“No, Jack,” said Jeremiah loudly and clearly, “I also do not consent to any recording, audio or video, of our interaction, in which you tested whether I would refuse to sell you illegal drugs, and I passed.”
“All right, Jeremiah,” Jack said, “I am going to stand up and leave now. I am now standing. Thank you. Here I go. Goodbye. I am almost at the door. I am at the door now.”
The door closed behind him.
“Just in case there really is a record” said Jeremiah into the air, “he totally wanted to buy drugs.”
* * *
After Jack’s visit, the afternoon slowed dramatically. Maybe all the passengers were taking post-lunch naps in their newly repaired Relaxation Stations, or maybe—even here in sunless space where afternoon was purely a social construct—it was during those long middle hours that Boyle’s recent memento mori cast its longest shadow.
Jeremiah certainly felt it. Had it been only yesterday morning that he’d seen Boyle dead? And the day before when he’d seen him alive and bitter and crazy? Each time Jeremiah closed his eyes and let his mind wander, it was a coin flip which incarnation of Boyle he’d have to dispel.
Even the mysteries of the playbook could not hold Jeremiah’s attention for long. By 3 o’clock he was sure that he could not ever be more bored than he was at that moment. By 4 o’clock he realized that his 3 o’clock self had lived, jaded and unappreciative, in a relative golden age of interest and distraction. By 4:30 he was close to gnawing off his own leg, and by 4:58 he could feel his imminent release like a fresh breeze from an open door at the end of a prison hallway.
At 4:59 Mrs. Abdurov walked in.
Her strength of character was visible in every punishing step she took, but Jeremiah had to admit that it was mysterious to him exactly which aspects of Mrs. Abdurov’s physical beauty Mr. Drinkwater had in mind when he sang its praises. “Statuesque,” you could have called her, if you posited a sculptor who had mistakenly begun work on a marble block lying on its side, a little wider than it was tall, and after realizing his mistake—given the price of marble these days—tried to make the best of it, chiseling the nose of his masterpiece in the aftermath of a fight with his wife, the eyes after they had passionately made up, and the mouth while she was calling him to dinner. Mrs. Abdurov wore pink slacks and a boxy olive-green blouse whose shoulders looked to have oven mitts sewn into them, as if to cushion the kickback from the butt of a rifle.
“Jeremiah,” she shouted, “I catch you in time.”
“Hello, Mrs. Abdurov,” said Jeremiah, “I was just about to close up.”
“What? Don’t mumble.”
“Close up,” shouted Jeremiah.
“No,” she said, even louder, “my chair. My chair isn’t working. My Relaxation Station.”
Mrs. Abdurov was stone deaf in one ear, but—Jeremiah had long suspected—only conveniently deaf in the other. He studied her face for any indication that she had actually understood him, but she would have made an excellent poker player—she seemed content to let Jeremiah take as much as time as he would like, secure that she would give nothing away.
“Oh, all right,” Jeremiah said, “what’s one more Relaxation Station? Let’s go.”
“What did you say?” said Mrs. Abdurov loudly—but this time Jeremiah was sure that he could see the glint of understanding in her eye, and the pleasure of victory at the corners of her mouth. “Speak up. Don’t mumble. Let’s go.”
* * *
Mrs. Abdurov was not one of Jeremiah’s easier customers. She held strong opinions about every detail of his duties: from the route they took back to her quarters, to whether Jeremiah was crowding her or malingering along the way, to how he began his investigation of her Relaxation Station and its various malfunctions.
For several problems ailed the apparatus: a shimmy when reclining, a click and grind that marked a refusal to recline any further, and a piercing whine when Jeremiah attempted to straighten it up again. Strangest of all, the workings of the chair chirped softly, even at rest.
Jeremiah followed the recommendations laid out in the playbook, but this Relaxation Station’s maladies were novel, and Jeremiah quickly found himself at the section labeled What to Do When None of the Above Work, which read in its entirety: “Take the Relaxation Station apart and investigate. Good luck.”
For a good fifteen minutes Jeremiah tugged and wrestled the various sections of the chair apart, while Mrs. Abdurov stood above him, sipping a cup of tea and remarking unfavorably on his strength, technique, and work ethic. Finally the back of the chair came shooting off, nearly taking Mrs. Abdurov’s cup of tea along in the process, as well as Jeremiah’s head.
Once the mechanism of the Relaxation Station was exposed, Jeremiah did not require long to diagnose the root cause of its problems.
“Crickets,” he said, and then shouted, before he could be instructed not to mumble. “Your Relaxation Station is home to a whole concerto of crickets!”
Crickets in every ontological state a cricket could inhabit, in fact, from the larval with their whole cricket lives ahead of them, to the deceased but still intact, to the deceased and powdered and gumming up the gears of the recliner quite effectively. Those still in the prime of crickethood, sensing freedom in the new wide spaces available to them, began to desert the chair that had been their home for a dynastic number of cricket generations.
Before Jeremiah could react to their exodus, Mrs. Abdurov hip checked him out of the way and stepped forward to confront the leaping horde herself. She had put down her cup of tea somewhere, and from elsewhere equally mysterious produced a can of aerosolized pesticide, which she was now wielding to deadly effect, strafing the advancing cricket line and then covering the inner workings of the chair with the poison mist until droplets gleamed on the metal. The toxic fog of war cleared to reveal a battlefield strewn with crickets lying on their backs, a few spiky legs still twitching briefly in the air—and then all was still.
“Where did you get that pesticide?” asked Jeremiah between coughs.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Abdurov said, clearing the air around her face with one hand and putting the other—still holding the can of pesticide—behind her back. “I put chair back together myself. You go now.”
Jeremiah did not need to be asked twice.
“I’m just going to wash this stuff off my hands and face,” he said, opening the door to the bathroom.
“No!”
This “no” was not Mrs. Abdurov’s usual shout, or even her unusual shout. This was a primal scream, and it accompanied a movement so fast and powerful that Jeremiah could hardly believe a woman of her age capable of it. She dashed in front of him and launched him backwards with both hands, then grasped the doorknob and tugged the door shut again—but not before Jeremiah had caught a glimpse of something protruding from the bathroom sink.
“I manage fine from here,” she said. “You go. Now.”
* * *
“You’re sure?” said Katherine.
“What else could it have been?” Jeremiah asked.
“I don’t know—a green toothbrush. A green tube of toothpaste. A green figment of your imagination.”
One of the other waiters ducked around the dish shelves where Katherine and Jeremiah were conversing.
“Kat, the orders are piling up.”
“Can you just cover me for two more minutes?” she said.
He shook his head as he left, with a less than kind look at Jeremiah.
“It was not a figment of my imagination,” said Jeremiah. “It was a tail. A green reptilian tail sticking out of the sink. And I saw a terrarium on the floor.”
“So Mrs. Abdurov stole Mr. Wendstrom’s iguana.”
“That’s certainly how it looks.”
“And she poisoned Mr. Boyle.”
“That I didn’t say,” Jeremiah said. “I just noted it was strange that she would have pesticide sitting around.”
“Do you think Boyle found out she’d taken the iguana?
Was he blackmailing her? Or maybe it was a love triangle of human, human, iguana?”
“Go on and laugh, but she didn’t want me going in that bathroom,” said Jeremiah.
“As someone who has been sharing a bathroom with you, I can’t blame her.”
“Are you going to help me or not? I can’t pull this off alone.”
“Jeremiah—”
“I understand if you’re too scared.”
“I’m not scared.”
“Or if you don’t think you could handle the pressure.”
“Of course I can handle the pressure. What pressure?”
“Or if you don’t care whether I end up away from Earth for another 20 years or not.”
“Kat,” said the waiter, appearing again, “table four is going to revolt if you don’t get out there now.”
The waiter looked at her. Jeremiah looked at her.
“Also,” he said, “I lifted some chocolate biscuits from Mrs. Idlewhile today. I was planning to share them with you. In case that sways you at all.”
“All right, all right,” said Katherine. “But we have to do it late.”
“Of course, when she’s asleep.”
“No, I mean I’m meeting John for a coffee after dinner shift, so it has to be after I get back.”
“Ah,” said Jeremiah.
“What does ‘ah’ mean?”
“It just means ‘ah, so you do have coffee with co-workers, as long as that co-worker is The Specimen.’”
“I seem to remember something about it not being any of your business what I do, or with whom.”
“And I seem to remember that I was allowed to be jealous.”
“A little jealous. Does that mean you’re allowed to say ‘ah’ whenever you want?”
“Look, it was just an ‘ah’, so let’s not make a big deal of it,” said Jeremiah. “You go on your coffee date and when you get back we’ll liberate Mr. Wendstrom’s iguana from Mrs. Abdurov’s room.”
13
Snatch and Grab
Still Monday (6 days until arrival)
It was 11:39 p.m., and Jeremiah had filled the time with every occupation he could contrive while waiting for Katherine. First he had catalogued and graded his outstanding problems, not as reptiles but as fires, as by this point he lacked the zoological knowledge to assign a unique species to every challenge recent events had thrown his way.
Making Mrs. Abdurov fall in love with Mr. Drinkwater by way of miming in a talent show: the smoldering embers of a campfire
A stage for aforementioned show: one glowing brand in aforementioned fire
Mrs. Chapin’s revolution, the fomenting thereof: the shell of a veecar on fire, flames licking from the windows, a spectacular ruby necklace melting into the dash
Jeremiah’s broodingly intense Canadian stalker: a wall off which the paint was beginning to blister and droop—a fire was in there somewhere, but who knew how big or hot?
Likewise Jack’s quest to get mellow: a doorknob that had singed his fingers, but did the attached door open to a small flare-up or a raging inferno?
Luis and his potential arrest the moment he set foot on American soil: not, strictly speaking, Jeremiah’s house on fire, but one to which he was inclined to bring a bucket
Mr. Boyle’s possible murder: had he just imagined the smell of smoke?
Mrs. Mayflower’s broken bandora: a grease fire on a stove, spitting and leaping higher the more water he threw on it, giving every indication of becoming, in the fullness of time, a full-on four-alarmer
Katherine spending time with The Specimen, even as Jeremiah made this mental list: flaming bamboo shoots under his nails, for reasons he could not quite get his mind around
The Somewhat Satisfaction of every passenger on board when surveyed in six days: a forest fire almost sure to claim his life—see Mrs. Mayflower’s bandora at a minimum—but as of yet no more than an orange glow in the distant sky
And finally, the hunt for Carolus the Bold, a happy exception in this litany of infernos: a cakeful of gently glowing birthday candles that Jeremiah was poised, with a little help and a bit of luck, to blow out this very night
Even after ending this depressing catalogue on such a hopeful note, Jeremiah had found it necessary to sit down and hyperventilate for a few minutes.
Once that had been taken care of, he had found his way to the staff laundry and washed a load of clothes, of which he was in dire need, as the unseen elves who had spirited away his dirty laundry and replaced it, fragrant and folded, had evaporated upon his imminent default.
He had read three whole sections of the playbook, and was confident that he could now either resolve or direct appropriately any questions about special diets, reports of malfunctioning space toilets, or requests for custom levels of pressurization in a guest’s quarters.
He had re-read the hated relativity pamphlet, reviewed Albert Einstein’s revolutionary insights once more at leisure, and achieved a state of still deeper confusion regarding them.
In desperation he had even, finally, taken a stab at repairing Mrs. Mayflower’s bandora, gently filing away the worst splinters on the neck, daubing liberal amounts of the wood glue (which he chose over the glue for wood by closing his eyes and picking at random) on the body, and clamping the whole arrangement together as best he could to let it dry. The end product did not inspire him with confidence, nor was he pleased to discover that the entire effort had killed 22 piddling minutes.
Finally, in a spiteful 30-second gorge, he ate all Mrs. Idlewhile’s biscuits himself, despite having promised to share them with Katherine, and not even being hungry—a mean-spirited and senseless protest that he regretted the moment it was done.
* * *
At 11:47 Katherine returned.
“Hey,” she said cheerily.
“Hey.”
“You fixed the bandora?”
“I tried.”
“It looks pretty good.”
“Yeah, I guess,” said Jeremiah.
“Is something wrong?”
“What would be wrong?”
“You just sound—”
“I just sound like what?”
“Like something’s wrong.”
“I’m tired, that’s all,” said Jeremiah.
“Does that mean you want to do the thing another time? I wouldn’t mind hitting the hay myself.”
“No,” said Jeremiah, jumping to his feet. “I’m getting a second wind.”
* * *
“Were you upset because I was with John?” Katherine asked as they walked. The lights were dimmed at this hour, and the hallways completely abandoned.
“That’s none of my business,” said Jeremiah. Despite the empty hallways, the sense of the occasion had them both whispering.
“I agree completely.”
Jeremiah sensed a chance to offset his earlier petulant behavior. He did not want to be a clingy whiner in Katherine’s eyes—he wanted to be a man of action, a man who focused on the task and—regardless of any flaming bamboo shoots of jealousy that may or may not be jammed under his fingernails—got things done.
“Look,” he said, “let’s get our heads in the game. This is a simple snatch and grab, and if we both do our parts it should come off without a hitch.”
“I think you mean smash,” said Katherine.
“What?”
“It’s smash and grab.”
“That makes no sense—we’re not smashing anything.”
“But it makes sense to grab something you’ve already snatched?” said Katherine.
“More sense than smashing it before you grab it.”
“No,” said Katherine, “you smash the shop glass before you take the jewelry behind it. I mean, not you, but a robber.”
“Oh, I see. A robber smashes the ShopGlass and grabs the jewelry behind it?”
“Exactly.”
“What does he smash it with?” asked Jeremiah.
“I don’t know—a wrench, a rock. Does it matter
?”
In a show of great tolerance, Jeremiah shook his head only the tiniest bit.
“Are these magic rocks? Wrenches forged in the fires of Mt. Doom?”
In perhaps an even greater display of tolerance, Katherine restricted her reaction to saying that she did not follow him.
“Well,” he continued, “you’re telling me that robbers use these rocks and wrenches to break ShopGlass—which is specifically designed to stop bullets, and which I once personally saw turn a hand grenade in the Detroit Election Night Riots—and that’s why it’s called a smash and grab.”
“I don’t think this conversation has much of a future,” said Katherine.
“I agree completely. Now listen, this is a simple burglary, and your part is critical. First we stop by the kitchen…”
* * *
As he stood outside Mrs. Abdurov’s door, communicator in one hand, holding the keycard he had encoded poised above the access strip, Jeremiah felt his nerves sharpen and arrange themselves, like iron filings beneath a magnetic field, into a shape that recalled days long gone. He remembered Bohemian hijinks in crumbling Detroit apartments, fueled by youth and alcohol and a certain liberation that came from having no credit and prospects only in artistic careers, where “prospects” never meant prospects of credit. Jeremiah had always felt like a faker in those days—mostly because he had been one, with his rich uncle footing the bills and his super-lawyer-plus-agent furthering his career from behind the scenes. Now Jeremiah was legitimately on his own, with no avuncular safety net, and he relished that feeling. He looked at Katherine. She was tucked against the wall, safely out of what would be the line of sight when the door opened. Their eyes met in agreement, and then Jeremiah put on his game face, swiped the key card, and stepped into the darkness.
World Enough (And Time) Page 13
