Blowing Smoke

by Barbara Block

  “I like being low-tech”

  “I know you do.” George paused for another swallow of his beer. “But the world’s becoming a high-tech place.”

  “You think I’m not aware of that?”

  “Even a Luddite like you has got to move with the times.”

  “I will.” I leaned over and watched the ripples in the opaque water and studied the way the color shifted from lighter to darker green. Then I lifted my head up toward the sun and closed my eyes. “But not today.”

  George and I stayed on the water for the next three hours. It was getting cooler. I rubbed my arms and wished I’d brought a jacket along. The breeze had a definite chill to it now. Or maybe it was just my sunburn that was making the wind feel that way.

  “What’s Manuel up to these days?” George suddenly asked.

  “Why?” George didn’t approve of him, thought it was wrong of me to have given him the key to my house.

  He shrugged. “Just making conversation.”

  “He’s checking out Louis’s girlfriend for me.”

  “What’s she got to do with anything?”

  “I don’t know. She’s just popped up in too many places recently.”

  “Just like my ex-wife,” George muttered.

  I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t, and I didn’t ask. His ex-wife was one of those out-of-bound topics of which we had far too many. The river had grown quieter in the last hour. Lacy patches of fog drifted up from the water, obscuring vision. Most of the boats had gone in for the evening. Soon we’d have to go in as well.

  George yawned. The sun and the water, not to mention the beer, had made us both sleepy. “How about we give it twenty more minutes and then call it a night?”

  “Fine.” It would be too dark to see anything soon, anyway.

  He pointed at the sky. “Look at those clouds.”

  I nodded. I’d been watching them for the last ten minutes. They were black and moving in from the west at a rapid clip. “The weather report didn’t say anything about rain.”

  “It looks as if it’s coming, anyway.”

  There was a clap of thunder far off in the distance. Zsa Zsa whined. She didn’t like storms. If we were home, she’d be hiding in the closet.

  “We’d better head for the marina,” George said.

  “Wait a minute.” I held up my hand as I watched a figure make its way down to the shore. “I think that’s Sinclair.”

  George cursed under his breath. “Are you sure?”

  I held out the binoculars. “See for yourself.”

  “I believe you. What’s he doing?”

  “Nothing at the moment.”

  Sinclair had come down to the water’s edge. He had his skullcap back on. His robe was moving in the breeze that had suddenly sprung up. He stared straight out. For a moment I shrank back, thinking he was looking at us, but then I realized he was looking at the yacht that was passing by. We bounced around in its wake.

  George held out his hand. “It’s starting to rain.”

  “I know.” I could feel the drops on my nose and cheeks. “Come on, Pat,” I murmured, willing her to appear. “Don’t make me have to run all over God’s creation looking for you.”

  “Why doesn’t Sinclair go inside?” George demanded.

  It started to pour.

  Sheets of wind-driven rain swept across the water. I blinked the water out of my eyes. Then, suddenly, we had the answer to George’s question. Pat Humphrey appeared as if I’d conjured her up.

  “Now this is interesting,” I said.

  George grunted.

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I think I’d like to get out of the rain.”

  My eyes were glued to Pat Humphrey as she walked down from the lodge. Her head was bare, but she was wearing a long dark raincoat. Underneath it I got glimpses of a white shirt and skirt that stood out like a beacon in the dim light. As if sensing her presence, Sinclair faced in her direction and held out his arms. They embraced, and then they kissed. His hands were all over her body.

  “They’re a good pair,” George observed.

  “They certainly have a commonality of interests.”

  Zsa Zsa rubbed the side of her muzzle against my leg. I reached down with my free hand and stroked her while I watched Sinclair and Humphrey. They kissed for a long time.

  “Whatever happened to motel rooms?” George asked.

  “Maybe they’re economizing.”

  “At last,” he said as Sinclair turned and started back up the path to the lodge. “It must be fun walking in those wet robes.”

  Pat Humphrey was still standing by the water’s edge. She knelt, picked up a handful of stones, and began tossing them, one at a time into the river.

  “What the hell is she waiting for?” George demanded.

  “You got me.”

  By now the chop was getting really bad. I could feel my stomach turning queasy, so I was relieved when she turned and started up the way Sinclair had come. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Good,” George said. “I could use a drink.”

  “Two,” I said. I reached for my cigarettes, but they were soaked, too.

  A few seconds later, we heard the crack of a rifle shot.

  Chapter Twenty

  It’s funny how you experience things when you’re not expecting them.

  How sometimes you think they’re something else.

  For one split second I’d thought that the crack I was hearing was the sound of a branch falling from one of the trees along the river. Or maybe I’d hoped that’s what it was, because I knew better even before George had yanked me down off my seat.

  A dull pain ran up the middle of one of my thighs as my knees hit the floor. I rubbed the spot above my elbow where George had grabbed me and cursed under my breath. I could almost feel the bruises forming.

  “You want to get shot?” he hissed, pointing to the hole near the hull of the boat.

  The bullet had entered about three inches from where I was sitting.

  Close enough.

  I’d been shot before. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second and took a deep breath to steady myself and tried not to think of the shattered muscle and bone. Of pain. Of the time shut away in a hospital bed. Of the gratitude at just being outside in the fresh air.

  I indicated the hole. “I wonder if the rental place is going to make us pay for this.”

  “Maybe if we ask the shooter nicely, he will.”

  “Maybe.”

  The water streaming off George’s face outlined and highlighted its contours. His eyes stood out bright with anger. I raised my head above the side of the boat and surveyed the shore. The fog coming off the water, combined with the rain, reduced everything to varying shades of gray. Water and sky looked the same.

  “I don’t see anyone. Maybe they left.”

  George snorted. “I wish I’d brought my weapon.” He had a nine millimeter that he kept in a lockbox in his bedroom.

  “I wish I’d brought my cell phone.”

  “I wish we were on land.”

  I thought about the rifle I’d grabbed out of Sinclair’s hands yesterday. I shouldn’t have thrown it in the lake. I should have shot the bastard when I’d had the chance. Now it was too late. I tried to picture him or one of his goons standing behind a tree, the gun heavy in his hand, intent on the sound of our voices or the waves slapping on the boat’s hull. He’d lift his weapon and pull the trigger, the revolver bucking in his hand, a smile of satisfaction on his face. Somehow, though, I couldn’t put Sinclair’s face on the shooter. It wouldn’t stick.

  I wiped the rain out of my eyes and pulled the brim of my hat farther down on my head, but it didn’t keep the water off my face. The drops ran down my cheeks and soaked my shoulders. It felt as if I were submerged in a watery grave.

  The wind picked up, sweeping a curtain of water across the river, blowing it into George’s face. He hunched down, reached over, and pulled the starter. The motor co
ughed and died.

  “Fuck.” George tried again. This time nothing happened. He brought his foot back and kicked it.

  “That’s going to help.”

  The boat dipped alarmingly low to the water as George swiveled to face me. “You have another suggestion?”

  But before I could make it there was another crack. We threw ourselves onto the boat’s floor. Little slivers of metal peppered my face like bee stings as the bullet ripped through the boat hull. How far could bullets go underwater, anyway? I tried to remember. Fifty feet? Half a mile? Less? More? Above me I could hear George’s litany of curses rising and falling, intertwined with Zsa Zsa’s whining.

  After a minute, I raised my head. By now the runabout was rocking back and forth, and water was sloshing in over the sides. Zsa Zsa tiptoed around the edge of the boat, trying to avoid getting her paws wet in the puddles that were forming. I touched my cheek. My fingers came away wet, but I didn’t know if they were wet with rain or blood.

  George took my face in his hands and studied it. “You just got scratched. You’ll be fine. But the shooter wouldn’t be. I can promise you that. He’s going to wish his momma had never pushed him out into the light of day.” He sounded angrier than I’d ever heard him. Then he turned back to the engine.

  I pulled the tendrils of hair that had plastered themselves across my cheek away and checked for the life jackets.

  “See if there’s a wrench in there, too,” George said, his voice an echo on the wind.

  I rifled through the compartment the life jackets were supposed to be in.

  The first one was filled with rope, empty beer cans, and fast-food wrappers. The second one was stuffed with paint cans and brushes and rags that smelled of gasoline and turpentine.

  “So far there’s nothing here we can use.”

  “Well, keep looking. Maybe we’ll get lucky. I don’t know why I let you talk me into these things,” George complained.

  I raised my head. “These things, as you refer to them, was just going to be a nice day on the water. Which it was up until about fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Have you found anything yet?”

  “Only this.” I held up the ratty-looking life preserver I’d located in the third compartment. According to the notice pasted on the compartment door, the boat was supposed to have a minimum of six flotation devices.

  “That’s going to get us far,” he observed, eyeing the duct tape on it.

  “It’s better than nothing.”

  “Barely. No wonder the rental was so cheap. When we get back to the marina, I am going to personally and cheerfully strangle the guy who rented us this piece of shit.”

  “At least it’s floating.”

  “But not for long if this keeps up.”

  George was right. More water was coming in over the sides. Zsa Zsa whimpered and tried to sit on my lap. No sense, she probably thought, in everyone getting wet.

  Another crack sounded.

  We ducked down for the third time.

  “I’m getting tired of this,” George said. “Real tired.”

  After a couple of minutes, we poked our heads back up, and George went back to working on the engine.

  It was dead.

  I repositioned Zsa Zsa on my lap. “Maybe you should let me try.”

  “I’m almost there.” George yanked on the string again. This time the engine spluttered. “See. She’s coming.” He pulled again. The engine coughed and died. He patted it. “Come on, baby,” he coaxed. “You can do it, you know you can.” George yanked the cord again. The motor roared to life. “That’s it,” George cried. “We’re out of here.”

  But just as he opened the throttle up, a bolt of lightning flashed across the sky. For an instant everything went white. The smell of ozone filled my nostrils. The hair on my arms stood up.

  “Jesus, that was close,” I said.

  Another bolt crackled above us, dazzling us with light.

  George gestured upward. “It’s time to go in. Unless, of course, the idea of becoming a French fry appeals to you.”

  “No. I’ve sworn off fried foods.”

  “I just hope that the shooter has gone home for the night.” And with that George turned the boat around and headed it toward Sinclair’s dock.

  “So do I.”

  By now the runabout was bobbing up and down like the proverbial cork in the ocean. The rain was coming down in sheets. Zsa Zsa whimpered and wiggled under my legs as another crack of lightning exploded in the sky.

  “Great,” George said to me. “I don’t get it. All summer it’s nice, there’s no rain, and we have to be out on the water on the one evening it storms.”

  We were a couple of inches from the dock when George cut the throttle. I reached out to pull us in, but a wave slapped us against the jetty. I pulled my hand back just as the hull smashed into the wood. The thought that Sinclair would not be pleased flashed through my mind as we rammed the dock again. Somehow that made me feel better.

  “I can’t get up there to tie us down,” I yelled as another wave pulled us out toward the river.

  By now we were about a foot away and traveling fast. George tried to start the motor again, but it coughed and spluttered and died. He pounded it with his fists. It didn’t help.

  “We don’t even have any oars,” he said as he hunched over the motor.

  I watched the shoreline recede, come closer, and recede again. Then suddenly there was a loud crunch.

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “No shit. We’ve hit something,” George said at about the same time I looked down to see what was knocking against my legs.

  It was the cooler floating around. Which was when I became aware that there was about six inches of water—though it was difficult to gauge the exact amount in the dark—in the boat.

  “We have to get out of here,” George yelled.

  “We could bail.”

  “I don’t think we can bail fast enough. How’s your swimming these days?”

  I wiped the rain out of my eyes. We weren’t that far from shore. “Tolerable, and yours?”

  “Good enough for this.”

  By now the water was over my shins, and the runabout was riding lower. “What about Zsa Zsa?”

  “I’ll take her. I bet she’ll never go in another boat.” And George grabbed the whimpering dog and plunged into the river.

  I said a prayer and followed him. Considering the hot summer we’d been having, the water was colder than I expected. The shock of it took my breath away. I swallowed a mouthful of river, gagged, and began coughing.

  George paddled toward me. Zsa Zsa was clutched to his chest. He grabbed the back of my T-shirt with his other hand. “Light, you’re not going to drown on me, are you?”

  I raised my head and struggled to get my breath back. “No.” The buffeting waves made me feel as if I were in a churn. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You sure?”

  I treaded water while I got a bearing on the land. “Absolutely” It was easy to see how someone could panic and end up swimming the wrong way in the dark.

  “Because I wouldn’t want to be stuck with your damned dog.”

  “Won’t happen,” I assured him. “It’s okay. You can let go of my shirt now. Really.”

  He did, reluctantly. “You go first and I’ll follow.”

  I nodded and started doing the crawl toward the shore. As I swam, I tried to time it so I took a breath when I was on top of the wave, but every once in a while I’d miscalculate and swallow some more river and gag on it. I lost all sense of time. It seemed as if I were swimming forever. What had looked liked a short distance in the boat turned out to be a lot farther in the water.

  I settled into a rhythm, switching from the crawl to the sidestroke and back again, stopping every once in a while to check and see that George and Zsa Zsa were still behind me. As each moment went by, my arms and legs seemed to grow heavier and heavier. By the time I crawled up on the shore and collapsed in the dir
t, my legs were shaking from exertion. I felt as if I’d run a marathon.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  A moment later, George sprawled out beside me. Zsa Zsa jumped out of his arms, ran over and licked my face. I hugged her to me. She licked the corners of my mouth and my chin, then rubbed up against my shirt, trying to get some of the water off her coat. After that she snuggled up by my side. The three of us lay like that for I don’t know how long, too spent to move or talk, the cold water having leached the warmth from our bodies. Even if someone had come up and tried to shoot us, I’m not sure I could have summoned up the energy to move.

  Instead, I watched the lightning and listened to the thunder. The smell of wet dirt and vegetation and ozone lingered in the air, but the storm was moving off. The lightning was over the hill now, the time between the thunderclaps and the flashes longer. Over to the west I could see glimpses of the moon as the clouds scudded across it. The rain felt soft as it caressed my face. I listened to the wind whipping the branches of the trees back and forth. The friction of the leaves rubbing against each other sounded like sandpaper. And there was something else as well. Something higher.

  I turned my head toward George. “I think I heard a moan.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “There it is again.” A picture of Pat Humphrey flashed through my mind. In the excitement I’d forgotten about her. She’d been there at the edge of the shore, and then she disappeared. I pulled myself up. My legs felt as if they were made of rubber. My arms were still partially numb from the cold water. “I’m going to check it out.”

  “Don’t be stupid. The shooter could still be out there.”

  “If he were, we’d be dead already.”

  “Come on, Light.” George rested his hand on my calf.

  “There. You mean you didn’t hear that groan?”

  George grunted and got up, but I was already on my way.

  Zsa Zsa circled my legs as I followed the sound. The smell of wet pine needles surrounded me. They scratched at my calves and ankles. I stepped over rocks. Pebbles embedded themselves in my feet. Somewhere along the way I realized I’d lost my shoes. I moved a branch that had been downed by the storm, and its sap stuck to my hands. I went around a large lilac bush that someone had planted as a specimen tree. Then I went around another one and stopped.