A Thing As Good As Sunshine

by Juliet Nordeen

  I slammed my hand against the hull of the boat, getting a wet thwack and a stinging palm for my trouble. The pain grounded my panic, like when someone asks you to pinch them, but my brain continued whirling in disbelief. Just when I thought things were headed in the right direction, Laume had vanished and taken my phamily with her. It was the only explanation.

  "Laume!" I yelled at the sky. "You bitch. Where'd you go?"

  I was angrier than I ever remembered being in my life, so much so that the lights on the fishing boat’s deck took on a red tinge. That inhuman bitch had strong-armed me into blindly making an agreement and then she magically stole away into the darkness with the only part of my life that made any sense, my phamily.

  Unless I had it wrong.

  My skirt billowed around me as I plopped into the bottom of the boat, ignoring the dirty rainwater, and considered the possibility that everything I'd been through in the past three days had been a hallucination. A mad lie built to cope with losing Maria and JoJo and Cooper and Paulo in a horrible accident at sea.

  Fixating on an empty oar lock, I tried to quiet the dervishes in my head so I could think.

  I had no proof they'd survived the yacht going down, or been in the lifeboat at all. Starving and parched, it's possible I might have mixed some things up in my head; imagined our conversations, pretended we’d been together. I sure as hell couldn’t say with any conviction that an evil, Higher Power had fallen from the sky as a ball of light, offered me a deal I couldn't refuse in exchange for rescue, propelled our little lifeboat miles and miles across the Gulf to one tiny little fishing boat, and then disappeared along with four adults — three of them bigger than her — when I turned my back on her for two seconds.

  Even though I felt like it had all been real, I had nothing to show any of it had actually happened. That cold fact slammed around inside my brain, opening a crack into which Doubt invited itself to slither through and make itself at home — the first step down a familiar but unwelcome path toward some very bad times. The only two things left for me to cling to were a name, Hannah Faye Williams (strange, I realized, we had the same middle name), and a city, Portland, Oregon and I knew I couldn't have made either of those up.

  No. No, I had not hallucinated the past three days. Hot anger born of self-doubt in my belly drove me to my feet to scream at the stars, "Laume, you dog-cold bitch! Come back. What the hell did you do with my phamily?"

  My yelling attracted the attention of the men on the shrimp boat and a spotlight tracked across the water until it found me railing at the darkness like a lunatic in my little lifeboat. They followed me with the light as I fell back into their wake. A dozen men gathered along the aft railing, shouting in Spanish until the big boat's engines cut off. Ropes and flotation donuts flew through the air towards me as two men stripped down to their underwear and dove into the water.

  As they swam toward me I felt torn between wanting them to hurry up and rescue me and not wanting to be saved without my phamily. How could I go home without them? How could I explain what happened? I didn't give a rat's ass about the record company's yacht; they could sue my ass and I’d work the rest of my life to cover the cost of replacing it. But how could I look Paulo’s Mama or JoJo’s sister in the eyes and tell them that all five of us had been just fine for three days and then the four of them disappeared minutes before we were to be rescued? I couldn’t lie and say I had been the only survivor; I was a bad liar.

  "Then don't go home," said a voice inside my head. At first I thought it was my chicken-shit inner nature looking for an easy way out, but then I realized it wasn’t my voice. It was Laume's voice, talking to me from inside my own frickin' head.

  Get out of my head!

  "Make me," Laume said.

  Not knowing how she'd gotten into my head in the first place — some Higher Power mumbo jumbo that was way above my pay grade — I knew that I was unlikely to just kick her out. I knew she knew it. As much as I hated the violation — my skin crawled from the thought of having another being inside the only private place I thought was guaranteed to me — I was powerless to stop it from happening.

  If I couldn't fight it, my desperation drove me to try to make use of it. What did you do with my phamily? I asked, silently. I want them back. Right. Goddamn. Now.

  The pity of having a conversation inside my head was the bone-deep knowledge that I couldn't hide the fear I felt. I was bluffing with my implied ultimatum. And I knew she knew that, too. She brushed me off, laughing right inside my brain, a sound more humiliating for its intimacy than any bully's taunts could ever be.

  "I need your promise that you are not going home. That you will proceed directly to Portland to complete your task."

  I have to go home first. I have to explain about...

  "No, you don't. No one on that boat knows who you are or where you came from," Laume said, conveying absolute certainty. "They haven't seen news coverage of your missing yacht. They have no idea that there were ever five miserable, half-drowned wretches aboard this lifeboat. As far as those fishermen are concerned they are about to rescue una muchacha muy bonita. You don't even have to speak with them, pretend you don't understand Spanish."

  Her brazen disrespect for my situation tied my brain in knots, I couldn't find a response that included anything but swear words. Laume mistook my inner silence for agreement.

  "They will take you to shore; their vessel is ported out of a small village called Santa Teresa. You will ride with their daily catch to Ciudad Victoria and then take a bus north along the coast to Laredo, Texas. Your "lost" passport will be waiting for you at the border."

  I knew she was full of shit because I'd never owned a passport.

  You can stuff your bus trip and your fake passport up your skinny white ass, I yelled at Laume in my head, uncomfortable with being dictated to. Where is my phamily? You said you'd get them to safety.

  "They're safe as moonbeams, little darlin', and will remain so as long as you execute your end of our bargain. It is in my best interest that you arrive in Portland, as quickly as possible, unencumbered by unnecessary concerns, so listen carefully. After crossing the border you will travel by bus again to Dallas, to the place where airships port, and there you will wait for further direction."

  How do I know they are safe? Where did you take them?

  "You'll have to trust me," Laume said in my head.

  Screw that. There wasn't a molecule in my body that trusted Laume. She didn't even know airplanes and airports.

  I don't. I don't have to and I don't want to. And I'm not going anywhere until I know they're okay. I thought this thought with all the conviction I could muster. Laume had to know I wasn't shitting her on this. If she wanted me to climb aboard some random Mexican fishing boat, much less run off to the woods to save a little girl named Hannah, she had to give me something to prove my bandmates were safe.

  The two swimming fishermen had almost reached my little lifeboat and I knew something had to give, and soon. Laume's plan sounded well thought out, and given how easily she'd gotten the lifeboat to a rescue vessel I figured arranging a little ground transportation from the shore to Dallas and then on to Portland probably wouldn't be beyond her. But once I got onto that fishing boat I'd be stuck on her path, I could be in an even worse situation — if that were possible.

  I wished I could at least talk to Maria about all of this. She was the steady one in the group, the one who always took care of us when we needed it or smacked us across the face with reality when our heads were too far up our own asses. Maria would know whether I could trust Laume at least enough to get onto the fishing boat, or whether I should tell her to kiss her own divine ass.

  What do you say, Dolly? That's how I would ask Maria's opinion had she been there.

  "I think this babe's a schuckster, but don't let her rattle your cage little darlin'."

  I startled. The voice in my head had changed, it sounded like Maria, not just her voice but that's exactly what I'd expect he
r to say: pragmatic, level-headed and direct. Maria? Is that really you?

  "It's me, kitty-cat."

  You okay? Where are you? Are you all together? She said she’s taken y’all somewhere safe. I wanted to believe that it really was Maria in my head and that she wasn't talking to me with a gun to her head, real or supernatural.

  "This Faery Bitch might be lighting up the tilt sign with most of what she's dishing out, but for the moment we've got it made in the shade. Do what you gotta do, kitty-cat. Don't you worry about us."

  That had to be Maria, and most of what she said made sense in a 'billy way. All except the part where she called Laume a Faery...that wasn’t 'billy shorthand we tossed around in our circles.

  What did you call her? I asked Maria in my thoughts.

  "She's Faery, magic, not human...you know, Tinkerbell gone wild."

  But she's so big.

  "That's enough," Laume butted in to my mental conversation with Maria like she'd just taken her cell phone away. "Your dog-paddling saviors have arrived. You have a job to do."

  My heart ached at being allowed to talk to Maria and then having her yanked away like that. I believed in my gut that my phamily was alive, and not in danger, for the moment. I had to believe Maria would have found some way to signal me if that had been the case.

  You'll keep them safe? I asked silently.

  I heard, "Get it done," and then Laume’s presence in my mind evaporated, too. Whatever magical connection we'd used to have that odd conversation had been severed. Violation ended.

  I blinked my eyes and shook my head. Had I really just had a telepathic conversation with my Faery-napped best friend while floating in a lifeboat, awaiting rescue by a couple of Mexican fisherman? Was any of it real?

  Assessing my new reality brought on a bloom of cold behind my breastbone, loneliness. For the last twelve years I'd always had at least one of Billy's Asylum Rats no further than a phone call away. Now it was just me and the crazy voices in my head.

  I looked in the direction of the shrimp boat and was surprised to see a muscular young man with black hair and chocolate skin heave himself into the lifeboat, rocking it violently. He lay panting in the bottom of the boat as the searchlight did its best to stay on us. I hadn't heard his approach as he swam, nor his kick against the water to propel his body into the boat, not even his deep breaths as he lay a foot away from me in the bottom of the boat. The young man yelled — or at least his lips moved — as he gestured for the other man to swim over with the free end of the rope. But I couldn't hear his voice. Or the slosh of the water. Or the voices of the other men.

  I couldn't hear anything.

  After a day of Impossibility stacked upon Impossibility, it seemed a small thing to suddenly not be able to hear — but it was a huge thing. I'd never had trouble with my hearing in my entire life; for the drummer in a rock band, that said something.

  As I opened my mouth to ask the universe why the hell this was happening, nothing came out. Not a peep, not a syllable. When I touched my throat with my hand I didn't feel any vibration, but I got a tickle on the inside like I'd swallowed a handful of junebugs. I started to cough and apparently that made a sound because the young fisherman looked at me with concern before turning his attention back to his buddy arriving with the rope.

  I panicked.

  After what I'd been through over the previous three days there shouldn't have been any adrenaline left to race through my body, but my heart pounded fiercely all the same. I couldn't hear and I couldn't speak. Why couldn't I hear? And what did that have to do with not being able to speak? Was this a spell Laume concocted to keep me from messing up her well-laid plan to get me to Portland? Was it punishment for my less-than-stellar manners? What kind of monster takes away a person's ability to communicate? And at a time like this?

  Pulsating motion of the lifeboat broke through my panic and I realized the boys were pulling in the ropes, drawing us toward the hulking shrimper. We quickly fell into the shadow at the stern of the larger boat and a rope ladder unfurled. One of the young men held the lifeboat steady while the other held the rope ladder for me and motioned for me to climb. He smiled and nodded, looking serious and trustworthy, but I hesitated.

  Crawling up that ladder and onto a strange boat under a usual rescue-scenario like this would be daunting. But not being able to communicate with my saviors made me feel awfully vulnerable as I counted the sixteen rope rungs between the lifeboat and the deck. Suddenly, having a less than perfect grasp of Spanish seemed like small potatoes, but it seemed I was out of options, no choice to get on the boat, take a step onto Laume's path.

  I stood up in the lifeboat carefully, my footing as unstable as smooth leather-soled shoes on a freshly waxed dance floor, and reached between my legs to grab a handful of the back of my polka-dotted skirt. After I had it pulled through my legs and tucked it into the belt at the front of my dress, denying the boys a free peek while they held the ladder for me, I made my way up one shoddy rung at a time.

  A frenzy of hands pulled me over the rail of the fishing boat and onto its rusty metal deck. The dozen faces that greeted me shared a sense of curiosity, and what came across in my silent world as a flurry of wordless teeth-gnashing as they said things I couldn't hear. Funny how it wasn't immediately clear to me whether they were happy or angry: their excited expressions could have been either — eyes wide, brows raised, lots of teeth needing orthodontia.

  The one face I had no trouble reading was the one on the man standing next to a net full of wriggling shrimp that dripped seawater onto the deck. His arms-crossed demeanor, aggressive cigar puffing, and scrutinizing glare told me this was his boat, and he its captain. And the captain wasn't happy about his crew wasting time with the soggy blonde girl when they ought to have been hauling in nets.

  After pulling a half-smoked cigar from between clenched teeth, the captain said something sharply that lit a fire under his crew. Most of them turned back to their duties immediately. The two who had swum out to get me petted my long hair and looked at me regretfully with their dark brown eyes before putting their clothes back on and joining their mates at the nets.

  Fish out of water. That was me. I stood for the captain's inspection — flat-haired, mascara-streaked, swing dress still trussed up like pantaloons — and his predatory glare scared the crap out of me. It's not like me to cry in front of strangers, hell I hardly ever cry in front of my phamily except when too much tequila dredges up the past, but I was lost and alone and the pressure of the situation forced hot tears to dribble down my cheeks.

  And that, apparently, did the trick.

  In a blink the Captain's stern face melted into a soft-eyed smile and he stepped forward to take both my hands into his. He shouted something to someone over his shoulder, I couldn't say what or to whom, and guided me toward the cabin door. Afraid he wanted to take me down into the darkness of the trawler's belly, I resisted him until I saw a grandfatherly old man in a chef's coat and shorts come up from below with a steaming mug of coffee, a big bottle of water and a plate of tamales. The chef beckoned to me to sit on the worn wooden bench next to the door. When I hesitated, the captain demonstrated, patting the wood next to him.

  I smiled at them, laughing for a brief moment at my own fear and stupidity, and untucked my skirt before settling next to the captain. I nodded inadequate thanks to the chef as he handed me the hot cup and plate and then set the bottle next to me. My stomach churned as I smelled the sweet corn masa of the tamales and I imagined what an unladylike rumble must have accompanied it. I grabbed the first tamale and demolished it between sips of the richest coffee I've ever tasted.

  Six tamales, two cups of coffee and a liter of water later I felt like the hole in my belly that might never go away had finally been filled. But that one problem solved left too many others battling for space in my brain as I tried to figure out my next steps: my phamily, Laume, Hannah, communicating telepathically, and my unexplained problems hearing and speaking. No matter how h
ard I wrestled ideas in my mind I found no solutions and my head nodded drowsily, eyes drifted closed.

  To be Continued...

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