High Seas Drifter (Cruise Confidential 4)
Page 36
“Then where—”
“Shh!” Cat interrupted, holding up a finger to command silence. Once achieved, she slapped Lisa on the knee. “Hush, Baby Bat. Don’t make me go all dominatrix on your ass.”
“As I was saying,” Cat continued with an extra flutter of purple eyelids. “I get my velvet, lace, and satin from secondhand stores. Now you’ve never been a feminine dresser, so you should stay away from lace and stiletto heels. You don’t have the shape for corsets. And ruffles? Hell no. You’d rock a top hat over that pixie cut, though. And ribbons. Yes, you need ribbons. Or at least some boots with laces up to the knee.”
“Ribbons?” Lisa repeated, surprised. “Ribbons aren’t very depressing.”
For one tremulous moment hope blossomed in Lisa. Could she use this setback as a springboard for something new, something fun? Alas, dark thoughts came rushing back in. “Oh, this isn’t going to work! The only Gothic thing I know is the Count from Sesame Street. One! One flying bat. Two! Two flying bats!”
Cat nodded, impressed. But Lisa continued in earnest, lamenting, “I look like a poser. I don’t even have my ears pierced!”
“Calm down,” Cat scoffed, “There isn’t any secret initiation ritual involving a needle through the septum or anything. I don’t even have a tattoo—though I’m thinking about getting a spiderweb on my... well, this is about you. Being Goth is about attitude.”
“So I have to be all gloomy and sad?”
“I’m all gloomy and sad?” Cat asked with mock distress. “I think not! Real Goths don’t spend all their time moping on street corners smoking clove cigarettes. We go to drama clubs. We debate. Contrary to stereotypes, we’re very social. Though we do get Goth points for doing something solitary if it’s extra spookalicious, like reclining on a velvet chaise lounge reading Baudelaire by candlelight.”
“Goth… points?”
“I was just kidding about that,” Cat admitted. “But come now! Haven’t you seen Morticia from The Addams Family? She wears black but is full of good humor and hot passion. She’s total Goth because she’s an individual, a nonconformist. There are happy breeds of us, too, you know: Perkygoths, if you will. Yay glitter and starlight!”
Lisa’s pout remained firmly fixed. Cat bent over to cup Lisa’s face with two lace-gloved hands.
“Stick with me, my dear Baby Bat. We’ll get you cheered up in no time. Going Goth is all about embracing your individuality. Only you can truly celebrate who you are, because only you can truly know who you are. Society only sees what it wants to see. Perception is nothing.”
5
“Mr. Arno, you look positively radiant.”
His white mustache quivered with excitement. “Oh indeed, I am, Lisa. Indeed, I am!”
“Well?” Lisa prompted. Exhausted of being angry with his presence, she’d learned to just go with it. They were the only ones left in the restaurant, of course. All the other guests had left hours ago. It takes a long time to eat twenty-six plates of shrimp. That put him up at two thousand, seven hundred shrimp today. Lisa had long since gotten over the nausea over such numbers.
“Today,” Mr. Arno said, beaming, “I saw one of the heroes of our age.”
She waited for him to continue, but he didn’t offer anything more. Who could he be referring to? A movie star? A musician?
“Well?” Lisa prompted again. Suddenly she feared he may have been referring to a politician. How boring would that be?
“I saw Eugene Cernan!”
Lisa looked at him blankly. “Who?”
His brows shot up in surprise, and he asked, “You don’t know who Eugene Cernan is?”
Lisa shrugged and said, “Should I?”
“Of course!”
“Okay, okay. Who is he, then?” she asked, exasperated.
“Why, he is only the last man to set foot on the moon!”
“That wasn’t Neil Armstrong?”
“No, no,” Mr. Arno corrected impatiently. “Neil Armstrong was the first! You know, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, then Pete Conrad and Al Bean with Apollo 12…?”
“Uh huh,” Lisa said with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.
“There were twelve brave souls altogether,” Mr. Arno continued, still enrapt with the thought of it all.
“Uh huh.”
“I saw Eugene Cernan deliver an address at the Museum of Science and Industry. Magnificent speaker, and much more than merely the commander of the final Apollo mission.”
“You really are nuts about the moon, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” he answered severely. “She is fascinating. She holds more secrets than you can possibly know. Oh, how jealous I am of those who have stepped upon her… stepped, but not touched. No, the moon is not for touching.”
“What’s so cool about that?” Lisa challenged. She was sick of his weird behavior, sick of her weird body, just sick. It made her feel like arguing. “There’s just rocks up there, right? Nothing interesting.”
“Why, everything! Is it not fascinating how much of life revolves around her? Why, one-third of the entire world depends upon her daily.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Islamic calendar, of course.” His eyes glazed as he recited, “At the first notice of the waxing crescent, after a new moon, Muslims start their month. But it’s her secrets that call to me. Think about her appearance. You can usually only see crescents and slivers.”
“So?”
“But she is whole! Always there, always whole. So much mass there, yet most people only see a small portion of her. Human perception is so easily manipulated.”
“Why is that so interesting?”
“Perception, my dear! Perception is everything!”
Lisa shook her head, not liking his words one bit. She challenged, “So you’re obsessed with the moon, so what? What does that have to do with eating enough food to feed a starving nation? Let me guess: shrimp’s from the sea, and the sea has tides, which are affected by the moon and stuff.”
His eyes glinted. “Yes! Now you begin to understand! She is perceived as barely a slice, yet she is full and round and beautiful. Are all the people who see a crescent moon merely wrong most of the time? Or is there something more going on? Recognizing—nay, acting upon—the disparity between reality and perception unlocks the doors to so many secrets. Have you noticed how I look thinner?”
Her face clouded. Had she ever! He was eating over two thousand shrimp a day, yet was skinny as a rail! He looked almost as thin as he did when he first started coming three weeks ago. Meanwhile Lisa was getting huge and ate nothing.
“It’s a matter of perception and reality,” Mr. Arno explained. “Believe me, the secrets of the moon can be applied to people, if they are clever enough. We are not as directly affected—as the tides are—but we are not immune to her influence. Oh, no. Ask any ER physician. There are always more accidents during a full moon.”
Lisa’s frown deepened into confusion and annoyance. Noting her expression, Mr. Arno returned to his usual blandness.
“Of course you don’t believe a word I am saying.”
She smiled grimly at him. “I think you’re nuts.”
He sniffed disdainfully, then returned his gaze to his plate of shrimp. “Am I?”
Bloated hands waved over the mound as if seeking heat from a fire.
“Perception led me to transference. In the beginning I merely looked thinner than I was, like glorious Luna herself. But after exploring her secrets, my manipulation of perception led to something marvelous—to transference! It all begins with perception. It is everything.”
“No!” Lisa suddenly cried. “Perception is nothing! I’m not who I look like. I’m not!”
Mr. Arno seemed unfazed by her outburst. He coolly reviewed her for a moment, then his white mustache quivered.
“Perhaps not right now,” he said, a knowing twinkle in his eye. “But you will be. You will be.”
Books by Brian David Bruns
Fiction:
&n
bsp; The Gothic Shift
In the House of Leviathan
The Widow of Half Hill
Nonfiction:
1. Cruise Confidential
2. Ship for Brains
3. Unsinkable Mister Brown
4. High Seas Drifter
Cruise a la Carte
Comstock Phantoms:
True Ghost Stories of Virginia City, NV
Rumble Yell:
Discovering America's Biggest Bike Ride*
*USA REBA Grand Prize Winner
Praise for The Gothic Shift
“A delightful balance of whimsy and the grotesque, with a glimmer of moonstruck romance. Bruns creates well-imagined, realistic settings for his lively characters.”
- Kirkus Reviews
"I was squirming in my seat to find out what would happen in the end."
-Reader's Favorite Reviews
“A juicy collection of stories, with some great character development and a lot of original ideas. Recommended!”
-Horror After Dark
"The stories in this volume are little nibbles at the edges of you mind that show the Gothic style can resonate with even hardcore horror lovers. Recommended.”
-Hellnotes
“I found this book to be an extreme delight. Bruns builds each piece with a subtle tension rather than in your face horror. But do not misunderstand that statement: the horror is there and very real."
-Horror Novel Reviews
Unsinkable Mister Brown
Gold- USA Best Book Awards
Silver- Paris Book Festival
Bronze- London Book Festival
Bronze- Hollywood Book festival
Finalist- Book of the Year, Humor- ForeWord Awards
Finalist- Book of the Year, Travel- ForeWord Awards
Ship for Brains
Bronze- London Book Festival
Bronze- New York Book Festival
Bronze- San Francisco Book Festival
Bronze- New England Book Festival
Finalist- Book of the Year, Humor- ForeWord Awards
Cruise Confidential
Gold- Book of the Year, Benjamin Franklin Awards
Gold- Book of the Year, Humor- ForeWord Awards
Bronze- New England Book Festival
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by Brian David Bruns
All rights reserved
Cover design by Brian David Bruns
Produced in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form—except quoting brief passages in a review—without permission in writing from author or publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Bruns, Brian David
1st ed.
Produced by World Waters
ISBN: (print edition): 978-0985663568
1. Travel/Essay2. Cruises 3. Humor