Bad Grrlz' Guide to Reality

by Pat Murphy

  “His nails look nice, too,” the man said. “I’d guess they’re just married. A wedding is about the only time most men will let themselves be talked into a manicure. She suggested it so his hands would look nice for the wedding pictures.”

  Susan glanced at the couple again: his nails did look nice. “You can tell that she comes from money,” he went on.

  “She is dressed nicely,” Susan said. That silk shirt wasn’t cheap. “Here’s a tip: Don’t just look at her clothes,” he said. “It’s the shoes that tell you the most. Hers are top quality. That woman is used to nice things. Now look at his shoes.”

  He was wearing athletic shoes of a brand she didn’t recognize. “He shops the sales and doesn’t care about appearances, as long as the shoes are comfortable.” The man shook his head sadly. “I’ll give the marriage two years, tops.”

  Susan was suddenly painfully aware that her own shoes could use polishing. She was starting to feel a little guilty at the way the man was passing judgments on the other couple. “You think their marriage is going to fail because he doesn’t buy the right shoes?” she asked in dismay.

  “The shoes are just a part of it,” he said. “Look at how the two of them are sitting. No body contact; no connection between them.” The woman had her legs crossed; she sat at an angle on the chair, gazing at the fire. The man was leaning back in his chair, staring toward the stage.

  “Now consider the way she’s eating that cherry.”

  The woman had taken a small bite from the cherry on the fruit shish kabob.

  “That’s no way to eat a cherry,” the man said. “A woman who would eat a cherry like that has no enthusiasm for sex. I’d guess that within a year she’ll be spending more money than he makes and he’ll be flirting with a waitress who can tie a cherry stem in a knot with her tongue.”

  Susan blushed, glad that she had ordered a beer so that her cherry-eating would not be analyzed. The frightening thing was, she suspected the man was right about that couple. The woman was laughing again, tossing her blond hair back. Susan suspected it was a gesture the woman had practiced in front of the mirror. “You’re good at this,” she said. “Max told me this morning that cops and writers pay attention to things that other people don’t. So if you’re not a cop, you must be a writer.”

  The man laughed. “I’m certainly not a cop. I’ve written a few books.”

  “Really. What’s your name? Maybe I’ve seen your work.”

  The man shook his head. “I don’t think it would be to your taste.” He smiled, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. It was a superior smirk, as if he knew something she didn’t. “In fact, I’m sure of it.”

  Susan frowned. He seemed to be enjoying himself. He knew that he was making her uncomfortable, and he liked that.

  The man was still talking. “But that’s not the real reason I’m good at reading people. You see, I used to tell fortunes for a living. Reading people was an occupational requirement.” Suddenly, he leaned across the table, taking her left hand in both of his. “I’ll tell your fortune now,” he said.

  His hands were large and strong and crisscrossed with old scars. She laughed awkwardly and tried to tug her hand free. He gripped her hand harder, so hard it brought tears to her eyes.

  He wasn’t looking at her hand ; he was staring at her face, studying her with unblinking intensity. “I can tell a lot about you,” he said. “I can tell that you’re a liar. That’s easy to see.”

  She tried again to pull her hand away. This time, he let her go. “You’re the sort of person who would lie to a perfect stranger for no reason at all.”

  She stared at him, unable to speak.

  “You don’t have a sick fiancé. You’ve been lying to me since we met. My guess is that you’ve been married, but you recently got dumped and you’re still dealing with that.”

  “But …” Susan started to protest.

  “Don’t dig yourself deeper,” he said, waving a hand. “You’d better practice more if you’re going to make a habit of lying. First, never hesitate before you lie. You gave yourself away right there.”

  She clutched her drink, feeling like a fool. “I just …”

  He ignored her attempt to interrupt. “No ring,” he said, tapping the ring finger of her left hand. She flinched at his touch. “That was another sign. And you didn’t bother to look for your fiancé’s photo.”

  “I … I didn’t think you’d be interested,” she said weakly. He shook his head. “No happily engaged woman would miss a chance to point out her fiancé’s photo.” He studied her for a moment. “Besides, if you had been telling the truth, you wouldn’t be blushing and stammering right now. You’d be indignant.”

  She sat up straight in her chair, trying to muster a little dignity. “I don’t see…”

  “I know that. But I see.” He stared at her. “I see right through you.” He pushed back his chair. “But you probably don’t even realize that I started lying to you as soon as you started lying to me. I don’t have a wife.” He stood up. “But unlike you, I know how to lie.” He walked away, leaving her sitting alone at the table by the fire, stunned and confused.

  The piano player returned to the stage. The woman singer took the microphone from the stand and began a line of easy patter about what a wonderful night it was, what a wonderful audience they were. The singer was halfway through her first number when Tom Clayton tapped Susan on the shoulder.

  Tom had been shutting down a noisy party in the crew quarters when he got the call from Frank Bender at the Alehouse saying that the fellow who called himself Weldon Merrimax was in the bar. It had taken Tom a few minutes to make his way up to the Promenade Deck and forward to the Alehouse. By the time he arrived, Weldon was gone.

  “He left about ten minutes ago. He was sitting with that lady there,” Frank said. “She bought the drinks, so I didn’t see him at first.”

  Tom recognized Susan, sitting at a table alone. There was a glass of beer in front of her, and an empty glass in front of the chair across the table. She looked upset and confused; she looked as if she might be ready to burst into tears. “Thanks, Frank.”

  Tom got on the radio and advised Don, the security guard who was patrolling the sector that included the Games Room, to check that room for poker players. “If Weldon Merrimax shows up, I’d like to have a word with him,” Tom told Don.

  Susan was staring into space and she didn’t notice Tom until he touched her shoulder. Then she jumped, startled.

  “Hello, Susan.” He slid into the seat across from her.

  She blinked at him. “What are you doing here?”

  He shrugged. “Looking for trouble. It’s my job.”

  She managed a tremulous smile. “Is there trouble here?”

  “That’s what I was going to ask you,” he said. “I had a few questions about the gentleman you were drinking with.”

  She frowned at him. He had her attention now, he thought. “He was no gentleman,” she said.

  “Really? What happened?”

  She told him a rather confusing story about meeting the man in the photo gallery and lying about her fiancé. Max had told her she should practice lying and she had decided to give it a try. Watching her, Tom knew she was a rotten liar.

  “I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea,” she said. “But he said he was waiting for his wife—and he invited me for a drink.” She flushed then, looking down at her hands. “I figured it would be okay, since he was married and I was engaged—or he thought I was engaged. But then he got really angry.”

  Tom nodded. All this was beside the point. He really just needed to find the man and ask him about a few things. But Susan seemed to need to talk. “What was he angry about?” Tom asked.

  She shook her head, still frowning. “I don’t know. We were talking about Max’s books. I said something about Weldon Merrimax. And then he told me I was a liar and he left.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  She shook her head again. “Ev
en if he had, I wouldn’t put much stock in it. He admitted he was a liar—he didn’t really have a wife or a daughter. He seemed okay until we started talking about Max’s work. I said I hadn’t read the books Max had written as Weldon Merrimax because I’d heard they were too depressing. And then he got downright mean. It was weird. Why are you looking for him?”

  “A little confusion over his cruise card,” Tom said easily. “An identification problem, that’s all.” She was still frowning.

  “But I think you’re right—he’s certainly not a gentleman. Unfortunately, that’s not considered a crime on the Odyssey.”

  EIGHT

  There was a dragon in the cave, she was sure of that. But she knew the monsters name. And that gave her a certain advantage.

  —from Here Be Dragons

  by Mary Maxwell

  Susan had the Promenade to herself. Tom had sat and talked with her while she finished her beer, then offered to walk her to her stateroom. She had declined his offer. Too restless to sleep, she thought she’d walk around the Promenade once before heading up to her stateroom.

  The ocean was dark. Beside the doors that led from the ship’s interior to the Promenade, electric lightbulbs set in fixtures designed to look like antique lanterns glowed brightly. Near the doors, light shone on the fat white bellies of the lifeboats that hung overhead, glistened on the damp, wooden boards of the deck. Away from the doors, the deck was thick with shadows. Here and there, a window cast a bright rectangle of light, but the stretches of deck between the windows were dark.

  Susan walked briskly, moving from light to shadow and back to light again. As she walked, she thought about how Tom had a knack for appearing at just the wrong time. “What happened?” he had asked her, and she had told him everything.

  He must think she was a complete idiot—lying about being engaged, having a drink with a man who was some sort of criminal. But Tom had simply listened to her. And he had done his best to reassure her that she had done nothing wrong. “Just relax,” he had told her. “Have a good time. Why let one encounter with a jerk spoil your vacation? It seems like you need a vacation.”

  She did need a vacation, and she was perfectly willing to have a good time. But it seemed that in five years of marriage, she’d forgotten how. Maybe she could remember.

  At the stern of the ship, she forced herself to stop walking. The air felt warm and tropical. In the morning, they would make port in Hamilton, Bermuda, one of the ship’s two ports of call on the way to London. She leaned against the railing, looking out at the ship’s wake. Illuminated by lights at the stern of the ship, the wake made a white path in the dark water.

  Relax, she told herself. Why let one jerk spoil your vacation? She imagined telling Pat about her encounter with the man in the bar. Pat would laugh, Susan thought. Pat would approve of Susan’s lie—Pat felt that Susan needed to cut loose and make trouble. Pat would be amused that Susan had lied to a liar. Pat wouldn’t waste any time stewing about her lies—or about the arrogance of the man she had met.

  Behind her, Susan heard a burst of music from one of the ships bars. Someone had opened a door that led onto the Promenade. The music was muffled again as the door swung shut, drowned out by the hum of the engines.

  Susan did not look around. She did not want to talk with anyone. She watched the churning bubbles of the wake. From behind her, she heard a thump—as if something had struck the side of the ship. Then she saw a dark object bobbing and swirling in the ship’s wake. Startled, she glanced behind her. No one was there. She looked at the wake again, but the object, whatever it was, was out of sight.

  Hesitant, but curious, she walked along the railing in the direction from which the sound had come. On the side of the ship, just around the corner from where she had stood, she noticed a bright smear of red. It looked like blood, she thought.

  Then the lights went out.

  Tom was heading for his cabin when he got a radio call from Don, requesting assistance. “Possible 245 in the Games Room.” That was the code for aggravated assault.

  When Tom reached the Games Room, he found Don sitting with a male passenger on a bench in the corridor outside the room. The passenger, a large man in his fifties, was pale. His face was wet with sweat and his hands were shaking. “It was a friendly game,” he was telling Don. The man was drunk, and Tom could tell from Don’s expression that this was not the first time the man had told him about how friendly the game had been.

  “This is Mr. Perkins,” Don told Tom. “He’s reported the incident. I’ve called for backup and I’ve secured the room, but I thought I’d better stay with Mr. Perkins until you got here.”

  Tom nodded. Mr. Perkins started talking again.

  “Patrick said Weldon was cheating, and then Weldon stabbed him. Just like that. Not a bit of warning. Just stabbed him. He killed him; I’m sure he killed him. Then he looked at me like I might be next.” Mr. Perkins looked like he might be about to cry. “I ran out the door before he could go after me.”

  “I was coming by to check on the Games Room,” Don said. “I found Mr. Perkins running down the corridor. By the time we got back here, the other poker players were gone. I secured the room and called you.”

  Tom flicked on his radio to call the ship’s doctor to see if the victim had come in for medical treatment. And then the lights went out.

  Susan froze in the sudden darkness. She couldn’t see a thing. The ship’s engines still rumbled underfoot; she could hear the rush of water past the ship’s hull, far below. She could hear her own heart pounding. She was alone in the darkness. She felt cold, despite the warmth of the air around her.

  She turned away from the sound of rushing water. Arms outstretched, she took a few tentative steps in what she thought was the direction of the doors. Her hand brushed against the wall, and she groped her way along the wall to find a door.

  She pulled the door open a crack and heard voices, people shouting and laughing. “Hey, who turned out the lights?” “Anyone have a flashlight?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know, but I can’t find my drink.”

  Susan opened the door and stepped into the corridor. In the distance, she could see a light. Someone was holding up a cigarette lighter, which cast a pool of flickering light, and people were gathering around, talking and laughing. No one seemed particularly alarmed.

  She headed toward the man with the cigarette lighter. “We should go to our muster stations,” he was saying to the people who had gathered around him. “That’s what we’re supposed to do in an emergency.”

  Susan’s eyes were beginning to adjust to the dark. She could make out the people surrounding the man with the cigarette lighter.

  “Is this an emergency?” a woman asked.

  “Where are our muster stations?” asked someone else.

  “Hello,” Susan said to the group gathered around the cigarette lighter. “Does anyone know what’s going on?”

  “Hello! Hello!” A bright flashlight beam shone from the far end of the corridor. The young man holding the flashlight wore the red jacket that designated him as a member of the purser’s staff. People peppered the young man with questions.

  “Is something wrong with the ship?” “Should we have our life jackets?” “What should we do?”

  “Just a little problem with the electrical system,” the young man said. “No big deal. The engineering staff is busy fixing it right now. You could go to bed. Or you could come to Apollo’s Court, if you like.”

  “That’s our muster station,” said the man with the cigarette lighter in a satisfied tone. He seemed to be the sort of fellow who liked knowing what was going on.

  There was much discussion then—with some people going to bed and some deciding to accompany the crew member to Apollo’s Court, the large buffet-style restaurant not far from where they were.

  Susan hesitated, her arms wrapped around herself. She didn’t know what to do.

  “Are you all right, m
a’am?” the crew member asked her.

  She bit her lip, thinking about what she’d seen. A splash of red on the railing. Blood? More likely a strawberry daiquiri, spilled by a drunk. She weighed the odds and decided on the innocent explanation. It couldn’t have been blood.

  “I’m fine,” she said and followed the man with the flashlight to Apollo’s Court.

  Sitting in the darkness, Mr. Perkins told Tom that a man named Patrick Murphy had been stabbed by a man named Weldon Merrimax during the course of a poker game in the Games Room. Patrick Murphy, according to Mr. Perkins, was a tall fellow with a mustache. Patrick had been dressed in what Mr. Perkins called “old timey” clothes. “Maybe he’s one of those historians,” Mr. Perkins suggested. Mr. Perkins’ description of Weldon matched Frank Bender’s description of Weldon Merrimax.

  Mr. Perkins had met Weldon in the lotus Eaters’ lounge, the bar closest to the Games Room. Weldon had seemed like such a friendly sort, Mr. Perkins said. The conversation turned to cards, and Patrick Murphy, who was also sitting at the bar, had joined in. Patrick was the one who had suggested a hand of poker, Mr. Perkins said. Weldon was the one who suggested that they go to the Games Room.

  The ship’s procedures offered little guidance in this matter. Most fights aboard the ship were simple matters. Someone smacked someone else around; Tom separated the protagonists and usually that ended the matter. There had been knife fights between members of the crew, but the combatants in those had been easily identified, fired, and removed from the ship at the first opportunity. This was another matter.

  During the confusion of the blackout, Tom did what he could. He ascertained that no stabbing victim had visited the ship’s doctor. Security staff conducted a flashlight search of all the open decks, service areas, and public areas. They found no victim, but one guard found the cause of the blackout in the course of the search. An electrical panel in a staff area had been tom open and shorted out. “Smells like Scotch,” said the guard who found it. According to Mr. Perkins, the poker players had all been drinking rather heavily. Weldon had supplied them with Scotch.