“Inflate your BC!” Ben shouted at her. “Do it orally!”

  Caddie sank beneath the water, bobbed back up, spitting and choking. Ben lunged toward her and grabbed her from behind, holding her around the waist so that her flailing hands couldn’t reach him. In her panic, she would grab hold of anything, and he needed to maintain control.

  “It’s all right,” he told her, reaching for her low-pressure inflator. He held the outflow button down and breathed into the mouthpiece. Caddie’s BC swelled slightly. He blew again, and she began to rise in the water. Another four breaths and she was buoyant. Still, she struggled.

  “Caddie,” Ben said firmly. “You’re all right.”

  She stopped flailing and began to cry. He turned her around and looked into her face. “What happened?” he asked her.

  “I ran out of air,” she said between sobs.

  Ben took her computer and looked at it. It didn’t make sense that she had run out of air. They hadn’t been down that long. Yet her gauge was in the red, the needle resting against the farthest edge. He didn’t give her a full tank, he thought. That idiot sent her down without enough air.

  He dropped the computer. He would deal with Brian later. Right now he wanted to make sure Caddie was all right. “How do you feel?” he asked. “Are you tingly? Does your chest hurt?” He ran through the classic symptoms of the bends, trying to remember all of them.

  Caddie shook her head. Her crying had become a ragged snuffling, but she was no longer hysterical. “I think I’m okay,” she said.

  “Good,” Ben told her. “Do you think you can swim in?”

  Caddie looked toward the shore, which was farther away than Ben would have liked. They had swum around the kelp forest and were now closer to the north end of the beach. While he would have preferred to go back the way they’d come, it would be faster to go straight in.

  “I can do it,” Caddie said.

  “Good girl,” Ben said. “I know you can.”

  Since their masks had sunk, they swam on their backs. This was harder, and Ben was tired after only a few yards. He kicked harder, thinking perhaps his legs had become entangled in some kelp. Then he felt a strange warmth wash over his skin. No, he prayed. Please, no.

  Caddie was beside him. As the tingling sensation increased, Ben tried to reach for her and found that he could barely move his fingers.

  “Caddie,” he said.

  “I’m okay, Dad,” she answered.

  “Caddie,” Ben repeated, “I need your help.”

  Suddenly, his vision filled with exploding stars. He opened his mouth to speak and found that he couldn’t. Then all was blackness.

  CHAPTER 42

  Hudson placed the battered manuscript on Helen Guerneyser’s desk. “This is for you,” he told her.

  The archivist looked at the papers, which by now were dirty and torn from repeated readings. Hudson’s illegible scrawl filled the margins, and an assortment of sticky notes protruded from between the pages, as if he had pressed butterflies between them. Helen looked over her glasses at the title page. “Changing Tides,” she read. “What is it, something you wrote?”

  “If I’m right, it’s something Steinbeck wrote,” Hudson told her. She looked up, quickly, and he continued. “A colleague of mine, who has since died, found this,” he explained.

  “How long have you had it?” she asked.

  Hudson hesitated. “About three years,” he said truthfully.

  Helen picked the manuscript up and leafed through the pages.

  “This is a copy, obviously,” Hudson said. “The original is in a safe place.”

  “I’d ask you why this wasn’t turned over to the Stanford archives,” Helen said. “Or to us,” she added. “But I think I can guess the answer to that myself.” Her voice held no animosity, and Hudson knew that she understood fully the impossibility of any academic handing over such a potentially exciting find.

  “Is it any good?” Helen asked him.

  “It’s very good,” said Hudson. “It’s unfinished, but it’s very good. But ...”

  Helen stopped flipping and looked at him, waiting. “But?” she encouraged.

  “I can’t prove that it’s by Steinbeck,” Hudson said. “And even if I could, I’m not sure it would be the best idea.”

  Helen took her glasses off and placed the end of one earpiece between her lips. “Eleanor Mintz called me,” she said. “She’s under the impression that it’s your intention to try to blackmail the foundation.”

  Hudson started to deny the accusation violently, but Helen waved her hand. “I know it’s ridiculous,” she said. “But I found it curious that she wouldn’t tell me what, exactly, this apparently lurid information you have is. She said, and I quote, ‘It’s nothing a lady would ever say, Helen.’ ” She laughed. “But as neither you nor I is a lady of Eleanor’s standing, I think you had better tell me,” she concluded.

  Hudson told her, as simply as he could, his theory about the manuscript’s origins. When he was done, he watched her face for any indication of her feelings. She took her time and then, completely unnerving Hudson, began to laugh. When she was through she wiped her eyes. “No wonder Eleanor was so beside herself,” she said.

  “I don’t understand,” said Hudson. “What’s funny about the idea that Steinbeck and Ricketts might have been lovers?”

  “Eleanor tried to sleep with both of them,” Helen answered. “Oh, she’d deny it if anyone ever asked her, but she did. She chased Ricketts around for years, and when Steinbeck moved back here, she made sure she got that job as his assistant.”

  “She said he hired her from the newspaper,” Hudson said.

  “Yes, he did,” Helen said, nodding. “What she didn’t tell you was that she was working in the advertising department when he came in to place an ad for a Girl Friday. Well, he never did place that ad, and Eleanor quit the paper the same day.”

  Hudson couldn’t believe it. “What a little tramp,” he declared.

  “If I’d known what you were on about, I would never have sent you to Eleanor,” said Helen. “She’s the original virgin spinster. They modeled all the other ones after her.”

  “So she didn’t ...” Hudson started to ask.

  “Oh no,” said Helen, understanding his meaning. “Neither of them had the slightest interest in her, from what I understand. But I think she’s convinced herself that they did. She never married, and I wouldn’t be surprised if beside her bed she keeps their framed photos and kisses them every night before she goes to sleep.”

  “No wonder she was so upset,” said Hudson.

  “Yes, well,” Helen said, “I’m sure she’s told half the board by now that you’re out to besmirch the reputation of our Mr. Steinbeck. Already there may be plans to run you out of town on a rail.”

  Hudson laughed, mostly because he could see Eleanor Mintz—and Edgar Macready as well—standing by the side of the road as an angry mob drove him from the city limits. “I’m surprised she didn’t try to poison me and keep me in that mausoleum she calls a house,” he joked.

  Helen tapped her glasses against the manuscript. “Why are you telling me all of this now?” she asked.

  Hudson sat back in his chair. “To be honest, I don’t know,” he answered.

  “You don’t think you can prove your theory?” Helen suggested.

  “Maybe,” Hudson admitted. “Mostly I’m just not sure that I care anymore if I do.” He looked into her face. “I’m not sure I ever did.”

  “It would be an extraordinary find,” Helen said. “Even if it’s just a novel it would be a substantial addition to the canon.”

  “Yes, it would,” Hudson agreed. “But if it’s just a novel, then it wouldn’t matter who found it, would it?” He raised one eyebrow and tried to adopt an air of mystery.

  Helen returned the look. “No,” she said. “It wouldn’t.”

  “For instance,” said Hudson, “it might have been found in a previously overlooked box of miscellanea.” This wasn’t far from the truth, he thought, and such a claim would be unlikely to meet with much suspicion. “And depending upon where that box was, this wouldn’t have to end up in, say, the archive at Stanford,” he added.

  “That’s true,” Helen agreed.

  “And if you can get Eleanor Mintz to admit that she destroyed what she thought was the only copy, that would answer the question of authenticity,” Hudson said, grinning.

  Helen put her glasses on again. “We’re being very flippant about this,” she said. “Now tell me seriously, do you not want to be the one to discover this manuscript?”

  Hudson looked to the right, where Paul was standing behind Helen Guerneyser’s desk, regarding the manuscript with a mixture of longing and despair. He turned his gaze to Hudson, pleading with him. Hudson looked at him for a long time, then nodded at Helen. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sure.”

  Helen gathered up the manuscript. “I’m looking forward to reading this,” she said.

  “I’ll send you the original, of course,” Hudson said. “When I get back.”

  “What are you going to do now?” asked Helen. “This was to be your dissertation, correct?”

  “It was,” Hudson said. He searched for more to say and found that there was nothing. “I guess we’ll see,” he finished.

  Helen stood. Hudson, following her lead, did the same. He reached out his hand. “Thank you,” he said as Helen took it.

  Helen placed her free hand on top of their joined ones. “You’re the one who deserves the thanks,” she said. “I haven’t given you anything.”

  He looked past her, searching for Paul’s ghost. It was gone. “Yes, you have,” he told Helen.

  He left the building, his briefcase swinging lightly at his side. It was now nearly empty. He looked at it for a moment, remembering the day he’d bought it. He’d selected it because he could picture himself walking into a classroom with it, setting it on a desk, and opening it in front of a group of eager students. It was very much like the one Paul had carried.

  He found a trash can and stuffed the briefcase into its open mouth, where a Carl’s Jr. cup tipped over and spilled cola across the caramel-colored leather. Then he walked to his car and drove out of the parking lot. When, at a stoplight, he looked in the rearview mirror, he saw only the face of the driver behind him.

  He felt suddenly free, like a kite after its string has slipped from the fingers of the one controlling it. His heart soared up into the blue sky, riding the wind alongside the gulls who dipped and turned with practiced ease. He was no longer an earthbound creature, held down by the burden he’d carried for too long. He was free to do as he liked.

  And what he wanted to do, he realized, was to see Ben. Last night had not been enough for him. He wanted more. He couldn’t say that he loved Ben; he didn’t know that yet, and might not for a long time. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to, or that Ben wanted him to. But he wanted to be with him, to feel him in his arms and see what might happen between them now that he had laid Paul to rest.

  Part of him felt that he shouldn’t be so happy. He had, after all, just handed over his life’s dream to someone else. No, he reminded himself, you handed over Paul’s life’s dream. He had broken his promise, he thought, his joy fading somewhat.

  Then he thought of Eleanor Mintz, alone in her house with her ghosts. She had made them promises as well, and keeping them had turned her into a living ghost, hollow and haunted, forced to believe in something that was never true. He would not become her. As much as he had loved Paul, he was not beholden to him. His promise had been made not to fulfill Paul’s dream but to keep him from leaving Hudson completely.

  But now he was gone, released into whatever place his spirit resided. Hudson hoped that he’d gone without rancor, that he understood why Hudson had needed to do what he’d done. And if he didn’t, then he hoped he would be forgiven.

  He wondered what Paul would make of Ben Ransome. While he would appreciate Ben’s intelligence, Hudson suspected that Paul would have declared Ben to be “limited.” It was his favorite descriptive for those he felt were not quite up to his level of thinking, although Hudson suspected that he applied it most often to those whose ways of thinking challenged his own. Certainly he would find Ben to be unsophisticated, another damning trait.

  They were very different men, he thought, and yet he was attracted to them both. But would he be as attracted to Paul now as he had been when he’d met him? He recalled the way he had been seduced by Paul’s confidence, by the way he assumed that people would listen to him and, because of this, they did. He’d laughed when Paul would rail against the stupidity of others, seeing in it a kind of forthrightness, a willingness to confront the world when it went astray.

  But Paul had lacked kindness. This was something he realized only now that he saw the opposite exhibited so strongly in Ben. Paul would call it weakness, but he would be wrong. Ben accepted the world for what it was not because he didn’t think he could change it but because he saw no need to. And if sometimes this kindness caused him deep sadness, Hudson believed that Ben was capable of a joy that Paul could never imagine.

  He hoped that one day, and soon, Caddie could see her father in this way. But he suspected that it would take some time, or some event of enormous emotional proportions, for her to do so. Until then, she and Ben would likely wound one another over and over as they attempted to find the places where their lives intersected, frequently missing the mark and adding new scars to the ones already formed. Maybe, though, he could be there to, if not help, at least cushion the blows.

  Stop it, he ordered himself. He’s no more your responsibility than Paul was. He knew this was true. One night did not constitute a relationship. Unless you’re a lesbian, he thought wickedly. Then you would have moved in already.

  He promised himself that he wouldn’t think too far ahead. He didn’t even know what he was doing with his life now that the manuscript was out of his hands. With it gone, he really had no reason to stay in Monterey. No reason but Ben, he thought. And that was not—could not be—reason enough. Don’t wanna fall in love, he sang in his mind. Who was it who sang that song, the woman with the scary braids and the nose chain? Jane Something. Don’t wanna fall in love, he repeated, drumming on the steering wheel the song’s distinctive beat. Love cuts just like a knife.

  Child. Jane Child. That was her name. He wondered what had happened to her. Probably she’d joined the hundreds of other people who disappeared after one good song. Maybe they all met once a week in some smoky bar and sang their songs to one another.

  Jane Child. Henri-Frédéric Amiel would love her. A child sees what we are, he thought. Through all the fictions of what we would be. Don’t wanna fall in love. You make a knife feel good. Ben Ransome was not a knife. Still, he had the capacity to hurt Hudson, and that was a danger greater than any other.

  You’re the one who wanted to talk about what happens now, he reminded himself. And, yes, he had raised the question, not six hours earlier, in fact. And it had been Ben who had wanted to wait. Why? Hudson had intended to have the talk about not getting too serious. He’d felt it was necessary to spare Ben getting his hopes up. But perhaps Ben was thinking the same thing, thinking that he didn’t want to hurt Hudson’s feelings.

  All this time, Hudson realized, he had believed that he had been helping Ben come to terms with who he was. It had freed something in himself as well, given him the strength to let go of Paul, but always he had assumed that Ben was the one being transformed. Now he saw that he had been just as transformed by his time with Ben. Both of them had lost something during the night in one another’s arms, and both of them had gained something as well.

  The idea that Ben might not want to be in love with him was suddenly deeply frightening. He felt a loss that had not been there moments ago, as if he had opened a secret door and found behind it an empty room, the footprints of the former occupant left in the dust on the floor. He found himself worried that something terrible would happen before he could get to Ben and tell him this, tell him that, although he was so very afraid, he was willing to try to love him.

  He increased his speed, passing the cars ahead of him. Time seemed incredibly important, the wasting of it a crime. The need to see Ben, to touch him and feel the solidness of him in his hands, was overwhelming. He pressed the gas pedal harder, watching the needle of the speedometer leap in response to the quickening of his heart.

  He drove directly to Ben’s house. Finding the driveway empty, he remembered that Ben was diving with Caddie and Brian. He struggled to remember the name of the place. Then it came to him—Monastery—so odd a name, unless, as Ben had said, you thought of the kelp forests as cathedrals. Then it was most appropriate, a place where those who loved the sea came to devote their lives to it.

  Monastery. It shouldn’t, he thought, be difficult to find. Ben had said it was on the way to Pt. Lobos, and there was only one road that went there. Surely he would see other divers and know that he was at the right place. Or he would ask. Either way, he decided, he would be there to welcome Ben when he rose from the ocean.

  He returned to the main road through town and followed it to Highway 1. The sense of dread was fading as he drew nearer to where he would see Ben. Ben would be happy to see him. They would go back to his house, make dinner, and talk. Maybe they would make love in Ben’s ancient bed, embarrassed when the springs betrayed their enthusiasm.

  He drove down the steep hill he remembered from previous trips, past the unexpected shopping center that appeared on the left like an oasis in the scrubby landscape. Beyond the lone stoplight the ocean appeared on his right. It must be around here somewhere, he thought just before he spied the cross rising above the trees.

  Then he saw the cars pulled to the side of the road. A man in a dry suit stood beside a dusty SUV. Hudson pulled in beside him, nodding as the man, talking on a cell phone, turned to look at him. He turned the engine off and opened the door.

  “Move it to the end of the lot,” the man said gruffly, turning and hurrying off toward the beach. “We’re going to need that space for the ambulance.”