Нэнси Пикард - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 128, No. 6. Whole No. 784, December 2006

Humiliated, she took refuge in the room she had just rented — not even bothering to bring up her bags, just hurrying up the stairs and locking the door behind her and lying down on the bed. Through the louvered shutters she could heard the people talking on the dining terrace. She closed her eyes, but she had drunk too much, and the room seemed to turn; to avoid being sick she had to open them again. After a time, she fell asleep.

She awoke with a headache, drenched in her own perspiration. She staggered over to the window and pulled open the shutters, drinking in the ocean-scented air that puffed through. The sun was at a slant now, its light pink against the dozen or so puffy clouds that had appeared over the bay. If anything, the scene was more exquisite than ever. Suddenly she couldn’t bear to simply look at it any longer. She had to go in. She had to throw herself in that beautiful blue cleansing water.

She rushed out of the room and down the wooden stairs to the lobby. The clerk nodded to her as she walked past. When she got to her car she realized she had left it unlocked. Her luggage had been stolen.

The clerk was terribly sorry — shocked, actually. Nothing like this had ever happened before. But what was one to do, except report the theft to the police?

“I know how y’all feel,” said a voice behind her.

Geri turned and found herself facing a deeply tanned young man wearing a bathing suit and a cut-off football jersey that said in big block letters: “Prop. LSU Athletic Department.”

The young man smiled amiably. “When I got ripped off in Ocho Rios they cleaned me out good. Luggage, passport, traveler’s checks — the works. Only thing I had left was my spear-fishing stuff. ‘Course, spear fishing’s why I’m here. If y’all need clothes, I got a few things. Prob’ly fit you. Girl they belonged to was about your size. We kinda went our separate ways.”

He stuck out his hand. “Name’s Mike.”

She hesitated. “Justine,” she said.

“Enchanté, y’all.” He grinned.

His last name was Godchaux — “Godshaw,” he pronounced it. He was island-hopping his way down to South America. He was starting work as an oil-company geologist in Baton Rouge in May, his first job out of college. He told her this on the way up the stairs to his room, which, like hers, was on the second floor but in the back.

“How about you?” he asked, fitting the big, rusted skeleton key to the door.

“Me?”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a publicist at Bertram.”

“Bertram?”

“The publishing house?” Unintentionally, her answer came out with a sharp upward inflection, as if she could not conceive of anyone not being familiar with such a well-known name.

“Oh well, I’m not much of a reader, I guess. Y’all prob’ly from New York, then.”

“Yes,” she muttered, feeling a little shamed by the humility of his response.

He opened the door. His room was considerably smaller than hers. It was dim and stuffy. Leaning against one wall was an enormous frame backpack. He knelt down and unzipped a pouch near the bottom and pulled out a small packet of clothing. On the outside, folded so the logo was visible, was another LSU sweatshirt. Unwrapping it on the bed, he spread out the contents: a pair of denim cutoffs, bleached and frayed. A lime-green tube top. A white cotton sundress. Three bikini panties. And a navy-blue maillot swimsuit, the stretchy kind competitive swimmers wear.

“I really don’t think I could—”

“Y’all might as well use ‘em.”

Eyeing the clothes, she attempted an appreciative smile, which came out tight and condescending. To wear a sweatshirt identical to his... well, that felt uncomfortably like the first step toward a relationship that she definitely did not want to encourage. The cutoffs looked like they’d be tight in the hips, a struggle to zip up. The tube top was certainly not her style. The thought of putting on someone else’s underwear was vaguely nauseating. And the sundress was far too cutesy. The swimsuit might be okay, if it fit. She should never have allowed him to talk her into coming up and taking a look.

And yet, she wanted desperately to swim. To throw herself into the perfect blue water of the bay. To wash away the defeats and frustrations of the day.

Suddenly, spasmodically, she gathered up the clothes spread over the bed. “Thanks,” she said, retreating immediately toward the door.

He shrugged and smiled. “Hey, no problem. Y’know, if y’all can stand getting up early tomorrow morning, we’re going out past the reef for a little fishing. Bébé’s always got extra room on the boat.”

“Thanks again, but I don’t know the first thing about spear fishing.”

“You don’t have to fish. You can just paddle around. It’s pretty.”

She forced a smile. “Thanks.”

“Well, hey, if you change your mind, let me know tonight. I’ll be around the hotel somewhere.”

Geri felt the eyes of the desk clerk on her as she came down the stairs to the lobby wearing the swimsuit and carrying a white, slightly threadbare hotel towel that was too small to wrap around her waist.

“Mademoiselle—”

She raised a hand, not wanting to discuss the theft further. “I’ll be back in a while. We can talk then.”

She scuttled across the road, the asphalt burning hot under her bare feet, and onto the powdery soft sand of the beach. It was empty, even now in the late afternoon when the sun-wary generally ventured out, and as she looked down the curving scimitar of sand and the perfectly tilted palms she wondered why. But rather than dwell on it, she dropped her towel and strode directly into the water.

It was warm and clear and the sand beneath it was as white as the beach. It looked clean, beautifully clean, in fact, and alive with small schools of tiny bright fish that darted away from her footfalls. The fish were perfectly visible, for there were no waves, nothing more than ripplets. A half-mile distant was the reason why: The feathery line of surf where the big swells of the open Atlantic crashed against the barrier reef.

Her heart lifting, she began to splash ahead, running now, running as fast as she could, ready to throw herself into the water, ready to swim as long and hard as she could, as far as the barrier reef, if necessary, if that was what it would take to work the awful, airless, self-conscious paralysis out of her life.

But then there was a strange thing. She ran fifty feet and the water deepened only slightly, up to the middle of her calf. Another fifty feet and it was up to her knee. Another fifty feet and it was actually shallower. And around her she began to see patches of sea plants, dark brown against the white sand bottom. She found herself in a shallow sand-bottomed channel through what was now an expanse of sea vegetation.

Perspiring heavily, with the heat of the sun reflecting off the water rising up thickly around her, she made her way down the channel. It began to deepen and she felt a wild sense of relief. Then, without warning, the channel ended and her left foot fell in the midst of the slithery, clinging bottom grass. Shuddering with disgust, she pulled her foot out and staggered back. She laced her fingers together for an eyeshade and looked around her.

She was maybe two hundred yards from the shore and the perfect crescent of the beach, and the tilting perfectly spaced palm trees, and the perfect white jumble of the town with the emerald mountain rising behind. In the other direction, five or six hundred yards away, was the reef, the surf just barely audible now, a sandpapery rasping sound. She was all alone in the midst of the perfect turquoise bay.

All alone because everybody but her knew it was unswimmable.