Ahead, the clean northward trough ended. Vic steered around a dune and through a break until she found another trough. She had to adjust the sails as she did so. Marco seemed at peace on the bow and made no effort to come back and help. Probably knew she’d be pissed if he tried. He held the forestay with one hand and continued to gaze toward the horizon, thinking on his own riches, possibly. Or busy naming their kids. Or dreading the day their mother told them about the time their dad was nearly killed by an undergarment.
Shantytown rose at last, after the scrapers and the great wall. A scrabble of low huts with bright steel roofs gleamed in the rising sun. She had to search hard to spot the marina on the south side, for it was nearly bare. Just two sarfers parked, neither of them fitted with masts, otherwise Vic was sure they’d be out among the dunes as well, looking for Danvar.
The traffic they’d seen between Low-Pub and Springston had been unprecedented. She and Marco had passed dozens of parked sarfers among the dunes with their dive flags up. Dozens more had been spotted with their sails billowing as they raced all points but east. Vic eased the sheets to drop some speed and steered into the marina while Marco lowered the jib. It felt good, this ride between Low-Pub and Springston. The anxiety of the chase for treasure had lessened. She just felt an urge to find her brother and share in the excitement with everyone else. Nothing wrong with being second or tenth. Just a pang that her father wasn’t there to be a part of it. To hear that Palmer had maybe been first.
She guided the sarfer into an open flat of sand, loosed the mainsail, and realized this would be her first trip into Springston in almost a year. God, today was the day, wasn’t it? Or was it yesterday? She knew it was coming up. Conner and Rob would be out camping. Maybe that’s where Palmer was as well. Hell, maybe he’d had no part in locating Danvar. He’d just been camping, had done whatever two-tank dive he and Hap had lined up and had gone out to No Man’s for the weekend. Doubt crept in after getting Marco’s hopes up. She may have sailed them in the wrong direction.
“I’ll stay here and watch the sarfer,” Marco said, snapping her from her thoughts. The noise of the wind and the skids was gone, leaving a residual roar. They would both be shouting at each other until it went away.
“No, you’re coming with me.” She coiled the mainsheet before tugging her gloves off, then nodded to the small shack beyond the mooring posts. “I’ll give the dockmaster a coin to watch our stuff.”
Marco shrugged. “If you insist.” He wrapped a line around one of the posts so the sarfer couldn’t break free and run under bare pole. They flaked the mainsail and left the mast up so they could get out of there as soon as they found Palmer. Vic tied back the halyard so it wouldn’t clang a racket, then checked their dive gear in the haul rack to make sure nothing had come loose. She took a long pull on her canteen, dreading the hell out of this, dreading it worse than any deep dive, then led the way toward the Honey Hole, Marco having to jog to catch up with her.
28 • No Room for Breathing
The brothel, with its noisy generator and bright lights and balconies hunkered under juts of corrugated tin, stood between two shoveled dunes in that neverwhere between Shantytown and Springston. Vic couldn’t decide which town the building belonged to. It was as if neither side wanted it but neither wanted to lose it. It was that last piece of rotten snakemeat begrudgingly fought over by two starving but half-hearted men, each secretly hoping the other might win the struggle.
The sun pounded the back of the brothel by day, baking it until noon, then allowed it to revel in all its lurid glory as it slowly set to the west. This was when the idle women left their idle beds and leaned over railings from their balconies, their breasts drooping seductively in fire-red lace and midnight-black straps as they smiled down at the men who went twelve dunes out of their way home from work to ogle what they could not afford. Or as they shoved their way inside and paid anyway for what they could not afford.
Vic avoided the place like no other spot in the high desert. She would just as soon venture into No Man’s Land after her father or swim through a viper’s nest as set foot in the place. This distaste was an inconvenience when in Springston, for quite a bit of a diver’s business was conducted around the mismatched tables of the downstairs bar, men leaning heads together over smoldering ashtrays to consult expert maps scratched in charcoal on the faces of napkins. It was a blessing, in a way, that her mother owned the place and worked there. It gave Vic an excuse to shun the joint. Otherwise she would have to explain herself, would have to admit that it had nothing to do with her mom. Without this excuse, the men who dominated the world of diving would think her unbrave and unworthy.
“You go in,” she told Marco, holding up outside the front door. “Ask for Rose and tell her to meet me out back.”
“Why don’t you just come in with me?” Marco asked, wagging his eyebrows, mocking her. “You really have such a problem with what your mom does?”
Vic hesitated. “It’s bad for business,” she finally said. “When I walk in there, all those drunks take one look at me and they decide they don’t want nothing else for a week. Bad for business, and it’s my mom’s business.”
Marco laughed. “Jesus, whatever. I’ll go book an hour with your mom for you.”
“Yeah, fuck you—”
But Marco was already through the door. The Honey Hole belched a blast of noise as it swung open for a moment, the early-morning crowd unusually alive, probably because of the news of Danvar, or still going strong from the night before. Vic took advantage of the lee of the two-story building to pull out her tobacco pouch and roll a smoke. Getting low. Would need to ride out to the gardens at some point and hit up her supplier—
“Why don’t you smoke that in bed after we’re done, Honey?” A face and two breasts leaned out over the rail above. “Twenty coin for you. Special rate. Whaddya say?”
Vic clicked her lighter, fired up her cigarette, and blew smoke toward the balcony. “Fuck off,” she muttered. She left the shelter from the wind and stepped around the building between the dunes daily carved away from this most sacred and protected of buildings. She thought of her little brother Conner as she considered how the sand here was eternally dug away just as it was from other wells of nourishment.
At the back of the building, there stood a low wall around a service door where drunks and garbage were dragged out. Vic enjoyed her smoke, the deep inhalations calming nerves jangled from being near the place. Rusted hinges full of sand screamed as her mother stepped out, an unlit cigarette in her mouth, the white robe Vic’s father had brought up from beneath Low-Pub fluttering around her knees.
“Got a light?” her mom asked.
First words exchanged in a year, and Vic was pretty sure they were the same words she had last heard from her mother, standing there in that very place. She cupped her hand tight around her silver lighter, and her mom dipped her cigarette into the flame. It came out aglow and smoking.
“New tattoo?” her mom asked. She pointed the lit cigarette at Vic’s arm.
“Yeah,” Vic said, resisting the urge to look down at her arm and see which one she was talking about. The sun was just breaking over the highest scrapers. She could already tell it was going to be a hot one. “Look, I’d love to chat, but I just need to find Palmer. Have you seen him?”
Her mom inhaled, nodded, turned to the side and blew smoke against the sandblasted door. “Saw your brother last week. Needed money for a pair of visors. Said he would really pay me back this time.”