exclaimed another man. In ten minutes, it was over. She’d raised thirty million dollars. Ah, she thought. So this was what it was all about.
Afterward, as she returned to her seat, Enid reached out and grabbed her wrist. Annalisa bent down to hear what she was saying. “Well done, my dear,” Enid whispered. “Mrs. Houghton couldn’t have done it better herself.” Then she glanced over at Paul and, pulling Annalisa closer, said,
“You’re very much like her, my dear. But you must remember not to go too far.”
Six weeks later, Annalisa Rice leaned over the railing of the super-yacht and watched as Paul and the onboard scuba instructor disappeared beneath the surface of the waters in the Great Barrier Reef. She turned around, and almost immediately, one of the twelve crew members was by her side. “Can I get you anything, Mrs. Rice? Iced tea, perhaps?”
“Iced tea would be lovely.”
“What time would you like lunch?” the young woman asked.
“When Mr. Rice gets back. Around one.”
“Will he be diving again this afternoon?”
“I hope not,” Annalisa said. “He’s not supposed to.”
“No, ma’am.” The girl nodded and went into the galley to get the tea.
Annalisa climbed the two flights of stairs to the top deck, where eight lounge chairs were arranged around a small pool. At one end was a covered cabana with more deck chairs; at the other end was a bar. Annalisa lay down on one of the deck chairs in the sun, tapping her fingers on the teak frame. She was bored. This was a terrible thought, especially for someone who was on a two-hundred-and-fifty-foot super-yacht. On the deck above, on the very top of the ship, was a helicopter, a speedboat, and an assortment of Jet Skis and other water toys, all of which she might employ for her pleasure. But she wasn’t interested. She and Paul had been on the yacht for two weeks, and she was ready to get back to One Fifth, where she could at least be away from Paul during the day. Paul wouldn’t consider it, though. He’d fallen in love with his new hobby — scuba diving — and refused to cut his vacation short. He’d spent two million dollars to get the yacht, he pointed out, outbidding another guest at the King David gala by a hundred thousand dollars, and he planned to get his money’s worth. She couldn’t argue with him about that, could she? Besides, he added, it was the old lady downstairs — what was her name? Enid something — who’d suggested that he bid on the yacht in the first place.
Annalisa found this strange, along with Enid’s remark about going too far. Annalisa couldn’t understand what Enid had meant, but she didn’t doubt that Enid wanted Paul out of the building. Perhaps she figured a month without Paul Rice was better than nothing. But she needn’t have worried. She would probably get her wish, since Paul kept talking about how he wanted to sell One Fifth as soon as they returned.
“The place is too small for us,” he complained.
“We’re only two people,” Annalisa countered. “How much space do you need to take up in the world?”
“A lot,” Paul said, not catching her sarcasm.
She’d smiled but, as was often her habit now, didn’t respond. Ever since Paul had told her how he’d engineered Sandy Brewer’s downfall and, consequently, Billy Litchfield’s death, Annalisa had moved through her days on autopilot while trying to figure out what to do about Paul.
She didn’t know who he was anymore — and he was dangerous. And when she’d brought up the topic of divorce, Paul wouldn’t hear of it.
“If you really want to move,” she’d ventured one evening as he was feeding his fish, “perhaps you should. I could keep the apartment ...”
“You mean like in a divorce?” Paul had asked softly.
“Well, yes, Paul. It happens these days.”
“What makes you think I’d give you the apartment?” he’d said.
“I’ve done all the work on it.”
“With my money,” he’d scoffed.
“I did give up my career for you. I moved to New York.”
“And it hasn’t exactly been a hardship for you, has it?” Paul had replied.
“I thought you loved it here. I thought you loved One Fifth. Although I don’t understand why.”
“That’s not the point.”
“You’re right,” Paul had said, turning away from his fish and going to stand by his desk. “It’s not the point. What is the point is that divorce is out of the question. I’ve had some meetings with the Indian government.
They may be interested in doing the same kind of deal as the Chinese.
A divorce would be inconvenient right now.”
“When would it be convenient?” she’d asked.
“I don’t know.” He hit a button on his computer. “On the other hand, as you’ve learned from the Billy Litchfield situation, death can be a much more practical solution. If Billy hadn’t died, he’d probably be in jail. That would have been terrible. Who knows what happens to people like him in prison?”
So she had her answer. And since then she kept wondering if it was only a matter of time before Paul did her in as well. What imaginary slight would set him off? If she stayed with him, she’d be in a prison herself, always watching him, trying to gauge his mood, living in fear of the day when she couldn’t mollify him.
Paul returned from scuba diving half an hour later, full of information about the various sea life he’d seen. At one o’clock, they sat down at opposite ends of a long table covered in crisp white linen and ate lobster and a citrus salad. “Are you going to dive this afternoon?” she asked.
“I’m thinking about it. I want to explore the wreck of the Endeavor.
Captain James Cook’s ship.”
Two servers came in wearing gray uniforms and white gloves. They removed the plates and carefully laid out the silver for dessert. “Would you like more wine, ma’am?”
“No, thank you,” Annalisa said. “I have a bit of a headache.”
“It’s the barometric pressure. It’s changing. We may have some bad weather tomorrow.”
“I’ll have more wine,” Paul said.
As the server filled his glass, Annalisa said, “I really wish you wouldn’t dive this afternoon. You know it’s dangerous to do more than two dives a day. Especially after you’ve been drinking.”
“I’ve had less than two glasses,” Paul said.
“It’s enough,” she protested.
Paul ignored her and defiantly took another sip of wine. “It’s my vacation. I’ll do as I please.”
After lunch, Annalisa went to the stateroom to take a nap. While she was lying on the king-size bed, Paul came in to get changed. “I don’t know,” he said, yawning. “I might not dive after all.”
“I’m glad you’re being sensible,” Annalisa said. “And you heard what the server said. The pressure’s changing. You don’t want to get caught in bad weather.”
Paul looked out the stateroom window. “It’s perfectly sunny,” he said in his usual contrarian style. “If I don’t go, it could be days before I have another chance.”
As Paul was suiting up, the captain of the yacht came out, holding a dive table. “Mr. Rice,” he said. “I need to remind you that this is your third deep dive today. You can’t stay down for longer than thirty minutes total, and you’ll need to include ten minutes to surface.”
“I’m well aware of the time/nitrogen/oxygen ratio,” Paul said. “I’ve been doing math since I was three.” Holding the regulator over his face, he jumped in.
As Paul descended, weightless and with the familiar childlike joy he’d recently discovered in being unfettered by gravity, he was joined by the yacht’s scuba instructor. The water was particularly clear in the Great Barrier Reef, even at eighty feet, and Paul had no trouble finding the wreck. The old ship was fascinating, and as Paul swam in and out of the hull, he was overcome by a feeling of pure happiness. This was why he couldn’t stop diving, he told himself. Then Paul recalled something from the diving manual and tried to remind himself that the giddy feeling could be a sign of impending nitrogen narcosis, but he quickly dismissed it. Surely he had another five or ten minutes. The giddy feeling increased, and when Paul saw the scuba instructor motioning for him to go up, instead of following his instructions, Paul swam away. For the first time in his life, he thought irrationally, he was denying the rigid rules of the monstrous numbers that had dominated his life. He was free.