They separated, Vanessa going up to B Deck and the muscular woman to the crew’s quarters, forward on E Deck. Skip began knocking on doors.
“Yes?” The woman’s face was innocent of makeup and smeared with cream. Her hair was in curlers.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” Skip said, “but this is important.”
“I was getting ready for bed.” The woman paused. “You should go to bed, too. You’re that man who goes around with the captain, aren’t you?”
Skip nodded. “I’m trying to find Mastergunner Chelle Blue. I don’t suppose you’ve seen her within the past few hours?”
“Not since yesterday, I think.”
“She told me she would be in Jerry’s room. Just that—Jerry’s room. Do you have any idea where that would be?”
“No. Not here. I have son-in-law named Jerry back home. Should I call him?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Skip said, and thanked her.
The knocking at the doors of the next three cabins evoked no response. The fourth was opened by a boy. In response to Skip’s question he said, “I’m Jerry, and this is my room, right here.”
No words came.
“See, my folks don’t want me in with them because I drive Dad nuts, and I don’t want to be in with them anyhow because Mom drives me nuts, so I get my own room. Brass, right?”
“Very brass.” Skip had recovered himself.
“Only this game’s kinda itchy, and there’s never anything on tele.”
Wondering what an itchy game was like, Skip nodded.
“So I’m gonna sit around the pool, and maybe swim if it’s not too crowded.”
“Could we go into your cabin for a minute? Please? You’d be doing me a great favor.”
“Mom says not to let anybody in.” The boy shrugged. “Only you look okay, so I guess so.” He stepped aside.
“Thank you, Jerry. I don’t think Chelle’s in here, but I’ve got to look. I really must.”
There was no one in the lavatory, no one out on the veranda, and no one in the closet.
Jerry said, “Who’s Chelle? Is that Mastergunner Blue? I saw her once, and Steve says her first name’s Chelle. Is she hot or what?”
Skip nodded.
“You think she might be hiding in my room? Wait’ll I tell Steve!”
“I was hoping she was hidden in your room,” Skip said. His phone vibrated as he spoke; he took it out and flipped it open.
“This Trinity, Mr. Grison. I found that man got no hands. You know? He say you know him.”
“Achille,” Skip said.
“Got big ol’ hooks. He say he know where that Jerry’s room is, and he take us there.”
“Did he say what deck it was on?”
There was a murmur of speech too faint for Skip to understand. Then: “This Achille, mon. Is on bottom, mon. Bottom deck, you know?”
“M Deck?”
“You know cheap bar? We meet you there, you buy drink, I show you.”
“The tourist-class bar?”
“Is so, mon. Meet there. I take you Jerry.”
Skip sighed. “All right.”
As he shut his phone, Jerry said, “Did somebody find Mastergunner Blue?”
“I don’t think so. I think I’m going to find a wild goose. The tourist bar is aft, isn’t it?”
“Sure. I’ll show you.”
REFLECTION 13: Sleep
When we need to be at our best, we’re always far from it. I could sleep now for twelve hours straight, or I feel I could, and rise refreshed. Instead, I walk through half the ship with a loaded submachine gun slantwise across my back and a pistol shoved into my belt. Both are much too heavy, and I much too tired. Would Chelle do this for me?
I would like to think so, and perhaps she would. God only knows what she did on Johanna. She did much worse, in all probability.…
Which is my cue to whine that she was younger.
As she still is. Much, much younger than I, and she sleeps on her side, always turned away. It’s clearly a defensive posture, but does she know it? On her back sometimes when she has had a few; she snores then, snoring so soft that it is almost purring. I sleep on my belly, a good reason for staying in shape, for not gaining another kilo. Does the ship have a handball court? I don’t even know.
I could walk around and around the Main Deck. A lot of people do that, but I have walked now until my feet are blistered and feel that they must burst through my shoes. Through canvas shoes I bought for comfort, visualizing much shopping on this island and that, see the fort, built in 1615 by the Spanish. “There are a hundred and fifty-three steps so perhaps the old people should wait here while the rest of us go up.” Me climbing the stairs to show Susan that I was still young, Susan climbing behind me to show that she was still loyal. Once Susan would have combed this ship for me, I know. She’d have combed it ’til she dropped, and I may drop soon.
Would I do this if Chelle and I were the same age? Yes, and if anything more willingly. Chelle has still the fire of youth, a fire I would control if I could. That’s wrong, perhaps. Wrong but right. Wrong but true.
Correct.
Why is it my dreams are never the dreams I would like? Other men have good dreams, or so they tell me. Dreams of success. Of flying without a plane, of flying like a bird or flying like a balloon. (But it is never the fat ones who fly like balloons. Am I the only one to notice?)
I dream of prisons, of windowless concrete walls and being locked in boxes. Prisons in which I never sleep and never eat, or drink, or defecate. Dreams of driving down doubtful roads that narrow and narrow, of driving a car as big as a bus across a footbridge that falls to bits behind me.
Of getting out of the car in a wilderness to shout at someone on the farther side of a gorge, someone who turns away with no sign of having heard. Soon I give up—and do not try the car door, knowing that the car cannot cross the gorge and that I have locked myself out.
In the future, I may dream of walking through this endless ship, of painted corridors that rock and pitch and lead only to more corridors, silent corridors lined with locked doors.
Once I dreamed of Chelle, dreamed that she was leaving me, going to the stars to fight a war from which she would never return, and I was old.
No dream, that last. I am. Fifty will be at my doorstep only too soon. Chet is what? Eighty-something. I have never hoped that Chet would die; now I hope that he will live. If Chet achieves one hundred, why Skip might, too. At one hundred, no one will care if I remain abed, or how long I sleep.
14. NO YOU DON’T!
A long walk to the nearest stair was succeeded by a weary descent to E Deck and an even longer walk aft, a walk that took Skip and Jerry through the tourist-class casino and almost to the tourist-class dining room. By the time they reached the tourist-class bar, the ship was pitching hard enough to force them to hold the railings.
Trinity and Achille were sitting at a table in the bar, Trinity with a glass before her and Achille with none. Trinity waved them over. “He say he know, Mr. Grison. Say he know Jerry and know where is Jerry’s room, too. We buy him a drink, an’ he show us. Only I didn’t buy him none. I don’t think we ought to ’til Ms. Healy come. I call her after I call you. She say she come right away. What you bring this li’l boy for?”
“He knew where this bar was,” Skip explained, “and I didn’t. At least, I wasn’t sure.”
Jerry stopped staring at Achille’s hooks. “I’d have followed you anyhow.”