“One more idiot.” It was Liz.

Looking at her, Douglas made a face. “Jesus, listen to it, Bo. It walks and talks. It’s alive after all.”

“You’re very funny,” she said. “Also very stupid. What’re you trying to do—impress him?”

Parnelli laughed. “You found us out, Liz. That’s our lifelong ambition—to impress an Illinois shitkicker.”

“Why aren’t we turning back, then?” she asked Douglas. “You can barely see the island, for God’s sake.”

The boat had swung around on its anchor, so that now the island was lying out over the stern, low and gray and peaked in the center, like a submarine passing in the mist. Douglas had made his fist into a telescope and now he was comically squinting through it, at the island.

“I can see it,” he said. “I can see that island plain as day. And when you can see a mile in the fog, that ain’t much of a fog.”

“Hell no,” Parnelli said. “I’ll just get us a couple of nice big red snappers for lunch. And maybe a shark for our guest here. Unless of course he’d prefer to go down and get it himself. You sure you don’t want to change your mind?”

“I’m sure.”

Parnelli downed the last of his whiskey, put on his flippers and face mask and followed Douglas out onto the stern, walking like a man in deep mud. Douglas tied a line to a small plastic raft and tossed it overboard, then he helped Parnelli into his scuba tanks and positioned a ladder out over the side, down into the water. Parnelli got his breathing apparatus into place, checked it, then moved laboriously down the ladder into the water, where Douglas handed him a spear gun. As he moved off through the swelling waves and then slipped under them, like some grotesque twin-tailed fish sounding, Douglas turned to Hook with a grin.

“A tiger,” he said. “The man’s afraid of nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

In the cabin doorway, Liz angrily pulled her jacket hood up over her head. “Except you, you sonofabitch.”

Douglas pretended to be shocked. “Now, what do you mean by that?”

“You know what I mean. You could’ve told him not to go down.”

“And why should I?”

“You’re a diver. You know better than I do.”

“Christ, we’ve been down on days a lot worse than this.”

“Exactly,” she said. “We’ve been down. You didn’t go alone.”

Douglas smiled, not very prettily. “How would you know that, sweetheart? You think I’ve never gone diving without you along? Why, many’s the time Jill and I come out here together. Just the two of us.” He winked at Hook. “Jill’s my wife. We have this understanding.”

“Gentlemen’s agreement is more like it,” Liz said.

“Touché.” Douglas toasted her with his empty glass, and then went back into the cabin and poured himself some more.

Liz looked at Hook and shivered. “It’s awfully cold,” she said. “You want a drink? I’m going to have one.”

He said yes, and she went back into the cabin.