Peter Benchley - Jaws

Ellen looked at Hooper, trying to define her reminiscence. She hoped Albert Morris would introduce them, but he seemed to have no intention of doing so. “Excuse me,” she said to Hooper, “but I have to ask you something.”

Hooper looked at her and smiled again — a pleasant, friendly smile that softened the sharpness of his features and made his light blue eyes shine. “Sure,” he said. “Ask away.”

“You aren’t by any chance related to David Hooper, are you?”

“He’s my older brother. Do you know David?”

“Yes,” said Ellen. “Or rather, I used to. I went out with him a long time ago. I’m Ellen Brody. I used to be Ellen Shepherd. Back then, I mean.”

“Oh sure. I remember you.”

“You don’t.”

“I do. No kidding. I’ll prove it to you. Let me see… You wore your hair shorter then, sort of a pageboy. You always wore a charm bracelet. I remember that because it had a big charm that looked like the Eiffel Tower. And you always used to sing that song — what was it called? — ‘ShiBoom,’ or something like that. Right?”

Ellen laughed. “My heavens, you have quite a memory. I’d forgotten that song.”

“It’s screwy the things that impress kids. You went out with David for what — two years?”

“Two summers,” Ellen said. “They were fun. I hadn’t thought about them much in the past few years.”

“Do you remember me?”

“Vaguely. I’m not sure. I remember David had a younger brother. You must have been about nine or ten then.”

“About that; David’s ten years older than I am. Another thing I remember: Everybody called me Matt. I thought it sounded grown-up. But you called me Matthew. You said it sounded more dignified. I was probably in love with you.”

“Oh?” Ellen reddened, and Albert Morris laughed.

“At one time or another,” said Hooper, “I fell in love with all the girls David went out with.”

“Oh.”

Morris handed Hooper his change, and Hooper said to Ellen, “I’m going down to the dock. Can I drop you anywhere?”

“Thank you. I have a car.” She thanked Morris, and, with Hooper behind her, walked out of the store. “So now you’re a scientist,” she said when they were outside.

“Kind of by accident. I started out as an English major. But then I took a course in marine biology to satisfy my science requirement, and — bingo! — I was hooked.”

“On what? The ocean?”

“No. I mean, yes and no. I was always crazy about the ocean. When I was twelve or thirteen, my idea of a big time was to take a sleeping bag down to the beach and spend the night lying in the sand listening to the waves, wondering where they had come from and what fantastic things they had passed on the way. What I got hooked on in college was fish, or, to be really specific, sharks.”

Ellen laughed. “What an awful thing to fall in love with. It’s like having a passion for rats.”

“That’s what most people think,” said Hooper, “But they’re wrong. Sharks have everything a scientist dreams of. They’re beautiful — God, how beautiful they are! They’re like an impossibly perfect piece of machinery. They’re as graceful as any bird. They’re as mysterious as any animal on earth. No one knows for sure how long they live or what impulses — except for hunger — they respond to. There are more than two hundred and fifty species of shark, and every one is different from every other one. Scientists spend their lives trying to find answers about sharks, and as soon as they come up with a nice, pat generalization, something shoots it down. People have been trying to find an effective shark repellent for over two thousand years. They’ve never found one that really works.” He stopped, looked at Ellen, and smiled. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to lecture. As you can see, I’m an addict.”

“And as you can see,” said Ellen, “I don’t know what I’m talking about. I imagine you went to Yale.”

“Of course. Where else? For four generations, the only male in our family who didn’t go to Yale was an uncle of mine who got thrown out of Andover and ended up at Miami or Ohio. After Yale, I went to graduate school at the University of Florida. And after that, I spent a couple of years chasing sharks around the world.”

“That must have been interesting.”

“For me it was paradise. It was like giving an alcoholic the keys to a distillery. I tagged sharks in the Red Sea and dove with them off Australia. The more I learned about them, the more I knew I didn’t know.”

“You dived with them?”

Hooper nodded. “In a cage mostly, but sometimes not. I know what you must think. A lot of people think I’ve got a death wish — my mother in particular. But if you know what you’re doing, you can reduce the danger to almost nil.”

“You must be the world’s greatest living shark expert.”

“Hardly,” Hooper said with a laugh. “But I’m trying. The one trip I missed out on, the one I would have given anything to go on, was Peter Gimbel’s trip. It was made into a movie. I dream about that trip. They were in the water with two great whites, the same kind of shark that’s here now.”

“I’m just as glad you didn’t go on that trip,” said Ellen. “You probably would have tried to see what the view was like from inside one of the sharks. But tell me about David. How is he?”

“He’s okay, all things considered. He’s a broker in San Francisco.”

“What do you mean, ‘all things considered’?”

“Well, he’s on his second wife. His first wife was — maybe you know this — Patty Fremont.”

“Sure. I used to play tennis with her. She sort of inherited David from me. That’s a nice way of putting it.”

“That lasted three years, until she latched onto someone with a family business and a house in Antibes. So David went and found himself a girl whose father is the majority stockholder in an oil company. She’s nice enough, but she’s got the IQ of an artichoke. If David had any sense, he would have known when he had it good and he would have held on to you.”

Ellen blushed and said softly, “You’re nice to say it.”

“I’m serious. That’s what I’d have done if I’d been him.”

“What did you do? What lucky girl finally got you?”

“None, so far. I guess there are girls around who just don’t know how lucky they could be.” Hooper laughed. “Tell me about yourself. No, don’t. Let me guess. Three children. Right?”

“Right. I didn’t realize it showed that much.”

“No, no. I don’t mean that. It doesn’t show at all. Not at all. Your husband is — let’s see — a lawyer. You have an apartment in town and a house on the beach in Amity. You couldn’t be happier. And that’s exactly what I’d wish for you.”

Ellen shook her head, smiling. “Not quite. I don’t mean the happiness part, the rest. My husband is the police chief in Amity.”

Hooper let the surprise show in his eyes for only an instant. Then he smacked himself on the forehead and said, “What a dummy I am! Of course. Brody. I never made the connection. That’s great. I met your husband last night. He seems like quite a guy.”

Ellen thought she detected a flicker of irony in Hooper’s voice, but then she told herself, Don’t be stupid — you’re making things up. “How long will you be here?” she said.

“I don’t know. That depends on what happens with this fish. As soon as he leaves, I’ll leave.”

“Do you live in Woods Hole?”

“No, but not far away. In Hyannisport. I have a little house on the water. I have a thing about being near the water. If I get more than ten miles inland, I begin to feel claustrophobic.”

“You live all alone?”