We Are Pirates: A Novel (23 page)

“We are warning you for the last time,” Amber said.

“Over my dead body,” the man sneered, and Gwen just stared at him, this flabby heap of a man, his eyes nasty and his legs open. “You’re playing with danger,” he said. “
Fire
, I mean,” and now with his grabby hand, the one empty of weapons, he touched Amber right below the knee, where she had offered to ink herself in sisterhood.

“Take your hands off me,” Amber said, standing steadfast.

“And now you’ll get burned,” said Roger Cuff, and he turned the gun to Amber. He was still on the floor, so she, Gwen Needle, was taller than he was. With sharp, blue fierceness, Gwen kept her eyes right where they were, staring and thinking one thing.

What would Octavia do?

“We will fight any man with any weapon,” she said, and plunged her knife deep into his chest.

There hadn’t been much choice. With the weather, there were not too many boats on the water.

The sound Roger made was raw, with his mouth open. He let go of Amber, and the gun fell straight down onto his leg. Whatever it was he had said he said again, and Gwen pulled the knife out, easily, and easily made another hole in him even as the first spouted. The third she made higher up, right next to his shoulder bone, so deep it took a few seconds to slide it out again. He kicked, but by now she was sitting on his knees. He gave up on words and just screamed, but his eyes were asking a question that surely has been asked since piracy first darkened the seas. She stabbed him again, and the question bleeded out to her.

“Why—?”

She was prepared for this. She leaned forward and said it to his gaping face, paling and sweaty. “She who wants the world . . .” she said.

He frowned and his hands both fluttered on the floor.

“. . . must first escape from it.”

He shook his head, which rattled against the cabinets. They would have to move him to see what was inside. “About,” he said, maybe, “about time,” and she gifted him three more stabs,
quick
and
quick
in both arms and then
deep
in his stomach, and he died in a bloody mess. The clot thickened. She stood up with blood on her hands and arms. Errol was looking at her, but he didn’t look alarmed. Amber’s eyes were wide, terrorized or delighted or, Gwen thought, both. It was the reason they were here, that teetering boundary that had sliced their lives to shreds. She had sliced back.

“Are you all right?” Amber asked her.

She actually felt as if she had something in her mouth, something about the size of something large, but soft, and watery. Amber held her shoulder, and Cody stood halfway down the stairs, looking at them both.

“I’ve never seen that before,” Cody said quietly.

“
Sick
,” Amber whispered.

Errol had leaned down to put his fingers on Roger’s neck, silent for a minute before shaking his head, like doctors did in movies. They never nodded yes. They were always, whoever they were, dead after they were stabbed.

The woman clattered past Cody, all the way down the stairs, and then stopped short with a cry like she’d run into a glass wall, invisible between herself and the pirates. “
Oh my God
!
” she screamed, and then turned to the controls. “
Oh my God
!
” she screamed at the ruined radio. It sounded exactly the same, as if she were equally horrified at the two crimes. “You’re gonna,” she said, and closed her eyes. “I’m gonna,” she said. “What—”

Cody turned to her. Even those few, at this point in history, who had never heard the phrase “Dead men tell no tales”—well, everyone knew what it meant. Gwen watched the woman realize it herself and try to stumble back up the stairs. But Cody was there, right where she wanted to go. Across the starboard windows of the cabin was a plastic
squeal
as the rescue boat was dragged to the pirate ship
.
It was time to go. They would leave her, Gwen decided, let her howls, like a ghost, warn other sailors away. Let her scream away to nothing, clutching her paramour fallen in battle. It was what pirates would do.

But Cody, brand-new to this, was an amateur. He’d never even read
The Sea-Wolf.
Without permission or preparation, he raised his cleaver and struck it down on Cath’s bare thigh, right above the tattoo. It went deep and she screamed. Amber gave Gwen a look, but even the look was unnecessary. It was a mistake, Cody’s bloody deed, but mistake or not, they would have to finish it off. Amber’s knife moved in her hands, and so did Gwen’s. They all did.
Countless dead
, said some of the former ridiculous and extravagant accounts, but it was nonsense. You could count them, of course you could count them. So far it was two. The woman was quaking frantically as if something were infested with spiders on her lap.
Get them away! Get them off me!
Her leg was already ruined with blood, covering skin and ink as she fell.

N’importe où! n’importe où! pourvu que ce soit hors de ce monde!
It was from a piece of French literature, which called for adventure when Cath was younger and more reckless. But she was learning now. Now she was figuring it out.
No matter where! No matter where! As long as it’s out of the world!

Gwen stepped forward and they scattered her all over the boat.

Chapter 9

Levine was laughing in the lobby. Hard. She had a hand on Leonard Steed’s knee to steady herself. Phil Needle exited the elevator and went to them, dragging his suitcase, which felt lighter, probably from things he had been too panicked to repack. Gone forever.

“Your messenger,” Leonard Steed said in a mean playground voice, “has brought your news, as what I understand is her last duty.”

“I’m sorry, Leonard,” Phil Needle said. “Obviously it’s an emergency.”

“Obviously it is.”

“I need to get out of here.”

Leonard Steed held up one finger and a surprisingly long nail. “I moved mountains to make this happen, and now you slink away.”

“Then she didn’t tell you,” Phil Needle said. The silvery painting sat disinterested on the wall.

“You can’t let me down. This has been brewing for
months.
”

“You
just
called me about it
.
”

Leonard Steed sighed, and only then, Phil Needle noticed, did Levine take her hand off him. “As your producing partner, yes,” he said. “But as your consultant—”

“My daughter is missing,” Phil Needle said. He looked at Leonard Steed, but Leonard Steed’s eyes were too scary to look at, so he looked elsewhere. He hated that fucking painting of squares.

“Wait,” Levine said. “Missing? What, is she really?”

“Nobody knows,” Phil Needle said, “where she is. Could you go get the car.”

“Really?”

“Yes,
really
,” Phil Needle spat. “
Really!
Get the car!”

“She told me she quit,” Leonard Steed said evenly. At the end of the sentence he left his lips slightly open, and Phil Needle could not help but feel a good-sized chunk of sexual shame.

“She can’t quit here,” Phil Needle said.

“She could work for me,” Leonard Steed said and then turned to her. “I may have use for you.”

“Phil’s right,” Levine said tiredly. “I forgot where we were.”

“What’s this? Are we ready?”

Phil Needle looked elsewhere, at this new voice. It was one of the men from last night. He couldn’t remember his name, if he had known it, if he had a name. “Phil here was just giving us the disappointing news that he has to cancel the pitch,” Leonard Steed said.

The man frowned. “Oh?”

“I’m afraid,” Phil Needle said, “I have a family emergency.”

“Oh,” said whoever it was. “I’m sorry to hear that, Phil. I’m sure we can do this on the phone sometime soon. I think I have a Friday next week. Go take care of your family, Needle.”

“Yes,” Leonard Steed said. “Take care of your people. I’m saying that from here.” He was pointing at his heart, so that it would be clear that what he had said was meant from the heart. The executive nodded and also touched his heart, or at least the pocket of his shirt. “Shall we count on that Friday then?”

“I don’t know,” Phil Needle said. “I don’t know where she is.”

“Give us a guesstimate,” Steed said, folding his arms.

“Let me get back to you on that,” Phil Needle said. He was not talking frantically, as far as he could see, or moving frantically, but everything was frantic anyway, a frantic, unconcerned lobby. “Let me get back to you.”

The doors opened for Phil Needle. Outside, the morning was stale and windy. His glasses sweated on the bridge of his nose. He had never found his contact lens. Where was his daughter, that he could find her? He checked his phone. It was on. Nobody wanted him. He could not call his daughter, only her phone, abandoned useless in the condo. The company that sold him the cell phone said he could call anyone, anywhere, anytime, and he wanted Gwen, right now, wherever she was. But the phone company had lied. Liars, all of them.

Levine was next to him with a phone to her ear. “Flights will be tricky,” she said. “We’re actually closer to the Burbank airport, but they’re smaller.”

“What?”

“I’m trying to get you a flight.” She was staring at him, her face shuffling like a deck of cards: helpful, worried, confused and, somewhere in there, something else.

“Winter Air?”

“Whatever we can get, I thought.”

“Not Winter Air.”

“Okay.”

“That was a mistake.”

“Okay.”

“You’re saying you know it’s a mistake?”

“I’m saying that we all made mistakes yesterday.”

Phil Needle looked at her face and hated it. “What airline were you calling?”

She didn’t answer right away, or apologetically. “Winter Air.”

“We’ll drive,” he decided instead. “It’s quicker to go fast. Where’s the car?”

“Phil—”

But Phil Needle found himself making a noise. He checked his phone again, but the noise was him.

“Maybe we should fly,” she said. “Why aren’t we flying?”

“I don’t need any more of your help,” he said.

She scowled at him. “I’m still quitting,” she said. “I realize it’s an emergency, but—”

“It
is
. This is really happening, with my daughter.” He thought of something. “It was probably happening last night.”

“You didn’t know that,” she said.

He told her then how sorry he was for last night, but not out loud. Never out loud. Just a sigh, outside a hotel. “Are you coming with me?”

“No,” Levine said, but she said it the same way she had said it before: not firmly enough. Phil Needle’s phone rang, and he looked at the screen. He still would not answer.

“This man,” Levine was saying, and for a moment Phil Needle thought she was reporting him to the authorities. But the uniform was not that of the law. “This man needs his car.”

“Do you have your ticket?” the attendant asked.

Levine did not have to look at Phil Needle for him to remember slamming down his keys in the lobby. She
was
looking at him, though. Yes, he remembered.

“Make and model?”

“Rental,” Phil Needle said. “Small. Help.”

The kid sighed and opened a little wooden box with hooks inside. On the hooks were keys. On the keys were tickets. On the tickets were numbers. In this day and age, such a system looked ancient and wrongheaded, leeches to cure, pigeons delivering news, celestial navigation instead of an arrow on a screen on a phone in your hand. But it worked, didn’t it? The attendant pawed through keys like checking which fish smelled fresh. It didn’t matter how ugly his windbreaker was. Did it? Wasn’t the key there, the right one just right there?

“I’ll go with you,” Levine said.

“What?”

“You shouldn’t do this alone,” she said. “You shouldn’t drive, probably, but—”

“I’m driving,” Phil Needle said.

“I’ll go too.” She was looking at the fountain, not beautiful, and Phil Needle could not decide whether to be grateful or keep feeling this fury. The fury might propel him. If the attendant, this little boy in a wooden box, were furious, he’d have the key now. Right? Yes? While destiny cooled its heels in the lobby, while Levine turned back to fetch her things? Wouldn’t it be right here, wherever it was, wouldn’t it be goddamn handed to him?

Someone might ask what all this was for. Gwen could picture someone asking. “What is all this for?” And in reply she would spill everything out
.

“Look at this,” she would say, in the upstairs cabin. “Cashews, toasted almonds, smoked almonds, raw almonds. Peanuts, Spanish and unsalted. Oriental mix with rice crackers and wasabi peas. Spicy bridge mix. Two whole cabinets of this stuff, within reach of the captain’s chair on the bridge. Fantastic!”