“So how was last night?”
“Superb. Moritz and I—he’s Swiss by the way, I’m thinking of calling him my Swiss Mister—made mind-blowing love until dawn. Then he cradled me gently in his tweedy academic arms and I realized that, like the moon over the Alps, he was precious and perfect to me. And we didn’t even mind that there was a child two feet away, you moron, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“You developed a sense of humor,” she observed, stone-faced. “Should I be worried?”
“Not yet.”
She took a thoughtful sip of her water and chuckled to herself. That couldn’t be good. “Vomit sex, eh? I did that once. Does not bear repeating.”
“I don’t know what befouled vent of hell birthed you, but I seriously hope we’re sailing back there to drop you off,” I said. “For good.” She winked and finished her cup of water. “I’m not joking.”
“Neither am I,” she said. “Although that’s not the worst of my transgressions.”
She was baiting me, and like a bunny staring down a hole full of carrots, I just had to leap and bite. I had no idea how apt that comparison really was. Luckily we were relatively alone, with Shane snoring softly a few yards in front of me, the blankets still pulled up over his head. “What do you mean by that?”
“Once,” she said, lowering her voice, “I screwed a Rabbit.”
I blinked. “Once? Once when?”
“A few weeks ago.”
“And you thought this was a bright idea because…?”
“Lighten up,” Andrea replied and refilled her water cup. She swirled it around like a brandy snifter. “He was cute. Huge,” she said significantly. Then she stuck out her tongue. “Covered in tattoos, though, weird ones.”
“Let me guess, there was a tally tattooed on him somewhere with how many women he managed to knock up.”
“Maybe,” she replied casually. “It was dark. There was some Latin around his neck, a big rabbit on his shoulder that looked like it was on steroids.”
“So they’ve embraced their nickname?” I laughed. “How forward-thinking of them. I don’t suppose you used protection?”
Andrea threw back her head of long, dark hair and laughed. The floppy hat perched on her head nearly tumbled down her back. “I’m on the pill. Big idiot thought he was getting the last laugh.”
“Well, when the syphilis develops I think he probably will.”
That was the most eventful conversation of the day. Thank God. The boat continued north, out into a broader waterway, away from the tip of Discovery Park, and then farther north, north beyond beaches and coasts I had never seen and only glimpsed on a map. The rugged green outline of the shore remained more or less the same, dotted at random with buildings and homes. Shane was restless, contented only when I sat with him and said nothing as he watched the birds hovering over the water.
We needed to talk.
“What happened with Carl…” God, this sucked. It’s always easier to self-flagellate in your mind. The shame is amplified a few hundred times when you have to say it aloud. To a kid. A kid that you let down in a big, big way. “I made a rotten choice. I wasn’t thinking straight, letting him hang around with us. Sometimes … adults are clumsy and make stupid decisions. We were sort of safe, I thought, and I got careless.”
Shane stared down at his hands, his fingertips red where he had picked at the nails. God only knows how many neuroses brought on by my moronic behavior.
“I miss your mom and dad,” I said finally, hearing the catch in my voice. “She wouldn’t have done something so … so thoughtless.”
I just wanted something … one word … one indication that he didn’t hate me to the core.
“It’s not going to happen again.” I gestured to each compass point on the boat and lowered my voice. “These people? We’re with them, but it’s really just you and me, right? They could turn out okay, but from now on I’m only going to worry about you.”
“You don’t like them?” he asked, looking up at me finally.
“It’s not that,” I said quickly. “Like I said … they might be okay, but you matter most.”
And with that, he nodded, whispering a breathy, “I guess that’s okay,” before staring back down at his red fingers. Okay. One word. One indication. It would have to be enough for now.
* * *
It’s amazing how quickly the options for diversion are exhausted on a boat. Uncle Arturo never spoke much but he was nice enough to lend Andrea and me a deck of ancient playing cards. Cross-legged on the deck, with the water swishing by and the clouds gathering overhead, Andrea and I played gin rummy when Shane decided to nap next to us. Arm’s reach, I insisted—if he didn’t want to play cards he would have to at least stay at arm’s reach.
Sadly, there was no actual gin to accompany the rummy.
“What’s the verdict on Scrubs McBloodstains?”
I glanced over my shoulder, following Andrea’s eye line. The nurse—still in said scrubs, of course—sat huddled against the pointed apex of the bow. She held a patched carpet bag to her chest as if it was a buoy and we were going down. At different points during the afternoon, the young man, Noah, and Kellerman had tried talking to her. The attention only seemed to make her more withdrawn, though that didn’t stop Noah from trying. It was surprising, actually. I didn’t expect someone Noah’s age to put that much effort into comforting the nurse. But he seemed genuinely concerned. Maybe teenagers weren’t teenagers anymore, I mused, watching him crouch next to her and wait, patiently, for some kind of response. The one thing he could get out of her was a name, Cassandra. A tiny chain of islands shimmered into view and slid by behind the woman’s profile.
“Something tells me we don’t want to know,” I replied, looking back at my cards.
“Seems mean to just let her sit there shaking like a leaf.”
“Maybe that’s what she needs.”
“We could ask if she wants to play cards,” Andrea suggested, still watching Cassandra.
“Leave her alone,” I said. “She’ll come to us if she wants to join.”
“Do you want to be left alone?”
I smiled down at my row of jacks. It was a good question, but I couldn’t really decide. So I said, “No, this is good” and we continued the game.
At nightfall we gathered around the cockpit and divvied up food. Andrea pulled out the cabbages and dried fish she had salvaged from my apartment. As she did, one of my sketches came out as well, stuck to the dried fish package. I grabbed it as quickly as I could and stuffed it back inside. Nobody seemed to care, but when I looked back at Arturo for a handful of almonds, Moritz Kellerman was watching me closely.
That was it, I thought, I can’t hold onto these sketches. They weren’t a liability, not at all; I just didn’t want them anymore. It’s not like they would be suddenly useful on a boat or on an island, or anywhere. If I couldn’t say clearly to myself what they represented then there was no use lugging them around.
Kellerman’s glance didn’t mean much at the time, but it certainly explained things when I woke up that night to a rustling right next to my head. The garbage bag full of my sketches and clothes was open, two hairy forearms sticking out the end.
“What are you doing?”
He jumped, the flashlight wedged beneath his chin clattering onto the deck. He went for the flashlight but I was awake now, painfully awake, and faster.
When I shined the beam of light on him he froze, two pieces of paper pinched between his fingers. Busted.
“Those are mine,” I said lamely.
“I … I didn’t mean to snoop.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Yes … all right, but only a very little.”
I sighed, too tired to start up a real argument. “Here,” I said, handing him the flashlight, “get a good long look. Tomorrow they’re going overboard.”
He looked like a huge tweed grasshopper, perched over the garbage bag with his knees sticking out in opposite directi
ons. His scarf hung down like a tongue blue with cold. Kellerman directed the flashlight’s beam onto the sketches and frowned.
“Why would you ever think to destroy these?” he asked.
“Because they’re total shit, that’s why, and there are more important things to worry about.”
Kellerman didn’t argue against that. Real encouraging. He was too busy scratching at his chin, mulling something over. It was too late for this. I wanted to curl up on my blanket again and revel in the fact that, blissfully, I was no longer seasick.
“Who is this woman?” he asked.
He had already seen everything there was to see, no use being coy. “Allison Hewitt,” I said. “She’s um, a bit of an urban legend.”
Over the thin beam of the flashlight, Moritz stared at me unblinking. Right. Nonnative English speaker—I had forgotten. “It’s like a myth, I guess, but a modern one.”
“I know what an urban legend is,” he said, curt but not irritated. He pointed at a panel with one of his long, knobby fingers. “I know her. I’ve met her.”
“You’ve met Allison Hewitt?” Yeah right, buddy. “How is that possible?”
“You’ve drawn her too short,” he said, ignoring the question. “And Collin, her husband, he does not look so … so fatigued.”
“How did you meet her?” I asked, louder. He chuckled, and then glanced at the others asleep.
“They held a painting for me. So very many houses have been abandoned, and others ransacked. My colleague and I put out a general word of mouth about our services. Allison and Collin came across a Cassatt and kept it for me.”
“Cassatt? Hold on. You mean Mary Cassatt?”
“Yes,” he said. Then he smiled and it lit up his whole face. He pulled a Polaroid from his coat pocket and handed it to me. The flashlight beam fell on three people in front of an Impressionist portrait of a pale, lovely woman. “Private collections have gone to ruin everywhere,” he explained, cradling the picture as if it were made out of butterfly wings. “They were kind enough to protect this masterpiece.”
“And you have it?” I asked. Then I felt foolish, seeing plainly that he wasn’t carrying around a gigantic oil canvas. But he nodded.
“In Seattle. It’s at our safe house, in a bank vault on Seneca.”
I squinted down at the Polaroid. There was Kellerman—grinning like a child perched on Santa’s lap—standing between a tall, vibrant man with dark hair and a young woman in a green hooded sweatshirt. Allison. She was taller than I thought. And there was Collin Crane too. He had a salt and pepper beard. Had he always had one? I’d never considered a beard. It was like slipping downstairs early on Easter morning to find an actual giant, anthropomorphic rabbit in a pastel bowtie scattering eggs across your sofa.
“You’re an illustrator,” he observed.
“Was an illustrator. Now I’m … I don’t know, a castaway? First mate?”
He shook his head. “You’ve rendered Miss Hewitt quite accurately,” Kellerman said. “Have you seen images of her?”
“No,” I replied honestly. “It was just a guess, and I had heard a few descriptions of her, rumors. I stopped following the blog after a while.”
“Why is that?” he asked.
“I had to focus on my own struggle,” I said. I don’t know why I went on, maybe because finding someone who knew about Allison made us instant allies. “It was just … depressing, realizing other cities weren’t any better, that there was no greener pasture. I stopped caring about what was happening in Philadelphia or Chicago when I was hardly eating. And then Shane dropped into my lap and I had to trade the laptop for vegetables.”
“Mm.”
That had been a bad day. I probably should’ve haggled harder and for more, but Shane and I were almost starving and suddenly that computer just didn’t matter like it used to. Pen and paper would have to suffice.
I blinked, suppressing those cold, unfriendly memories.
“And what does a Cassatt go for these days?” I asked, changing the topic. “Five hundred pounds of potatoes?”
“It was free, free with the understanding that I would take good care of it and see that it was safely stored until … Well, until it could be properly displayed again.”
A free Cassatt? This truly was a changed and frightening world. Carefully, I took the Polaroid from him. Allison beamed up at me, her hand around Kellerman’s slim waist, her smile genuine and free. So it was true. Suddenly, throwing my sketches overboard in a defiant and dramatic act of purification seemed pathetic, unthinkable.
As if reading my mind he said, “She would like to see these. Please don’t destroy them.”
Maybe Jason was wrong, the pudgy jerk. There might be an audience for the comic after all.
“So is that what you do?” I asked. No one had woken up from our conversation. We were lucky to be traveling with heavy sleepers. “You go around rescuing art? Captain Canvas?”
Kellerman began pulling more photos from his coat, handing them to me one at a time. A few of them I recognized, others were at least attention grabbing in that they were works of fine art. The water out around the boat squished against the hull, a rushing, breathing sound that made me simultaneously sleepy and energetic. For a moment, I wondered where we were going and whether or not Arturo had a destination in mind. Maybe we would drift forever. I frowned and tried to keep those thoughts at bay.
In the meantime, Polaroid photos of works by Julie Verhoeven and Piao Guangxie and others I couldn’t name piled up in my hand. It was an illustrator’s duty to know art, to steep in it, but it was impossible to know everything.
“I was a critic,” he said softly. That fit. “But I don’t do much criticizing anymore.”
He pointed to the photo lying at the top of a pile, a bizarre, modern canvas with very little paint and an excess of pretention. For once, I was glad I didn’t know the artist. He laughed fondly under his breath.
“Oh goodness. I called that one fatuous and desperate in L’Hebdo,” Kellerman said. He gave a little breathy laugh and shrugged, “But I nearly died getting it out of New York.”
I gave him a long look. “Fatuous and desperate? I hadn’t pegged you for a brainless leg-humper but even so, Moritz, that’s really harsh. Why risk your life for something so … so…” I struggled for the word. “… average. I mean, if it doesn’t qualify as art, why would you bother?”
Kellerman smiled, the same kind of smile he wore in his photo with Allison. I looked away, startled. “I can’t answer that. I’m not a critic anymore, I don’t know what to make of any of this,” he said, “and I think … I think all of the philosophers are dead.”
FOUR
“Does Uncle Arturo actually know where we’re going?”
The shore, the water, the steel-bottomed clouds … it all looked suspiciously similar to the day before. It would be easy to lose track of the days out here and that’s exactly what I became afraid of. Andrea wouldn’t let me go near Arturo. She said I annoyed him and he wasn’t fond of children either, which meant Shane couldn’t do much but silently count shipwrecked boats along the shore. That was fine with me, in a way, because he could do that from any point on the deck and he didn’t put up a fight when I insisted he stick to my side unless absolutely necessary.
Even I wasn’t paranoid enough to make him use the bathroom while I hovered.
“Of course he knows where we’re going,” Andrea replied, waving me away impatiently. Occasionally Shane would glance up at us, smiling wanly as if amused by the adult bickering. Before I could disturb her uncle, she cornered me against a railing where I kept one eye on her and one on Shane’s still head of curls.
“Great—would he mind sharing that information with the rest of us?”
Uncle Arturo was quiet, Zen Master quiet. The man needed his boat, the water and a healthy swig of port and he was happy as a clam. Fitting, considering getting his mouth to form words was like trying to force open an oyster shell with a polite written request. His pe
rfect paradise did not involve talking and neither did his day to day routine.
“Can’t you just ask him for some details?”
Andrea was ignoring me.
“I trust him,” she said by way of explanation. “And you should too.”
At that moment, Arturo had lowered the main sail and kicked the outboard motor to life. He was using the motor as little as possible, worried about gas consumption. He had a fuel canister in the cockpit, but using the sail was safer for us. I watched, my hands clinging to the rail, as he eased the Ketch toward a small, shadowy inlet. The sun hovered behind a gray wall of clouds, typical for the region, and just warm enough to make being out in the windy air bearable. Noah stood behind Arturo, watching him maneuver the vessel. He seemed to be the only one of us Arturo could stand, maybe because the boy seemed to be genuinely fascinated by the whole sailing thing. The two men couldn’t be any more different. Noah was rail-thin, with white, peachy skin and a thick head of wavy hair. Arturo was stocky and paunchy and creased like a golden raisin.
“I was thinking…” I began, walking alongside Andrea as she went in search of soda. “We’ve got a decent supply of food for now, but we could use more. If we did some fishing we could dry what we catch, you know, in case later times are leaner. We wouldn’t have to land even … we could just, you know, float.” Lay anchor? Put in? Fuck it. Subway cars are more seaworthy than yours truly.
“That’s not a bad idea,” Andrea said. She turned to her uncle, calling to him in Portuguese. I knew a bit of Spanish and it was similar enough in spots that I could make out her suggesting the fishing thing. Arturo considered the idea, chewing on the end of his cigarette with one brow in the air. Then he called something back, trundling down into the cockpit.
“He has to bait the line, but I think he’s happy for an excuse to do something new.”
“It’ll be a nice change of pace,” I said lightly. “Instead of doing nothing on a slowly moving boat, we’ll do nothing on a completely motionless boat.”
“Have a drink,” Andrea suggested, straightening her ponytail. “Or is Auntie Flow paying Auntie Sadie a visit?”
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