Ghost Lights by Lydia Millet (classic fiction txt) 📕

“I did have that one clove cigarette at Dinty’s. At that New Year’s thing?”

“It was clove? Clove cigarettes are the equivalent of seven regular cigarettes.”

The rest of the group stood waiting for them to sign or not sign the waivers, gear slung over their shoulders, fins hanging by the heels off two crooked fingers.

Hal felt impatient. He was irked by the bohemians. Previously he had been irked by the Germans, now it was the bohemians who irked him. Although the Germans had become his allies. What if the bohemians fell into line also? Would the bohemians also befriend him?

No. A bohemian was not a German. Socially speaking a German turned outward, like a sunflower toward the sun; a bohemian turned inward like a rotting pumpkin.

“Why don’t the rest of you go ahead and get into your wetsuits,” said the divemaster, and smiled affably.

When they came out of the restrooms the bohemians were also wetsuited. All of them stuffed their clothes and shoes into cubbies and walked barefoot down the beach toward the dock, the bohemians broadcasting a sense of glum foreboding. Or perhaps it was terror. Hal hypothesized that one bohemian had blackmailed the other into the scuba diving excursion, possibly with threats of poisoning via Red Dye Number Three.

Hans and the divemaster walked at the head of the pack discussing reef fish and Hal listened to Gretel tell him about swimming with stingrays in the Grand Cayman, how she had gently stroked their soft pectoral wings. He nodded without saying much, smiling in what he hoped was a beatific fashion and meanwhile wondering if, in the black wetsuit, he in any way resembled Batman. Was his torso, for example, slightly triangular? Just slightly, he didn’t mean any big bodybuilder-type-deal. Did it descend just a bit from broad shoulders to a narrow waist, creating an impression of virility?

Squinting down at himself he noticed the wetsuit was in fact a very dark green. He was disappointed. In the shade of the dive shop he had thought it was black. Gretel’s was black, as was Hans’s. They gave the Germans the black wetsuits; him they gave the dark-green, the color of spinach slime. He suspected he most resembled the animated character Gumby, which as a child Casey had watched on TV with barely suppressed delight.

“Out at the caye,” the divemaster was telling Hans, “where we will stop between dives for a late lunch and snorkeling, you will see lemon sharks. Some people feed them, although it is technically forbidden. Small sharks. Pretty. They swim around at your feet.”

In the boat Gretel sat beside him and asked him about Stern.

“This is the man who is the boss of your wife?” she asked.

“The boss of my wife. Yes.”

“And he is a seller of real estate, you said before. Like a small Donald Trump.”

“Better hair, though.”

“That is very funny.”

“I notice you’re laughing hard.”

“But you must be very close to him, yes? To come all the way here looking. He is a friend of the family, maybe.”

He considered telling the truth but dismissed this as rash. And in fact Stern was a friend of his family, both his wife and his daughter, though not him personally.

“It’s difficult,” he said, but nodded.

She reached over and squeezed his wrist in sympathy. So easily misled.

•

He would not have come scuba diving if Gretel had not lured him with her kindness and beauty, he thought resentfully as he sat on the edge of the boat, his tank hanging heavily off his back, waiting to roll over backward into the ocean. He did not want to roll over backward into the ocean. Who was he? He was a middle-aged IRS employee, a father and a cuckold. He was an idiot.

He had let Hans and Gretel go before him so they would not witness his tomfoolery. He anticipated some kind of choking, spasming incident. But it was time. He had to follow Hans and Gretel, for they were his dive buddies. If he waited too long he might lose them. The pressure was on. This was it. The divemaster was staring at him expectantly. The neurotic bohemians were also watching. Their scrutiny was a grudging challenge.

He had hoped the neurotic bohemians would go before him, but they had found reasons to fiddle with valves and masks almost endlessly. Now there was no more excuse for delay. He could not see the expressions of the neurotic bohemians through their masks, but he imagined they were white-faced and trembling.

Middle-aged employee, or tax man? It was all in the wording. He was the tax man, by God.

He felt off slowly, even limply. He grappled. Then he was in. Sinking. For a second he panicked. Then: breathe only with the mouth. It was OK. He was doing it.

He heard his breath, the slow in-and-out like Darth Vader. There were white bubbles around him as he sank, a screen across everything, and then they cleared and it was light blue and placid. He looked down: beneath the black fins on his feet were rocks and yellow- and gray-striped small fish. He raised his head again and saw Gretel ahead of him, moving toward a wall of coral. She was lithe and graceful with her fins moving back and forth; her long hair floated behind her and caught the light, a stream of warmth in the cold water. It rippled.

Off to the right at a slight distance was Hans, at greater depth. He had announced on the boat that he had two goals: sea cucumbers and moray eels.

Hal did not share his goals.

The fins felt good, powerful. He propelled himself forward, hastening to get close to Gretel. It was nice down here, lovely. It was a cathedral of light and softness. Down here you probably couldn’t even tell the difference between a black wetsuit and a dark-green one.

The dive would last about a half-hour, they had told him. He would stay close by her. She would point at things.

As they held steady