The Steel Shark

Chapter 2

Vivian wanted to quit her job. She liked Tesla well enough, and she still felt guilty she’d lost track of him on the night he was dosed with whatever it was that gave him agoraphobia, but she hated this underwater crap. His fault she was standing in a cold swimming pool in a wetsuit that leaked at the sleeves, trying to overcome a fear of water she’d carried around since a near drowning on Coney Island when she was eight.

“We only have one more thing before we can finish up and go home.” Chad the instructor talked like a chipper preschool teacher. He also looked fourteen years old, and had a series of chakra tattoos along his left side. He was one centered dude.

She looked at her watch. Chad had started class a half hour late and was running fifteen minutes beyond that. One more thing to go, and she was already late. Maybe Tesla would take the sub and leave without her. Not that she ever got that lucky.

“Face your partner and smile from your inmost being.” Chad smiled, presumably in case they didn’t know what that kind of smile looked like. Near as Vivian could tell, it looked patronizing. “Open up and make your world bigger.”

She faced her dive-training buddy. His name was Guy. She’d seen his driver’s license. Not even a nickname. Just a noun of generic manliness. Guy gave her a reassuring smile. He’d picked up on her nervousness. They’d probably picked up on her nervousness from space.

“Now, you’re going to put your regulator in your mouth,” Chad chirped. “Then dive down to the bottom of the pool and adjust your buoyancy to stay there. After that, swim across the bottom all the way to the other end.”

So far, so good. Swim underwater for one pool length. She could do that without breathing if she had to.

“But you’re not going to use your own regulator. You’re going to buddy breathe,” Chad said. “Share air.”

Buddy breathing meant your buddy took the regulator out of his mouth and gave it to you to use. Which meant that half the time he was using it, so half the time she wouldn’t have access to air. Vivian looked over at Guy. If she had to, she could take him down and steal the regulator. She smiled for him, and Guy looked uneasy.

Chad was finishing up. “Take it nice and slow and easy. You can always surface and start over. There’s no time limit. No pressure. You’re just getting the feel of using someone else’s regulator if you have to. Nowadays, every tank has two regulators — a primary and a spare — so if you do run out of air, you can always use your partner’s spare. We only practice buddy breathing so you can get a feel for it.”

Then Chad exhaled and blew it out as if he were teaching them yoga and not scuba. “Ready?”

Half the class nodded in a gung-ho fashion and the other half in a resigned one. Vivian was resigned.

She drew in a deep breath of chlorine-scented air, then stuck the regulator in her mouth. It tasted like rubber, and she hoped they’d cleaned it since the last user. Across from her, Guy did the same. He waggled his eyebrows and pointed his thumb down at the water. That was the first step in the five-point descent they’d just been taught. Step two was to orient yourself. Pretty straightforward in the pool. Hard to get lost when you just had to follow the line of blue tiles inlaid into the bottom of the pool. Step three was to put the regulator in your mouth. They’d both done that one out of sequence. Step four was to check your timing device to calculate the start of the dive. Both looked ostentatiously at imaginary watches. The last step was to let the air out of the buoyancy compensator device, or as Chad called it, ‘the BCD,’ and sink.

Face-to-face, they sank to the bottom. Vivian fought back panic as soon as her head went underwater. Bubbles shot out of her regulator. She was breathing too fast, and she brought it under control by inhaling to a count of five, exhaling to a count of seven, then waiting for a count of five. Tesla did something similar when he had panic attacks. She wasn’t pleased to think they had random panic in common.

Guy made the OK sign, hand on his head.

She nodded. She was OK enough.

A special dive pool, the bottom twenty feet down. She messed with her BCD at the bottom, trying to set it up so she would hover. Air in, bounce up, air out, sink. Repeat until it was just the right amount of air. And repeat.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Guy doing the same.

Eventually, they were both kind of hovering with just a little bit of kicking. Close enough.

Who was the buddy in this scenario? Should she take out her regulator and use his, or make him use hers? Guy hung nearly motionless next to her. His buoyancy was under better control than hers.

Fine. She pushed down her unease, took a deep breath, clenched and released her jaw, and took out her regulator. A few bubbles drifted up. She reached the regulator across to Guy. He took a breath and gave it back. So far, so good.

She took another breath and slowly kicked forward. Guy was level with her, everything was fine. She wasn’t going to lose it. She had a spare regulator if she needed it, and the surface was only seconds away. She could do this.

Then Guy’s eyes widened as if he’d suddenly realized he was underwater without an air source in his mouth and the insanity of that.

He grabbed the regulator out of her hand and yanked it up to his mouth so hard she smacked into his chest. His blue eyes were wide and panicked, and he sucked on her regulator like he hadn’t taken a breath in an hour.

She gave him a couple of seconds to get it together, then tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to her regulator.

He handed it back, and she took a long breath. Before she could give him the regulator, Guy panicked.

He pushed himself away and flailed, clearly trying to find his own regulator. They’d practiced leaning forward to let the regulator fall forward and then sweeping to the right to retrieve it. Chad had insisted they do it three times, and they’d humored him.

Clearly, Guy didn’t remember any of his training. He wasn’t sweeping. He wasn’t leaning. He was thrashing. He nearly clipped her face with a fin, and she backed away to give him the space to recover.

But he didn’t.

He floundered. Air bubbles popped out of his mouth and headed up for the surface. Following them would have been a good idea, but he wasn’t doing that either. In his panic, he’d zeroed in on one thing — finding his regulator. Which clearly wasn’t going to happen.

Deciding she’d been standoffish buddy long enough, she swam in front of him and tried to catch his eyes, to make a calming gesture or hand him her spare regulator.

No go. He didn’t seem to see more than a few inches in front of his face. Poor guy was in a bad spot.

Trying to get inside his flailing arms, she darted toward him, grabbed his regulator with one hand and slammed it against his mouth. He ducked his head back in surprise and clocked himself hard on his tank valve. He opened his mouth, probably to swear, and she plopped the regulator in like a mother stuffing a pacifier into an angry baby’s mouth.

He sucked in one long breath, then another. She threaded a hand through his BCD and slowly started to ascend.

He shook his head. He took the regulator out and mouthed, Sorry.

His heart thumped so hard she could see his carotid artery flutter with each beat, and he was shaking. She hated to think of what he’d discharged into the water in his panic. Still, she stopped ascending and they hung there for a long minute. Slowly, his breathing stabilized.

She pointed to his regulator, and he nodded. Let him be in charge of the air. Staying face-to-face, only a few inches apart, they traded off the regulator. Gently, she kicked them toward the end of the pool.

Eventually, they got there and surfaced. Half the class was already gone.

“I’m sorry,” Guy said.

“It’s fine.” She was going to switch him out for a new dive buddy for the next class. She had more than her share of neurotic men in her life already. In the water, she was supposed to be able to be the weak link.

“How are we?” Chad asked. “A little rocky at first, but you two came together like a team.”

“Yup,” Vivian said.

“I panicked,” Guy said. “If Vivian hadn’t been there, I don’t know what would have happened.”

Drowned, she thought.

“That’s what a dive buddy does,” Chad said in his irritatingly calm voice. “That’s why we never dive alone, bro.”

Vivian hauled herself out and started stripping off gear.

“Slow down,” Chad said. “We’ve got the pool for an hour.”

“I’m late.” Vivian set the weight belt next to the pool, took off her BCD, and closed her tank valve.

“I’ll carry your stuff back,” Guy said. “It’s the least I can do.”

“Thanks.” She stripped off her wetsuit and left it in a pile on the floor. “You got it together, and that’s what counts. Don’t focus on the bad moment. Everybody has a bad moment.”

“I bet you don’t,” Guy said.

She snorted. “You have no idea.”

“Do you want to switch out for a new buddy?” Chad asked. “No harm in that. Gives you a chance to meet new people. Learn their styles.”

Guy looked at her. He had giant blue eyes and long black eyelashes. He wasn’t going to put any pressure on her, but he clearly wanted to keep her around.

Knowing she’d probably regret it later, but feeling sorry for him, she said, “I’ll stick with Guy.”

Story of her life.