Shuttered Sky

She stood suddenly, and like a petulant child grabbed the platter of shrimp and hurled it at Winston. It bounced off his chest and clat­tered to the ground, rolling down the steps to the pool deck.

“This is MY ship!” she screamed. “MY life, and MY reward for the hell I’ve been through!” On the dance floor, the music stopped and all eyes turned to Lourdes. “And if you had half the brains you claim to have, you’d stop taking your marching orders from Dillon, or it’ll kill you like it killed the others!”

Then her eyes darted around to the spectators, as she realized she was, as always, the center of attention, but this time in an unflattering light. As if to add to her embarrassment, several gulls winging high over the ship cawed in the silence like mocking laughter from above. Lourdes turned her eyes to the sky, the birds’ wings went limp, and they plunged, dead, into the sea. Then she turned to her profligate partiers.

“Dance!” she ordered. Suddenly their arms began to jerk and their bodies undulate, involuntarily pulled by their puppeteer’s unseen strings. Flustered, the band quickly kicked into another number. Sat­isfied, she released the dancers with the slightest flick of her head, and although their steps missed a couple of beats, they quickly took over for themselves, regaining the rhythm, and not daring to leave the dance floor for fear of what Lourdes might do.

“Don’t look at me like, like I’m a monster,” she told him. “All of my guests are here by choice, because they appreciate me, and the pleasures I have to offer.”

“What about the crew?”

She hesitated before answering. “They know their place.” Then she turned and walked to an open-air bar further back on her private deck, while her Michaelesque boys both hurried to clean the shellfish scattered on the ground. Even before she arrived at the counter, the bartender had mixed her a red and white “Miami Vice,” heavy on the Bacardi.

“Aqui tiene, Senorita Lourdes,” said the bartender, stuffing a paper parasol and a pineapple wedge into the drink. He took a quick glance at Winston, “?Uno para su companero?”

“No—apenas es un nino,” Lourdes said, irrespective of the fact that she, too, was underage. She sat on a stool, ignoring him as she sucked down her drink, its daiquiri head flowing like blood into the Pina Colada beneath.

What troubled Winston most was how easily Lourdes had seized control of her guests’ bodies on the dance floor. Used to be it took incredible concentration for her to control such a large group of peo­ple, but, like himself and Dillon, her powers were still exponentiating toward an end he still didn’t know. It frightened Winston to think what Lourdes might do if she ever really got angry.

Maybe it was best after all for her to be queen of her own little ship, her dominion limited to the souls on board, slaves and followers who were resigned to subjugating their will to hers. Let her have her ship, so that she might be satisfied, and extend her grasp no further.

Leaving her to vanish again to the horizon would certainly be the easiest thing to do, but for the Shards, the path of least resistance always led to disaster. Winston knew that if Lourdes slipped off of his radar again, it would be a dangerous step backwards.

He came up behind her, waiting for her to turn around, but she didn’t, so he sat beside her at the bar. “There is something we need to do, Lourdes. You, me and Dillon. I’m not sure what it is, but it keeps me awake at night, and when I do sleep, I dream about it. You have to be feeling it as much as I am.”

She slurped down the bottom of her drink. “I don’t feel a thing.”

“You’re lying.”

She turned to the bartender. “Gerardo, una mas, por favor.” Winston dimly recalled that she had a brother named Gerardo, and Winston found himself not wanting to know if she had put her whole family to work here. The bartender mixed her another drink, but by the time he slid it onto the counter, Lourdes had lost interest. She sauntered past Winston to the railing, looking out at the Ensenada shoreline.

“You’ve been dreaming, too, haven’t you Lourdes? About some­one in a purple chair. And three figures on the ledge of a building.”

Lourdes sighed. “It’s not a ledge, it’s a stage. Three performers taking bows at the edge of a stage, surrounded by the flowers thrown by the audience. I can smell them. And the chair’s not purple, it’s lavender.”

“I thought it was perfume,” Winston said. “What do you think it all means?”

“I don’t care.” That was a lie, too, but this was one she was sticking to. She had almost softened, almost shown a hint of her old self, but now the expression on her face solidified to granite. She strolled back to her lounge, and, resuming her position of leisure, she called to her boy toys. “Paul, Eric, it’s time for our visitor to leave. Throw him overboard.”

The two brawny men advanced on Winston.

“What?!”

“No—wait!” said Lourdes. “After all this is a pirate ship. Make him walk the plank!”

Gerardo brought her the drink she had left at the bar, and she began to suck it down gleefully.

While the boy toys held him, two fat crewmen bounded off, re­turning with a long table from one of the decks below, and cantilevered it out over the side. By now the event had drawn the attention of Lourdes’s guests and they crowded the rail, chattering and laughing as if this were just another bit of entertainment.

They prodded Winston onto the makeshift plank.

“Lourdes, don’t do this!”

“Oh, please,” she said. “We’re barely half a mile from shore, and the water isn’t that cold. Humor me.”

Winston stood at the end of the plank, seven decks above the Pacific, being cheered on by Lourdes’s hordes. No, thought Winston, the fall wouldn’t kill him, and neither would the swim. But it was not his death he was considering. It was Lourdes’s. She was dead—or at least the girl he once knew. They had all been affected by the events of their lives, misshapen in many ways by what they had been through. Lourdes was broken, and he doubted even Dillon could fix her now.

“Good-bye, Lourdes.”

With the cheering crowd behind him, and without looking back, he jumped into the sea.

The fall seemed to stretch on for a sickening eternity, and then the sting as he hit the water was quickly numbed by the chill. He surfaced beside the great ship, still hearing the cheers from above. The water was cold but not frigid, and although half a mile was a long way for an untrained swimmer to go, Winston stroked, finding his desire to put distance between himself and Lourdes enough motivation to pro­pel him to shore.

5. Catching Rays

Transcription excerpt, day 193. 13:45 hours

“Pigeons pray. Did you know that, Maddy?”

“I never noticed.”

“They did a study. Take a pigeon, put it in a cage, then feed it at random intervals regardless of its behavior, and pretty soon it starts to do some weird things—like hopping on one leg, or spinning in circles, or bowing its head over and over, as if that’s what brings on the food. ‘Religious behavior’ they call it.”

“The prayers of pigeons.”

“Exactly.”

“What makes you think their prayers aren’t answered?”

“You know, Maddy, sometimes you remind me of someone.”

“Do I remind you of Deanna?”

“She also would have championed the prayers of pigeons. And she’d make you believe they were answered.”

“I’m a poor substitute for the goddess of faith.”

* * *