Chapter 8
I stared in disbelief at the point where Bella had sliced through the waves and disappeared.
"MAN OVERBOARD!" I shouted, turning to the bulwark for a life preserver and wrenching it free. But I merely hugged it to my chest, knowing there was no one there to catch it, whispering to the sea, "Bella overboard."
Behind me, I heard a gasp and Rose rushed up, clutching a pair of her canvas pants, "Shit! Ted, what happened?"
I could only shake my head.
Rose slapped my arm, hard, before grabbing the rail and leaning out. "Dammit, Ted! Did she fall?" She turned her face to the cabin, the wind whipping her hair into her mouth as she screamed, "Emmett! Cut the engines! CUT ENGINES!"
Seeing Rose search the water's surface shocked me back into myself. I strode to starboard, scanning. But deep down I knew there was nothing to see. Deep down, I knew Bella had thrown herself in and disappeared like a scuba diver.
Rose caught up to me, her eyes on the water as well. I felt the engines drub down to an idle. I jumped at a loud thump on the glass behind me. Emmett's muffled shout came through as, "—at —appened?"
I shrugged at him and turned to go inside, Rose so close on my heels she was kicking my ankles. That could have been on purpose.
As I entered the cabin, the entire crew swarmed up from below deck, Charlie and Jasper and Peter all looking puzzled and concerned. James looked wary and… eager? But before I had time to process that anomaly, the skipper was all up in my grill: "What's happened?"
His spittle hit my face with the fury of his demand and I flinched. Stuttered.
"She… Bella… she went over."
Charlie growled at me. Emmett stepped right up beside him, "She slipped?"
Feeling intimidated as they pressed me back, I could only shake my head.
"Goddammit!" Charlie fizzed, "No one goes over on my boat!" I'd never seen him so… animated. Jasper, reading the tension even standing behind him, clapped a hand soundly on Charlie's shoulder, "Let Ted explain."
Charlie shot-gunned out a hard breath, and with a tight nod, stepped back.
I raked a hand through my hair. Looked at Emmett. "You saw her," I pleaded, "You saw her pounding on the glass."
"Yeah," Emmett answered, but he was shaking his head, obviously as baffled as I was.
To Charlie, I said, "She was—hell I don't know!—trying to get out. Acting like she was trapped or something.
"So I took her out."
Charlie sucked his teeth, his heavy mustache twitching in agitation. "You… took her out?"
I was in trouble.
I knew it.
I nodded.
I heard an intake of breath from behind Charlie, but I was riveted his stare.
"So you took an injured girl with a fever who'd been mostly drowned… OUT?" Charlie flared. I'd never heard him angry before. For quite possibly my first time as a grown man—I hadn't even done it during pre-med—I cowered.
With a withering glare, Charlie motioned below, "Go clean up my cabin, Ted. I don't want to see you for at least twenty minutes."
Making myself as small as possible—at my height not an easy thing—I slipped past and thudded down the ladder. As I dropped below deck, I heard Charlie instruct Emmett to make a full pass and sent James and Peter on deck to scan for any sign of the girl. I paused there long enough to hear him radio a distress call to the mainland.
I stood in the door of the cabin, my brain unable to take it all in. The pile of heavy blankets. The plastic jugs full of water. The hammock where she'd slept with me. Her torn dress hanging on a peg. That peculiar corset thing she'd been wearing.
I stepped across the cabin and picked it up. Even dry, it was heavy. Stitched into the back, up the sides, and under the lacy fabric that had cupped her breasts—her small, pretty breasts with their tight gumdrop nipples—shit!—I groaned in frustration and dismay at the memory—were slim stays of a barely flexible material that held the clothing's shape. I was pretty sure this was what my grandmother meant when she'd used the term "foundation garment." But I'd never seen anything like it. Through a fraying slit made by the knife Rose had used to cut it off Bella, I could see the slats, grayish-yellow against the creamy fabric. Parting the material to get a better look at what I assumed was plastic, sort of like the collar stays in my dress shirts, I saw uneven striations, and with a shock, bristles. This wasn't plastic! It was whalebone!
More properly called baleen, whalebone was keratin, like our fingernails. Found in the mouths of most whales, plates of baleen lined the upper jaw like teeth on a comb. Swimming through clouds of plankton, whales took in mouthfuls of water, and by pressing it through the baleen with their tongues, strained out tiny sea creatures. The baleen's bristly edges further helped sieve out krlll, copepods, even small fish, for the giant mammals' meals. It took tons of plankton to fuel those immense bodies.
My sister Alice had studied the history of fashion, and I had a vague recollection from helping her cram for a test—something about sixteenth century visions of the perfect womanly form and Victorians having ribs removed so their corsets could be laced up tighter.
I also knew whales could no longer be hunted for baleen or oil or meat by factory ships. Most species were endangered. How on earth had Bella come by such a garment? And why on earth would someone as young and lean as her wear something so god-awful restrictive and uncomfortable?
I fingered the delicate embroidery and ran the rough pads of my fingertips over the lace edging that had framed her flawless ass, picturing her modeling it for me in a happier place and time. How had she come to be in the sea? Why had she leapt back there? Was she out there, swimming and freezing? Drowning because of my carelessness?
"Weird, isn't it?"
GAH! I almost jumped out of my skin at the voice behind me. "Fuck! Rose!" I spun to face her. She was looking at the corset I still held, her own perplexity plain on her face. She lifted her hand toward it, and I passed it over, saying, "Did you see how it's made?"
Rose nodded. She held the corset up against her stomach, looking down at it. "No lacing," she said, so quietly I had to ask her, "What?"
She looked up at me, her blue eyes distant. "No lacing," she said clearly, bringing her focus back to me. She held the corset out to me, and I took it back. My hands seemed huge holding it.
As I turned it over and over, trying to take in what Rose had said, she stepped to the bunk and picked up the corner of a blanket to start folding it. I laid the corset on the chair, moving to help.
Minutes passed and silence stretched between us as we worked, putting the cabin to right, stowing the hammock, hefting the water jugs into the gangway. We surveyed the tidied cabin together. Before stepping over the bulkhead, I leaned to snag Bella's dress and corset. I bent to pick up a couple of the jugs to take back to the galley. So softly I almost didn't hear her, Rose said, "If it took a knife to get it off, how the hell'd she get the damn thing on?"
Author's note: "I asked the man who showed it me/What is the name of that strange beast?/He said its name translated roughly to/He-who-easily-can-curve-himself-against-the-sky." —Joanna Newsom
