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Stay with him?
Linda struggled to look at Teresa directly. "No, no. Don't be afraid.
You'll stay only if you choose it. Thomas is gentle, less dangerous than the
oyster he considers himself to be."
"Why would you think I'd stay? Do you think I want to die?" The idea
was grotesque, she had forgotten about the bottle of Nembutal.
Linda sighed, "Maybe I'm wrong about you. Maybe you're not like me.
Maybe you've been able, a time or two, to live within the moment. Maybe
you haven't spent all your life grieving for the past, fearing the future. If
you think you can really live the rest of your life, then that's fine."
A slow weary tide of sadness began to rise in Teresa's heart.
"But let Thomas show you what he does," Linda said. "If you want to
leave after that, I wish you well. Though I fear for poor Thomas."
"Poor Thomas?"
"Yes." Linda's voice was very faint now. "He lives only through us. All his
life is borrowed." Her body trembled beneath the quilt. "Leave me, now.
I've been pretty lucid for a woman in my condition, but it won't last. If you
decide to stay, send him to me. I want to finish."
When she reached the deck, Thomas had gone forward, to sit
crosslegged with his back against the mainmast. The moonlight was
brighter now, and he seemed no more intimidating than any other very
handsome man. Perhaps Linda was just a lunatic, in the last stages of
some mania-inducing disease?
But Thomas shared her delusion, or so it seemed.
Teresa went up the sidedeck and leaned against the lifelines. How
strange, she thought. Here she was with a man who believed himself to be
some sort of soul-eating life-draining monster. And for some reason
Teresa wasn't swimming for the shore. It wasn't like any horror movie
she'd ever seen. "Linda said we should be sorry for you. Poor Thomas, she
said."
An ordinary human might have shrugged, but of course Thomas did
not. "I do not understand her concern. I am as I am."
"Right. Well, listen, this has been interesting, but I'd better go. Got to
look for a new job tomorrow; I'll be a busy girl. Could you take me ashore?
You could drop me at the sandspit. Nobody lives there, yet."
"You are humoring me," said Thomas. "It is charming, but unnecessary.
You may take the dinghy. Or, if you wish, I will show you what I am."
She retreated a step, but he made no threatening movement. "I don't
think so," she said. "I mean, it's a terrific offer and all...I could relive my
crappy life and then die, it sounds like great fun, really, but..."
He looked away, out across the harbor toward the darkened sandspit
that divided the harbor from the pass into the Gulf. "Then return to your
room and your bottle of stale Nembutal." His faint smile never wavered.
Suddenly, she believed, and she wasn't even very curious about the
source of his knowledge. "Is it...is it like some sort of super drug? One
taste and I'm hooked for life?"
"For death, do you mean? In a way. Life is the most completely
addictive drug. Those who are addicts can never get enough. They feel, all
the time, as you will feel if you remember your life through me."
"And I can't change? I can't learn to feel as they do?"
"I don't know," he said. "Sometimes people do change. My impression is
that you will not."
His words, spoken in that soft formal voice, seemed inevitable, and they
finished the erosion of her will. Were Thomas suddenly to sprout long
fangs and lunge at her throat, she thought, she wouldn't even attempt to
stop him.
"Why did you help me? With the Sailorman," she asked, but without
any real curiosity.
"You did not deserve to own so ugly a memory."
A time passed, and the breeze died.
"Show me," she said.
Thomas glanced up. "See," he said, pointing. "The moon is about to go
behind a cloud."
She looked.
The blue Gulf was a beautiful soft dream, the first time she saw it. She
parked her old car along a stretch of undeveloped beach, and felt the sun
soak through the windows, warming her. There was an energizing tang to
the air, she'd never filled her lungs with such delicious stuff before.
She got out and looked out across the ocean, marveling at the subtle
gradation of hues, from the pale aquamarine in the shallows to the dense
metallic purple at the horizon. A gentle onshore breeze carried a faint
scent of seaweed and fish, an exotic smell, not at all unpleasant, with an
even fainter undertone of coconut oil. The beach was almost deserted, in
comparison to other beaches she had known only a few sunbathers were
scattered over the brilliant white sand.
She felt a complex mixture of hope and anxiety, but the emotions were
just a buzzing background to the lovely sensations of the moment. She'd
left Atlanta in a frenzy of anger and disappointment, driven all night,
thinking dark thoughts. All forgotten, at least for now.
She opened the trunk and got a cream soda from the ice chest. She sat
on the hood, looking out over the Gulf, sipping the soda. She rolled the
taste of it on her tongue vanilla was such a round perfect flavor.
The sun felt so good. Later it might be too hot for comfort, but now, in
mid-morning, it was perfect. She wanted to take off her blouse and let the
sun touch her breasts, like a lover's warm breath,
Happiness surged through her, but it was a feeling that lived far away
from her ordinary thoughts and emotions. She might have thought it very
strange, were she not so full of delight.
By the time the sun rose, they were far out in the Gulf, the Destin
condominiums sinking below the edge of the sea. Thomas showed her how
to steer the course, how to watch the set of the sails, and then went below.
An hour later he came on deck with Linda's body wrapped in a sheet
and weighted with rusty chain.
He gave her to the water without ceremony.
"What now?" Teresa asked.
"We will go south, to an island where no one lives, and the tidal range is
large enough to careen Rosemary. She needs new bottom paint."
He took the wheel, and Teresa went to sit in the corner of the cockpit,
where there was a little shelter from the wind.
She could not say she was happy, but at least she felt no pain. She could
not say she had hopes, but at least she had expectations.
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