The Deep

“For Christ sake!” he said, raising his arm to ward off the second blow. He grabbed her, pinned her arms to her sides, and brought her to him. “Hey… nobody got hurt.”

She struggled briefly, then stood still and let him hold her. “Who are you trying to impress?” she said.

As he started to answer, Sanders heard footsteps behind him. He turned to see an old black man carrying a ring of keys. The man was muttering.

“What went wrong?” Sanders asked.

“Temp’amental like a baby.” The man searched for the key to open the metal box.

“Does this happen often?”

The man didn’t answer. He opened the box, reached inside, and nicked a switch. Immediately, the pitch of the motor dropped back to normal. The man pushed something else, and, after a couple of clicks, wheels began to turn. Within seconds, the elevator was at the top of the cliff. The man shut the door, turned the key in the lock, and started away.

“Hey,” Sanders said. “What happened?”

“Never know. Maybe too hot, maybe too cold.”

“It’s not going to fall off the pole, is it?”

“Never happen. If something ain’t just right, there’s clamps that suck right down on that pole like a old octopus. No, all that ever happen is she get stuck. If people just be patient, they be okay.”

When the man had left, Sanders unloaded the diving gear. “Give me a hand with this?” he said to Gail.

She didn’t move. She looked at him and said flatly, “Don’t you ever do something like that again.”

III

Sanders stepped out of the shower, dried himself, and stood before the bathroom mirror. He tightened his pectoral and stomach muscles and was pleased to see the muscle fibers showing through the skin. He patted his stomach and smiled.

The bathroom door opened behind him, and he felt a cool breeze that carried the aroma of Gail.

Gently, Gail pinched the insignificant flesh that sat above his hipbones. “Don’t exercise too much,” she said. “I’d hate it if you lost your love handles.”

“Never.” Sanders turned and kissed her.

They dressed for dinner, and as they left the cottage, Sanders slammed the door, turned the key in the lock, and jiggled the doorknob to make sure the lock was fast.

“Who’s going to steal anything?” Gail asked.

“Anybody. Cameras, diving gear-it’s expensive stuff. No point in making it easy to get at.”

“Well, locking the door won’t do any good. The maid has a key.”

Holding hands, they walked along the path to the main building of the Orange Grove Club. It was like walking through a tropical nursery. Oleander, hibiscus, bougainvillaea, poinciana, and poinsettia, in a fusion of colors, crowded the sides of the path. Oranges and lemons dropped from trees in small well-tended groves. They passed a cluster of cottages similar to their own.

The limestone buildings were painted orange-all but the roofs, which shone soft white in the evening sunlight.

Gail said, “Have you ever seen cleaner roofs?”

“They’d better be clean. That’s what you drink off of.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s no well water on Bermuda, no underground streams, no rivers, no nothing. All the water comes from rain. It runs off the roofs into cisterns.”

“I thought you said it never rains here.”

“What I said was, there’s never been a year with less than three hundred and forty days of some sunshine. It rains a fair amount, even in summer. But the storms are sudden and squally, and they don’t last long.”

“For someone who’s never been here, you’re full of groovy facts.”

“National Geographic training,” Sanders said. “Life is nothing but the pursuit and capture of the elusive fact.”

“Why did you quit the Geographic? Writing for them sounds like it’d be fun.”

“Writing might have been.” Sanders smiled.

“Doing anything might have been. I didn’t do, and I didn’t write. I only made up captions.

Legends, they call them. I went there because I wanted to live with wild apes, fight with crocodiles, and dive for wrecks no man had ever seen. Instead, I spent my days thinking up lines like, “Calcutta: In-Spot for India’s Teeming Millions.” I never did anything. I was paid to abbreviate what other people did.”

As they neared the club’s main building, another couple, younger, appeared on the path, walking toward them. Their gaits were awkward, for they had their arms around each other’s waists, and since the man was much taller than his bride, he had to shorten his steps into a mincing trot so she could keep up with him. As soon as he saw the young couple, Sanders dropped Gail’s hand.

When the couple had passed, Gail said, “Why did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Drop my hand.”

Sanders blushed. “Honeymooners make me nervous.”

She took his arm and touched his shoulder with her head.

“You’re one, too, you know.”

“Yeah. But I’ve already had one honeymoon.”

“It’s my first, though,” Gail said. “Let me enjoy it.”