SAN FRANCISCO
It was like a monstrous exhumation.
The tarnished blue paint work was barely what could be called a colour anymore. There were cracks that weren’t cracks made by grime and wear and weed. There were dents cut into the side of the roof where the massive retraction tools had been attached.
It was on the dock, water still gushing from inside, flowing out onto the water-blackening concrete. Wet sand poured out too. It was almost as though archaeologists had ripped it from beneath the desert instead of the men from the salvage boat pulling it up from the ocean floor at the foot of the cliffs. It seemed as though no-one had seen what was inside it, not for thousands of years. It seemed as though her father’s body was still there, as though this were his coffin; but that wasn’t true. All these romantic illusions were gloss and powder over the stark fact of it.
Molly tightened her grip on her upper arms, squeezing at the chill, feeling the sadness now after all, that she’d hoped she wouldn’t.
The body had been removed already. Her father was no longer entombed within this old car of his. But he had been. The metal trap had struck the water from the top of the cliff, and if he hadn’t died right at that moment, then it had dragged him slowly down into the darkness, knowing exactly what was coming for him.
She had felt a tremendous catharsis releasing her story to Jack about her culpability in this grisly affair but any elation and reprieve was withering. The men from the salvage company moved around the car, unhitching their equipment. The chill in her body beneath the dark new denim of her short sleeved shirt was the chill at the bottom of the ocean. In this cold reality the truth she had made herself realise was coming back to her over and over again. She couldn’t work out why David Eden would have been so desperate that this car should be raised up. She felt grim resentment battering her face along with the early morning wind. She couldn’t work out why he’d want her of all the people in California to be there to see it.
Two men approached from the right dressed in suits. They weren’t cut quite clean enough to be lawyers but they weren’t far off. Molly turned back to the car as they began speaking to the chief salvage operator.
The recollection of the visions she’d been having of being trapped in the falling car herself came back to her mind: falling all that way and knowing it was coming.
She had been swimming in a pool once as a girl and jumped off the top board. It couldn’t have been more than twenty feet but with her eyes closed she had fallen and fallen and when the water had finally come up to engulf her all the air had come straight out of her lungs. She’d been trapped at the bottom of the pool, tons of water between her and the surface and the terror had overwhelmed her that she was drowning. She had swum to the surface, clawing at the water and kicking desperately but it had felt as though she would never breathe again.
She moved her hands up to her shoulders, squeezing and rubbing her arms to keep warm.
One of the two men in suits moved along the far side of the car. She couldn’t see the other. Then he appeared next to his friend, rising up from a crouch where he’d been concealed behind the chassis. She frowned at the same time he did. He turned to his partner and pointed down at something on the side of the car she couldn’t see.
The men in suits spoke again to the foreman. He pointed at Molly. She frowned again, concerned suddenly that she knew who they might be.
No comments:
Post a Comment