"I knew you'd be mad, but I thought you might be able to get over it. I was just trying to be floozish. I'm sorry if I'm not very good at it. It's not a skill you get to use a lot in an undersea city. Truth be told, the dating pool is sort of shallow here in Gooville. I was just trying to be sexy. I never said I was a good floozy."
Nate reached over and patted her hand. "No, you're a fine floozy. That's not what I was saying. I wasn't questioning your… uh, floozishness. I was just questioning its sincerity."
"Well, it's sincere. I really do like you. I really did come here to see you, to be with you."
"Really?" What was the biological analog for this? A black widow spider male falling for one of her lines, knowing innately where it was going. Knowing right down to his very DNA that she was going to kill and eat him right after they mated, but he would worry about after. So time and again Mr. Black Widow passed his dumb-ass, sex-enslaved genes on to the next generation of dumb-ass, sex-enslaved males who would fall for the same trick. Spinning a little conversation: Interesting name, Black Widow. How'd you come about that? Tell me all about yourself. Me? Nah, I'm a simple guy. I'm doomed by my male nature to follow my little spider libido into oblivion. Let's talk about you. Love the red hourglass on your butt.
"Really," Amy said. There were tears welling in her eyes, and she lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it gently.
"Amy, I don't want to stay here. I'm not — I want — I'm too old for you, even if you weren't a lying, destructive, evil —»
"Okay." She held his hand to her cheek.
"What do you mean, 'okay'?"
"You don't have to stay. But can I stay with you tonight?"
He pulled his hand back from her, but she held his gaze. "I need to be way more drunk for this," he said.
"Me, too." She went over to the scary fridge thing. "Do you have more vodka?"
"There's another bottle over there in that thing — that other thing that I'm afraid of." He caught himself watching her bottom while she found the bottle. "You said 'okay. You mean you know a way out?"
"Shut up and drink. You gonna drink or you gonna talk?"
"This isn't healthy," Nate observed.
"Thank you, Dr. Insight," Amy said. "Pour me one."
"Nice red hourglass."
"What?"
Back at his bungalow at Papa Lani, Clay sat on the bed with his head in his hands while Clair rubbed the knots out of his shoulders. He'd told her the Old Broad's story, and she'd listened quietly, asking a few questions as he went along.
"So do you believe her?" Clair asked.
"I don't even know what I'm admitting to believing. But I believe she thinks she's telling the truth. She offered us a boat, Clair. A ship. She offered to buy us a research vessel, hire a crew, pay them."
"What for?"
"To find Nate and her husband, James."
"I thought she was broke."
"She's not broke. She's loaded. I mean, the ship will be a used one, but it's a ship. It will still run in the millions. She wants me to find one — and a crew."
"And could you find Nate if you had a ship?"
"Where do I look? She thinks he's on an island somewhere, some secret place where these things live. Hell, if she's telling the truth, they could be from outer space. If she's not… well, I can't just run a ship around the world stopping at islands and asking them if they happen to have seen people crawling out of a whale's butt."
"Technically, baby, whales don't have butts. You have to walk upright to have booty. This is why we are the dominant species on the planet, because we have booty."
"You know what I mean."
"It's an important point." She slid into his lap, her arms around his neck.
Clay smiled despite his anxiety. "Technically, man is not the dominant species. There's at least a thousand pounds of termites for every person on earth."
"Well, you can have my termites, thanks."
"So man isn't really dominant, whether it's brains or booty."
"Baby, I wasn't saying that man was the dominant species, I was saying that we are the dominant species. Wo-man."
"Because you have booty?"
She wiggled on his lap by way of an answer, then leaned her forehead against his, looked in his eyes.
"Good point," Clay said.
"What about this ship? You going to let the Old Broad buy it for you? You going to go look for Nate?"
"Where do I start?"
"Follow one of these signals. Find whatever is making it and follow them."
"We'd need location for that."
"How do you do that?"
"We'd need to have someone working the old sonar grid the navy put down all over the oceans during the Cold War to track submarines. I know people at Newport who do it, but we'd have to tell them what we're doing."
"You couldn't just say you were trying to find a certain whale?"
"I suppose we could."
"And if you have your ship and that information, you can follow the whale, or the ship, or whatever it is to its source."
"My ship?"
"Roll over, I'll rub your back."
But Clay wasn't moving. He was thinking. "I still don't know where to start."
"Who has the booty? Turn over, Captain."
Clay slipped off his aloha shirt and rolled over onto his stomach. "My ship," he said.
Nate was suddenly cold, and when he opened his eyes, he was pretty sure that his head was going to explode. "I'm pretty sure my head is going to explode," he said. And someone rudely jostled his bed.
"Come on, party animal, the Colonel sent for you. We need to go."
He peeked between the fingers he was using to hold the pieces of his head together and saw the menacing but amused face of Cielle Nuñez. It wasn't what — who — he expected, and he did a quick sweep of the bed with one leg to confirm that he was alone. "I drank," Nate said.
"I saw the bottles on the table. You drank a lot."
"I didn't get a knob so just anyone could use it anytime they want."
"I noticed your knob. It looks out of place."
About that time Nate realized that he was naked, and Nuñez was standing over his naked body, and he was going to have to let the pieces of his head go where they may if he was going to cover himself. He felt for a sheet, pulled it up as he sat up and threw his legs off the bed.
"I'm going to need a moment."
"Hurry."
"I have to pee."
"That will be fine."
"And throw up."
"Also fine."
"Okay. You go away now."
"Brush your teeth." And she left the room.
Nate looked around the room for signs of Amy, but there were none. He didn't remember where her clothes were, but the last time he'd seen them, he was pretty sure they weren't on her. He stumbled into the bathroom and looked into the basin, mother of pearl with its little siphon fixtures and the green sphincter drain. Seeing that pretty much did it for him, and he heaved into the sink.
"Hi," Amy said, poking her head out of the retracting shower door.
Nate tried to say something — something about trapdoor spiders, in keeping with an arachnid theme he was developing with regard to Amy — but it came out more bubbly and moist than he intended.
"You go ahead," Amy said. "I'll be in here." And the door clicked shut like a frightened clam.
When Nate had finished reviewing the contents of his stomach, he rinsed his face and the sink, emptied his bladder into the thing on which he would not sit, then leaned against the sink and moaned for a second while he gathered his thoughts.
A head popped out of the shower. "So, that went well."
"The water's not running."
"I'm not showering, I'm hiding. I didn't want Nuñez to see me. The Colonel shouldn't know I've been here. I'll leave after you go. Brush your teeth." And then she was back in her shell.