Finally, dumbfounded and furious, Jeremiah coded a spare keycard for Mr. Drinkwater’s room and prepared to face Mrs. Abdurov. As he looked out one more time over the room before leaving, he was glad at the very least that Uncle Leo had left his credits to ferrets and not to iguanas, which were turning out to be more troublesome little beasts than he could have imagined possible.
* * *
“Where have you been?” asked Mrs. Abdurov.
“I had some trouble with the keycard encoder,” Jeremiah said.
“Never mind. I rang bell while I wait for you: Tat Drinkwater is away. You go in and find Marya Jana. I stay here and keep watch.”
“Mrs. Abdurov,” said Jeremiah, trying one last time, “I promise you that Mr. Drinkwater had nothing to do with Marya Jana’s disappearance. I can’t tell you how I know it, but I do.”
Mrs. Abdurov reached over and patted Jeremiah’s cheek, shaking her head.
“You are good boy, Jeremiah, so you think other people are good too. But you are stupid. You do not live in the world of four of sky mirror. People are not good. The world is hard, and it makes people hard too. So you go in now and get me back my Marya Jana, yes?”
Jeremiah could find no other response than to brush the keycard against the access point and walk into Mr. Drinkwater’s room.
As the door closed behind him, Jeremiah suddenly understood why the passengers who were traveling Ultra Premium Luxury—Mr. Drinkwater, the Chapins, a very few others—never hosted soirees or dinners, and even threw their own birthday parties in the common areas. These rooms were practically an affront to those who, like Jeremiah and Mrs. Abdurov, had squeezed into a mere Super Luxury Cabin, which was barely large enough—Jeremiah now understood, having witnessed the Ultra Premium—to sustain civilized life. A pang of retroactive envy made him frown. He could never have imagined that there was this much credit in children’s literature.
Even the crescent shape of the living room suggested opulence and plenty. No need for squared layouts and efficient shared corners, it seemed to say—there’s more than enough space on this boat to waste on a wall that curves to welcome you like open arms, complete with bookshelves made of real wood and full of real books, and a false fireplace in the middle that flickered to animated life as soon as Jeremiah entered.
Had it really been less than a week since he had moved below stairs? Fewer than 200 hours since he had traded tempura-battered oysters gently fried for a rubbery quiche that was just the latest disguise for an immortal batch of synthed ham? Since he’d gone from the ennui of commanding his own time, all the time, to running around frantically serving the interests of others? Suddenly Jeremiah had to sit down. Luckily there was a wing chair of gorgeous chocolate leather thoughtfully placed where a tired or inebriated guest, returning to his Ultra Premium Luxury Suite, would have to stumble but a few steps to collapse into complete comfort. Jeremiah stumbled a few steps and collapsed into complete comfort.
He had intended to stay in Mr. Drinkwater’s room just long enough to tell Mrs. Abdurov with a straight face that he had given it a thorough toss and come up with no iguana. But now, with the cool of a leather wing on his cheek and the faint smell of leather polish in his nostrils, he was in less of a hurry. The quiet here was deep and thick and unctuous, spread over the space like butter on bread, and it was indescribably pleasant to inhabit such quiet again. Jeremiah found he had a lot to think about—not just the more pressing problems to be visualized as reptiles or fires, but thoughts that his subconscious had been putting off for some unhectic moment that had never quite seemed to arrive until now.
For example: he was poor. Dirt poor. He’d been running around trying so hard to remain free for the next two years that he hadn’t really considered how he was actually striving to be free and also—unless Appleton pulled off a miracle on his behalf—poor. How did one even go about being poor in Detroit? Really poor? What would happen to him? Would he find a job at a McSynthy’s somewhere and scratch out a living in a tenement until a heart attack claimed him one evening while he was watching a PED in boxers and a wife beater and the neighbors found him days later? Would he contract some disease—not anything exotic like the passengers of the Einstein IV, something eminently curable—and die one of those “preventable” deaths, unable to afford treatment? Or would Detroit simply swallow him up, never to be heard from again?
And then there was the matter of Katherine, and how much time she seemed to be spending with The Specimen, and how little Jeremiah thought of him. Yes, The Specimen was broad-shouldered and square-jawed and had biceps like grapefruits, which was fine if you liked that sort of thing—but Jeremiah didn’t. Worse still, Jeremiah wasn’t even sure that The Specimen was a bad guy per se. Jeremiah was quite sure, on the other hand, that he was a bad guy for Katherine. All wrong. And Jeremiah would have to find a way to tell her so.
It seemed to him that there was something else to tell Katherine as well, though he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it—something about how she was different from anyone else he had ever met. About how there was a quality to her that he didn’t know how to name. It was not just self-sufficiency, or competence, or kindness—he could come up with no word for her unique combination of characteristics but “Katherine”, which made it hard to imagine expressing to her. It was a quality most visible in the effect she had on everyone and everything around her—in the same way that a scene from a wave was completely transformed, deepened immeasurably, by the right music playing behind it.
It bothered Jeremiah that he could not think how to describe Katherine. It bothered him that he could not stop thinking about her. It bothered him that she might not be bothered in the same way by Jeremiah himself.
And now that he was getting warmed up, another matter had just popped into Jeremiah’s mind, one that seemed worthy of some of his immediate attention: namely that the door of Mr. Drinkwater’s quarters had just opened and Mr. Drinkwater himself had just walked through.
“I would be delighted to accompany you to breakfast,” he was saying. “Just let me drop off my—”
His eyes met Jeremiah’s and he stopped.
“But Mr. Drinkwater,” called Mrs. Abdurov from just outside the door, “I am so hungry right now.”
“Oh,” said Mr. Drinkwater, loudly. “That is, I…” He dropped his voice. “Jeremiah? What are you doing in my chocolate leather wing chair?”
Jeremiah made a variety of motions in rapid succession and combination: waving his arms as if warning Mr. Drinkwater off from a landing gone bad, shaking his head, pointing through the wall to where Mrs. Abdurov would be on the other side and—perhaps most frequently—bringing a finger to his lips in a violent shushing motion.
Mr. Drinkwater’s confusion persisted for a moment as he absorbed all this, but then an expression of delighted understanding broke upon his face.
“Now?” he whispered excitedly. “You think I should do it now? All right. All right, I will! Oh Mrs. Abdurov,” he said, louder, “here I come!”
Mr. Drinkwater ran out as fast as he could, and the door closed behind him. Jeremiah sat for another moment in the wing chair. He was not entirely sure what had just transpired, but he was fairly sure that it would not turn out to have been a lucky break.
15
The Law of Averages
Still Tuesday (5 days until arrival)
Mr. Drinkwater walked into the Guest Services Office at 10:30 a.m. and did not stop walking, pacing back and forth despite Jeremiah’s invitation to sit down. His snowmanesque physique did not wear anger and disappointment well. As he paced he tugged absent-mindedly at his turquoise scarf, first pulling this end longer and then the other, like a snowman lamp repeatedly turning itself off and on.
“You M-I-S-L-E-D me, Jeremiah,” he said. “You really let me D-O-W-N.”
“I’m sorry for breaking into your rooms, Mr. Drinkwater, but I can explain,” said Jeremiah. In fact he could not even remotely explain, but luckily Mr. Drinkwater was not i
nterested.
“When I first came to you for advice, you told me not to mime for Mrs. Abdurov, and so I didn’t, even though my heart was bursting with mime. Then when you told me to mime for her, I did mime, despite my deep misgivings about that being the right occasion. And, just like I F-E-A-R-E-D, it blew up in my face.”
“I never told you to mime for Mrs. Abdurov,” said Jeremiah.
Mr. Drinkwater stopped pacing, as if he had bumped his head on the bald shock of this denial.
“Jeremiah, I’m a nice man—my wife, rest her soul, used to say you could push me over with a marshmallow. But if there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s L-I-E-S, so don’t give me that S-T-U-F-F. When I found you sitting there in my chocolate leather wing chair, you very clearly motioned towards Mrs. Abdurov, and very clearly sent me out to mime to her.”
Mr. Drinkwater accompanied this assertion with a recreation of Jeremiah’s arm waving and shushing, which—while more practiced and stylized than the original—did not deviate from it sufficiently to allow room for denial.
“I had just found her there,” Mr. Drinkwater continued, “in front of my door, and she had invited me to breakfast, did you know that? She had come looking to invite me to breakfast. It was my big chance, and I listened to you, and I threw it all away. As soon as I went back out in the hall and started to mime she grew cold and distant. She began to talk of loss and separation. D-A-R-N my foolish heart! Many, many people—good people, cultured people—can’t take mime before breakfast. By the way, Jeremiah,” said Mr. Drinkwater, as if remembering the milk, “what were you doing in my quarters?”
“There’s been a misunderstanding,” said Jeremiah, trying not to sound like the kind of person who says there’s been a misunderstanding.
“About what?”
“This whole thing,” said Jeremiah, buying himself as much time as he could with the long “o.” “The truth is—well, the truth is—I was in your quarters because Mrs. Abdurov sent me there.”
“Mrs. Abdurov? What for?”
“She sent me there to—well, to search your room. She thinks, you see—or at least she thought—that you—”
Although Mr. Drinkwater’s face had hardly moved, a remarkable change had been wrought there as Jeremiah was bumping his way through these sentence fragments. It was as if a master sculptor had passed his hand over the work of a lesser talent, revising almost imperceptibly the line of the thick eyebrows and parting the lips ever so slightly, so that the confusion and disappointment on Mr. Drinkwater’s face had become instead confusion and wonder—wonder that this angel made flesh (which was to say, Mrs. Abdurov) should deign to take any interest in himself whatsoever—let alone sufficient interest to commission a search of his room. The effect inspired Jeremiah to a different ending than he had originally planned.
“That you were keeping a woman in there,” he said.
“What?” said Mr. Drinkwater. “Why would she think that? And why,” he said, his eyes growing wide with a hope he dared not express, “would she care?”
“Can’t you see?” Jeremiah said, feeling something rise and sink in his stomach at the same time. “Don’t make me betray the poor woman’s confidence.”
“No, of course not, you mustn’t—she’s suffered enough, poor angel. But if she really feels that way—if my wildest dreams and fantasies are somehow coming true—then why would she treat me so coldly?”
“A woman like Mrs. Abdurov is complicated,” Jeremiah said. “It’s not enough for her to love—she must respect, as well. And strength is what she most respects.”
Jeremiah felt that the spirits of all those workers who had sat at the Guest Services Desk before him—every departed member of his accidental guild—had arrived to support and inspire him, like the muses of interstellar hospitality. He could not tell whether he was inventing the words or receiving them—he was communing so deeply with the proud forebearers of his function that there seemed to be no difference.
“So you must make her respect you,” continued Jeremiah. “Only then can she possibly love you.”
“But I’ve tried!” Mr. Drinkwater said. “I’ve shown her kindness and deference. I’ve even shown her my talent, and—”
He cringed, unable to finish at the memory of her reception.
“Talent is not strength!” Jeremiah shouted. “Kindness and deference are weakness! You must be cold—you must be callous. Pass her in the hall without comment. Answer curtly when she speaks to you—if you answer at all. You must show Mrs. Abdurov how strong you are in the face of your own passion—how much you do not need her. Only then—” said Jeremiah, growing quieter, “—only then—will she need you.”
Mr. Drinkwater stood for a moment in the aftermath of this delivery. His posture straightened, his expression grew hard, and his eyes took on a determined glitter, as if he had been hooked up to a dialysis machine that was slowly replacing his blood with ice water. He buttoned the jacket of his suit and threw the end of his scarf over his shoulder with a continental insouciance. He was no longer a man of snow—but of ice.
“Thank you, Jeremiah,” he said, and turned to leave. But as he approached the door it opened and there, standing in the hallway, stood Mrs. Abdurov. Both froze, eyes locked.
“Good morning, Tat Drinkwater,” Mrs. Abdurov said. Icicles could have formed on the words.
“Is it?” answered Mr. Drinkwater, and his tone made Mrs. Abdurov’s feel like a spring morning in comparison. He lifted his nose to an angle just shy of major chiropractic risk, turned on his heel—teetering a bit due to his snowman’s physique—and departed.
“A prodigy,” Mrs. Abdurov said as she approached the desk, her eyes shining. “A mastermind.”
“You mean Mr. Drinkwater?” Jeremiah asked.
“So long since I have worthy opponent—a nemesis.”
“But you can’t still think Mr. Drinkwater stole Marya Jana—I checked his room very thoroughly and she wasn’t there,” Jeremiah said.
“Of course not—he moved her. The man is no fool. But how he knows exactly when we come to get her? And then the way he taunts me in the hall outside his room—no words, only gestures, making like iguana.”
Mrs. Abdurov did her own interpretation of Mr. Drinkwater’s mime act, which Jeremiah preferred to Mr. Drinkwater’s own—and in which he had to admit an imaginative critic could have found an iguana struggling to escape the bonds of captivity.
“How could he know I have recording device on my person?” said Mrs. Abdurov. “So brilliant, so cold. Tat Drinkwater was disrespect. From now on, I call him Vor Drinkwater.”
“A recording device?”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Abdurov, pointing to the pen in the breast pocket of her thatchy jacket. The blue jewel on the pen’s cap winked at Jeremiah, as if welcoming him into the know. “I am always recording everything.”
“Do you record our conversations? Are you recording right now?”
“Always,” Mrs. Abdurov said, hammering each syllable. “Everything. But then he makes mistake—he gives me clue. Listen.”
Mrs. Abdurov took the pen out of her pocket. It was made of pale yellow gold worked with curlicues of something that looked like platinum. She flicked one of the curlicues and the recorded voices of Mrs. Abdurov and Mr. Drinkwater—slightly distorted, but loud and still intelligible—began to play.
“Of course I look sad,” said the recorded Mrs. Abdurov. “I lose something precious to me.”
“I am very sorry to hear that,” the recorded Mr. Drinkwater replied, more distant but still audible. “Have you considered taking a safe deposit box? That’s where I would keep anything that was very precious to me. Unless, of course, it was something that didn’t belong in a safety deposit box. Something, say, that was very precious to me but also very—”
In the pause that followed Jeremiah could practically hear the pointed, romantic look that Mr. Drinkwater had cast.
“—alive.”
Mrs. Abdurov clicked the recording
off.
“You hear?” she said. “He keeps Marya Jana in safe deposit box. You will break in and get her back for me.”
“But he just said he wouldn’t put anything alive in a safe deposit box.”
“You stupid, sentimental boy, you do not understand the words of powerful men. I will interpret. Marya Jana is dead—this is how he tells me. But you will recover her body for me,” said Mrs. Abdurov in a voice like blue steel, “and then her dead eyes will witness when I avenge her.”
“Mrs. Abdurov,” said Jeremiah, “this is a huge misunderstanding. Mr. Drinkwater was referring to you: you’re the precious, living thing he would never put in a safe deposit box. He’s a romantic, and he’s head over heels in love with you. When you thought he was imitating a captive iguana, he was inviting you to breakfast. He’s just not very good at expressing himself—not in words or mime.”
Mrs. Abdurov smiled tenderly, almost wistfully, and for a moment Jeremiah thought perhaps he’d gotten through to her.
“Jeremiah, you are very sweet boy but you have soft head. You are no match for mastermind like Vor Drinkwater. I know such men—for years I help my husband deal with them and their schemes. They try for many years to take his business, to steal his men, even to kill him. But Vassily and I, we bury every one of them, one next to the other in our garden, until Vassily’s heart attacked him. Marya Jana is all he leaves me—her and the rest of the credit and the businesses. Now this man takes Marya Jana from me. So you leave all thinking to me, yes? You do what I ask and get Marya Jana’s body back for me from the safety deposit box of cold, cruel, brilliant man.”
“What if I break into the safe deposit box and Marya Jana’s body isn’t in there?”
World Enough (And Time) Page 16
