Nevada Barr - The Rope

Rudely, Regis trained his flashlight beam into the face of the intruder. An Asian man, thirties maybe, tall and leanly muscled, had scaled the rocks behind him and was standing helpfully at his heels in wildly pink-and-turquoise print swim trunks.

A witness.

“I got a call someone may be in trouble here. There’s no time to explain.” He pulled the park radio from its holder on his belt, keyed the mike, and said Jim Levitt’s call number. When Jim’s voice crackled back, he said, “It’s Regis. I think Jenny and Anna are in trouble in the slot at the end of Panther. I’m going in. I got a visitor here—”

“Martin,” the young man said.

“Martin. I’m leaving the radio with him.” Regis shoved the radio and the flashlight into Martin’s hands. “See if you can locate bodies in the water,” he said sharply, uncoiling the rope. When he had a line looped over a rock that wasn’t going anywhere in the next fifteen thousand years, he kicked off his deck shoes and dove off the rock, the yellow line, held in his right hand, trailing after him.

When he surfaced the water was alive with reflections. The Asian guy methodically sweeping the waves with the flashlight. “Anna!” he yelled. “Can you hear me? Anna! Jenny! Answer me!”

Jenny’s feet had cramped, the insteps curling in on themselves. When she’d tried to pull her toes back toward her knees, she’d lost her grip on the wall. It wasn’t like before, when they plunged; this time she and Anna, held together by muscles too cold to move, sank gently. Anna Pigeon and the warmth she shared floated away into a lightless universe.

In Jenny’s fist was the front of Anna’s shirt. When Anna had drawn her arms around her, Jenny took a fistful of cotton to fortify an embrace she knew was going to get more difficult to maintain as the minutes clicked by. It wasn’t strength or courage that kept her holding tightly to her friend but the inability to unclench her fingers.

Too confused to know which way was up, Jenny waited, unafraid, in limbo. The air she’d drawn in as they sank carried her back to the surface. Her lungs sucked in the oxygen greedily. Jenny was oddly indifferent, as if the bellows pumped in a body not her own.

She had thought Anna was completely submerged. She wasn’t. Her chest was rising and falling under Jenny’s knuckles. Had she been able, she would have wrapped the smaller woman in her arms. When she could no longer move her legs sufficiently to keep them afloat, she promised herself, that’s what she would do.

Wild and racing, lasers slashed the slot walls, cutting out ribbons of darkness that fell into the darker waters. Hypothermia was disorienting, Jenny knew that. Hallucinations hadn’t been mentioned. Not that it meant anything. Not that Jenny could hold on to the thought or care.

A deep, ragged voice jangled through the stillness. “Anna! Can you hear me? Anna! Jenny! Answer me!”

The shouting seemed part of the death Jenny and Anna were sharing. When it penetrated the area of her brain still operable, and she realized the cavalry had finally arrived, Jenny tried to call out. Her jaws would not open, not at all, not one millimeter.

A splash. The cavalry had dived in.

Hope generated enough strength that Jenny kicked, keeping them above water a few more seconds. A blow landed on her upturned face. Bone and muscles, paralyzed with cold, clanged a death knell and she sank like a stone, Anna’s shirt still caught in her fingers.

Her hair snagged on something; there was no pain, just pressure as she was dragged. Jenny’s face came clear of the water. Her head rested on something warm; above her were stars. Slow as a dream, she began drifting on her back. An arm was across her chest. A lifeguard had jumped into the pool. Rescue had come. Salvation, she wanted to tell Anna.

Though her mind did not remember the lifesaving moves, her body did. From a source not her own, strength flowed into her arm, enough so that she could draw Anna onto her breast. She hoped Anna’s nose and mouth were above water, and that there were not now three dead children in the deep end.

Stars slowed, then stopped. No. She had slowed, then stopped.

“Okay, Jenny, this is going to be a bit crude, but you’re about one angle from an ice cube. I’m putting a rope around you.”

A light shone down from above. A beam like from the star to the baby Jesus in his cradle. In its vague glow she watched a bright yellow rope in dark brown hands pass under her arms and across her back.

“I’m going to tie this off, okay? When it’s tied, I’ll take Anna. Don’t you worry. Hey, guy! Throw me down the PFD.”

“Martin.”

“Yeah, Martin. There’s two there by the rock. Throw one down.” Warm hands threaded the rope over her rib cage, pushing it between her and Anna. Jenny tried to take it and make it go around both of them, but the hand that wasn’t clenched in Anna’s shirtfront was of no more use than a club.

The lifeguard who was saving them kept on talking. The words were too quick to catch, but the tone was comforting. Then he began pulling at Anna, digging at Jenny’s fingers to free them from the shirt. Anna was being taken from her arms. Jenny fought in her mind, screamed in her mind. Her hands let go without her permission, her arms fell away, traitors.

“It’s okay, Jenny. Don’t fight me.” It was wrong to fight the lifeguard. Jenny used to know that. She watched him buckle Anna into an orange Mae West. Then the lifeguard went away and left them in the cold water. Anna bobbed gently out of the erratic circle of light. Jenny waited to slide under. The rope didn’t let it happen.

“Jim. Hallelujah,” burbled up from somewhere. “Tie off that second line and throw it to me.”

Time passed. Jenny’s eyes closed, her mind went away. Grunting, like that of a pig in labor, enticed her to open them again. Nothing remained of her but eyes and mind. Her body was a quiet invisible thing she could not feel. Perhaps she was dead and watched, as spirits are said to, hovering above the operating table while the body dies, only to swoop back down when the body is shocked back to life.

Anna, clownish in the orange life vest and white face, bobbed back into the spotlight. Send in the clowns … Jenny heard Joni singing. No. Not Joni. It was from a Broadway musical.

Anna would like that.

As if Jenny’s thought were her cue, Anna floated across the watery stage until she bumped up against the rock. There she struggled, not like a woman, but like a fish on a line, then up she went. Like Lazarus from the tomb, Jenny’s mind said. Like an unlucky trout from a pool, like a woman lynched by a mob. And up. And gone.

Now only she and two corpses remained in the deep end, said the mind that had been Jenny’s, herself and the dead men who had tricked them into going for a swim in Ted Bundy’s backyard pool.

The sow in labor increased her grunting.

Jenny’s old body sent a message that the world was changing, and not for the better. The lungs she’d been using were squeezed so tightly air had little space for going in or coming out. Her head fell forward until she could see the faint light of the night sky on her breasts. They’d bobbed up out of the inky briny deeps. Good breasts . Buoyant boobs.

In a scattering of male voices, grunting redoubled. Jenny watched with disinterest as her belly and thighs, knees and feet rose out of the black water.

Hands closed on her upper arms, “Gently, gently,” someone was saying. “Very gently. We don’t want to shock her into a worse state. Easy does it. Got her? Okay, on three. One, two, three.” Jenny levitated, flying upward like magic; then strong arms were supporting her and hard light was striping across the rock, illuminating three pairs of feet, one in boat shoes, one bare, one in flip-flops.