Bad Grrlz' Guide to Reality: The Complete Novels Wild Angel and Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell (47 page)

Tom had heard all this from Ian, over the past few weeks. Ian delighted in sharing the stranger bits that he found on the Internet. He was particularly fond of the story of
Mary Celeste.

“The ship was in perfect shape,” Ian said, his voice pitched as low as a man telling a ghost story. “The table was set for breakfast. No sign of any foul weather. Something strange had happened—and no one knows what it was.”

Tom watched as Charles looked up from the wine list. Tom could see that Charles was thinking about how to turn this conversation to his advantage. “So what’s your explanation, Bill?” he asked, a touch of challenge in his voice.

More posturing, Tom thought. He had watched on the previous night when Bill and Charles had played one-upmanship, and he could see the same thing happening again. Charles had noticed Bill’s support of this mystery, and now he was trying to nudge Bill into a position where he’d propose a theory that Charles could ridicule.

Bill shook his head, unwilling to be nudged. “I’m no expert,” he said. “But we do have an expert at the table. You write about this weird stuff all the time, don’t you, Max? I bet you have an explanation.”

Tom frowned as Bill and Charles leaned back in their chairs, grinning. Bill had sidestepped Charles neatly. Now they were both eager, Tom thought, to watch Max make a fool of himself describing some crackpot theory. That would make them feel superior and they’d enjoy that.

Max looked up from his menu and took off his reading glasses.

“An explanation for the Bermuda Triangle?” Max set his glasses on the table beside his menu. “Well, I am, actually, a bit of an expert on this topic.”

Tom noticed that Susan was biting her lip, looking concerned. She was worried for Max. Bill and Charles were waiting, smiling like wolves waiting for a comrade to fall.

“So what’s the explanation?” Bill asked.

“People have proposed any number of explanations,” Max said in a serious tone. He had the manner of a professor lecturing his students. “Some say that the islands in this area are the mountain tops of the sunken continent of Atlantis, and that the seismic disturbances that sank Atlantis millions of years ago will occasionally capture a ship. There are others who blame sea monsters—giant squid or other monstrous animals dragging ships down. Others prefer an extraterrestrial explanation: UFOs and alien abductions. There’s one fellow who has written to me a few times: he thinks that there are tiny wormholes under the water—those are black holes that lead to white holes, you know. Anyway, these micro-wormholes open up and suck people into other dimensions. He claims he has found evidence of this in the form of magnetic anomalies.” Max paused to take a sip of water.

“Very interesting,” Charles said. “Do you think that’s the case?”

He was hoping, Tom knew, that Max would say yes.

Max set down his glass. “No, I have my own theory,” he said. “It’s really quite simple. I’m surprised more people haven’t figured it out. But I suppose the truth is always difficult to see.”

Tom saw Charles and Bill exchange glances. They were in league now, ready to be amused.

Max smiled at them, then said simply, “People lie.”

“What?” Charles exclaimed, as if stung. “What do you mean?”

“People make up stories. They lie.” Max studied Charles with an air of benign puzzlement. “Surely it can’t come as a shock to you. As a banker, you must come across this all the time.”

“Well, yes, of course.” Charles was sputtering now. “People lie when it’s to their advantage. But there’s no advantage to lying about things like this. Why would they?”

Tom grinned as he watched Max tilt his head and study Charles. It was clear who had the upper hand. The banker was uncomfortable now; Max took his time.

“People are always lying,” Max said. “They lie for fun. They lie to make a better story. The crew of the
Mary Celeste
probably abandoned ship in the lifeboat and then were lost in a storm. There’s a lot of evidence to support that. All that business about the table being set for breakfast, the ship being in perfect shape—all that was added later on. The historical record shows that the ships lifeboat was missing, and that the ship had endured some heavy weather. The cargo was a couple of thousand barrels of unrefined alcohol—and there’s some evidence that a few barrels exploded. So you can understand why the crew might have abandoned ship.

“But Conan Doyle got a hold of the story of the
Mary Celeste,
wove it into one of his books, and made it much more interesting. Doyle was an excellent liar, you know. People liked the story he told better than the truth, so that’s what they remembered.”

Max picked up his menu and smiled innocently. “Fiction writers are all liars,” he said. “People tend to forget that.”

“You say I’m a liar? I say you’re a liar. And who’s to say we aren’t both right.”

—from
Here Be Dragons

by Mary Maxwell

“So what are we supposed to do here?” Susan said. She and Pat stood by the spiral staircase on the uppermost deck of the Atrium, leaning against the railing and looking down. Their position gave them a good view of the deck below.

“This is the ‘Welcome Aboard’ party,” Pat said. “We’re supposed to mingle and have a good time. We can meet the captain if you like. There he is, right over there.”

Susan glanced in the direction that Pat had nodded. The captain was surrounded by well-dressed women and their husbands. He was smiling and nodding, but Susan thought he looked bored. She didn’t see any reason to meet him. “What else can we do?”

“We can get our picture taken by the ship’s photographer.” Pat gestured to the photographer at the bottom of the stairs. A matronly woman in a gold lame dress posed on the stairs, showing a fearsome array of teeth. The photographer snapped her photograph, then she continued down the stairs and a matronly woman wrapped in flowered silk took her place. “Apparently they always take people’s pictures at these things. Later, they sell the print to you for five bucks. You can look at the prints in the photo gallery, down near the theater. Have you seen that yet? They’ve got a photo of you, that one they snapped when you were getting aboard.”

Susan shook her head. She remembered being asked to pose beside a big cardboard cutout of a palm tree while someone official had snapped her picture, but she’d been in a rush and hadn’t asked why. She hadn’t seen the photo gallery and hadn’t found the theater yet. She was still having some trouble finding her way around the ship. Restaurants and shops and pools and corridors—it was all very confusing. She found it difficult to remember sometimes that she was on board a ship. It felt more like an enormous hotel.

On the far side of the lower deck, she saw a flurry of activity surrounding a man in a cowboy hat. Light glittered on the silver star he wore on his chest. As the crowd shifted, she saw a woman dressed in an historic gown and a man in a top hat. She saw a flash of light as another photographer snapped a picture.

“What’s going on over there?” she said, staring at the group below. “Some folks from the show that’s playing tomorrow night in the Singing Sirens Theater,” Pat said. “Some kind of musical melodrama set in Gold Rush California.” Susan stared at her.

“Hey, don’t look at me. I don’t make this up. Apparently there are a bunch of California historians on board—some kind of convention.”

“How do you know this stuff?”

“It’s all in the
Ship’s
Log,” Pat said. “Hey, there’s Tom.” Susan saw Tom moving through the crowd below. “Want to go down and say hi?”

Susan shook her head. “He looks busy.”

Pat gave her an appraising look. Pat had commented on Tom more than once, and Susan knew that her friend thought Susan and Tom would make a good couple.

“There’s Ian,” Susan said, waving at the computer programmer. He was watching the couples on the dance floor.

“You want to go see what he’s up to?” Pat asked.

“You go. I’ll meet you later.” Susan could tell that Pat really wanted to get to know Ian a little better.

“What are you going to do?”

Susan shrugged. “Explore the ship a little. Maybe I’ll go check out the photo gallery. If I don’t run into you later, I’ll meet you in the stateroom.”

“Are you sure?” Pat asked. “Absolutely.”

Pat shrugged. “If you say so.” Pat headed downstairs, pausing at the photographer to have her picture taken. Susan stayed where she was, watching the crowd below.

She saw Charles and Lily Rafferty making their way toward the captain. Of course, Charles would want to introduce himself. She hadn’t seen Bill and Alberta yet; she was hoping to avoid them if she did. At dinner, conversation had focused on the Bermuda Triangle and she hadn’t had to answer any questions about herself. She was still thinking about Max's suggestion that she lie. He made it sound like such harmless fun. Reinvent yourself.

She thought about heading down the spiral staircase, but then she saw Alberta and Bill coming up. She turned away before they could see her and headed toward the bow of the ship to look for the photo gallery that Pat had mentioned.

It took a while, but she found her way to the photo gallery, one deck down and toward the bow of the ship. The gallery was in a corridor near Aphrodite’s Alehouse. The walls of the corridor were covered with photos under glass—hundreds of photos of passengers standing beside that silly cardboard palm tree, teeth bared in insincere smiles. The counter where you ordered copies of your photo was closed, and no one else was in the gallery. A placard at the end of the corridor pointed the way to the Singing Sirens Theater, where a magician and a comic were currently performing.

Susan could hear music from the Alehouse—a woman singing a Barbara Streisand song about people who need people. Susan thought about going to the bar for a drink. She had long since finished her rum swizzle from the cocktail party. But she didn’t want to sit in a bar alone.

Susan studied the walls of photos, idly looking for herself. In most of the photos, a couple or a group of people stood by the silly palm, grinning at the camera or at each other. There were, she thought, so few photos of solitary travelers. So many couples and family groups and groups of friends. She stared at one photo—a balding man in his fifties and his chubby wife. They looked genuinely happy, she thought. The woman was leaning on the man’s shoulder and they were both smiling. A little tired from waiting to board, but she was sure that they hadn’t been snapping at each other while they waited. No, they had been doing their best to be cheerful. They had probably been chatting amiably with the other folks who were waiting.

She and Harry had not been a happy couple. She did not know why they hadn’t been happy. She thought they should have been. When they were in college, Harry had said he loved her. He had asked her to marry him, and she had said yes. She couldn’t remember exactly how she felt when she said yes, but she thought that she must have been happy.

Her memories of her wedding day were hazy. She remembered her mother fussing with her hair; she remembered her father walking her down the aisle; she remembered a reception filled with people, all admiring her dress, all wishing her the best of luck. She remembered feeling dazed. She remembered feeling that she was there, but not quite there—as if this were happening to someone else.

They must have been happy then. But if they had been, it hadn’t lasted. Somewhere along the way, Harry had grown impatient with her. She didn’t understand why. He became an ambitious lawyer. Maybe a bookish librarian was not the ideal wife for him.

It seemed to her that Harry was always angry. He was angry with the other lawyers in his practice, angry at other drivers, angry when they had to wait in line—always angry. Sometimes, he was angry with her, but she tried not to give him any reason for that.

It hadn’t been a terrible marriage. Harry was a civilized man—he rarely raised his voice, never raised his hand in anger. But even when he wasn’t angry over anything in particular, she had been aware of anger simmering just below the surface, waiting to boil over. It wasn’t easy and comfortable being with Harry.

She studied the picture of the balding man and his chubby wife. They looked happy. She couldn’t imagine Harry smiling, however wearily, after waiting to board the
Odyssey.

She touched her left hand, aware once again of the absence of a wedding ring. It had been silly to throw it overboard, she thought. The ring had been expensive—she remembered Harry telling her so. Throwing it overboard was a foolish and extravagant gesture, but thinking about it, she smiled.

“Over here,” a man’s voice said. She glanced toward the sound. She hadn’t noticed the man entering the gallery. “You were looking for your picture, weren’t you?”

She nodded, a little startled. “Right here,” he said.

He was in his late forties—a man with a thin face, a neatly trimmed mustache, and curly brown hair. Not handsome, exactly, but attractive in a roguish sort of way. Blue eyes that studied her with just a little too much interest. She thought he looked a bit like the sort of fellow Pat tended to date.

He was wearing khaki pants and a polo shirt—not exactly cruise wear. She imagined that he had skipped the Captain’s Welcome Party; he was a bit too casually dressed for that. He looked a little out of place, as if he didn’t really belong on a cruise. She could sympathize with that.

She hesitated, feeling uncomfortable, but not willing to be rude. Reluctantly, she stepped over to him and glanced at the photo he indicated. It was her all right. She remembered that moment now—her cab from the airport had been caught traffic and she had been late, rushed, a bit panicked. In the photo, her hair was a mess. She had smiled when the photographer said, “Say cheese,” but just barely. She was looking past the camera at the gangway, her eyes wide and distracted.

“Oh, dear,” she said.

“It’s not that bad,” the man said pleasantly. “It looks like you were in a bit of a rush, that’s all.”

“I was late,” she said. “I was meeting my fiancé on board. I knew he’d be worried.”