by Anna Roberts
I pause at the mouth of the container. I have no shoes and the deck is disgusting - covered in seagull poo and some kind of unidentifiable green residue that might be Mountain Dew, but I have no way of knowing and less inclination to find out. "Um...could I have some shoes?" I ask.
"No."
Kate punts a broken bottle into the water. "She could get tetanus," she says. "Hate to piss on your rugged individualism, guys, but things like this are pretty much the reason why safety regulations exist."
"Yes. Because the creep of crypto-socialism has made society soft and decadent," says Anonymous #1.
"Actually I was going to say 'So you don't get sued to bejesus and back'," says Kate. "But whatever butters your muffin, I guess. Just bear in mind your glorious leader isn't going to be particularly happy with you if his snugglebunny here comes down with a good old fashioned character-building case of lockjaw."
The Anonymouses (Anonymi?) stare at us for a moment.
"He won't share his My Little Pony porn with you any more," explains Kate. "And he'll probably send you back to the mainland."
"He can't do that," says Anonymous #1, a whine of fear creeping into his voice. "I won't go back."
"Neither will I," says Anonymous #2. "My Dad will make me get a job cutting lawns. And he knows I have hayfever."
"And agoraphobia," says Anonymous #1.
Kate slaps him on his meaty shoulder. "There you go then. Either give her some shoes or a piggy back ride."
"I have lower lumbar issues," says Anonymous #2.
Kate looks him up and down. "I'm not surprised. What are you? About three hundred? Three fifty?"
Anonymous #1 loads me clumsily onto his back. Another unholy smell rises from the already evil smelling fog of polluted water, seagull crap and something unidentifiable but greasy. The new smell is instantly recognisable - a heady high school cocktail of Axe body spray and sweaty sexual frustration.
"Listen, Blondie," he says, turning to Kate. "Nobody gave us specific orders about what we were supposed to do with you. It only takes one small 'administrative error' and suddenly you're taking a swim."
I shriek and grab hold of his neck. For a moment I thought I was about to slide off through a large, clumsily cordoned hole in the deck. "Excuse me - can you not finger-quote while I'm on your back?"
Kate peers down through the hole, apparently trying to commit to memory what I was trying so hard to forget. The congealed lumps of cooking fat go some way to explaining what the greasy stench is, but I don't want to speculate about the other things bobbing around beneath us. There are a couple of crude cardboard signs stuck to the cordon - DANGER, DO NOT WANT and I HEREBY RESIGN FROM THE CLEANING ROSTER.
"Okay then," says Kate, and goes quiet.
The 'streets' are made from metal bolted crudely over a series of platforms that in turn must be bolted to boats or something, because as we walk the streets sway and creak, sometimes opening to reveal sheer drops into the filthy water below. There is dried vomit everywhere. We pass a couple of makeshift movie theatres, advertising plasma screens and animes too perverted for mainland consumption, but aside from the puke and the dirty Japanese cartoons there is no sign of human habitation. Pipelines constructed out of old cans criss-cross the walkways, but Kate has stopped asking questions and I have no inclination to start.
Everything is covered in seagull poo.
At the end of one walkway is a yacht - a stately, expensive yacht that reminds me of the one Crispian used to own before we were married, back when he had all his money. It's white and shining and the only thing not completely covered in bird crap, although there are some streaks here and there. Whatever they've dumped in the water is giving the gulls a vicious dose of Montezuma's revenge.
We step aboard the yacht and at once I am catapulted back in time. There is a pony decal staring back at me - a big eyed pink pony with a skirt that's blowing up like Marilyn Monroe's, only its not wearing underwear and you can see...oh my.
Kate gags. I don't know if it's the smell or the artwork. Could be both. I know how she feels.
This was always the trouble with Crispian; while he was rich and complicated in an interesting way that meant we spent many a happy, boring night having long, whiny conversations about our various issues, he always remained a total and utter pervert. There was nothing that made him happier than drawing 'anatomically correct' pictures of My Little Pony.
I slide off Anonymous 1#'s broad, fleshy back with a sigh of relief; he had a large boil-sized zit on the nape of his neck and I was beginning to worry that it was going to go off in my face.
"Downstairs, ladies," he says, and points the way.
Kate and I go down a flight of narrow white stairs, to find ourselves in a grand cabin. There is a great wraparound window, affording a beautiful view of the Sound. And in the middle, gazing out at it, his hands behind his back, is Crispian Neigh.
Holy crap.
"Hello, Hanna," he says, without turning around.
"Crispian?"
"Hey shitlord," says Kate. "We thought you were dead."
He turns around and glances up from under the brim of his pin-striped fedora. There is a button on it that reads Brony Pride and I realise with a strange thrill that it's the same fedora he was wearing long ago, back when he came to stalk me at the toystore where I worked. When I gaze into his mesmerising brown eyes it's like I'm falling back in time - I can feel the straps of the padded head guard they made me wear, the rows of pink plastic toys and the unidentified smell we could never seem to purge from the ballpit in the soft play area.
Crispian smiles. "No. Not dead. Just...altered. Like when Gandalf the Grey returned as Gandalf the White."
Kate looks him up and down. "Except younger, right?" she says.
"Obviously."
"And not Sir Ian McKellan."
"No."
"Sucks for you. I bet it's nice being Sir Ian McKellan."
"I'm sure it is," he says, turning testy already. "How are you Kate? How's the Mexican transvestite?"
"Still both of those things," she says. "Actually on the latter front he's even more of that. And rich. Probably. I don't know - he never stops working long enough to tell me how much he's worth."
Crispian eyes her with ill-disguised loathing. "Yes, I've been watching Jessica's career with interest," he says, moving closer. "As I have yours, Hanna."
I gaze at him through the blur of my confused tears for a moment. "I don't understand," I murmur. "I thought you were dead."
Kate dumps herself down on the sofa and starts going through the mini-bar. "For once she raises one hell of a good point, Equus," she says, snagging the most expensive bag of macadamia nuts. "If those weren't your charred remains they fished out of the Sound, then whose were they?"
Crispian laughs urbanely. "You remember the Thomasens, don't you? What kind of nouveau riche trash brings a helicopter to a garden party?"
"Dunno," says Kate, chewing. "The same kind of person who brings a helicopter on a first date?"
He ignores her and once again gazes moodily at the window. "My mother always warned them - if they kept flaunting their wealth like that, people would start taking advantage. They'd attract freeloaders. And so they did. I was halfway over the water when I realised there'd been a hobo asleep under the seats the whole time."
Kate stares at him in horror. "You killed a hobo?"
"No," says Crispian. "I didn't have to. He spilled whatever anti-freeze he was drinking all over the cockpit and it started the fire. I jumped out into the smoke, which is probably why nobody saw me. I swam to the nearest island and was adopted by a family of sasquatches."
I stare down at my hands. "How can this be?"
"It can't," says Kate. "Sasquatches? Are you fucking kidding me?"
"I assure you I'm not," says Crispian. "And once I'm cleared of the charges against me I intend to press one hell of a lawsuit against your little friend Jesús. The sasquatch are a noble and honest people, and his filthy novel se
ries and its allegations of moral turpitude amount to nothing but than libel."
I start to cry again. He was so brave, living wild amongst the sasquatches for all these years. But why didn't he come to find me? I was so lonely. And so poor. Speaking of which, how the hell did a bunch of sasquatches get their hairy hands on a luxury yacht?
"It's good to see you haven't changed," says Kate. "Mad as a sack of cats and still yanking it to My Little Pony."
"My Tiny Horsie, actually," says Crispian.
"Huh?"
"My Tiny Horsie," he repeats. "I'll explain later, over dinner. That is if you'd care to join me?"
Kate grabs several more bags of nuts and candy from the mini-bar and shoves them down her Spanx. "Nah. If the chefs aboard this floating stank-island are even half as skilled as the architects and engineers, I'll probably end up needing bowel surgery. Feed Hanna instead. You remember how, right? You take a nicely chilled bottle of Bollinger and a funnel..."
He waves her away and lifts me to my feet. "You look pale, my love," he says. "Winsome. Not to mention thin."
"Thank you," I murmur. "I'm a size four."
Kate snorts and I hear the unmistakable sound of a Toblerone being broken over her knee. If she didn't eat so much chocolate maybe she wouldn't be single, even if her breasts have been known to stop traffic.
"Widowhood suits you," Crispian smoulders in my ear. "You always did look beautiful in black. How many nights have you been pining for me, Hanna?"
Oh shit. Behind me I can tell Kate has that look on her face - the one kind of like a starving dog that's just been presented with a whole filet mignon. "Um..." I say. "You know...I was...um...devastated. Obviously."
I await the inevitable Kate-explosion, but she's gone oddly quiet.
I stare down at my fingers. "I...just didn't know what to do with myself, Crispian," I mutter. "In fact, I don't really remember the days after the accident. It was too painful. I think I blotted a lot of it out..." Yes, this could work. "...which is why I may have made some very poor decisions when the balance of my mind was disturbed."
He steps back from me and grins. "Oh, I know that, Hanna."
"You do?"
I turn to gauge Kate's reaction, but she's gone. There's a note on the door of the minibar that says STOLE ALL YOUR SHIT. BACK LATER WHEN YOU'VE RESTOCKED. XOXO KATE.
"Crispian," I begin, struggling to find my voice. "You don't understand how it was for me. I thought you were dead. I saw the helicopter catch fire - we all did."
He laughs mockingly. "Hanna, I don't care that you thought I was dead."
"You don't?"
"Of course not. That was the whole idea. But come, we'll discuss this later when you're properly dressed. This room has a drop down dining table and everything. It's been too long since I took you to dinner."
"I remember," I murmur. The last meal we ate together was a series of inedible and pretentious dishes served at the Kleptocrats Masked Ball on the day he 'died'. Before that was a Chinese banquet ordered by him and paid for by me because he was electronically tagged and all his assets had been frozen. And I dropped my phone in the sweet and sour sauce when Timot...no. No. I mustn't think about that.
Instead I try to remember the last time he took me to dinner and realise I can't. Lunch, yes - he took to me a fancy boutique restaurant in the forest where he told me he had been molested at a young age by a sexually voracious female jockey. But dinner? No. Ours was a love built on bowls of off-brand Cheetos.
He claps his hands and the Anonymi come down the stairs, one by one. It's a narrow staircase.
"She got away, boss," says Anonymous #1, who is still wheezing.
Crispian shakes his head. "Never mind. She won't get far. Watch the docks."
"Yes, Your Overlordness."
"Meanwhile," he says, shoving me roughly towards the Anonymi. "Have this one bathed and brought to me."
"Um...we've already brought her?"
He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. "Goddamn it, Josh," he says. "Don't you know I always wanted to say that? Now have her bathed and brought to me."
"Yes, Your Overlordness."
"Thank you," says Crispian, irritably. "Any further questions?"
"Just one, boss."
He sighs and removes his fedora. "What?"
"What's 'bathed'?"
Chapter Fifteen
Atlas Clopped
I gaze out of the window of the yacht at the panoramic vista before me. Crispian easily has the nicest view in the whole Seasteading Institute, although it’s occasionally marred when fresh garbage floats past - a bobbing Bawls tin, an abandoned inflatable girlfriend. I wonder what Kate's doing. I wonder if she managed to find anything else worth stealing.
I am dressed in the clothes Crispian gave me - a lime green zebra-striped tube dress and a pair of five inch pink Lucite stripper shoes, complete with ten dollar bills encased in the heels. The shoes are scuffed and the dress smells of sweat and desperation. How times have changed. On our third date he bought me a car.
He walks in and whistles. "Niiice," he says, and slaps me on the behind.
"Do you think so?" I murmur, carefully adjusting the top of the tube dress. I think it was designed for someone who wasn't married to a plastic surgeon.
"Sure," he says, reaching for a couple of glasses. "Makes you look like a crack-whore. You know how much I love that."
I stare down at my hands. "Of course. Your Mommy issues."
"Damn straight, Toots. Champagne?"
He hands me a glass. It's plastic. And it's not champagne - it's cheap Asti Spumante. Tears gather on my mink lash inserts and drip into the drink. Already I'm yearning for Waterford crystal and Bollinger.
"What's the matter?" asks Crispian.
"I can't drink this," I whisper. "I'm a high-class alcoholic now."
He sighs and gestures to the dining table. "Take a seat, Hanna. I think we have a lot to talk about, don't you?"
I sit down and my heart sinks further into my stripper shoes. He's using rinsed out jelly-jars as tumblers, and the plates look like paper that has been crudely laminated to save on wear and tear. The forks are the kind of plastic folding ones you get with cup noodles. I hate to think what's for dinner. I hope to God it's not seagull.
An Anonymous shuffles in with a large bowl of off-brand Cheetos. "Appetiser?" says Crispian, grabbing a fistful.
Oh, this is terrible. How am I going to tell him about Bennett? And Celestia? Perhaps he already knows. And suddenly, like a bolt from the blue or an unwarranted cliché, I realise I should have known all along.
"The seagull," I murmur. "That's why it tasted of off-brand Cheetos."
"Hmm?" he says, munching. He still has those heartbreaking little Cheeto coloured crescents under each fingernail, even if he has gained weight and looks kind of greasy. I don't think they have much fresh water out here at sea, which is kind of ironic, like in that poem by Samuel L. Jackson.
"It was you, wasn't it?" I ask. "The e-mails and the phone calls. Talking all medieval, like we used to. It was our thing - that nobody else knew about. I should have known it was you. And the fire. That was you too, wasn’t it?”
Crispian raises an eyebrow, his face impassive. “Yes, Hanna,” he whispers. “It was foolish of me, but every time I thought about you I wanted to reach you somehow.”
I sit on my hands. “You could have left a note.”
“I did,” he says.
“You did? I didn’t get it.”
“I know. It burned up in the fire.”
I blink, confused. “God, it’s so weird. I thought that too. We’re still so...in sync with one another.”
“Serendipity, Hanna,” he murmurs, taking another off-brand Cheeto from the bowl.
“Why did you do it?” I ask. “The fire. The e-mails?”
He peers up from under the brim of his fedora. “I only want what's mine, Hanna. Just like I always did."
I frown. "But...Crispian. Half the things you wanted were p
roperty of Hasbro. And the other half belonged to like...the British or whoever owns Doctor Who. That's why you went to prison."
"Don't obfuscate, Hanna," he elucidates, giving me a fine opportunity to use my new pocket thesaurus. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about our daughter."
"Celestia," I moan.
"Yeah. When were you going to tell me you'd had a kid?"
"I thought you were dead!"
"That's kind of beside the point, isn't it?"
I shake my head, uncomprehending. Fortunately at that point one of his goons comes back in with the main course. "Voila," he says, whisking off a cloche that appears to have been fashioned out of half an old football. Underneath it is a bird of some kind - headless, but with its feet still on. It hasn't been that well plucked. It smells terrible.
"Oh," says Crispian, eyeing it with distaste.
"It's seagull, isn't it?" I say, sinking ever deeper into disappointment.
"Yeah," he says, wrinkling his nose. "It kind of is."
I stare at the steaming gull and try not to gag. I cover my nose with a paper napkin and think wistfully of our luxury yacht in the South of France, with its fine Irish linen and rosewood dining table and the priceless Fabergé eggs we used to load into the skeet shooter.
"I won't lie to you, Hanna," he says, eventually. "I've kind of fallen on hard times."
"I can see that."
He swallows. "I know it was never about the money for you..." he says.
"No," I assent. "No, of course not." I sit back from the table. "I'm sorry - can you get rid of that bird? It smells really bad. I can't think straight."
He calls his henchman back and the seagull is removed. "Listen," says Crispian. "I have plans, Hanna. I don't mean to stay here forever. I want to go back to the mainland, perhaps under a new identity. But I want to see Celestia - I have to see her. She's mine, isn't she?"
I lean across the table and slap him. "How dare you?"
He peers up at me, clutching his cheek. "Of course," he says. "I was the only man you'd ever had, wasn't I?"
"Of course you were!" I snap.
"Forgive me," he says, gazing up at me.