Donald Westlake - Drowned Hopes

Reassuring himself like mad, Doug went over to the door, tried the key, and was relieved, faintly surprised, and also faintly disappointed, when it worked and the door swung open. Standing in the open doorway, he was about to check the time on his waterproof, shockproof, glow-in-the-dark watch/compass/calendar when motion made him look up to see a long black car—a Mercedes, he realized—traveling without lights and just coming to a stop next to his pickup. In the extreme dimness, he could just make out the MD plate on the Mercedes, which was a real surprise. Those guys weren’t doctors. Standards haven’t slipped that much.

Both front doors of the Mercedes opened, without the interior light going on. (How did they do that?) Andy was the driver, John the passenger. They shut the car doors quietly and approached, Andy saying, “Right on time.”

“I’ve got the door open,” Doug announced, unnecessarily, since he was standing in it. Then he gestured at the pickup, saying, “All the gear’s here. It weighs a ton.”

It did, too. Wearing half the stuff and carrying the rest, the three staggered into the school building, Doug closing the door behind them and then leading the way with his pencil flash along the wide empty dark corridor—that well-remembered smell of school! — to the stairs, and then down the long flight and along the next corridor—not quite so wide down here—to the double swinging doors leading to the boys’ locker room, and through it to the entrance to the pool. An interior room in the basement, the pool area had no windows, and so there was no reason not to turn on lights, which Doug did: all of them, revealing great expanses of beige tile and heavily chlorinated water. Footsteps and voices echoed wetly in here, so you always had the feeling there was somebody else around, just behind you or on the other side of the pool.

The two students looked at that great ocean in the bottom of the school building, and Andy said, “Where’s the shallow end?”

“It’s the deep end we want,” Doug told him. “Right here. Let’s get our gear on.”

“At the real place,” Andy said, “we’re just gonna walk in.”

“Look, guys,” Doug said. “That was your decision, that I’m not going to the real place with you. So I arranged for us to use this pool. And believe me, wherever it is you’re gonna walk into, when you get fifty feet deep it’s gonna be a lot farther down than the deep end of this pool.”

They both took a moment to look into the pool, contemplating that truth. Then John sighed and shook his head and said, “Okay, we’ve come this far. Let’s do it.”

“Fine,” Doug said. “We’ll get out of our street clothes, into our swimsuits and our wetsuits and all our gear, and get to it.”

Two less athletic or more reluctant students Doug had never had. They didn’t like their wet suits, they didn’t like the way the tank straps felt on their shoulders, they didn’t like the weight belts around their waists (he’d given them each fourteen pounds), they didn’t like their masks, they hated their BCDs. Finally, Doug said, “Look guys, the idea was, you wanted to do this, remember? I’m not forcing you into it.”

John held up his BCD, a thing that looked like a larger and more elaborate life vest, and said, “What is this thing, anyway?”

“A BCD,” Doug told him.

Which didn’t seem to help much. “That’s the alphabet,” Andy pointed out. “A, B, C, D.”

“No, no,” Doug said. “Not A BCD, a BCD. Buoyancy Control Device. Simply, the amount of air you put in the BCD determines at what level you hover when you’re underwater.”

“When I’m underwater,” John said, “I generally hover at the bottom.”

“Not with the BCD,” Doug assured him. “Let me demonstrate.”

“Go right ahead,” John said.

So Doug went into the pool, wearing all the gear and with the BCD inflated enough to keep him at the surface. Head out of the water, he said, “I’m going to raise my arm and press the button on the top of the control to release some of the air from the BCD. This pool is only eight feet deep, so I can’t descend very far, but I’ll hover in the water, above the bottom, and then I’ll add air to the BCD from my tank, and I’ll rise again. Now, watch.”

They looked at each other. Doug said, “Watch me .”

“We’re watching,” John said.

So Doug did exactly as he’d announced he would do, keeping his knees bent upward so his feet wouldn’t touch the bottom when he floated downward. He hovered near the bottom for a while, then lay out flat and stroked across the pool, the BCD maintaining his depth at about five feet. Stroking back, he added air and rose to the surface. Looking at those two skeptical faces, he said, “See how easy?”

“Sure,” said John.

“So let’s do it,” Doug said. “Jump on in.”

No. They would not “jump on in”; no matter how he assured them they wouldn’t sink, they insisted on going down to the shallow end and coming down the steps there. And even then, they were barely knee deep when both stopped. Looking as startled as a man whose face is encumbered with mask and mouthpiece can possibly look, Andy cried, “This suit doesn’t work!”

“Sure it does,” Doug told him. I’m earning my thousand dollars, he told himself. “Come on in, fellas.”

“It’s wet inside the suit!”

John said, more quietly and fatalistically, “Inside mine, too.”

“It’s supposed to do that,” Doug explained, holding to the side of the pool at the deep end. “The wet suit is Neoprene rubber. It lets a layer of water in. Your body warms the water, the suit holds it in, and you stay warm.”

“But wet !” Andy complained.

Doug shook his head, losing heart. “I don’t know, guys,” he said. “Maybe you just aren’t cut out for this.”

“No,” John said, “it’s okay. Just so we know the score. If that’s the way it’s supposed to work, okay, then. Come on, Andy,” he said, and plowed on into the water with the expression of a man tasting his aunt’s favorite eggplant recipe.

Once he actually got his students in the water, Doug’s problems really began. These two guys simply did not want to breathe underwater. They’d descend, mouthpiece clamped in teeth, eyes wide behind the goggles, and they’d hold their breath . Eventually, asphyxiating, they’d surface and take in great huge gulps of air.

“Oh, come on, fellas,” Doug kept saying. “That’s air in that tank on your back. Use some of it.” But they wouldn’t.

Eventually, Doug saw that drastic measures were the only measures with these guys. Climbing out of the pool, but still wearing all his equipment in case of trouble, he convinced and cajoled them toward the deeper end. Their BCDs were full, of course, so they couldn’t sink, and they kept holding to the edge, but at least they were in water that was theoretically over their heads.

Now to turn theory into practice. Gently but firmly disengaging their clutching fingers from the pool’s rim, Doug shoved each of them away toward the middle. As buoyant as Macy’s parade floats, they drifted in the middle of the pool, blinking at him through their glass masks.

“Fine,” Doug told them, standing at the edge of the pool. “Mouthpiece in mouth. Are you breathing through your mouthpieces?”

They nodded. Above the water, they were happy to use scuba air.

“Fine,” Doug said. “Now we’ll test another part of the equipment. Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen. Each of you, lift your left arm. You know the silver button on that control there? Fine. Press it.”