Southampton Spectacular (38 page)

Into the chaos of the froth and whitewater.

The panic came like a bad idea, like something she didn’t want to think of, but which refused to go away. She tried to think of waiting. Of being calm, and letting herself float up toward the light and the surface. But the wave had rolled her too many times, and she was disoriented in a way that did not allow patience. She could not make herself wait. Her arms were flailing, churning uselessly, and she could tell, even as she floundered in the water like a bug trying to skitter out of a swirling drain, that she was behaving exactly the way all those other drowning people had behaved. Those ridiculous, panicked people Kenny had been forced to save.

So now, the one clear thought in Devon’s head was a name.

As if he had heard her, his arms were suddenly around her. She was being lifted up quickly to the surface, and then the sun was on her face. She coughed and shook her head back and forth quickly, blinking and pawing at her own face as though wiping drops of acid from her eyes. Kenny held her there, and he gave her a minute to recover instead of simply dragging her out of the water. She calmed herself, opened her eyes, and looked at him.

It was not Kenny. It was Austin.

There was a great deal of relieved laughter then. And exclaiming, and splashing. So much that Devon forgot that she had been scared. Forgot that she was still out in the middle of a red-flag ocean. Austin was so calm in the water – as he was everywhere, somehow – that there no longer seemed to be any reason to be scared. About anything. She realized, finally, that Theo Mahlmann had been right: Austin was not a problem. He was everything
but
a problem.

And maybe she would go to Spain with him next month, or maybe not. But it didn’t matter.

He escorted her out of the water. They swam in slowly, with Austin watching the horizon and announcing when they should wait or go. It was effortless. They made it back to the beach, and Devon was laughing again. About nothing. About seeing him here again, after what seemed like a stretch of weeks. She asked him where he had been all this time, and he said that he had been back since two days ago, back from the city. He added, gently, that maybe
she
had some explaining to do on the question of where certain people had been for the last few days, and Devon fired back – in a relaxed, uncaring way – that she’d been very busy cleaning her room, and that he’d better watch himself because there was some shit going down around here that was serious, and she needed to be treated delicately.

Austin said that she didn’t
look
delicate. Not at this particular moment.

She stuck out her tongue at him, and then she asked him, still giggling, what had been so important, so goddamned important in New York that he couldn’t have been here. Because they could have used his help with a few things.

He smiled. “Had some long talks with Mr. Berducido,” he said.

“About?”

“About postponing the Spanish trip until next summer.”

Devon tried not to overreact. For many reasons. But it was difficult.

I just finally got myself comfortable with that whole thing
, she didn’t say.
You put off Spain? And here I was, just starting to pick out dresses.

Instead she said, “Good to hear.”

“Just good?”

“
Great
to hear. Thank you.”

“I still think you can do better than that.”

She shook her head at him and went to collect her towel and bag. She looked up and called to Kenny, to thank him for keeping an eye on her. Austin looked up, too. And waved. Kenny nodded once at each of them, and then he returned his attention to the ocean. As if more panicked swimmers might appear at any moment.

Devon and Austin linked their arms together, and they walked back up toward the club.

“I didn’t see you come in,” Austin said.

“My car’s down at Cryder Lane.”

“What a sneak.”

“
Me
a sneak? When were you planning on letting me know about your Spain postponement scheme?”

“I just did,” he said, as if it were nothing. “When are you going to give me the straight story on what happened while I was gone? I’m getting all kinds of conflicting gossip from people.”

Devon smiled again. She didn’t know why it felt so easy now. The facts were no less upsetting. “It’s a long story,” she said. “My dad isn’t my dad. How about that? And apparently James is my half-brother. Ned and Frankie, too. Let’s start there and work our way back.”

Austin shrugged as if Devon had just told him that there were two new movies in town, neither of them any good. “That reminds me,” he said. “Tracy Dunn gave me a message for you.”

Devon raised an eyebrow.

“She said, ‘Ask her who taught her to speak.’”

Devon stopped walking, and she nodded at the sand. Then she smiled. “Never mind,” she said to him.

“Never mind what?”

“Everything. The things I just said. The only important stuff was that Pauline died, and James and Barnes got hurt. The rest is crap.”

Austin nodded. “That’s what I thought. But it’s good to hear you say it.”

They made it all the way up to the club. Devon paused at the bottom of the stairs, turned Austin toward her, and gave him a kiss. “Thanks for everything,” she said.

“My pleasure, believe me.”

They walked together up to the mezzanine, where they found Devon’s parents. Peter and Cynthia Hall were sitting at a table overlooking the pool, just as they always did. Watching the pool and the entrance to the club.

Watching the entrance with perhaps a bit more focus than usual. With more hope.

They saw Devon, saw her turn and walk toward them with her straight back and her cautious smile, and they reminded themselves not to say too much. Not to say that she was the only thing they had been thinking about for three straight days, or that the sight of her made them want to fall to their knees.

So they simply turned and smiled through the tears that they could do nothing to stop, and they held their arms out to her.

With obvious love.

Kenny waited until he was sure Devon and Austin were gone from the beach. He checked his waterproof watch, saw that it was past quitting time, and climbed slowly down from his perch. He took a moment to look up at the club, in case he might catch another glimpse of Devon Hall from afar. Then he nodded to himself and headed back to the lifeguard shack to collect his own things. He had been a hero many times, and on many days, over his long career as a guard at the Bathing Corporation, but he had never run a save quite like the one this afternoon, in the late hours of a quiet Tuesday in July. He had seen Austin come down to the beach, and he had known who he was. So when Devon had fallen into trouble, he had urged Austin on.

“You,” he barked. As if Austin were an employee arriving late for work. “Go get her. I’ll be here.”

Austin did not wait, which Kenny was glad to see. He ran for the water before he even saw where Kenny was pointing.

Kenny watched him go. He knew it would work out. Knew that Austin could make the save. Even though Kenny himself would have been happy, so very, very happy, to run and go and be the one who brought Devon Hall out of the waves. To be the one holding her when she opened her eyes and smiled and laughed out her relief, magnificent with the residue of fear washing off of her in rivulets of salt water, giving way to the exaltation on her face, the ecstasy of being safe and alive and breathing.

What a thing it would have been, to be holding Devon Hall at that moment.

So on this day, for a sacrifice of which only he was aware, we acknowledge Kenny.

And we nod once more in his direction.

James and Barnes were together. Their parents made sure they were put in hospital beds next to one another, and it was a strange scene: two massively trussed-up patients, both looking as if they had been hit by a train or crushed under a Steinway Grand.

More strange was that they always seemed to be laughing.

Barnes kept up a monologue of remembrances and one-liners, and James filled in the spaces with derisive judgments on Barnes’s low intelligence and moral fiber. The nurses liked coming over to talk to them, especially since neither one ever seemed to need anything except a steady drip of painkiller.

It was several days before Barnes actually related the details of his crash with Pauline; he wanted to be sure that James was ready. Ready to discuss her.

On their third day lying in beds next to each other, James said, in a forced-casual tone of semi-interest, “So, what happened?”

“Tell you tonight,” Barnes said. He didn’t want to incriminate himself if he could avoid it, and the quiet of the nighttime hours would make it easier to hear the approaching steps of the nurse.

That night he went through it. Step by step. Barnes wasn’t sure which parts would be upsetting or not, so he simply told James everything. Even the parts at the very end. Because Pauline had deserved exactly what she got, for one thing. Also because Barnes was proud of himself. He even told James what he had said to Pauline just as they were about to go flying off the edge of the turn.

“Dude,” Barnes whispered, talking very softly now. As if this next part of the story were particularly secret. Particularly incriminating. “I looked right at her, and I said, ‘Why don’t you suck on
this
?’ And then I popped it down to third, spun the wheel and floored that thing again, and we went fucking
flying.
”

There was a silence in the room, and Barnes was briefly worried. The raw, open-wound nature of what he had just said seemed suddenly to occur to him. He held his breath.

But then James whispered back, “Dude, what an
idiot
you are.”

And Barnes laughed in the dark.

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