George’s eyes lit up. “Cigarettes? No shit. My perverse addiction thanks you.” He fired one up and smiled. “Oh baby, oh yeah.”
“Goddamn junkie,” Pollard said. He took the pack and fired one up himself. “I’m supposed to be quit… can’t see it mattering now.”
“Where’s Elizabeth?” George said, blowing out smoke. “Aunt Else has all but accused me of kidnapping her.”
“She’s coming,” Cushing said. He cocked his head. “You sure as hell aren’t gonna believe what she found.”
They heard her coming down the steps, saw her enter the cabin. She offered Pollard the thinnest of smiles and gave George the obligatory death-stare. He winked at her. Maybe she didn’t like him and his mouth much, he figured, but she understood him. Understood him just fine. She stepped aside and four men stepped in behind her.
“Jesus H. Christ!” George said, jumping to his feet. “I can’t.. . holy shit!”
Pollard was up, too.
They both looked like they were seeing ghosts.
But there was nothing spooky there, just Menhaus, Fabrini, Saks, and Crycek. And for all them, it was like the ball had just dropped at midnight on New Year’s Eve.
Saks gave him his porcine, wicked smile. “Well, can’t say I’m surprised, George, figured you and Cushing were holed up somewhere swapping spit.”
That made George laugh. Didn’t seem like he could stop. “Yeah,” he gasped, “but the whole time we were thinking of you, Saks.”
“Shit,” he said.
George shook hands with Fabrini, his favorite muscle-bound Italian. Fabrini looked so glad to see him, he had tears in his eyes. And Menhaus? Same old Menhaus. Thinner, certainly, more lines on his face… but the same old Menhaus.
“Jolly Olly,” George said and they hugged, slapping each other on the back.
“Boy, I’m glad to see you guys.”
“Glad to see us?” Menhaus laughed. “Shit, after… what? A week with Saks here? We’re definitely ready for some human company.”
Fabrini chuckled.
Saks laughed despite himself. “And after all I’ve done for you.”
“Or to him, don’t you mean?” Fabrini said, very little humor in his words.
“Kiss my ass, Fagbrini.”
There was tension there, but it faded about the time the bottle started making the rounds. Jokes and insults passed around like cold germs. Cushing said very little, though there was plenty he wanted to enlighten them on. But not yet. Not now. Not until they settled in.
Elizabeth just stood there, looking uncomfortable like she’d just wandered into a men’s club. The talk was both salty and spicy, the language a little rough. She looked a little surprised and taken back by it.
Cushing figured she wasn’t used to it, but with this bunch, she’d have the chance. That was for sure. Fabrini kept looking at her as if he just didn’t believe there could be something like a woman. But every time she looked in his direction, he averted his eyes like a shy schoolboy. Not so with Saks. He was eyeing her up and down like she was fresh off the grill and he was hungry. Like maybe he wanted to stuff an apple in her mouth and cut himself a slice. She saw it, too. It was hard not to. And the look she gave him… well, Cushing figured Saks was lucky she didn’t have a gun in her hand.
Gradually, the talk turned to more serious matters.
It was confession time. What happened and to who and what the hell did you do when the ship went down? Then it seemed like everyone was talking at once.
“Soltz?” Menhaus asked.
George just shook his head. “No. What about Cook?”
Menhaus shook his head this time.
Pollard was filling Crycek in on their shipmates. “Yeah, Marx.. . the chief. Squid got him and Gosling, too.”
“The First? Oh, shit,” Crycek was saying. “Not the First, not the First.”
George sketched basically what had happened to Gosling and Crycek told him about someone named Hupp, that George did not know. Whoever it was, you could see that Crycek felt the pain of his loss as he felt the loss of Marx and Gosling.
Saks was the only one unmoved by any of it.
He seemed oddly at ease with it all. But maybe that was because the gears were already turning in his head. Gosling would have definitely stood in his way, but without him? Maybe there was still hope to rein this bunch in.
All in all, the stories that passed now were grim. They had all survived the seaweed sea and its innumerable terrors. And you could tell by the way they told those stories that they knew damn well that none of it was over with just yet.
About that time, when there was a lull in the horror story competition as it were, Elizabeth announced. “You men must be hungry. I’ll get you some food. Will you help me, Mr. Cushing?”
That got Saks laughing. “Mister Cushing. I like that.”
Cushing smiled and went into the galley with her. He had things to say and George could see that, but he wasn’t ready just yet.
When the door was closed to the galley, Saks said with his usual subtlety, “Cushing? He banging that shit?”
“Jesus Christ, Saks,” Fabrini said.
George just laughed. Saks. Always the sentimentalist. “Could be. She’s taken a real shine to him. She’s okay, Saks, don’t give her a hard time. Wait till she brings out the food… better than that survival shit.”
George explained to them how Elizabeth was something of a professional scavenger. All the food she had stockpiled, the garden she had growing on a barge somewhere.
“Jesus,” Menhaus said, rubbing his hands together. “Real vegetables… sweets… goddamn bacon and bread, you say?”
“Well, don’t be in any hurry, Menhaus,” Saks said. “Cushing’s probably putting the meat to her right now.”
“They always go for the big Viking types, don’t they?” Fabrini joked.
Saks grinned. “Maybe we need to put more men on the job. Maybe I better go in there, show dumbfuck Cushing how it’s done.”
“Maybe you better just keep it in your pants, Saks,” George warned him. “This lady is tough, she don’t fuck around. You keep it in your pants or she’ll cut it right off. Trust me.”
“Listen to you,” Saks said. “You even got a dick, George?”
“Your wife thinks so.”
Saks flushed, looked like maybe he might go after George, but he kept it in check, offered up a little hollow laugh. And maybe his laugh was hollow, but Fabrini’s wasn’t… it was loud and booming. Menhaus was laughing, too. You could see that Saks didn’t like that. You didn’t go around laughing at Al Saks.
“Now listen to me,” George said. “I’m not trying to give you shit, Saks, but you’ve got to remember a few things here. This woman is letting us stay here and she don’t have to do that. And don’t give me that ah-she’s-just-a-fucking-broad look. This girl is tough. She’s a survivor. She knows how to survive. You cross her and you’ll find out. She’s been living here for years, fighting to stay alive. You think for a minute she won’t slit your throat she sees you as a threat, guess again. Leave her be. That’s all I’m saying. She likes Cushing and that’s the way it is. He gets some and you don’t, too damn bad. Go fuck your hand. Because you get out of line and you might screw it up for all of us. And I tell you what, Saks, I won’t put up with it.”
“Oh, you won’t?”
George gave him back his look. “No, I won’t. You don’t think so, try me.”
Fabrini was eating it up. Menhaus just looked tired by it all. Like maybe he’d been living on a steady diet of this kind of shit and the only thing it did now was fatigue him.
Saks smiled then, because it was all a joke, couldn’t they see that? Cushing was throwing the pirate-girl the old bone? More power to him. It was okay with Saks; he wasn’t the sort of guy to shit on a romance. “Okay, George,” he said, very calmly. “Don’t get your pecker hard, I was just kidding around.”
“Sure,” Fabrini said, touching the bandage at his ear. “Saks is like that. He’ll kid you right to death. See if he don’t.”