The group had been under for about five minutes when I came up from the cabin, onto the weather deck. All of the plus-ones and twos were gathered together, passing around a bottle of sunblock, but one woman stood apart from the others, alone. She was gripping the guardrail like a perched sparrow, gaping down at the water. 

 

“It’s normal, right?” she said, without turning to face me. “For them to be down this long?”

 

I opened a bag of potato chips and walked up beside her. The vast expanse of cerulean blue spanned out around us, turning aquamarine where it met a stripe of land on the horizon. 

 

“Oh, yeah. Totally normal.” 

 

I ate a chip.

 

“I’ve been holding my breath,” she said. “For as long as I possibly can. Then I exhale, and then I hold my breath again. I’ve inhaled twelve times since he went down. Well, thirteen now. About to be fourteen.”

 

She was wearing a fuchsia sun hat with a wide, floppy brim, and a flower print dress. Her shoulders were covered in half a dozen shades of tan lines, and one tattoo of a pair of prescription glasses. 

 

“I saw there was a kid signed up this week,” I said. “You his mom?”

 

“Yeah,” she said, gulping up some air. “I’m Gale. How about you? Do you work here?” 

 

“Me?” I said, eating a chip. “No, I’m Vivian’s boyfriend. I just ride along sometimes.” 

 

I noticed she was holding her breath again, so as a way of filling the silence, I confessed my deepest fear.

 

“I’m actually scared of the ocean. Of being in it, I mean. Not of looking at it. Or of being near it. I enjoy standing here, for example. But if I fell in, I think I’d just weep until I died.”

 

“Oh,” she said. “So you understand how I feel then.”

 

My mind strayed into half-reverie, of being submerged in water, held in silent pressure, over a smooth, dark void. And, of something alive inside the smoothness. Something smart and detail oriented. 

 

“I do,” I said. 

 

“The thing is,” she muttered, releasing a long, full breath. “This is just how his father died.”

 

My next potato chip was folded in half, thus extra crispy. While the precise total for all deaths at sea is hard to discern, conservative estimates generally put the annual global number somewhere in the tens of thousands. Major death categories include commercial fishing accidents, migrant sea crossings, and shipping or passenger incidents. All in all, it was a statistical long shot, but living on Nine Islands, sooner or later, you were bound to meet someone who knew someone who’d defied the odds.

 

“He was a diver?” I said. 

 

“No,” she said. “It was only his first lesson, just like this. A different company, though. A different boat. Two weeks ago. A shark attack. We’re suing. He was the love of my life. The father of my child. A great man. Spoke four languages.” 

 

She paused.

 

“And Tristan… Well, he’s his father’s son, I can tell you that. Speaks three languages. I thought it was too soon, but he said this was something he had to do. That he wanted to face the scourge that ruined his chances at a normal life.”

 

“Um,” I said. “How old is he?”

 

“Ten,” she said. 

 

We both stood there for a while, gazing down while she held in another lungful of air. Then, through the refracting sunlight, a small blemish appeared, deep in the blue. A tiny black spot quickly expanded into a violet cloud, swirling like gas, rising up to the surface. Reddening. 

​

“Oh, it’s blood,” I said.

 

Gale buckled at the knees and started hyperventilating. 

 

“Oh my God. Oh my God, it’s happening again. Exactly the same as before! Last time, too, the blood came at exactly twenty breaths!” 

 

It didn’t take long for all the other plus-ones and twos to also notice the blood. They all clamored over to the side rail, panicking, saying things like “I knew this would happen.” and “Somebody do something.”

 

I smiled, walked over to the ice chest, and started making a sandwich, which made one guy super mad.

 

“What kind of laissez-faire attitude is this to have?” he shouted. “How can you be making sandwiches at a time like this?”

 

The water lapping against the hull was totally red now, like cherry juice. I tilted my head away from it, up to the sky. There was a single, pillowy white cloud hanging overhead.

 

“Because,” I said, thickly slicing the sourdough loaf I’d packed that morning. “Vivian is someone to believe in, no matter what.” 

 

The guy made a face.

 

“What the crap is that supposed to mean?”  

 

“It means,” I said. “Every single person that went down there is gonna be on this boat within the next five minutes, safe and sound. And I told my girlfriend I’d have lunch ready when they got back.”

 

“But, where are they?” someone else said. “Shouldn’t they be here by now?” 

 

“No,” Gale said. “They have to come up slowly. Ascending too quickly releases dangerous levels of nitrogen in the blood. It’s called the bends.” 

 

I shook up the sriracha bottle and asked if anyone there was a vegetarian. No one said anything else, and about half of the group sat down on the floor facing away from the blood, while Gale resumed holding her breath. And one guy puked into the ocean. 

 

It took me about two more minutes to finish making Vivian’s favorite Spam and pineapple sandwich just the way she liked it. And, just as I secured the structure with frilly toothpicks, the sound of splashes rang out from all around. One by one, round, goggled heads started popping out of the water. 

 

The plus-ones and twos started shouting, calling out the names of their people, pulling the divers aboard. Gale lifted Tristan up with unnatural strength, and he laid flat on his back, skinny and gasping for air.  

 

“There was a shark,” one diver said. “It went straight for him.”

 

The diver pointed at Tristan. I kept working, adding kimchi to the plate, and a side of curried potato salad. 

 

“Yeah,” said another diver. “But the teacher, Vivian, came out of nowhere and blocked him. It was like she knew martial arts or something.” 

 

“Where is she?” someone said. “She’s the only one still missing.”

 

"She does know martial arts," I said, slicing the sandwich in half, diagonalwise. 

​

The next splash was big, and it made everyone scream. A shark suddenly launched out from the water, arced through the air and landed on the deck. It slid a very long way, right up to the mad guy’s feet, and laid there, bleeding from the gills.

 

“Hey, sweetie,” Vivian said, swimming up beside me. Her goggles were propped up on her forehead, revealing her dewy eyes. “I beat up a shark.” 

 

“Hey, sweetie,” I said, and held up her plate. “I made you your thing.”

 

I helped peel her hood back, and we kissed with tongue, but not so much as to make it weird for everyone. Then, Tristan pushed himself up from the ground and walked over to the shark.  

 

“It’s not dead,” Gale said.

 

“But it’s wounded,” Vivian said. “Not long for this world. Someone should probably eat it. Wouldn't be right to let it to go to waste.”

 

A new silence fell over the boat, different from all the other silences so far that day. Everyone watched together, as the ten year old boy crouched over the dying fish and said:

 

“Ich verzeihe dir.”

 

Which, I later found out, is German for ‘I forgive you.’