A Thing As Good As Sunshine

by Juliet Nordeen

  But no impact came; no splintering wood, drenching spray, or upended lifeboat. Instead I heard a small gurgle, like bubbles rising from an aquarium aerator, and then a gentle splash warned me something had breached the surface and was about to approach our little boat. I held my breath and attempted to look everywhere at once, trying to catch the first hint of any movement in the darkness. Fight-or-flight instincts primed my muscles with adrenaline; I was ready to pounce the length of the lifeboat if whatever was about to come out of the water made one wrong move toward Paulo.

  One pale set of fingers, and then a second, rose up over the edge of the stern and then clamped on. The digits were long, though not inhumanly so, elegantly strong and tipped with manicured nails that reflected the silver of the starlight. Fingers became hands became wrists and forearms and then a full head of glossy, dark hair rose into view. A woman, maybe a few years older than me or Maria, pulled herself up on the edge of the boat until she could tuck both arms over the edge.

  She was gorgeous — 1940s Hollywood gorgeous — with ebony hair, milk-white skin, and light eyes in a shade of gray or blue that I couldn't make out in the darkness. She was bone dry and her make-up was perfect as if she hadn't just surfaced from the water, though I knew in my gut that she had. My sense about it was that she appeared that way for no other reason than that's exactly how she wanted it, as if a drowned-rat entrance to begin a rescue was both beneath her and impolite. She smiled at me in a way that filled her whole being with a glow and warmed me to the depths of my frightened soul. Hope flooded back into me so quickly that my toes tingled.

  "Bailey Faye Michaels," she said, more as a statement to confirm my identity than a question.

  I nodded because my mouth hung open too widely to form words.

  She took in the state of my phamily — obviously knocked-out by exhaustion — the empty oar-locks of the lifeboat, and the expanse of dark water stretching to the horizon in every direction. "Oh, my. You do need some help. It's a good thing I've come."

  Relief filled my body at her words, ushering the adrenaline out of my overly-tense muscles like a bouncer herding drunks after last call. I reached out to wake Maria, who was closest to me, hoping she could confirm whether I was hallucinating or if there really was a beautiful woman with a trillion-watt-smile hanging off the back of our lifeboat. But our visitor stopped me.

  "Better to let them sleep," she said. Her voice carried a bell-like, soothing quality that made me wonder how I could have doubted my eyes. "They've had such a terrible few days."

  Wasn't that the truth? I could shout three Ooby Doobys and a Go, Cat Go! in support of that little assessment of our recent events. The omniscient sympathy in her voice immediately made me certain that all I'd believed about Higher Powers my whole life was wrong and I was truly in the presence of a godlike being.

  A goddess. There was a goddess hanging off the back of our boat in answer to my plea.

  I forgot my manners and simply stared for minutes on end. Like a starlet addicted to the adoration of the paparazzi she absorbed my attention, apparently content to wait, bobbing up and down with the motion of the lifeboat.

  My brain fought with itself. If she were a goddess, why would she arrive like that — splashing into the water and threatening to torpedo our little boat? Why not just appear, hovering in a glow of ethereal light? And what was she waiting for? Why didn't she just snap her fingers and teleport us all to the shore? Doubts of her divine power tickled my intuition and my mind came back to reality. I found my voice. "What are you?"

  "I'm Laume." She pronounced it l-oww-may, with an Eastern European accent which would be all growly and clipped if she had been a man. On her it was intriguing; as different as you could get from a Texas drawl, but compelling in a similarly lazy way.

  "Laume," I repeated, trying to get the unusual name to stick in my brain. "But, what are you?"

  Laume tilted her head to the side and smiled at me like I was a puppy or particularly dim-witted child. "I'm here to help you."

  She boosted herself higher on the back of the boat until her waist rested on its edge. Her long dark hair draped onto Paulo's chest as she leaned forward, her gaze holding more intensity than I've felt from anyone since my dad found out I'd started a band with four other kids from the state mental hospital.

  "That is if you still want my help," she said.

  "Yes! Yes, please!" I put my hands to my face, surprised to feel cool tears on my cheeks; tears of hope. "I didn't know how we were going to survive this mess."

  Laume relaxed, lowering her body back down until her arms rested easily on the edge of the boat and then she elegantly rested her chin on her arms. "I like your enthusiasm, little darlin', but perhaps it would be better if we discussed my price before you agreed?"

  "Price?" I asked. Higher Powers put a price on rescue? I never heard of God charging to perform a miracle. Not that I wouldn't have given anything to get us all back to dry land, but I thought that was the kind of thing they did out of the goodness of their hearts, or to improve their reputations. How inhuman that felt, how not-divine.

  "Yes, a price," Laume said, her smile becoming predatory. "A bargain, if you will. I have a task that your unique talents are perfectly suited for. In exchange, I will transport your friends to safety."

  CHAPTER TWO

  My unique talents?

  A bargain?

  A price and a task?

  "What do you mean?" I asked, feeling like I'd fallen down some desperate, aquatic version of Alice's rabbit hole.

  "First, we must agree to the bargain. You agree to help me and I will grant your wish."

  "If I say yes, I won't have to kill anyone? Will I?" I asked.

  Laume smiled in a wholesome way again. "Probably not."

  I bit my lower lip. "I really don't have a choice."

  "Of course you have a choice, silly girl," Laume said. "There's always a choice. It's only been three days, yes? You could wait another three or four sunsets for a boat to happen by before anyone dried up and died. Except for maybe this one," Laume nodded to Paulo lying beneath her.

  Then a very odd sensation crept over my eyes, as if someone had blindfolded me with the softest, lightest silk in the world. I have no issue with kink, not among consenting adults, but what happened next was not something I would have agreed to experience had I known it was coming, and it scared me like nothing I'd ever faced. Instead of going dark, my vision began to lighten, fading up into what looked like a helicopter's view, time-lapse image of us in the lifeboat and the waters around it. The images flew so quickly that it took me a minute to understand that I wasn't seeing a replay of the last few days, but a preview of what we were in for.

  Laume's version of the Ghost of Christmas Future was ugly. As she hinted, Paulo didn't make it to see another sunset. The worst part was watching the four of us argue — silently, of course, as this particular freak show had no audio or soundtrack — about whether to leave him lying in the back of the boat or lay him in the water and tie him to the boat. My stomach cramped watching Maria and Cooper get so pissed-off that they came to blows. Maria lost.

  I wanted to vomit watching Cooper carefully pick Paulo up and lay him in the water where he bobbed, half surfaced-half submerged, with the setting sun finally giving his pale skin some color.

  It was horrible.

  We, the grown-up versions of the misfits from the juvenile ward at Texas State Hospital, were not prepared to deal with losing Paulo.

  I bowed my head and brushed my hands at the mythical blindfold over my eyes, not that it helped. "Okay, okay. Just make it stop."

  Laume purred her satisfaction. The vision stopped and I saw the darkness and the boat and Laume again.

  "You must say I agree."

  "I don't know," I said. She had me at such a disadvantage. I did not want what I just saw to ever happen for real. If Paulo died, if any of us died in this godforsaken dingy, Billy's Asylum Rats would be quitso for sure and I'm not sure any of the rest o
f us would really make it, even if we survived and got back to dry land.

  The decision was too much for me to handle on my own. "I need to wake my friends and ask them for their help."

  "It's not a difficult decision. Either you will help me so that I can help you and your friends. Or I'll just go and find someone else who can help."

  "But..."

  With that, Laume let go of the boat and dropped quickly out of my sight — bubbles gurgling to mark her submersion beneath the dark water.

  The cynical side of me knew she was bluffing; Higher Power or not she answered my plea because she needed my help at least a fraction as much as we needed hers. I held tight to that cynicism as I waited to hear Laume surface again. And I waited. And waited. And the waves around the lifeboat stirred up a notch, like a song swinging into its bridge. And Paulo started to moan in his sleep — low, sad, distressed — his face so pale that it nearly glowed in the low ambient light of the stars. In my memory I saw his lifeless body floating, tied to the boat, and it was no easier to take as a memory than when Laume had given me the vision.

  "Laume?" I asked the air. I stood up to see if she might be hovering just below the dark surface of the water at the back of the boat. There wasn't enough light to see clearly, but the shapes of the waves gave nothing away. "Come back."

  Nothing.

  My inner cynic started to panic.

  "Laume!"

  My shout caused Paulo's whimpers to grow louder, but none of the rest of them appeared to be disturbed by the desperation in my voice. They should have woken up but were as still as death. Death which might decide to come for Paulo first, but would get all of us sooner rather than later if we didn't get back to dry land, food and drinkable water.

  Death that would surely come if Laume didn't come back to help us.

  "Laume, please come back." I looked back up at the sky, tears clouding my eyes so that the stars streaked together. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please. I need your help."

  Without a splash or a sound, the lifeboat tilted a bit toward the stern and there was Laume, perfectly dry and perfectly pretty. "You must say I agree."

  My tongue stuck to the top of my dried-out mouth, trying to prevent me from making a huge mistake by agreeing to such a blind bargain, but I managed to peel it loose and say, "I agree."

  She nodded to show that she'd heard me and lifeboat tipped toward its stern, plowing quickly through the water in the opposite direction of the skittering clouds.

  Somehow, soundlessly and effortlessly, Laume pushed the little boat as smoothly as if it were being towed off the tail of a gigantic cruise ship. Compared to three days of hand-paddling and drifting with the wind and tide, it felt like the boat had suddenly grown jet packs. Miles zoomed by. I reached my hand over the side and felt the rush of warm water flow over it and knew that despite the unknowns, I'd made the right choice. The only possible choice.

  Now I just needed to understand what I'd stupidly and blindly agreed to do. Just as I opened my mouth to ask, Laume said, "You do like children, I expect."

  Children? What about me did she see as maternal? I doubt it was my carefully sculpted eyebrow arches or my waist-length platinum blonde hair. I'm sure it wasn't my skin-tight, red polka-dot swing dress that showed off my twenty-seven inch waist. And I'm convinced that it wasn't my tattoos — the leopard print full-arm sleeves, the blood-red heart over my breastbone, or the trail of stars running up the back of each leg — that made her think I had a soft-spot for ankle biters.

  I'm the drummer of a 'billy band at night and a pastry chef before the sun comes up. My car, a chopped-and-channeled fifty-six Buick, doesn't have seat belts much less tethers for a damn baby seat. In fact, on the streets of Austin, most parents herded their children away from me when I walked down the sidewalks. And I'm talking about downtown Austin, home of everything weird.

  I think there was enough moonlight that Laume could read the concern on my face.

  "Oh dear. Not very fond of children," Laume said. "That might make this task a tad tricky for you, I'm afraid."

  She was afraid? I hyperventilated as I envisioned her sending me on a trip to an African refugee camp to save hundreds of starving children or laying in for a stint as a kindergarten teacher with thirty munchkins underfoot. Or worse, I paled at the thought of magically becoming someone's evil step-mother.

  "I really don't know anything about kids," I said.

  "But you were one," Laume said. "Once upon a time."

  A sarcastic laugh escaped me before I could stop it. Sure I had once been a small human, under the age of majority, too young to smoke or drink, legally. Not that any of that had ever made me a child. No, my father, who loved reminding me that he raised me all by himself, insisted that my behavior must, at all times, rise to his expectations of a young adult. And he enforced that mandate as soon as I was old enough to understand that my mother was years-gone and never coming back. I think I was three, maybe four. Took a lot of deprogramming at the Texas State Hospital during my teen years to get over that.

  Thinking about my father and the couple of days at the hospital before I met Maria and JoJo made my scalp crawl in anger. "Could you fucking be less cryptic and just tell me what you want me to do?" I yelled.

  Our speed dropped until the little boat flattened out and coasted to a stop in the dark water. Laume's eyes narrowed and I knew that had been exactly the wrong thing to say. She pursed her perfectly stained lips and considered me for a few moments over my sleeping friends before her face relaxed. "You are under a great deal of strain," she said. "I will forgive your slip in manners, this once."

  I fought the urge to thank her as a subject thanks a queen's mercy, or to apologize like an employee caught with her hand in the register, but couldn't stop the urge to bow my head and Laume took that to mean whatever she needed from me and got the boat underway again.

  "There is a girl, Hannah Faye Williams, she's in trouble and she needs your help. She also has daddy issues," Laume said, implying that she knew something — maybe everything — about my relationship with my father. "You will go to the northwest of your country, the city of Portland, and help her."

  "Help her how?"

  Laume raised her face to the sky as if to ask her fellow gods and goddesses why she'd been burdened with the stupidest human on the planet. When she met my eyes again she said, "I'm sure I have no clue what a child needs to grow up and become what you might call well-adjusted. I'm relying on you to figure that out."

  "I'm not what most folks would consider well-adjusted." I was only good at three things in life; drums, pastry and sex. Well-adjusted people my age finished college, had babies and shopped for mortgages.

  "Even so, you were a child whose mother was unavailable and whose father failed to live up to the role he took on for himself by engaging in coitus without the proper protection. I am confident you will know how to help. I would not have proposed our bargain otherwise."

  "What kind of trouble is she in?" I asked.

  "Dear Hannah Faye is in the worst kind of danger; she risks losing her soul. The government has taken her from her home and placed her in a vile place that threatens to quash the very essence of her being — as if she were some unwashed plebeian."

  My imagination ran away with that thought. Not that I was a churchgoing, bible-thumper type myself, but suddenly my mind's eye spun images of ritual circles around raging bonfires and I feared that somewhere in the woods of Oregon a little girl was being forced into an arranged marriage with a man three times her age. It made perfect sense to me that a Higher Power might want to get involved with a situation like that. Hell, it might be worth a carefully aimed bullet or two if the circumstances went badly enough.

  "Why this girl? Who is she?" I asked.

  Laume smiled at me and gestured beyond the front of the lifeboat. "Look."

  I spun my head around and saw something I'd been hungering after for three days: the lights of a fishing boat in the near distance. I'd been so caught up i
n Laume's description of my task that we'd gotten to within a couple hundred yards of it and I hadn't even heard the thrum of its engines. It looked like a shrimp boat; tall and wide with nets draping from large booms on both sides of the boat.

  A cry escaped me and I turned to thank Laume with tears in my eyes. Satanists and creepy daddy-types be damned, I'd made the right choice and we were going to be safe. JoJo and Paulo and Maria and Cooper and me, we were going to survive. Billy's Asylum Rats would record and release music all over the internetz, we would play live again, and we would be whole.

  "Thank you," I said.

  Laume bowed her head to me. "Of course. We have a bargain."

  "We do," I agreed.

  I turned forward to watch the fishing boat grow from the size of a bathtub toy to its full hulking size, until I could smell the stench of its holds full of dead and dying sea critters. Gradually Laume's push on the back of the lifeboat fell off until we stopped within shouting distance of the shrimper.

  "How do I explain..." I started to ask as I turned around to ask Laume what I could or should say to my phamily about how we'd been rescued. Only Laume no longer hung from the back of the lifeboat.

  She was gone, just vanished, and so was my phamily. I was all alone.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In a night full of the Impossible, this bigger and greater Impossible smacked me across the face. Our little lifeboat, the one Cooper had nearly died retrieving from the sinking yacht, was empty but for me and a half-inch of dirty rainwater. Scared that somehow my phamily had fallen overboard, I scrambled from side to side along the length of the boat to search for them in the black water, stretching my arm down, again and again. I got all the way to the stern and found nothing but bathwater-warm, salt water. I took a second to look around and thought about it. I’d heard no splashes, seen no ripples, found no sign that anyone had been anywhere near the little lifeboat, except me. I was alone.