Bad Grrlz' Guide to Reality: The Complete Novels Wild Angel and Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell

by Pat Murphy

  Susan tossed the second coin, going for a lower arc. It hit the platter and barely bounced, but it had too much forward momentum. It skidded right off the side.

  “Too low,” Tom said, and she nodded, holding the last coin pinched between her fingers. She faced the platter again, carefully measuring the distance with her eyes. Then she tossed the coin, lofting it high, but just high enough to reach the platter, giving it no more energy than it needed.

  The coin hit, bounced, hit the platter again, and stayed.

  The women and her friends cheered. Tom clapped her on the back. “You are a woman of startling talents,” he said. The teenager who ran the booth stared in amazement as the women gathered around Susan, talking in Portuguese.

  The teenager gave Susan the platter, pulling one in a box from beneath the counter. The box was dusty and battered. It had obviously been traveling with the carnival for some time.

  Susan opened the box and slid it out, checking to see that the platter was the same as the one on the display. She smiled at the teenager and turned to the woman who had been struggling to win the platter.

  “I’d like you to have this,” she said, and handed the platter to the woman.

  There was much conversation in Portuguese, much laughing and cheering. A translator was found—the woman’s son, Susan thought. Speaking very careful, high school English, he thanked Susan for the woman.

  Later, in the restaurant, Tom asked Susan how she had become such a master of carnival games.

  The restaurant was on the second floor of a building beside the square where the carnival was taking place. Their table was on a balcony that overlooked the open square. The square below them was crowded with people, but Tom and Susan sat above it all—separate, isolated, private.

  Susan frowned and looked down at the table, made suddenly self-conscious by Tom’s question. Tom had ordered a bottle of red wine, and the waiter had filled Susan’s glass. A single candle burned in the center of the table. The curved surface of the full wine glass focused an image of the candle flame on the tablecloth—a shimmering light in the center of the shadow of the glass. Susan studied the flame for a moment, considering what Mary had told her about telling your own story. You sort out the past, rearrange it, give it a bit of a plot. Susan wondered if she’d done that with her memories of childhood.

  “Not all games,” Susan said slowly. “just that one. When I was a kid, our church had a carnival every year and they had a booth like that one. They had a punch bowl that I thought was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It was ceramic and it was painted with fruit and flowers. When I was ten years old, I wasted my whole allowance trying to win it for my mother.”

  She shook her head. “The next year, a month before the carnival, I took a plate from the kitchen and set it up on a TV tray in the back yard, behind some bushes where my mother couldn’t see me practice. It was summer and I had lots of time. So I spent hours practicing.”

  She pushed her hair back out of her eyes, remembering that long, hot summer. In the first week, she missed the plate most of the time. Then she got to where she could hit the plate, but the coin always bounced out. She learned to toss it gently, so it had just enough energy to get to the plate, and not so much it would bounce out again.

  “When the carnival came, I was ready. I took my whole allowance in dimes.”

  “So what happened?” She had his full attention. The candlelight shone on his face. His eyes were a very dark blue, a trick of the light.

  She shrugged. “I won the punchbowl. And I gave it to my mother.”

  He leaned forward. “That’s amazing. That’s wonderful. She must have been so proud.”

  She shrugged again, feeling a tightness in her throat, a slight stinging in her eyes. She stared past him, focusing on the colored lights in the trees. “Not really. She … she didn’t really like it.” She punchbowl was the sort of thing only a kid could love. It was garish and bright and tacky. She thanked me politely and put it away in the cupboard and never used it for anything.”

  He reached out and touched her face, forcing her to look at him, studying her with those intense blue eyes. “Pardon me for saying it, but your mother was an idiot. Who cares if it was tacky? It was beautiful because you won it for her.”

  She nodded. She did not want to talk. She would cry if she talked too much, and she did not want to cry. It was a special evening, an evening where she was changing the rules, and she did not want to remember the time when the rules were bigger than she was.

  “So that’s why you won the platter tonight,” he said. “You won it for someone who appreciated it, for someone who admired it, for someone who understood.”

  She nodded again.

  “Your mother didn’t understand.”

  His hand was still on her cheek. She leaned her head into his rough palm, glad to feel its warmth against her face.

  The waiter came to take their order. Through the double glass doors that connected them to the restaurant, Susan could see a musician strolling from table to table, playing a sort of guitar. Instead of a round hole in the middle of the body, this guitar had two heartshaped holes.

  A moment after the waiter took their order, the musician came to their table and sang to them. All the people in the restaurant were smiling and staring out at the two of them sitting on the balcony. It could have been terribly embarrassing. Susan remembered a time when she and Harry had been vacationing in Mexico and a group of mariachis had serenaded them. She had wanted to crawl under the table.

  But this time, sitting at the table on the balcony with Tom, she smiled at the musician, smiled at Tom, smiled back at the other diners. Everyone was so happy, and if they stared it was only because they wanted to share in Susan’s happiness.

  Tom reached across the table to hold her hand. She liked that—no need to talk, just the warmth of his hand on hers, the music of the guitar, the gravelly voice of the musician. She didn’t understand the words of his song, and that was just fine.

  The musician finished his song. Tom tipped him, and he strolled away. Susan sipped her wine and relaxed. Their dinner came, a wonderful seafood stew seasoned with chili. “The fire and the sea,” she said to Tom, thinking of the taxi driver’s description of the houses. “A little of both.”

  In the street below them, people were gathering. “It is the chamarrita,” the waiter told them. “A traditional dance.”

  To the music of guitars, the dance began. The men were in one line and the women in another, but somehow, after dancing in an intricate pattern, they had rearranged themselves into laughing couples.

  She told Tom—a little drunkenly, perhaps, after two glasses of wine—that she wished life were as easy as that. Just dance around and end up with the right partner.

  After dessert, after a glass of port so sweet and smooth that it tasted like another dessert, it was time to go. Tom put his arm around her as they walked down the stairs to the street. He flagged down a taxi and they headed back for the ship.

  From the top of the hill, they looked down on the harbor. The Odyssey sparkled against the water of the harbor, its lights bright against the darkness. Tom squeezed her hand—he’d been holding it since they left the restaurant.

  “How beautiful,” she said, looking down at the ship.

  “Yes,” he agreed, but when she glanced at him she discovered that he was looking at her, not at the ship.

  Such a strange evening, she thought. She felt that she was some how playing hooky, evading some responsibility. She had always been a very good girl, playing by the rules. But tonight, something had shifted.

  “When we get back to the ship, will you be back on duty?” she asked.

  “Not right away,” he said slowly. He hesitated, watching her face. “I have a bottle of brandy in my cabin. Would you like to join me for a nightcap?”

  Susan smiled. Was she the sort of woman who would go to a sailor’s cabin on the first date? Apparently so. It was not the sort of thing she would ord
inarily have done. But it was not an ordinary night. It was not an ordinary cruise. This was not an ordinary place. And she was beginning to believe that she was not an ordinary person.

  “That sounds splendid,” she said.

  TWENTY-TWO

  There are many kinds of pirates in the galaxy. There are businesslike pirates who are motivated by profit. There are sadistic pirates who crave power. And there are swashbuckling pirates who seek adventure. It is these last that capture the heart of the romantic. They are a wild, unpredictable, and ultimately compelling crew…

  —from The Twisted Band

  by Max Merriwell

  Susan woke up early, feeling warm and relaxed. Tom was still sleeping, his arms around her. Tom’s bed was barely big enough for two, but they had managed despite that. Susan had slept soundly.

  A beeping sound woke her. Tom stirred in bed, flinging out an arm to silence the alarm. Four A.M., still dark. He had warned her that he’d have to be up early. They were leaving Faial that morning.

  He clicked on the bedside light, and she blinked at the room. Their brandy glasses were still on the table in the corner. On the wall above the table were a few photos: Tom’s brothers, his mother, his father.

  She looked back at Tom. He was watching her. “Good morning,” he said. “Trying to figure out what you’re doing here?”

  “I thought that was pretty clear last night,” she said, and then bit her lip, wondering if she had been a little too bold.

  He laughed. “You’re right. It was.”

  She sat up in bed. It had all been so easy last night. Now she felt very awkward. Having thrown off the covers, she was aware of her nakedness—her clothes were tossed over one of the chairs.

  “I know you have to work this morning,” she said. “You warned me about that last night.”

  “I do,” he said. “We sail in four hours. Lots to do.”

  “Well, I’d better be going,” she said, reaching for her clothes.

  He sat up and put his arms around her, stopping her before she could get out of bed. “Did I tell you that you are a woman of startling talents?” he asked.

  She glanced at him. “You told me that last night, when I won the platter.”

  “I didn’t know the half of it then,” he said, grinning.

  Tom walked her to her stateroom. He insisted on it, even though she assured him that she could find the way. The corridors were empty except for a lone steward bringing coffee up to the bridge. Tom greeted him. “Good morning, Osvaldo.”

  Susan gave Osvaldo a big smile. She knew that she looked like a woman who had just crawled out of her lover’s bed. In movie love stories, the woman’s hair was always ever so charmingly tousled the morning after, and she chose to imagine that her hair was tousled in just that way. She knew that Ian and Geoffrey and anyone else who was interested in Tom’s love life would know how his date with her had turned out.

  She didn’t care. That startled her. She didn’t care what anyone thought; she didn’t care that her love life was a matter for public gossip. Her mother would be appalled. But she didn’t care.

  Tom kissed her good-bye at her stateroom door. He wished her a happy Halloween and warned her that he’d be busy that night. “I figure if Clampers are normally out of control, Clampers in costume will be worse,” he said.

  She slipped inside quietly, so as not to wake Pat. She undressed quietly and got into her bed, still feeling warm and sleepy.

  Ian poured Max a cup of coffee and offered him a biscotti from the tray Osvaldo had brought that morning. While Max sipped his coffee and nibbled the biscotti, Ian considered the note Max had received.

  Tom wasn’t in the office yet. From what Ian had heard, Tom had had a fine night. Osvaldo had reported spotting him in the corridor with Susan very early in the morning. They both, according to the Osvaldo, had looked very happy.

  “It was under my door, just like the others,” Max said. “I thought I’d see what you and Tom thought of it.”

  He looked weary, Ian thought. As if he hadn’t slept well.

  Ian considered the note. A hexagram, of course: a stack of six lines, alternating broken and unbroken lines with a solid line at the top. Beneath it, someone had written, in a looping, exuberant handwriting: “Disorder prevails. One must move warily, like an old fox walking over ice.”

  “The lower trigram is K’an,” Max muttered. “K’an, the abysmal. Its image is water. The upper trigram is Li, the clinging. Its image is flame. The fire and the water meet. The hexagram indicates a time of disorder and transition.”

  Ian called up the relevant page from the Book of Changes on his computer. He scanned the text quickly. “The hexagram indicates a time of transition,” he said, “but it’s a hopeful sort of transition. The Book compares it to spring, which leads out of winters stagnation to the fruitfulness of summer.”

  “Yes, but hopeful for whom?” Max asked, frowning.

  Ian read from the screen. “‘When fire, which by nature flames upward, is above, and water, which flows downward, is below, their effects take opposite directions and remain unrelated … We must first investigate the nature of the forces in question and ascertain their proper place. If we can bring these forces to bear in the right place, they will have the desired effect, and completion will be achieved. But in order to handle external forces properly, we must above all arrive at the correct standpoint ourselves, for only from this vantage can we work correctly.’ ”

  Max nodded vaguely. Ian went on reading. “‘ … One must engage the energies of able helpers and in this fellowship take the decisive step. … Then completion will become possible.’”

  Max nodded again, frowning. “I suppose that makes some sense,” he murmured. Then he glanced at the clock. “Almost time for workshop,” he said. “I’d best be going.”

  He wandered out the door, taking a biscotti with him and leaving crumbs behind.

  Susan woke to the sound of the door to the corridor closing. Pat stood by the door, holding a tray, on which there was a pot of coffee and a plate of sweet rolls. Pat smiled when she saw that Susan’s eyes were open. “Would you like some breakfast?” Pat asked. “Seems like you need to keep your strength up.”

  Susan grinned and stretched, the memory of the night before returning to her. “I did manage to work up an appetite,” she said.

  Pat sat at the foot of the bed and set the tray beside Susan. She poured coffee and Susan sat up in bed and helped herself to a sweet roll. Outside the sliding glass doors, the sky was overcast. Susan could see the island of Faial, but the ship was moving, leaving the harbor and heading back out to sea.

  “So what’s the story?” Pat asked. Her tone was light, but she was studying Susan’s face, obviously concerned about her friend’s feelings.

  Susan hesitated, thinking about all that had happened the night before. She was feeling confident, happy, sure of herself. “We drove through the village and met a herd of goats in the street,” she began. “The taxi driver told us that was a good omen. He was right.”

  She told Pat about the taxi ride, about the green flash, about the carnival, about the dinner. She got to the part where they were returning to the ship, and she said, “Then one thing led to another.”

  “That’s the part that I like,” Pat said. “The part where one thing leads to another. And I assume the other thing led to his cabin.”

  “Well, yes, it did.” Susan grinned.

  Pat leaned back in her chair, studying Susan’s face. “Wow. You’re not even blushing. You head off into the wilds with this guy and you come back a changed woman. That’s amazing.”

  Susan laughed. She was startled by her own audacity, and pleased that Pat recognized it.

  “So is he the kind with a girl in every port?”

  Susan shrugged. “I don’t think so. Can’t say for sure.”

  Pat stared at her, astonished and delighted. “This is so out of character,” she said. “I love it. So what are you going to do next? Are you go
ing to run off to sea and become a pirate? Dance on the table at dinner? You’re a changed woman.”

  Susan thought for a moment. “The pirate option sounds pretty good,” she said. “I’m not much of a dancer.”

  “What about Tom? You think he’s interested in being a pirate?” Susan helped herself to another sweet roll, considering the question. “I don’t know what Tom thinks.” She poured herself more coffee. “And this may sound callous, but I don’t really care.”

  “You don’t care?” Pat was staring at her in amazement. “Wait a second. You always care. When you were with Harry, you seemed to care more about what he thought than you did about what you thought.”

  Susan laughed. “Uncharted waters,” she said. “Unexplored territory. Maybe I’m really a loose woman at heart and I’m just realizing it now.”

  Pat smiled. “Not loose, but looser. I think it’s great. Let me know if you need a first mate on your pirate ship.”

  “You think I’ll be captain?”

  “The way you’re heading, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

  The workshop was smaller that day. The knitting lady and the surly teenager hadn’t shown up. Cindy blamed the rough weather.

  The sky was overcast and the movement of the ship had changed. Susan couldn’t describe the new movement as rocking—that was too definitive a word to describe such a subtle motion. This was a slow, almost imperceptible shifting. She found herself leaning ever so slightly in her seat, compensating for a tilt in the floor. Then she realized that she was leaning too far. Gradually, she shifted back to an upright position. Then, moments later, she found herself leaning in the other direction.

  All this took place over the space of several seconds, slow enough that she could almost ignore it—except for the moments when the direction shifted and she almost overbalanced. Such strange sensation. It was a strange, dreamy, vertiginous sensation. It made her a little dizzy, a little disoriented.

  “Today,” Max said. “we are going to explore the power of the imagination.” Max didn’t seem to mind—or even to notice—that his class was dwindling.