Jeremiah was of a different opinion, but he wasn’t exactly eager to discuss the Katherine situation with the table—and besides, he had more pressing business with Luis: namely, his recent conversation with Mr. Werther. Jeremiah tried to summarize for Luis what Mr. Werther had told him about Alabama v. Pinkerton, the Principle of Least Earthly Surprise, and moral hazard—and how all this meant that Luis could still be charged for grand theft veeauto the minute he set foot back on U.S. soil—but Luis was having none of it.
“Mundo knows of what he talks,” Luis kept saying. “Mundo knows of what he talks.”
“Would you at least talk to Mr. Werther?” asked Jeremiah at last.
“I don’t want to talk to no lawyer. You say ‘hello’ to a lawyer and they charge you 1,000 credits. Then you ask, ‘What the hell you charge me for?’ and they charge 5,000 more to explain you. My brother Mundo, he knows of what he talks. I don’t want to talk no more about stolen cars and the statue of libertations, ok?”
Jeremiah agreed reluctantly. There was no sense in fighting—he would just have to find some way to get Luis and Mr. Werther together.
“Good,” Luis said. “We talk about something else. How you plan to fight El Luchador?”
The prospect of discussing Katherine and John Battle with the table still held about as much appeal for Jeremiah as scheduling a root canal simultaneous with a colonoscopy and a visit from the IRS in the recovery room, but he could feel the drift moving in that direction—he had to find some other topic to distract them.
“Luis, you mentioned you were a carpenter?”
“Yes,” said Luis, “me and Carlos Second are good carpenters. The others, they try.”
“If you were gluing together some old wood, what would you use?”
“Adhesivo de madera, of course,” he said. “I don’t know how you say in English.”
“Wood glue?” asked Jeremiah.
Luis shook his head.
“Glue for wood?”
“No,” said Luis, “is not glue. Is more like, adhesive.” He paused to translate the exchange to the table, who seemed to find it amusing. Carlos Second asked a question. “Carlos Second wants to know, what you are trying to fix?”
“Mrs. Mayflower’s bandora,” said Jeremiah.
At the name, all laughter around the table stopped instantly, and the blood drained from ten faces.
“La diabla,” whispered Jesús, and crossed himself.
“Usó su nombre,” said Heriberto, who looked as if he had finally laid eyes upon someone more loco than himself, and did not like the view.
Carlos First picked up his tray and left, followed shortly by Heriberto, Carlos Third, and Carlos Second, and one by one by the rest of the table until only Luis remained.
“What just happened?” Jeremiah asked.
“Was not funny, Jeremiah,” said Luis. “Why you upset everyone?”
“I was just telling you what the glue was for.”
“Why you no tell your ghost stories to someone else? I have work to do.”
* * *
Jeremiah sat alone after all his lunchmates had gone, picking at the crust of his sandwich and trying in vain to piece together what had just happened. After a few minutes he had the distinct feeling that he was being watched, and looked up to find the young Canadian doctor staring at him with a brooding intensity from across the cafeteria. The doctor stood up, and Jeremiah left without finishing his sandwich or even bussing his table.
12
Showdown at the Relaxation Station
Still Monday (6 days until arrival)
Back in the office, Jeremiah did not have long to dwell on this unsettling end to lunch before his first customer of the afternoon arrived, nearly stumbling through the door in her eagerness.
“Jeremiah,” said his first customer, at once breathily and breathlessly.
“Mrs. Chapin.”
“Jeremiah.”
Jeremiah was about to respond in kind when the memory of their last encounter made him think better of it.
“Hello there.”
“I have something for you,” said Mrs. Chapin. “I came yesterday, but you weren’t here.”
“Yes,” said Jeremiah, “Reynolds gave me—”
“You have no idea how hard it was to wait. I lay awake all night, fantasizing about the moment when I would give you this.”
She reached up to the lapels of her tasteful beige blouse and, before Jeremiah could protest, ripped left and right as if doing away with an unwelcome bodice.
To his relief, Jeremiah saw that the manner of her reveal had been more violent than the effect—only the top button had come unfastened. Even more welcome was the realization that Mrs. Chapin was not offering him a passionate assignation, but rather the ruby necklace that her beige blouse had been concealing.
And not just any ruby necklace. Mrs. Chapin had worn this necklace frequently throughout the cruise—Jeremiah knew the top quarter of it well—but never with a neckline risqué enough to reveal its full decadence. Jeremiah imagined that any run-of-the-mill ruby necklace having the misfortune to find itself on display next to Mrs. Chapin’s would have felt roughly as good about itself as Jeremiah standing in an elevator next to The Specimen. When Jeremiah thought of ruby necklaces—which, admittedly, he did not do often—he thought of golden chains brightened up with a few twinkles of red, and maybe a ladybug-sized stone in the center to make a real statement. This necklace looked more like a miner had strung the contents of an entire ruby mine on golden rope to make them more portable. Mrs. Chapin unclasped the necklace and set it on the desk.
“Here,” she said.
“Thank you,” said Jeremiah. It seemed the only thing to say.
“Don’t thank me, it’s not yours.”
“Ah,” said Jeremiah. “Just as well, since I couldn’t possibly accept.”
He tried to hand it back.
“It’s for you,” said Mrs. Chapin.
“But you just said—”
“Not to have—to use. You were right.”
Jeremiah associated being right with more positive feelings than the ones he was having right now.
“I was living in a fantasy world,” said Mrs. Chapin. “In the real world revolutions are difficult and expensive, just like you said. Furthermore, I am part of the oppressor class. If I’m not making sacrifices, how can I ask others to do the same? This necklace should fetch more than enough credit to get a revolution started.”
“Mrs. Chapin—”
“Jeremiah,” she replied soulfully.
“—I can’t possibly rally the workers of this ship to a revolution around me, ruby necklace or no.”
“Of course not—you’d be a terrible leader of a revolution.”
“That’s exactly what I was trying to tell you,” Jeremiah said.
“Yes, but the call of justice was resounding so loudly in my ears last time we spoke that I couldn’t hear. Why would the downtrodden workers of this ship choose you—a man who has been downtrodden for mere days—to represent them?”
“Yes,” said Jeremiah, “exactly!”
“Which is why you’ll have to find the face of the revolution. You’ll be his right-hand man—the Che to his Castro. Though perhaps you can restrain him a bit, as we talked about, to keep things from becoming too blood-soaked. Anyway, you’ll give the necklace to him, and he’ll know what to do. So who have you met among the workers to lead our revolution? Who will you give the necklace to?”
Jeremiah briefly entertained the fantasy of giving the necklace to Katherine, for reasons that were not revolutionary in the slightest—but no one else came to mind.
“I’m at a loss,” he said finally.
“Think! Who have you met?”
“Well, there’s Reynolds, but he seems too busy even to chat for a few minutes, let alone run a revolution. There’s that Canadian doctor who I keep running into—he certainly has the brooding intensity to be a revolutionary.”
“No no no,”
said Mrs. Chapin. “No one who has been to medical school can possibly be downtrodden.”
“Not even a Canadian?” asked Jeremiah.
“No. Not undeservedly, at least.”
“All right, there’s Luis and the Mexican table—”
Mrs. Chapin perked up.
“Did you say ‘Mexican’?”
“Yes,” said Jeremiah.
“And ‘table’?”
Jeremiah admitted he had.
“That’s perfect!” said Mrs. Chapin. “Mexicans have a long history of glorious revolutions started around tables—it’s in their blood. And this ‘Luis’ is the ringleader? Give him the necklace. He’ll know what to do.”
Jeremiah tried to protest, but she shushed him with her finger on his lips. Once it was clear that he would keep quiet, she walked to the door, where she stopped and turned.
“I’ll check back in a few days. If you can’t start a revolution with that necklace and a whole table of Mexicans,” she said, “then you are no kind of revolutionary.”
On that, at least, they agreed.
* * *
Things were quiet for the next hour, which gave Jeremiah some time to ponder the nagging salamander in his Domenican litany of woes: which was to say, a stage for the talent show. He flipped through the playbook, learning much about event planning in the process—which channels to reserve the dining room through, how to requisition a security and medical presence, and more—but nothing about how he might procure a stage. He was deep in the details of requesting maintenance to reconfigure the lighting in the dining room for a more theatrical effect when the door opened.
“Hello, Mr.—you know,” said Jeremiah, “I don’t know your last name.”
“I don’t believe in last names,” said Jack.
Jack had always seemed like a man who did not believe in a number of things, a partial list of which might include: trimming his ferocious red and silver beard, which resembled a bowl of long-grained rice cooked with slivers of orange peel; corrective vision surgery; cleaning the lenses of the glasses he wore as a consequence of his disbelief in corrective vision surgery; exercise of the upper body; posture; and avoiding the combination of denim overalls and a brown cardigan sweater with big leather buttons. He did seem to believe strongly, on the other hand, in turquoise wool leg warmers worn over denim overalls.
“I never knew last names were things you could not believe in,” said Jeremiah. “By the way, I like your leg warmers. Where did you get those?”
“I didn’t come here to be interrogated,” said Jack.
“Right, then let’s—can I help you find something under the desk, Jack?”
“I’m looking for bugs.”
“As in cockroaches?”
“As in recording devices. Did you know that it’s illegal in most states to record a conversation without the permission of all parties? Which permission,” he said, raising his voice for the benefit of any recording devices, “I categorically decline to give.”
“Jack, there aren’t any recording devices in here,” said Jeremiah. “Can I ask you to take a number?”
If there were any recording devices in use, they would have picked up Jack’s scoff, which sounded like a human-size cat clearing a cat-size hairball from his throat—which was to say, not a hairball the size of a cat’s, but of the cat itself.
“You imply that I’m crazy to suspect I’m being recorded, and in the same breath ask me to take a tracking number. Should I lean over so you can tattoo it on my neck?”
“I didn’t—never mind,” said Jeremiah. “How can I help you, Mr. Jack?”
“You can tell me you want me to buy drugs from you.”
“Sorry?”
“Loudly and clearly, so all the bugs pick it up.”
“But I don’t want you to buy drugs from me.”
“But I want you to say you do,” said Jack.
“I don’t really want to say it, either,” said Jeremiah.
Jack had prepared for this eventuality. He sat down at last, not in the chair, but directly in front of the door, so that Jeremiah could not exit and no one else could enter. From his pocket he produced a handful of nuts. As he ate, he began to hum. Jeremiah recognized the tune as “Take that Boot out My Face”—unofficial anthem of the Civil Wrongs movement, which had fomented the Detroit Election Night Riots. That Jeremiah recognized the song said a great deal more about Jeremiah’s skill at recognizing music than Jack’s skill at producing it.
For a few minutes Jeremiah tried to ignore Jack. He resumed reading about event permits. Jack finished the nuts and produced a protein bar, which he began to unwrap.
“Would you like one?” he asked Jeremiah.
“Not hungry, thanks.”
“Are you sure? I have plenty.”
Without standing up Jack opened his cardigan, revealing two inside pockets swollen with sufficient provisions to sustain him through a much longer stint of non-violent obstructionism than Jeremiah was willing to contemplate.
“All right,” said Jeremiah, and sighed. “I want you to buy drugs from me.”
Jack stood up.
“Louder.”
“I want you to buy drugs from me.”
“Say my name.”
“Jack.”
“Say the whole thing together, nice and loud.”
“For the love of—Jack, I want you to buy drugs from me. Are we done?”
“Entrapment,” said Jack into the air. He waited, smiling, as if giving some time for whoever was listening on the other side of the bugs to absorb the magnitude of the checkmate he had just delivered. Finally he sat down in the chair.
“I’m sorry about all that, Jeremiah,” he said. “I want you to know that I still consider you a friend. But, friend or not, once you’ve become part of the System, you have to be treated as such. It’s a question of my safety.”
“I see,” lied Jeremiah. “How can I help you today?”
“I want green, and I know you’re holding.”
“Green what?”
“You sold drugs to Bernie Wendstrom. I want some.”
“I never sold drugs to Mr. Wendstrom—or to anyone else, for that matter.”
“I was in line to sign up to do my Tibetan nasal chanting for the talent show, not ten feet away. He was sitting in the same chair I am now, and he asked you if you’d located any green for him. I heard it.”
“Ah,” said Jeremiah, relieved, “you misunderstood. The green item I was locating for him wasn’t drugs.”
“Then what was it?”
Jeremiah’s wave of relief broke on some rather disappointing cliffs.
“I’m not at liberty to reveal that,” he said in the blandest, most official tone he could muster, “due to Golden Worldlines’ strict policy of guest confidentiality.”
“Because it was drugs.”
“It was not drugs.”
“I just need to get mellow once before we get back to Earth. That fascist security officer found my stash and destroyed it. A true cog in the System, that one. He said if I weren’t a passenger he would have thrown me in the brig.”
Assuming that, by fascist security officer, Jack meant The Specimen, Jeremiah experienced a shot of unexpected sympathy.
“That guy’s the worst,” he said. “I’m sorry about your stash—I’d help if I could.”
“I’m not asking for the hard stuff. No white, no brown. Just green. And I’m willing to pay. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, after what I’ve done for you. Do you?”
It took Jeremiah a moment to recall exactly to which “what” Jack was referring.
* * *
All things being equal, it was a time Jeremiah would just as soon have forgotten: a night back in the red leg of the cruise, when his doorbell had rung and he had answered it to find Jack in the hall, holding up a plate of piled brownies.
“Try one,” Jack had said.
Jeremiah had obliged with pleasure, choosing the largest non-load-bearing brownie he
could find in the pyramid.
“Finally!” Jack had said. “Someone who’s willing to live a little! None of those other fogies would take one. They’re homemade.”
“Wow,” Jeremiah had said after finishing in three bites, “these are amazing! How did you make them?”
“I bribed one of the chefs to let me use the kitchen for a while.”
“Bribed him with what?”
“A brownie, of course!”
“Can I have another?” Jeremiah had asked.
Jack had lifted the tray magnanimously.
“Actually, do you mind if I—would it be rude if I—took two more?”
Abandoning all pretense of courtesy, Jeremiah had rooted around in the pile for the two largest brownies remaining, and then—as Jack had watched with a disbelief that quickly became concern and then respect—scarfed both down ravenously. Before he left, Jack had embraced him and called him his brother.
Jeremiah had passed the rest of the evening sobbing in his bathroom while the walls gurgled show tunes, bleeding what looked like rainbow Jell-O, and his PED plotted openly to sell him into sexual slavery. Afterwards Jack had invited him on several occasions to “get mellow” again, but Jeremiah had always found an excuse.
* * *
“Jack,” said Jeremiah, back in the present, “I appreciated the brownie—”
“Brownies.”
“—but I don’t have any drugs.”
“Is your place in the System really worth treating a friend this way?”
“Jack,” said Jeremiah, who had an idea, “for the last time, I categorically deny that I have access to drugs, have sold them to Mr. Wendstrom, or can sell them to you.”
So saying, Jeremiah poked the desk hard with his index finger. As he hoped, something about his having done so—and something about that word “categorically”—caught Jack’s attention.
“I see,” Jack said, his eyes growing wide. He lay a finger alongside his nose and pointed at the desk with his other hand, where he understood Jeremiah to have just indicated the position of the bugs. “For the record: I understand that you have no access to any illegal drugs, and no intention of selling them to me. Also for the record, I never had any intention of buying anything illegal—I was only testing you. And by the way, I do not consent to any recording of this conversation, audio or video, in which I tested whether you would refuse to sell me illegal drugs, and you passed. Do you consent to any such recordings?”
World Enough (And Time) Page 12
