We Are Pirates: A Novel (13 page)

“
And
,” Amber said, “you were right about him.” She swirled the stick in the air. “I mean, verily, he’s crazy, but so’s everybody, you know?”

“I know,” said Gwen. She had an itch on her leg and just moved her pant leg up to scratch it, not caring about the burn.

“What do you call him?”

“Errol.”

“No, no, Captain something.”

“I just called him my captain that time. It’s not something I call him really. I just think it.”

Amber laid her hand on Gwen’s. She stopped scratching. “I get it.”

“Because he seems kinda captainy.”

“He
does.
I thought that.”

“And he used to be in the Navy.” Gwen would never know this was not true.

“Maybe we should start calling him that to his face.”

“I guess so. We can call him anything.”

“I know, it’s cool, because he doesn’t remember. You can start over every time with him.”

“More than every time.”

“
Verily.
Like every five minutes.
Seconds.
I wish I could do that with everyone.”

“Yeah.”

“Not you. But everyone else.”

They sat and stared at the city on the hill. Amber let go her hand. “But the thing is, Gwen,” she said, “what are we going to
do
?”

This was the question. It had been the question for lo these three long weeks of friendship. She and Amber had so much in common. Neither of them liked it when people acted like dicks, and when they were alone they liked to eat ice cream and dance. Neither of them needed much light to do anything, and hated it when people turned on the light for them, particularly if they said, “Here, I’ll turn on the light for you.” Amber’s house on Octavia had a neighborhood with free perfume samples, gorgeous boots in the window, a yoga class they might take someday. Gwen had offered her meager Embarcadero in return, but Amber had showed her that if you kept walking, through the farmers’ market and past the gleamy hotels, past the hospital where they’d check Gwen for dehydration, shock and exposure, another destination was within their grasp: a pier, tarted up for tourists with expensive ice cream and a body lotion place and piles of sea lions rolled up on the jetties like dead sleeping bags. It was
sick
just how much they could hang out, unseen by the tourists, except the occasional wistful pimpled boy embarrassed with his parents. They tumbled around all day, blitzing on candy, taking pictures of each other, the endless sea as background, the foggy bridge, the island prison, a shiny boat of new wood where every afternoon they put on a show. The best was one Amber rigged so it showed up on the screen whenever they texted: Gwen, looking brave and slim, her hair draped by the wind perfectly across her brow, with the wooden ship, the
Corsair
, behind her with its canvas sails and its tiny little turret on top of the mast.

The picture was so good of Gwen.

But still there was the boring squall of their lives. One thick and drizzly day they waited it out in Gwen’s room for once, safe from Marina, who was locked up painting and didn’t even come out to see who was raiding the fridge. They watched the rain, leaning backwards off the bed, touching each other’s hair. Amber took something out of her purse and uncrumpled it against her thigh.

“Got back my final,” she said. “F.”

Gwen squinted at a large drop on the glass, one that didn’t want to leave. “I’m ashamed of you.”

Amber gave her a flick and held the paper up over them like she was signaling to a plane. “I just gave honest answers for each one. Number One, A. Number Two, C. Number Three, False. Number Four, E. Number Five, I Don’t Know. Number Six, I Don’t Care. Number Seven, Fuck This Class.”

They were both kicking with laughter. “And they
flunked
you?” Gwen said, fiercely and kidding.

“The Stepmonster
freaked
,” Amber said. “I don’t know why. I told her I wouldn’t transfer, not to the school she’s crazy for me to be at, even if I got the grades.”

“Someone was murdered there,” Gwen remembered.

“Years ago,” Amber said. “I got the grades for it and
still
I can’t give honest answers.” She sighed deeply on the bed, her hair slumping down to the carpet in a broken fan. “This is what we’re up against,” she said, and then turned her head to see the stash of books underneath Gwen’s bed.

Gwen had not quite been ready to share them. They were a big secret.

“What are these?” Amber asked. Gwen hoped she would not ask if they were dirty, as Naomi would have. “Did you read all these?”

“Um, yeah.”

“
Verily?
I couldn’t. I have the attention span of a carrot. What are they?”

“Just books.”

But Amber was already flat on the floor after a slow-motion tumble and was turning them over like stones. Gwen stayed on the bed, staring at her nothing ceiling, her hands at her chest like she was buried alive, trying to think of something plausible to say.

“Are they all like this? Where did you get them all?”

“I borrowed them,” Gwen said. As many as she wanted, for as long as she wanted, Errol had told her. Nine times.

“From Errol,” Amber said. “I remember, in his room. What’s a privateer?” She was pointing to the gold, double-lined letters but didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s a pirate?”

“I know.”

“You read these? Pirates?”

“I know,” Gwen said again.

Amber opened the book and saw the definition Gwen had copied onto the inside cover. “An advocate,” she said, “or exponent of private enterprise. Is that a pirate? It’s the same thing?”

“Sort of,” Gwen said.

“Look at me,” Amber said, and at last Gwen turned over and slid off the bed to sit with Amber and the books. Gwen looked at her.

“I know,” she said. “It’s stupid.”

But Amber was already shaking her head. “What does it mean, an exponent of private enterprise?”

“You can do whatever you want, I think,” Gwen said, very quietly. “Go anyplace.”

Amber looked, just once and just quickly, out the window at the bridge and the sky and the sea. “
And
,” she said, “without anybody telling you.”

Gwen watched this self-spoken information, engined with shivery wisdom, flow into her friend. Behind her the waves waved.

“What do you know about pirates?” Amber asked.

“They’re,” Gwen said, “um.”

Amber turned a page, and they looked at
A History of Dispossession.
“What’s that? It sounds like—”

“It’s depriving someone of their possessions,” Gwen said. “Taking stuff away.”

“It sounded like demons or something,” Amber said, and Gwen could see that she was embarrassed for not knowing.

“It’s old,” Gwen said, touching Amber’s hand holding the book. “You have to read it and look up everything almost.”

What does anyone know about pirates? At the time this story takes place and for centuries before and afterwards, pirates were not unknown, not to anyone. It was thinking about them that was different. Gwen and Amber thinking about it was like lightning in the room. Everybody knows lightning. Nobody expects it in the room, and the air crackled around the next book Amber overturned.

“Which one should I read?”

Gwen was breathless. “That one.”

It will be generally admitted that
Captain Blood
is the most sublime story that has ever penetrated into the human mind. All sorts are satisfied by it. The hero is a physician with a grisly name. He heals soldiers who have been wounded in battle and is arrested, convicted, and banished—
grounded
—whereupon Captain Blood embarks on a career of dispossession in order to restore justice previously hijacked.
Why, first he’s a rebel, then an escaped slave, and lastly a bloody pirate.
It is this philosophy that had sent Gwen bolt upright in bed, so late that the sparks of cars across the bridge were scarcely to be seen. One day you have taken enough, and you begin to take it all back.

“Captain Blood is foul-mouthed but plainspoken, superstitious but irreligious, courageous but rowdy, dependable but difficult,” Amber read from the flap. “I would get with that in a second.”

“You don’t think it’s stupid?”

Amber shook her head and blinked very quickly. “I do it,” she said in a near whisper.

“What?”

Amber reached a hand into the pocket of her sweatshirt, and withdrew it still empty. No, she uncurled two fingers and there was a tube of lip balm.

“From that place,” Gwen remembered gradually. Amber had abruptly announced that she was bored and they’d left in a hurry. “Underneath the big billboard, on the pier.”

“All the time,” Amber said. “All the time I do it and I never knew why.” She tapped the book:
This is why.

Gwen took
Captain Blood
from Amber and then handed it to her with both hands, like this time she was doing it the right way. It was the start of something, although even now, the next day on the top of the hill, they could not quite see what it was. What
were
they going to do? Gwen lit an imaginary cigarette. This was something else they had in common. Amber smiled and took it for a puff. But what else could they dream up?

“What is this pirate stuff?” Amber asked. “Ganging up, right? But what are we doing? It’s not just—taking stuff from stores.”

“No.”

“And it’s not just making him your boyfriend, is it? That
guy
,
what’s-his-name, Cody Glasserman.”

“Nathan.
No
.”

“No. Because it’s stupid. Like my ex. It’s kind of sad how obsessed I became with the idea of being with him.”

She seemed to be waiting for something, so Gwen started to agree, but then Amber just tossed the imaginary cigarette away. “I tried to kill myself a little over it,” she said, and reached down to show Gwen a tiny, tiny scar on her ankle. “Bled like crazy.”

“I thought it was, the wrists.”

“Yeah, well, I said it was a little,” Amber said with an almost grin. “Anyway, that’s the end with boys. Too stupid. You can make out with him if you want to, but I’m not ganging up just to get you Cody.”

It would spoil it to correct her again, although his name,
Nathan Glasserman
, still rolled in her mouth when she thought of him. But that wasn’t what they were going to do. “It’s got to be like that day,” Gwen said. She could practically taste the sting of the salt of the sea.

“That was so good of you,” Amber said again. “Tell me something.”

“What?”

“No, I mean like I told you. About my ex, and the razor. Tell me something. We need to know each other the most of
anything.
”

“I’m a mistake,” Gwen said, before she could change her mind.

“What?”

“I am,” Gwen said. “They didn’t tell me, my mom and dad, but they lived in New York forever and wanted to be, I don’t know, big radio stars.”

Amber snorted.

“Yeah, well, they didn’t want me.” Gwen felt another sting, tense under one eye, like the tip of a blade.

“They might say things,” Amber said, “but they don’t mean them.”

“They
don’t
say them,” Gwen said. “That’s the thing, is what I mean. I had to figure it out all by myself. They watch me and they watch me, and I can’t take the bus alone, and we practically have to steal time to be together. I’m supposed to be a good sport. I’m not, though. I quit swimming.”

“Stop,” Amber said, and put her head down on Gwen’s shoulder.

“I don’t want to,” she said, “
keep up the good work.
” Gwen felt so fierce she could picture the cigarette starting a fire that would scorch the hill. Amber’s breath warmed her sweater. “I’m tired of keeping up the good work.”

“Let’s tell today,” Amber said. “Let’s do something like we said, let’s tell him.”

She was already standing, and so, Gwen realized, was Gwen. They strode down to where they were going, both thinking of the photograph again. They did not need to look at it to look it over. They could look elsewhere, Gwen thought, not at the girl but at the ship waiting in the background. What does
Corsair
mean, anyway? It was an old word. Old people would know it.

Errol had good days, Gwen had learned quickly. In his room, she hoped this was one. But “I worry about it” was what he was saying now, and Gwen sighed and looked at her hand.
Memory
was the word he was looking for. “There’s something on your hand, Vera.”

“
Gwen
,” Gwen said.

“I know! What is it?”

Gwen and Amber were standing up. Perhaps that was the problem. Gwen knelt down close to him, taking a tissue from his lap and gently wiping the drip off his nose. It was very hot in the room. Always. “Hi,” she said.