Bad Grrlz' Guide to Reality: The Complete Novels Wild Angel and Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell (67 page)

“You’ve been looking for years,” Susan said, “and you’ve never seen it? Are you sure it really exists?”

Tom shrugged. “Nope. Could be that someone with too much imagination made it up. But I’ll keep looking anyway.”

She smiled at him. “I don’t think you’re as practical as you pretend,” she said.

The road emerged from the trees, and Susan saw the sun again, still lower in the sky, just a fraction of its bright disk above the horizon.

“Almost there,” Susan said.

Another clump of trees blocked the view, then the road curved and the sun was visible again, just a sliver of red at the horizon. As Susan watched, the last touch of red disappeared and she saw a brilliant green light, just for a moment.

She turned to look at Tom. “Did you see it?”

He was shaking his head, looking startled. “I guess it does exist.” Susan grinned. Irrationally, she felt that she was somehow responsible for the green flash, as if by talking about it she had helped cause it to appear. As the taxi turned into a valley, she saw a cluster of lights below, a small village in a natural harbor.

The taxi took them to the main square, which was crowded with people and booths. The big stone church that formed one side of the square was decorated with tiny white lights; colored lights festooned the trees and the booths. As they got out of the taxi, Susan could hear music from the far side of the square—guitars and singing. Men in the booths were calling to the people—she couldn’t understand the words, but she knew what they were saying. “Come try my game. Come buy my food. Come and spend your money and be happy.”

When Susan was a child, the nearby church had held a carnival to raise money each summer. For a week, the church parking lot was filled with rides and cotton candy stands and booths where you threw coins on plates and rings over bottles and spun a wheel to win a giant stuffed dog. Susan had loved that carnival. Each year, that carnival transformed the mundane parking lot into someplace exotic and wonderful, a place where anything could happen.

“The restaurant is over this way,” Tom said, taking her arm. “Oh, let’s go to the carnival first,” she said. “Come on!”

She gave him no time to disagree. Without hesitation, she led him across the street, heading for the music, the barkers, the booths. Children with sparklers ran beneath the colored lights, calling to each other. The aroma of roasting sausage and barbecue and frying bread filled the air.

Susan stopped at the edge of a crowd that was watching a man demonstrate a set of kitchen knives. The man chattered at an enormous speed as he slashed an aluminum can in half, then used the same knife to cut a ripe tomato into thin slices. “I could swear that the same guy sold knives at the state fair when I was a kid,” she told Tom, “except the guy at the state fair had a Brooklyn accent.”

They walked past a game of chance where you could bet on a spinning wheel and win a garish clock. They passed a game where young men threw baseballs at targets to win stuffed animals for young women. Susan wondered whether Tom would stop to try to win her a toy. Harry would have done that. Harry would have insisted on winning the biggest stuffed dog, whether she wanted it or not. Susan was relieved when Tom glanced at the toys and kept walking.

A moment later, he stopped at a shooting game. The target was beside a puppet theater where marionettes hung lifeless. When Tom hit the bullseye, the theater lit up and the puppets danced. Tom smiled at Susan. “Better than an ugly toy,” he said, and she smiled back.

Susan stopped at another booth, where people tossed coins at a stack of sparkling glassware. If a coin stayed on a plate, the person won that plate. Susan watched as a determined young woman tossed coin after coin, trying to get one to stay on the topmost piece, a spectacular cut-glass platter. Every coin the woman threw bounced off the platter and fell among the other glassware, ringing against the plates and cups as it fell.

“Do you have any coins?” Susan asked Tom. He pulled a handful from his pocket and held them on his flattened palm. He looked amused. He was humoring her.

“These things are impossible to win,” he said.

She nodded, taking the coins from his hand and holding them out to the teenager who manned the booth. “Which one?” she asked him, and he pointed to three coins of the right denomination. The woman who had been trying to win the platter had stopped to watch Susan and Tom.

Susan felt good. She felt strong. She felt ridiculously confident. She wasn’t sure why. If this was someone’s dream, she thought, she would win the platter. If this was a story someone was telling, she would win. It was only right.

She took the three coins the teenager had indicated, and she returned the rest of the money to Tom. “The secret,” she told him, “is not to throw it too hard.”

He nodded, still smiling.

She tossed the first coin, lofting it high in a gentle arc that carried it to the platter. It hit with a musical “ping” and bounced away.

“A little too high,” she said. “It had too much energy when it hit.”

Tom nodded again. His eyes were narrowing and she could see that he was wondering how seriously to take all this. The woman who had tried to win the platter was still watching. Another woman came up. The first woman spoke to the second woman in Portuguese, then they both watched.

Susan tossed the second coin, going for a lower arc. It hit the platter and barely bounced, but it had too much forward momentum. It skidded right off the side.

“Too low,” Tom said, and she nodded, holding the last coin pinched between her fingers. She faced the platter again, carefully measuring the distance with her eyes. Then she tossed the coin, lofting it high, but just high enough to reach the platter, giving it no more energy than it needed.

The coin hit, bounced, hit the platter again, and stayed.

The women and her friends cheered. Tom clapped her on the back. “You are a woman of startling talents,” he said. The teenager who ran the booth stared in amazement as the women gathered around Susan, talking in Portuguese.

The teenager gave Susan the platter, pulling one in a box from beneath the counter. The box was dusty and battered. It had obviously been traveling with the carnival for some time.

Susan opened the box and slid it out, checking to see that the platter was the same as the one on the display. She smiled at the teenager and turned to the woman who had been struggling to win the platter.

“I’d like you to have this,” she said, and handed the platter to the woman.

There was much conversation in Portuguese, much laughing and cheering. A translator was found—the woman’s son, Susan thought. Speaking very careful, high school English, he thanked Susan for the woman.

Later, in the restaurant, Tom asked Susan how she had become such a master of carnival games.

The restaurant was on the second floor of a building beside the square where the carnival was taking place. Their table was on a balcony that overlooked the open square. The square below them was crowded with people, but Tom and Susan sat above it all—separate, isolated, private.

Susan frowned and looked down at the table, made suddenly self-conscious by Tom’s question. Tom had ordered a bottle of red wine, and the waiter had filled Susan’s glass. A single candle burned in the center of the table. The curved surface of the full wine glass focused an image of the candle flame on the tablecloth—a shimmering light in the center of the shadow of the glass. Susan studied the flame for a moment, considering what Mary had told her about telling your own story. You sort out the past, rearrange it, give it a bit of a plot. Susan wondered if she’d done that with her memories of childhood.

“Not all games,” Susan said slowly. “just that one. When I was a kid, our church had a carnival every year and they had a booth like that one. They had a punch bowl that I thought was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It was ceramic and it was painted with fruit and flowers. When I was ten years old, I wasted my whole allowance trying to win it for my mother.”

She shook her head. “The next year, a month before the carnival, I took a plate from the kitchen and set it up on a TV tray in the back yard, behind some bushes where my mother couldn’t see me practice. It was summer and I had lots of time. So I spent hours practicing.”

She pushed her hair back out of her eyes, remembering that long, hot summer. In the first week, she missed the plate most of the time. Then she got to where she could hit the plate, but the coin always bounced out. She learned to toss it gently, so it had just enough energy to get to the plate, and not so much it would bounce out again.

“When the carnival came, I was ready. I took my whole allowance in dimes.”

“So what happened?” She had his full attention. The candlelight shone on his face. His eyes were a very dark blue, a trick of the light.

She shrugged. “I won the punchbowl. And I gave it to my mother.”

He leaned forward. “That’s amazing. That’s wonderful. She must have been so proud.”

She shrugged again, feeling a tightness in her throat, a slight stinging in her eyes. She stared past him, focusing on the colored lights in the trees. “Not really. She … she didn’t really like it.” She punchbowl was the sort of thing only a kid could love. It was garish and bright and tacky. She thanked me politely and put it away in the cupboard and never used it for anything.”

He reached out and touched her face, forcing her to look at him, studying her with those intense blue eyes. “Pardon me for saying it, but your mother was an idiot. Who cares if it was tacky? It was beautiful because you won it for her.”

She nodded. She did not want to talk. She would cry if she talked too much, and she did not want to cry. It was a special evening, an evening where she was changing the rules, and she did not want to remember the time when the rules were bigger than she was.

“So that’s why you won the platter tonight,” he said. “You won it for someone who appreciated it, for someone who admired it, for someone who understood.”

She nodded again.

“Your mother didn’t understand.”

His hand was still on her cheek. She leaned her head into his rough palm, glad to feel its warmth against her face.

The waiter came to take their order. Through the double glass doors that connected them to the restaurant, Susan could see a musician strolling from table to table, playing a sort of guitar. Instead of a round hole in the middle of the body, this guitar had two heartshaped holes.

A moment after the waiter took their order, the musician came to their table and sang to them. All the people in the restaurant were smiling and staring out at the two of them sitting on the balcony. It could have been terribly embarrassing. Susan remembered a time when she and Harry had been vacationing in Mexico and a group of mariachis had serenaded them. She had wanted to crawl under the table.

But this time, sitting at the table on the balcony with Tom, she smiled at the musician, smiled at Tom, smiled back at the other diners. Everyone was so happy, and if they stared it was only because they wanted to share in Susan’s happiness.

Tom reached across the table to hold her hand. She liked that—no need to talk, just the warmth of his hand on hers, the music of the guitar, the gravelly voice of the musician. She didn’t understand the words of his song, and that was just fine.

The musician finished his song. Tom tipped him, and he strolled away. Susan sipped her wine and relaxed. Their dinner came, a wonderful seafood stew seasoned with chili. “The fire and the sea,” she said to Tom, thinking of the taxi driver’s description of the houses. “A little of both.”

In the street below them, people were gathering. “It is the chamarrita,” the waiter told them. “A traditional dance.”

To the music of guitars, the dance began. The men were in one line and the women in another, but somehow, after dancing in an intricate pattern, they had rearranged themselves into laughing couples.

She told Tom—a little drunkenly, perhaps, after two glasses of wine—that she wished life were as easy as that. Just dance around and end up with the right partner.

After dessert, after a glass of port so sweet and smooth that it tasted like another dessert, it was time to go. Tom put his arm around her as they walked down the stairs to the street. He flagged down a taxi and they headed back for the ship.

From the top of the hill, they looked down on the harbor. The
Odyssey
sparkled against the water of the harbor, its lights bright against the darkness. Tom squeezed her hand—he’d been holding it since they left the restaurant.

“How beautiful,” she said, looking down at the ship.

“Yes,” he agreed, but when she glanced at him she discovered that he was looking at her, not at the ship.

Such a strange evening, she thought. She felt that she was some how playing hooky, evading some responsibility. She had always been a very good girl, playing by the rules. But tonight, something had shifted.

“When we get back to the ship, will you be back on duty?” she asked.

“Not right away,” he said slowly. He hesitated, watching her face. “I have a bottle of brandy in my cabin. Would you like to join me for a nightcap?”

Susan smiled. Was she the sort of woman who would go to a sailor’s cabin on the first date? Apparently so. It was not the sort of thing she would ordinarily have done. But it was not an ordinary night. It was not an ordinary cruise. This was not an ordinary place. And she was beginning to believe that she was not an ordinary person.

“That sounds splendid,” she said.

There are many kinds of pirates in the galaxy. There are businesslike pirates who are motivated by profit. There are sadistic pirates who crave power. And there are swashbuckling pirates who seek adventure. It is these last that capture the heart of the romantic. They are a wild, unpredictable, and ultimately compelling crew…

—from
The Twisted Band

by Max Merriwell

Susan woke up early, feeling warm and relaxed. Tom was still sleeping, his arms around her. Tom’s bed was barely big enough for two, but they had managed despite that. Susan had slept soundly.