by Ellen Datlow
“I’m sorry,” she said, treading barely enough water to keep her mouth above the surface.
“I wrote your name,” Jaden said.
They were both crying.
“You grew up perfect,” she said, butterflying backward into the open sea, and Jaden closed his eyes.
DAY 26
Night. No city in the sky. Not quite midnight yet, Jaden guessed.
It was quieter now than it had been.
Jaden had been holding his tongue to the popsicle for long enough that it had kind of dried to the chocolate.
The splash to his left turned him around, the popsicle hanging from his mouth.
It was his mom.
She was half her, half not.
Jaden screamed, ran for her, butted her back into the water before she could get steady on the island.
She fought back to the ledge, the shore, and she was panicked—she knew what was water, what wasn’t water, and she wasn’t going to stay in the water anymore.
Jaden kicked her back, kicked her back again, but he wasn’t winning.
She was wolfing out more and more. Because she wanted to stay alive.
Jaden shook his head no, yelled to her to stop, and, when she didn’t, he drove the sharp end of the straw down into the hand she’d clawed into the sand.
The straw went through. They both looked down to it. The skin of her hand and the light werewolf fuzz coming in sent tendrils of smoke up.
Silver.
That’s what he’d written on the list, right? Silver straw, for coconuts. He’d asked for silver because it was antimicrobial, a thing he knew from his aunt explaining her earrings to him when she hadn’t been able to answer any questions about where his parents were.
His mom jerked her hand back from the island, from the straw. Her hand—her paw—split down the middle, left the straw standing there in the sand, the werewolf blood on it sizzling away.
“Stop, stop!” Jaden said to her.
She couldn’t, though. She couldn’t help it.
And, the silver, it was making her go back from wolf.
It was his mom again.
“Jaden, please, just let me come up for a—”
Jaden drove the straw into her right eye, and, when the blunt, hollow end was sticking out, was just blinding her not killing her, when it was just pumping blood and eye juice, he thumped it once, hard, with the heel of his hand, pushing it deep enough that a slow plug of greyish pink came out the straw, drooped down into the water.
His mom stopped fighting.
Jaden leaned forward, held her forearm in his hand, then her hand in his, then her fingers. Then nothing.
DAY 32
Jaden should have kept the record sleeve. The one with the eyeholes.
And the action figure blisterpack.
He could have fashioned the blisterpack’s plastic into lenses for the eyeholes of the record sleeve, improvised … not sunglasses exactly—there was no tint—but something to wear when he was buried in the sand, anyway.
It would feel like wearing a mask. Like he was somebody else.
But he was just him.
As of last night and this morning, he’d taken to talking out loud to Peggy.
He was telling her how tonight he was going to have to rebuild a city, window by window. Maybe if he did it right, those stacks of windows would resolve into the portholes of a monster of a cruise ship, right?
It didn’t hurt to dream.
Well, it sort of did, but he couldn’t help it.
His beard wasn’t full yet, he knew. He could tell by rubbing his jawline. His beard was wispy, thin, a joke. But give it a few years. Give it a few years, and he’d be living in his own personal comic strip.
It was going to be hilarious.
SAUDADE
STEVE RASNIC TEM
As his taxi raced toward the dock Lee could see the water between buildings and at the ends of streets, filling the space around and beyond distant spits of unfocused land. The ocean smelled like a liquefied cellar. His last time near the ocean was that summer at Myrtle Beach when he was nine. He’d hated the way the sand got between his toes, in his swimsuit, in every private crevice. He’d gone into the water to get rid of the sand, and been alarmed by the volume and the pull of it. Its murky gray was the color of everything dissolved, everything disintegrated, eaten, and disappeared. He never went into the ocean again.
It wasn’t too late to turn around. But his girls wouldn’t get their money back. And worse, they’d be disappointed in him.
“Dad, it’ll be like riding the bus.” Jane had tried to be reassuring, but how could she know? Neither she nor her sister had ever been on a cruise. All they knew was from the TV commercials and the colorful brochures. Lee and his late wife had raised their daughters to be skeptical, but it never quite took.
His cell phone began playing that discordant ring-tone Cynthia had programmed to identify her. He fumbled with the buttons and answered. “Hi, honey. I’m almost at the dock.”
“Great! I’m sorry we couldn’t be there to see you off.”
Jane shouted in the background, “Bon voyage!”
“Tell her thanks. How’s the internship going?”
“It’s going well, Dad! We’re impressing everybody! You’ll be proud.”
“I’m already proud. You sure you have enough money? You spent so much on this trip.”
“We have savings, remember? All that stuff you used to say about the real world? We listened.”
Lee felt himself tear up. It happened easily these days. “OK then. I’ll send postcards.” He heard inarticulate yelling, laughter in the background. “Cindy, what’s going on?”
Cynthia laughed. “Jane wants you to promise you’ll warn us first if you’re bringing home a new wife.” Lee didn’t react, and they said their goodbyes. He wished they hadn’t pushed him into this.
Stuck in traffic only blocks from the pier, Lee pulled out the brochure. Senior Singles Cruise. The words embarrassed him. But it had been over five years, and he was very much single and feeling older every day.
If the taxi were late it wasn’t his fault. The welcome packet stressed that the ship always sailed on time—it was your responsibility to get on board, both at the start and at all stops along the way. The very idea of being marooned in some Caribbean port—he might just stay on board the entire trip.
But the taxi made good time over the remaining blocks. Dilapidated warehouses were the rule on one side of the road. On the ocean side small and mid-size boats were anchored or dry-docked for repair, their hulls chewed with corrosion, the upper parts and edges stained a coffee color.
At the terminal he waited for hours with hundreds of others on brightly colored chairs, an experience not mentioned in the brochure. Eventually he found himself heading for the gangway with a large group. A pretty young photographer offered to take his “Bon Voyage” picture. It was only then he realized the looming white metal wall was his destination. He consented only so he’d have one to give the girls. He smiled as if he were already having the best time of his life.
Once inside the ship a small olive-skinned man with a thick accent offered to take him to his cabin. “My bags?”
“They wait for you,” the little man said, “please watch your step,” and rapidly led him through various openings and a maze of corridors. After a few minutes he had no sense of location or being on the water at all.
The cabin was like other small rooms he’d stayed in at cheap hotels. An undersized bed and a cramped bathroom, a tiny table and chair beneath twin portholes. He wasn’t sure what he’d hoped for—something exotic perhaps. But Lee was used to disappointment.
A printed schedule for “Senior Singles” was on the table. He read it with increasing alarm. Dinner was a “Meet Someone New” event. An equal number of women and men at each table was somehow guaranteed. He’d made a terrible mistake in agreeing to this.
After breakfast there were classes on dance and casino games, Brid
ge, tennis and other “deck sports,” and “Social Skills for Seniors.” After a small-group lunch (whatever that was), “cruisers”—oh, please—were encouraged to change into sun or swim attire and relax in one of the countless deck chairs. A good quality sun screen was highly recommended. His daughters had bought him enough extremely high SPF products to protect him from anything short of immolation. In the evenings, after the awkward-sounding dinners, live entertainment was offered, and the optional “romantic stroll around the deck.” Lee dropped this schedule into the waste bin. He’d brought plenty of books.
He glanced out one of the portholes. The ocean appeared to be in a slow spin around him as the ship headed out to sea. He sat down, struggling not to weep.
For the first two days Lee asked for people’s names and occupations. He listened to their stories and laughed at their jokes, and told a few harmless stories of his own. But “his” stories were stolen from people he knew and had nothing to do with him. He wasn’t sure why he lied, except he thought these tales more generally appealing. With each small deceit he felt worse.
Staff were always interrogating him, asking if he was having a good time, offering snacks, providing dozens of fluffy white towels every day. Others ran around with buckets of white paint, coating the barest suggestions of corrosion. Every day there were new brown spots, red streaks of oxidation, holes needing to be plugged before passengers noticed.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you out on the deck,” a tablemate named Sylvia said at one night’s dinner. “But it’s the quiet ones you really have to watch out for.” She winked at him and laughed. Lee couldn’t remember the last time a woman had winked at him.
“Oh, I’ve heard that saying,” he replied, not knowing what else to say. What in the world was she talking about?
The ever-present waiter interrupted. “Is everything perfect?”
Lee looked up and forced a smile. “It was a very good meal.”
“Was there something that did not suit you?”
He had no idea what to say. His tablemates spoke of textures, presentation, and the blend of flavors. Surely they were making it all up as they went along?
When the waiter hustled off, that woman, Sylvia, grabbed his arm. Lee stared at her thin fingers, a large ring on each one. “Don’t tell me you’ve found someone already, without giving the rest of us girls a chance!” He looked into her red-rimmed eyes and realized how much wine she’d consumed.
“Sylvie! You’re terrible!” her companion exclaimed, blushing and glancing his way. Suddenly he was in high school again, not understanding what his classmates were getting at. He was unable to speak the rest of the meal. He embarrassed too easily. Had he ever been able to do this? There had been moments, surely, otherwise he could never have married Ann and raised those two beautiful daughters.
After dinner Lee took an elevator to an upper deck for some air. The motion of the ship was more pronounced at this level, sometimes with a roll that forced him to shift his weight from one leg to the other, or a pitch that almost made him fall, or float off into the air. He knew suicides were sometimes a problem on these voyages, but perhaps some were hapless victims of unintentional flight. He wondered if the onboard shops sold heavier shoes.
At this height the ocean was a boundless expanse of black, borderless width and bottomless depth. There should have been more reflections—the ship was brightly lit. It made a shushing sound cutting through the liquid dark, and the troublesome whispers underneath.
Tonight’s moon was low on the horizon, its gleaming reflection painting a path across the water into its very heart. He felt a desire he had no words for.
If he stared into the water long enough he could distinguish blacker areas within the black, moving independently. As the clouds drifted rapidly away and the waves began to rise he saw another cruise ship in the distance, all lit up like an upside-down chandelier. Then an arm of the ocean covered it and it disappeared. He waited for it to reappear, unsure of what he had just seen. Finally he turned away, thinking he had misapprehended.
He heard a broken cackle from the deck below, followed by sobs, reassurances. That woman Sylvia and her friend. Lee took a few steps back in case they looked up. He saw a woman a few feet away in a pale yellow gown leaning on the rail. There was something about the set of her shoulders, a certain absorption. From this angle her face looked wet. It alarmed him enough that he was willing to risk embarrassment. He walked over and stood beside her.
The sky was now remarkably clear—a field of stars extended over hundreds of square miles. “You never see this many stars from land,” he said. He should have followed that with something, but he had no idea what. The stars ended in a region near the horizon line where lightning rhythmically fractured the emptiness.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” She turned her face slightly and she didn’t appear to have been crying. Her eyes were large and outlined in black—make-up or not, he couldn’t tell. She smelled of some exotic spice, not perfume, but perhaps something she’d eaten. The rest of her was in shadow. He thought she must be both beautiful and unusual. Still, she seemed untroubled. He had misunderstood everything.
“I’m sorry to have interrupted you.”
“You thought, perhaps, I was going to jump.”
“Oh no, I was just …”
“Attempting to measure my mental state. Do not be embarrassed for a kind urge. People do end their lives on these … frenetic vacations. They insist that you enjoy yourself. And when you do not respond as programmed, a certain desperation ensues.”
“I was thinking that very thing earlier. I didn’t want to come, but my daughters gave me this trip.”
“And you do not wish to disappoint them. You are part of the seniors group, the ‘cruisers’ I believe they call themselves.”
“Terrible, isn’t it?” Then she wasn’t part of the group. In this light he couldn’t tell how old she was—maybe he was making a fool of himself.
“Loneliness is terrible. Loneliness deadens the spirit. A man who has lost his wife knows much about loneliness, I think.”
“How did you …”
“A band of discoloration on your ring finger. You might have removed the ring as part of some ruse, but you do not seem the type. So either a divorce, or a passing, and I see no signs of divorce in your face.”
Lee looked down at his hand. He couldn’t see anything—it was too dark for her to have seen. He had taken his ring off over a year ago. “As I’ve told my daughters, I’m doing okay. I don’t need some … intervention.”
“We have a word in Brazil. Saudade. Estou com saudades de você. I miss you. But it means much more. It is a profound, melancholic longing for an absent something or someone one loves. However much you attempt to think of other things, it lingers. But you may never have even possessed the thing, or the someone, before. The one you yearn for may be a complete fabrication. We Brazilians are passionate, and we are in love with—how do you say?—tragic frames of mind. Saudade is part of our national character. Saudade, I suspect, is why many of these people are here. They hunger for something, someone. What is it that you long for, Lee?”
“How did you—” But she shut off his question with a kiss. Her lips were damp, and unpleasantly cold, but the sensation pleased him. It had been years since he’d kissed anyone on the lips. He pulled her closer into him, seeking more warmth, and found none. Instead, to his alarm, he could taste bile coming up into his throat. He turned away, gagging. “I’m so sorry!” He’d experienced no seasickness since coming on board. He’d been inordinately proud of himself. To have it come now, at the most inopportune time, made him despair.
It took him some time to recover. At some point he was forced to his knees. When he could finally look up she was gone. Who could blame her? He’d embarrassed her as much as himself.
When he regained his feet he searched for her to apologize. The deck glistened where she had been standing. He heard the shush and scrape. He turned—one of those ubiquito
us deckhands was cleaning up after him, avoiding his gaze. “Aren’t you supposed to put out barriers when you mop? Someone might slip and fall!”
The little man looked terrified. “So sorry, so sorry!”
“I … I didn’t mean to snap at you,” Lee said, and walked away.
He wandered around looking for her, having no idea what he would say if he found her. He didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, but she had kissed him, hadn’t she?
He took the elevator down and walked up to the bow. Balcony after balcony piled up behind him—when he turned he saw a few people watching from above, one shouting drunkenly. With both feet planted Lee could feel the ship’s engines throbbing inside him. He walked around the edge of the deck, paying particular attention to any women standing by the railing, until he’d made his way to the stern. Here he could see the wake of the ship, the furrows of water turned silver by the moon.
An opportune place, if he were so inclined, to leave the cruise and everything else behind. But how horrible to be alone in all this water. After a few hours you would beg to die.
Lee spent the next morning in bed, not quite able to pull himself out of dreams he could not remember. Even with the DO NOT DISTURB sign out there were numerous knocks on his door. Finally he woke himself up enough to yell “Read the sign!” He felt satisfied by the sounds of rapid retreat, but had he missed an opportunity to see the woman from last night? Somehow she had known his name, so it would be no surprise if she could find his door, or had he misunderstood all that?
He needed more sleep to drain any residual sense of unreality, but blasts of the ship’s horn made that impossible. Defeated, he stared at his cabin walls. A series of prints conveyed an attitude of eroticism, while still far from explicit so that no one could complain—curves and blurry flesh-colored swatches of color, some lines hinting at a highly abstracted embrace. Highly abstracted embraces seemed the most he could hope for at this stage of his life.
These images recalled a series of Chagall prints Ann chose for their bedroom. He didn’t know much about art. Their titles contained words like “lovers,” “marriage,” and “kiss.” With clouds of color that spread across the lines of the forms, it was as if the passion those couples felt extended to everything they touched, everything they saw. It was too much, or at least he had thought so at the time. Now he envied their enthusiasm. The figures were so full of emotion they floated—they’d lost all sense of decorum or gravity.
