Free Scavenger Reef by Laurence Shames Page B

rags of cloud. They hesitate,
sometimes they crawl back up. Then they venture down a little
farther, and then they start to spin. Once they start turning, they
digest the whole huge cloud they came from, suck it all down
through their writhing hollow bodies.
    "I saw three spouts touch down, and they all
were moving toward me. I had to make a choice: drop sail and take
my chances or try to outrun the storm. You know me, I made a race
of it. I sailed away. The funnels followed. I headed farther out to
sea—away from the reef, away from the shallows. The wind started
really ripping, and then in an instant it totally changed
direction. I wasn't ready for that. I got slammed around, I
couldn't even hold the wheel, there was no way I could keep my
course.
    "I looked up and a spout was dancing
straight toward me, shimmying, swaying like a genie, homing in like
it had radar. I tried to dodge it. But it was too close now, the
swirling wind kept pulling the ocean out from under me like a rug.
I thought it was starting to hail, then I realized what was hitting
me was little fish, snappers and ballyhoo, that had gotten sucked
into the spout and now were raining down, bouncing off the deck,
slapping into the cockpit. The shrouds were twanging and groaning.
I think the mainsail tore but I can't be sure; the jib came loose
and was whipping around like a flag in a battle.
    "And I really don't know what happened
next," the painter said. He was still staring at the ceiling and
speaking in a quiet monotone. His parrot shifted on its perch and
scratched its chest with its beak. "I might've been carried back to
the coral, I really can't be sure. Either I was pulled out of the
boat or the boat broke up around me. I think something hit me in
the head— maybe the boom, maybe just something flying. I suppose I
was knocked out. Then suddenly I was in the water, awake enough to
thrash through the foam like a madman. I looked around for the
boat. It was gone. I thought I saw the top of the mast
disappearing, but I may have imagined it. My arms were getting
exhausted, I was sucking too much water. Then the dinghy—half the
dinghy—came bobbing by. I managed to grab it and nestle in; it was
like a leaky clamshell. I must've passed out again."
    Nina Silver put her hand on her husband's.
His skin was so thin it felt powdery and she thought she could
distinguish the small bones in his fingers. "Augie," she said, "if
this is too painful . . ."
    The painter seemed surprised at the word. He
smiled, and his wife noticed how deep were the fissures in his
burned lips. They seemed to divide his mouth almost into tiles of
flesh. "Painful? I wasn't aware of it being painful. Beautiful and
terrifying. Painful, no."
    He looked at his wife and realized he had
been misunderstood, and that the misunderstanding had hurt her.
"Missing you," he said. 'That was painful. The thought of leaving
you by dying—that was painful. But those things I didn't feel till
later—till I remembered. For a long time I knew nothing except what
I imagine an animal knows: I knew I was alive. I knew I was in
danger. And that was all."
    He paused and closed his eyes. His wife
nestled closer and waited for him to continue. But he didn't
continue. His breathing fell back into the rhythm of sleep, his
foot kicked weakly under the sheet and half awakened him. "I love
you, Nina," he mumbled, and then his breath began to whistle softly
through his nose. His wife stayed in bed a few minutes more, then
went, as on any ordinary morning, to put up coffee.
     

 
13
    "No," said Claire Steiger, "there won't be
any sales before the auction."
    She hugged the phone against her shoulder
and looked down at her fingernails. It was a muggy morning in
springtime New York, a May day on the lam from August. Viscous,
dirty light spilled in through the windows of the gallery office.
Below, on 57th Street, people looked stylishly limp in the season's
first wilting linens.
    "Yes, Avi," the dealer was saying, "I