to the surface.
The light poured from above, green through the water, and now she could see the bottom of the buoy. In another few seconds she would push her head into the daylight, but just as she was about to crack the surface and fill her lungs with air and wipe her hair out of her eyes and turn toward shore—where she’d dress on the beach and then show Edmund the giant lobster—just then, still in the clasp of the ocean, still ten feet under March water, Linda saw the slender snout of a blue shark.
It was about five feet long, not quite full-size, its pectoral fins extending from its side like two crescent moons. Its belly was white, its back was dark blue, and its two black eyes were sunk deep in the side of its snout, which was now only a few feet from Linda. At first she couldn’t believe it was a shark, because the blues usually didn’t come this close to shore, and she thought that maybe it was a swordfish that had lost its sword, or a large barracuda—so long and skinny it was—but then it opened its mouth and revealed a row of rounded but deadly-looking teeth.
Linda stopped kicking and floated silently, hanging on to the pot warp. She couldn’t tell if the shark was eyeing her or her lobsters. It was a dark-eyed silent creature, its intentions all mystery, and if Linda hadn’t been so frightened she would have recognized the shark’s sleek, dangerous beauty; she would have pondered the fast fury that ran electrically through its brain. She knew she should try to escape, but she didn’t know how; she was transfixed. She and the shark floated in the ocean, as if suspended from something above, its fins paddling, her lungs aching for air. She thought about the party that was about to arrive on the beach looking for her. A part of her was already resigned to the fact that the shark would devour her, nudging up its snout and flinging open its mouth and snapping those teeth into her thigh, penetrating her flesh. She would release an underwater scream, one that only she and the shark would share, and her blood would seep as slowly as ink clouds, staining the sheets of the ocean. And later, when Edmund arrived on the beach and couldn’t find her, he would shrug his shoulders and say, “Where’d she get to now?” She thought of the story her death would provide Charlotte’s pen: a girl disappeared, stolen away as if by a large, cruel hand. Linda hoped that Charlotte would notice her clothes on the beach and piece together the facts, and Linda wrote the final sentence for Charlotte: “Did Linda Stamp drown, or was she eaten alive?”
The shark’s eyes were the size of sand dollars, with a gelatinous sheen. They didn’t seem to have eyelids—they were simply two dark, oily disks staring into the still world of the ocean and finding Linda. All of it—her desperate need for air, the winter current, the threat of the mouth curving prehistorically beneath the blue snout—made Linda think of her life at Condor’s Nest, with its surrounding thicket of hottentot figs blooming with yellow flowers; of Dieter, still in Europe, even though the newspaper pinned to Margarita’s bulletin board indicated that peace had arrived and that Wilson himself had gone to France to sweep things up; of Valencia, who had recently pulled Linda aside and told her a few shocking secrets of the world, most of which involved womanhood; of Edmund, her Siegmund, who had recently complained to Valencia that he no longer wanted to sleep in the same cottage as his sister. She thought of them all, but mostly of her brother, his face invading her mind: and she felt the urgency to make a final choice, a choice of devotion, to settle her heart upon one single thingbefore it was too late. Linda chose Edmund: If I can think of only one, I shall think of you. She wondered what the shark was thinking of, what it
—he?
—had chosen. And just as she was about to go limp and offer herself, the shark whipped its tail and turned around, its
The light poured from above, green through the water, and now she could see the bottom of the buoy. In another few seconds she would push her head into the daylight, but just as she was about to crack the surface and fill her lungs with air and wipe her hair out of her eyes and turn toward shore—where she’d dress on the beach and then show Edmund the giant lobster—just then, still in the clasp of the ocean, still ten feet under March water, Linda saw the slender snout of a blue shark.
It was about five feet long, not quite full-size, its pectoral fins extending from its side like two crescent moons. Its belly was white, its back was dark blue, and its two black eyes were sunk deep in the side of its snout, which was now only a few feet from Linda. At first she couldn’t believe it was a shark, because the blues usually didn’t come this close to shore, and she thought that maybe it was a swordfish that had lost its sword, or a large barracuda—so long and skinny it was—but then it opened its mouth and revealed a row of rounded but deadly-looking teeth.
Linda stopped kicking and floated silently, hanging on to the pot warp. She couldn’t tell if the shark was eyeing her or her lobsters. It was a dark-eyed silent creature, its intentions all mystery, and if Linda hadn’t been so frightened she would have recognized the shark’s sleek, dangerous beauty; she would have pondered the fast fury that ran electrically through its brain. She knew she should try to escape, but she didn’t know how; she was transfixed. She and the shark floated in the ocean, as if suspended from something above, its fins paddling, her lungs aching for air. She thought about the party that was about to arrive on the beach looking for her. A part of her was already resigned to the fact that the shark would devour her, nudging up its snout and flinging open its mouth and snapping those teeth into her thigh, penetrating her flesh. She would release an underwater scream, one that only she and the shark would share, and her blood would seep as slowly as ink clouds, staining the sheets of the ocean. And later, when Edmund arrived on the beach and couldn’t find her, he would shrug his shoulders and say, “Where’d she get to now?” She thought of the story her death would provide Charlotte’s pen: a girl disappeared, stolen away as if by a large, cruel hand. Linda hoped that Charlotte would notice her clothes on the beach and piece together the facts, and Linda wrote the final sentence for Charlotte: “Did Linda Stamp drown, or was she eaten alive?”
The shark’s eyes were the size of sand dollars, with a gelatinous sheen. They didn’t seem to have eyelids—they were simply two dark, oily disks staring into the still world of the ocean and finding Linda. All of it—her desperate need for air, the winter current, the threat of the mouth curving prehistorically beneath the blue snout—made Linda think of her life at Condor’s Nest, with its surrounding thicket of hottentot figs blooming with yellow flowers; of Dieter, still in Europe, even though the newspaper pinned to Margarita’s bulletin board indicated that peace had arrived and that Wilson himself had gone to France to sweep things up; of Valencia, who had recently pulled Linda aside and told her a few shocking secrets of the world, most of which involved womanhood; of Edmund, her Siegmund, who had recently complained to Valencia that he no longer wanted to sleep in the same cottage as his sister. She thought of them all, but mostly of her brother, his face invading her mind: and she felt the urgency to make a final choice, a choice of devotion, to settle her heart upon one single thingbefore it was too late. Linda chose Edmund: If I can think of only one, I shall think of you. She wondered what the shark was thinking of, what it
—he?
—had chosen. And just as she was about to go limp and offer herself, the shark whipped its tail and turned around, its
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