Lydia Millet - Ghost Lights

“Of course,” he said.

“You have to come in with me!”

He was flatly opposed to this. He would be cold and wet. He had no interest in it.

“OK,” he said.

Wearily and without haste he took off his clothes. Who cared, after all, who would ever notice or give a shit? No one. Gretel herself wasn’t even looking. The air was black around them and the blackness gave them a loose kind of privacy. She stepped out of her own skirt as though it was nothing, pulled her shirt over her head and dropped it on the sand too. No brassiere. He had a glimpse of pertness, the sheen of skin.

She left the clothes in a pile without casting a glance at them, bounded forward into the surf and dove. Submerged.

He watched the water, holding his breath. Shivering. Now he had to go in after her. That was how he was with the Germans — he acceded to their demands and then he had to summon the wherewithal. When in fact he did not have it. He was afraid of dark things in the water, surging up from the deep.

Where was she? She should have resurfaced by now. He waded out, up to his knees, up to his waist. Where was she?

She came up with a splash, laughing and shaking the water off her head.

“I love it!” she cried.

“Nice,” he agreed, nodding, and dropped in up to his shoulders, dog-paddling. She went under again.

He remembered a scene from one of the British nature shows featuring famous, avuncular naturalists — wry, witty men who casually stepped down from helicopters in the African veldt and talked companionably to the camera in their Oxbridge accents as they walked through the tall, waving grass in their safari outfits. Such men were at home with the animals, picked them up and showed them to the camera as though there was no trick to it. They said this little fella as they described a mating behavior or trotted out a surprising factoid. But the scene he remembered had been part of an episode devoted to bioluminescence. They had shown deep-sea fishes that looked like spaceships, myriad lights rimming their graceful, pulsing bodies. Marine biologists had descended in a bathysphere like something out of Jules Verne. In the depths near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, in the bathysphere’s headlights, they caught luminous creatures undescribed by science.

Casey had cried when she saw that. But she hid it from him. She pretended she was crying for another reason, pain probably. She was embarrassed to be seen crying out of sheer emotion.

In the dark he saw mostly the glitter of the waves, Gretel, porpoise-like, diving and coming up again. For a few seconds she stood on her hands in the shallows, her legs and feet sticking out straight, toes pointed like a ballerina’s. There was a breeze across his chest and shoulders and he threw his weight backward and floated on his back, water skirting his bare chest. He could not help but think of sharks and other predators, sluggish and ominous beneath him. Awakening. Tendrils or tentacles or rows of sharp teeth. .

Above him he saw the moon, but not with clarity; just a blurred scoop of white. He closed his eyes. It was reassuring to have Gretel nearby. Nothing would befall her. No shark would dare. By extension he was also safer. Wasn’t he?

Something brushed against his back from beneath and at the same time he panicked and he knew it was her. Her sleek, wet head emerged beside his own and she was spitting seawater on him and laughing. He sank down a little, coughed and sputtered and righted himself, feet searching for the sandy bottom and sinking in.

Without warning she kissed him. Their bodies were touching all over, under the water and above it, solid and inflaming. Her nipples were against his chest. At once he was both frozen and pulsing with current. Even as it happened, and then continued to happen, it was completely impossible.

He would have to pay for this, he was thinking. And he would pay. He would pay. Gratefully.

They were clean-looking guys with brush cuts, looking intently ahead of them and carrying the smell of fresh sweat and what he suspected was pine-scent deodorant. The armed forces weren’t as Caucasian as he’d imagined them, more Latino and black, but just as muscular and young. He stood in the sand beside the dock watching as they filed past, he in his shorts and tattered old sneakers, they in stiff uniforms and bulky black boots. He felt unarmored, a tiny pale civilian.

They dismounted from the dock in rapid succession, boots thumping into the sand, and ran past him and up the beach, leaving their two powerboats tied to the dock. A few hundred yards out on the water the mother ship was anchored, a line of flapping flags flying over her gleaming white bulk. He recognized only the Stars and Stripes.

“ Nantucket ,” he read, off the side. “Wow. She’s big.”

Hans, a few paces off with his hands clasped behind his back, shook his head with a tut-tut noise. “Smallest patrol boat in the fleet, except for the Barracudas,” he said. “A 110. Island class. 155 tons full load. Two diesels, two shafts, 5,820 bhp and about 30 knots. For guns, a 25-millimeter Bushmaster low-angle and two 7.62-millimeter MGs.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Hal.

Hans laughed joyously, as though Hal had told a good joke.

“I thought you did airplanes,” Hal added.

“Tactical sensor networks,” said Hans. “I like boats though. Kind of like a hobby.” He waved at a man standing on the powerboat’s massive bridge. Hal squinted to see him better; he was a small stick figure.

“I don’t get it,” said Hal. “How did you manage this?”

“They were already here. Humanitarian assistance,” said Hans. “This mission falls in the category of hurricane casualties. Even though technically it was only a tropical storm. Your friend is an American citizen, no? And an important businessman also. An asset. I impressed them with this. They are based in an operations center in Miami. The ones in light-brown are the Belize Defence Force cadets. They are just here to learn.”

“I didn’t think anyone would show up,” said Hal, still stunned and failing to adjust. “I really didn’t.”

“Of course,” said Hans, and grinned. He put his hand up for a high-five.

Dazed, Hal slapped it compliantly and then felt stupid.

Hans consulted his waterproof digital watch, which he had worn diving the day before and of which he seemed to be quite proud. “We weigh anchor at 10:00 hours,” he said. “So you have exactly ten minutes for preparation.”

“Oh. I’ll go get my shit, then,” said Hal after a few seconds, and struck out for his room at a jog.

He was dizzy and almost trembling from too little sleep and too many margaritas and lying awake in disbelief remembering the recent past — Gretel’s mouth, thighs, and hands all over him. They lay on their shucked clothes on the sand; they had to be careful not to get sand inside her, between them where it counted. He brushed it off her thighs and stomach, off himself. . but she was lighthearted and playful so he had tried to seem lighthearted too, though he was dead serious.

After they finished he had walked her to the flight of stairs outside the room she was sharing with Hans and the cornboys. Salt-encrusted and shivering, he had gazed up at her back and legs, flashes in the dark as she went up. Probably he had been beaming the whole time, he thought. He had felt like beaming. The room door had closed softly behind her and he had almost run back to his own room, bounding forward giddily. Like a kid.

He was not without pride, lying there, he had to admit it. He even fell asleep proud.

Then first thing in the morning Hans found him at the lobby coffeemaker and rushed him outside to watch the patrol boat cruise in.