Chris (7 page)

By the time she had dried herself and combed her hair, Chris was full of hope. Hope for a chance to get away for awhile, from Dizz and from George and from Carol and from herself, and back to the stillness and peace of the underwater world.

When Chris reached the kitchen, dressed and ready to go, Dizz had just finished scrambling eggs with bacon. She carried two plates from the stove to the table. "Sit down," she said.

Chris sat. "What's eating you?" she grinned.

"You make me so damned mad sometimes. What's so mysterious about a bunch of stinking sea shells?" Dizz was furious and fuming.

"Who said anything about sea shells?" Chris picked up a fork and went at the eggs hungrily.

"Shut up. Just shut up!"

Chris finished her eggs and bacon and opened a fresh pack of cigarettes. She took one out and lit it. "Now, slavey, if you'll bring me some coffee," she paused and winked at Dizz, “I’ll tell you about Max."

Dizz put a cup of coffee in front of Chris and set the pot in the center of the table. "So tell me," she said.

"Well," Chris said, reaching for the sugar, "his name is Max Petersen. Fifteen years ago he was the world's leading marine biologist. Now he's sort of a sea-going hobo." She paused to take a sip of the coffee.

"What happened?"

"He got married," Chris went on. "Six months later his wife had a miscarriage and died. It nearly finished him. He hit the skids, started drinking. For a couple of years he just sort of leeched off his friends, people he'd worked with. Then he went on the bum. For the past ten years he's been drifting around on freighters."

Dizz looked at her blankly. "And what makes this sot such a fascination to you and Jonathan?" she asked.

"He's not just a sot, Dizz. He's a genius in his field—marine biology, that is. And his special charm is that he's been responsible for some of the best finds we've made. Remember that black pearl I went after a couple of years ago?"

"Of course," Dizz said. "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

"He told us where to find it. He used to belong to the museum. Now he just comes around for money." Chris paused thoughtfully. "Though sometimes I think he still cares. Anyhow, he hasn't done any diving since he took up alcohol. He lost his nerve."

"And you think he's found another pearl?"

"He's found something, at any rate," Chris said.

Dizz got up and carried the dishes to the sink. She carefully avoided looking at Chris.

"Darling, does that mean," Dizz said slowly, "that you'll be going diving again?"

"It could," Chris said. "In fact, I hope so. I don't get much of a charge out of picking up shells on the beach anymore." She pushed back her chair and stood up. "Why?"

"Ever since that barracuda tried to make lunch of your leg, I've preferred to think of you diving in a quiet indoor pool," Dizz said.

Chris did not answer immediately. She was thinking of the scar on her leg and of the year she'd spent hobbling around the house. She had not forgotten the incident for one day of her life since it happened. It had nearly ended her career. And her.

Chris knew in her heart that she was as anxious as Dizz. But for a different reason. She had to find out, sooner or later, whether or not she was done for as a diver. This could be her chance.

"Dizz," Chris said, "look at me." She put her hands on the girl's shoulders and turned her around. She gazed down at her seriously. "Once you upset a pan of hot grease. You burned both hands and both thighs, and pretty badly too. Did you stop cooking?"

Dizz was silent for a long time. Then she said, "Okay, teacher, I understand the lesson for today." She looked up and smiled. "Just don't come home to me mauled."

"That's better," Chris said. "Now, I've got to get out of here."

Chris walked into the living room and picked up the typed manuscript. "I'll probably be gone all day," she said. “I have to deliver this, see Max, and then stop at the museum."

"Call me and I'll have dinner ready when you get here."

"Right." Chris gave Dizz a quick peck on the nose and started for the door. "See you later."

She left the house and turned right on Fiftieth, then right again on First Avenue. She walked rapidly, her hands deep in her jacket pockets, the manuscript under her arm. She had not worn a coat nor did she carry a purse. Her heels were flat. She was in a hurry and stripped for action.

At Fifty-Sixth she made a quick stop at the bank. When she came out, she was carrying five hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills. She folded them in a neat wad and jammed it into her inside pocket.

Then she hailed a cab.

"Forty-Sixth and Lex," she said. "Fast."

Two hours later she emerged from the offices of
Marine Life
irritated and beginning to suffer the first pangs of a hangover. She'd been kept waiting while Mr. Peale read, waiting while Mr. Peale conferred with Miss Macintosh, waiting while Miss Macintosh talked to Mr. Blutt, waiting while Mr. Blutt wrote out a check and gave it to Miss Macintosh who gave it to Mr. Peale who gave it to Chris. Then she had to wait for the elevator.

She went into a drugstore on the corner.

"Bromo," she said to the counterman.

"Bromo it is."

She swallowed the bubbles quickly, dropped a dime on the counter and went back out to the street.

She decided against a cab. Her head was in no condition. She turned west on Forty-Sixth and walked slowly toward Fifth Avenue.

People hurried all around her, bent on lunch hour shopping and business. A fat greasy woman in a yellow coat collided with her and swore at Chris over her shoulder. Chris sighed and walked a little faster.

A bus. She'd take a bus to Washington Square. The ride down Fifth was the only one in the city she could tolerate on a bus. Maybe if she closed her eyes...

She took a seat at the rear of the bus, next to the window. She rested her elbow on the window ledge and her head in her hand. The man behind her was reading the
Times
, folded lengthwise like you fold it hanging on to a strap in the subway. Every time the bus stopped, the edge of the paper hit her just below the neck. Stop, bump. Stop, bump.

She counted thirty-eight bumps before the bus rolled around Washington Square circle and stopped. The thirty-ninth came on schedule.

Chris walked to the ladies' room in the park. She got some paper from one of the booths, wet it at the sink, and pressed it against her eyes and her forehead. By now her head was not splitting—it had split. She took a small bottle of aspirin out of her pocket and shook out four. Then she scooped them into her mouth. She cupped her hands under the cold water, took a long drink and swallowed.

West on Fourth, south on MacDougal, west on Third, south on Sixth Avenue. Slow, walk slow, walk slow.

At the junction of Sixth, Bleecker and Carmine she went into a luncheonette and sat on a stool at the counter.

"Bromo," she said.

"Bromo it is."

She was beginning to feel about half human. It wouldn't pay to be shaky around Max. That boy was a shrewdie. He was out for money and plenty of it. You had to be with it to get what you came for.

She followed up the bromo with a cup of thick black coffee. She took her time. She raised a hand and looked at it. It was steady. When the rest of her felt the same way, she stood up.

She paid the man and went to the phone booth at the back of the shop. She dropped a dime in the slot and dialed Max's number.

After the tenth ring a voice croaked, "Yeah?"

"Max? This is Chris Hamilton."

"Where are you?"

"Downstairs."

"You got money?"

"Yes, I've got money."

"C'mon up."

Chris hung up the phone and left the store. She walked faster now, the headache for the moment forgotten.

Chris turned left on Bedford and into the entrance of an apartment house next to an Italian grocery. White X’s on some of the windows marked the building condemned. In the store the fat grocer was exclaiming loudly in broken English about how he'd been here thirty years. His fat wife singsonged in mawkish chorus.

Inside was the smell of thirty years of garlic and more years of cabbage and grease and no garbage cans. The floor was grey with filth and smudged where someone had tracked a dog turd down the hall and up the stairs. Somebody else or maybe the same somebody had puked here long ago. The yellowish mess had dried to a crust on the wall and floor. A little boy stood among the ruins in grave dignity, relieving himself against the wall.

Chris swallowed hard. Every year it got worse. The first time she'd come here it was like being dropped into a garbage dump in July. That was eight years ago. There were no words anymore.

She climbed to the fifth floor and stopped at apartment twenty-one. Of all the dirty doors in the building, this was the dirtiest. She knew neither it nor the rooms inside had been cleaned in the eight years Max had had the place.

She bumped the door a couple of times with her foot. The door opened almost immediately.

Max Petersen was in his early fifties, a six-foot, potbellied, hairy, ape-like man. He had been handsome once, but now the tiny veins beneath his cheeks and around his eyes had broken and he looked like a sick purple chimpanzee. At the moment he was wearing a pair of filthy black trousers with a broken zipper, an undershirt and a thick stubble of beard.

Max swung open the door and bowed from the waist. "Chris, good to see you."

Chris took two steps into the room and stopped. Behind Max on the cot was a fat blonde in a brassiere. She was clutching the neck of a gin bottle in one hand. She was about twenty and had gorgeous green eyes.

The blonde looked straight back at Chris. She lifted the bottle and took a long drink. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.

"Excuse me," Chris said.

Max whirled to face the blonde. "For Pete's sake, Jennie, get some clothes on," he said savagely.

Jennie belched out a coarse sound. "What the hell for? That big dyke." She laughed nastily. "She's seen plenty o' this before."

"She didn't come here to look at you," Max said. "We got business to discuss."

Jennie got off the couch and came toward Chris, swinging the gin bottle. "How about it, handsome? I bet you'd rather talk business with me, huh?"

The smell of gin and sex and perspiration hung over the girl like a cloud. It moved with her as she sidled across the room. It surrounded the two of them as she came up to Chris and rubbed against her.

Chris flushed deeply. She had been approached by women like Jennie before, but never quite like this. Never with a straight man for an audience. Certainly not when the guy was the woman's lover and no doubt paying for her services. But she knew she had to be calm about it, not take the damn slut and bat her around like she deserved. She had to be polite about it.

Chris put three fingers on each of Jennie's shoulders and pushed her gently away. "No, thanks," she said.

"Big dumb bastard," Jennie said. "Big dumb bastard."

Max slammed the door behind Chris. He approached Jennie. His arm went up and back. The huge hand caught Jennie on the side of the head. She screamed and dropped the bottle. It smashed and the gin soaked into the bare wooden floor.

Jennie glared at Max with hatred. "Big dumb bastard," she said.

Max grabbed her by the shoulders and propelled her toward a door at the other end of the apartment.

"Now get out of here," he said.

Jennie went into the other room and slammed the door. "Big dumb bastards," she yelled.

Max pushed the broken bottle under the sink with his foot. It brushed against a paper bag. A plump cockroach emerged and scuttled away across the floor.

"I'm sorry about that, Chris," Max said. "She's not very bright."

"Or very sober," Chris added. "Forget it."

Max pushed some rags that were probably clothes off a chair to the floor. He turned to Chris. "Sit down."

"Thanks," she said. She sat down without looking at the chair. It was easier that way. "Jonathan tells me you've got something that might interest us."

Max snorted. "What do you mean, might?"

Max pulled out a second chair and sat down by the table. He pulled a bottle toward him. "Drink?" he said.

"No, thanks," Chris said. "I'm on the wagon as of this morning's hangover."

"Wish I could say the same," he sighed. "It gets you after awhile." He poured some of the syrupy liquid into a glass with something on the bottom that looked like black coffee. He took a long drink.

Chris waited for a minute, then said, "So what have you got?"

Max leaned his chin on one hand and looked her straight in the eyes. "Ever seen a Glory-of-the-Seas?" he asked.

"Once, in a museum," she said. "There are only a couple of dozen of them around."

"Supposing I told you where you can find hundreds, maybe more?" Max said.

Chris felt an irresistible surge of curiosity. "Well," she said cautiously, "I might tell you you're drunk. Nobody's seen one alive since 1838. Or do you mean you've found the graveyard where all good little Glories went to die?"

"Alive, my dear, alive."

"Hundreds or more?" Chris said. "Alive? Let's hear it, Max."

Max leaned back against the chair. "Got a cigarette?”

Chris handed him one and held out a match. She left the pack on the table.

"Did you ever hear of a place called Tongariva?" he asked.

"Vaguely," she answered. “I could probably find it on a map."

He took a deep drag on the cigarette. "It's a small island in the south Pacific. It makes a triangle like this." He traced a triangle in the dust on the table top. "Here's Pago Pago, here's Tahiti," he pointed. "And up here at the top is Tongariva."

“I get the picture," Chris said. "So what? You know as well as I do that shell's only been found around the Philippines."

"That's ancient history," Max said.

"I'm listening."

“I'm telling you," he said. "I was working on a freighter out of Valparaiso. This is about six months back. We hit a storm—it was March tenth, in fact. Well, anyhow, we got blown off course and the damned boiler blew up. We had to pull into Tongariva to make repairs." He stopped to fill the glass again. "Still interested?”