Delusion Read Free Page A

around her, sang a few off-key notes she took to be the shark theme from Jaws.
    “I mean it,” she said.
    Clay stopped singing. He glanced down. “Hey, what’s that?”
    “What’s what?”
    “On the bottom.”
    Nell dipped her face into the water, gazed down through her mask.
    She saw something black lying on the sand, something man-made, maybe a box. She turned to Clay. That big smile was back on his face.
    She noticed he’d had way too much sun; this was the ninth day of vacation, their longest in years, maybe ever.
    “Too deep for me,” he said.
    Nell got the mouthpiece back between her teeth, dove down. Yes, a box, not big, not heavy. She carried it back to the surface.
    “What’s inside?” Clay said; still that big smile.
    Nell raised the lid. Inside, wrapped in waterproof plastic, she found another box, this one blue, the word Tiffany on the top. She opened it, too.
    “Oh, Clay.”
    “Happy anniversary,” said Clay.
    “But it’s months away.”
    “I couldn’t wait.”
    They bobbed up and down, the swell pushing them closer together.
    The sand beach on Little Parrot Cay pinkened under the late-afternoon sun. A flock of dark birds rose out of the palms, wheeled across the sky and headed north.
    D E LU S I O N
    11
    . . . .
    “I don’t want to go back,” Nell said.
    “Maybe one day we won’t,” said Clay.
    “When?” said Nell. “Be specific.”
    Clay laughed. “June,” he said.
    “June?”
    “The thirty-third.”
    She laughed, too, pretended to throw a punch. He pretended to block it.
    They ate dinner on the patio of the house on the back, rocky side of Little Parrot Cay—spiny lobster, speared by Nell, conch fritters, cooked by Clay, white wine. The lights of North Eleuthera shone in the east, a fuzzy glow like a distant galaxy. Clay’s lobster fork clinked on the glass table. A shooting star went by—not an uncommon nighttime sight on Little Parrot Cay, but this one was very bright.
    Nell caught its reflected path in Clay’s eyes.
    “Life is good,” he said.
    Their bare feet touched under the table.
    Little Parrot Cay belonged to Clay’s friend—their friend—Duke Bastien. Nell and Clay spent one or two weekends a year on the Cay, free weekends, if Duke had had his way, but Clay insisted on paying.
    He’d researched Out-Island hotel prices, paid Duke the top rate. That was Clay, at least the professional side: by the book. In other parts of life he could be unpredictable—the shark episode, for example; and sometimes in bed.
    Like tonight. They’d been married for almost eighteen years, so it wasn’t surprising that he’d know her body. But to know things about it that she did not? After, lying in bed, the ocean breeze flowing through the wide-open sliders, Nell said, “How do you know?”
    But he was asleep.
    Nell slept, too. She’d had the best sleeps of her life on the Cay, un-troubled visits to some deep, rejuvenating place. And she was on her way when Johnny appeared in her dreams, stepping out from behind a coral reef, but somehow dry. He wore pin-striped suit pants—Nell 12
    PETER ABRAHAMS
    remembered that suit—was barefoot and naked above the waist. The red hole over his heart was tiny, almost invisible. So long since she’d seen him, in life or in dreams: she wanted to lick that tiny red hole, make it go away, but the scene changed.
    Nell awoke at dawn. The breeze had died down, leaving the bedroom cool, almost cold, but she was hot, her face clammy, an actual sweat drop rolling into the hollow of her throat. She glanced at Clay. He lay on his side, his back to her, very still. Light, weak and milky, left most of the room in shadow, but it illuminated a vein in Clay’s neck, throbbing slowly.
    Nell rose, saw herself in a mirror: her eyes were dark and worried. She went into the kitchen, dug through her purse, found her cell phone. No missed calls, specifically none from a 615 area code. That calmed her for a moment or two. She imagined Norah fast asleep in her