But David was already hugging her. “Are you really going to have a baby?” he said. “Both of us? You don’t need a passport to get to Canada, my love. If you forget, you can get in with a driver’s license as long as you make a fuss. I made a fuss, so please you don’t, baby. Andrea is sort of mean, and she has that stupid hair, but truly it’s that I don’t love her and I do you, and what on earth has happened to your face?”
“Is that true?” Helena said, and was breathless and willing to believe that she knew it all along with the love. “I don’t even have a driver’s license because I’m new in town and everyone drives on the wrong side of the road.”
“I’ll teach you to drive,” said her husband, and Helena imagined that he would have a lot to teach her. So much more gorgeous he was than the song, even in those particular pajamas, that she could imagine he was going to teach her a lot. “I’ll teach you to drive and drive you anyplace in the meantime. And the baby, wherever it wants to go.”
“It likes the Black Elephant,” Helena said and lay down next to him on the bed. He put his arm around her and felt the belly where the baby was currently living. This made Helena need to pee even more, but she kept him there out of love and because of love and because all the stupidest songs are right. Why talk over this music? Helena could think of no reason. Why argue with the way love falls, not particularly, on people who arguably have not earned the warmth it brings in the bed, as fierce and red as the center of the Earth? Helena did not argue. Perhaps she could not, after all the dancing. She leaned against her spouse and stopped her sobbing. She threw her worries into a puddle on the street and let the love deliver itself like an envelope full of money. She clutched it in her hand, the stuff she won, the money she earned, the love she arrived at, everything everything just for her and her baby, baby. She leaned against him and wished for nothing else.
often
The pharmacy on the ship is more like a closet, so the woman working at the pharmacy is a woman standing in a closet, and Allison is a woman standing outside the door of a closet like she’s deciding what to wear, thinking what’s in my closet? What’s this? What’s this? And how did this get here, this ugly thing?
“Oh my god!” the pharmacy woman is squealing, because Allison has asked for what she wants. “Oh my god! Congratulations!”
Allison pulls a wallet out of a purse and has a fervent desire, even in these times, that it’s a gun. “I want to shoot you,” Allison says, but she is soft-spoken.
“What?” says the pharmacy woman.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Allison says, but she knows this is like “turn this ship around and bring me back to San Francisco.” Now everyone will know, and she feels fat, too. Almost everyone knows already, the way this woman is with the “Oh my god!”
“Oh my god!” says the pharmacy woman, and Allison looks through her purse again. Where is her gun? Where is her machine gun to shoot people? She hands the pharmacy woman a piece of American currency in the amount of twenty dollars and says, “Instead of change, please give me a gun so I can shoot you.” She is soft-spoken but short and full of rage lately, like her whole life.
“No no honey,” the pharmacy woman says in her closet. “You sign for it and the bill comes later. You know how to use these things? You pee on it. You pee on it in the morning.”
“I hate you so much,” Allison says, and the woman frowns like maybe she heard some of that.
“I hope it turns blue,” the pharmacy woman says. “When you asked for a pregnancy thing I was like oh my god! I really hope it turns blue for you.”
“You too,” Allison says, and puts the thing in her purse.
Allison is on a Comics Cruise. The offer came on the phone, which Allison answered on the third ring, like anyone remembers a thing like that. “Hello, I’m the woman from Comics Cruise,” said the phone earpiece. “I’m here to offer you blah blah blah. A Comics Cruise is, comic book artists are there. There are panels. Your husband Adrian is incredibly fucking respected in his field, and he is invited on the Comics Cruise. His fans will get a chance to meet with him on a boat in the middle of the ocean. They will get that chance.”
“And what do the comic artists get?” Allison asked.
“What do they get?” said the telephone in goddamn surprise. “They get to go on the Comics Cruise!”
“See you there,” Allison said, and hung up the phone. This is not exactly how it happened, but Allison went upstairs and told Adrian anyway.
“What?” Adrian said. “A Comics Cruise, do you hate me?”
“She said you were incredibly fucking respected,” Allison said. “Sometimes, yes. You could have answered the phone, for instance. It rang three times.”
“Like anyone remembers something like that,” Adrian said, making a mark on a paper with a pen. “I don’t want to go on a Comics Cruise. It’s in the middle of the ocean.”
“They get you there on a boat,” Allison said in anger, and she looked around Adrian’s office for a bunch of things she could throw up in the air. They couldn’t be important things and they couldn’t break. She loved him, after all, but they had been fighting and so she signed him right up for a Comics Cruise. “They pay for the whole boat,” she said helplessly. “It’s not like they drop you in the middle of the ocean and you’re surrounded by sharks. Love me, Adrian, like you used to.”
“Sharks?” Adrian said. “I’m definitely not going.”
“This is what I’m talking about,” Allison said. “You’re making me very sad.” She was in a chair, thinking about this diner they had been to once, which she had loved but was in an inconvenient place to get to. Why hadn’t they gone there again? “Or,” she said, “I’m sad lately, and it has nothing to do with that.” The diner, she thought. The diner and its menus and seats, everything up in the air. She sat there until her husband looked up at her at least, like he might put down his pen. “Can I help you?” he asked, and here she is. The Comics Cruise is divided into three decks. Everything is on C Deck. Allison is on C Deck, at the Something Bar, with Hillary and Tomas and other people giggling. She needs a vacation, but this is more like hell on Earth than a vacation. Still, it is something like a vacation. In front of everyone are things they won’t have to pay for until later. The bar menu is garishly extensive, with drinks like the Neptune Fizz and the Attractive Magpie. They have Hong Kong Cobblers and Tipsy Mermaids and Do Be Carefuls and many people are having Sex on the Beach. They have something called the Gypsy Rose, and they have cranberry juice which they will serve with a twist if you ask. Allison has not asked. There are two schools of thought on what you should drink if you might be pregnant and then again you might not. One is, drink cranberry juice. The other is, why should I drink cranberry juice when I might be pregnant and I’ll have to have cranberry juice until the baby comes out of my vagina, I think I’ll try the Hong Kong Cobbler. Allison has no school of thought. She’s letting her thoughts run around the yard rather than reporting inside, and she is still thinking about sitting in Adrian’s office and thinking about the diner, even now. There is a possibility that this is what is making her cry a little bit, but Hillary doesn’t notice because she is enjoying her Happy Banana Monkey.
“Earth to Spouse, Earth to Spouse,” Hillary says. Hillary is based on a real comic artist whose work my wife hates. Cat humor is prevalent. She snaps her fingers in front of Allison and says it again, “Earth to Spouse.” She calls her Spouse because she was behind Allison in the registration line. The registration man said “name” and Allison gave it up. The registration man flipped through a bunch of cards he’d stayed up all night putting into order and boxes. “Hmm,” he said. “Your name isn’t here and I’m one thousand percent positive these cards are in the exact right order.”
Allison looked in her purse for a gun. “You can’t be one thousand percent sure,” said an irritating woman behind her. “There’s only one hundred percent of everything.”
“Good point,” the registration man said, and t
hey both laughed and the man reached over Allison’s head and handed the irritating woman a badge and a packet of stuff. “Hey, Hillary,” the man said. “Welcome back to Comics Cruise.”
“I’m one thousand percent happy to be here,” Hillary said, and Allison couldn’t believe it but they laughed again at the very same thing.
“Now, let’s get you squared away,” the man said. Now he was in a better mood, what with laughing so hard at the same thing twice. “Are you a fan or a comic book artist?”
“Neither,” Allison said. “I don’t really like comic books and I don’t draw them.”
Hillary had stuck around for this, and the registration man looked puzzled and flipped a few cards, possibly out of habit. “Spouse?” he finally guessed.
“Yes,” Allison said. “I married him.”
“Are your names the same?” the man said.
“No, no, no, no,” Allison said. “When we got married we had all these wedding checks, money people had written to the two of us. We took them to the bank and the bank said it would be more convenient for them if we had the same name. We thought that was ridiculous.”
The registration man and Hillary both nodded eagerly. They were both one thousand percent sure that a punch line was coming. Allison remembered when she used to think that, and was amazed that it actually wasn’t that long ago. “And then I burned the bank down,” Allison said, “with kerosene-soaked rags,” but she was soft-spoken and nobody knew about this crime.
“What?” Hillary said.
“I said,” Allison said, but then instead of saying what she said she said her husband’s name.
“Oh my god!” the registration man said.
“Oh my god too!” Hillary cried, and then put down her shopping bag and gave Allison a hug with both of her arms. Allison decided it was okay sort of like if you’re in a car and it topples off a hill you decide it’s okay to fall, too. “Your husband is so respected in this industry!”
“Blah blah blah!” said the registration man.
“I’m going to sit next to you at all the panels,” Hillary said. “And we’ll eat together too and at night they have this wonderful bar and we’ll take turns buying each other drinks and stuff!”
Allison looked around at all the lines of people. Many of them were already taking photographs of what was happening. When the phone had said panels on the cruise, for some reason Allison had pictured panels, like big blank squares, maybe the walls of a cubicle, or large pieces of cardboard, on display. She thought that would be nice, presumably a break for all the comic book artists who were used to filling in panels with ink. But now, with some people already putting the plastic badges around their necks so they would always have them handy on the Comics Cruise, she saw that of course it was panels, with people talking and stating their opinions and perhaps asking questions and preceding their questions with, “I have two questions, and the first question is in two parts.” Allison felt herself split into two parts right there on the registration floor, as if her gun had accidentally fired and ripped through her purse into her spine which hurt from the Hillary hug. “I don’t have enough money,” Allison said. “I can’t pay for all those drinks.”
“You just sign for them,” Hillary said. “You sign for them and the bill comes later. Haven’t you ever been on Comics Cruise before?”
“We’ve never been able to get him,” the registration guy said. “We never thought a man of his blah blah would make it to Comics Cruise.”
“He didn’t make it,” Allison said. “I threw him overboard into the sea full of sharks.”
Nobody heard her. It wasn’t funny anyway, not like that thousand-percent laugh riot, or that “Earth to Spouse” joke Hillary is making now.
“Earth to Spouse! Earth to Spouse! Come in, Spouse!” Hillary says, and Allison clears her throat.
“Sorry,” Allison says, and then says it again because she is soft-spoken. “Sorry,” she says.
“Hey hey, that’s okay,” Hillary says. “You have a lot on your mind? Comics Cruise is always food for thought for me.”
“I’ve never been on one,” Allison says, to pass the time.
“Oh yes,” Hillary says. “It’s not a show, though. Do you know or remember? A TV show from when we were kids? It was that show on TV about love on a boat. It was about…” Hillary waves her hands in the air and slurps the rest of her Monkey with a straw.
“It was about an hour long,” says a voice, and above them is a man who is handsome like a new truck. He has shoulder-length blond hair, if you like that sort of thing, and he is smiling because he needs the practice.
Hillary doesn’t laugh, which is sort of a miracle, although not the miracle Allison is hoping for. “That is funny,” Hillary says seriously, and puts a piece of ice into her mouth. “Can I use that?”
“Use that?” the man says. “Are you an aspiring comic artist?”
“I am a comic artist,” Hillary says. “I don’t aspire to anything. I’m totally syndicated.” She looks at the guy and says the name of her comic strip like you might say the name “Adolf Hitler” if somebody said, “Who’s that German guy who was in charge of all the Nazis?”
“Sorry,” the guy says, and puts his drink into his other hand so he can shake hands with Hillary. “My name’s Keith Hayride. Perhaps you’ve heard of my strip, Fair Is Fair?”
“Heard of it?” Hillary says. “Oh my god!” and Allison looks up at the ceiling to see how quickly it would collapse in a fire. There must be kerosene-soaked rags in her purse, and this guy Keith would definitely definitely definitely give her a light. But where is Adrian? Shouldn’t he be at the bar too, instead of maybe hiding in his room? For a while, after the bank fiasco, Allison kept a copy of her marriage certificate in her purse, for identification purposes only. But now Adrian is nowhere to be found in her purse. He has been replaced by a gun, by kerosene-soaked rags, and a pregnancy test. Adrian used to stop by her purse all the time, every day even. That felt like love, to Allison, something she knows is in her purse even if she hardly ever used it.
“This is Allison, Keith,” Hillary says, “but her nickname is Spouse because she’s married to blah blah.”
Keith raises his eyebrows and says nothing. Allison likes that a little bit. “I’m having Sex on the Beach,” he says. “It’s a party drink.”
“Is this your first Comics Cruise?” Hillary asks.
“Yeah, I guess,” Keith says. “I’m sort of looking forward to the panels I guess. Although a lot of the people say stupid things at those things.”
“They’re just trying to ask us questions,” Hillary says, like she’s petting one of her cats and calling it a nickname. “I think it’s nice. Comic fans don’t get that chance very many times.”
“I guess so,” Keith says, looking around. Someone takes a picture of them all at the bar together, and Allison blinks in it. “Some of them seem like kids.”
“There was a children’s author cruise too,” Hillary says, counting something on her fingers. “The theme was ‘High Art and Low Art.’”
“That won’t get you laid,” Keith says and chuckles.
Hillary takes the straw out of her Monkey and drinks some more of the wet ice. This doesn’t pass the time, so Allison decides to speak up.
“All my life,” she says, “people told me what would get me laid, but I never did it.”
“And?” Keith says.
“And I never got laid,” Allison says, but is this a mating dance or not? If someone is answering this question it’s not Allison. For a while in school she was all about the ornithology, mostly because of a professor. “For all organisms the single most important aspect of their lives is to reproduce, for if they leave no descendants they are evolutionary failures.” But then she switched to English and got her Ph.D., and then she met Adrian because they both were always copying things at a copy store, and now look at her. Past the bar is a dance floor the size of four mattresses pushed together in the center of the room, and so
mebody is playing dance tunes, so people will dance. She loves Adrian very much, but how did the mating dance leave her here? She thought there were more steps to it than that.
“Oh my god!” The pharmacy woman is here and now she is wearing sunglasses and three other people, one of whom is inching her hand toward a camera tucked into the waistband of her pants. “Have you told them?”
“Told us what?” Hillary says, and laughs for a minute like she’s getting ready to laugh later and wants to make sure it’s ready.
The pharmacy woman claps a hand over her mouth and her friends laugh, sure enough. They’re all comic fans, although clapping their hands over their mouths will not save them from kerosene-encouraged flames.
“Told us what?” Hillary says. “Told us what told us what told us what?”
“She’s pregnant,” the pharmacy woman says, and how could this happen? Allison never should have let her out of the closet. More and more in the news, in the country where this whole thing takes place which is America, there are random gunmen and they shoot up whole rooms of people. But why are they never here, where we want them? Why don’t they shoot up a whole room just when Allison wants them to?
“Oh my god,” says one of the friends of the pharmacy woman. “With your husband and what he does. He writes about it and now it’s true! You must have been waiting for many years!” Everyone thinks this over and makes some joyous noises.
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Hillary says. “Oh Spouse I mean Allison this is so exciting for you.”
“You know what I hadn’t thought of?” Keith says, but the pharmacy woman and her friends have found some stools so they can get their chance to meet comic book artists in an informal setting. They decide to sit in a half-circle, like half a bunch of sharks, like there is only half a chance Allison could go someplace else. “I hadn’t thought that everyone who works on the cruise would be a fan of comic books, “Keith says. “I’m pretty sure they didn’t make that very clear on the phone with the Comics Cruise woman.”
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