Message From Viola Mari

by Sabrina Devonshire

  “This room sure is small,” Justin said. His hand found mine and he lifted it until it brushed by my cheek.

  “Yep.” I said. “In here we won’t be able to do much except sleep and…” my voice trailed off and I giggled.

  “And what?” Justin asked, nuzzling my face with his early morning beard. He looked so sexy, wearing only swim trunks, which rode low on his hips. My gaze lingered over his tanned muscular chest, which narrowed to a trim waist, and then wandered down toward his pelvis. I wanted him-- all the time.

  I leaned over and whispered my thoughts into his ear. “That’s what I had in mind myself.” He raised an eyebrow and pulled me into his arms. He smelled pleasantly of soap and aftershave. “But right now, they’re expecting us on deck.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” I answered, reluctant to remove myself from his aromatic embrace.

  He captured my lips once with his mouth before grasping my hand. The side of his body felt warm against mine, even warmer than the golden sunlight, which caressed my bare shoulders as we stepped out from beneath the deck.

  We introduced ourselves to the six other divers on board. There was Bob and John, a gay couple from Amarillo, Mary and Don, two young honeymooners from Massachusetts, and Robin and Joanne, two sisters who lived on different sides of the country.

  Despite the early hour, everyone conversed. “It’s so great to be away from the cold and the snow,” said Mary, tilting her head back so the sun struck her full in the face. Her skimpy bikini left little to the imagination. Don’s gaze roamed over his scantily clad bride before he placed his arm around her and pulled her against his glow-in-the-dark pale chest.

  “It is really beautiful here,” I said. I loved the tropical weather. In La Jolla, even though the weather was idyllic during the day, nights and mornings were chilly. It felt like such a luxury to step outside in a swimsuit any time of the day or night.

  Michael carried out a tray of coffee and tea before passing around plates of bagels and breakfast rolls.

  “At least you don’t have to worry about snow in La Jolla,” said Bob, his mouth still full of Danish.

  “No, our weather is great all year,” Justin said.

  “So are you doctors or what?” Bob asked.

  “No, actually, I’m an oceanographer and my boyfriend is a science fiction writer and teacher.” I broke off a piece of my bagel and steered it toward my mouth.

  “No fucking way,” said Bob, laughing.

  I looked at Justin and gave him a what’s up with that look. What’s the shocker? His job or mine?

  Justin smiled and shrugged.

  Another man appeared from below decks. “I’m Raoul, the dive master,” he said, waving to the group. Sweaty dark hair stuck to the side of his head, his compact body was deeply tanned. He rested the edge of his clipboard on his abdomen and called out our names.

  I raised my hand when I heard mine.

  “Who do you plan to dive with?” he asked.

  “My boyfriend, Justin, unless you want him to get jealous.” Even with sunglasses on, the sun was so bright I had to squint to see his reaction.

  Everyone laughed. Raoul waited for everyone to settle down.

  “I don’t always remember names the first day so I always make good notes,” Raoul answered. “After all, we don’t want to end up missing anyone at the end of the day, do we?” His thick brows drew together and his lips drew up in a smirk.

  “No, um, of course not,” I stammered.

  He briefed us on our dives for the day. “We’ll do the Blue Hole this morning while you’re fresh. Once you suit up, you’ll descend slowly to around a hundred and thirty feet. At that depth, we’ll only be able to stay down about ten minutes. Once we reach our final depth, I’ll point out stalactites and other limestone features in this collapsed cave, which flooded after the last ice age. You have to be cautious about buoyancy on this dive because for all practical purposes, it’s a bottomless dive. If you drop out of control to four hundred feet, no one’s going to go down to get you and you’ll end up being fish food.” While Raoul chuckled, everyone else looked pale and like maybe they’d rather stay safe on the boat.

  “When I signal, we’ll ascend slowly as a group, then spend another fifteen minutes decompressing on a shallow sandbar at around twenty feet. Make sure you stay there for the duration. This is a deep dive and you need to give yourself plenty of time to outgas before you reach the surface. It’s not like there’s a decompression chamber anywhere nearby,” he said, waving his arms toward the open sea. “Once we reach the surface, we’ll decompress for two hours and do a shallow dive before lunch. After lunch, you’ll dive the wall off Half Moon Caye.” I focused on the horizon as the boat bounced up and down over fifty more miles of frothy waves. Finally, we reached Lighthouse Reef Atoll. The boat skimmed across layers of shallower turquoise water and then all at once, the Blue Hole loomed in front of us. A limestone ring formed an almost perfect circle in the middle of the sea, its midnight blue core a testimony to the water’s tremendous depth.

  As everyone pulled on their wet suits, Raoul said, “Here we are. This amazing cavern we’re about to explore is more than one thousand feet in diameter.”

  Justin and I attached our regulators to our tanks. I turned my back to him and asked him to zip my wet suit. His warm lips brushed against the back of my neck, leaving a residual tingle even after he zipped the suit and tucked the strap underneath the Velcro at the nape of my neck. When he finished, I turned to face him.

  “Are you ready, beautiful?” He slid my sunglasses from my face.

  “I just need to put a couple of fog-prevention drops into my mask.” When I finished, I passed the bottle to Justin. “Okay, I’m good to go, how about you?”

  “I’m ready to hit the water. Let’s go.” He tucked the bottle in a small side pocket of my dive bag.

  We made our way toward the back of the boat and took giant stride steps from the boat into the water. Once the other divers jumped in behind us, Raoul motioned for all of us to descend. Justin and I faced each other, holding hands as we descended into the deep blue water. I looked through my mask into Justin’s, captivated by his sparkling eyes. I felt ready to say I love you but the regulator in my mouth prevented me.

  We held hands and swam beneath the rim of limestone cliffs. Through the murky blue depths, the stalactites and stalagmites looked like dinosaur teeth. We kicked along the jagged walls, touching the limestone and pointing our lights into crevices. It was so romantic swimming beside the man I loved, surrounded by the geology of the earth and the womby warm sea.

  When our ten minutes of bottom time were up, we checked our gauges and began our ascent to the shallow sand bar. Joanne kicked briskly by, flailing her arms and legs. One of her fins struck my mask, nearly yanking it from my face. When she turned to see what she had done, her blue eyes widened with terror. Her eyebrows merged into a frightened crease as she used her hand to slice the out of air signal across her throat. Raoul lunged toward one of the reserve tanks he had left in the sand but it was too late. Joanne started kicking for the surface. Don’t do it, I wanted to scream. Those carbon dioxide bubbles will explode inside of you and you’ll die writhing in agony.

  Justin propelled himself toward Joanne, the power of his kicking, fin-tipped feet raising a cloud of sand. Fear momentarily paralyzed me and I watched the horrific scene play out like a movie in front of my eyes. “Oh my God, Justin,” I screamed through my regulator, which created only an echo of bubbles.

  He swam up behind her and grasped her in a cross-chest hold, letting air out of his jacket to lower them back toward the sand bar. She thrashed and clawed at him until her regulator fell from her mouth. Their struggle stirred up a more sand and moved them dangerously near the precipice. I clenched my fists and my pulse pounded like a drum in my ears. I felt frantic to help Justin, but knew entangling myself in the struggle would only make the situation more dire. Maybe if they break apart, I can intervene. Oh please, God, don’t l
et anything happen to him. I love him so much. As I trembled with terror, I reminded myself to breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Regular breathing is a diver’s lifeline. Since pressure changes constantly with depth, even a few seconds of breath holding can fatally overinflate the lungs. If she pulls him over the edge when he has no air in his buoyancy vest, they’ll tumble faster and faster into that well of midnight blue water never to be seen again.

  As Joanne and Justin tottered on the edge of the crater rim, Raoul swam over and grasped the back of Justin’s BCD with one hand, holding the spare tank in the other. After he pulled them away from the edge, he attached Joanne’s regulator to the tank. It took both men to hold her still. Eventually, she stopped thrashing around and began breathing. Joanne’s sister motioned to go to the surface, but Raoul merely shook his head and pointed to his watch. We needed to release more dissolved gases from our tissues before we ascended. If we did, we would all live to see another day.

  Back on the boat, a pall hung over the morning. We nibbled on snacks and sipped from water bottles but communication was restricted to the occasional grunt or nod. Joanne had been careless and in the process had turned what could have been a pleasurable dive into a terrifying nightmare. Now each of us lived inside our own heads.

  Raoul broke the silence. “So I was thinking instead of diving again this morning, we could land on Half Moon Caye a bit early so you’ll have time to explore the island before lunch. Then we can dive the wall this afternoon. What do you say?”

  “That would be really nice.” I detected an unsteady tremor in Robin’s voice. “To stand on dry land for awhile.”

  Everyone else nodded or voiced their agreement. Every muscle in my neck and shoulders had stiffened from all the stress. I ached to spend some alone time with Justin. I wanted to hold him extra close, to show him how much I cherished every moment we spent together. That instant he’d been in mortal danger had frightened me to the core. I recalled the recent nights I’d slept so peacefully in the comforting cradle of his warm chest and shoulders. How the rise and fall of his chest, like the waves outside the boat, had soothed me into sleep. How his chest hair sometimes tickled my face. I can’t lose him. Not ever.

  Half Moon Caye was a waxing moon of white sand and towering palm trees. Justin and I slipped off our dive gear and stepped off the boat holding hands. The northern end of the one-and-a-half-mile-long island was all white sand, the southern end a tangled jungle. The morning’s stressful events were forgotten as we walked along a narrow shell-lined path beneath a canopy of trees, stopping to taste the salt on each other’s lips from time to time. Justin had this way of making me forget any other place existed, other than the world of him and me.

  He kissed me again and again and we stumbled into the depth of the canopy away from the trail and fell into the sand and overgrowth, uninhibited by thoughts of snakes or possible discovery. His long fingers adeptly removed my bikini and I tugged off his shorts. His ready-for-action organ brushed against my moist thighs. I gasped with desire. His hand caressed the contours of my breasts, my stomach and tingly goose pimples ran down my flesh as he roamed his hands over my buttocks and thighs and nibbled and licked my nipples until I told him I wanted more. “Climb on top of me,” he demanded. He lounged back on the sand, his abdominal muscles rippling, his penis standing up like a pole. I straddled him, giving him time to slide his fingers in and out of my wet opening and stroke my clitoris before I raised my hips and lowered myself with a sinful moan over the length of his aroused penis. I cried out with ecstasy as we moved toward a frenzied rhythm. As I thrashed and moaned and cried out his name, he placed his hand over my mouth to muffle my orgasmic cry, which would have reverberated throughout the jungle. Before Justin, I’d only had sex in beds. Justin and I made love anywhere and everywhere.

  After our lovemaking, he gently pulled my bikini straps together and as he tied them, his fingertips tickled my neck and back. We walked through the canopy of trees, holding hands and I looked into his face, wanting to commit every feature I adored to memory. His angular, sun-bronzed face, his tangled curls, and the dangling silver chain that hung slightly askew from one earlobe.

  A platform stood at the end of the sandy trail. We climbed dozens of wrought iron steps toward the top. Above the canopy of trees, the entire island and the surrounding clear blue ocean extended for miles. In the surrounding trees, were myriad nests of the endangered red-footed booby birds. The birds looked so safe and comfortable in their large nests of grass and branches, the way I felt encircled by Justin’s strong arms.

  As we strolled back, we mused over the differences between diving in La Jolla and the Caribbean.

  “Diving here is like peering through clear crystal,” Justin said.

  “That’s what I love about this place,” I answered. “The water’s so murky in California—the visibility isn’t ever very good. I love diving without a wetsuit, too--it feels forbidden.” The warm Belizean waters embraced, rather than chilling the body to the core.

  “If all goes well, you might not be wearing anything by the end of the next dive.”

  “In your dreams, lover boy.” I mock-punched him.

  “Well, it wasn’t difficult to get that suit off earlier.” He gave the back strap of my bikini an affectionate twang. When I tried to grab him, he ran away. Sand flew from my heels as I sprinted after him.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Once Raoul and Michael piled their plates high with sandwiches and potato salad, they wandered down the beach, eating as they walked. The rest of us sat clustered around a cement picnic table shaded by coconut palms. I wiggled my toes in the warm white sand and listened to the arching fronds whisper in the breeze. John and Bob talked about deep-sea fishing and Justin chewed his way through a second sandwich while I bit into a fleshy chunk of mango, squirting sweet juice down my chin.

  Joanne’s green eyes darted nervously from my face to Justin’s. She hunched over her nearly empty plate. “I was too upset earlier to thank you for helping me. I’m just so embarrassed. I’ve been diving for ten years and never ran into trouble before.” She pushed a chunk of pineapple across her plate with her fork. “But I think that dive was just too deep for me—at that depth I was so out of it, I completely forgot to check my gauge. Anyway, I really appreciate all you did—I would have drowned if you hadn’t rescued me.”

  Robin patted her on the shoulder. Joanne sat up straighter.

  “It was nothing really,” said Justin. “Just help me out if something goes wrong for me, okay?”

  “You can count on it.” Joanne jabbed her fork into a triangle of pineapple and lifted it towards her mouth.

  “Is your boyfriend this much of a hero at home?” asked Robin.

  “He’s my hero,” I answered, leaning toward him until our shoulders touched. Our eyes met as he chewed another bite of sandwich.

  “Where are you from?” Justin asked.

  Joanne taught elementary school in Baltimore while Robin practiced tax law in Palo Alto. The two of them took an annual trip together since they lived so far from each other.

  “Maybe next year we’ll dive the Great Barrier Reef,” said Robin.

  “You should. It’s a spectacular place,” I answered.

  After lunch, our boat roared out to the edge of Half Moon Caye Wall. At sixty feet, the wall began its plunge into midnight blue depths, but Raoul insisted that we stay above eighty feet. We didn’t need a lot of convincing—the morning’s extreme dive had saturated us with carbon dioxide and our dive computers showed that if we were going to do a repeat dive safely, we had to be conservative.

  “It’s easy to lose track of depth on a wall like this,” he said. “We’ve lost more than one foolish diver out here. Pay close attention to your buoyancy and stay focused on that gauge. Is that clear?” He directed his gaze at Joanne.

  Everyone nodded. Once Raoul gave the go ahead, we suited up and exited the boat. We descended along the buoy line to eighty feet and followed the wall’s contours. A multico
lored palette of coral and sponges decorated the wall. Fans waved in the current. Coral looked like wintry trees or deer antlers in brilliant reds and purples or had grown into contorted shapes, like brains or oversized heads of cauliflower. The underwater garden flourished—there wasn’t a single sign of human disturbance. I jerked my head up when I spotted a flash of silver out of the corner of my eye. Above me, a barracuda frowned at me with razor sharp teeth. On the reef, colorful fish swam in schools, chasing each other or nibbling on plants.

  We kicked along the edge of the wall, which slanted downward into darkness. I pointed to a series of bubbles rising from the depths. For a moment, fear constricted my chest. Divers release bubbles whenever they breathe. Perhaps Joanne didn’t put enough air in her vest and plunged out-of-control to the bottom.

  My panic turned to laughter when three dolphins spiraled into view, nudging each other with long noses and twisting through the water as if introducing themselves. These friendly creatures didn’t have to worry about decompression sickness—their bodies were designed to change depth rapidly. As we followed the wall back to the boat, they pursued us, their slippery gray bodies occasionally brushing up against us. Justin took my hand and we swam side by side with our new playful friends.

  At the surface, the dolphins continued frolicking. Justin and I leaned over the boat and watched them leap into the air and hit the water with a resounding splash. Others joined them and soon dozens of dolphins leaped, flipped in the air, and splashed down into the water.