John Burdett - The Last Six Million Seconds

She gave him a sincere smile when he joined her, touched his forearm.

“I am sorry for waking you like that. It’s just me; I’m one of those people born without any subtlety at all. Up front, no depth, a primal type with the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old, that’s me. I even crack up at knock-knock jokes.”

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Mustafer.”

“Mustafer who?”

“Mustafer fag before I dive.”

He watched her double up. “You don’t really find that funny?”

She nodded, helpless.

Fuck Cuthbert.

Underwater with a scuba tank on her back Emily was lithe, playful, artistic, funny: a human porpoise. On the coral bed eighty feet under the boat she lay on her back, blew air rings of silver that wobbled lazily to the surface. As soon as Chan floated down to her level, he felt her hand on his thigh. He had not brought a wet suit; he wore only a T-shirt and swimming trunks. She found his testicles under his shorts. He liked her firmness of touch, her hunger, the humor of a submarine seduction.

Emily beckoned to him to follow. She stopped by the boat’s anchor, pulled him toward her. He could see her eyes glittering behind her mask. People died like this.

He felt his heartbeat double as he allowed her to pull open the Velcro fastenings to his buoyancy jacket. Carefully she slid it off him, his life in her hands. He chomped firmly on the mouthpiece. She used the Velcro straps to hitch the jacket and tank to the ring of the anchor chain. He hung in the sea with only the rubber windpipe tying him to his air. Through the water he felt her lust. Don’t let her …, but this was a seduction Cuthbert might have appreciated. For denizens of the edge, there was no greater aphrodisiac than the proximity of death. How had she guessed that eighty feet underwater was the one place where he would find her irresistible?

She pulled off his shorts, taking care to leave him his weight belt, tied them too, gestured for him to remove his T-shirt.

At the same time she pulled off her own buoyancy jacket, tied it next to his, managed to unzip her wet suit and remove it without losing the weight belt. Chan thought it would be funny if they lost the weights now and shot to the surface.

They sucked life from mouthpieces joined to umbilical cords joined to the tanks that had nestled next to the anchor. Between the fins and the masks they both were naked except for the weight belts: two monster frogs in a breeding ritual. Her breasts and thighs, the whole surface of her skin glistened with the liquid silk of the sea.

She clung to the anchor line in front of him, offering him her buttocks. As he reached down in slow motion, he found her hand already there ready to guide him. Without weight, without friction, he had to press her pelvic bone hard with his hand to avoid losing her to the sea. The bubbles from her mouthpiece reached a crescendo, then subsided with her slowing loins.

Wood, earth, metal, air, fire, water: Chan remembered in the Taoist system water was the origin of pleasure. He remembered too that other Taoist wisdom: Sex was the lesser climax, foreshadowing the greater one of death. He held that thought while he hung in the sea, spent.

Already Emily was replacing her wet suit. Following her, Chan watched while she fed giant rays that emerged from small hillocks in the sand of the seabed.

During breakfast on the rear deck under an awning Chan avoided the pity in Cuthbert’s eyes. Jenny and Jonathan were faintly embarrassed. Curious how sensitive people could smell coitus through eighty feet of salt water. Only Xian seemed unaware of a subtle change in the social order. He slurped congee while the others ate toast with coffee.

Cuthbert broke the silence. “How was your dawn dive?”

“It was unbelievable.” Chan concentrated on his toast.

“Emily, was it good?”

There was no sign of mischief in the diplomat’s face, but then he was English.

“Wonderful, just wonderful. Tell them, Charlie.”

“Giant rays-some of the biggest I’ve seen. Emily’s trained them to come when she taps her tank.”

“With food, I expect?” Cuthbert asked.

“Of course. They’re not stupid. Whenever I come, I first tap the tank, then give them some dried shrimp. Now all I have to do is tap the tank and they rise from the sand.”

“I’d like to see that,” Cuthbert said.

By lunchtime the atmosphere had altered again. Prolonged immersion in fresh air and sea had released everyone’s tension. Cuthbert had lost ten years.

“By God, that was something,” he said when he returned from a shower. “Such beauty, makes you never want to look at a desk or a telephone again.” He winked at Chan.

They ate lunch slowly, exchanging comments like a family that had been together years. Afterward they allowed their bodies to sag in sun chairs or on the swimming platform.

Chan caught subtle looks passing between Jenny and Jonathan. Emily’s eyes consumed his body. Remembering the morning, he smiled. Warm water and copulation went together like duck and rice. Only Xian seemed on edge, anxious to get back to land.

Everyone except Jenny drank a beer while lounging in the sun; then one by one with sketchy apologies they retired to their cabins.

Chan returned to the swimming deck and thought about diving naked into the sea again. He was quietly smoking and staring out at the electric blue ocean when the boat boy approached with a red envelope that bore the name Chief Inspector Chan in green felt tip pen. Inside, a single sheet of paper carried a two-word message: “knock, knock?”

Chan smiled. He could feel her will dragging him in invisible chains toward her stateroom. For a moment he toyed with the amusing idea of ignoring her message and observing the savagery of her revenge, or the humor of her pleading-her reactions were hard to predict. On reflection, though, he padded back down the corridor. Abovewater perhaps she would talk.

Cuthbert lay down on his bunk. It was so hot he gave in and turned on the boat’s air conditioning. He had prepared his diskman and travel alarm. He set the alarm, replaced the Gregorian chants with Mozart’s Concerto for Clarinet.

When the alarm bleeped, he pressed a button that activated a radio receiver: nothing except the sound of Xian snoring. Cuthbert removed the headset. As he did so, he heard Emily’s voice penetrating through the wall from the stateroom next door. Cuthbert put his ear to the wall.

“Admit it, have the guts: They turn you off, don’t they?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Christ, if you didn’t have to be such a fucking detective, you wouldn’t have noticed. Men can’t feel saline; it’s guaranteed.”

“Let’s just say I’m impotent and leave it at that.”

“You weren’t so fucking impotent this morning-before you knew. I saw your face when you saw the scars.”

“I’m sorry, yes, I saw the scars.”

“And now all you can manage is a wet fish between your legs.”

“I’m practically impotent. Submarine erections are all I can manage.”

“Prick.”

“Look, what d’you want me to say? You have a hang-up about your tits, your implants. What do I know? Why is it my problem?”

A long pause. Then Emily’s voice: “Go on, fuck off, go back to your cabin.”

“D’you have to be quite such a bitch?”

A short pause.

“No, sorry. I’m upset. It’s not like me. At least it is when this happens.”

“So-”

“Yes, Chief Inspector, it’s happened before. Chinese men have got to be the most fastidious in the world.”

“Choose a South African.”

“What?”

“A particularly insensitive race-up your street.”

A pause.

“Come here, kiss me.”