Any hope I had for stealth, I abandoned as I trudged onward. I found an old tar road and decided it had to lead toward something. I walked. The cough that had been building in my chest through the day racked me now.
The farther I went, the more I began to doubt Bay’s story. Would the ships bother to send anyone? I was popular enough, but was I worth the fuel it took to come get me? If they thought I had fallen, maybe. If they knew I had lowered the lifeboat deliberately, that I might do it again? Doubtful. Unless they wanted to punish me, or charge me for the boat, though if they docked my account now, I’d never know. And how would Bay have contacted them? She’d said they were in contact, but unless she had a solar charger—well, that seemed possible, actually.
Still, she obviously wanted me gone or she wouldn’t have said it. Or was she testing my reaction? Waiting to see if I cheered the news of my rescue?
I wondered what else she had lied about. I hoped I was walking toward the city she had mentioned. I was a fool to think I’d make it to safety anywhere. I had no water, no food, no money. Those words formed a marching song for my feet, syncopated by my cough. No water. No food. No money. No luck.
Bay set out at first light, the moment she realized the guitar had left with the stupid rock star. It wasn’t hard to figure out which way she had gone. She was feverish, stupid with the stupidity of someone still used to having things appear when she wanted them. If she really expected to survive, she should have taken more from Bay. Food. A canteen. A hat. Something to trade when she got to the city. It said something good about her character, Bay supposed, down below the blind privilege of her position. If she hadn’t taken Debra’s guitar, Bay’s opinion might have been even more favorable.
Inside the Music: Tell us what happened.
Gabby Robbins: My last night on the ship was just like three thousand nights before, up until it wasn’t. We played two sets, mostly my stuff, with requests mixed in. Some cokehead in a Hawaiian shirt offered us a thousand credits each to play “My Heart Will Go On” for his lady.
“I’ll give you ten thousand credits myself if you don’t make us do this,” Sheila said when we all leaned in over her kit to consult on whether we could fake our way through it. “That’s the one song I promised myself I would never play here.”
“What about all the Jimmy Buffet we’ve had to play?” our guitarist, Kel, asked her. “We’ve prostituted ourselves already. What difference does it make at this point?”
Sheila ignored Kel. “Dignity, Gab. Please.”
I was tired and more than a little drunk. “What does it matter? Let’s just play the song. You can mess with the tempo if you want. Swing it, maybe? Ironic cheesy lounge style? In C, since I can’t hit those diva notes?”
Sheila looked like she was going to weep as she counted off.
I ran into Hawaiian Shirt and his lady again after the set, when I stepped out on the Oprah deck for air. They were over near the gun turrets, doing the “King of the World” thing, a move that should have been outlawed before anyone got on the ship.
“You know who that is, right?” I looked over to see JP, this bartender I liked: sexy retro-Afro, sexy swimmer’s build. It had been a while since we’d hooked up. JP held out a joint.
I took it and said he looked familiar.
“He used to have one of those talk radio shows. He was the first one to suggest the ships, only his idea was religious folks, not just general rich folks. Leave the sinners behind, he said. Founded the Ark line, where all those fundamentalists spend their savings waiting for the sinners to be washed away so they can take the land back. He spent the first two years with them, then announced he was going to go on a pilgrimage to find out what was happening everywhere else. Only, instead of traveling the land like a proper pilgrim, he came on board this ship. He’s been here ever since. First time I’ve seen him at one of your shows, though. I guess he’s throwing himself into his new lifestyle.”
“Ugh. I remember him now. He boycotted my second album. At least they look happy?”
“Yeah, except that isn’t his wife. His wife and kids are still on the Ark waiting for him. Some pilgrim.”
The King of the World and his not-wife sauntered off. When the joint was finished, JP melted away as well, leaving me alone with my thoughts until some drunk kids wandered over with a magnum of champagne. I climbed over the railing into the lifeboat to get a moment alone. I could almost pretend the voices were gulls. Listened to the engine’s thrum through the hull, the waves lapping far below.
Everyone who wasn’t a paying guest—entertainers and staff—had been trained on how to release the lifeboats, and I found myself playing with the controls. How hard would it be to drop it into the water? We couldn’t be that far from some shore somewhere. The lifeboats were all equipped with stores of food and water, enough for a handful of people for a few days.
Whatever had been in my last drink must have been some form of liquid stupid. The boat was lowered now, whacking against the side of the enormous ship, and I had to smash the last tie just to keep from being wrecked against it. And then the ship was pulling away, ridiculous and huge, a foolish attempt to save something that had never been worth saving.
I wished I had kissed JP one more time, seeing as how I was probably going to die.
Gabby hadn’t gotten far at all. By luck, she had found the road in the dark, and by luck had walked in the right direction, but she was lying in the dirt like roadkill now. Bay checked that Deb’s guitar hadn’t been hurt, then watched for a moment to see if the woman was breathing, which she was, ragged but steady, her forehead hot enough to melt butter, some combination of sunburn and fever.
The woman stirred. “Are you real?” she asked.
“More real than you are,” Bay told her.
“I should have kissed JP.”
“Seems likely.” Bay offered a glass jar of water. “Drink this.”
Gabby drank half. “Thank you.”
Bay waved it away when the other woman tried to hand it back. “I’m not putting my lips to that again while you’re coughing your lungs out. It’s yours.”
“Thank you again.” Gabby held out the guitar. “You probably came for this?”
“You carried it this far, you can keep carrying it. Me, I would have brought the case.”
“It had a case?”
“Under the bed. I keep clothes in it.”
“I guess at least now you know I didn’t go through your things?”
Bay snorted. “Obviously. You’re a pretty terrible thief.”
“In my defense, I’m not a thief.”
“My guitar says otherwise.”
Gabby put the guitar on the ground. She struggled to her feet and stood for a wobbly moment before leaning down to pick it up. She looked one way, then the other, as if she couldn’t remember where she had come from or where she was going. Bay refrained from gesturing in the right direction. She picked the right way. Bay followed.
“Are you going to ask me why I left?” Even this sick, with all her effort going into putting one foot in front of the other, the rock star couldn’t stop talking.
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve met you before.”