And suddenly the idea of just dying out here, beaten to death by the waves, didn’t seem so attractive. Why not try to live, he found himself thinking? Not the kind of life he’d had before (he wouldn’t want that again, ever) but some other kind of life. Travelling around the world, perhaps, incognito; just the two of them. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? And when they were bored with travel they could find some sunny beach down in Costa Rica and spend every day there drunk amongst the parrots. There they could wait out the years until the big, glossy world he’d once given a shit for had forgotten he even existed.
All these thoughts came in flashes, none of them really coherent. The only thought that took any real shape was the means by which they could escape this dark water alive.
“We’re going to dive!” he yelled to Katya. “Take a deep breath.”
He heard her do so; then, before another pulverizing wave could come along and knock them out he drove them both into a teetering wall of water, diving deep into the placid heart of the wave. They must have done this half a hundred times; diving down, rising up again gasping, then watching for the next monstrous wall to be almost upon them before diving again. It was a desperate trick, but it worked.
It was dearly preventing them from getting a terrible beating, but it was steadily taking its toll on their energies. He knew they couldn’t continue to defy the violence of the water for very much longer. Their muscles were aching, their senses were becoming unreliable. It would only be a matter of time before the force of the water got the better of them, and they sank together, defeated by sheer fatigue.
But they had counted without the benign collusion of the tide, which all this time had been slowly bearing them south, and — as it did so — had been also ushering them back towards the shore. The tumult of waters around them began to die down, and after a few minutes their toes began to brush some of the taller coral towers. A few minutes later they had solid ground beneath their feet, and a few minutes after that they were stumbling ashore at Venice.
For five minutes or so they lay on the dark sand together, spitting up water and coughing, and then eventually finding it in them to laugh, and catch each other’s hands.
Against all the odds, they’d survived.
“I guess we … we weren’t ready … to die,” Todd gasped.
“I suppose so,” Katya said. She dragged her head over the sand, to put her lips in reach of his. It wasn’t a kiss, so much as a sharing of breath. They lay there, mouth to mouth, until Katya’s teeth began to chatter.
“We have to get you back to the Canyon,” he said, hauling himself to his knees. The lights of the Venice boardwalk seemed impossibly remote.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Yes you can. We’re going home. We’re going back to the Canyon. You’ll feel stronger and warmer once we’re walking. I promise.”
He helped her get to her knees and then practically lifted her to her feet. Arms around one another they stumbled towards the boardwalk, where the usual tourist-trap entertainments were still going on, despite the lateness of the hour. They wove between the people, unrecognized, and in a back street Todd found a kid with a beaten up Pinto to whom he offered three hundred waterlogged bucks if he’d take them back home, and another three hundred, dry, if he promised not to mention what he’d done and where he’d been, to anyone.
“I know who you are,” the kid said.
“No you don’t,” Todd said, snatching the three hundred back from the kid’s hand.
“Okay, okay. I don’t,” the kid replied, gently reclaiming the money. “You gotta deal.”
Todd knew that there wasn’t much chance that the driver’s promise would last very long, but they had no choice in the matter. They made their makeshift chauffeur close all the windows and turn up the heating, and they clung together in the back of the car trying to get some warmth back into their blood. Todd got him to drive as fast as the vehicle was capable of going, and twenty minutes later he was directing the kid up the winding road into Coldheart Canyon.