Deep Water (12 page)

       Melinda and De Lisle were simply sitting on the piano bench talking to each other. But Melinda's face had that warm animation that Vic for many years had not seen directed toward himself.

       "Vic!" Phil said. "Come and have something to eat!"

       It was the host pressing him to eat again, because he was neglected and scorned by his wife. Have another piece of cake, Vic. "I think I might, thanks," Vic said cheerfully, and took a slice of ham on a plate, a dab of potato salad, a stalk of celery, though he had no appetite whatsoever.

       "Did you bring your bathing suit?" Phil asked.

       "Yes. So did Melinda. They're in the room where the coats are." When Vic looked toward the piano again, Melinda and De Lisle were gone. Phil went on talking, and he talked too, trying to be pleasant and partylike, though he could feel Phil's awareness of Melinda and De Lisle's disappearance as acutely as his own awareness.

       From the terrace, Vic heard Evelyn's voice say, "Is anybody ready for a swim?"

       And a couple of moments later, hardly any time later, a woman's voice which he didn't recognize called from the back of the hall, "Say, the door's locked!—Is the door locked?"

       And Phil, in the very act of moving toward the hall, checked himself and looked at Vic. "There's plenty of time. We don't have to rush."

       "Oh, no," Vic agreed, rubbing his upper lip. "I suppose I've time for another drink." But he didn't want another drink, and turning to find his plate, which he had left on the corner of the buffet table, he saw that his unfinished drink stood beside it.

       Phil Cowan, walking away toward the terrace, said, "Excuse me, Vic," over his shoulder, and disappeared.

       Was he going to consult his wife as to what to do about the coat room, or whatever room it was that was locked? Vic felt a tingle of fear—or disgust, or panic, what was it?—creeping up his bare legs under the toga. Then he heard a woman say in a pleasant, expressionless voice, so that he couldn't tell if it was addressed to Melinda herself or not, "Oh, Melinda!" from the hall, and as if this were a signal to retreat, Vic went out on the terrace and strolled to the darker end of it. Don Wilson was still there, talking to a woman. The woman was Jennie MacPherson. Vic stood looking out across the lawn to the swimming pool. Some of the lanterns had gone out, but he could still see its lazy L shape, the wide-angled L and its rounded corners, by the light of two or three lanterns. There was no moon tonight. Two people splashed into the pool at the same time, in different arms of the L. The pool was really a boomerang shape, he thought.

       "What're you doing here all by yourself?" Evelyn Cowan was suddenly beside him, blotting her shoulders with a towel. Her black bathing suit had a frill skirt like a ballet costume.

       "Oh, I'm enjoying myself," Vic said.

       "Aren't you going to take a swim?"

       "I might, when Melinda does."

       Somebody called Evelyn from the pool just then, and she said, "Well, hurry up!" to Vic, and ran down the terrace steps.

       Melinda and De Lisle came out on the terrace, in swim suits, with two or three other people also in suits. One of the people was Horace, and seeing Vic, Horace detached himself and came over.

       "Is Tiberius in retirement already?" Horace asked.

       Tongue-tied, Vic watched Melinda in her green bathing suit waving good-bye to two couples who were leaving and crossing the lawn toward the cars in front of the house.

       "Aren't you having a dip?" Horace asked.

       "No, I don't think so," Vic said. "But I'll come down to the pool," he added, for no reason that he knew of, because he didn't want to go down to the pool.

       He and Horace walked down together in silence. Finally Horace said, "Looks like the party's thinning out a little."

       Vic hung back out of the glow of the lanterns. De Lisle was standing on the edge of the pool with a can of beer in each hand, watching Melinda, who was swimming in a fast overhand stroke down one arm of the L toward the end of the pool. De Lisle came around the edge of the pool to meet her. He had not been in yet, Vic saw from his dry blue shorts. De Lisle's body looked scrawny and pale, and here and there patches of black hair grew, not only on his sunken-in chest but high on his left shoulder blade. He stooped and handed a beer to Melinda as she hauled herself out, and she said in her loud, distinct voice, "I've got a 'foul' headache! This'll kill or cure!" She caught sight of Vic.

       Vic turned away, strolled toward a gardenia bush with the intention of examining a blossom, though it was so dark he could hardly see the white flowers.

       "Hi, there!" Melinda's voice called behind him. She tossed his rolled-up trunks at him, and Vic caught them. "Aren't you coming in?"

       From across the pool De Lisle was grinning in their direction. The lantern glow made his face cadaverous.

       Melinda hit the water with a belly-whopping 'splat', which didn't seem to bother her, because she took a couple of easy strokes, then rolled over on her back. "Oh, it's divine!" she shouted lust as Vic had known she would, and he knew also that she had by now had so much to drink that she didn't know or care what she was saying. She was just as likely to come out with, "Charley, I adore you!" as she had one night, when Jo-Jo was around, said "Jo-Jo, I adore you!" and their friends who had heard it—the Cowans, Vic remembered—had discreetly ignored it.

       There was the distant slam of a car door from the road.

       Now De Lisle was gingerly descending the metal ladder at the far end of the pool. Vic took his trunks toward the remotest gardenia bush to change, because he was expected to go in, but he felt a revulsion about getting into the pool while Melinda and I )e Lisle were there, about even getting near the pool, because De Lisle had been in its water. The gardenia bush was thirty yards from the pool, in the darkest corner of the lawn. Vic was as careful to get the bush exactly between himself and the pool as he would have been if it had been broad daylight. He left his toga, his walking shorts and underwear and T-shirt behind the bush, and stepped forth barefoot in his brown swimming trunks.

       Horace had left, Vic saw, evidently gone back into the house. Melinda was just climbing up the ladder as Vic got to the pool. "Cold?" Vic asked.

       "No, it's not cold," Melinda said. "I've got a headache." She whipped off her white rubber cap and shook her damp hair out.

       De Lisle was hanging on to the gutter of the pool, not cutting a very athletic figure. "Feels pretty cool to me," he said.

       "Have you got an aspirin, Evelyn?" Melinda asked.

       "Oh, of course!" Evelyn was standing nearby on the grass. "But they're not in the bathroom—I don't think. I think they're in the bedroom. Come on with me. I'll just make a small detour to look at the coffee."

       "I smell that coffee way out here," Phil said, getting up from the edge of the pool. "Anybody want coffee?"

       "Not just now, thanks," Vic said. He was the only one who answered. Vic suddenly realized he was alone with Charley De Lisle.

       "You're not coming in?" Charley said to Vic, pushing off from the edge of the pool, swimming in a vague side-stroke toward the shallow end.

       The water looked black and uninviting. Not cold, just uninviting. He wanted to walk away, to leave De Lisle there alone, but he felt it would look like some kind of retreat, like a silly change of mind after he had gone to the trouble of putting on his swimming trunks. "Oh, I suppose so," Vic said, sliding immediately off the edge of the pool into deep water. He was a buoyant swimmer, a strong swimmer, but he was not in the mood for swimming now, and the sudden coldness of the water, the messy wetness of his hair, shocked him unpleasantly, and started up a little dynamo of anger within him.

       "Nice pool," De Lisle said.

       "Yes," Vic replied as coolly as a snobbish club member might use to a nonmember. Vic, treading water, looked at the terrace where two lanterns still burned. There was nobody on the terrace, Vic thought.

       De Lisle was on his back, floating. One of his white arms came up and lashed the water awkwardly and a little frantically, though where he was would be barely over his head, Vic knew Vic would have loved to grab him by the shoulders and hold him under, and even as he thought of it, Vic swam toward him. De Lisle was now making an overhead stroke to bring him to the edge of the pool, but Vic reached him in a second, grabbed his throat and pulled him backward. There was not even a bubble as De Lisle's head went under. Vic had him under the chin and by one shoulder now, and unconsciously he tugged him toward where the water was over Vic's head, though it was easy to keep his own head above the surface because of De Lisle's threshing efforts to rise under his hands. Vic made a scissorlike movement with his legs and caught both De Lisle's thighs between his calves. Vic's head went under as he tipped backward, but his hands kept their grip and he pulled himself forward and rose again. De Lisle was still under.

       It's a joke, Vic thought to himself. If he were to let him up now, it would be merely a joke, though perhaps a rough one, but just then De Lisle's efforts grew violent, and Vic concentrated his own effort, one hand on the back of De Lisle's neck now, his other hand holding De Lisle's wrist away from him under the water. De Lisle's free hand was ineffectual against Vic's grip on the back of his neck. One of De Lisle's feet broke the surface of the water, then disappeared.

       Suddenly Vic was aware of the placidity of the water around him, of the soundlessness all around him. It was as if his ears had gone dead. Vic relaxed his grip somewhat, though he still held De Lisle under. Vic looked around the lawn, at the house, the terrace. I le saw no one, but he suddenly realized—almost objectively, with no sense of shock—that he hadn't made absolutely sure that there had been no one on the terrace or on the lawn before he pulled I )e Lisle under. He still held the faintly buoyant shoulders under, not really able to believe yet that he was dead or even completely unconscious.

       It's a joke, Vic thought again. But now it was too late for it to be a joke, and even as that came to his mind like a piece of news he realized that he'd have to say that De Lisle must have got an attack of cramp while he was dressing himself on the lawn, and that he hadn't seen or heard anything of it. Vic tentatively released the shoulders. The back of De Lisle's head came up a little above the water, but his face stayed down.

       Vic climbed out of the pool. He walked directly toward the gardenia bush and began to change his clothes. He heard voices and laughter from the kitchen at the end of the house. He hurried into his toga, flinging it around him with the movement he had practiced at home, then started for the back door of the kitchen, which opened on the lawn.

       They were all in the kitchen, Melinda, Evelyn and Phil, Horace and Mary, but only Evelyn greeted him as he went in.

       "How about a sandwich and some coffee, Vic?" Evelyn asked him.

       "I could use some coffee," Vic said.

       Phil was pouring a cup of coffee and Melinda was standing near him, groggily assembling a ham sandwich and murmuring something about her headache still being with her. As Vic stood leaning against the sink, the atmosphere seemed almost oppressively like the atmosphere of dozens of other ends-of-parties he had known—the hosts in the kitchen with the handful of people who had lingered on, the handful of people who were completely at ease, because they knew one another very well, and because everybody was in a relaxed and easy mood, due to the lateness of the hour and the liquor they had drunk. And at the same time Vic felt absolutely certain that everything that was said or done now was going to be discussed and rediscussed later, and argued about: Evelyn trying to resume a story she had evidently started before he came in about meeting somebody, an old friend, at the Goat-and-Candle, whose little boy had had a strange heart operation. Horace endeavoring to listen. And Phil now handing him a cup of coffee, saying, “Here you are, Vic. Sugar?" And Evelyn interrupting, "What about 'me'?" meaning she wanted coffee, too. And Melinda saying, with her morning-after despair already upon her, "My God, what did I do to deserve this 'booming' headache?" to no one in particular, yet in such a booming voice that Evelyn got up and went to her. "Honey, have you still got it? Why don't you try one of those wonderful yellow pills I've got? They'll do it, I know"

       Melinda walked half across the kitchen when Evelyn left the room to get the yellow pills, and Vic thought she was going to follow her, but she turned completely around again. "Where's Charley?"

       Vic said, "He's still swimming."

       "'Swimming'?" Melinda said in an incredulous tone.

       "Well, he was still in when I left him," Vic said.

       Melinda started to go out on the lawn, then stopped in the doorway, swung herself outward holding to the doorjamb, and yelled, "Charley! Come on in!" She came back in herself without waiting for an answer.

       Then very quickly Evelyn was back, Melinda swallowed the pill, and immediately went to the door again and called, "Charley!" then went out to get him.

       And Vic saw Phil and Evelyn exchange a look and a smile, because Melinda was so concerned tonight with Charley. Phil picked up a sandwich and took a bite.

       Then they heard a scream, "'Vic!'" Melinda shrieked. "'Phil!'" They ran out, Phil ahead, then Vic and Horace. Melinda was standing, helpless, on the edge of the pool.

       "'He's drowned!'" Melinda said.

       Phil took off his jacket and jumped in. Vic had a glimpse of Phil's grim, pale face as he turned toward them, dragging Charley. Vic took one arm, Horace the other, and they hauled Charley out. "Do you—" Phil began, gasping, "do you know anything about artificial respiration?"

       "A little," Vic said. He was already turning Charley face down, putting the right hand under his cheek, extending the other arm upward. Melinda was in his way, feeling for Charley's heart, frenziedly feeling for a pulse in the wrist.