“You should. Maybe you can watch her someday.”
“Y-y-yeah.”
“Yeah, and she doesn’t want me down here, Wilkie. You know what she tells me?”
He didn’t answer.
“She says, ‘No unnecessary chances, Fausti.’ I think your wife would tell you the same thing. So just chill the fuck out until we can break the surface, man.”
He said something garbled.
“Only a bit more to go now, Wilkie.”
While Wilkie itched to break the surface, the idea of my wife floated below with me. I never gave much thought to the dangers of the job. Not unless she made me feel guilt. I spoke to Scarlett that evening, before going down—she was busy in Milan, finding us a new place to live—and although she was the one who insisted that I work to pay for the house, I knew she didn’t really want me working offshore. Me being a diver made her anxiety worse.
Her feelings on the matter flipped back and forth depending on the day. Some days it was bearable. Others it was a central fear. She never wanted to hear about what I did specifically, so I stopped bringing it up. It scared her beyond the norm. We both learned how to skirt around the main issue, only discussing things that she deemed safe.
I didn’t like going under with the weight of it on my shoulders. If something were to happen, she’d never forgive me for doing something she always considered too risky in the first place.No unnecessary chances, Fausti,was written at the end of every one of her letters, spoken at the end of every one of our conversations, always coming right afterI love you always.
This situation was why she feared for me so much. If Wilkie caused me to lose my life, and probably not from the bends, more like a technical slip, I was going to fucking kill him. We were on the verge of something dangerous, but I wasn’t sure what, only that it felt too reckless.
My gut was rarely wrong. About seventy feet from the surface, Wilkie broke loose, and I wasn’t able to stop him. A few minutes later, I was being yanked, but the surface team was telling me that they weren’t pulling me up. I was hooked with no recourse. Though my heart beat steady, a voice inside of my head, her voice, screamed out in fear.
I surfaced just in time to release my helmet before the propeller minced me up into fish bait. A hand on the boat hauled me in while the tender who was supposed to be watching out for me attended to Wilkie. He’d been concentrating on Wilkie when my hose got wrapped up in the propeller. He wasn’t expecting Wilkie to break the surface so soon.
I didn’t seem to have any issues—all was steady but my heart. It only feared separation, a line between my wife and me. Wilkie, on the other hand, whether from his panic or something more detrimental, was shaking like a detoxing alcoholic. Tremors hit him so hard that he was almost seizing. He was having a hard time breathing, and it seemed like the entire team was attempting to get him straight.
There was no telling what was going on with him. His reaction could have been a result of severe fear or an acute reaction from breaking the surface too soon. Like I said, it was a gamble—no rhyme or reason—but whatever the cause, Wilkie seemed to be getting the worst of it.
Boomer sat across from me, staring at the action, until he met my eye.
Yeah, he seemed to communicate through his heavy silence,you never know what’ll fuckin’ happen on a dive. From nasty ass water that causes rashes to hypothermic conditions, to not having the proper briefings before the dive, but at the end of the day, it’s our job. It’s what we do for our bread and butter.
Yeah, I thought, looking up at the sky after he had closed his eyes,all the reasons why my wife doesn’t want me going down.She probably had a detailed list of her own.
No unnecessary chances, Fausti.
Yeah, but it was just another day on the job for me, minus effing Wilkie.
After the standard amount of time in the decompression chamber, Mitch found me in my room. My hands were shaking, but only because I realized how close of a call I had—if I left my wife, what then? It wasn’t fear that I felt for myself, it was for her. She was in Italy, in the lion’s den, and time would only tell what kind of trouble that’d lead to. Theratto, Nemours, would direct her straight to it, no doubt.
“Shit, Brando. That was a close call. That’s why I refuse to go down on anything but pu—”
“Mitch.”
“Scarlett’s—”
“My wife.”
“Your wife,you particular fucker,has been calling like a madwoman. Started right after you stepped out of your room.Won’t stop. She’s threatening to call Daddy Oilbucks or an entire fleet of Coast Guard if I don’t make you call her back pronto. She’s serious too. For as slight as she is, she has a big mouth.”
She didn’t know I was going down. I wasn’t supposed to. One of the other diver’s got sick. He was supposed to go down with Wilkie and Boomer.
“Yeah,” I said, closing my eyes tight. “I figured.”
Chapter Two
Scarlett
