We Are Pirates: A Novel (36 page)

Authors: Daniel Handler

Tags: #Fiction, #Literary, #Retail

BOOK: We Are Pirates: A Novel

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“It’s open.”

Gwen was on her bed, unmade, with the pillows scattered angrily, MY PRINCESS SLEEPS HERE. She was painting her toes, her legs bent oddly beneath her. She was wearing a T-shirt from a radio station, and as shorts a pair of men’s boxers, probably her father’s. She appeared to have a burn on her leg. A dog, also banished, watched me from its place on the floor.
Thank goodness
, I confess I thought,
she’s home safe
. Her room had been righted somewhat, the drawers back in their slots and the clothes hung up, but the wastebasket was far too full, wrappers and love notes overflowing onto the floor. Gwen didn’t care. It had taken a long time, days, for her love to die, but it had. She didn’t think about Nathan Glasserman, and the Glassermans were so eager to bury the story that Nathan never thought of her either.

She didn’t acknowledge me, except to hide one hand under her legs so I couldn’t read whatever was written there. The window to her room was open, and through some trick of acoustics you could hear every word of the party below. She must have heard it, I thought, when it was said.
We are pirates.
But Gwen just kept flipping through her new television, a gift of gratitude maybe, or apology, or just because Phil Needle had come into more money.

At first it was some sporting event, with a bunch of guys running around, never never never even one girl except for the ones with boobs and skirts on the sidelines, but then she changed the channel. Women were in prison, and the moon was full. Veronica, who had been framed by her boyfriend after the opening credits, cowered in her bunk as the strange noises slithered closer. In seconds she would awaken to the shriek of the warden’s whistle, and no one would believe her. Of course it was a dream. She could not have seen vampires in a women’s prison. During the day, where could they go? But Veronica’s eyes shimmered with fright and glitter. “Help me,” she moaned, badly dubbed in a voice Gwen could not place. Vampires, then, I thought, if pirates have been taken away from her. Some wild story, some chance for escape. “Help me! Help me!
Help me
!
”

It was what Gwen always remembered. She did not always remember the boom of the gun, or the freeze that was everywhere on her skin. She did not remember giving up completely and deciding to sink, as it was useless to do anything else and there was nowhere else to go. Errol was gone and the boat was gone and the cold water rushed around her and she did not draw away from its grasp until she heard Amber’s faint and frantic cry, and then followed the course she had taken, required even of synchronized swimmers. The course was on water safety, and had reminded everyone that if you’re lost underwater, look what direction the bubbles are going. They will always be rising. Look for your breath to save your life, or the lives of those you love.

“Help me!” Amber was screaming when Gwen reached the surface. Her grandfather was below her somewhere. It was like the problems they gave everyone at school, as if school didn’t give you problems enough.
You can swim and your grandfather can’t and your best friend can’t, but you don’t have time to save them both.
“Help me! Help me!
Help me
!
”

Gwen reacted, just as the Stepmonster would overreact and, to have morality and sense replace rebellion and ingratitude, enroll Amber in Immaculate Conception Academy, as if such a thing could be taught. Gwen and Amber would be seen as victims, but not quite blameless ones, bystanders who should have been more innocent, and so denied phones and watched like hawks until Gwen started college, a year late, shortly before her parents’ twenty-fifth anniversary. It is useless, at the time this story takes place, to say they never saw each other again. They were on the grid, photographed and tagged, and whenever curiosity bit at them, alone at a screen, they could look at updates, postings. Everybody could do this with anybody. They did not lose each other, although they never again spoke, because they could not get lost. Phil Needle stood in the parking lot, suddenly grasping that this was so, that nothing is lost in a world utterly mapped, that nothing is rogue with everything cross-pollinated, as the shouts on the beach lured him across the street to the sand. He still had coffee in his hand. An accident, he thought, mistakenly. A fresh disaster. Something new and unconnected to himself. But then he saw his sweatshirt, his favorite sweatshirt, on a figure on the beach. It was like seeing a cotton gin in the lobby of a building, something snatched up from its rightful owner and moved to a new place. He blinked in disbelief and then Phil Needle connected, dropped the coffee cup to be swept later to sea, and ran down the sand to his daughter. There she is! There she is! There she is! This was his day, his chosen time. He was sick with luck, surprised and grateful that the world was his oyster after all. There she is! Thank you God and the men standing around wondering what to do! Thank you to the map in the police station and all its pins, thank you to the ambulance, to the open sea with its wide arms tossing everything back to land! To my crew at Phil Needle Productions, thank you! To the microphone in the booth and the waves in the air, and thank you to the radio audience, anyone out there listening! He kept broadcasting it in his head, all down the beach, until he had her in his arms. “We’ve got ’em.” All the happiness in the world, all that was denied him, had come into his possession at last, pouring onto him like water on a drowning man. It was what he always remembered, returning to the moment like a treasure in his chest, his destiny, the pure and purloined joy in his heart as Gwen collapsed onto the sand. We steal the happiness of others in order to be happy ourselves, and when it is stolen from us we voyage desperately to steal it back. We are pirates. It is the course of the world, and we may think that we can travel out of the world’s reach, but anyone who thinks that, Gwen always remembered, is a mistake. You can swim as long and as hard as you like, but you will be giving up one life in order to save another. She found Amber in the water and grabbed her as Errol settled to the bottom. She pushed her to the surface, and Amber stole a first breath from the air as the water stole Errol’s last. She brought her to shore and gave her up. She stood alone, Gwen Needle, and thought for a moment she could go somewhere else, but then she was in her father’s arms and it was over. The world was her home, she could not leave it. She was found, she was lost. She was safe, she was doomed. She was history.

Author’s Note

This book contains bits lifted from the vast treasure troves of pirate history, lore, literature and film. Acknowledging the sources of such material would be contrary to the spirit of the pirate and literary traditions both, but the author would be remiss if he failed to salute Rafael Sabatini and Richard Hughes for
Captain Blood
and
A High Wind in Jamaica
(or,
The Innocent Voyage
),
respectively.

A Note on the Author

Daniel Handler is the author of the novels
The Basic Eight
,
Watch Your Mouth
,
Adverbs
and
Why We Broke Up
. As Lemony Snicket, he is responsible for many books for children, including the thirteen-volume sequence
A Series of Unfortunate Events
and the four-book series
All the Wrong Questions
. He is married to the illustrator Lisa Brown, and lives with her and their son in San Francisco.

By the Same Author

NOVELS
:

The Basic Eight

Watch Your Mouth

Adverbs

Why We Broke Up

NOT A NOVEL:

Girls Standing on Lawns

AS LEMONY SNICKET:

A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS

The Bad Beginning

The Reptile Room

The Wide Window

The Miserable Mill

The Austere Academy

The Ersatz Elevator

The Vile Village

The Hostile Hospital

The Carnivorous Carnival

The Slippery Slope

The Grim Grotto

The Penultimate Peril

The End

[and]

Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography

The Beatrice Letters

ALL THE WRONG QUESTIONS

Who Could That Be at This Hour?

When Did You See Her Last?

Shouldn’t You Be in School?

[and]

File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents

29 Myths on The Swinster Pharmacy

FOR THE HOLIDAYS:

The Baby in the Manger

The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming

The Lump of Coal

AND:

Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid

The Composer Is Dead

13 Words

The Dark

AS THE POPE:

How to Dress for Every Occasion

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the following people: Lisa Brown, Otto Handler, Charlotte Sheedy, Ron Bernstein, Nancy Miller, Suzi Young, Andrew Sean Greer, Dave Eggers, Amanda Ducat, Nina Seligson, Laura King, Lauren Cerand, Jeffrey Fisher and Susan Rich. Parts of this novel were hashed out at the MacDowell Colony, to which the author also tips his hat.

available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including

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recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be

liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. For information, write to

Bloomsbury USA, 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018.

Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York

Bloomsbury is a trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR

eISBN: 978-1-60819-775-0

First published in the United States in 2015

This electronic edition published in February 2015