Page 118 of Saltwater

But Martina was here and my ride was not. And I remembered how the articles I had saved on my computer detailed the gruesome realities of Sarah’s death. The way it only took hours for the crabs and crayfish to disfigure her nose, her fingers. How the fatty protuberances always went first.

“I can drive you out there,” I said.

Martina looked like she might say no. A small part of me hoped she would.

“Only if you’re sure he won’t mind,” she said.

“No,” I said. “I’ve driven it many times.”

That much was true. I had ferried girls for Stan. I had fucked the captain we used in the Caribbean, too.

“Sure,” she said, even though she sounded anything but. Then she warmed to the idea. “Okay. All right. I just want to get to bed before he does.”

“I understand,” I said.

The keys were where I expected, and the tender’s engine hummed as soon as I turned it over. I had an hour, that’s what Marcus had said. I piloted us off the dock and turned toward the inlet where I had nearly drowned Helen earlier that day. Did I know then that it was a dress rehearsal?

Martina sat at the back of the boat, her body folded into a corner seat, her face turned toward the sea. When we hit chop, the salt spray dusted her cheeks. She didn’t seem to mind. As we motored past Stan’s yacht, she called to me.

“That’s it,” she said.

Like I wouldn’t recognize it, like I wouldn’t know it from the others.

She yelled something else, but I pushed the throttle down to drown her out.

It only took five minutes for us to reach the rocky inlet. That side of the island was dark, without villas or boats, without the thump of music from the open bars and lido decks. I killed the engine and let the boat coast to a stop.

“We missed it,” Martina said, standing at the stern. “It was the gray one. Back there.”

She turned, pointing in the direction of the anchorage, her back to me. And when she did, I pushed her shoulders, and then I bent low to lift at the knees. She was so light. A slip of a girl. She was overboard in an instant.

“Wait!” she called to me from the water. “I can’t swim.”

I started the engine.

“Stan can pay you,” she said. There was a tendril of fear. The water already filling her mouth, crowding out her voice.

I had said almost the same words twelve hours before.

“It’s not about the money, Martina,” I yelled to her. Then, softer, to myself, I added: “That’s what everyone gets wrong. It’s never really about the money.”

I pushed the throttle down against her screams. If my friendship with Helen had taught me anything, it was that I would always, no matter the price, save myself first.

When I returned the boat to the jetty, the marina was still empty. No sign of the captain or my transport to Naples. I threw the duffel over my shoulder and followed the road back to where the group of men had leapt over the wall and into the tall grass. I slept outside that night, waiting for a late-afternoon ferry for Naples the next day. And then, with the day-trippers and tourists, I slipped on board.

It shouldn’t have worked, of course. Someone should have been there to say,That’s not Lorna! That’s Martina! I know her!But no one knows girls like Martina, girls like me. We are an afterimage, a shadow, a disposable body. Girls like us, we are all the same. We are substitutes.

No one, I knew, would miss Martina. No one, even, would missme.

I went north. The banker who opened the accounts helped me secure new papers and found me someone to invest my money. The investment adviser reminded me of Marcus, but younger. He was prematurely gray, and kind. After a year of going over my returns, heasked me to dinner. Six months later, he asked me to come to Milan. I agreed.

Should I have known Helen would be there, waiting?

Like her family, she had receded from the public eye after Capri. I didn’t even know if she was still in Europe. When she spotted us in Brera, I wanted to leave the city. But the investment adviser wouldn’t hear of it. He still needed to take me to the Palazzo Dugnani.A private visit,he said.Romanticwas what he meant.

But in the gardens and on the streets of Milan, I could feel her watching me. Like a weight on your back or an itch at your neck. When the sensation became unbearable, I finally stopped. Turned. Looked for her.

“Are you okay?” the investment adviser asked.