Drowned Hopes by Donald E. Westlake

Author:Donald E. Westlake
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com / Open Road

FORTY-TWO

“What time is it?” Judy murmured in his ear.

Doug Berry reared up on his elbows, rested his wrist on Judy’s nose, and looked at his waterproof, shockproof, glow-in-the-dark watch/compass/calendar. “Five to three,” he said.

“Oh!” she cried, suddenly moving beneath him on the life jackets spread on the bottom of his Boston Whaler much more enthusiastically than at any point before this. “Damn! The lesson’s over! Let’s go!”

“Judy Judy Judy,” Doug said, holding on to her bare shoulders. “I didn’t know I was finished.”

“It doesn’t matter when you’re finished,” she told him. “I pay for the lessons. And I have a waxing appointment this afternoon. Off, big boy.”

“Wait a second!” Doug stared around; all he needed was half a minute, less, he was sure of it. “Your hair’s stuck!” he announced, leaning his weight back down on her, lowering his face beside hers as though to help. “Stuck in this buckle here, be careful, you’ll h-h-h-hurt yourself, I’ll just get it-it-it-it loose, and you’re all-l-l-l-l-l-l, oh, buhbuhbuhbuh, AH!”

When the shivering stopped, he raised himself onto his elbows again, grinned down into her skeptical eyes, and said, “There. It’s loose now.”

He rolled off her, and they both sat up in the sunlight, Doug looking off toward the distant shore of Long Island, out across the Great South Bay, as Judy said caustically, “Are you satisfied now?”

“If you are, Judy,” he told her, grinning, not giving a shit anymore. “You’re paying for the lessons.”

She was. Judy was the wife of an ophthalmologist in Syosset, and this was the third year she’d come to Doug for diving lessons. All kinds of diving lessons. Each May first she’d appear, regular as clockwork, and would help pay his rent and divert his hours three days a week until the fifteenth of July, when she and her husband would go off for their month on St. Croix.

She was a good-looking woman in her late thirties, Judy, whose hard body was severely kept in trim with aerobics, jogging, Nautilus machines, and pitiless diets. The ruthlessness showed in her face, though, in the sharpness of her nose and the coldness of her dark eyes and the thinness of her lips, so it was unlikely anyone other than the ophthalmologist—who had no choice—would have willingly hung out with her over an extended period without something more than her companionship to be gotten out of it. Who salted her restless tail the rest of the year Doug had no idea, but his annual two-and-a-half months of the pleasure of her company was just about all he’d be able to stand.

May was still a little early for most water traffic on the bay, especially in midweek, except for the ubiquitous clammers and the occasional ferries over to Fire Island. It was easy at this time of year to find an anchorage in the shallow water of the bay away from other boaters, dive a bit, screw a bit, and thus while away the two hours of each lesson. Doug would have been

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