Open Water by Maria Flook

days in the Navy Hospital having his arm set and reset. He didn’t like the sensation of the cast cinching his muscles and he had a panic reaction. A physician’s assistant sedated him and strapped him to the hospital bed using plush, quilted belts with Velcro closures. On the third day he was released to Rennie, who had flown down to Virginia to take him home to Newport. The intern gave her a doctor’s name at the Navy Hospital in Newport. Willis should get some further evaluation. They gave Willis an embossed insurance card which would be valid at any New England base if further treatment was needed. Rennie pushed the card into her wallet. Willis could see that she didn’t accept any advice. “The Navy doesn’t know what to do with its resources,” she said.
    The analgesic pills they offered for his broken wrist didn’t work for his pain, but he took them hoping they might untangle the knots he felt behind his eyes. His daily tension was almost audile, like a constant vibration, a humming. He couldn’t ignore its pulsing, tinny echo. It was like the threatening din of a distant marching band when it walks in place, honing its crescendo, before turning a corner onto the main avenue.

Chapter Six

    H olly was lying sideways across her bed, just the balls of her feet on the floor. She heard the surf drag a cloak of pebbles back and forth across the sand, a nauseating suction. She felt the tight bale wire of a hangover slicing into her temple. At shorter and shorter intervals, a bird was making a racket outside. Holly hoped it would find somewhere else.
    The night before, Holly had started early at the YMCA. She took an exercise class and finished off in the steam room with the other ladies. She listened to someone’s story: a husband had lung trouble from working twenty years in the local yacht-building industry where he sprayed fiberglass without wearing a proper mask. The women commiserated and let their towels drop to their waists. Holly, too, peeled open her soggy towel, letting the hot mist penetrate her skin. She was pink as fruit.
    She showered, shaving her legs in the shower stall; she nicked herself and the soap swirled pink as it circled the drain. She toweled off and massaged her legs using a tall squeeze bottle of cheap lotion scented with imitation White Shoulders. She was reeking.
    She liked walking Newport’s Pineapple Dream section.
    A “pineapple dream” was a horrid sweet concoction that packed a wallop. The pineapple was a symbol of the colonial shipping trade, and the local bars invented different versions of the mixed drink. Holly never touched it, but Holly liked visiting at least a few different bars. She went on foot. When she walked into the Old Colony, two or three men noticed she wasn’t with Jensen and they called her name. A regular dipso sliced off the last syllable and she didn’t want to sit with him. Again and again, he tried to get her attention. “Hey, Hol? Hol? Hol—” Her name, severed like that, made her feel wary. Anywhere else it might have made her feel at home.
    Earlier that winter, Holly had fallen for a barfly named Kim. If she couldn’t find him in the bars, she walked the sidewalks waiting for him to drive up beside her. His old Pontiac was missing a headlight and she watched the streets for this telltale sign. He edged along the curb, idling the car, before swinging the passenger door open for her. They made love in an old house on Hammond Street where he was keeping house with a few local dropouts. It was a bare mattress. The ticking was stained. He centered her hips over the deep rusty flowers, their broad scalloped petals in perpetual bloom. He fucked her or he fucked her mouth. His cum tasted like the sea and it tasted like nails. After a few months Kim left town.
    Last night, Holly went with a fellow who took her to his place in old Navy housing. His wife was out of town. His wife was gone, but her things were strewn around. Before they could make love,