Bad Grrlz' Guide to Reality: The Complete Novels Wild Angel and Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell (57 page)

“Another Rum Monkey for my friend,” Pat said, and Susan found herself sipping another drink.

The bar was getting noisier and more crowded. Susan noticed that the tall man with the Flaming Rum Monkey had joined a group of men—all in their thirties and forties—clustered around one of the tables near the fireplace. One of them was lifting his glass in a toast. “What say the brethren?” he called. The others cheered and shouted, “Satisfactory!”

Susan recognized the ritual question and response from Max’s description of the Clampers in
Wild Angel
. “That must be a group of Clampers,” Susan said. “E Clampus Vitus.”

“Yes, I met some of them earlier at the poolside bar,” Ian said.

“They’re having some sort of reunion and celebrating a noble feat of St. Vitus. Something involving a rescue and an elephant. It wasn’t at all clear.”

Susan blinked at him, remembering a scene from
Wild Angel.
The Clampers had created a distraction while members of the circus used an elephant to yank the bars from the window of the jail and free Sarah. Could Max have based this incident on some historical event?

Or could the Clampers be celebrating their appearance in
Wild Angel?
“Wait,” she said. “There was a scene like that in Mary Maxwell’s book. I wonder if it was based on some historical incident.”

“Let’s ask the Clampers,” Pat said. “They’d know. They’re drunken historians after all, not just drunks.”

Ian stood up to go with Pat. Susan shook her head. “Let me know what they say. I’ll stay here and keep an eye out for Mary.” She watched as a waitress carried a trayful of the flaming drinks to the table of Clampers. Apparently the drink had met with the tall man’s approval and he had ordered a round for the group. Pat and Ian headed over to the table.

Susan was surprised to realize that she had finished her Rum Monkey. Before she could protest, Frank had made her another. He was just setting it in front of her when he looked over her shoulder. “Ah,” he said with satisfaction. “You’re back. Just in time. Let me get you a Flaming Rum Monkey.”

Mary slid onto the bar stool beside Susan. “Mary!” Susan said. “I was worried about you. I—”

Mary wagged a finger at Susan. “Later,” she said. “Now we must give our full attention to the matter at hand.”

Mary watched as Frank mixed another Flaming Rum Monkey, ignited it, and offered it to her with a flourish. She picked up the mug. The flames danced, then died. Mary took a sip while Susan and Frank watched. “Perfect,” she said. “Just as I imagined it.”

Frank winked at Susan. “As good as the ones you had in Jamaica?”

“Better,” Mary said. “As good as I imagine the ones I wish I had had in Jamaica would have been—if I had actually had them.”

Susan frowned, trying to follow that sentence and failing.

Mary smiled. “The imagination is a powerful thing,” she said, lifting her glass to Frank. “And the Flaming Rum Monkey lives—thanks to you.”

A waitress called to Frank from the far end of the bar—an order of Rum Monkeys for the ladies at the table by the stage. The band had started up again. Pat and Ian were surrounded by Clampers who were lifting their Flaming Rum Monkeys in a toast. There was no chance of getting Pat’s attention just now.

“What happened to you this afternoon?” Susan asked Mary, speaking loudly to be heard over the din.

“I had a bone to pick with that fellow,” she said. “Sorry I had to rush away like that.”

“Ian says you signed in at the beauty salon as Mary Maxwell,” Susan went on.

“That’s my name,” Mary said. “I had to talk with Weldon Merrimax. He’s a dangerous man.”

“Wait a second,” Susan said. “Slow down. What did you have to talk to him about?”

Mary sipped her Rum Monkey, looking thoughtful. “A lot, actually. It’s all about the nature of reality. And dreams, of course—it has a lot to do with dreams.”

Susan blinked, more baffled than before.

“Come on,” Mary said, taking her arm. “Let’s go outside where we can talk without being interrupted.”

Still clutching her drink, Susan let Mary lead her from the bar, out into the corridor, then through the double doors onto the promenade deck. The door swung closed behind them, shutting out the shouting of the Clampers, the music of the band.

A cool breeze blew from the ocean. Overhead, the stars were bright and still. Susan leaned against the railing. She felt drunk. She felt that she had the right to demand answers. She wanted to know what was going on.

“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked Mary. “Why are you pretending to be Mary Maxwell? Who is that guy who’s pretending to be Weldon Merrimax? What’s going on, anyway?”

Mary was gazing out to sea, where the dark water rose and fell in gentle swells. “So many questions,” she said softly “So much confusion. Isn’t it lovely?

“I think some answers would be nice,” Susan said.

Mary grinned, leaning back against the railing. “One more question, first. Have you ever read
Through the Looking-Glass,
by Lewis Carroll?”

“Many times.” That had been one of Susan’s favorite books to read aloud at the library’s story hour.

“Do you remember when Alice meets Tweedledum and Tweedledee? They show her the Red King. He’s sleeping—wearing a red nightcap and snoring. And Tweedledum says that Alice is just a thing in the Red King’s dream.”

Susan nodded. She remembered the scene. “Alice says she’s not just a thing in his dream, she’s real. She starts to cry and Tweedledum says, ‘I hope you don’t think those are real tears.’”

Mary nodded.

Susan went on. “In the end, the whole story is Alice’s dream.”

“Is that what you think?” Mary said. “It isn’t really, you know.”

“Of course it is,” Susan said. “That’s what the last chapter is all about.”

“Oh, yes, the last chapter is Alice talking about how it was a dream,” Mary said. “And she thinks it must have been either her dream or the Red King’s dream. But you know it wasn’t really either one.”

Susan stared at her. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s really a story told by Lewis Carroll,” Mary said. “Alice is imaginary and so is the Red King. So you could say it was Lewis Carroll’s dream …”

Susan nodded slowly. “I could go along with that.”

“… but Lewis Carroll was imaginary, too,” Mary went on.

“No, he wasn’t,” Susan protested. “He was a mathematician and a deacon in the Church of England. He was reputed to like little girls a bit too well.”

Mary shook her head. “That was the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson,” she said gravely. “He wrote as Lewis Carroll, but that’s not the same thing as being Lewis Carroll, now is it?”

Susan hesitated, thinking of Max Merriwell and Mary Maxwell and Weldon Merrimax. “I suppose not,” she admitted reluctantly.

“I’d say it was all a dream of Dodgson who dreamed of Carroll who dreamed of Alice who dreamed of the Red King. Or it could have been the other way around. Maybe the Red King dreamed up the whole thing.”

Susan’s head was spinning. “But what’s real?” she asked.

Mary laughed. “Have you ever read the work of Chuang Tzu?” Susan shook her head. The only thing that seemed clear was that Mary was not going to clarify matters.

“Oh, you must. It will help you come to grips with all this. Chuang Tzu was an ancient Taoist poet and philosopher. He wrote about dreaming that he was a butterfly. And when he woke, he wondered if he was really a butterfly, dreaming he was a poet.” Mary shrugged. “There’s no way to know. And as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter.” She gazed into the distance for a moment, as if concentrating on something only she could see. “Listen,” she said.

Susan heard a strange sound on the breeze—like the wind howling through a gap. “What’s that?” she asked. “Sounds like wolves to me.”

“Wolves?” Susan shook her head again. “That’s ridiculous. We’re in the middle of the ocean.”

“Just a small pack,” Mary said, as if the size of the pack made a difference. A chorus of distant howls rose and fell with the breeze.

“How could there be wolves here?” Susan said, bewildered.

Mary shook her head, looking amused. “You haven’t been listening. Reality is a much more flexible concept than most people think. The borders are fuzzy.” Mary shrugged. “It’s all about the power of the imagination. The shifting nature of reality. The possibilities of the dream. You need to trust your imagination. You need to believe your dreams.”

“This isn’t a dream,” Susan protested. “I’m really here.”

Mary just smiled. She was looking over Susan’s shoulder. “Look who’s coming this way.”

Susan turned to look, and she saw Max Merriwell approaching, walking along the railing and smoking his pipe. When she turned back, Mary was gone.

Max came up beside her. “Susan!” She turned to look at him. “It is you!” He studied her for a moment. “Quite a change. You look very nice.” He puffed his pipe.

She glanced around, looking for Mary. Max was studying her, frowning. “Is something wrong?”

Yes, Susan thought, I’m going nuts. I’m imagining conversations with lunatics. I’m hearing wolves.

“No,” she said. “No, I’m fine.” She didn’t want to ask Max if he had seen a woman disappear. She didn’t want to try to explain what they had been talking about. “I … I just stepped out for a breath of fresh air.”

“We missed you at dinner,” Max said. “It was quite dull without you and Pat and Ian.”

“Pat and I decided to make do with bar snacks,” she said. She realized as she said it that they had never gotten around to ordering any snacks. No wonder she was feeling so drunk.

“Ah. Well, I’m meeting Ian for a drink at Aphrodite’s before I turn in. Will you join me?”

She shook her head. “No, thanks. I’ve had enough for now.” More than enough, she thought. She stared out to sea, feeling dizzy.

“I’ll go in then. Come and join us if you feel like it later.”

She heard a burst of music when he pushed open the door, silenced when the door swung shut. She closed her eyes. She had drunk too many Rum Monkeys. Mary’s last name was Maxwell. There were wolves howling in the middle of the ocean. That made no sense at all. Her imagination was running away with her.

Now that Max was gone, Susan could again hear wolves howling somewhere above her. A sweet wild sound, stretched thin by distance. It couldn’t be wolves, Susan thought. There were no wolves in the middle of the ocean. But it sounded like wolves.

It could be the wind, she thought. That was the only logical explanation, the only sensible thing to think. Mary was some kind of lunatic and the howling was just the wind. Susan tried to believe that it was the wind, blowing across a narrow opening and howling in a way that sounded just like wolves.

She tried to believe that, but she didn’t want to believe that. When it got right down to it, she wanted to believe that there were wolves up there. There are, she thought drunkenly, so many possibilities for a woman who knows how to use her imagination.

Susan imagined members of the pack exploring among the deck chairs on the recreation deck, lapping water from the sparkling pool, bedding down in a heap of towels, overlooked at day’s end by the towel guy. Something strange was happening, and she did not want to believe that there was a sensible, reasonable explanation for it.

She followed the sound, heading toward the bow of the boat. She found a door marked “emergency exit” that led to a companionway, and she climbed the stairs. She pushed the door open and stepped onto the silent recreation deck.

The poolside chairs had been stacked neatly, their cushions stacked beside them. Nets covered the swimming pool and the jacuzzis—a safety precaution, she suspected. The cruise line didn’t want a drunken passenger falling into a pool and drowning. The water in the swimming pools surged back and forth with the rolling of the ship, overflowing the pool and washing across the deck.

She circled the pool, peering behind the stacks of deck chairs, searching for wolves. There were lights beside the pools, lights on the ship’s railings. Beyond those circles of light, the ocean was dark. When Susan looked over the rail, the only light came from the moon and the cold, distant stars. The ship had seemed so large in New York harbor. Now it felt tiny, insignificant in the vastness of the ocean.

The dark ocean surged and swelled. So much darkness, all around them. Unknown territory, she thought. Terra incognita. She sympathized with the ancient mapmakers who had drawn dragons in the unknown seas. There could be dragons out there, lurking just beyond the limits of her vision. There could be sea serpents below the waves hiding in the darkness of the deeps.

When she was in the bar, in the dining room, in her stateroom, she felt like she was in a resort hotel, as safe as she was on dry land. But out here—where the wind tousled her hair and the stars gazed down with chilly indifference—out here, she could feel the power of the ocean.

It was terrifying—and at the same time, it was fascinating. So many possibilities. So much to explore. So much unknown territory. That was what she loved in Max’s books, in Mary’s books. The sense that something wonderful or terrible might be waiting just around the corner. You could find a gold ring and talk with dragons. You might walk through a gate in a garden and find yourself caught up in a battle between the owls and the ravens. (A woman did that in Mary’s book,
The Owl Kingdom.)
You might experiment with a Mobius strip and get caught in a dream that circles around and around, never letting you go. A man did that in Max’s book,
A One-Sided Story.
You might fly across the galaxy or live among the wolves. Anything could happen.

This was all Max’s doing, she thought. Worlds that Max had created were bleeding through into the reality of the cruise ship. Max had opened a door and strange things were coming through.

Susan walked carefully beside the swimming pool with its sloshing water, a miniature imitation of the ocean around them. She was drunk and she knew it. She was very careful.

She heard the wolves again, howling in the distance. Above her, always above her. An exhilarating sound, the sound of mystery, the call of adventure.