Chapter

 53

I leaned forward into the spray of the bow’s wake as Lauren stood steering the “Petite Princess,” a small speed boat she boasted had given her water skis many a thrilling challenge.

I looked behind me at the receding lights of the yacht, hoping that Mathews would not be disturbed when he read the note on his cabin door, “Doc - gone with Lauren to visit a ‘cove.’ Be back soon. Charles.”

He was either going to think I was finally taking on the full responsibility of my problem or that I had gone completely over the edge.

I asked myself that question several times as we closed the gap between the speedboat and the now murky shoreline. Murky because a light fog had drifted in from the north, just a small patch, but it was fog. It was fog that became denser as we came closer.

“Would you please hand me a towel from inside there,” she shouted above the roar of the engine that pushed us faster...the speedometer climbing to 50 mph. Her voice had a familiarity I hadn’t heard before now...a glee, a carefree lilt uncharacteristic of this woman whose inner-self was usually insulated by her business decorum.

I lifted the bench seat and handed her a towel from the neatly packed beach and scuba gear. It appeared she had all the equipment two people would ever need for a moonlight visit to a cove.

As she wiped her face that now seemed to be straining to see something through the fog, I watched the shoreline lights disappear in the gray mist.

We were engulfed now.

Suddenly, she shut the engines off. As we drifted to a standstill, she peered at the barely visible compass. “We have to be close,” she whispered as if anyone would hear.

“Close? Close to what?” “Shhhh. Listen. Hear it?”

I listened, but the only sound reaching my ears was the gentle lapping of water against the hull. “What am I listening for?”

“The bell buoy. Listen. It’s just to the right...maybe fifty, seventy-five yards.”

She started the engines again. “From there, it’s forty degrees North North West,” she said. “Remember how you used to watch me eat up that half mile to the cove? You’d sit on the beach with your Wall Street Journal and go on and on about how dangerous it was to swim these waters. But, for me, it was life. The bigger the waves, the stronger the current, the colder the water...that’s what made it worthwhile. You could never understand that. You couldn’t understand how that translated to the boardrooms...to the P & L statements...to your bank account.”

She shut the engines off again. “But that was all right. You paid me well for what I did. Hear? There it is.”

I peered through the intermittent patches of fog and could see the buoy bobbing peacefully in the calm waters, its red light struggling to be seen.

She turned to me. “It wasn’t the money, Charlie, it was you I wanted. I would have worked for nothing. But you never believed me because you bought everything. You wouldn’t take anything without paying generously for it. So, you never trusted me...never trusted me any more than the used dice. When you wanted pristine dice, you bought them, even when they were free. When you wanted a new pack of cards, you bought those too. And when you wanted a virgin flown in from anywhere...you paid a king’s ransom. Always everything had to be new...brand new. Except me. Well, look at me, Charlie. I wasn’t new then and I’m sure as hell a lot less new now. But I guess you broke your rules because I taught you everything you know.”

We’d drifted closer to the buoy. We were twenty feet away when she said, “Here,” handing me the rope and anchor. “You used to be good at this. Hook me up.”

“What?”

“The buoy. You used to be pretty handy with one of these. Give it a try.”

I looked at the grappling anchor and then the buoy and shrugged. “Why?” I queried.

“Go ahead. Don’t ask so many questions. Go on.”

I stood on the edge of the boat and after several tries, managed to hook the anchor onto the top rung of the buoy cage.

“Pull us in, Charlie,” she called out, having now opened a bottle of Dom Perignon. “Pull us in.”

I drew us alongside the buoy as its bell sounded out a carefree toll.

She handed me a glass that was all but empty by the time my hand could grab it. “Let’s drink one to old times, Charlie. How should we put it? To the wedding bells that never tolled? To all the times you sat on the shore and watched while I proved myself to you? Or just to the love you never understood?” She clinked my glass and drank as I thoughtfully followed.

It was hard reconciling my thoughts about this woman who seemed to have been hurt so deeply. She then reached into the scuba gear, removed a flashlight, grabbed the grappling rope and pulled us even closer to the buoy. She pointed. “See, Charlie...see the writings. There are twenty-two of them, Charlie...twenty- two swims to my little place in the water.”

I looked to where she was pointing. Carved many times on the top of the buoy was “I Love Charlie.” I looked back at her. Her face was a mixture of mist and tears as she lifted a knife from the scuba gear.

She stared at me a moment, then her tear-filled eyes glanced again at the inscriptions. “That’s something you didn’t know about me...probably the only thing I never told you. I knew you’d laugh at my secret place. You were a mean son-of-a-bitch, Charlie, but somehow you could make me feel young, like a schoolgirl, like a child. I’ll always remember that.”

She leaned forward and once again made record… “Twenty-Three,” she muttered as she quickly finished, lifted the anchor and leaned back into the boat.

“You pour, I’ll drive.” She gestured to the ice chest at the rear of the boat. She turned and started the engine as I started back to the chest.

It was inconceivable that I, that Charles could have caused so much pain in one human being. I wanted to take her in my arms and apologize for all the pain Charlie had to have caused her. I wanted to let her feel the small child in herself again, to feel loved and without wounds.

As we slowly motored toward the shore, I glanced back at the buoy, and for an instant even considered stepping up to her and uttering the lie “Charlie loves Lauren.” But, before any of these thoughts could take flight...I suddenly found myself falling forward toward the stern of the boat as the primal scream of the engines lifted the bow skyward in an angry lurch. Mixed in was the faint sound of Lauren shouting, “I loved you Charlie...I really loved you.”

Then all was dark and cold and sinking. I was overboard.

I was underwater.

I was trying to survive.

My eyes searched the darkness. There was no light. There was nothing but black and the roar; the bubbling roar through the water as the engines went further and further away.

My lungs were bursting, as I desperately reached the surface.  As the engine sounds faded completely, they were replaced by the faint sound of a tolling bell.

Blindly, I pulled my body through the water toward the sound of the buoy. Not since the throwing of the football in Death Valley had I experienced the strength my arms were capable of. As I unleashed every ounce of willpower I had, I kept thinking of the ball floating through the air toward the woman running to catch it. Sara’s face and outstretched arms suddenly gave me the resolve to pull forward just a few more times.

I gasped for the air to keep me conscious. My head reeled. My arms and legs flailed as my eyes sought out the sound my ears told me meant safety.

There it was. Breaking through the fog was the red light of the buoy, only a short distance away. I was still alive.

Sobel was nowhere.