by Heidi Heilig
Thank God the map had failed. But despair had lifted off my shoulders and settled, like a vulture, onto Slate’s. We’d spent months in the doldrums of my father’s depression, drifting in the Pacific where the ocean was thick with whales and white sharks. I’d leave trays of food outside his door, which was where Slate left them as well. Eventually he had emerged from the room, thin and pale as a bone under his tattoos, dark blue bruises under his eyes and in the crooks of his arms. He had devoured a huge plate of food, vomited over the rail, and fallen asleep on a pile of rope rigging. When he woke up the next day, he took the wheel again and never said a word about any of it.
Which was fine by me. There is something terrifying about seeing someone strong standing on the edge of the abyss, like a ship on the lip of a whirlpool where the whole sea plunges into the maw of Charybdis. There is that moment when they reach out—like a drowning man will—and if you’re within reach, they will pull you down with them. I didn’t want to stand there beside him. I didn’t want to be dragged down.
In the three years since, I’d let myself hope we’d run out of maps from the era, that I was safe, that the captain had finally put the past behind him. But here we were again, and Slate wasn’t even trying to swim against the current. In fact . . .
“But what?”
I looked up at Kash, tasting copper; I’d been chewing my lip. “He doesn’t have any idea what will happen to me, and I don’t think it matters to him either way.”
“Amira . . .” His expression was mixed—sympathy and disgust—and I couldn’t bear it. I was almost relieved when the captain emerged from the auction house. He started toward us, but Kashmir gripped my arm, whispering fiercely in my ear. “Why do you help him?”
I watched my father swinging his briefcase and grinning ear to ear, his joy visible, so rare, and effervescent as fine champagne. “How can I say no, Kash?” I murmured. “She’s dead because of me.”
And then Slate was there, clapping his hands together, the color high in his cheeks, and for a moment I glimpsed what my mother must have when she fell in love. Slate was as picturesque as any ruin.
“You look happy,” I said. I couldn’t help it; like an old wound, it itched.
“Oh, yes, Nixie, yes, I am, indeed! I am not disappointed. I never am, when I come to New York. I love New York!” he shouted, spreading his arms wide. Passersby watched, bemused; Kashmir watched him too, his face troubled.
“Me too.” My eyes went to the briefcase. “Is it in there?”
“Oh, no. No, no, no. They’ll put it in a padded box and deliver it to the ship in—pardon me,” he said, turning to a woman and lifting her wrist before she could protest. “May I see your watch? Thank you. Four hours.” He released the woman, who jerked back her arm and hurried away. “Four hours!” He tossed down his briefcase and wrapped his arms around mine and Kashmir’s shoulders “I can hardly wait!”
He released us but made no move to pick up the briefcase. I nudged it with my foot. “It’s empty, then? You bid everything you had?”
“Nixie,” he said, with mock disappointment. He swung the briefcase up and set it on a trash can. “Nixie, Nixie, Nixie! Did you think I wouldn’t be able to keep a little something back?” He flipped open the latches and revealed a thick stack of bundled twenties. “See? Your mother taught me how to haggle!” He was in a very good mood, then, to mention my mother. His eyes were bright with manic excitement. How long would it last?
“Jesus, Dad,” I said as people stared. “Someone will rob you.”
The captain laughed. “Yeah.” He jerked his chin toward Kash. “Him.” He grabbed the wad of bills and split off a handful. “You know what? Here. This is for you, this is for you. . . .” He stuffed twenties into our fists without counting them. “And the rest is for Bee and Rotgut.”
I held the money in both hands. It must have been nearly five hundred dollars. “Does this mean we have shore leave?”
Slate stopped in the process of unknotting his tie. “Shore leave? What for?”
“To spend this.” I grinned at Kash. It was only a brief reprieve, but it was something. “There’s an exhibit opening this weekend at the Met about the Book of the Dead. Or a talk tomorrow night about pre-Christianity in Armenia that—”
“Oh, Nixie, no.” The captain shook his head and threw his tie into the briefcase. “There’s no time for all that. We’re leaving in the morning.”
“Well, how about a bookstore then? Just for the afternoon.”
“We’ve still got to manage the deliveries. But if you see something quick between here and the ship—”
I stared at him, the money crumpling in my clenched fist, although it wasn’t about the money, really; the one thing I could never buy was more time. “Forget it,” I said, shoving the worthless bills into my bag. The newspaper Kash had given me was more valuable. “Let’s just go.”
The euphoria in his eyes dimmed, but only for a moment. “Eager to be under way? That’s my girl!” The cheer in his voice was forced, but he hugged me, with both arms, and lifted me up off the ground.
“Dad!” But I let myself hold him too, as tightly as I could.
He let me down, staring at me for a moment, his eyes brimming. Then he made a beeline over to a man selling roasted nuts out of a cart. He bought half a dozen bags, dumping one into his mouth and chewing fiercely while stuffing the others into the pockets of his suit.
Christie’s sent the map to the ship by car. When the sleek Lincoln rolled up to the docks that evening, Slate, who had been pacing on deck like a cat in a cage, went entirely still. Bee signed the release form, and she and Kashmir carried the crate up to his cabin, all while Slate watched, nothing moving but his eyes. Only when they set it down outside the door did he spring into motion and tug the crate inside, letting the door swing shut behind him.
I winced when the door slammed, but the silence of his absence seemed louder still. It shouldn’t have; since our embrace on the sidewalk I’d seen him slipping away into his head, into his plans for tomorrow and all the rest of the future, grand dreams of what might come from his newest treasure map. But perhaps naive hope runs in my blood. Bee cleared her throat; I’d been staring at the closed door.
She came over to stand beside me as I leaned on the rail, and side by side we watched the western sun wash the towers of Manhattan. “This is the better view,” she said. Her voice was soft, a raspy whisper because of the scar that lay like a noose around her throat.
“Agreed.” The city shone across the river, a temptation all its own, but it might as well have been an ocean away. “I just wish we had more time here.”
“Us too. Ayen loves the lights,” she said. “But I love the bull.”
“The brass bull? On Wall Street?”
“Yes. He reminds me of my song bull, although he grazes on a different green.” I laughed, and she tapped the cowbell at her belt. “Sometimes I miss my herd.”
“Does Ayen?”
Bee grinned, and the scars on her cheeks—like rows of pearls—curved with particular mischief. “She misses the dancing. She says there’s a warehouse party in Red Hook tonight. House music. What is house music? She tried to explain, but I’ve never heard anyone play a house.” Bee shook her head dramatically, but she winked at me.
I couldn’t help but smile back. Bee was Na’ath, from a tribe in Northern Africa where cattle were both kith and currency. Ayen was her wife who’d been killed years ago, before Bee had come to the ship. But in accordance with their beliefs about death, Ayen was still with her, doing those little annoying things ghost wives do, like make you drop your breakfast or trip over a coil of rope. Or bother you about going to warehouse parties in Brooklyn. “Admit it, you would take her to the party if we weren’t sailing at dawn.”
“The worst part is, she already knows it.”
“Well. There’s not much dancing on the ship, I suppose.” My eyes returned to the captain’s door. “Do you wish you could go back?”
“Back
where?”
“To Sudan. To before Ayen died.”
“Such an odd idea. We were already there.” She stroked the necklace of her scar. “He does not think before he acts. Would you like me to burn it?”
“To—what?”
“The map. I should have done it with the last one, but the idea came to me too late. Ach.” She flicked her hand over her shoulder as though a fly had buzzed her ear. “Yes, yes. To be honest, it was Ayen’s idea. But I would gladly do it.”
“Burn it?” For a moment my heart leaped at the idea, and I was shocked I hadn’t thought of it before. It would be so easy. Then I bit my cheek, ashamed. I had already taken her away from him once. “No. No, but thank you. I . . . thank you. I’m certain the map won’t work,” I lied. “None of them have.”
“Ah, well, good. Otherwise, I imagine you might worry.”
Downtown, a glass monolith seemed to blaze, catching the slanting sun as it crept toward the sea. She waited for a response, but I made none. Finally Bee dropped her hand onto my shoulder for a moment, then let it fall away. “I’m going to go organize the deliveries. You come too.”
Bee recommended hard work as a cure for any emotional turmoil. I followed her down into the hold, which still smelled of tigers, although the cages had been replaced by a handful of boxes scattered haphazardly. Instant coffee; my father lived on the stuff. A crate of toilet paper. Aspirin and iodine and antibiotics. Bleach and bamboo toothbrushes and toothpaste with fluoride.
We broke down the cardboard boxes and repacked their contents in the wooden chests we kept for the purpose. Then we piled all of the crates against one wall and scrubbed the hold till the teak gleamed. Bee was polishing the floor with beeswax when a box of vitamins tumbled down from the top of the pile; she scolded Ayen under her breath. The faint smell of honey filled the air. By the time we finished, I did feel better. And hungry.
“Must be nearly dinner.” I pushed my fists into the small of my back; the hatch framed a sky tinged with pink.
“Or past it,” she said. “It gets dark late here in summer.” At the mention of summer, she smiled like she couldn’t help it.
“What did you do?” I asked, but I didn’t bother to wait for her answer. She followed after me as I raced upstairs to the deck.
Kash and Rotgut had been just as busy as we had. A table was laid on the deck, and on the table, all the culinary delights New York had to offer: pungent halal chicken and rice doused in hot sauce, pork dumplings in Styrofoam clamshells, a cardboard box marked DI FARA’S PIZZA, pastrami sandwiches thick as dictionaries, creamy cheesecake covered with glistening scarlet strawberries.
Kashmir flung his arms wide. “Happy theft day!”
“Glad we stole you,” Rotgut added, raising a bottle of Brooklyn Lager in his bony fist.
I cast my eyes about, but it was only the four of us on deck. I lifted my chin as Kashmir patted the seat beside him—the one with its back toward the captain’s cabin. We dined like New Yorkers on the deck while Manhattan’s skyline shimmered in the water like the Milky Way and my father shut himself in the map room, conspicuous by his absence.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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After the party, Bee watched while I made up an extra plate of food, but she didn’t say anything. There was no answer when I knocked on the captain’s door, but it was unlocked, so I let myself in.
The light was dim—he’d thrown bits of fabric over the lamps—and the room was stuffy, the heat raising the vanillin scent of old paper from the maps spilling from the shelves and cupboards lining the walls. Slate hoarded maps like a dragon hoards treasure: maps of every shape and shore, in parchment and paper, birch bark and Nile linen, kangaroo leather and sharkskin. There were maps punched in copper, painted on urns, and one scratched into the surface of a shelf mushroom. He even had Robert Peary’s 1906 map of Crockerland, a continent that enjoyed a scant seven years of existence before being judged a fata morgana; after 1914, it no longer existed on any map, nor anywhere else at all.
I needed air. I set the plate on the table and crossed the room, stumbling on a pile of books, to open the aft deadlights. The breeze ruffled the edges of the black curtains of the sleeping alcove. The captain dozed behind them, his newest map resting on his chest like a blanket. I clenched my fists to keep from snatching it away.
Instead, I went to the drafting table, where the map of 1981 lay, pinned down by half-empty coffee cups. I took the cloth off the lamp above the desk and leaned over the page, looking closely at the lines. The cartographer’s focus had been delineating New York neighborhoods, with each shaded in different watercolor and detailed down to major landmarks. I drummed my fingers on the table. Still, to my eye, there were no hints this map wouldn’t work.
Frustrated, I rolled up the map and shoved it into the cupboard with all the other dead enders. The rest of his Hawaii 1868 maps were there. There was no reason for me to worry that the new map would be different. I licked my lips and tasted salt.
No reason at all.
I closed the cupboard more noisily than necessary, but the captain didn’t even move. Since I’d started cleaning, I kept going. I picked up the books—myths, legends, history—scattered around the room like confetti, and returned them to their shelves. The dirty clothes I threw in the empty hamper. The caladrius’s cage was on the trunk; I filled a cup with water for her.
The bedsheets had spilled into a tangled pile on the floor. When I picked them up, I uncovered the box, lying open, displaying Slate’s most precious things: a block of black tar, a stained pipe and fresh needles, a bottle of pills, all nestled beside the map of 1866, the map of the time before I came along and everything went wrong.
I kicked the whole mess back under the bed, hard enough it hit the wall.
My palms were damp. I wiped my hands on the bundle of bedding and let it drop back to the floor. Then I took a deep breath to clear my head. The breeze off the ocean, cooler now the sun was down, had swept away the musty smell in the room, but Slate still hadn’t stirred except for the gentle rise and fall of his chest under the 1868 map. I could no longer contain myself; I took one corner between my thumb and forefinger, lifting it gently away, and he started awake, his hands closing reflexively on the edges.
“I’m going to put it on the table,” I said. His eyes focused on mine, and he released the map, trading it for the plate I’d brought. I glanced at the page, and my heart sank.
It was nothing like the others. Inked, faded, signed, dated. A. SUTFIN, the drafter, had printed in neat block letters and drawn in a very precise hand. And the map was original. But even that was no guarantee it would work. Suddenly I was absurdly grateful for the inexplicable failure of the 1981 New York.
“It’s a good map, isn’t it?”
I looked up at him; Slate was balancing the plate, untouched, on his knees, waiting for me to agree. I dropped my eyes back to the page and chewed my lip. “I hope it’s worth what it cost.”
“It is priceless, Nix.”
“Right.” Not a crease, nor even a crinkle. Someone had preserved this map quite well.
“Thank you,” Slate said then.
That gave me pause. “For what?”
“For the map.” He picked up the fork. “And for dinner.”
I pursed my lips. Why had I been surprised? He could afford to be kind now he had what he wanted. “Of course, Captain.” My voice was vague as I studied the map. It was only the island of Oahu, and in fine detail. Beautiful lines.
His duty done, he stabbed a dumpling with the fork. “This is good.”
“Good.” My eyes roved over the contours on the page, seeking flaws and finding none. The mapmaker had even labeled Honolulu’s main streets—Nu’uanu, Beretania, King—as well as the post office and the major churches. The city was centered around Iolani Palace, the seat of the King of Hawaii; there, just a few blocks n
orthwest, was Chinatown. I ground my teeth.
“You know,” he said, his mouth full. “The last time I had a pastrami sandwich from Katz’s was when I was your age. This is from Katz’s, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Why so quiet?”
But then his face fell and his fork paused in midair. For a long time, neither of us spoke. He put down his fork and squeezed his eyes shut. “There was a party.”
I shrugged as if I didn’t care. “It’s fine.”
“I’m sorry, Nixie.”
“I don’t want to talk about it, Captain.”
“Kashmir told me, but I forgot.”
“I can see that.”
“I said I was sorry!” He threw his hands up, suddenly defensive. Then he clenched his fist and brought it in front of his mouth. “And I am,” he added quickly. “I was distracted, is all. The map is very distracting.” He set the plate aside and smiled hopefully. “But it’s beautiful, isn’t it? And it’s almost like a gift.”
“A gift?”
“To you.”
I couldn’t help it; my lips twisted like a juiced lime and the response was too bitter not to spit out. “To me?”
“Well . . . don’t you want to meet your mother?”
His question seemed designed to induce guilt, and it cut deep enough to reveal a splinter of cruelty, hard as bone. “My mother’s gone, Slate.” I put the map down on the drafting table, smoothing it with my palm. “On the map I came from, she’s dead.”
