The Drowned Life Read Online Free

from his thoughts. He remembered Bleeter Street and said it six times, but the number…. Leapingforward, he assumed the flying position, and flapping his arms, cruised down the street, checking the street signs at corners, and keeping an eye out for sharks. He remembered the address had a three in it, and then for blocks he thought of nothing at all but that last woman’s contempt.

• FIVE •
    Eventually, he grew too tired to fly and resumed walking, sometimes catching the current and drifting in the flow. He’d seen so many street signs—presidents’ names, different kinds of fish, famous actors and sunken ships, types of clouds, waves, flowers, slugs. None of them was Bleeter. He passed by so many storefronts and apartment steps and not a soul in sight. At one point a storm of tiny starfish fell like rain all over town, littering the streets and filling the awnings.
    Hatch had just stepped out of a weakening current and was moving under his own steam when he noticed a phone booth wedged into a narrow alley between two stores. Pushing off, he swam to it and squeezed himself into the glass enclosure. As the door closed, a light went on above him. He lifted the receiver, placing it next to his ear. There was a dial tone. He dialed and it rang. Something shifted in his chest and his pulse quickened. Suffering the length of each long ring, he waited for someone to pick up.
    â€œHello?” he heard; a voice at a great distance.
    â€œRose, it’s me,” he screamed against the water.
    â€œHatch,” she said. “I can hardly hear you. Where are you?”
    â€œI’m stuck in Drowned Town,” he yelled.
    â€œWhat do you mean? Where is it?”
    Hatch had a hard time saying it. “I went under, Rose. I’m sunk.”
    There was nothing on the line. He feared he’d lost the connection, but he stayed with it.
    â€œJesus, Hatch…What the hell are you doing?”
    â€œI gave up on the bailing,” he said.
    She groaned. “You shit. How am I supposed to do this alone?”
    â€œI’m sorry, Rose,” he said. “I don’t know what happened. I love you.”
    He could hear her exhale. “Okay,” she said. “Give me an address. I have to have something to put into MapQuest.”
    â€œDo you know where I am?” he asked.
    â€œNo, I don’t fucking know where you are. That’s why I need the address.”
    It came to him all at once. “322 Bleeter Street, Drowned Town,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.”
    â€œIt’s going to take a while,” she said.
    â€œRose?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI love you,” he said. He listened to the silence on the receiver until he noticed in the reflection of his face in the phone-booth glass a blue spot on his nose and one blooming on his forehead. “Shit,” he said and hung up. “I can take care of that with some ointment when I get back,” he thought. He scratched at the spot on his forehead and blue skin sloughed off. He put his face closer to the glass, and then there came a pounding on the door behind him.
    Turning, he almost screamed at the sight of the half-gone face of the woman who’d been goosed by the octopus. He opened the door and slid past her. Her Jolly Roger profile was none too jolly. As he spoke the words, he surprised himself by doing so—“Do you know where Bleeter Street is?” She jostled him aside in her rush to get to the phone. Before closing the door, she called over her shoulder, “You’re on it.”
    â€œThings are looking up,” thought Hatch as he retreated. Standing in the middle of the street, he looked up one side and down the other. Only one building, a darkened storefront with a plate-glass window behind which was displayed a single pair of sunglasses on a pedestal, had a street number—621. It came to him that he would have to travel in one direction, try to