The Astonishing Mistakes of Dahlia Moss

by Max Wirestone

  “You guys are up next,” said the organizer. “Everyone here?”

  “Daniel Simone and Dahlia Moss reporting in,” said Daniel, taking the initiative. Which was fine, because if the plane is absolutely going down, it really doesn’t matter who’s at the helm. Things were more serious today, I could tell, because the organizer actually made us show him our IDs, to make sure we weren’t ringers, I suppose. Of course, Daniel had a costume on, and I suppose it could have been anyone there. At an EVO fighting tournament, Jamie Lee Curtis, of all people, attended in disguise, also dressed as Vega. So maybe it wasn’t about security. Maybe the organizer was A Fish Called Wanda fan who just wanted to double-check. Daniel even took off his mask, very briefly.

  “Are you gonna wear that during the match?” asked the organizer, uncertainly.

  “Can I?”

  “It’s your funeral. Where are your fighting sticks?”

  “They’re being cleaned,” I said, which is a lie that I found more fun each time I said it.

  “I see,” said the organizer. “I suppose we’ll have to fish out the joysticks that came with the machine.”

  While the organizer was thinking about this, Swan presented his ID, which I really should have looked at to figure out what his name actually was, but I didn’t have the idea until later.

  “Great,” said the organizer. “Where’s your partner?”

  Swan looked concerned. “He hasn’t checked in yet? He told me he was coming here first.”

  “Your partner is Chul-Moo Yoon? No, I haven’t seen him.”

  “That’s very strange,” said Swan, and eyed me suspiciously. Like I had kidnapped him.

  “What are you looking at me for?” I asked.

  “Well,” said Swan. “All of your opponents yesterday got disqualified for not appearing.”

  “Not the kindergarteners,” offered Daniel, all too happy to remind everyone that he defeated small children in hand-to-hand combat.

  “Okay,” said Swan. “But everyone else.”

  “A man got murdered,” I said. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  Again I got a suspicious look from Swan, although, who knows, maybe these were just more mind games.

  “Listen,” I said. “It’s not my fault that your partner is running late.”

  “You’re sure he’s just running late,” said Swan.

  “Cheese and crackers,” I told him, with the best over-the-top Maine accent I could manage. “I don’t know. I don’t go around following your partner.”

  “What does ‘cheese and crackers’ mean?” asked Swan.

  “It means fuck you, Swan. This is not my fault. Just run out and look for your partner. He’s probably in the bathroom shitting himself.”

  I was getting unduly salty, I admit, but it had been a difficult twenty-four hours.

  Swan left, but he did not look overly convinced by my suggestion that Chul-Moo was just waylaid. I wanted nothing more than for Chul-Moo to walk through the door, maybe with toilet paper on his foot, at which point I could crow over everyone. But that didn’t happen. Swan was gone, Chul-Moo was missing, and rumors that I was some sort of tournament black widow began making the rounds.

  “Someone’s cranky this morning,” observed Daniel. “He’s probably just anxious about his match, you know.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said, finding the Kathy Bates within, “sometimes being a bitch is all a woman has to hang on to.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  We waited around for a while, and I started to get anxious. It was the crowd behind me that was getting to me. I was sure they were all saying things like: “She’s the black widow of the tournament! Everyone who faces her is DOOMED!” Probably paranoia, but you know, gamers do love their memes.

  “How much time do we have before the match is officially called?” I asked the organizer.

  “Twenty-three minutes.”

  “I’m going to help look for Chul-Moo.”

  The organizer looked surprised by this idea. “If he shows up while you’re gone, you guys will be eliminated.”

  “I’ll be back with seconds to spare,” I said. “No worries.”

  Persuading Daniel to come along on this trip, however, was more challenging.

  “I want to get as far at this thing as we can get,” he said. And he sounded so determined that I wondered, just for a moment, if he hadn’t somehow messaged Chul-Moo himself. I know he’d turned the trick with Charice. Maybe he’d sent them to the same storeroom.

  But I didn’t ask that, because it’s unseemly to accuse your ostensible friends of wrongdoing, unless the friend is Charice—who is usually flattered by the idea, or guilty. And often both.

  Besides which, Shuler had been right. I was being overly suspicious of Daniel. He didn’t kill anyone. He didn’t kidnap anyone. He’s just this dude, you know.

  “I’m going to look for him,” I said.

  “You should stay here,” Daniel said. “Look at the audience we’re going to have.”

  And maybe that’s what it was. Actors can’t resist a good audience? As far as I was concerned, I would have preferred no audience whatsoever. Ideally I’d be playing alone, in a dark hole, she said, hashtag foreshadowing. But I digress.

  “I’m going to look for him.”

  “You do you,” said Daniel.

  Of course, the moment I left the theater where the match was being held, it became instantly clear to me that I didn’t really have an idea how to go about looking for Chul-Moo. It’s easy to say detective-y things—”Follow that car! Let’s dust for prints! The game’s afoot!”—but significantly harder to actually do them.

  That said, I was on a steamboat, which is, as these things go, a very finite place. If you took it as a given that all the individual cabins were off-limits, and I think that you must, how many places could Chul-Moo possibly be?

  As I stood there and considered my options, I figured that there were two starting points, right?

  1. Chul-Moo was someplace normal. So, on a deck somewhere looking out at the river. In the bar. On a deck chair. Pooping. I could make a quick run-through of all the obvious places, aside from the men’s rooms, but assuming that was the case, he’d probably show up on time anyway.

  2. Chul-Moo was someplace terrible.

  However, it was Detective Shuler who said to me just yesterday that the answer is not always murder, and he was a homicide detective and ought to know. So I went, for now, with the more positive and probably more likely option. Chul-Moo was yukking it up somewhere, probably. I just needed to figure out where.

  And actually, a third option entered my mind, which was odd given that the previous options were sort of (1) alive and (2) dead. But I thought, you know, possibly he’s not on the boat at all. Probably that meant he was alive, and thus option one, but really the question was nugatory. If he was dead and not on the boat, it was also not my problem. Maybe he had gotten innocently hit by a car or choked on a peach or something. Or, and this was an even better option, he was alive, but not on the boat. The first question to answer wasn’t “Alive or not alive?” but “Boat or no boat?”

  And that was a question I could figure out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Despite the boat’s limited occupancy, and the fact that no one, absolutely no one, at this point was waiting in line, the ticket taker at the dock did not seem overly pleased at my presence. He was a blond kid, fair skinned, and gave off the aura that I was keeping him from something important and urgent. Judging from the closed DS at his table, that important and urgent thing was probably Animal Crossing.

  “You’re sure you can’t check your sheet to see if my partner, Chul-Moo, is here?” I changed it to being my partner, because that sounded better than “my opponent’s partner, whom I would like to locate so that I don’t appear to be a villain.” Also it’s less syllables.

  But the notion didn’t move him in the slightest.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you that,” he
said. “It’s a violation of privacy. Why don’t you call him?”

  And that was an interesting idea, too, actually. I didn’t have Chul-Moo’s number, but Swan did. Why didn’t Swan call him? Something to ask later, perhaps.

  “I did, but he’s not picking up,” I said, because the best way to improve an iffy lie is to pile on more lies. “I don’t know, maybe his phone is out of power.” Bullshit comes to me very naturally, which I think is a good skill to have, although not one that you usually list on résumés. “Can you please just help me out?”

  “It’s a violation of privacy,” repeated the blond kid. “I’m sorry.”

  And he didn’t sound sorry in the slightest. He sounded positively irritated that I hadn’t taken a hike yet. And yet the information I was looking for was right there—old-school, even. He had a white notebook, the kind that people would sign at a wedding, which was clearly being used to check off the names of all the people on board. A ship’s registry, maybe? Who knows?

  “This tournament is everything to me,” I said, going toward fake sobbing and missing the mark considerably. This is not to say that I was hammy—just the opposite. Apparently I am incapable of expressing genuine emotion. I didn’t sound sad in the slightest. Or even honest.

  “Yeah, I can’t—” started the blond, and hell with it, I just reached over and took the book.

  This was clearly not a possibility that the blond had anticipated, because he stared at me openmouthed, even as I ran off. I was a good ten feet away when he yelled:

  “Bring that back! I’ll get in huge trouble if I lose it.”

  “I’ll bring it back, I promise!” I shouted.

  Anyway, all of this is a testament to the power of not being overly tactful.

  I skittered down the deck, and came to an open lounge area, which actually was a great place to look for Chul-Moo, if I were going to do that next. Lots of people, sofas, and brass lighting. Also, wallpaper to die for in here.

  No Chul-Moo in here, though. Also no Swan. Was Swan really looking for his teammate? Or maybe Swan had already found him and they were waiting for us at the tournament now. More questions for later.

  I opened the book.

  But I wasn’t able to get very far, because suddenly there was Tricia and Undine.

  “Isn’t this lounge great?” said Tricia. “I mean, look at this wallpaper.”

  The wallpaper really had been of note, but I was right at the cusp of figuring something out, and I was on a twenty-minute timer and did not have time for Tricia’s decorating tips.

  “It’s great,” I said. “But I’m busy.”

  “Listen, Dahlia,” said Tricia, really sidling up to me. This was a Charician sort of sidle, the kind people use when they want something and are not ashamed of letting you know that right up front. I was prepared to object immediately, but I knew this sort of face. I didn’t have to acquiesce to whatever Tricia wanted, but I was certainly going to have to let her ask me.

  “What do you want?” I asked. And then, taking a second to observe her, added, “And why are you wearing different clothes?”

  “Just a different shirt,” said Tricia. Tricia had been wearing a relatively subdued outfit earlier—a green T-shirt that said “Dark Alleys” on it and was maybe early bird swag from the event yesterday, but was now wearing a gauzy zebra-print blouse that was not entirely opaque, and through which I could see her bra strap. Whether she was more dressed up or dressed down now was hard to say.

  “Why did you change clothes?” I asked.

  “Undine threw up on me,” said Tricia. “Beyond throw up, really. It was next-level vomiting. I had to change. Anyway, I need to go back to the bathroom. And also maybe get a drink.”

  “Those are different things.”

  “Well, I need a drink because I got covered in vomit, and I would like to go to the bathroom, because I think maybe there’s some throw up in my shoes. Just don’t ask.”

  “You’re not going to ask me to watch Undine again, are you?”

  “Oh, thank you,” said Tricia, not waiting for a yes or no. “You’re just the best.”

  “Wait, wait. Why can’t you bring her with you?”

  “I could technically, but I feel like it’s wrong to order a drink while holding a baby. People are judge-y about that sort of thing.”

  “You really need a drink that badly?”

  “There was vomit in my hair.” Tricia gestured to her hair, which was, it had to be noted, wet in places.

  “Fine,” I said. “But if you see Chul-Moo in the bar, tell him I’m looking for him.”

  “Why are you looking for him?” asked Tricia again. “What’s with you and that guy?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Just tell him he has a match. And what do I do if Undine throws up again?”

  “Oh,” said Tricia, with a dismissive wave. “She’s not going do that. She can’t possibly have anything left in her.”

  Undine, for her part, who I observed had also changed clothes, was now sleeping as though she were some sort of blessed cherub. Her tiny little frame bobbed up and down.

  “I’ve got a match in, like, ten minutes,” I told her. “If you’re not back in time, I’m taking her with me.”

  “I’ll be superfast,” said Tricia.

  This would not prove to be true, although she did at least mime speed walking at me as she left the lounge. Tricia was, quite clearly, a strange lady, but I didn’t have enough experience with mothers to know whether her penchant for pawning her baby off to strangers was part of the weirdness or just the normal reactions of a woman that has been thrown up on.

  I was less nervous having Undine this time than last, and I pulled her baby carrier up to the sofa, and said:

  “Okay, Undine. Let’s go through this registry together.”

  Undine farted quietly, which I took to mean yes.

  The registry was in two parts—people who had prepaid and were being checked off, and everyone who paid the morning of. Chul-Moo surely was in the previous group, and so I scanned the list for his name. I even knew his last name now—Yoon—and so it was quick work to find him.

  And also to discover that he was among the very first people here. So: Chul-Moo was on the boat.

  Hooray, detecting!

  The next question was: Where the hell was he?

  I waited exactly five minutes for Tricia to come back, but I really disliked the idea of missing my matchup because I’d wandered off. I guess Daniel was starting to rub off on me, because although we were certain to be crushed, I sort of wanted to see it through. I suppose he sold me on the idea. It was better to fight and get crushed than to never fight at all. Or something like that.

  So I picked up Undine’s baby carrier and headed back toward the theater, where I hoped that Chul-Moo was waiting for me. Sort of. I felt a little like I was kidnapping a baby, but I did warn her where I was going, so it wasn’t really kidnapping. It was mobile babysitting.

  Maybe I’m weak, but Undine’s baby carrier was a lot heavier than I expected it to be. Carrying her reminded me of the week and a half in junior high in which I played bari-sax. Which was fun, but caused me to teeter around the halls of the school in a lopsided and scoliosis-forming way. I was doing that now, along the deck, and I felt the process would have gone much better if I had been holding a bari-sax now in my other hand. For balance.

  It is a truth universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of a small kidnapped infant who is also late for a fighting-game event is in want for a person to delay her on the side of a steamboat. No, wait. Just the opposite of that actually.

  “You’re not wearing the unicorn shirt,” someone yelled out at me.

  I really didn’t have time for this discussion, but I was able to deduce two things quite quickly from this outburst.

  1. The person yelling this at me was Doctor XY, potential lurker.

  And also:

  2. This was Nathan’s voice. Which meant that I had found my lurker.

  �
��What the fuck, Nathan?” I said, turning.

  Nathan, for his own part, seemed mostly surprised by the fact that I was holding a large plastic basket that had Undine in it.

  “Where did you get a baby?”

  “I’m watching her. Why are you here?”

  Nathan ran to catch up to me, and he had this light, airy sort of trot, that was actually a little mesmerizing. He moved like a pony, an enchanted one, that sang songs and galloped but still floated over the ground. When I run, I pound the ground as though my feet yearn for the destruction of the earth. He was also dressed unusually for him, in a black leather jacket I’d never seen before and red corduroy pants that were new, too, although the cords were definitely a go-to look.

  When he reached me, he smiled and said, “I wanted to watch you play. And plus there were death threats, which seemed like the sort of thing I should be around for. I can be your bodyguard.”

  “I have a bodyguard,” I said, which was stupid, because it just led to this opening:

  “Oh, where is he?”

  “I’m not sure,” I told him. “Probably at this match that I’m late for.”

  I should have just started walking, and then Nathan and I could have done a walk-and-talk, like they do on Aaron Sorkin shows. But I didn’t, probably because of the baby, which Nathan had knelt down in front of and was cooing at.

  “Who is this cute little child?” asked Nathan. “Boy or girl?”

  “Her name’s Undine. Listen, I gotta get moving. And did you send me a mystery message telling me you would meet me in a storeroom?”

  “I didn’t think it was that much of a mystery. I assumed you knew it was me all along.”

  “No,” I said. “And that’s very creepy.”

  “I told you I had a prickly surprise,” said Nathan. “Who else would it be?”