A cormorant flapped its jointed wings and took off from a post. A spray of tiny fish roiled the water as they fled some large thing feeding on them from below. Jimmy Gibbs pictured himself at the wheel of the Fin Finder, alone in Ray-Bans at the steering station just below the tuna tower. Captain Jimmy. He'd hire a couple young guys to haul the lines, clean the fish; his hands would heal. Maybe he'd buy himself a new truck too. Captains didn't show up at the charter docks in dinged-up old heaps that sifted rust.
Yates watched him, felt a quick pang of remorse, and raised a cautionary finger. "No such thing as a sure thing, Jimmy. Don't spend that fortune before you have it."
It was sound advice and it was too bad the talk-show host was not following it himself. It was five o'clock, the sun was still throwing heat as heavy as bricks tossed off a building, and Ray Yates reminded himself that he had to meet a guy to discuss a small matter of some gambling debts. He took a final swig of his tequila and got up with all the gusto of a man on his way to a root canal. He waved goodbye to Hogfish Mike, put a hand on Jimmy Gibbs's shoulder, then trudged the length of the pier. At the foot of it, right up against the seawall, the remains of a filleted fish were floating. The affronted eye stared heavenward, some opal meat still clung to the backbone, and Ray Yates didn't like the look of it at all.
14
Augie Silver slept fitfully for most of the day. It was brutally hot, the palm fronds hung limp and silent outside the bedroom window, yet the painter never lowered the cotton quilt from under his chin. He was too thin, too dry, too tired to sweat, he lay there papery and brittle, his breathing shallow, the dream movements of his eyeballs clear and disconcerting through the veiny translucent skin of their lids.
Around six o'clock he struggled out of bed, slipped out of his clothes, and went slowly to the closet for his favorite robe. It never occurred to him that the robe perhaps had been moved from its accustomed peg during his four-month absence-and it hadn't been. It hung there patient and welcoming, the loops of yellow terrycloth worn flat and shiny at the elbows, the big soft collar suggesting a certain pomp, like the entrance of a champion boxer. Directly under the robe, as if held in place by an invisible mannequin, were the backless slippers that so perfectly suited his shuffling, meandering walk. He stepped into them with the reverent confidence of the prodigal who knows in his bones that his wanderings have made him more profoundly, more legitimately the possessor of his home, his comforts, his life.
Silently he strolled into the living room. His former widow was lying on a sofa reading, and she did not hear him approach. He took a moment to gaze around the house. His paintings hung on almost every wall, they rang in his brain with a glad but overwhelming clamor that had less to do with sight than sound, as though he were a composer and ten orchestras were simultaneously playing every tune he'd ever written.
"Looks like a goddamn museum in here," he said.
Nina looked up. Her reading glasses stretched her eyes, made them huge and liquid, and the lifting of her head made the sinews rise and quiver from her collarbone to her jaw. She had at that moment an unposed loveliness that made Augie's knees go even weaker in appreciation of what he had come home to.
"I hung the paintings for the memorial service," said his wife.
"Memorial service," mused the painter. "I keep forgetting I was dead." He mused further. "Guess I'm still dead, far as anybody knows. It's kind of relaxing… Was I lavishly and excessively praised?"
"Your ears must have been on fire."
"Who gave the eulogy?"
"Clay."
"Ah. Elegant and flowery, I bet. I owe him one."
Nina said nothing and Augie shuffled to the sofa. He leaned over to kiss his wife and tried not to let her see what an effort it was to straighten up again. She tried not to let him know that she had noticed.
"Hungry?"
The word sounded somehow foreign to him and he took a moment to respond. "I should be. But my body seems to have forgotten what to do with food." He sat.
Nina hesitated. It seemed too soon to speak of doctors, of worries, of the fresh fear of recurring death. She draped herself across her husband's shoulders.
"I blew to Cuba," he suddenly said, being pulled back into his story as into a fever dream. "Funny, huh? A place I'd always wanted to go."
"Cuba?" said his wife.
Outside, soft evening light filtered through the oleanders and the crotons. A faint smell of jasmine and mango slipped past the louvered shutters and through the unscreened windows. Augie half leaned, half fell against the back of the sofa. His robe splayed open to reveal a white thigh that had grown thinner than his knee.
"Eventually," he said. "I guess I passed out after hauling myself into the broken dinghy. When I came awake, I was still having trouble breathing, my arms and chest ached horribly. But the storm was over and a fresh cool norther had blown up behind it. From the color of the sea I figured I was in the Gulf Stream. It was just before sunset. I watched awhile and conked out again.
"Night came. It got cold. In the morning I was shivering and parched but alert enough to remind myself not to go crazy. I needed something to concentrate on; but when I tried to pick something, I noticed I couldn't remember my name. Or what I did. Or where I lived. Or you. For a while I was panicked, then a weird acceptance kicked in: I was in the ocean and as blank as the ocean. I drifted. I curled up this way and that way, trying to hide from the sun. Now and then I peered around, imagining I would see a boat, an island.
I tried to sleep but my head was pounding, surging like waves were trapped inside it.
"By the next day I think I was getting delirious. I shook. I tasted blood in my throat. I was no longer sure whether I was asleep or awake, wet or dry, cold or hot. The glare on the water was blinding me, I kept seeing green streamers like when you press on your eyeballs. Then I saw the fins, circling, approaching, retreating, approaching."
Nina whimpered. It was an involuntary sound, a tiny shriek from an ancient nightmare. Augie reached out and put a hand on her head. The sleeve of his robe hung down from his bony arm. "Sharks?" she whispered.
"Dolphins," said her husband. "They were swimming with me. Or at least I think they were. I was pretty out of it by then. My sense of time was all screwed up, I expect I was yammering to myself. But I had the definite impression that a pod of dolphins, four or five, was surrounding me, protecting me, guiding me to wherever it was I was floundering. I watched those beautiful arched backs, the spume flying up from their blowholes and exploding into rainbows in the sun.
"More time passed. Another day, maybe two. I could feel myself shriveling up like a leaf. My skin was cracking open. Then, when I was asleep or raving, I felt and heard the dinghy being rammed, nudged, pushed. It was the first time I was afraid of capsizing. I grabbed the gunwale and looked over the side. Coconut palms. The dolphins were shepherding me to land.
"I have a very dim recollection of crawling to shore. Pebbles and shells cutting my hands. Saltwater searing deep into my flesh. I remember cool sand against my cheek. And the next thing I knew, I was waking up in an old fisherman's hut.
"I heard voices before I could open my eyes. Spanish voices. I couldn't understand much, but I guess I wasn't in very good shape, because one of them kept saying muerto, muerto. That made me nervous. I felt I had to do something impressive to show them I was alive, or they might do the decent thing and bury me. So I tried to move. I couldn't. I tried to speak, to groan. Nothing. I used to think failure was relative, but this was failure in the absolute. I couldn't even blink.