Nick gave her a quizzical look. He was standing in the sun and his head was aching. “But Troy — ” he began.
“I know what you’re going to say,” she interrupted him. “He doesn’t have much experience and it could be a dangerous dive.” She stared directly at Nick. “That doesn’t matter to me. I have enough diving experience for both of us. I prefer to dive with Troy.” She waited a few seconds. “Now if you’re not willing — ”
This time it was Nick who interrupted Carol. “All right, all right,” he said, turning away. He was surprised to find that he was both hurt and angry. This woman is still pissed, he said to himself. And I thought maybe . . . Nick walked away from Carol and went back on the other side of the canopy to finish preparing the small rented salvage crane he and Troy had installed the night before. Since they had used this old equipment several times on other excursions, the installation had been straight forward and without major problems.
Carol climbed onto the boat and put her copy of the photos on top of the counter next to the steering wheel. “Where’s the trident?” she called to Nick. “I thought I’d take another look at it this morning.”
“Bottom left drawer, under the nav equipment,” was his swift and sharp reply. She took the gray bag out of the drawer, opened it, and pulled out the golden trident. She held it by the long middle rod. It felt funny for some reason. Carol put the object back in the bag and pulled it out a second time. Again she held the heavy trident in her hands. It still didn’t feel right. Carol remembered grasping the rod underneath the overhang in the water and wrapping her hand slowly around the central rod. That’s it, she said to herself. It’s thicker.
She turned the object over in her hands. What’s the matter with me? she thought. Have I lost my mind? How could it he thicker? She examined it one more time with great care. This time she thought that the individual tines of the fork had lengthened and that she could detect a perceptible increase in the overall weight. Good grief. Can this be possible? she wondered.
Carol pulled out the photos she had brought along. All the images of the trident that she had with her had been taken underwater. But she was certain that she could discern two subtle changes since it was first photographed. The axis rod did appear to be thicker and the tines of the fork did indeed look longer.
“Nick,” she said in a loud voice. “Nick, can you come here?”
“I’m right in the middle of something,” an unfriendly voice responded from the other side of the canopy. “Is it important?”
“No. I mean yes,” Carol answered. “But it can wait until your first available moment.”
Carol’s mind was racing. There are only two possibilities, she said to herself with logical precision, either it has changed or it hasn’t. If it hasn’t changed, then I must be spooked. For it definitely seems thicker. But how could it change? Either on its own or someone changed it. But who? Nick? But how could he . . . ?
Nick came up to her. “Yes?” he said in a distant, almost hostile tone. He was obviously annoyed.
Carol handed him the trident. “Well?” she said, smiling and looking at him expectantly.
“Well, what?” he answered, totally confused by what was happening and still angry about the earlier interaction.
“Can you tell the difference?” Carol continued, nodding at the trident in his hand.
Nick turned it upside down as she had done. The sunlight glinted off the golden surface and hurt his eyes. He squinted. Then he switched the object from hand to hand and looked at it from many different angles. “I think I’m lost,” Nick said at length. “Are you trying to tell me that there’s some change in this thing?”
He held it out between them. “Yes,” she said. “Can’t you feel it? The central rod’s thicker than it was on Thursday and the tines or individual elements of that fork on one end are a little longer. And don’t you think the whole thing is heavier?”
Nick’s headache continued to throb. He looked back and forth between the trident and Carol. As far as he could tell, the object had not changed. “No, I don’t,” he said. “It seems the same to me.”
“You’re just being difficult,” Carol persisted, grabbing the trident back. “Here, look at the pictures. Check out the length of the fork there compared to the overall rod and then look at it now. It’s different.”
There was something in Carol’s general attitude that really irritated Nick. She always seemed to assume that she was right and everyone else was wrong. “This is absurd,” Nick nearly shouted in reply, “and I have a lot of work to do.” He paused for a moment and then continued. “How the hell could it change? It’s a metal object, for Christ’s sake. What do you think? That somehow it grew? Shit.”
He shook his head and started to walk away. After a couple of steps, he turned around. “You can’t trust the pictures anyway, “ he said in more measured tones . “Underwater photos always distort the objects . . .”
Troy was approaching with both the cart and Carol’s equipment. He could tell from the body positions, even without hearing the words, that his two boatmates were at it again. “My, my,” he said as he walked up, “I can’t leave you two alone for a minute. What are you fighting about this morning, Professor?”
“This supposedly intelligent reporter friend of yours,” Nick replied, looking at Carol and speaking in a patronizing manner, “insists that our trident has changed shape. Overnight I guess. Although she has not yet begun to explain how. Will you please, since she won’t believe me, explain to her about the index of refraction or whatever it is that fouls up underwater pictures.”
Carol appealed to Troy. “But it has changed. Honest. I remember clearly what it felt like at first and now it feels different.”
Troy was unloading the cart and putting the ocean telescope system on the Florida Queen. “Angel,” Troy said, stopping to check the trident that she was extending toward him with both hands, “I can’t tell whether it has changed or not, but I can tell you one thing. You were very excited when you found it the first time and you were also underwater. With that combination I wouldn’t trust my own memory of how something felt.”
Carol looked at the two men. She was going to pursue the discussion but Nick abruptly changed the subject. “Did you know, Mr. Jefferson, that our client Miss Dawson has requested your services as a diving partner today? She doesn’t want to dive with me.” His tone was now acerbic.
Troy looked at Carol with surprise. “That’s real nice, angel,” he said quietly, “but Nick is really the expert. I’m just a little more than a beginner.”
“I know that,” Carol responded brusquely, still chafing from the outcome of the previous conversation. “But I want to dive with someone I can trust. Someone who behaves responsibly. I know enough about diving for both of us.”
Nick gave Carol an angry look and then turned and walked away. He was pissed. “Come on, Jefferson,” he said. “I’ve already agreed to let Miss High and Mighty have her way. This time. Let’s get the boat ready and finish setting up that telescope thing of hers again.”
“My father finally divorced my mother when I was ten,” Carol was saying to Troy. They were sitting together in the deck chairs at the front of the boat. After they had gone over the procedures for the dive a couple of times, Carol had mentioned something about her first boating experience, a birthday on a fishing boat with her father when she was six, and the two of them had moved comfortably into a discussion of their childhood. “The breakup was awful.” She handed the can of Coke back to Troy. “I think you might have been luckier, in some ways, never to have known your father.”
“I doubt it,” Troy replied seriously. “From my earliest days, I resented the fact that some of the kids had two parents. My brother, Jamie, tried to help, of course, but there was only so much he could do. I purposely chose friends who had fathers living at home.” He laughed. “I remember one dark black kid named Willie Adams. His dad was at home all right, but he was an embarrassment to the family. He was an older man, nearing sixty at the time, and he didn’t work. He just sat on the front porch in his rocking chair all day and drank beer.