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Sand Tiger shot away in a herky-jerky motion. Sharks feel blows to their gills the way men feel kicks to their balls. The first shark, the seven-footer, attacked again and avenged her mate. She whisked through the water, opened her mouth wide, and slammed into Charlie’s stomach. His gut was a fat, juicy target of massive opportunity. Then she retreated, smug and victorious.
Something chunky and red flopped through the white shreds of Charlie’s shirt. The mangled gobs looked vital. Intestines, kidney, liver, maybe all three, I couldn’t be sure. Charlie reached for the clumps and tried to push them back inside. He moved in slow motion, suffering from a lack of either oxygen or blood. The wound disappeared in the clouds, his life pouring into the water.
From outside the tank I recognized agony. Bile welled inside my throat. And I dry-retched. The crowd screamed, men and women alike, everyone horrified by what they saw. Someone puked the real thing. A sickly smell filled my nostrils, making me dry-retch even more.
The third shark, the biggest of the three, blasted through the water like a guided torpedo. The sight stopped me dead in my tracks. I forgot the nearby nausea. The Sand Tiger held his mouth high and wide, a wizened old veteran of feeding frenzies. His urine-yellow eyes flashed absolute evil. All the guests in the hall froze like deer in the headlights.
He struck.
Charlie’s magnificent, humongous head disappeared. Gone. The same beefy belfry that had spawned all the self-deprecating jokes about Cossack ancestors. Gone. The shark’s wide jaws crowned Charlie’s cranium with ease. Gone.
Without breaking stroke, the shark shot forward, leaving extension cords of vertebrae and arteries where head and neck had once been. He gnashed and gnawed. He chewed the skull with reckless abandon, the way a dog savages a bone. Charlie’s remains descended to the base of the Great Ocean Tank under the weight of the attached food cart. The other two sharks circled back and struck the headless torso again and again.
I dry-retched. Someone cacked over the backs of the crowd. It must have been a woman. Burkas would have checked the spew from men.
Deep inside the tank, Charlie’s severed arm sank to the sandy base. A moray eel, hidden in that beautiful if man-made coral reef, shot out and pulled the arm into its cave. The eel, an ugly fish with a spiny-toothed sucker mouth and skin resembling snot, struck repeatedly at the hand. Between assaults, Charlie’s wedding ring flickered in the light.
I scanned the halls for Sam. No luck. She was lost somewhere in the panicking swarm, somewhere among the stench of fear and vomit shrouding the aquarium.
CHAPTER FOUR
Over the weekend Charlie’s bizarre death made every newscast in the country. CNN. Fox. You name it. One guest had taken a camera phone to the party and, with remarkable presence of mind, taped the feeding frenzy. All day Saturday and all day Sunday, I heard: “An unsettling story from Boston. Charlie Kelemen, noted philanthropist and member of the hedge fund community, was eaten Friday night by three sharks at the New England Aquarium. Film at eleven.”
It got worse. Some jerk uploaded the clip onto YouTube, where it immediately became a “featured video.” By 3:47 P.M. on Sunday there were 450,467 hits. One was mine. Alone in my condo on Central Park West, I brooded over the horrific images. They were almost impossible to believe, and I found myself flipping to a happier collage of memories.
There was that black-tie benefit held in the Waldorf last January.
“Listen up,” Charlie commanded his dinner partners. “I want to know who pees in the shower.” With mock gravity he raised his right hand, as though to swear an oath, and poured a fabulous Côtes du Rhône with his left. Hegazed into every face around the table. His big, brown
Something chunky and red flopped through the white shreds of Charlie’s shirt. The mangled gobs looked vital. Intestines, kidney, liver, maybe all three, I couldn’t be sure. Charlie reached for the clumps and tried to push them back inside. He moved in slow motion, suffering from a lack of either oxygen or blood. The wound disappeared in the clouds, his life pouring into the water.
From outside the tank I recognized agony. Bile welled inside my throat. And I dry-retched. The crowd screamed, men and women alike, everyone horrified by what they saw. Someone puked the real thing. A sickly smell filled my nostrils, making me dry-retch even more.
The third shark, the biggest of the three, blasted through the water like a guided torpedo. The sight stopped me dead in my tracks. I forgot the nearby nausea. The Sand Tiger held his mouth high and wide, a wizened old veteran of feeding frenzies. His urine-yellow eyes flashed absolute evil. All the guests in the hall froze like deer in the headlights.
He struck.
Charlie’s magnificent, humongous head disappeared. Gone. The same beefy belfry that had spawned all the self-deprecating jokes about Cossack ancestors. Gone. The shark’s wide jaws crowned Charlie’s cranium with ease. Gone.
Without breaking stroke, the shark shot forward, leaving extension cords of vertebrae and arteries where head and neck had once been. He gnashed and gnawed. He chewed the skull with reckless abandon, the way a dog savages a bone. Charlie’s remains descended to the base of the Great Ocean Tank under the weight of the attached food cart. The other two sharks circled back and struck the headless torso again and again.
I dry-retched. Someone cacked over the backs of the crowd. It must have been a woman. Burkas would have checked the spew from men.
Deep inside the tank, Charlie’s severed arm sank to the sandy base. A moray eel, hidden in that beautiful if man-made coral reef, shot out and pulled the arm into its cave. The eel, an ugly fish with a spiny-toothed sucker mouth and skin resembling snot, struck repeatedly at the hand. Between assaults, Charlie’s wedding ring flickered in the light.
I scanned the halls for Sam. No luck. She was lost somewhere in the panicking swarm, somewhere among the stench of fear and vomit shrouding the aquarium.
CHAPTER FOUR
Over the weekend Charlie’s bizarre death made every newscast in the country. CNN. Fox. You name it. One guest had taken a camera phone to the party and, with remarkable presence of mind, taped the feeding frenzy. All day Saturday and all day Sunday, I heard: “An unsettling story from Boston. Charlie Kelemen, noted philanthropist and member of the hedge fund community, was eaten Friday night by three sharks at the New England Aquarium. Film at eleven.”
It got worse. Some jerk uploaded the clip onto YouTube, where it immediately became a “featured video.” By 3:47 P.M. on Sunday there were 450,467 hits. One was mine. Alone in my condo on Central Park West, I brooded over the horrific images. They were almost impossible to believe, and I found myself flipping to a happier collage of memories.
There was that black-tie benefit held in the Waldorf last January.
“Listen up,” Charlie commanded his dinner partners. “I want to know who pees in the shower.” With mock gravity he raised his right hand, as though to swear an oath, and poured a fabulous Côtes du Rhône with his left. Hegazed into every face around the table. His big, brown
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