“That’s terrible news,” Mr. Drinkwater said. “How can I impress a woman like that?”
“Mr. Drinkwater, don’t sell yourself short! Does Mrs. Abdurov know about your literary success?”
“If she doesn’t, she’s not going to hear it from me,” said Mr. Drinkwater. “I don’t want her to know I made my credit. You know what they say, Jeremiah: credit makes credit, people make people. Anyway, I came on the E4 to get away from all that.”
“I thought you came on the E4 to extend your copyright. Sorry,” Jeremiah added, realizing that his toes had once again crossed the line of propriety laid down by the Golden Unwritten Rule, “I don’t mean to pry.”
“What in the all-fire H-E-C-K do I care about my copyright?” Mr. Drinkwater said. Jeremiah was familiar with his verbal tic of spelling out even the lightest curse—a consequence, he supposed, of a life surrounded by the young, impressionable ears of his fans. “What use will I have for royalties when I’ve been stone cold dead for a century? It’s my publishers who want the copyright extended. So we cut a deal: I came on this cruise, giving them an extra eighteen years before my work became public domain.”
“But what did you get in return?”
“I got out seven books early, is what I got! I got away from that S-T-U-P-I-D little penguin and his so-called ‘adventures.’ My heart was never really in children’s literature in the first place, Jeremiah—I wanted to do art that was edgier, not so D-A-R-N safe.”
“All right,” said Jeremiah, “we’ll have to find something else to impress Mrs. Abdurov. What was that edgier art you wanted to try?”
Mr. Drinkwater chewed his lower lip. He looked both eager and abashed, as if he had taken a coin representing his fear on one side and his desire on the other, flipped it, and seen it land perched on its edge.
“Mime,” he whispered finally.
“Sorry,” said Jeremiah, “did you just—did you say ‘mime’?”
“Yes.”
“Like the clowns with the white paint who do the whole ‘oh no, I’m trapped in a box’ act?”
Mr. Drinkwater smiled indulgently.
“You could call that mime,” he said, “in the same way you could call a Budbusch a beer, or a McSynthy’s a hamburger. Mime is an ancient and beautiful art form. I wanted to turn professional, you know, as a young man—my parents insisted I go into something safer.”
“Like what?” asked Jeremiah.
“Children’s literature, of course. But I still wonder to this day whether I could have made it as a professional mime.”
Mr. Drinkwater shook his head and pursed his lips, as if he could taste the past on them, and it was not sweet. Jeremiah did not enjoy seeing such a kind man so disappointed—a man whose work had brought happiness not just to Jeremiah but to so many other children as well.
“Well I for one am sure you could have been a professional mime,” said Jeremiah. “Anyone would know it just by looking at you. The way you move, the way you sit, the way you hold yourself. Everything about it says ‘this man is a very talented mime.’”
Mr. Drinkwater brightened.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, Jeremiah. You know, I think you’re right: if we’re going to impress Mrs. Abdurov, mime is how we’re going to do it.”
“Well,” said Jeremiah. “I didn’t quite mean—that is, mime isn’t the easiest way to impress someone on your average occasion. It’s not really the sort of thing you can just break out in the middle of breakfast or cocktails, is it? You need to find the right atmosphere—a social context, you could say, more conducive to miming.”
“That’s it!” cried Mr. Drinkwater, leaping from his chair. “Jeremiah, you’re a genius!”
“Thank you, Mr. Drinkwater. And thank you,” Jeremiah said optimistically, “for visiting the Guest Services Desk. Have a Golden Worldlines day.”
“I need a platform to showcase my mime!” Mr. Drinkwater continued. “Somewhere I can stand out from the pack of preening suitors! Somewhere that it’s not just socially acceptable to display one’s talent, but expected. I need a talent show!”
“A talent show it is, then,” said Jeremiah. “And now, if you don’t mind, I’ll head to a slightly belated lunch.”
“You should,” said Mr. Drinkwater. “You go on and get some lunch, Jeremiah. Enjoy it. Savor it. You’ve earned it, by G-O-D.”
He shook Jeremiah’s hand as the latter stood up, and kept shaking it as they walked out of the office side-by-side, like two politicians creating some awkward b-roll waves at the conclusion of all-night peace talks that had gone better than expected.
“Mr. Drinkwater?” said Jeremiah when they reached the hall, still shaking hands.
“Yes?”
“I have to lock the door.”
“Ah, of course you do!” said Mr. Drinkwater, releasing Jeremiah’s hand at last. “So will you announce tomorrow? We have less than two weeks left on the cruise!”
“Announce what?” asked Jeremiah.
“The talent show!” said Mr. Drinkwater.
“Oh,” Jeremiah said, “events like that aren’t really my forte. I thought that you’d be handling more of the announcing and organizing and various—Mr. Drinkwater, why do you keep pointing above the door?”
“What does it say there, Jeremiah? Right where I’m pointing?”
“Office of Guest Services?” said Jeremiah.
“And?”
Jeremiah’s heart sank.
“Event Planning.”
“Enjoy your lunch,” said Mr. Drinkwater, grabbing Jeremiah’s hand for one more pump. “By G-O-D, enjoy every morsel.”
3
Civil Rights, Sharp Lefts
Still Friday (9 days until arrival)
Despite this rough end to the morning shift, Jeremiah felt a bit better as he hurried to the dining room. The holo-portals were showing fields of sunflowers as far as the eye could see, their faces turned upward to catch the noon rays, rustling in the digital breeze. As he passed the library, Jeremiah thought for perhaps the 1000th time that he should really get back to reading a bit more. When he cut through the billiards room, Jeremiah imagined with pleasure how much more relaxing tonight’s friendly game and brandy with the Chapins would be, with a day of hard labor behind it.
His arrival in the dining room did nothing to change his mood’s upward trend. A general hush fell over the diners, and for a moment Jeremiah enjoyed the pleasant sensation of a minor celebrity strolling among a crowd that is still trying to figure out whether he just looks like himself or actually is.
“Jeremiah!” called Mrs. Chapin from across the dining room. She waved him over to the table where she and her husband were occupying two of the four seats.
“We saved your seat,” she said, pointing out the one next to Mr. Chapin, where Jeremiah was accustomed to sit during lunch, and did so now. “And we waited to order—I told you he’d be here, Henry.”
“Hello Jeremiah,” said Mr. Chapin.
“Hello, Mr. Chapin.”
Mr. Chapin wrinkled his nose.
“I think you mean Henry,” he said.
“Apparently in my new situation I am to call you Mr. Chapin, or suffer dire consequences.”
“We heard a bit about that, but you’ll have to tell us more,” said Mr. Chapin. “Perhaps after we order?”
“How can you think of food at a time like this?” said Mrs. Chapin. “Ordering lunch while Jeremiah can’t even call us by our given names? And before Alastair arrives? Where could he be? He’s never late for lunch. But I don’t want to hear another mention of food until we’ve got the whole story. Now, Jeremiah: was it awful? Were you persecuted? Tell us everything,” she said. “Everything.”
* * *
“They can’t do that to you,” Mrs. Chapin pronounced, when Jeremiah had finished. “It’s not like you could even make enough credit to pay your passage. You know what they say: credit makes credit, people make people.”
In his narration of the morning’s
events, Jeremiah had attempted to balance the rich detail that Mrs. Chapin demanded with the quick summary for which Mr. Chapin’s hungry eyes had pleaded—and with which Jeremiah, conscious of the brevity of his lunch hour and hollowness in his own stomach, sympathized.
“Yes, and if it’s just a matter of credit,” said Mr. Chapin, relieved that the fix was so simple, “we would happily—”
“No,” Jeremiah said. “Thank you, but I couldn’t possibly. It’s just riding a desk and fixing the odd PED for ten days. I’ll be done by five every night, just in time to tell you all the day’s war stories over dinner and billiards. I’ll soldier through. You know, perhaps we should order…”
“Soldier through?” Mrs. Chapin said. “This is indentured servitude! A violation of your civil rights. Wait, do we have civil rights out here?”
“I assume so,” said Jeremiah.
“Which kind? British?”
“American, I would think.”
“But we departed from London.”
“But Golden Worldlines is an American company.”
Mrs. Chapin frowned.
“I would prefer British civil rights,” she said.
“Do you even know the difference?” Mr. Chapin asked.
“No, but I’ve had American civil rights my whole life. A little variety might be nice.” She turned back to Jeremiah. “Anyway you’re British, aren’t you?”
“Detroit,” Jeremiah said, “born and bred.”
“Honestly Sara,” said Mr. Chapin, “he doesn’t even have the accent.”
“Well, he has the air.”
Jeremiah smiled. This was life aboard the Einstein IV—the Chapins bickering pleasantly about matters of no consequence, the sounds of silver- and glassware in the background, and the prospect of a good lunch. All was once more as it should be—the only minor nuisance being that Jeremiah had to keep checking the clock.
“The only Brit on this cruise is Roof, as you well know,” Mr. Chapin was saying. “Where has he got to, anyway? I’m starving. Ah, speak of the handsome devil himself.”
Upon this announcement, Mrs. Chapin made a discreet survey of her sixty-years-young beauty under the pretense of frowning at a spot in her soup spoon, flattening her blouse so that a bit more of her ruby necklace peeped out from the neckline.
“Crowded today,” Alastair Roof observed.
“Only because you’re later than usual,” said Mr. Chapin.
“Yes,” said Mr. Roof, “matters to attend to and all that. May I? Have you already ordered?”
“We waited,” said Mr. Chapin. “I’ll call Katherine over now.”
Mr. Chapin waved over Jeremiah’s shoulder while Mr. Roof began the 30-second process of sitting down without dulling a single one of the knife-creases in his clothing. As the Brit crossed his long legs, he admired the turquoise blue of a fine wool sock that peeked out from beneath his pant cuff. He smiled—though whether at the warmth of the socks or their rare incongruity with the rest of his costume, Jeremiah could not tell.
“I like your socks,” said Jeremiah.
Mr. Roof frowned and hid his legs below the table.
“The climate control has been kept rather cold lately,” he said. He looked relieved as Mr. Chapin began to cough, sparing him any further explanation.
Mr. Roof’s relief faded as those first few dry hacks grew into a full-blown attack. Mr. Chapin turned his head to the side and waved away the water that his wife pressed on him, while Mr. Roof and Jeremiah found other things to study in the dining room—the chandelier, the period brasswork, the dance floor gleaming in the middle of the rich maroon carpet, unused since the Valentine’s Day dance—as if neither had any inkling that Henry Chapin might have had anything worse than a tickle in his throat. But as the seconds became minutes, Mr. Roof and Jeremiah could no longer maintain the pretense of examining the decor. They exchanged a worried, questioning glance, while Mrs. Chapin abandoned the water angle and started whacking her husband on the back. Jeremiah was just about to summon help when Mr. Chapin recovered in one fell swoop and said, with only a trace of hoarseness, “Good afternoon, Katherine. I’ll have the oyster tempura to start and then the venison, on the rarer side, hold the asparagus.”
Jeremiah turned and looked over his shoulder, where Henry Chapin had directed these remarks, and indeed, there she was: Katherine, lovely and cheerful in her simple black slacks and white blouse, holding her notepad and pen at the ready (though Jeremiah had never seen her take a single note or mistake a single order).
“Would you like to sub in a different vegetable for the asparagus, Mr. Chapin?” she asked. “We’ve just thawed out some carrots, and there might be a few green beans left from last night.”
“Vegetables aren’t food, Katherine,” said Mr. Chapin. “They’re what food eats.”
“Potato?”
“Give it up, dear,” Mrs. Chapin said. “I’ve been trying to get him to eat vegetables since I was your age, and it’s larky. Do you know, once at the Maplewood I tried hiding a pea under Hollandaise sauce while he was away from the table—a single pea under a whole blanket of the stuff—and he picked it out immediately when he came back. ‘What’s this?’ he said, holding it towards me with his fork, just like that, dripping with Hollandaise. ‘What’s this?’”
“Did he?” said Mr. Roof in a tone of polite wonder, as if he had not heard this same story a significant fraction of the 2,100-plus meals they had shared during the previous 700-plus days. “Hollandaise sauce, you say?”
“Like the princess and the pea,” Mrs. Chapin said, “only with Hollandaise.”
“I think that’s enough discussion of my dietary habits for one day,” said Mr. Chapin, handing his menu across the table to Katherine. “What are you having, Sara my dear?”
“The chicken cacciatore sounds interesting,” she said, “but I just don’t think I can face chewing chicken right now. I do feel like the flavor of chicken, though. Could the chef cook the sauce with the chicken for a while and then remove it?”
“Are you congenitally unable to order from the menu?” her husband asked.
“I miss being able to cook for myself.”
“You haven’t cooked for yourself three times in the 40 years we’ve been married.”
“I didn’t say I missed cooking, I said I missed being able to cook. Sometimes,” said Mrs. Chapin, handing her menu to Katherine, “you don’t appreciate what you have until it’s gone. And it’s 43 years we’ve been married—next month it will be 44.”
As the Chapins began a vigorous debate about how many years it was that they had been vigorously debating any and all such matters legally in the eyes of man and God, Katherine turned to Jeremiah.
“Mr. Brown?”
“I’d like the oysters and venison as well—and for the 100th time, for you to call me Jeremiah.”
“We’re still not allowed to call the guests by their first names, Mr. Brown.”
“What if circumstances had changed?” asked Jeremiah.
“What do you mean?”
Jeremiah stole a glance at his fellow diners: Mr. and Mrs. Chapin were now arguing about whether the relativistic cruise they were on affected the counting of their anniversaries. Mr. Roof, whose judgment was occasionally being appealed to in the anniversary argument, was alternating polite but meaningless smiles at the Chapins with nervous, sidelong surveillance of the door. None of them were paying the slightest attention to Katherine and Jeremiah.
“Katherine,” said Jeremiah, “do you remember how one night a good while ago, back in the red leg of the cruise, I dawdled a bit after everyone had finished dinner, and—after you and I had been chatting pleasantly for a while about this and that—I asked you a potentially embarrassing question?”
Katherine crossed her arms. Her left eyebrow, which was naturally higher than her right, lifted higher still. Jeremiah saw her perform the same survey of the Chapins’ and Roof’s attention as he had, and reach the same conclusion.
“Yes,” s
he said.
“Do you remember what you said?” asked Jeremiah.
“That I don’t have coffee with guests.”
“So if I were to tell you that, due to imminent default on my ticket, I had been assigned to work in the Office of Guest Services with Alfred Reynolds—thereby making us co-workers—what would you say?”
“First, that I don’t have coffee with co-workers. Second, I would ask you why, if you’re not a ticketed passenger anymore, you were eating lunch in the guest dining room instead of the staff cafeteria.”
She had a point. It was a good point, a strong point—a point that Jeremiah had not considered. It was also a point that he was eager to continue not considering as long as possible—which did not promise to be long, as Mr. Grubel had just entered the dining room. He had stopped right inside the door and was scanning the tables.
Jeremiah hid behind his menu, but too late—he had been spotted, and Grubel approached the table like a man on a mission.
“Jeremiah, thank goodness I found you!” said Grubel. “And Katherine, you’re here too, excellent.” He turned and addressed himself to the Chapins and Mr. Roof. “Good afternoon, I’m Benedict Grubel, Financial Officer on the Einstein IV. I’m sorry to interrupt your lunch, but I have some business with Jeremiah.”
“I know who you are,” said Mrs. Chapin. “You’re the one who violated Jeremiah’s civil rights.”
“Technically, Mrs. Chapin, this far from Earth, Jeremiah doesn’t have civil rights. He acknowledged as much in the contract he signed—as did you all.”
“How do you know my name?” asked Mrs. Chapin.
“Mrs. Chapin, it is my business to know our guests—in certain aspects of their lives—better than they know themselves. If you have any further questions about civil rights—Jeremiah’s or in general—I am happy to point you to the apropos sections of the contract. Or if you have the leisure, I encourage you to read it in its entirety—it’s quite enlightening.”
Mrs. Chapin worried the bejeweled end of her necklace between her thumb and index finger, as if it were a talisman against this horrifying suggestion.
World Enough (And Time) Page 3
