29
Eventually Gloria fell silent.
Over the next few hours, Dan and Mara did their best to comfort her. They covered Lenny’s body with his coat, took turns putting their arms around Gloria. They whispered sweet things about Lenny, said he was a hero and, “He was larger than life, Gloria, truly an incredible man.” Even if what Lilyanna said was true, Dan meant most of it. He disagreed with just about every move Lenny Fava had made in the past week, but at least the guy stood for something. Believed in…something.
A lot of good that did him. Betrayed by a woman he trusted. Shot to death. Drowned in his own blood at the bottom of an empty swimming pool.
Mara signaled that they should leave Gloria alone for a while, and Dan followed her advice emphatically. She would know. Mara worked in death, in grief, knew the nasty shapes it took, knew the sight and smell of it. This was all new for Dan.
The gunshots fell silent too. A stalemate. Dan had dropped his radio in the mad dash to keep up with Mara, and Lenny’s radio had shattered under their synchronized cannonball into the pool. They were trapped in these trenches alone, with no means of communication with the base. And it was cold, God, it was cold. Dan and Mara huddled, backs against the south edge of the pool, shivering together. His ass was damp from snow, Mara’s fingers were like popsicles.
“Maybe we could sneak b-back,” Mara said after a while. “Maybe he won’t see us.”
Dan rubbed her arms, her legs, tried to get some friction going. “He could be anywhere.”
Literally, anywhere. Rico’s head could pop over the edge of the pool any second now. Fish in a barrel. Humans in a bathtub. Mara’s nose was white.
“We can’t just stay here, Danny. We’ll freeze.”
Dan spotted a pool skimmer in the snow. They must’ve tripped over it earlier. He crawled over and retrieved it—the metal pole was so cold that it burned—and then he hoisted the net into the air, waved it above the pool line, made it dance in the dark. A gunshot splintered the silence and Dan dropped the skimmer from fright.
“Damn,” he said.
A gaping hole right through the middle of the net. Dead center. A beautiful shot, really. Dan couldn’t help but admire it.
“Rico,” Mara said.
“Rico,” Dan confirmed.
He collapsed back into the snow, knocked his head against the pool wall a few times. “Fuckin’ Madge . What do we do?” He repeated, “He could be anywhere.”
Mara huddled up to him again. “We could try shouting, ‘Marco.’”
Gloria stirred for the first time in a while. She cuddled up next to her husband in the snow, pulled his limp arm from under the coat and rubbed her cheek with it. She whispered to him, something soft, and then lay still, her head against his enormous chest. They looked like one of those embracing couples unearthed in the ashes of Pompeii.
“M-maybe they’ll send people,” Mara said.
“Who?”
“Alan and Charles. They wouldn’t leave us here.”
“Yeah.”
“You think they would?”
Dan didn’t know. He clamped his teeth shut to keep them from chattering. Mara kicked some snow from her sneaker.
“Lilyanna got away.”
“We don’t know that. She could be tangled up in a pool chair up there, full of bullet holes.”
Mara liked the sound of that. “Say more things.”
“Maybe she fell in the l-lazy river on top of Madge, and they both broke their necks. Maybe Lilyanna’s extensions got sucked into one of the pool pumps and scalped her.”
Mara’s lips were nearly transparent. “M-maybe she fell and one of her boobs popped.”
“We have to hold on to hope.”
Mara placed an ear to Dan’s chest. “People like Lilyanna always get away.”
“What about people like us?” Dan asked.
“People like us f-freeze to death in the Bahamas.”
They sat silently for a while, and even though Dan was suddenly very tired, he knew they shouldn’t sleep. But man, a nap would be nice… Just, you know, a little shut-eye… Twenty minutes, give or take, recharge a bit… Dan stiffened his back. No. No . He had to fight it. Mara too. Sleep was the enemy. Fuck sleep. Super overrated. If he could just talk, if he could just keep her talking…
“I wanted to tell you something,” he said.
Mara stared up at him.
“You know—you know how I make all those smart and, like, really thoughtful comments about movies or TV shows after we watch them?”
“Mm-hm.”
“I read them on the internet.”
“What?”
“I read them on the internet, and I just r-repeat what other people figured out. And I make it sound like I thought of it, like I’m really good at noticing things. I’m not.”
“Why do you do that?”
“I want you to think that I’m smart.”
She laughed. Some color returned to her cheeks. “What? Danny, that’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Just w-wait a while. I’ve got worse.”
“Can I tell you something?”
Dan nodded. “Yeah.”
“I really don’t want to die wearing your fart pants.”
She was wearing Dan’s fart pants. She’d pulled them on last night and never took them off.
“You should be honored to wear my fart pants. They’re the most comf-comfortable pants in the world.”
“They’re really comfortable.”
“Have you tried farting in them?”
“No. Should I?”
“Make yourself at home.”
“I like how they have pockets. My pajama pants don’t have pockets, which is the stupidest—what’s this?”
She pulled a creased Polaroid from the pocket. It was the photo from Dr. Shae’s observatory, the group photo with the woman with the bushy black hair Dan was sure he knew, sure he recognized. He’d forgotten all about her. Dr. Shae’s cabin was a lifetime ago.
Mara studied the picture and laughed at the absurdity of it. “Why do you have a picture of Jane MacCallum in your pocket? And who are these other people?”
Dan’s heart stopped. “Wait. What did you just say?”
“That’s Jane MacCallum. The woman we saw on Disappearance Report . I told you I joined her subreddit.”
Dan sat straight up. JANE MACCALLUM. That’s who it was! Jane MacCallum. They had just watched her episode of Disappearance Report a few weeks ago. Dan had even brought it up while they were cutting templates in the ballroom.
It was a good episode. Jane was a Navy pilot in the ’80s, top of her class or something, some real Top Gun shit. Her plane went down during a training exercise off the south coast of Florida. Well, that was one theory anyway, because no wreckage was recovered. Some thought she defected. Others said she was abducted by aliens, because the last thing she said over the radio was something about bright lights… Either way, another unsolved mystery. Add it to the pile, pass the popcorn.
Damn. Jane MacCallum. Mara got it immediately.
Wait though. Why did—
“Why do you have a Polaroid of Jane MacCallum in your pocket?”
Dan blinked at her. “I found it. I—it was in Dr. Shae’s observatory.”
“Why would he have a Polaroid of Jane MacCallum?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wait. Is that Shae in the picture? He’s younger, but…”
“I thought so too.”
Now Mara sat up, and the two of them searched each other’s eyes for an answer. Mara looked at the Polaroid again, and then back at Dan.
“Was this taken on the island?”
“I don’t know. How would I know?” He felt accused somehow. “It kind of looks like the woods north of here.”
Mara clicked her tongue. “Is this weird?”
“You know, it feels pretty fucking weird.”
“She disappeared off the south coast of Florida, Danny.”
“I know.”
“Where’s Dr. Shae been, anyway?”
“Lilyanna asked her people to leave him alone, but—” A thought smacked Dan so hard that he recoiled. He used the side of the pool to stand, shattering the ice in his joints. He paced and mumbled, “ Could we make it? It’d be risky. Yeah, right, but staying here is risky too. I could go alone. And leave them? That’s not right. What if I—hm. No, no. Hm. ”
Mara used Danny’s arm to pull herself up. “Danny, what is it?”
“There’s a tunnel.”
“I know,” she said.
“No, another tunnel.”
“Another tunnel?”
“Another tunnel. That Rico and his men don’t know about.”
Mara scoffed. “What the hell is up with this island?”
“It leads to Dr. Shae’s cabin. Right to it. Shae may be able to help us. He helped me before. It would at least get us away from”—he threw his hands in the air—“this.”
“Where’s the entrance?”
Dan pointed. “Behind B. The garden. There’s a boulder with a false bottom. I used it to get back here the night of the storm.”
“You didn’t find that strange at the time, Danny? Why are you just now telling me about a second tunnel? And there’s a picture of Jane MacCallum in your pants!”
“It’s been a chaotic few days!” He glanced at Gloria and lowered his voice. “It’s our only shot.”
“They’ll pick us off on the way.”
Dan conceded the point. It was risky. “Yeah. But there’s more cover than if we were to run for C.”
“Less cover than if we were to stay here.”
“We can’t stay here. We’re dead here.”
Mara bit her thumbnail. “Danny, I don’t know.”
“It’s okay. I do.”
He wasn’t sure where this calcification of confidence was coming from, maybe it was the frostbite, maybe it was what Mara said to him last night, but something scraping the inside of his gut told him this was the right move, the only move, the only way he could possibly protect himself, and his wife, and even Gloria. They’d have to run like hell though.
“Danny, if we leave this pool, there’s no coming—”
Dan seized her shoulders. “You made the call with the wedding ambush. I make this one.”
Confidence must be contagious. Mara’s eyes narrowed, she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Your call.”
“My call,” Dan repeated. He turned to Gloria to help her up, to tell her the plan, but she was already stirring.
They carefully brought her to her feet. She was like a bag of frozen peas. She softly placed Lenny’s arm back under the coat, tucked him in like he was just going down for the night. There was snot hardened to her face, her false eyelashes dangled by a thread.
“We have to go, Gloria,” Mara said softly. “We’ll come back for Lenny. We will. But we have to get ourselves out of here, we’re shooting for—”
“I heard,” Gloria said. She sniffed. “I heard, doll.” She put a hand on each of their cheeks. They were cold—so cold—but somehow warm too. Dan leaned into it, thought of his mom back home.
“We’ll have to run,” he said. “Can you run?”
“Tramps like us were born to run,” Gloria said, gazing down at her Lenny. She smiled and wiped her eye. “But I’m runnin’ the other way.”
“What?”
“I’ll run the other way, handsome. You two run toward the tunnel, the boulder, whatever it is. You two go, and you go fast, okay? That Rico, with the shooting, he’s too good. He’s too good. But if I go first, in the other direction, that’ll give yous a chance. He’s focused on me, right, and boom , the two lovebirds slip right out from under him. Oh, it’s romantic, if you think about it.”
Protests from Mara and Dan were jumbled. You can’t—Gloria, no—we have to go together—don’t be crazy—
She just smiled again, pulled them both in for a hug. “Not another word, okay? I made up my mind. It’s what my Lenny would’ve done.”
“He’ll kill you,” Dan said.
She shrugged. “Would that be so bad? So I’m back with Lenny again. I don’t know. I like it.”
“Gloria,” Mara said. “You can’t do this.”
She was doing it. She gave Lenny one last kiss, brushed through Dan and Mara, and crawled her way up to the shallow end and over to the pool steps. Dan and Mara followed. Once there, they all sat crisscross applesauce, out of sight.
Gloria touched their cheeks again. “Look at you two,” she said. The pain in her eyes could fill the pool, fill it right back up to the brim and drown them all. “It’s the most beautiful thing in the world, what you got. Okay?” She peered up the steps. “So I’ll go first, and I’m going to break right, okay? Toward C. And you wait a second, but only a second, and then you rush toward the garden. Hold each other’s hands. Come on. There you go.”
“Gloria,” Mara said, “please. You don’t have to do this.”
Gloria clung to the first step. Her head was dangerously close to the pool line. “You know, it’s weird. The dark didn’t really bother me till now.” She took a deep breath. “You two be careful, okay? And hold hands. Okay.”
Dan thought to grab her, thought to pin her down and convince her not to do it, thought of what Lenny might say, how he was somewhere in the sky cursing Dan out, saying, How the fuck could you let her do this? That’s my girl there, how could you not protect my girl?
Gloria almost leapt forward but caught herself. “Oh. Almost forgot.” She tugged a pistol from the waist of her jeans and handed it to Dan. “That was Lenny’s. You keep it.”
It was heavy. He turned it over. “I’ve never shot a gun in my life.”
A wry smile stretched across Gloria’s face. She leaned in. “Let you in on a secret. Neither had Lenny. Ha!”
She took another deep breath, nodded once more at Dan and Mara, and was gone. As promised, she broke right at the top of the stairs. She lost her footing on an icy patch, almost rejoined them in the pool, but she recovered and was off. Dan clutched Mara’s hand, said, “Ready?” but didn’t wait for a response. As their feet left the final step and landed on textured cement, the first gunshot cracked like a whip. Mara screamed, but they didn’t stop, they didn’t look back, Dan was laser focused on Building B, on the garden behind it, on the tunnel to salvation. His heart ripped against his chest, the cold disappeared.
Another gunshot. Then many more, but coming from Building C. They were firing back! Dan and Mara hurdled a lounge chair, darted through half a dozen palm trees, and burst through a frozen canopy. They hit an ice patch too and lost their balance completely, ended up on their asses behind a pile of inflatable pool rings. As Dan scrambled to lift himself and then Mara, the pool rings exploded, one by one, a sickening pop each time. Mara shoved him.
“ Go! Keep going! ”
They sound like wasps. That was the best way Dan could think to describe the bullets, like wasps shooting past his ear, pissed-off wasps, wasps on a mission to finish some wasp-related business. They passed a row of ceramic planters that shattered in succession, like in Indiana Jones, and then they dove for safety behind the stucco siding of Building B. The gunshots ceased. They were safe here—momentarily, anyway—out of the line of fire. Dan gathered his breath, wheezed, and he and Mara gave each other another once over, checking feverishly for wasp holes.
“I’m good,” Dan said breathlessly, patting her hand.
“I think I am too.” Mara squinted, tried to see Building C. “I can’t see. Do you think she made it? I can’t see her.”
Dan didn’t answer.
Mara bent over, hugged her knees. “Jesus, Danny, how did it get this bad?”
“I think things turned a corner when they emptied the vending machines.” He stood straight. “Come on. We have to move.”