Red Tide (Billy Knight Thrillers 2)

“Yes, worms. As I say,” she said. She pulled her hand away and I let her. “There is so much, and it is all exactly nothing.”

“That’s just the way I feel,” I said.

She looked at me, then shook her head. “When you are better, then I say these things,” she said.

“Anna,” I said. “There is a small spot on my right leg with no pain. You’re making it hurt. You’re raising my blood pressure, and that cancels out my pain medication. If you have something to say, say it fast before I pop a blood vessel. Otherwise, just sit still for a few minutes and look perfect for me.” And I collapsed back into my pillows, feeling the pulse throb in all my broken bones.

Anna sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand again. “All these times you are in hospital,” she said. “I am thinking you will die. I am watching you, sitting beside you even at this bad time when there is the electronic noise and all the doctors run in.”

“Thanks,” I said. “It helped me to feel you there.”

“Piff,” she said. “You are saying politeness. I am trying to say true. Billy—” She paused and put my hand carefully onto the bed.

“Yes,” I said.

“All this time when I think you will die, I think also it is my fault, that I have killed you.”

“That’s a load of—”

“Please,” she said. “I know what this is loads of. I know this now. But then in the hospital I do not know. Watching your life go blip bleep on the machines. And is my fault. That you do this for me because of you have these feelings for me. And I say myself, how am I feeling of this man? Am I feeling him love—or just guiltiness only?”

“Oh,” I said. For the first time I got an idea where she was going. I didn’t want to go there.

“And as more I think, as more I do not know,” she said. She lifted up my hand again, turned it over. “And as more I do not know, so much I am thinking how important it is to know this.”

“Yes,” I said, “it’s important to know this.”

“And so I think when you are coming home again, I will know. And I do not know still. And I must.” She looked up at me. Her eyes were bluer than anything I’d ever seen before, bluer than the water from the Seven Mile Bridge, bluer than any sky had ever been. “All this things we are now going through, this evil things on the boat, this cannot be the thing to make us be together, yes? Only evil comes from evil. What is bringing us together, it must be from good. It must be here—” She touched her heart. “—and here.” She touched her forehead. “Because else, because if we allow the evil to make us together, this is another kind of evil which we cannot so easy go away from.”

“It didn’t seem that easy to me,” I said. She ignored me.

“Because is not looking to be evil, is two nice people together only, and so there is no way out.”

“Anna,” I said.

“There must always be a way out. I am knowing this since so big. Is not the freedom without. And without freedom is not the love.

“I must know first,” she said. “First I must know.”

She turned my hand over again, running the finger of her other hand along the lines on my palm. “And so I am feeling bad again. Because you are so much broken for this. For me. And I am saying thank you, very nice, please leave me alone now. This is the way to behave of a shit.”

“No.”

“Piff,” she said again. “Again you say polite. Let me be the shit, is more the better.” She smiled. It was only about half-mast, but it was the nicest thing I’d seen since I’d opened my eyes.

“All right,” I said. “You are the shit.”

“Good,” she said. “Now we are saying the true. And now say me the true of how you feel.” She put a hand on my chest. “In here.”

I looked at her eyes, those autumn blue eyes. She looked away. I thought of all that had happened; the end of whatever I’d had with Nancy, nearly the end of me. The Black Freighter and the black night on the Gulf Stream, and all

of it in that terrible August heat.

It was too much. I could not live through all that so quickly and still have feelings, too. No human being could. Maybe that was Anna’s point.

“In here is empty right now,” I said. I touched her hand. “I’ve been through too much. I still feel too bad, too close to dead.” I closed my eyes and saw it again; the burning skeleton, the snake, the sound of the flesh flaking off my bones. The drums. I opened my eyes. Anna was looking at me, concerned and—I don’t know, something else, too. “Or maybe I’m just too doped up. Maybe I can’t think straight.” I wrapped my fingers around hers and held her hand tightly. “I want to be with you. I’m pretty sure of that. I feel better when I see you. I think I need you to bring some kind of feeling back.”

“And so I am to be your medicine?”