“Don’t worry about it, sweetie. In your shoes I’d have done the same thing.”
“There are no atheists in foxholes, people say, and it’s so true, it’s so fucking true.” Cassie swallowed, savoring the aftertaste of the Cheerios. “No… no, I’m being too hard on myself. That maxim, it’s not an argument against atheism — it’s an argument against foxholes.”
“Exactly.”
A cold gray tide washed through Cassie’s mind. “Lianne, there’s something you should know.”
“Yeah?”
“I think I’m about to faint.”
The radio officer rose from her chair. Her mouth moved, but Cassie heard no words.
“Help… ,” said Cassie.
The tide crested, crashing against her skull. She slipped down slowly, through the floor of the radio’shack… through the superstructure… the weather deck… hull… island… sea.
Into the green fathoms.
Into the thick silence.
“This is for you.”
A deep voice — deeper, even, than Lianne’s.
“This is for you,” said Anthony again, handing her a stale slice of American cheese, its corners curled, its center inhabited by a patch of green mold.
She blinked. “Was I … unconscious?”
“Yeah.”
“Long?”
“An hour.” The Exxon tiger grinned down from Anthony’s T-shirt. “Sam and I agreed that the first person who passed out would get the emergency ration. It’s not much, Doc, but it’s yours.”
Cassie folded the slice into quarters and, pushing the ragged stack into her mouth, gratefully wolfed it down. “Th-thanks…”
She rose from the bunk. Anthony’s cabin was twice as large as hers, but so cluttered it seemed cramped. Books and magazines were scattered everywhere, a Complete Pelican Shakespeare on the bureau, a stack of Mariners’ Weather Logs on the washbasin, a Carpco Manual and a Girls of Penthouse on the floor. A spiral notebook lay on his desk, its cover displaying an airbrushed portrait of Popeye the Sailor.
“You’ll have some, won’t you?” asked Anthony, flashing her a half-empty bottle of Monte Alban. MEZCAL CON GUSANO, the label said. Mescal with worm. Without waiting for a reply, he sloshed several ounces into two ceramic Arco mugs.
“It’s hell being a biologist. I know too much.” As the pains started up again, Cassie pressed her palm against the Brief History of Time belted to her stomach. “Our fats were the first to go, and now it’s the proteins. I can practically feel my muscles coming apart, cracking, splitting. The nitrogen floats free, spilling into our blood, our kidneys…”
The captain took a protracted sip of mescal. “That why my urine smells like ammonia?”
She nodded.
“My breath stinks too,” he said, handing her an Arco mug.
“Ketosis. The odor of sanctity, they used to call it, back when people fasted for God.”
“How soon before we… ?”
“It’s an individual sort of thing. Big fellas like Follingsbee, they’re likely to last another month. Rafferty and Lianne — four or five days, maybe.”
The captain drained his mescal. “This voyage started out so well. Hell, I even thought we’d save His brain. It’s hash by now, don’t you think?”
“Quite likely.”
Settling behind his desk, Anthony refilled his mug and retrieved a brass sextant from among the nautical charts and Styrofoam coffee cups. “Know something, Doc? I’m just tipsy enough to say I think you’re an incredibly attractive and altogether wonderful lady.”
The remark aroused in Cassie a strange conjunction of delight and apprehension. A door to chaos had just been opened, and now she’d do best to fling it closed. “I’m flattered,” she said, taking a hot gulp of Monte Alban. “Let’s not forget I’m practically engaged.”
“I was practically engaged once.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Janet Yost, a bos’n with Chevron Shipping.” The captain sighted Cassie through his sextant; a lascivious grin twisted his lips, as if the instrument somehow rendered her blouse transparent. “We bunked together for nearly two years, running the glop down from Alaska. Once or twice we talked about a wedding. Far as I’m concerned, she was my fiancй e. Then she got pregnant.”
“By you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And… ?”
“And I freaked out. A baby’s no way to start a marriage.”
“Did you ask her to get an abortion?”
“Not in so many words, but she could tell that’s where I stood. I’m not fit for fatherhood, Cassie. Look at who I’ve got for a model. It’s like a surgeon learning his business from Jack the Ripper.”
“Maybe you could’ve… hunted around, right? Gotten some guidance.”
“I tried, Doc. Talked to sailors with kids, walked uptown to F.A.O. Schwarz and bought a Baby Feels-So-Real, you know, one of those authentic-type dolls, so I could take it home and hold it a lot — I felt pretty embarrassed buying the thing, I’ll tell you, like it was some sort of sexual aid. And, hey, let’s not forget my trips to Saint Vincent’s for purposes of studying the newborns and seeing what sort of creatures they were. You realize how easy it is to sneak into a maternity ward? Act like an uncle, that’s all. None of this shit worked. To this day, babies scare me.”
“I’m sure you could get over it. Alexander did.”
“Who?”
“A Norway rat. When I forced him to live with his own offspring, he started taking care of them. Sea horses make good fathers too. Also lumpfish. Did Janet get the abortion?”
“Wasn’t necessary. Mother Nature stepped in. Before I knew it, we’d lost the relationship too. An awful time, terrible fights. Once she threw a sextant at me — that’s how my nose got busted. After that we made a point of staying on separate ships. Maybe we passed in the night. Didn’t hear from her for three whole years, but then, when the Val hit Bolivar Reef, she wrote to me and said she knew it wasn’t my fault.”
“Was it your fault?”
“I left the bridge.”
Gritting her teeth, Cassie placed both her hands against A Brief History of Time and pushed. “We ever gonna find food out there?”
“Sure we are, Doc. I guarantee it. You okay?”
“Woozy. Abdominal pains. I don’t suppose you have any more cheese?”
“Sorry.”
She stretched out on the rug. Her brain had become a sponge, a Polymastia mamillaris dripping with Monte Alban. A mescal haze lay between her psyche and the world, hanging in space like a theatrical scrim, backlit, imprinted with twinkling stars. A scarlet macaw flew across the constellations — the very bird she’d promised to buy Anthony once they were home — and suddenly it was molting, feather by feather, until only the bare, breathing flesh remained, knobby, soft, and edible.
The minutes locked by. Cassie nodded off, roused herself, nodded off…
“Am I dying?” she asked.
Anthony now sat beside her, his back against the desk, cradling her in his bare, sweaty arms. His tattooed mermaid looked anorectic. Slowly he extended his palm, its lifeline bisected by three objects resembling thick, stubby pretzel sticks.
“You won’t die,” he said. “I won’t let anybody die.”
“Pretzels?”
“Pickled mescal worms. Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar.”
“W-worms?”
“All meat,” he insisted, languorously lifting Caspar — or maybe it was Melchior, or possibly Balthazar — to her mouth. The creature was flaxen and segmented: not a true worm, she realized, but the larva of some Mexican moth or other. “Fresh from Oaxaca,” he said.
“Yes. Yes. Good.”
Gently, Anthony inserted Caspar. She sucked, the oldest of all survival reflexes, wetting the captain’s fingers, saturating his larva. Satisfaction beamed from his face, a fulfillment akin to what a mother experiences while nursing — not bad, she decided, for a man who’d panicked at his girlfriend’s pregnancy. She worked her jaw. Caspar disintegrated. He had a crude, spiky, medicinal flavor, a blend of raw mescal and Lepidoptera innards.