Distress Signals

Adam

I jump before I decide I’m going to.

Air whistles past my ears as I plummet toward the sea, dark but for the panes of moonlight breaking into shards on its surface. At first, I’m moving in slow motion and the surface seems miles away. Then it’s rushing up to meet me faster than my mind can follow.

A blurry memory elbows its way to the forefront of my thoughts. Something about how hitting a body of water from this height is just like hitting concrete. I try to straighten my legs and grip the back of my thighs, but it’s a moment too late. I hit the water at an angle, and every nerve ending on the left side of my body is suddenly ablaze with white-hot pain.

I close my eyes. When I open them again, I’m underwater.

It’s nowhere near as dark as I expected it to be. Beyond my feet, yes, blackness, but here, just beneath the surface, it’s brighter than it was above.

It’s clear, too. I see no dirt, no fish. I twist and turn, but I can see no one else.

As I look up through the water, the hull of the Celebrate looms to my right, the lights of its open decks twinkling. I have a vague idea where, in the rows of identical balconies, my cabin is, and I wonder whether it’s possible for two people to leave the same spot on such an enormous ship, fall eight stories, and land in completely different places.

It must be, because I seem to be alone.

I drift down, toward the darkness. Pressure builds in my chest. I need to get to the surface so I can take a breath. So I can call out and listen for the sound of legs and arms splashing, or for someone else calling out to me.

I move to stretch both arms out—

A hot poker has lodged itself deep inside my shoulder. The pain makes me gasp, pulling water into my throat.

Now all I want to do is take a breath. I must take a breath. I can’t wait any longer.

But the surface is a good ten or twelve feet above me. I start to kick furiously. My lungs are screaming.

I’m not a strong swimmer; I’m going nowhere fast. My efforts just keep me at this depth, neither sinking nor ascending.

The surface gets no closer.

The urge to open my mouth and breathe in is only a flicker away from overwhelming. I start to panic, flailing with my right arm and both legs.

I lift my face to the light as if oxygen could reach me through the water the same way the moon’s rays are doing.

And that’s when I see a shadow on the surface.

A familiar shape: a life buoy. Someone must have thrown it down. I wonder what that someone saw.

The edges of my vision are growing dark. Everything is cold except for the spot where my left arm meets my torso. There, a fire burns. The pressure in my chest feels as if it were pushing my lungs to rupture and burst.

I tell myself, I can do this.

All I need to do is get to that floating ring.

Somehow, I kick harder and stronger and quicker now. Soon, the Celebrate starts to grow bigger. I keep kicking. Then the moon gets bigger, too, the water around me brighter still. I keep kicking. And just before I’m sure that my lungs will burst, when my diaphragm has already begun straining and spasming—

I break the surface. Gasping, sucking down air while my body tries to expel it, coughing, choking, retching, sputtering …

I can breathe.

I’m close enough to the life buoy to reach out and touch it. I grab it with my right hand and throw my left—hanging limp, the elbow at a disconcerting angle—over. The hot poker twists in my shoulder.

But now all my weight is on one side of the buoy, and it starts to flip.

I know it’s only assistance, not salvation, and that even though I’m utterly exhausted, I’ll have to keep my legs moving just to hold my head above water.

I’m not sure how long I can do this.

One thing at a time. Relax. Just relax.

I’m panting, hyperventilating, so my first task is to slow my breathing down. Breathe in. The right side of my face is stinging. Breathe out. My teeth are chattering. Breathe in.

I can’t see anyone else in the water.

In the distance off to my left, the lights of Nice are emerging from around the Celebrate’s bow. First the amber streetlights following the curve of the promenade, and then, crowded into every available space beyond, hotels and office buildings and apartment blocks. Behind me, nothing but sea for hundreds of miles.

The ship is a colossus rising two hundred feet above my head. I think perhaps I can hear tinkling music drifting down from her decks. The only other sounds are my breathing and the splashes I make in the water.

I try to be still and listen for someone else making those same splashing noises, someone calling out …

I hear it then, faint in the distance: whump, whump …

I know the sound, but I can’t remember what makes it. I’m trying to remember when I see something maybe fifteen or twenty feet beyond my left arm: a dark shape bobbing on the surface.

Whump, whump, whump … The noise is getting louder.

As I stare at the shape, the gentle rippling of water and the moon conspire to throw a spotlight on it, just for a second. I catch a glimpse of short brown hair.

Hair, I know, looks lighter when it isn’t soaking wet.

The body it belongs to is facedown in the water and, as far as I can tell, moving only because of the gentle waves beneath it.

Whump-whump-whump-whump …

There’s a blinding glare as a helicopter bursts into the sky above the Celebrate, the rotor beating so loud now that I can feel it thundering through my chest.

Its search beam begins sweeping back and forth across the water.

They’ve come for me.

My time is almost up. I wonder how they could possibly have gotten here so fast. Didn’t I just hit the water a minute or two ago? Have I been here longer than I think? Or are they here for someone else?

Whump-whump-whump-whump-whump …

Above me now, the helicopter dips to hover close to the surface, kicking up radiating waves that push me off course and splash cold, salty water in my face. I kick harder. The body disappears from view and undulating waves take its place. I blink away a splash. The body reappears. A wave rolls over me. When I open my eyes a second time, the body is gone again.

Whump …

The sound is tunneling a hole in my brain. It’s not above me anymore; it’s in me. I feel as if it were coming from inside my head.

Then, the grip of a hand on my arm.

Everything is filled with dazzling white light now. Am I hallucinating? Is that what happens when you go into the water from several stories up, possibly dislocate your shoulder, nearly drown, and then exhaust yourself trying to stay afloat in open sea?

But no, there really is someone by my side: a man in a wet suit, with an oxygen tank on his back. All I can see of his face are his eyes through the foggy plastic of his mask. He lifts it up over his nose and says something to me, but the words are lost in the helicopter’s roar.

I turn away from him and try to find the body again. I scan the surface, but I can’t see it now.

A bright red basket is coming down on a rope. The wet-suited man grips me under the arms and pulls me toward it.

He speaks again, this time shouting into my ear from directly behind me.

This time, I hear him.

Is there anybody else in the water? Did you see anybody else in the water?

I say nothing.

I focus on the belly of the helicopter. It’s navy blue and glossy. I think I see a small French flag painted on the underside of its tail.

Was it just you? he shouts. Did you go in alone?

We reach the basket and another wet-suit man. Together they lift me into it.

I’m now looking up at the night sky. It seems filled with stars. The man’s face appears above mine, blocking my view of them. Can you hear me? he asks.

I nod.

Were you alone in the water? Did you see anyone else?

Above me, the helicopter’s blades spin. Whump-whump-whump-whump-whump-whump. Out of the water, the pain in my shoulder stabs deeper. I start to shake.

All I wanted was to find Sarah. How has it come to this?

No, I say finally. It was only me in the water. There’s no one else.

Part One

Love is Blindness

Corinne

Even at 5:45 a.m., the Celebrate’s crew deck wasn’t empty.

Something fleshy and pink and snoring was splayed on an inflatable chair bobbing at one end of the swimming pool. A young stewardess reclined on a sun lounger, smoking, her red and yellow uniform revealing that she worked the breakfast buffet and either slept in her clothes or stored them in a ball on the floor of her crew cabin. Huddled around one of the plastic tables, three security guards argued in English about a soccer match and some goal that should never have been allowed.

Shifts ran constantly and around the clock, the midnight buffet clear-up finishing only minutes before the breakfast prep had to start. It was always someone’s spare moment before work, or smoke break, or post-shift crash. With the crew quarters impossibly cramped, below the waterline, and always smelling faintly (and sometimes not so faintly) of seawater and sewage, everyone dashed outside to the crew deck whenever they could.

Blinking in the sunshine, Corinne stepped out onto it now and paused for a moment while her eyes adjusted to the light. On the portside was an unoccupied table. Careful not to spill either of the two coffees she was carrying, she headed for it.

Passing the table of security guards, Corinne felt the gaze of one of them, crawling up her cabin attendant’s uniform to her face. The flash of him she had caught in her peripheral vision left a vague impression of youth, broad shoulders, and closely cut blond hair. The man’s eyes, she felt sure, stayed on her all the way to the table and lingered after she sat down.

She didn’t entertain for a second the notion that this attention was down to admiration or attraction. He was at least three decades her junior, and Corinne’s face wore several more years than she had lived. On top of that, her hair was gray, her body weak and painfully thin. That left mild interest (What is a woman of her age doing working on a cruise ship?), which was fine, but also suspicion (What is she really doing here?) and recognition (Don’t I know her from somewhere?), which were not.

The table stood unevenly on its legs, and she had to weight it with her elbows to keep it from rocking. It was also missing its parasol, and one off-white plastic leg was pockmarked with cigarette burns—crew grade, in company-speak. Everything the crew had was secondhand, from the flat, stained pillows on their bunks to the chipped crockery in their mess, all of it already used and abused by paying passengers until the Blue Wave Line deemed it no longer good enough for them.

Corinne sipped her coffee until she felt the inquisitive guard’s attention wander. A quick glance confirmed that his focus was back on the football debate. Then she checked her watch. She had about five minutes before Lydia arrived, wired and tired after her overnight shift.

Lydia was her cabinmate, and over the past week—the first for both of them aboard the Celebrate—they had fallen into a pleasant routine. They met for coffee on the crew deck just after Lydia finished her shift and before Corinne started hers, and again in the mess just as Corinne was ending her workday and Lydia was gearing up for a new one.

Lydia was young—just twenty-one—and had never been away from her home in the north of England. Corinne thought perhaps the girl found comfort in the company of a woman her mother’s age. Not that Corinne minded in the least. Lydia was a warm, cheerful girl, and it was nice to have someone to talk to about normal, everyday things. The world outside the shadow.

There was just enough time. Corinne pulled a small notebook from a pocket in her uniform skirt and laid it on the table, beside her coffee cup, angling her body so that no one else could read what was on its pages.

Behind her towered the bridge. All the crew’s outdoor space was sunk into the bow, another cabin attendant had told her, because there wasn’t much else a cruise ship could do with the open deck immediately below the bridge. For safety reasons, you couldn’t put bright lights there, and paying passengers needed bright lights. So, with the curving white walls of the bow rising up around them, the crew had the only swimming pool on board that didn’t offer a view of the sea.

For all Corinne knew, he could be one of the officers at the Celebrate’s helm right now, boring holes into her back. From what she’d seen on TV and in the movies, officers on the bridge had access to binoculars. She couldn’t take any chances.

The sea breeze blew the notebook open, flipping through a few pages in rapid fire. Corinne slapped her hand down on it to keep it from blowing away. It was a small diary, the week-to-a-view kind, with her own small, neat handwriting filling the spaces for the past four days with short notations:

Cabine 1002: lit parfait? Rien.

Cabine 1017: Valises, mais pas des passagers.

Cabine 1021: Ne peut pas entrer—le mari dit la femme est malade.

Sunday: the bed in 1002 hadn’t been slept in. She’d found nothing out of the ordinary on Monday. Tuesday: belongings in 1017, but no passengers for them to belong to. Then, on Wednesday, a request through the door of 1021 that she not disturb them, from a male passenger who said his silent wife was sick in bed.

All these little oddities had come to nothing. She would keep looking.

In the little pocket at the back of the notebook was a single sheet of folded paper. Corinne took it out and glanced over her shoulder. No sign of Lydia yet. No one else on deck appeared to be paying her any attention. She unfolded the page, laid it flat on the table in front of her, and smoothed out the creases with the heel of her hand.

Then, as she did every morning, she looked at the black and white photograph printed on the lower half. She studied the man’s features, then closed her eyes to recall the face from memory. She repeated the exercise a few times, until she could remember every minute detail.

Looking at him, she said silently, I will find you. Maybe today will be the day.

Then she carefully refolded the page, tucked it back in the notebook, and put the notebook back in the pocket of her uniform.

Lydia would arrive any second. Corinne couldn’t afford to get caught.

Adam

The night before Sarah left was unusual only in that we didn’t spend it at home.

We nearly always stayed in on a Saturday, taking up our established positions on the couch for a relaxed evening of pizza, bad-singing-competition TV, and good subtitled Scandinavian dramas.

I didn’t much like going "out out, as the kids called it—the kids" being what I called anyone under twenty-five, ever since I turned thirty years old six months ago.

Officially, my stance was that Ireland’s binge-drinking culture should be not a claim to fame we were proud to promote, but an embarrassing problem we were desperate to solve. Our newly graduated youth, blinking in the harsh light of the real world, was presented with just two options: join the queue for the dole, or join the queue for Canadian work visas. It would drive anyone to drink.

That had to be why they did it, right? To numb their pain? Because it couldn’t be for fun, could it? A typical Saturday night’s going out out, as far as I could tell, started with you being sad you were sober and ended with you wishing you weren’t so drunk. And, in between, all you did was queue up for things: for service at the bar, to get into the club, to use the toilets, to buy a box of greasy fried chicken, to hail a taxi home.

That was what I said, anyway.

The real reason I didn’t like going out out was because Cork felt like an ever-shrinking city where a run-in with an old school friend or former college classmate was never more than a street corner away. There was a limit to how many What are you up to these days? a guy could take when he wasn’t up to very much.

I’m writing, I would say. I’m a writer.

Me: hating myself for how sheepishly I said it.

Them: confused frown.

Screenplays, I’d add. Movies?

Oh, right. The inquirer would nod. "Nice. But I meant, like, for work. What do you do?"

Sometimes, I skipped the writing thing altogether and confessed straightaway to whatever shite temp job I’d taken that week, stapling things together in some generic office or answering phones in a call center. The pimply teens I’d left behind me when I dropped out of university were now young professionals collecting good salaries from investment banks, legal firms, and software giants. They had graduated during the boom and avoided the land mines of the bust, mostly. Their news was about promotions and bonuses and company cars, while I was still excited about the fact that scrawled across the top of my latest rejection letter had been my name. My name! Personalization: progress at last.

But it proved difficult to explain the concept of failing upward to a casual acquaintance who really only wanted to know whether you’d gone back on the dole.

"God, so bloody what? Sarah used to say in the cab on the way home, ducking underneath my arm so she could lean her head against my chest, her degree of exasperation varying directly with how many drinks she’d had. I don’t know why you let them get to you. You still have your dreams."

Ah, yes, I’d say. My dreams. What’s the current exchange rate on those, do you think? My phone bill is due.

Well, you also have a gorgeous girlfriend. Who believes in you. Who knows you’re going to make this happen. Who has no doubt.

None at all?

None whatsoever. Can we get takeaway? I’m starving.

But you’ve no evidence. And I think the takeaway is closed.

That’s what belief means, Ad. I mean, really. A poke in the ribs. "Aren’t you supposed to be a writer or something?"

I joked about it, yes, but the truth was, it got to me. I’d been trying to make this writing thing happen for years. Fantastical dreams were fine in your twenties, but I was thirty now. When even I had started wondering whether I should let my fanciful notions go, talking about them with people who had already moved to the Real World made it harder to convince myself that no, I shouldn’t. Not yet.

I started making excuses, coming up with reasons to stay in on Saturday nights. I was tired. I was broke. We were broke because of me. Whatever my story, Sarah would nod, understanding, and our conversation would move on to deciding between a box-set rewatch or tackling our Netflix queue. Sometimes, she went out with the girls. And I was glad she did, because I wanted her to do what she wanted, and those nights typically won me a few weeks’ reprieve. We still went out together every now and then, but eventually our go-to pub had a new name and our go-to club had closed down. I no longer recognized the songs that won especially loud cheers from the crowd when the DJ played them, and had no clue why we all were suddenly drinking out of jam jars with handles.

But that was before. Now things were changing. Finally.

I bet it’s like turning eighteen, Sarah said as we maneuvered around each other in the bathroom, getting ready. I was already dressed; she was wrapped in a bath towel. From the moment you can produce legal ID, nobody bothers asking for it.

"So tonight no one’s going to go ‘But what do you actually do?’ because for once I actually want them to?"

Oh, me? I’m a writer. Screenplays. Yeah, not doing too bad, actually. Just made a sale. Major Hollywood studio, six figures. For a script I wrote in a month.

Exactly. Sarah was putting on an earring, fiddling with the back of it. "They all know already anyway. You were on the cover of the Examiner, remember?"

I moved behind her, met her eyes in the mirror over the sink. And, I said, "the back page of the Douglas Community Fortnightly."

And that advertiser thing you get free in shopping centers.

That was the one with the very good picture.

That wasn’t of you.

Still, I said. It was a very good picture.

Sarah laughed.

So who’ll be at this thing? I asked. Anyone I know?

We were going to a going-away party. If the pubs and clubs of Ireland had worried that austerity would damage their trade, they needn’t have—there were enough preemigration shindigs these days to keep the industry afloat all by themselves. That night, it was the turn of Sarah’s colleague Mike, who was heading to New Zealand for a year.

Susan will be there. James—you met him before, didn’t you? And Caroline. She’s the girl we ran into the night of Rose’s birthday. You know Mike, right? Don’t think you’ve met the rest of them …

While Sarah was saying this, I wrapped my arms around her waist and rested my chin on her shoulder, savoring the fruity smell of some lotion or potion.

There was no long fall of blond hair to move out of the way. Just that afternoon, Sarah had walked into a hairdresser’s and asked to have it all chopped off. That morning, the ends had been tickling the small of her back. Now they couldn’t tickle her neck. The cut had exposed more of her natural warm brown color, and I think it was this that made her eyes appear bigger and bluer than before. She also seemed more grown-up to me, somehow, and there was something wonderfully distracting about all that exposed skin …

I pressed my lips against the spot where her neck met her left shoulder.

Sarah said she had decided to get the haircut on a whim, after seeing a picture in the salon’s window as she walked by. But a week from now, I would learn that she had made the appointment with the salon a week in advance.

Just don’t abandon me, okay? I murmured.

I was expecting one of Sarah’s trademark eye rolls and a sarcastic comeback. Maybe a reminder that I was now, technically speaking, a big-shot Hollywood screenwriter and could surely hold my own in conversations about Things Adults Do, instead of standing on the periphery, smiling at the right moments and rearranging the ice cubes in my drink with a straw. Or perhaps Sarah would point out that tonight I didn’t need to go to this thing. It was a work night, anyway, and she had planned on going by herself. But I moaned so pitifully about staying home alone the night before she was leaving for nearly a week, that she finally said fine, tag along.

But instead, she turned to face me, wrapped her arms around my neck, and said, I would never abandon you.

Well, good. Oscar night will be stressful enough without having to find a date for it.

I kissed her, expecting to feel her lips stretched into a smile against mine. They weren’t. I moved my mouth to her jawline, down her neck. There was a faint taste of something powdery, some makeup thing she must have just dusted on her skin. I brought my hands to her waist and went to untuck the towel.

"Ad, Sarah said, wriggling free. I booked a cab for eight. We don’t have time."

I looked at my watch. I suppose I should take that as a compliment.

Funny. Now the eye roll. Can you grab Mike’s card? I think I left it on the coffee table. I’m nearly done here. I just have to get dressed.

I turned to leave.

Oh, Ad?

I stopped in the doorway.

Sarah was in front of the mirror, twisting to check her hair. Without looking at me, she said, "I meant to tell you, the others aren’t exactly delighted about me being the one who gets to go to Barcelona. They’ve all been milking it with their honeymoons and maternity leave, but God forbid I get to have a week out of the office. I mean, it’s not like I’m off. I’m there to work. Anyway, I’ve been trying not to go on about it, so …"

Don’t worry, I said. I won’t bring it up.

I smiled to myself as I crossed the hall into the living room. Honeymoons and maternity leave. Now that I’d sold the script, we could finally start making our own plans instead of being forced to watch as the fulfillment of everyone else’s clogged up our Facebook feeds.

But first …

I collected Mike’s card from the coffee table, then dropped into my preferred spot on the couch. It offered a clear line of sight to my desk, which was tucked into the far corner of the living room and so, crucially, was only a few feet from the kitchen and, thus, the coffeemaker.

A stack of well-thumbed A4 pages was piled on it, curled sticky notes giving it a neon fringe down its right side. I got a dull ache in the pit of my stomach just looking at it.

The rewrite. I had to start it tomorrow. And I would. I’d drive straight home after dropping Sarah at the airport and shut myself in, make the most of the few days and nights that I would have the apartment to myself.

Sarah emerged from our bedroom, wearing a dress I hadn’t seen before.

The money from the script deal hadn’t arrived yet, but ever since I learned it was on its way, I’d been melting my credit card. Sarah had supported me for long enough, paying utility bills and covering my rent shortfalls with money she could have been—should have been—spending on herself. That morning, I had sent her into town with a gift card for a high-end department store—the kind that comes wrapped in delicate tissue inside a smooth matte-finish gift bag.

This is just a token, I had said. Just a little something for now, for tonight. You know, when the money comes through …

Ad, what are you doing? You don’t know how long that money is going to take to arrive. You should be hanging on to what you’ve got.

I put it on the credit card.

But you might need that credit yet. I really wish you’d think before you spend.

Look, it’s fine. We’ll be fine. I just wanted to … Sarah’s mouth was set tight in disapproval. Okay, I’m sorry. I am. It’s just that I don’t want to wait to start paying you back for … for everything.

She had seemed annoyed. Disappointed, too, which was worse. But then, later, she had come home with a larger version of the same bag, and now she was twirling around to show me the dress that had been inside it: red and crossed in the front, the skirt part long and flowing out from her hips.

Well? she said. What do you think?

She looked beautiful in it. More beautiful than usual. But with the new hair, not quite the Sarah I was used to.

Nice, I said. I pointed to my jeans and my dark, plain T-shirt. But now I feel underdressed.

Change, if you want to.

Our buzzer went. The cab was here. No, it’s fine, I said. Let’s just go.

Aside from the clothes Sarah was wearing when I drove her to the airport the next morning, that red dress was the only item that I could tell the Gardaí was missing for sure.

Cork International Airport, all eight gates of it, is perched on a hill southwest of the city. Each year, it begins one in every three days shrouded in the sort of thick, dense fog that delays takeoffs and that, only a few years ago, contributed to a fatal crash landing on the runway. In other words, it was a terrible place to build an airport. Ask any Corkonian about this, and they’ll mutter something about how the airport’s planning application must have come clipped to a bulging brown envelope stuffed with cash.

On that Sunday morning, the skies were clear but with dark clouds on the horizon, threatening showers later in the day. Typical August weather for Ireland: warm enough to be muggy, with the ever-present threat of torrential rain.

It was a ten-minute drive from our apartment to the terminal’s doors. Sarah was at the wheel.

I could be coming with you, I said as the car passed through the airport’s main gates. I could put the flight on the credit card, stay in your room.

It’s only supposed to be me in there.

Who’d know?

The hotel, and so would work once they got the bill. In Spain, all guests have to hand over their passport so the front desk can make a copy. Every name has to go on the register.

"How do you know