The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3)

by Gerald Hansen

  Aquanetta nodded haltingly, but a look was blossoming on her face as if someone had just taken an even larger dump in her vicinity. She hadn't even told the woman she'd do it herself! She knew what these women in a position of authority were like: never taking no for an answer from the staff. And that Irish woman! Aquanetta was realizing they could never be friends. She thought they were equally disadvantaged, having met in this sweatshop of a ship. She thought they had both suffered lives of misery. But she had a fireplace in what Aquanetta assumed was her swanky home in her foreign country, favored Liz Taylor perfume—she had said Liz instead of Elizabeth as if she knew her!—and owned a Rolex! Sure, she had tried to play it off as if she had stolen it. But Aquanetta didn't believe her. She felt betrayed. The look on her face grew darker, the lips pressed harder and the eyebrows were set for take off.

  This seemed to alarm the woman across the desk, who said quickly, eyes flashing as her mind raced, “I can't demand that you work, certainly not, and I suppose it would be too much to ask for you to clip those talons of yours a bit, but needless to say, there will be dire consequences if you choose to pass on this opportunity. There are two vacancies for latrine duty if you would like to move from housekeeping to that. But I do have a reward to show my gratitude. If you agree to serve this evening, you both will get to go ashore in Puerto Rico for half an hour as a reward. We should reach there tonight, if I'm not mistaken.”

  Her beaming smile met dead eyes. Aquanetta clamped her hand to a hip.

  “I want money too.”

  Yootha nibbled on a nail, and it seemed she was struggling to keep a torrent of rage in check. Indecision danced on her face. Finally, she nodded with reluctance.

  “I'll give you each $10.”

  Aquanetta grunted her laughter.

  “You think it 1985? Ten dollars don't buy shit no more!”

  “Twenty, then.”

  Aquanetta muttered something into the jar of pens that sounded like, “Better off collecting food stamps,” but she agreed with a nod. Yootha was immediately dismissive. She waved her away as if she couldn't wait for the Help to stop soiling the office with her presence.

  “And you'll tell Flood as well?”

  “Yeah. What time you want us there?”

  “Here's a printout that will give you all the information, including your duties and the numbers of the lockers which contain the uniforms. If they don't have your size, you'll have to improvise. I have a second printout for the other woman as well.”

  She handed them over.

  “...if she completes the lifeboat activity unscathed.” Yootha suddenly looked worried, as if she were flipping through the manila folders in her mind for a third replacement if that were to be necessary. Yootha didn't give a shit if Feeohnoowallah toppled off the ship and was devoured by sharks. Maybe then Yootha would give her the entire $40. But then she thought not to mention the compen-SA-tion factor to the fancy lady with the fireplace and just keep all the cash for herself.

  She looked Yootha square in the eye with hand outstretched and said, “Pay me the whole forty for the both of us up-front now, otherwise I say nothing to Feeohnoowallah or whatever you call her.”

  Yootha seemed pissed that this seemingly stupid housekeeping staff was so savvy. She paused a moment to recalculate and re-evaluate the situation and reluctantly reached for her bag from the locked drawer in her desk. “All I have is a fifty and a twenty,” she informed Aquanetta.

  “I’ll take the fifty then,” she said with a snarky smile, “and try to ‘break it’ before dinner is served. That cool with you, ma’am?”

  Furious, Yootha handed over the fifty. Aquanetta took it from Yootha’s paw with fingers daintily extended, leaned in and graciously said, “Thanks. Pleasure doing business with you.” She flashed an enormous smile and left.

  The office door slammed. Yootha collapsed with relief, then hurried off to her hairdressing appointment.

  CHAPTER 31

  “EFFIN MAGIC!”

  Siofra slipped through the grille of the air vent and dropped her grimy little body onto the carpet of Room 643, Deck E. She had found their cabin!

  Her arm still hurt, and her tummy rumbled with hunger, but she had more important things to concern herself with. And she had grown used to hunger; it was now her body's default setting. Maybe, she thought, she had worms.

  She looked around the cabin first for some dolls she could play with, but there were none. She searched the closets and the drawers. There was nothing but clothes. She scrabbled across the floor to the laptop that lay open on the desk. A screen saver of the British TV secret service spy show Spooks flickered on the screen.

  She signed in to her email account, shot off an email to her best mate back in Derry, Grainne, WISH U WUR HERE XOXO, then went into the web browser history, as she had been taught by Miss McClurkin in school the year before. The most visited website seemed to be one for celebrity gossip; the woman who had been with her Uncle Jed apparently liked Lindsay Lohan and her ilk. Second were the links to horrible saucy websites featuring women in latex with strange studded collars on their necks. Siofra was fascinated and disgusted at the same time, wishing she could erase from her eyeballs the visions her too-young eyes had just clamped sight of. There was also a site called PrivateInfoForAPrice. Find Out Everything About Anyone, it promised. Finances, Criminal Records and Protection Orders Revealed! She didn't know what that was all about.

  Then she scrolled further down the history, and saw that the BBC Spooks website had been visited many times, and also the How To Beat Em At Poker website. She clicked on most visited page of the Spooks website. It was an episode guide, and in Series 3 Episode 2, the secret service team had to stop 5 grams of red mercury, whatever that was, from getting into enemy hands. Useless information!

  She perked up when she noticed a window that had been minimized to the bottom of the computer screen. She pressed it and it sprang, full-sized, on the screen. She shook her head. It was just some boring receipt for a villa, whatever that was, in some foreign place she'd never heard of. Bungalow #12, La Villa Boracha, La Isla Bonita, Puerto Rico. How was that English?

  Her filthy little fingertips stopped clacking on the keys. Frustration overtook her. Tears welled in her eyes. This information told her nothing. She didn't know what else she could find that would tell her what the two horrid people were up to with her kind Uncle Jed. She was at a loss.

  After she had escaped from the engine room, she had hidden in the stairwell in a closet filled with brooms and mops and scurvy-infested rats. She had the door pried open a bit so she could see when her Uncle Jed and the two horrible creatures left. Ages, they had been in the engine room. She had almost fallen asleep by the time they passed the door and headed up the stairs. She had followed them, they had gone to the casino, and she had waited outside the emergency exit, found some wilted, ketchup-sodden fries and a half-eaten banana in the garbage to help pass the time, then followed the two to their cabin after they had left the casino. Without Uncle Jed. That had been hours ago.

  As if her hands were programmed for it, she dug into the trash can beside the desk. She tugged out screwed up bits of paper. There was a printout of the reservation, and then some scribbled notes. At first she didn't know what she was reading. But then her eyes widened. She knew what they were after! Her little face screwed with anger.

  Siofra thought for a moment about taking all their clothes from the closets, all those shiny suits and plaid shirts and tattered jeans and women's two-pieces and rich skirts and laying them on the bed and peeing on them, maybe even doing a number two on them, but realized that was her mammy's way. She pocketed all the paper in her unicorn jeans, hauled the chair over to the grille and climbed the wall to the air vent.

  CHAPTER 32

  FIONNUAULA THRUST HER way through whatever stood in her path, human or otherwise, thrusting the ram from left to right. She heard Paddy grunting on one side, smelled Dymphna on the other, sensed Fabrizio behind her. The foreign
idiot's ram pounded into her back time and again.

  The rain now pouring in buckets from the heavens battered down on her helmet, thunder echoed in the muggy chamber, and squeals of spectator delight. Her ponytails, scrunched inside the air cushion system, were like two sopping mop heads clamped to the flesh of her neck. She could see nothing but, reckless with rage and pride—her family was going to win or God help humanity!—her feet charged like galloping hooves across the deck. Or where she thought the deck was. They flew across ball bearings and sent her mass hurtling forward into black space. The crack of her helmet against some hard thing reverberated through her eardrums. The battering ram clattered to her feet. Her pruned fingers groped around the sludge until a fist clutched it tight again. Tears welled, snot dribbled, spit hung, sweat poured. Fionnuala cursed inside the hellish blind depths of the helmet. She hauled her creaking limbs and all the tonnage attached up the side of what seemed to be a funnel.

  The fingers of her free hand felt around the curvature, her fingernails digging into the metal hull for dear life. Limbs and battering ram pads jolted her shoulder blades, her elbows, her left hip.

  “Paddy?!” she called out. “Where the bleedin feck are ye?”

  “Here!” she heard nearby.

  “I'm almost at the other end, so I am! Get yer daft arse over here! Follow me voice.”

  “I'm here as well, Mammy!” Dymphna's shrill voice pierced Fionnuala's ears.

  “I too.” That must be the foreign git.

  “Get yerselves over here! Now!” For once, her brash howl was put to good use.

  Rounding the funnel, Fionnuala heard the chants and claps of spectators from the other side through the peals of thunder. She flipped to the side as the ship lurched over a massive wave. Her rump splat on the deck. She ground her teeth as she got upright again, tossed the useless ram into the water—now above her ankles!—and blindly felt through the lashing buckets of rain, hands grabbing air.

  She groaned as her pelvic bone smashed against the side of what felt like—

  “A boat! I'm at one of the lifeboats now, youse! Get yer lazy arses in gear and scoot yerselves over here! Or there'll be hell to pay!”

  She felt around in the dark, located jerking shoulders and arms and heads of two people inside. Two were missing. This boat was still fair game.

  “This our boat!” she heard.

  “Naw, ye mindless fecking git! Not yet, so it isn't!” Fionnuala roared down into the darkness.

  The arms turned to fists that battered her chest. She grabbed hair and tugged.

  “C'mere, youse! Paddy! Dymphna! And you, the other one! I've found us a boat!”

  They were soon by her side; she heard their labored breath, smelled their sour sweat.

  “Pull them out!” Fionnuala barked. In the back of her mind, she wondered, how the bloody feck is this meant to be fun?

  She heard the rams clatter to their feet. She felt their arms reach into the darkness beside her, heard the screams as Paddy and Dymphna and the other one clamped down on human flesh and dug in. Fingers grabbed her shoulders and sought to fling her to the deck. They were like crabs in a bucket, trying to pull each other down. Fionnuala threw off her helmet and widened her maw. Her yellow teeth gleamed in the plummeting rain. She chomped down on a shoulder.

  She heard dimly from the megaphone in the background as her eyes took it all in, the two in the boat, one screaming and clutching his shoulder, Paddy and Dymphna pounding uselessly on the other, battering rams flying through the torrents of rain, clapping, jeering, cheering fools surrounding the sides, “You in the pink and gray top! You! Pink and gray top! Follow the rules!”

  Letting go of the woman’s neck, Fionnuala wrenched off her blindfold. She looked behind the masses gathered to see who he meant. So she could laugh along with the crowd at the clueless cow’s misfortune. She was shocked that the field of eyes bored through the rain directly into hers, fingers pointing laughingly and accusingly. At her.

  Startled, she looked down at her top. When she had purchased it years back it had been stripes of red and black. A thousand washings later it had faded, but even while checking herself out in the reflection of the porthole that morning, she had seen it as red and black. That’s why she had chosen the earrings.

  “Disqualified!” the megaphone squawked. “Team EconoLux is disqualified!”

  Fionnuala bubbled with rage as the laughter rang out. She somehow sensed Paddy and Dymphna dropping their rams and tugging off their helmets at her side, but really her brain focused on the blood flooding her panting face as mortification overtook her. How could she have thought her top was still red and black?

  “Aye, go on and have a good laugh, youse!” Fionnuala's furious voice rang out across the length of the deck. “God punishes them what laughs at the misery of others! Youse are all on yer way to the fiery pits of Hell!”

  As the laughter increased, Fionnuala shuddered with fury. They must be non-Christians, she thought, and—

  A bell rang out, and the megaphone shrilled: “We have winner! Team Czech has won!”

  A roar went up from the sopping crowd.

  “And, a surprise runner up, Team Golden Oldies!”

  Paddy, Dymphna and Fabrizio struggled out of their helmets and glumly unwrapped their blindfolds. As the applause began to die, Fionnuala peered down the deck, past Team Czech, who were, all four in the boat, slapping one another's backs and mugging it up to the crowd. Shock attacked her skull. She stood, a woman electrocuted, and not by the lightning spearing through the sky around her.

  She would know that unseemly shade of purple anywhere...like a big purple blimp, an eggplant sat atop her head. Ursula Barnett! With both feet firmly in her lifeboat, waving at the crowd and wrapping her arms around—Jed! And the walrus-type creature, Fionnuala's brain would realize hours later, his fat must have been responsible for their win, and the tiny woman with the big red glasses. As the shock permeated through her veins, Fionnuala couldn't know she wasn't thinking clearly. She was thinking that once she had asked Ursula if Lady Clairol rolled that shade of purple off the production line for her exclusive use; she had never seen anyone else with such a revolting dye job the breadth and width of Derry. Ursula retorted that Fionnuala hadn't seen all the people in the world.

  Fionnuala forced her neck around and faced Paddy and Dymphna, raw, fresh rage shooting from beneath her eyelids.

  “The cunt! We've only gone and been beaten by the flimmin fecking Lady of the Manor, yer sister, Paddy! Ursula Barnett!”

  She slipped on a ball bearing and would've fallen into Paddy's arms, but he was scratching his head and staring in shock at his sister down the deck. Fionnuala dove into a pool of scabby sea water.

  CHAPTER 33

  JED'S TUXEDO STILL lay spread out on the bed, but where was the man himself? They had to leave for dinner at the captain's table in half an hour. He would have to shower and shave, and it took him an eternity to wrap the cummerbund around his waist; he had to ensure his waistline couldn't be seen between it and his pants.

  Ursula reached out for her handbag, which was strangely silent. In this world of surprises, few of them pleasant, he was her constant; she could always rely on Jed. Why hadn't he called? Texted, even?

  After they had been presented their second place trophies, he had pecked her on the cheek and said he had somewhere to go. He had gripped her hands especially hard and stared into her eyes. He seemed to be jittering with an excitement beyond that which winning a plastic trophy or a Cleopatra penny slot might give. He would be back in time for dinner at the captain's table, he had said; he knew how much Ursula was looking forward to it. He had given her his trophy and staggered down the deck, clutching the handrails as the ship groaned from one side to the other.

  Ursula opened her purse and looked inside the slot reserved for her cellphone. It was empty. Then she remembered she had thrown it overboard. She would have to call Jed. She must find a phone. But... She knew their home phone number by heart, kne
w the store phone, but Jed's cell...??

  She wrung her hands. The little animal charms from the bracelet jingled. She took steps to the bathroom, the hem of sparkling red gown sashaying around her pantyhosed feet. She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, and realized her makeup was only half done, lipstick on the left of her mouth. She had been too busy checking her watch—the silver Rolex left on her pillow—and trying to arrange the other accessories so that they looked like they matched. Her neck especially, the Egyptian necklace coupled with the amethyst choker, screamed out, look at me! Look at me! The staff hadn't left another pearl earring, but a large Sade-style golden hoop for her other ear. It definitely clashed with the purple of her hair and the amethyst, the silver and gold of the watch and bracelet, the pearl, the busy mess of the Egyptian necklace and the ruby of the choker.

  “Oh, Jed, Jed,” she murmured, thrusting the rest of the lipstick on her lips. She reached for her bottle of Xanax and was horrified to see it was empty. Empty. She would have to do this with her mind intact. She smiled at herself in the mirror. She looked like a schizophrenic's Christmas tree.

  It was now quarter to eight. She squealed her frustration. There was nothing else for it. She grabbed her sparkly green clutch and slipped into her heels. She left the cabin and went next door. She looked behind her, and it wasn't to see if her heels were trailing toilet paper. She wondered what hours housekeeping worked. But she saw no sign of Casino Woman. She knocked on the door, dreading slightly what she had to do. She waited, then knocked again. And again.

  Slim poked his head out. His face pink. His walrus mustache was tousled. His mounds stretched the straps of the wife-beater t-shirt to snapping point.

  “Where's Louella?” Ursula asked.