chapter 7
Something was tapping on my head. Naturally I tried to swat at it—a fly perhaps. But it continued to come back, performing a sort of rap-tap-tapping on my forehead.
I turned over in the bed and tried to pull the worn quilt over my head, but whatever it was found me again and continued to dance on my flesh.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I heard myself groan, and now tried using both of my hands to swat away the tapping, but it was relentless.
Then Charlie began to laugh.
I opened my eyes and saw him there, only one leg slung on the bed while still sitting next to me, and naturally his sketchbook and pencil in hand. I now understood the culprit of the tapping was a pencil—I lunged for it in an effort to destroy it. However, with my lack of balance, I misjudged my target and nearly toppled over the entire bed—luckily, though, Charlie caught me. He seemed different today. There was no longer that resistance to touch me, and needless to say I was considerably surprised to see him be so bold as to be sitting on the bed next to me. I realized immediately that I didn’t mind it in the least. But more than that, I was happy to see him in such high spirits.
“That is a very rude way to wake someone up!” I had to inhale sharply to keep from laughing.
He released my arms and pushed me back. “I had to,” he laughed. “Your snorin’ was ruining my thinkin’.”
I stopped struggling against him, “I do not snore!”
Charlie just laughed harder, “Yeah, yeah, you do.”
“Take that back!” I kicked him with my foot.
He went back to his sketch. “Nope.”
“You big jerk!”
I threw myself against him with the hope that maybe I could upset his drawing, but I managed to unbalance him enough that his leg slipped against the blanket and he went tumbling to the floor. Unfortunately, as I went to survey the hilarity he pulled me along with him, forcing us both to land in a crumpled heap on the floor.
With him beneath me, I could smell the dull remains of aftershave, soap, and the sea. I inhaled deeply. I could feel his heart pounding beneath me, sticks at the center of a drum. I could imagine the blood pumping in his body to every essential organ and limb, keeping him steady and sure. In that moment, my senses betrayed me with how attractive I found him. I wanted to kiss him so very much. I scolded myself—a psychologically healthy person shouldn’t have been thinking that way. I still should have hated him, and because I didn’t, I sincerely disliked myself.
Before I could embarrass myself further, I rolled away from him, instantly missing the feeling of his body against mine. For a moment more he lay there, swallowing hard before pushing himself back up again in a single motion.
An idea occurred to me as I glanced back and forth between Charlie and the door.
“Hey.” I looked at the door again. “Wasn’t the door locked?”
He flopped back down on the bed. “It was.”
I rested my hand on my hip. “Then how exactly did you get in here?”
He looked at me as though the answer was obvious. “Picked it.”
Being skeptical, I walked over to the door and examined it closely. The keyhole didn’t appear to be damaged in any way. Even when I turned the knob over, the lock didn’t turn with it, suggesting that it hadn’t been tampered with. I lobbied for a more suitable explanation.
“No way. You just had a key.”
He smiled and sauntered over to the door, opened it, and closed himself outside.
“Okay, lock it,” he called. The smile in his voice had me biting my lip in anticipation. I was eager to hear the sound of his voice again.
I followed his directions and heard the little latch clasp against the wooden door frame. Immediately I knelt down and tried to see through the keyhole, but it appeared to be barreled by the lock. If he was trying to trick me, he was doing a very good job.
From outside the door I could hear Charlie breathing—a fantastic sound all by itself. Then I heard a kind of jingling and within an instant of that, the unlatching of the door.
“See?” he said from the doorway. “Easy.”
A horrifying thought came over me. Reading my expression, Charlie’s own smile receded and his smugness vanished.
“What?”
“If-if you can do that,” I looked at him, “then why didn’t you just go ahead and open the door that first day I was here?”
He let out a deep sigh. “I guess I coulda easy ’nough, but you seemed scared enough; I didn’t want to spook you anymore than I had to.”
“Oh.” I tried to appear indifferent. Truthfully, I didn’t quite know how to feel about that.
“Will you teach me how to pick a lock?”
He laughed. “Why would someone like you need to know somethin’ like that?”
“What does it matter?” I shrugged. “It’s interesting, and anything that’s interesting is worth learning.”
For a moment I thought he might laugh in my face, but instead he took something out of his back pocket and sat on the floor next to me.
“All right then.” He locked the door with the two of us in between it so it couldn’t latch. “This is a tumbler lock. It’s the most common lock ‘round…” He watched my face while he spoke, as if waiting for me to interrupt or become bored with the process, but when I didn’t, he continued. “To get one of these open, you need a pick and a tension wrench—”
I raised my hand like a good student. “What’s a tension wrench?”
He smiled again. If that was all I had to do to make him smile then I had to start thinking of more questions.
“One of these.” He held out the tool he had removed from his pocket. “You use it to put pressure on the inside of the lock so you can hold any picked pins in place while the others are bein’ moved.”
I tried to peer inside the keyhole once more. “This is one of those things that requires a lot of practice, isn’t it?”
He laughed, “Yeah, generally.”
“Okay, then what?”
“The tension wrench goes in first and you turn it the same direction you do the key.” He demonstrated on the door as I hovered over his shoulder. “You’ll feel it give way on the plug. Then you use the pick…”
His face was all concentration again. I was glad I was good at multitasking so I could both admire him and observe the refined motions he made with his wrists.
“…try and listen for when the pins fall back into place. If you get real good at it, you can just feel it and it becomes easy.” With a final move of the pin, the door unlocked. He grinned, looking more smug than usual.
“I want to try.” I felt like a child again. It had been a long time since I had been challenged with a skilled task.
“Go for it.” He handed over the pick and wrench, but he kept his smirk. I bit the inside of my cheek, feeling quite nervous to see him move from my front to behind me—now he was hovering over my shoulder.
I locked the door then inserted the tension wrench. I was sure I had screwed up already until I felt the end of the lock plug just as Charlie had said.
“You got it?” He pushed up closer against me, trying to get a better look.
I coughed, cleared my throat, and hesitated. “Um—yeah, I think so.”
I told myself to focus, to pretend it was for a mark of some kind, but the illusion did little for me and in actuality only made it more difficult to concentrate.
The pick went in easily enough, but I had difficultly pushing the pins up into their positions. It was only after several minutes of hard work and eventual frustration that I finally heard the click of a pin give way.
I was well aware that as I worked, Charlie had been scooting ever closer to me—now his chest against my back. I could feel the taut muscles of his torso touching me just slightly, and the urge to lean back completely and test his strength was almost unbearable.
His breath quickened just a little as his arms reached up and came for the pick and wrench. Instinctively, I went to let him finish the chore, but his hands pulled me back.
“Here.” His voice was considerably strained.
His hands became mine as we worked the lock together. His right thumb and index finger overlapped mine completely, but he was strangely gentle. Come to think of it, he was always gentle with me. Even now, I could feel that as he rested the weight of his own arm against mine. By accident I brushed my thumbnail against the inside of his palm—he jolted and another pin came undone.
“Do you feel that?” His voice was hoarse.
I coughed again. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
It took dozens of tries and strings of cursing that I wasn’t even aware I knew before I was finally capable of getting the lock picked on my own. Really, it was something of a bittersweet moment, because while I was excited at having learned something new, I felt a little wretched that I had lost the excuse for Charlie and I to be so close.
“Okay, now what other kind of lock can I learn?”
He began to chuckle. It was nice to hear him let go of whatever it was that was holding him back.
I rolled my eyes. “And why exactly am I a source of comic relief?”
“You like to learn, huh?”
“Yes. Do you think that’s strange?”
“I guess, yeah.” He shrugged and then put the tension wrench in his back pocket and answered my unasked question. “‘Cause girls tend to be all crying and stuff when bad things happen, not wanting a school lesson—it’s weird.”
“First, not all females panic in stressful situations. Second, lock picking is hardly something my parents would have taught me, let alone something they teach in public schools. And third, if you recall correctly when…we met, I originally did ‘cry and stuff.’” I stuck my chin out and tried to be smug but the out loud mention of the situation seemed to put tension between us again.
He stared at me. His gaze was intense, as if he was considering something. “That’s right.” He took out a pack of cigarettes from the plastic crate and placed one in his mouth. “You were homeschooled. You liked that?”
I shrugged. “I can’t imagine a better education.” While it was somewhat closed minded, it was true. Mom and Dad had given us the opportunity to attend high school like other kids, mostly because Mom was nervous that we weren’t socializing enough. Robbie jumped at the idea, joining every team and sport he could, but I was irritated at the idea. Why would I want to do that when I could learn at home?
“You went to public school?”
“Sometimes.” I watched the flame of his lighter brighten his irises as he smiled. They seemed to be a combination of light green and blue today—a turquoise, I decided.
“That worked out well.”
Charlie shrugged and considered my response. “I picked up things I wanted to.”
“What does that mean?”
He lay down on the bed and blew smoke at the ceiling. “I ain’t smart like you, but I always managed to learn things I wanted to know.”
I fiddled with the lock of the door. “I guess we’re both like that.”
He smiled at me again.
“What did you say the name of this ship was?”
He smiled—it was slow and coy and forced me to sit down low against the wall. If he was unaware of the effect he had on me, I would have been grateful.
“The Diyu.”
“I thought so.”
“Got it secondhand with the name, never bothered changin’ it.”
“Do you know what diyu means in the traditional Chinese?” I questioned. “It’s really kind of funny when you think about it…”
He shook his head.
“It’s the equivalent translation for ‘hell’ or ‘underworld.’ When it comes to the afterlife, some Asian cultures revolve around Buddhist beliefs, and some ancient traditions say that before the spirit can be reincarnated, it must be purified or punished in the different levels of diyu.”
I looked at him and waited for a response, any kind of a response, but he just took another drag of his cigarette and continued to stare aimlessly at the corkboard ceiling. I became slightly afraid that I was boring him with my random knowledge, but I was also revved up by the familiar trivia and couldn’t help myself.
“It got me thinking about the myth of Persephone.” I felt a little excited as I began reciting the tale told to me so many times. Truth be told, I hadn’t even thought about it in a long time. “Hades was in the Underworld one day, and when he saw Persephone picking flowers in a field, he instantly fell in love with her. He tore a hole through the earth and carried her to his palace in hell to be his bride. And when Persephone’s mother, Demeter, found out what happened, she refused to continue nourishing the earth so all of the mortals would die.”
If this was the underworld, then what did that make Charlie?
“Well, without mortals, Zeus would have no one to worship him, so he told his brother (Hades was one of his brothers) to return Persephone. But being Hades and everything, he tricked Persephone into consuming six seeds of a pomegranate. The seeds tied her to the Underworld forever so even though she went back to earth, she always wanted to be somewhere else.”
“Then what?”
Finally, a response. His voice was so abrupt it ruined my line of thinking.
“Oh—um, well, For every seed she ate, Persephone stayed a month with Hades, and the other half of the year she had to return to earth. The months that she’s on Earth is supposed to account for the spring and summer months—winter is when Demeter is too upset to let us mortals harvest.” I tried to laugh.
“That’s lousy,” Charlie said after a minute.
I became defensive. “What do you mean?”
He put out his cigarette and sighed. “Think ‘bout it, Addie. Nobody got what they really wanted and so nobody was really happy.”
I considered his words and weighed them. “Well, sometimes I guess you have to compromise in life. If may not be fair, but that’s the way it is.”
“Nah,” Charlie shook his head. “I mean yeah, I get what you’re sayin’, but it shouldn’t have to be that way. The good stuff should be all or nothin’. Either you get what you want or you get nothin’ at all. Otherwise, wanting somethin’ doesn’t mean much of nothin’ to begin with.”
“There’s a difference between want and need, Charlie.” I was still feeling defensive about my myth retelling, the desire to explain how it was relevant to our situation was made more intense by how he tried to change the subject. Only now, Charlie was looking at me differently than before, and I felt as though we weren’t just talking about mythology.
“Nah.” He shook his head fiercely. “Need is somethin’ right ‘round the corner from want. It’ll creep up on ya when you think you got all your want under control. And then they end up being the same thing—ain’t no different in the end.”
The conversation was quickly making me uncomfortable, and I knew if I didn’t change the subject right away, he would get the best of me again. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be in control of the dialogue as I didn’t want him to be in control. As it was, I didn’t like the control he had over me; the way he made my body feel, the way he made me question my instincts…
“I’ve never thought about it like that. Fine then, if you’re an expert on stories, you tell me one.”
“One what?” He laughed.
“A story.”
He smiled his Charlie smile. “Okay,” he said. “I think I can do that.”
He cleared his throat as he began. “Once an old farmer found a viper half-frozen to death in the snow. He put him in his coat to warm him up. When he did, the snake bit him. So the farmer died.”
I looked at him and smiled—he was staring at me again. “That’s an Aesop fable.”
“The point is to mind your own business or else get bit.”
“I think that’s lousy. And completely inaccurate,” I added. “Not every act of kindness results in disaster.”
He put his head back down and, shrugged. “I heard it at a bar in the Maldives once.”
I sighed dramatically and threw myself to the floor in a likewise fashion. “The Maldives? I’m jealous.”
He sat up and laughed. “You never been?”
“Ha, ha.” My laugh was equally sarcastic. “The only beach I’ve seen is on the coast of New Jersey.”
He scoffed again and slid down to the floor beside me, lying down so our heads were adjacent to each other. “That ain’t no beach.”
“I know—don’t remind me.” I began to laugh.
He laughed too. It was a musical sound that was parallel to my ear-lobe and it made me want to smile just at the thought of it.
“Maybe after I’m done in Diyu I’ll show you a real beach.”
“What, you mean in the next life?”
His smile grew. “Yeah, you’d like it a lot.” He closed his eyes as if trying to remember something. “The water is so clear and blue you can see the reefs right through it…”
I tried to picture the image in my head. “I like the sound of that.”
“The coral comes in every sort of color you can think of: pink, purple, and yellow. Did you know corals get their color from this stuff living in their tissues?”
“No.” I smiled. “I didn’t know that.”
We stayed that way for a while, just looking at each other in a way that said something without having to be said. It was nice to lie beside him and have the quiet closeness of the moment. I questioned if this was what Dad had so often missed with Mom—their late night conversations at the end of a busy day. I had to confess that if nothing else, I felt comfortable in the confines of his companionship. And I had the most terrible feeling that I would miss it when it was gone.
A query came to me and I considered the possibilities: “Hey, Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you really think you’ll go to hell…when you die, I mean?”
“I don’t know.” His expression remained indifferent. “I can tell you I don’t want to think all them people have been wrong all this time. And ’sides…people like me should have somewhere just for us so we can’t be hurtin’ pretty girls.” He laughed, but it was bitter and disheartened.
I turned and stared at him with my mouth agape, searching for the right words, but my blush took over.
“I gotta do lookout tonight.” His announcement was abrupt. “You wanna come with me?”
“Um, okay.”
He nodded to the ceiling. “Okay.”
Before I could say anything else, he jumped up and lit another cigarette. I stayed on the floor and watched him walk to the door. He seemed different than usual, and although I couldn’t put my finger on it, he did seem happier.
“Addie?”
“Hmm?”
“Wh-what do you think ‘bout that kind of stuff?”
“The afterlife?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
I stood up and rested my weight on my elbows. “I don’t know.”
“No happily ever after?” I could tell he was mocking me again, but this time he seemed genuinely sad about it.
I smiled back. “Maybe it’s a ‘wait and see’ sort of situation.”
After I spent most of the day creating origami animals, I did some sketching before I quickly grew bored. I did, however, manage to amuse myself by working in some standard yoga and flexing my body into contorted shapes to help my circulation. The exercise helped get my mind back into working order after the perplexing series of conversations I had with Charlie. I made myself laugh repeatedly while trying to balance in different positions in that awkward little room.
Despite his temper and occasional foul disposition, Charlie had been tender with me when it wasn’t necessary, making me think that maybe there were these levels of him that overlapped into a complexity that made it difficult for him to function. He thought himself a burden on the world, this much I understood. But he was also sexist, violent, and lacked a formal education. But still, there was that otherworldly attraction that I couldn’t deny or take myself away from. And based on some of his behavior, I had to wonder if he felt the same way. I could at least tell by the way he looked at me that there was some attraction there, but other than that…
Charlie returned as promised several hours later and looked quizzically at my accomplishments for the day.
“Got bored, huh?”
I pulled at the tail of my origami swan and watched his wings take flight “A bit.”
He smiled and my heart began beating a little faster. I wondered if he’d always have this effect on me.
“You should talk to the concierge about getting a room with a balcony,” I joked. “I don’t understand how you manage to spend all this time in here without any windows. The lack of a view is crippling my imagination.”
He took the ball cap and placed it on my head, his kaleidoscope eyes staring into mine. “I don’t need any windows. This cabin already has the best view possible.”
For once I kept out of sight as instructed. If any of the deckhands saw me, they didn’t say anything while Charlie and I rushed through the corridors and up the stairwells labeled Deck B. Every surface, pipe, and floor piece was painted a bright, endearing red. The color was only made more spectacular by the aggressive sunset. Once we were there I could already see the orange globe making its way to the end of the horizon and working its way to retirement into evening. Everything, even the lowliest machine, was paved in a wave of pink and gold.
I sighed and breathed in the ocean. “Is it always this nice?”
He laughed at me. “No. Sometimes the weather gets real bad. You can have an entire trip where it does nothing but rain or it’s real cold. Other times other ships bother ya, people lookin’ to steal your stuff.”
I laughed as he struggled to light his cigarette through the wind that whipped off the ocean. Finally fed up, I covered the flame of his lighter with my hands. He glanced up at me; again my actions seemed to surprise him.
“You mean pirates?” I could hardly contain my excitement.
“I s’pose.” I noticed his effort to blow his smoke away from me.
“That’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?”
He looked at me curiously.
“Thieves stealing from thieves…”
“Everybody steals from everybody, Addie. That’s the natural order of things.”
I laughed. “Don’t be so morbid.”
“It’s true,” he said. “You know, survival of the fittest and all that.”
“I don’t think Darwin intended the laws of evolution for crime.”
“It’s all the same.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree.”
He began meandering about the deck, mostly staying close to the handles. And although I was reluctant to just blankly follow him, I did so because I was anxious to be left alone in a place that was so strange. But on another level that I wasn’t quite ready to admit, I also enjoyed spending time with him in a way that went beyond companionship.
Distracted by his movements, I felt my feet slip on the deck. I swore under my breath and clasped onto the railing.
“Be careful,” he called from behind his shoulder. “Gotta watch out for oil, seaspray, grease… everything ‘round here is slippery.”
I grabbed him by the wrist. His laughter stopped, but mine had just started.
“If I’m going down,” I giggled, “I’m taking you with me.”
He rolled his eyes. “Promises, promises…”
I stared out at the waves while the darkness rolled in. Slowly, he reached out and touched the bruises around my neck. I cringed at the reminder of the familiar wound and closed my eyes against the memory of it.
“Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.” I could barely get the words out, though we both knew it was.
He rested his weight against the wall of the deck and puffed. “Yeah, it is,” he laughed. “But I’m still sorry.”
“You heal real fast.” His tone was tight. “That cut on your foot is probably all but gone.”
I scanned my memory trying to think of when I had told him of that. I knew I hadn’t. In actuality I had been extremely careful to conceal that small detail while in the abandoned house. But he had warned me about the dangers of being a stowaway, so if there were medical professionals onboard, it may not have been wise to enlist their help anyway.
“You-you looked after me wh-when Wallace tried to kill me, didn’t you?”
He said nothing and stared into the waves.
I looked over at him and poked the flesh beneath his black eye, our hands still attached. “Hey, I want you to know I’m almost sorry I did that to your face.” I heard myself laugh slightly as he smiled and rubbed his hand along his nose. It was as though he was trying to wipe away the bruise of his ego instead of the literal pain I had caused him, though I doubted it could have been much.
He laughed. “Been a long time since somebody got the better of me like that.”
“It’s not like you didn’t deserve it.” I was beginning to feel smug.
“I ain’t gonna lie…you’re not the way I thought you’d be.”
I shrugged. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
Staring back out at the waves he smiled and said, “I forgot how to be surprised.”
I smiled back. “Well, you’re welcome then.”