“My dear, they eat it up with a dessert spoon. People believe what they want to believe. It does not fit with their worldview, you see, that a curator of archaeology would display modern ceramics in his home. People are funny. We have changed and yet we are the same as always.”
The words thump inside my head. The jar is not old. And yet, James and Raoul believed. I was there, I saw them. Or maybe I was the one seeing what I wanted, and they were toying with my funny bone. Or maybe they thought I was tickling theirs with my new-old jar, and so they played along. They took the answer to their graves without leaving me an explanatory note.
For a moment I want to laugh, because I’d kill them both if they weren’t already dead.
“The bones,” he continues, “belong to something in the Muridae family.”
“You know bones?”
“No. I know mice.”
TWELVE
The mouse with the bent whiskers is gone. There’s another in its place, one whose whiskers run straight and true.
“Wow, they look great,” I say.
Schultz is leaning back in his chair, munching on Doritos.
“I’m glad this lot didn’t die.”
“Yeah.” Chip crumbs fly from his mouth. “It’s great.”
“Hey, Schultz, what happened to all those mice that died? I mean, do you guys incinerate them or what?”
“Why?”
“Just curious, I guess.” I try and look dumb. Like there’s nothing more to me than a mop.
He grunts. “We burn ’em. It used to be Jorge’s job.”
“I hope
“Don’t worry, the big guy does it himself now. Doesn’t trust anyone else.”
“Well, I’m glad of that.” My mop continues to slap the ground.
I find the jar’s siblings crowded onto a low shelf between nested tables and a magazine rack. They’re not just brothers and sisters but clones spawned from the same mold. The only past they’ve emerged from is a truck, and before that a factory, and before that a bag of dust.
If there really is a book of fools, both old and new, I am surely on the first page.
The label reads:
The Corinth Canal is a hungry mouth cut into the landscape.
“See those?” The Swiss points to the twin breakwaters that cup the chasm, their lighthouses dead and impotent to guide ships between them. “Whore’s legs, wide open to let everybody inside.”
“Why do you hate women so much? Was your mother a whore?”
I saw something on TV once about Scott Base in Antarctica. The coldest place on earth, I remember thinking. Until now. His eyes make the South Pole seem warm and welcoming.
“My mother is none of your concern.” He taps on the railing. The canal nears. “I will tell you something, but you must not speak of it. If you do, I will cut up your friend just as she asked.”
I watch the dead stone cones and hope for light.
“Look in the cargo hold tonight. Tell no one what you see there.”
I go. Of course I do. I can’t help myself. Dropping a mystery in my lap is like waving chocolate cake in front of a starving woman. And I am famished. Not right away, though: I wait until the dark creeps in, just like the Swiss told me, and let the shadows tuck me in their pockets for safekeeping.
My feet fall lightly on the steps; they barely rattle. Through the guts of the boat I slip, seeing no one, until I’m at the cargo hold door.
It’s not locked. How bad can it be if the door’s not sealed shut? From my pocket I draw out a lighter and hold it ready to flick. Through the door I go, though I do not close it behind me.
“Loose lips sink ships” is a lie. It’s dead lips that are going to sink this boat.
The whole crew is here for the death parade. The captain is on the top of the corpse pile, his face caked in blood, his body bent like a crude coat hanger. The others are there, too, although some are just faces without names. Someone has stacked them as fishermen do their bounty, minus the ice packing to keep them fresh.
The Swiss.
This time I thunder up the steps, not caring about a quake that pinpoints my location. I race to the simple lounge where the others are in various stages of sleep, some twitching, some snoring. Others keep a weary eye open for danger. Lisa is curled in a corner, her head cradled by our backpacks. Scan. Pan. No sign of the Swiss.
I try the door, the one that leads to the bridge. Its handle is a battered, broken barrier between the controls and the rest of us.
“Wake up!” I shout. “Everybody, up. We’ve got a problem.”
They stare at me, these sheep awaiting slaughter. Nobody bothers beating the door; watching me try and fail is good enough for them.
My mind scans the possibilities and clutches on to the most likely answer: the lone lifeboat that had hugged the rails on the port side.
It’s warmer tonight. The air stinks of salt, a smell I used to love, but now it no longer reminds me of cheerful days at the shore. Now it’s the smell of defeat and death. Here I lost my president. Here the
The ferry grinds onwards. The lights are on but they barely penetrate the dark, and the moon gives me little to work on. The only tell is a small counter ripple in the water.
“You piece of shit!” I scream into the night. “Why did you kill them?”
The Swiss’s words drift back to me.
“The captain was already sick. Some of the others, too. Better to kill them now than let them suffer.”
“They might have lived.”
“Then they’d be changed. Unfit. Inhuman. What I did was merciful.”
“Bullshit. This is all a sick game to you. We’re toys.”
“Life is an experiment and I am a scientist! Will you survive, America? We shall see.”
“Then why bother warning me? You’ll skew your results.”
“Did you look at those other people? They are sick with wanting death. But you want to live, so I give you this chance.”
Then he floats into what’s left of the night, leaving nothing behind him but a thin lunule quavering in the sea. I go back to the others and wait to live.
We stand. We wait. Eventually the sun thrusts her horns over the horizon and we see.
Piraeus speeds toward us.
What happens next comes fast and slow, like any good disaster.
“What’s happening?” Lisa asks. “Tell me.”
Her naive question pokes holes in my tenuous temper.
I grab her by the shoulders, turn her body toward the swelling landmass, describe what’s coming for us.
“This ferry has no captain and plenty of fuel.”
She considers this, stuck on stupid. “How do we stop it?”
The words fly out like knives. “We don’t. We’re going to hit that concrete, like it or not. Unless another ship
