Kate Wilhelm - Day Of The Sharks

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2024-11-24 0 0 25.37KB 11 页 5.9玖币

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The Day of the Sharks

by Kate Wilhelm

Her tranquilizer is wearing off, Gary thinks, when Veronica begins to tell him

about it again. He stops listening almost immediately, and watches the road.

"...that thin voice coming in my ears, hour after hour. You know, he doesn't

dictate it like that. He pauses and goes out, has coffee, sees other patients,

but day after day, having that box talk to me..."

The road is a glare, the sun straight ahead, centered in the dazzling

whiteness of the concrete; the bay they are skirting is without a ripple, an

endless mirror of eye-hurting brilliance. It will be beautiful when the sun is

actually setting, he thinks, but now his eyes burn, and the damn

air-conditioning in the rented car is malfunctioning, alternately shocking

them with random cold blasts, or leaving them sweltering in the airless

machine that smells of deodorizers and cleaning fluids.

"...and they weren't people. Not after a while. They were gall bladders and

thyroids and kidney stones. I began to wonder if there were any people even

connected to them. You know? Free-floating kidney stones."

A flight of birds catches his attention; they just clear the water, almost

touching the surface with their broad wings that look tattered, old, as if

they have been at war, are flak-torn.

"...system's supposed to help with the filing, for the computers, or

something. Everything by number, not even parts of the anatomy any longer.

Just numbers and prices. Case histories of numbers."

Her voice is getting high, tight, the way it does these days. Her posture has

become rigid, her gaze fixed on a point straight ahead; she can stay this way

for hours, unmoving, seeing what? He can't imagine what she sees. He grasps

the steering wheel harder, wishes she would take another damn tranquilizer and

be done with it. She will eventually. But she is afraid of them throughout the

day until after dinner when it doesn't matter if she falls asleep. She took

two at breakfast and dozed on the flight from Chicago to Tampa; it was a

peaceful flight.

Ahead, a squat, ugly complex comes into view, black against the glaring sky,

his next landmark. He slows to make the turn off the highway over a bridge

onto a narrower road. Now, with the sun to his right, he can drive faster. The

islands have nothing on them, a few palm trees, some dunes, scrub that looks

like felled palm trees, more birds. Sea gulls, he thinks, with near triumph.

At least he knows sea gulls. Six miles farther.

His thoughts turn to Bill Hendrix and his wife Shar. And then he is thinking

only of Shar. For a time after she and Bill moved down here she pleaded with

him to come visit. He could fake a business trip. He could meet her in

Tallahassee, or Miami, or somewhere. Then no more begging, no more anything,

until the call from Bill. "If you're going to the Bahamas, hell, man, you've

got to come for the weekend, at least. You can fly on from Tampa on Monday."

"We should have gone straight on to Grand Bahama," Veronica mumbles, facing

the arrowlike road that seems to plunge into the blue water in the distance. A

low dense clump of green rises on the left. The greenery expands, becomes pine

trees, motionless in the still, late afternoon. "Turn again just after the

pines," Bill's instructions went on. There is only one way to turn, left. They

enter the subdivision under construction.

Unfinished houses are ugly, Gary thinks, obscenely ugly, naked, no illusions

about them, the land around the buildings cluttered with junk that will be

hidden away by the bulldozers, but there, always there. The landfill is

dazzling white: sand, shells, the detritus dredged from the bay to create

land, brought up long enough ago to have bleached to snow white.

"We should have gone straight on to Grand Bahama," Veronica says again,

louder, still not looking at him.

"I told you, I have this business with Bill. We'll leave first thing Monday

morning."

They wind through the subdivision, following instructions. A short causeway,

to the end of the street, on to the point. There is Bill's house, with a yard

fully landscaped, green and flowering. Gary's eyes narrow as he looks at it.

The house is almost hidden from the street, but what shows is expensive, and

the landscaping cost a fortune.

Bill said only three houses were finished, and that one is still vacant. The

buyers will move in on the first of the month. They have not passed the other

completed houses.

"I hardly even know them," Veronica says, not quite whining although a

petulant tone has entered her voice. Gary doesn't know what that is supposed

to mean. They were friends for more than five years. Gary wonders if she ever

suspected Shar, if Bill ever did. He is almost certain no one did, but still,

there is the possibility. Veronica knows there was someone. She always knows.

He parks in the driveway, but before they can get out of the car, they are

suddenly chilled by a last effort of the air conditioner. He feels goose bumps

rise; Veronica's skin takes on a bluish cast. Bill and Shar are coming out to

meet them.

She has a beautiful tan, the same dark gold all over her legs, her arms, her

face. Her hair is blonder than it was before; she might have been a little

thinner before, but otherwise she looks exactly the same. There is a sheen on

her skin, as if she has been polished. She is tall and strong, a Viking type,

she calls herself. Nothing willowy about her, nothing fat or slack. She has

long, smooth muscles in her legs; her stomach is as firm and flat as a boy's.

She wears white briefs and a halter, and rubber thongs on her feet. Bill is a

bit shorter than she is, thickly built, very powerful, with thick wrists and a

thick neck. Size seventeen. They are both so tanned that Gary feels he and

Veronica must both look like invalids.

"My God! Ghosts!" Shar cries, as Gary and Veronica get out of the car. She

embraces them with too much enthusiasm and warmth, and Gary can sense

Veronica's withdrawal. Next to Shar, Veronica appears used up, old. She is

only thirty-one, but she looks ill, as she is, and she looks frightened and

suspicious, and very tired. There are circles under her eyes; he feels guilty

that he has not seen them before, that only now, contrasting her with Shar

does he recognize the signs of illness, remember that this isn't simply a

vacation.

"Hey, it's good to see you," Bill says, putting his arm across Gary's back.

"Come on in. A drink is what you people need. And tomorrow we'll get out in

the sun and put some color in your cheeks."

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Kate Wilhelm - Day Of The Sharks

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