Disconnection (21 page)

“What are you thinking about?” Dean asked.

Sela turned from the water and saw that he was watching her.

She began, “I …”

“You don’t have to answer. I hate that question myself. You ever noticed how you immediately lose your train of thought when people ask what you are thinking? My parents do that to me all the time and I hate it.”

“I was thinking that we made miserable fishermen.”

“You’re not lying. At least we’re having fun.” He paused and shielded his hand over his eyes, blocking out the intense sun while he watched her. “We are having fun, aren’t we?”

“I think so,” Sela said, turning back around to face the water.

She did not flinch minutes later when she felt the heat of Dean’s fingers level around her neck. He whispered in her ear, “Maybe we should think of doing something different.” She was about to suggest that making love was hardly something different, but the warmth of his skin against her own embalmed her with a mindless ease, seizing all prior thoughts. The movement of his hands along her shoulders and back refreshened her in ways that no other potion on Earth could claim. The bayou had never appealed to Sela’s sense of romance before, but she found herself suddenly taken in by the dazzling collage of sensations coming together at once—nature returning to nature, man and woman again in the Garden of Eden, in the forest of primal discovery, everything becoming one.

He kissed where he touched. He licked where he kissed. He folded the shirt she wore into tiny squares as he unbuttoned the middle. He tossed the garment aside. She reached around and encircled his neck with the crook of her arm. The pirogue rocked underneath them, its pointed stem deepening in the water, foam slapping against its surface.

The couple gently made love lying down as a murder of crows flew over the water. Sela closed her eyes and reached orgasm as the birds screamed in unison. She felt Dean’s release as the sound of batting wings drifted off in the distance. Afterward, the couple lay together on the floor of the pirogue as the sun descended slowly in the late afternoon sky.

“We should start moving,” Sela said, finding her shirt and pants. “We’re on the other side of the bayou from where we came. It will take us at least two hours to row back. We’ll be lucky if we make it back by dark.”

“You’re probably right,” Dean said in a tired voice. “I’m aching for the toilet though.”

“Pee out of the boat,” she suggested as she threw on her clothes.

“I don’t think I can.”

“Trust me, the bayou’s seen worse.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. Not to make you sick, but I have to go number two.” He shrugged, his face flushed with mild embarrassment.

“Oh.” She paused awkwardly. “Well, right over there is land.” Sela pointed upward in the left direction. “About a five-minute paddle away. Think you can make it?”

“Do I have a choice?” Dean asked, gathering his discarded clothes. “Let’s get paddling.”

They landed on a shore where a handful of other boats rested nearby. Dean jumped out immediately. “Be right back,” he promised over his shoulder and he headed in the direction of a batch of green growth.

Sela, waiting, looked up to the sky where a blaze of orange and pink now eclipsed the blue sky.

Where are you, Chloe? I’m so nervous when you don’t call
.

Sela reached under her seat and picked up her purse. She lifted the phone from the side pocket and stared at it, willing it to ring.

Where do you go when you go … its getting dark in Cajun Country and still no word from you, don’t you care or does Heaven go by Pacific time?

Giving up, she stuck the phone back into her purse. It was then that she saw the corner of white paper sticking out to the side by her wallet. She pulled out the paper, which became papers, a dozen or so at least. All addressed to Chloe. Sela realized that it was the letters she had stolen from Chloe’s shoe box that night at her house. She had forgotten that she had them.

Sela unfolded them and looked at the first note. It was written in blue ink, the author perhaps a left-handed doctor, judging by the messiness of the scribble. Sela read it aloud,
“I want to pin your legs under your shoulders and watch you beg, you wicked little bitch. I want to pry into your flesh with the root of my cock and pound you so hard that you break in half.”
Sela tossed the note into the water and watched it turn into wet pulp. “Nice choice in men, Chloe,” she said mockingly, addressing the phone in her purse as if Chloe could somehow hear her.

She read the next one, which was a printed-out message from Chloe’s email inbox:

Hi, Chloe. I’m glad you seem so cool. I’m just a Jewish boy from New York looking for someone to hang out with. Would you like to meet?—
[email protected]

A crawling sensation entered Sela’s belly. She was uncertain she had read correctly. She reread the email.

(just a Jewish boy)

Jewish boy

soccerace

(Hey Soccerace!)

Mechanically, Sela unfolded another letter. It was also from
[email protected]
:

Hi Chloe. Black Kitchen tonight? Sounds good. I’m dying to meet you. Tell me what you look like and I’ll find you.—
[email protected]

A
wave of nausea came over Sela. She held her hand to her throat, willing the queasiness to vacate.

Dying to meet you!

(Isn’t that the understatement of the year?)

Sela’s eyes bulged, terrified. Her lips trembled with apprehension. She steadied herself by placing her two hands on either side of the seat, dropping the letters to the floor of the boat. It occurred to her that she should have known all along. Weren’t there signs?

Sela worked to breathe.

I have to go
.

“Sela?” Dean’s voice called out from a close distance.

Sela inhaled sharply. “Yes?” she answered, her voice shaking.

“You have to come and see this. I think I found one of those water moccasins you were talking about. It came out of the bushes, scared the shit out of me. Literally. Hey, I thought snakes hibernated in winter?”

Get out of here, get out of here now
.

Sela picked up her oars and tried pushing back into the water, but the pressure she used against the mud was not enough for the pirogue to budge. “Come on,” she whispered, gritting her teeth as she used every muscle to break free from the shore.

“What are you doing?” Dean appeared from behind the green growth. His head tilted inquisitively to the side. “Are you trying to leave without me?” he asked.

“Stay away from me,”
Sela hissed.

Dean moved closer, a worried frown now etched on his face. “What’s wrong?” he asked. He reached over to settle in the pirogue again, but Sela held her hand out, willing him to stay put. His frown deepened. “Are you
okay
?” he asked.

“I said get away! Don’t come near me!”

“Hey, chill out. What’s gotten into you?”

“You killed her. You
killed her.”

“What? Who?” Dean’s gaze followed the foot Sela used to point to the letters at the bottom of the pirogue. “What is that?” he asked.

Sela choked on a sob. “I have printouts of her emails, Dean. I have the messages you sent her.” Her breathing rapidly quickened. Her heart felt as if it was pounding out of her chest. “You were supposed to meet her that night. God, I am such a fool. That strange look you gave me. You thought I was
her.”

Dean’s face darkened. “Listen, I can explain. There’s no reason to get distressed. How do you know Chloe? Never mind. Remember last night when I said I would never keep anything from you?” He let the question hang as he drew closer to the pirogue, one foot stepping inside.

“Don’t take another step!” Sela screamed.

“Sela, please, you need to calm down …”

“You killed her. And Lisa! God knows how many others!” Sela did not wait for him to reply as she took her right oar and slammed it into Dean’s head. He went down like a bowling pin, blood pouring over his eyelids, then oozing down his cheek, leaking to his chin and finally dripping to the ground. Dean’s expression was stuck in a state of shock. His green eyes—oh, how Sela had loved those green eyes!—rolled to the back of his head as he collapsed backward into the mud and grass.

Sela frantically stepped out of the pirogue to push it back into the water. Her feet met near Dean’s crumpled body as she reached two arms over the pirogue’s side, willing it to loosen. When the pirogue finally broke free, Sela jumped into its diamond-shaped compartment and began paddling with every ounce of strength she had left.

Sela’s thoughts ran rampant.

Remember how he disappeared for a long time that night at the restaurant? He was setting your car on fire
.

Remember how he left the Black Kitchen after talking to you? He had found Chloe. He left with her and killed her and came back for you
.

(because he wanted you dead next)

Sela, Sela, you silly girl. To date a murderer and think it was love
.

Don’t you know? Life is a bad place to live
.

Sela did not know how long she had been paddling when she heard a noise in the distance. She turned around to see. She screamed when she saw Dean moving in her direction, accelerated by a boat with an engine that hummed menacingly as it parted the water, coming for her. She heard him scream her name. It was only a matter of time before he would catch up with her. Sela looked into the water. She felt like a cornered cat, with the option of walking through water or crossing a dog. She could sit in the pirogue and wait for him to kill her, or she could jump into the water. She studied the bayou’s murky depths.

Here goes nothing
, she thought, and jumped.

The water’s malicious cold sent shockwaves through Sela as she struggled to stay under. She tried to see, but there was too much algae, too much cloudiness. She could feel the tremor of Dean’s motor nearby, but from what direction, she was uncertain. But she had to move, there was no doubt of that. She thrust her legs against the aquatic pressure, fighting back the currents as she worked her body into a knife-like position. The fish moved out of her way when she rippled past, her legs and feet catching loose algae on the way. She willed herself to forget about air—she was not going to risk going up for oxygen, not until she absolutely had to.

Swimming in the green mistiness, a picture emerged from the back of Sela’s mind, one of a childhood visit to the YMCA pool with her parents. Sela was five and a half (and she never forgot to add that half when people asked her age) and she was wearing a pink Strawberry Shortcake swimming suit her mother had bought her a week before from an outlet store in Biloxi. Sela sat at the end of the pool while her father stood next to her, his lean body halfway submerged into the water, his hands beckoning her to join him. “Once you try,” he said, “you won’t be afraid again. Remember when you first rode a bike? It’s a little like that.”

“Try it, Sela,” her mother called from the lawn chair where she was, basking in the sunlight. Sunglasses masked her eyes, but Sela knew with instinct that only a child contained that her mother had been watching her the whole time, wanting, waiting for her to jump in.

Sela’s father bounced around on his toes. “See,” he said. “Look how fun this is!”

Sela swallowed hard. She wanted to join him, but problem was she did not want to drown. She had seen a fly drown earlier that summer at a neighborhood pool party. The fly had buzzed and buzzed around the barbeque grill and the lemonade bowl and the paper cups for what seemed like hours before falling to its ultimate death at the five-foot marker of the pool. Sela, munching on a Sunbeam bread roll from the safety of the lawn chairs, watched as the fly struggled to get up. She watched it raise its body just above the surface. She felt bad for it. It had annoyed her before, but not enough for her to wish its death. Still, she was transfixed by its struggle, a struggle that might have yielded an escape had the fly’s damp wings not failed to budge from its chlorine death trap.

Sela did not want to drown like that fly. Her body sat in an undeterminable pause at the pool’s cement edge.

“’The only thing you have to fear is fear itself,’”
her mother quoted loudly over the sound of young boys running along the pool’s edge.

Her father stopped bouncing on his toes and smiled reassuringly at her. “I’ll protect you,” he promised, reaching out his arms.

It was her father’s words that finally broke through Sela’s armor of fear. Slowly she maneuvered her body from the cement’s rough surface. The more she moved, the closer the water came. Her father reached out as Sela tumbled awkwardly into the water with one brave little jump.

(I’ll protect you.)

“Sela! Sela!”

She could hear Dean from her underwater race to escape.

Killer. Murderer. Why scream my name? Why would I come to you? Only to die. Fuck you
.

It was becoming harder and harder for Sela to hold her breath. The time had come for her to break the surface, to inhale air. An oxygen break, one that might kill her.

Damned if I do, damned if I don’t
.

She broke the surface only six yards from Dean’s boat. Funny, she thought she had swum farther. She inhaled deeply and submerged again, her ears faintly hearing Dean’s voice screaming her name.

She kept swimming. The distance she had traveled, she was not sure. Her only thought was to
go
.

Ahead Sela saw a looming object swimming her way, its form casting a dark shadow in the water’s green depths. Sela’s eyes widened in horror as the creature moved under a patch of water where the sun was able to break through, revealing the creature for what he truly was.

The water become colder as Sela opened her mouth for an underwater scream.

There was no mistaking the creature for anything else than the bayou’s largest and deadliest reptile. The Spanish called them
el lagarto
, scientists called them
Alligatoridea Mississippiensis
. For Sela, the creature was simply an alligator. And a big one too. A territorial male. Fourteen feet long, at least.