Ghost Lights by Lydia Millet (classic fiction txt) 📕

“I called in a small favor,” said Hans.

Hal shuffled away from them to pull the pants on. When he zipped up and turned back, their heads were backlit by the window and their faces indistinct; he saw them for a second as leviathans. They might be slim and standing there in their G-string swimwear, which had an all-too-floral tendency and made them look far more naked, even, than him. But in the strength of their Teutonic conviction he put his finger on what it was about them.

They were machines of efficiency, purposeful. Even in the simple act of unwrapping a granola bar there was the sense of a necessary fueling.

•

“I’m afraid you may be drinking too much,” said Susan.

She had him paged in the dining room while he was eating his breakfast. Because the Germans were sitting at the table with him, believing him to be a family man who was close to his loving wife, he could hardly refuse to take the call. Reluctantly he had followed the waiter to a telephone at the end of the front desk.

“Not at all,” he said.

“What was that fax about, then?”

“It was accurate. There’s a task force involved. Something to do with NATO.”

“Come on, Hal. I don’t get how you’re acting, these last few days. I’m asking you please just to be serious.”

He had brought his coffee cup to the phone with him and took the opportunity to sip from it with a certain poised nonchalance, his telephone elbow braced on the high, polished wood of the counter.

Robert the Paralegal could not raise a task force. A Trojan perhaps, but not a task force. None.

“What can I say? I met Germans with connections. Germans who refuse to take no for an answer, I’m guessing.”

“See? This is what I mean, Hal. You just don’t make that much sense right now.”

“I’m telling you, Susan. Either there’s a twenty-man task force trained in search-and-rescue that’s arriving tomorrow to look for your friend Stern, or the Germans are conning me. It’s possible. As history has taught us, Germans are capable of anything.”

She was silent for a few static beats. He sipped his coffee again.

“Really, Hal? Honestly?”

“So they tell me. We’ll see.”

“But that’s amazing, Hal. Amazing!”

“The jury’s still out on it. OK? Keep you posted. I was right in the middle of a hot breakfast, though. Do you mind if I get back to it?”

More static. He had hurt her feelings.

“Not that I don’t want to talk. Just a rush here—hectic. Wreckage, repairs. Aftermath. Hurricane. You wouldn’t believe the scene.”

He gazed out over the tranquil dining room, where lilies stood in tall vases on the white tabletops. Hans waved out the window to the boys in the pool, and Gretel, her long, languid legs crossed, was peeling an orange and licking the juice off the tips of her elegantly tapered fingers.

“OK. But keep me informed, OK Hal? Tell me everything that happens.”

“I always do. We’ve always told each other everything, haven’t we?” He was feeling a pinch of malice. Speaking with a dangerous transparency. He told her goodbye, hung up and downed the tepid dregs of his coffee.

• • • • •

There was no reason, he found himself deciding, not to enjoy himself while he waited for the armed forces. The day was still young, he had hours to kill before the night came on, and Hans and Gretel had invited him to go scuba diving.

Fortunately the children of the corn were too young to qualify for the scuba course and had resigned themselves to playing ping-pong.

“For the whole boat trip? They’re going to play ping-pong for five straight hours?” he asked Hans, when he saw the boys hitting the ball back and forth at the table beside the pool. They were steadfast and tightly wound, their lips compressed, eyes darting only a fraction to the left or right with a predatory glint as they followed the bouncing ball.

“At least,” said Hans.

“One time they played for two days, stopping only to sleep,” said Gretel. “Of course it was a weekend.”

They said goodbye to the boys, who ignored them studiously. Then a resort employee led them down to the dive shop, a kind of bunker with wet sand and footprints crisscrossing the rough concrete floor. There were wetsuits hanging on a rack and fins and masks arrayed in wooden cubbies along the wall; the ceiling was low and the walls were painted a deep, gloomy blue inside, maybe to simulate the ocean. The divemaster shook their hands and welcomed them.

Before they went out they had to sit through a safety lecture. Hal tried to listen attentively but was distracted by the presence of half-naked Gretel in her bikini, smelling delicately of coconut oil, and also by the belated arrival of the young bohemian couple hailing presumably from lower Manhattan.

The bohemian couple appeared skeptical of the lecture by the divemaster, bored and skeptical despite the fact that they had never been diving before and, if their breakfast exchange of the previous day was any indication, were also hypochondriacs. When the lecture ended and the divemaster began to choose gear for each of them, asking shoe sizes and moving along the row of cubbyholes searching, the bohemians raised an objection.

“This says we don’t have the right to sue if we suffer injuries on the dive, up to and including death,” said the man.

“Yes,” said the divemaster politely. “It is a required legal waiver. I am very sorry but it is not possible to go out on the resort dive if you do not sign it.”

“I don’t know about this,” said the woman, shaking her head. “I don’t do waivers, normally.”

“It says you can’t go if you’ve ever had a lung collapse,” said the man.

“I’ve never had a lung collapse,” said the woman. “Have you had a lung collapse?”

“Not that I know of.”

“It’s something you would probably notice,” said Hal.

The bohemian man ignored him.

“I had bronchitis one time in college,” said the woman. “Is that a risk factor?”

“Or smoking.