LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

I don’t feel anything.” She looked around at the rest of us and made an effort to smile. “I just thought I’d found the right guy you know?”

      Elizabeth and Tracey exchanged glances and Terry rolled her eyes. “Oh Lord, stop crying over spilt milk.”

      Sally jerked her head up and whispered. “At least with spilt milk you can lap it up, so nothing’s wasted. This is not spilt milk.”

      “Okay, so it’s spilt milk on sand. What’s the difference? Your analogy stinks. If you think you’re unique, think again. We’ve all been through it.” Terry looked around at the rest of us but no one said anything, no one nodded either. It was as if we were isolating her by refusing to agree with what we all knew was the truth. I wondered why.

      Suddenly Sally stood up and lurched for the door. Terry smiled and caught her by the arm. I didn’t see what passed between them because Sandy suddenly stood up and blocked my vision.

      Martha grabbed my arm. Terry looked at Martha. “Is it possible that you have no idea what you look like in that thing?”

      Martha daintily opened the sauna door wider and gracefully walked out, calling over her shoulder, “Is it possible that you have no idea what you just said?”

      As I left I looked back at Terry, who languidly raised her hand as if giving me permission to leave. “I cannot believe that you are going to jump in the pool in your bathing suits,” she said. “Bunch of cowards.”

      “Now for the good part,” Martha said as we trooped out the changing room door in our bathing suits, down the hall, past two cabins, and out the aft door onto a metal catwalk.

      Somewhere along the way we lost Elizabeth and Tracey, but they must have gone into the showers rather than brave the Arctic wind. And the pool. It looked like something you’d see at a really old zoo. It was very small and completely square, enclosed by a seri–ous looking iron railing that came right down to the edge of the water. You certainly couldn’t swim lengths in this kid-sized pool, unless they were vertical. The water was very deep and very clear. I figured they must have used it to contain wild aquatic animals because it looked like a prison. And it sat half a deck below the top observation deck, which meant that anybody could come and watch us frolic in the icy cold waters, mak–ing fools of ourselves.

      As we skittered down the fire escape type stairs the cold Arctic wind was threatening to beat the pool to the punch. By the time we got down there and draped our towels over the railing I was feeling decidedly less hot and hoped the pool wasn’t as cold as it looked.

      Fat chance. The maniacal scream as Martha made the first leap was not reassuring. There are sauna-induced screams and then there are sauna-induced screams. The higher the pitch the greater the shock, and I think her scream would have broken a wineglass. If I had had any doubts they were all dispelled by Sandy’s high-pitched squeal and Sally’s awful, long, drawn out moan. I knew that I should have gone first. And then it was my turn but I had to fight my way to the jumping off spot as every–one raced to get out. Suddenly I stood alone, everyone chattering around me and draped in nice warm towels, feeling the rosy glow you get after you survive the breath stopping cold.

      “Go for it, Cordi,” called Martha. “It’ll fix your stomach for sure.”

      “Yeah, by killing it outright,” I replied.

      They all yelled their encouragement until finally I leapt. The cold nearly knocked me out, sucking away my breath like a siphon. I came up clawing for the ladder and grabbed something soft and warm instead. I looked up anxiously, wanting to get the hell out of the pool and there was Terry looking down at me, grinning like the cat who ate the canary, still without a stitch of clothing on her body.

      “This is how you’re supposed to do it, ladies.” She stood there for a while as if we were both enjoying a dip in the tropical south and then she suddenly let out an unholy bellow and jumped over my head into the water. I scampered out and Martha draped my towel over my shoulders as I began to shiver. We were all watching Terry as she dog-paddled to the ladder, got out, slipped on her slippers and wrapped her towel around herself.

      Something made me look up at the open deck imme–diately above the pool. Arthur was standing there, the fog swirling around him, making him look indistinct and wraithlike. He was dressed in a down jacket and watch cap, resting his arms on the railing, completely still, staring down at Terry. His face was expressionless, like a man staring at something he couldn’t see. His gaze flitted to me for a split second and then he slowly turned away and disappeared. He didn’t seem to care that I had seen him, which was very disquieting. Peeping Toms are usually secretive.

Chapter Six

      Back in my cabin I opened the porthole and looked out at a swirl of fog and ragged masses of pack ice. What if we got caught in the ice, I wondered. The pack ice was fragmented — huge hunks of it were drifting about — but the winds could blow the separate floes together to form an impenetrable prison of ice. This was the land of Franklin’s ill-fated expedition in search of the Northwest Passage to the Orient. It wouldn’t be quite like Franklin because we had cell phones and GPS and helicopters and lifeboats, but I shuddered at the thought of the power of the ice creeping around the hull and squeezing until the rivets shot out and the water rushed in.

      I craned my neck down the length of the ship. I was really restless. It felt like about 8:00, but the clock by my bed said it was 1:30 in the morning. There’s some–thing about a ship at night — even in the land of the midnight sun — that is ghostlike. The ship lay at anchor near Baffin Island, where we were supposed to go ashore to see if we could find some polar bears to ogle, but we couldn’t because of the pack ice. I wondered when the captain would weigh anchor and move us out. Surely it wasn’t a good idea to stay here? I tried sleeping but it was so hard with the light streaming in the window. A couple of sleepless hours went by.

      Finally I got up, thinking I’d heard a knock on my door, but when I opened it there was no one there. The hallway was empty in both directions. I refrained from looking up, blocking out thoughts of a spider-like man clinging to the ceiling. As I stood there in the hallway the door at the aft end banged shut and then eased open and gathered for another bang. I smiled at my own jumpy nerves and went back into my cabin.

      I still couldn’t sleep so I kicked into my sweats and runners and looked around for my winter jacket. I couldn’t find it so I grabbed my rain jacket and toque and went up on deck, past the eerie and sombre orange hulls of the steel life rafts, and around to the port side where the gangway went down to the sea when an expe–dition was afoot.

      As I reached the railing I was surprised to see that the gangway was lowered. I looked out to sea, the wind buf–feting me. The fog was playing tricks with my mind but then I saw a shadow move out on the ice — a little white dog on white ice in a white fog. LuEllen’s little white dog; it had to be, there wasn’t any other little white dog on board. In fact, there were no other dogs on board.

      I’m a real sucker for animals so I left the observation deck to get a better look. I went down the stairs to the gangway where I stopped and surveyed the situation. The dog was about twenty-five feet from the gangway and was eating away at an unappetizing lump of stuff on the ice, which had moved in on the ship. Why hadn’t Jason moved away? It looked like the cook had just dumped a bunch of garbage there. Was that allowed? There was only a one foot gap between the platform and the pack ice and I realized I couldn’t just leave the dog there. The ship could leave him behind.

      I ran down the gangway, stepped onto the ice, and walked over to the dog, still gorging himself on the wind–fall. As I got closer he glanced up but went right back to eating. I approached slowly, so as not to frighten him, and wondered if he liked strangers. Martha had told me he was never out of LuEllen’s arms. Well, he sure was now. I reached down and grabbed him around his stomach; he was so small my fingers met. That’s not all they met. He wanted nothing to do with me and let me know by whip–ping his head around and sinking his teeth into my arm. Predictably, I threw

Скачать книгу