fish, an exotic smell, not
at all unpleasant, with an even fainter undertone of coconut oil. The
beach was almost deserted, in comparison to other beaches she had known
-- only a few sunbathers were scattered over the brilliant white sand.
She felt a complex mixture of hope and anxiety, but the
emotions were just a buzzing background to the lovely sensations of the
moment. She'd left Atlanta in a frenzy of anger and disappointment,
driven all night, thinking dark thoughts. All forgotten, at least for
now.
She opened the trunk and got a cream soda from the ice
chest. She sat on the hood, looking out over the Gulf, sipping the
soda. She rolled the taste of it on her tongue -- vanilla was such a
round perfect flavor.
The sun felt so good. Later it might be too hot for
comfort, but now, in mid-morning, it was perfect. She wanted to take
off her blouse and let the sun touch her breasts, like a lover's warm
breath,
Happiness surged through her, but it was a feeling that
lived far away from her ordinary thoughts and emotions. She might have
thought it very strange, were she not so full of delight.
By the time the sun rose, they were far out in the Gulf,
the Destin condominiums sinking below the edge of the sea. Thomas
showed her how to steer the course, how to watch the set of the sails,
and then went below.
An hour later he came on deck with Linda's body wrapped
in a sheet and weighted with rusty chain.
He gave her to the water without ceremony.
"What now?" Teresa asked.
"We will go south, to an island where no one lives, and
the tidal range is large enough to careen Rosemary. She needs new
bottom paint."
He took the wheel, and Teresa went to sit in the comer
of the cockpit, where there was a little shelter from the wind.
She could not say she was happy, but at least she felt
no pain. She could not say she had hopes, but at least she had
expectations.
~~~~~~~~
By Ray Aidridge
Ray Aidridge returns to F&SF after too long an
absence. He is now the proud father of three children. The new baby
took some time away from his writing, but he promises more short work
in the future
Recently his short fiction has received quite a bit of
acclaim, with two Nebula finalists under his belt. He has also written
three novels, published by Bantam Books
"Filter Feeders" is not hard sf. Instead it is one of
the most delicately written dark fantasies we have published.
