CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The days of the following week merged into languid hours of doing nothing very much except lying in the sun or swimming, eating or making love. They developed a routine—if self-indulgent laziness could be called such. They woke late in the morning, ordered food, and then returned to bed to amuse themselves until thoroughly sated. They ate their food on the deck, followed by swimming for an hour or so. The first half of the afternoon was spent sunbathing, and then the eroticism of the sun on their skin and lying beside each other naked overtook them, and they’d return to bed, the sex inventive and visceral in the bright light of day. When they were done, Ben would usually head to the hotel for a run along the sweltering dirt tracks or to use the gym. Nikolas would accompany him as far as the air-conditioned lobby and then sit on the terrace with his laptop to use the wireless connection. He claimed he was working, and Ben didn’t call him on it. As darkness fell, they’d join back up, return to the hut, shower and dress and motor to the hotel to eat. By the time they got back to their hut, they were ready for lazy, sensual lovemaking in the darkness and green glow. Ben sometimes wondered if, with Pavlovian inevitability, he would always get an erection if he saw green, glowing light.
By the end of the second week, no one left behind in London would’ve recognised them. Nikolas had turned a deep golden brown and his blond hair was streaked with highlights from the sun and the salt. His scars were far less visible under the new skin colouring, and he’d regained the weight he’d put on in Russia, appearing sleek and strong. Ben was dark, too; he’d not quite gone back up to his previous weight, but his diet of mainly fish and fruit suited him and had turned his body in a perfect anatomical model of muscle definition. That he spent an hour or so in the gym working individual muscles helped, of course, but when Nikolas lazily called him vain, Ben only asked pointedly which one of them enjoyed his body more.
The best development for both of them was Nikolas had mostly stopped taking the pills the doctor had prescribed for him. He still got headaches, but they were manageable with resting or staying out of the sun for a while. He never mentioned the hallucinations or strange thoughts that’d plagued him, so Ben was unable to judge whether these were gone. But better still, he seemed to have at last overcome his dependency on his less healthy recreational activities, he didn’t watch other people drinking or smoking as if he wanted to eviscerate them. He didn’t have the restless, painful edge Ben had found so exhausting.
Nothing in this paradise, Ben decided, could be restless or painful really. It was the most beautiful place he’d ever been, and the days passed with a dreamlike unreality to them. He felt he ought to be worrying about something, as if fate shouldn’t allow them to have this tranquillity. He knew Nikolas thought about these things even more than he did, but then Nik had more reason to feel fate ought not to be dealing him such a kind hand.
Nikolas mentioned Gabby occasionally, which surprised Ben, as he didn’t want to think about her at all. He couldn’t get over the fact he hadn’t seen her passion for him behind the mask of the kind, motherly friend. Perhaps it was the association with mothering that made his mind veer off the thought every time it occurred, but while he’d been taking comfort from a hug, she’d been thinking…it was too gross to go there, so he didn’t. But Nikolas brought up the subject, usually when they were lying sated from sex, covered in sweat and semen. It seemed to play on his mind that he’d been left alive to enjoy this and she hadn’t.
§ § §
When Nikolas saw the man falling from the sky into the deep sea beyond the drop off, he was, therefore, not especially surprised—it didn’t really matter whether this response was because he didn’t believe their lives could be so perfect and was waiting for things to go wrong, or whether it was because he was still having hallucinations more then he’d admitted to Ben. He saw it and was…curious.
He was at the edge of the lagoon where the water turned from warm to cold. Ben had gone running, and Nikolas enjoyed the times he could swim alone, pushing himself harder than he would if Ben were there. He watched the falling, screaming man with great interest. After all, when you occasionally still saw your drowned mother watching you from the corner of a room, a falling stranger wasn’t particularly unsettling. When he hit the water, the man sank quickly, unnaturally so, as if sucked down, also leading Nikolas to believe he was merely imagining the whole incident. He was intrigued enough though to dive off the drop into the dark, cold water and swim down the face of the cliff to see if he could find anything. He couldn’t and concluded, as he suspected, that he’d been seeing things. Thinking he’d probably swum enough, and lying in the sun doing nothing would suffice for the rest of the time Ben was away, he swam back to the hut. If he turned around occasionally to see if a suited man was swimming behind with a maniacal, screaming face, he reckoned no one would call him on it.
§ § §
Ben noticed Nikolas was quiet that evening as they dressed for dinner. He seemed distracted but when questioned claimed he had a headache, and to leave him be. Ben gave him a pill, which he took, and they went to eat. They’d still not overcome the feeling everyone in the room was picturing gay porn movies whenever they walked in, although, as Nikolas had pointed out, they were probably the only two people in the room who actually watched gay porn movies. As usual, they ordered water; although Nikolas was so well these days he didn’t mind Ben having the occasional glass of wine. Ben sometimes succumbed to the temptation, but not on a night when Nikolas seemed a little off already. So they drank iced water.
Nikolas stared off into the distance over the lagoon, deep in thought. Ben kicked him lightly under the table. “You okay?”
Nikolas nodded distractedly but brought his attention back to Ben. His eyes flicked down to the glass floor for a moment then back up very quickly, and he cracked a smile. Ben frowned. “What’s wrong?”
Nikolas clenched his jaw. “I’m still having occasional hallucinations. It’s nothing for you to worry about.” He flicked his eyes down again, frowning deeply, and then dragged them back up to Ben. “I’m ignoring them. They usually go away.” He picked up his glass of water, staring once more out of the window.
Suddenly, there was a loud, piercing scream, and a woman at the table next to them leapt out of her chair, screaming endlessly as she peered at the floor and then dancing away as if something was burning her. Her companion began to shout, and he too pushed away from the table, his chair tipping over. Nikolas watched all with this apparent fascination, and then when Ben cried out, “Fucking hell, I can see a bloody body!” Nikolas chuckled and confessed, clearly very relieved and pleased, “Join the club, Benjamin.”
§ § §
It was fairly hideous, and once Nikolas had gotten over his extreme satisfaction at finding out he hadn’t been hallucinating, he was entertained by the peculiar disadvantage of having a glass-floored restaurant. There was a body lapping gently under the water in full view of everyone in the place, face up, eyes wide, slightly nibbled and going nowhere. He supposed he had to make allowances for the fact most people had probably never seen a dead body and the juxtaposition of it floating fishlike under a seafood restaurant was rather unfortunate, but still, they did make a huge amount of unnecessary noise about it. It was giving him a headache. He suggested to Ben they leave, but to his surprise, Ben was finding it morbidly interesting. “How do you think he got there?”
Nikolas looked at him. “I would think he floated in, no?”
“But he’s dressed in a suit. You don’t go swimming—”
“Well, no, he fell from the sky.”
“Huh?”
“This afternoon. He fell into the drop off.”
Ben turned to him, glanced around, and saw a number of people were standing close, so he took Nikolas’s arm and led him away, even though they were speaking Danish. “You saw that man fall out of the sky, and you didn’t say anything? To me? To anyone?”
Nikolas shrugged. “I see lots of things.”
Ben just stared at Nikolas for a while longer. “Did you see a plane?”
Nikolas frowned again. “No, why?”
“Well, duh! He didn’t just fall from heaven, for fuck’s sake.”
By this time, one of the waiters had been volunteered to swim under the restaurant to pull the body out. He clearly wasn’t too happy with the task. This was slightly more interesting for Nikolas to watch, because the waiter had stripped down to his white shorts for the swim and, apparently, no one had anticipated this lightweight tropical material getting wet, because it became completely transparent when it was. Ben also seemed to think this was worth detailed study, so they stood watching the young man twisting and turning under the glass, trying to drag the heavy body behind him. He couldn’t hold his breath for long enough to make the swim in one try. Nikolas said he’d go and help, which got him a punch on the arm, so it was some time before the body was retrieved and dragged to the beach.
It seemed like a good time to leave. Neither wanted to be questioned by the police, even as vague witnesses, and Nikolas wasn’t about to mention what he’d seen out by the drop off. He did think about it, though, and something had occurred to him that piqued his interest in the whole dead-man-in-a-suit incident. But he pushed it to one side and piqued his interest in Ben for the rest of the night. He was in trouble, he knew, mainly for not mentioning the whole falling-body thing, but also for his interest in the waiter.
He found it amusing if Ben ever watched another man, because this rather negated Ben’s assertion he wasn’t gay, but Ben hated it if he even so much as flicked a glance to anyone. He enjoyed Ben’s jealousy, though, so he sometimes engineered it so he could smooth it away later. Ben wasn’t quite so easily placated this night, so it was some time before Nikolas could return to his interesting thoughts. Ben finally fell asleep, his head on Nikolas’s chest, both of them naked on the bed, hot and sticky. In his mind, though, Nikolas was in the deep, cold water and seeing again the moment when the man hit the ocean and sank. Rapidly…Unnaturally so…At the time, believing he was seeing things anyway, it hadn’t struck him as so odd that when he dived down to watch the body sink under the water, it hadn’t been there. Clearly it was real, so the only thing he could conclude was it’d been weighed down with something very heavy that had taken it down rapidly, but which had now broken free and let the body rise to the surface and wash into the lagoon. Whatever the heavy thing was, therefore, it was still at the bottom of the drop off…He lay awake, idly stroking Ben’s shoulder, thinking for the rest of the night. If questioned on this, he’d have denied vehemently he was excited by the prospect of going treasure hunting; he wasn’t ten years old, after all.
But that’s exactly what he was thinking.
§ § §
The next day, Ben was surprised when Nikolas asked him if he knew how to dive. Ben did, of course, as he’d dived with the army many times. He’d never bothered to get certified, though; they’d have to join the hotel’s dive school and do a course if they wanted go diving alone on the holiday. Nikolas didn’t mention this again, but when Ben went to the gym, he accompanied him to the hotel and went to use his computer. When they returned to the hotel that night to eat, there was an envelope waiting for Nikolas at reception, and he took it to the table with them. It had just their names on it, Christian Beck, Benjamin Rider. Nikolas tore it open and pulled out two faxed sheets. He smiled and handed them to Ben. “It appears we’re both qualified divers and can hire our own equipment.”
“Huh?”
“I pay Kate ridiculous sums of money, but so far my investment has paid off handsomely.”
“You’ve had fake dive certification made up for us? Why?”
“So we can hire a plane and go flying. Don’t be dense, Benjamin.”
“No, I mean, I get you want to go diving and as usual can’t be bothered to do anything legally or properly, but why dive in the first place? It’s activity. Since when do you do activity?”
Nikolas pulled out one of his irritating dismissive waves Ben had almost missed. “You need to keep busy, Benjamin, or you’ll start to get into mischief—fooling around with waiters. I’m merely doing my duty as your—” He laughed suddenly. “Did you just kick me?” He took the certificates back and studied them. “So, do you know how to dive?”
“Yes, I do, but it’s been years! You have to—”
“Can you teach me?”
That rocked Ben back a little. “Me, teach you?”
Nikolas frowned. “Yes. I don’t know how to dive! We were a little busy in the Russian army, winning wars, fucking with corrupt western democracies and destroying the evils of capitalism. I didn’t have time to swan around to holiday destinations, diving.”
“You’re pissed that I know how to do something you don’t, aren’t you? This is the first time in five years you’re going to have to listen to me and do what I say. Oh, God, I’m so going to enjoy this. And did you just call capitalism evil? You?” He waved vaguely around the room to emphasise his point.
Nikolas refused to discuss it further. He tucked the certificates into his pocket and picked up the menu. He chuckled and showed it to Ben. “They’ve taken off the sushi.”