He cleared his ears again. How deep was he? he wondered. He figured they would need to take him to at least one-twenty. He pictured the nitrogen balloons shrinking as the molecules were compacted. Would they fight their repatriation, or would they eagerly return to his blood? Despite the conditions of behavior—conditions negotiated as thoroughly as those drafted during the Hague Convention of 1899—there was a chance that one or more of them would rebel. They might hide out inside of him, fighting on, like those mad-eyed soldiers still occasionally found in remote mountains who refused to believe that whatever war in which they were participants had ended decades ago.

  Stop thinking about it, he told himself. There’s nothing you can do about it. This was, unfortunately, true, although hardly comforting. The only thing he could do was wait. And he would have a long time to do that. What had Adam said—nine hours? The last time he’d seen a clock, it had been after four. That meant he would be getting out of his cozy little suite sometime after one in the morning. Perhaps he would be able to sleep; that would make it more bearable.

  The ache in his bones had decreased noticeably. This was a good sign. And he no longer felt itchy. He wondered how he looked, if his skin was still flushed the color of a cooked shrimp. He might be able to see himself in the polished metal of the chamber’s numerous instruments, but decided against it. The image would only be distorted, like those in a fun house mirror or the reflection in a fish’s eye.

  “How are you doing, Ben?” Adam’s voice crackled through the small speaker set in the wall.

  Ben gave him the diver’s OK sign, and he heard Adam laugh. He owed his continued well-being, if not his life, to the two men in the other room. He’d known both for several years, although he’d not had need of their services until now. It was funny, he considered, how one’s perceptions of a person could change as soon as his expertise was required. He’d known Adam Jay and Leo Preziosi as just men; reliable dive buddies; and, on occasion, agreeable drinking companions. Both had attended poker nights at Al Blackmore’s house, contributing money and bawdy jokes, and if anyone had asked Ben about them, he would have said they were good guys.

  They were much more than that now. Now they were alchemists, working magic with oxygen and pressure, casting spells based on knowledge few possessed. He was relying on them to take him down and bring him back again, resurrected, from the bottom of the ocean. As soon as he’d made the decision to begin that ascent with Caddie, he’d put himself in their hands.

  Caddie. He couldn’t imagine what this must be like for her. Forced by his collapse to go from victim to savior, she had somehow found the courage to do it. How she’d gotten him to shore, he didn’t know, but however she’d accomplished it, he knew that it had taken great strength. Ben thought not about any debt she might owe to him but of the one he now owed to her.

  The headache that had held his head in its viselike grip was relaxing. He opened his eyes. Outside the window, he saw Caddie standing with Hudson. Both of them looked in at him with troubled expressions. He realized, with some surprise, that Hudson had his arm around his daughter.

  They think I’m dying, he thought. But surely Adam had told them that he wasn’t. Yes, he answered himself, but you wouldn’t believe it either if it was one of them in here.

  No, he admitted, he wouldn’t. Even though he trusted Adam’s and Leo’s experience, even though he believed that he would be all right, he wouldn’t have the same faith if it were anyone else inside the chamber. Anyone I loved, anyway, he thought.

  It was odd—unsettling, actually—how love magnified everything. Small joy was turned into overwhelming happiness; worry became heart-stopping fear. It was as if love became a magnifying glass turned on the heart, taking whatever was there and making it appear many times its normal size.

  He was reminded once again of being inside a submarine. Only this time, he was descending not into the Monterey Canyon but into his own heart. Outside were not strange invertebrates and curious fish, but the two people most important to his world. Still, he regarded them with the same sense of awe and mystery, as if he saw them for the first time.

  Caddie, he realized looking at her, was not nearly as strong as she pretended to be. Yes, she was full of fire, too full perhaps. But she still needed direction. She needed to know that it was all right if she tried and fell, that someone would be there to pick her up and put her on her feet again. She doesn’t think she has anyone, he thought. That’s why she’s so unhappy.

  And Hudson? He was, in many ways, a deeper mystery. Like Caddie, he had come to Ben’s aid and brought him to shore in a way no one else ever had. What had happened between them had shown Ben who he really was, or really might be if he decided to live without fear. That was something Ben and Caddie had in common, he realized. They were both afraid. But Caddie had Ben to pick her up, and now Ben had Hudson.

  But did he? He didn’t know what Hudson was thinking when it came to him. To them. Hudson had tried to talk about it at breakfast, but hearing those words, Ben had sensed the closing of a door that was too newly open. The thought that it might be closing forever had terrified him, and so he had put his hand on it, held it open, at least for a while longer.

  He told himself that Hudson had no reason to stay, either with him or alone. He had come there in search of only one thing. When he found it, he would go. Perhaps he would remember Ben fondly. Perhaps they would even remain friends. As for anything else, Ben couldn’t think about that. The belief that he could never have it made it impossible even to consider; it would only make it harder when the logical end came.

  Oh, but how he wished it didn’t have to come. Although he told himself not to think it, he did. He wanted Hudson in his life. He had no right to, but he wished he could make him stay. He considered the possibility that this was only because Hudson was his first. It seemed so silly to think of it like that, as if he were a teenage girl mooning over the boy who took her virginity from her. Ben was hardly a child. But the feeling was there, undeniable, no matter how juvenile it might seem.

  He was not Hudson’s first, of course, although an unfamiliar part of him wished that he might have been, years ago, before they both chose other paths. Why should he hope that he was as important to Hudson as Hudson was to him? There existed, he assumed, an inequality in what each of them provided the other, and it was this inequality that put him at a disadvantage. He risked having his heart, which felt newborn and tender since Hudson had touched it, crushed beneath the weight of disappointment.

  Embarrassed to be thinking such things while his daughter looked on, he remembered the feel of Hudson’s mouth on his. He recalled the movement of their bodies against one another, the meeting of flesh and muscle, the thrill of discovering that he was capable of longing and desire. Had Hudson felt those things as well, or was it for him just another encounter among many?

  “You’re at one-fifteen, Ben.” Adam’s voice startled him. “We’re going to bring you back up in stages,” he continued. “Just lie back and enjoy the ride.”

  Outside, he saw Hudson say something to Caddie. She nodded. What were they talking about? He wondered, absurdly, if this was what it was like to be a fish at the aquarium. Did they look out at their visitors and ponder their inner lives? Did they resent being the objects of curiosity, and were they curious in turn?

  He knew they didn’t, at least if one accepted the presumed limits of their capacity to think and feel. But certainly they possessed the ability to fear or not to fear and so were in that way similar to humans. Perhaps they were even smarter, as humans were known to stay when they should run, with disastrous results.

  His fish-self regarded his daughter and his, what, lover? He supposed it was an accurate description of what Hudson was, if only temporarily. Given the chance, would he run from them or would he stay? Soon enough he would find out. They were, all of them, at the same crossroads, even though their journeys had begun in places far apart.

  What would happen if you died? The question came to him unexpectedly, perhaps because Caddie still looked as if he might. Now that he’d thought it, he considered it. He could have died, maybe even should have, from such a rapid ascent. And if he had? If Caddie had towed a lifeless body to the shore and Hudson had come upon her kneeling over it? What then?

  You would have died without ever really loving anyone, he told himself. At first he denied the truth of such a thought; of course he had loved. He did love. He loved Caddie.

  But he’d never been in love. He knew that was what he was really asking of himself. He’d never given himself to someone else completely. He’d always held something back, even if he hadn’t known that he was doing it. He’d reserved the deepest part of him, the part that truly was him, because he’d feared that once he gave it away he would never get it back.

  It was a terrible thing to realize about himself, and it made him ashamed. He’d wasted too much time. If he had died out there on the ocean, or on the beach, he would have left nothing behind. Caddie would remember him, but as what? Hudson might remember him as well, but for how long? He’d given neither of them enough to keep more than the faintest memory alive. Nor had he given any more to anyone else, certainly not to Carol, not to any friends he had. He’d kept them all at a safe distance from himself.

  You sound like Scrooge, he thought, embarrassed at the maudlin sentiment creeping into his thoughts. Next you’ll be buying everyone a Christmas goose. He laughed at the idea and felt better. He was getting too serious.

  He saw Hudson and Caddie talking again. They’re wondering what I’m laughing about, he realized. He’d forgotten that they could see him, that they were all on exhibit here, with no kelp or rocks to hide behind when it became too uncomfortable.

  “You can speak to the outside world if you’re feeling up to it.” Adam, he thought, was reading his mind all too accurately. “There’s a microphone on your left. Just press the red button and talk into it.”

  Ben looked for the microphone, found it, and picked it up. He held the button down. “If you look carefully in the tank ahead of you,” he said, “you can see the very rare bent marine biologist.”

  On the other side of the glass, Caddie and Hudson broke out in smiles. They crowded closer to the glass. “Well,” Ben said, “maybe not so rare. But definitely popular.”

  “You’re giving that white shark the aquarium has a run for its money,” said Leo’s voice. “We’re going to have to start charging admission.”

  Caddie’s hands were pressed against the glass. He saw the lines on her palms, the scar across the right one where she’d fallen and cut herself on broken glass when she was six. There was a new cut there as well, a pinkish-red slice across the three middle fingers of the hand. She got that pulling me in, he realized. It’s where she held on to my BC.

  Suddenly he wanted to be alone. It was too overwhelming to sit inside what amounted to a fishbowl with nothing to look at but his own life. He wanted to close his eyes and go somewhere else, if only for a while. There, perhaps, he could rest. His world would still be there when he returned.

  He pressed the button on the microphone again. “You two should go get something to eat,” he suggested.

  Caddie shook her head.

  “I’ll be fine,” he told her. “Besides, I’m getting tired of looking at the two of you. Take a walk and come back later. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

  Caddie stepped away. Hudson put his hand on the window, waving good-bye with the other. “We’ll be back,” he mouthed silently.

  The two of them walked out of sight. Ben, staring after them, saw that they had left palm prints on the glass. He reached out and touched the whorled ghosts of their fingertips. I’ll be here, he thought. I promise.

  CHAPTER 45

  “How did you know something was wrong?” Caddie asked, picking up a shrimp and pulling it from its shell before plunging it into the dish of butter and spices.

  She and Hudson had come to Bubba Gump’s, in the middle of Cannery Row. It was a place neither of them would normally go into, packed with tourists and overflowing with kitsch. Yet they’d gravitated to it naturally, as if they needed to be someplace so alive that they couldn’t help but be reminded that life was still going on despite their worry over Ben. Now they sat near a table filled with raucous teenagers whose eagerness to appear older than they were was having the opposite effect of making them seem like spoiled children. Still, something about their youth made it impossible to believe in death, and neither Caddie nor Hudson suggested moving.

  Hudson sipped his drink, a too-sweet combination of strawberries, pineapple, and coconut milk. It was also too cold, and pain, ice bright and sharp, pierced his head. He rubbed his temples futilely, waiting for it to pass. When it did, he answered Caddie’s question. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I was just coming down to say hello.”

  Caddie poked at the empty shells lying, like the mounded skeletons of ghosts, in the bowl before her. “Good timing,” she remarked.

  Hudson wasn’t sure what to make of that. Now that the initial shock of the accident was wearing off, perhaps she was back to hating him. But he didn’t think so. Something in her had changed since the morning, as if the accident had killed something invisible in her rather than destroying her body. There was still anger in her—it was visible in her face and in the tightness of her movements—but he felt it was no longer directed at him.

  “Do you remember much?” he asked her.

  Caddie shook her head. “I remember trying to breathe and not being able to get any air,” she said. “After that, it’s mostly a blur. I didn’t even know he was holding on to me until we were on the surface.” She drew a shrimp languidly through the butter, held it up, and watched the golden drops fall back into the bowl. “I really thought he was dead.”

  “So did I, when I saw him,” Hudson told her. “He was so ...” His voice trailed off as he stirred his drink, watching the layers of red and white swirl together.

  “I used to pretend he was dead,” Caddie said.

  Hudson looked at her. She was picking the shrimp apart, using her nail to split the back and pulling the legs off one at a time. When just the meat was left, she dropped it onto the shells, then licked her fingers. “When I was little,” she said. “That’s when I did it.”

  “Why?” Hudson asked.

  Caddie shrugged. “It felt like he was,” she answered. “He was never around, and I got tired of people asking me where he was, so one day I just started telling everyone that he’d died.”

  “Did you mother know that?”

  “She found out,” said Caddie. “One of my teachers told her during one of those parent nights. She told my mom how sorry she was to hear that my father had died in a car accident.” She gave a little laugh. “He died in all kinds of horrible ways,” she said. “Car crashes. Airplane crashes. Avalanches. Once I told someone he had been murdered by my mother’s boyfriend.” She laughed again. “Shit, that was fun.”

  “I bet,” said Hudson, and he saw Caddie’s grin disappear. “No, I’m serious,” he said quickly, lest she think he was condemning her. “I wish I’d thought of that when I was a kid. Sometimes I wished my father was dead too.”

  “I didn’t wish it,” Caddie said. “I just pretended he was. There’s a difference.”

  Hudson didn’t correct her. He knew she was just getting back at him for the perceived slight. Besides, she was right, there was a difference. He just wasn’t sure which was worse.

  “My mom had a fit,” Caddie continued. “She made me tell her everyone I’d told a story to, and then I had to go to each one of them and admit that I’d lied and that my father was really still alive.”

  “How many were there?”

  “That she knew about? Maybe ten,” said Caddie. “Really there were probably four times that many.” She looked at Hudson. “How dumb do you think I am?” she asked.

  “You’re not dumb at all,” he said.

  The teenagers at the next table let out a shout. Caddie turned to see what they were doing. She misses her friends, Hudson thought, watching her. I wonder what she’s like around them.

  Caddie brought her attention back to their table. “Are your parents still together?” she asked.

  “My father’s dead,” Hudson said. “Really,” he added when he saw Caddie looking at him doubtfully. “Not like in an avalanche or anything.”

  She pushed some stray hair behind her ear. “What about your mom?”

  “I don’t really have much to do with her,” Hudson said. “We don’t like each other very much.”

  “Why?” Caddie asked him. “Is it because of the gay thing?”

  “No,” Hudson said, “although I don’t think that helps. We just don’t have anything in common.”

  “Except for the fact that she gave birth to you,” Caddie said.

  Hudson leaned back in his chair. “Whose side are you on here anyhow?” he said.

  Caddie shook her head. “I’m not on anybody’s side,” she answered. “I’m just talking.”

  “What do you and your father have in common?” Hudson said. “Other than the fact that he got your mother pregnant.”

  Caddie was quiet. For a minute Hudson thought he had gone too far. He started to apologize, but Caddie spoke. “I didn’t think we had anything,” she said.

  “And now?”

  “Diving, I guess,” she said. “Ironic, huh? I finally find something we both like and then I almost kill him doing it.”

  Before Hudson could say anything, the waitress appeared with their plates. She set them down and, after being told that there was nothing else she could get them, walked back toward the kitchen. As she passed the table next to them, Hudson saw her steadfastly avoid looking at the boy calling for a refill on his soda, and he made a note to leave her a nice tip.

  Caddie lifted the top bun from her garden burger and set it aside. Then she picked up her fork and cut a careful piece from the patty. “I don’t like buns,” she said when she noticed Hudson watching her. “And I don’t like picking it up with my hands.”