Davis, Jerry – Scuba

Christie walked around the corner and right up to him, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him. When she pulled back she showed him something in her hand, a hotel key with a bright orange tag. She dangled it right in front of his face. Her eyes were bright, glassy things, full of joy. She was smiling so warmly.

Jack slid off the bar stool and followed where she led.

#

The room was very nice. It was large, warm, and totally dark when the curtains were pulled. Despite being in a building with a population equaling that of most small mid-western towns, it was utterly silent.

They were naked on top of the covers, she was curled against him on the side opposite the door. Their hands still ran up and down each other’s bodies, caressing warm skin and nerves still tingling. Warm air blew down from a vent in the ceiling, a breath of luxury.

“We ought to send up for champagne,” she said. “I love champagne. I love expensive champagne. The more expensive it is, the more I love it.”

“My father loved this really expensive champagne from France that came in a black bottle. He could only get it every other year, because it was a very small vineyard. Sometimes he’d have it flown over special order. I remember the last year he did that the bill was more than a vacation cruise.”

“Your father was rich. Did you inherit it all?”

“No. I just inherited all his problems. Champagne and cigars were the only things he ever spent money on, other than his company. He was always pouring money back into it. Now all that money is shares of DGD stock.”

“How did he die? In bed with a blond?” She nudged him.

Jack laughed. “No, it’s funnier than that. He died of pneumonia because he didn’t believe he was sick enough to go to a hospital.” But that’s not the truth, he thought. Dad knew he was going to die. I think he wanted to die. I think that after all those years he couldn’t handle it anymore. He wanted out.

There was an odd scratching sound. A key in a lock. Before Jack could react the room door swung wide open and a man with an auto-advance camera and an electronic flash was taking seven pictures per second. Jack froze in shock. Christie reacted in a strange way; she climbed half over him with her body and posed in sexual positions.

The roll of film exposed, the man dashed out the door, slamming it behind him. Christie pushed herself off of Jack and slid into the darkness away from him. The room was again quiet, and seemed even darker than before. Horrible, blotchy afterimages of the flash haunted Jack’s eyes. The warm air blowing down on him now seemed like the sickly breath of a giant, inflated menace.

“I’m so sorry, Jack,” Christie said in a small voice, lost in the dark. “I like you. I’m sorry this happened.”

Jack said nothing. The pressure was returning, the air bubbling away. He felt it like a pressure on his face, like a diving mask being shoved into his cheeks and forehead by the overwhelming pressure.

“The job I took when I was in Hollywood was as a pornographic actress,” Christie was saying. “I’m a very good actress, I could have made it, but I’ve never had the will power to stay on that great straight and narrow, you know? From there I began working conventions, I was a ‘escort’ girl. That was three to five hundred dollars a night, Jack. I couldn’t turn that down, I was starving.

Out here in Chicago I get more, much more. I’m a star here, Jack.

Isn’t that strange? I’m a star.”

Jack was drowning. He was literally drowning. The air had turned to water, and it was in his throat.

“Don’t hate me,” Christie said.

Jack scrambled in a panic to the bathroom, bumping into walls and tripping. In the bathroom he closed the door and turned on the light. He stared at himself in the mirror; naked, beaded with water. His eyes bulged. He vomited salt water into the sink, vomited, vomited. It kept coming out, it seemed it would never end.

His career was dead, his car wrecked, his marriage stained.

In all these years he had never cheated on his wife. He couldn’t handle it. He couldn’t believe he’d let himself do something like this.

Christie was knocking on the door. He could hear her muffled voice coming through. “Are you okay? Jack? Hello, Jack?”

He fell back against the wall, slid to the floor. His breath came in raw rasps. The room was rocking with the swells of the ocean. Clothes, he thought. Dress. He stood up, wavering, and opened the door, pushing past Christie without a word. She had turned on the lights and put on her clothes. He wandered frantically from place to place gathering his together and putting them on.

“You do hate me,” she said. “Don’t you.”

“Did you wreck my car on purpose?”

“Yes.”

“Then, yes, I do hate you.”

She nodded, and turned and walked out of the room.

#

Jack reached his car and stopped, staring at the dent. It was large and horrible, made the car look like junk. The parking place beside his where he and Christie had pushed her car was empty. He stood there, staring.

The rain had stopped and now it was getting bitterly cold. I hate Chicago, he thought. We’re moving back to Florida, goddamn it. I don’t care how, we’re just going to get in the car and go.

Jack had to get in on the passenger side because the driver’s side door would not open. He was dizzy and light headed. It was hard to do anything because the ocean swells were throwing him off balance. The bulge on the inside of the driver’s door elbowed him over; it was like trying to drive with a midget sitting to the left of him. The car started, thank god. He put it into gear and pulled out of the parking lot, on onto the street.

It was past 10:00 PM and the traffic was light. The expressway took him into the suburbs and within minutes he was home. What am I going to tell her? he thought. She’s going to know. I didn’t call, and I smell like sex. What am I going to tell her?

He pulled into the driveway and stopped, shutting off the engine. The ocean swells were bad here, large, as if blown by a storm. I ought to get away from the house and throw out a sea anchor, he thought. Jeeze, that’s crazy, I’m in a car. I’m in a car. This is not a boat.

He sat there holding onto the steering wheel, and a large wave broke over the hood and washed over the windshield. Then the car tipped sickeningly and the water washed over the windshield again, but this time did not run off. Oh god, he thought. The car is sinking. I’m under water and the car is sinking. Oh god.

He tried the door handle but the door wouldn’t budge. The pressure is holding it closed, he thought. The pressure’s going to crush this car like an aluminum can. His shoes and legs felt wet, he looked down to see water rising from the floor boards. He tried the door again, but there was no way he was going to be able to open it. The window, he thought. Go though the window.

He turned the crank and water came streaming in, and the further the window went down the harder it pressed him into the seat. He was stomach down, holding his breath. The water poured over him. The car began to sink even faster. Jack could feel it in his guts, the feeling of falling, sinking. He hung on until the car was completely filled, then pulled himself through the window and swam up, fighting the suction of the sinking car. He could feel it dragging him down after it, but he fought, pulling himself up and to the side with sharp thrusts, and then he was rising.

The water around him was as black as outer space. His first thought was that he was deep, very deep, but then he remembered it was night time and that it would be black all the way up to the surface. I just have to keep my breath, he thought. Relax everything but my legs, and kick, kick, kick. Hold that breath.

You can do it. You can hold it for a minute and a half. You can hold it longer if you have to.

Already his lungs were burning. It had been a long, long time since he’d last held his breath for a minute and a half. The water was cold, very cold. It was numbing his legs so that he couldn’t tell if he were still kicking. He felt them with his hands to make sure.

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