We Are Pirates: A Novel (22 page)

Phil Needle put the phone down. It was not Marina. It was not Gwen. It was nobody he wanted to talk to.

Who does not see rich people on a boat and want to destroy them? A ship is a wooden world, with invisible delights below deck and vain displays above. But past the boundaries of land, just as the boat in storms is subject to the blue whip of the sea, the treasure is anyone’s game. Those in yachts are powerful, but their disputants also have a power granted in oppositional culture. They have
contempt
, utter and irrevocable, rage produced even in the gentlest. It must, this thing, lead to brutality. Gwen was ravenous to prove these ideas true. She was certain about it, as certain as the circles around each view of her prey, the limits of the binoculars they had found on board.

Over Paradise Bay a tiny rain was stopping and starting and the sun blinked indecisively in the air. The water was so cold, your favorite ring could slip off your finger, making identification much more difficult. Catherine Vogel was standing at the back of the boat, with her hands visored over her eyes in the shape of a heart. She had a beautiful body and a frown. She was looking out at Tiburon, a wealthy peninsula three miles away and Spanish for “shark,” and thinking, it appeared to Gwen,
When I put on this bikini I was happy.
She’d covered herself in a short, thin robe that belonged in a closet, two flights down, by a dark bed in a low room. You could see a loop of ink around her thigh, a few lines of French. She did not belong on board. She was twenty-three and just figuring this out. It was stupid, to be on a yacht, and she was not stupid. With a clear head she could see, Gwen could see, that she wouldn’t be caught dead here.

Her boyfriend was inside checking a piece of equipment. He was older. His name was Roger Cuff. He had been dressed in a buttoned shirt and a windbreaker, like a political candidate at a disaster, but he had just shucked his clothes and was now wearing only the hair on his body and his big, worried head. Roger Cuff had just had a big project canceled by his producing partner, who was also his consultant. This yacht,
Outside the Box
, a forty-footer with full detailing and a top dry ride up to twenty-six knots he co-owned with his last remaining friends, was no longer affordable for Roger Cuff. Yesterday his girlfriend had returned from a vague trip—a friend’s wedding, she’d murmured—on a later flight than she’d originally said, and had been quiet and cold on the boat. They hadn’t made love last night, and the removal of Roger Cuff’s clothes was a rash, hopeful gesture, although more than sex he wanted to lie around afterwards and talk of the other men who had, if you looked at it as Roger Cuff did, stolen his success. If Cath had come inside at that moment, he would have started to talk about it, naked or not, so prickly and immediate was it in his mind. (How many people have died thinking of such cheap things?) But Cath was looking at the approach of another boat.

The
Corsair
sailed under the gray sky, the whole crew openly bent on plunder. Errol was at the wheel, and Manny had found the controls for the ship down below and through tinted portholes was guiding the boat with ease and fire. Cody was bringing up mugs of coffee—nobody had slept yet—and Amber was untangling some netting, if it ever came down to fishing. And Gwen was staring down hard at the boat they would soon attack. The water was a large, wide noise, and the Golden Gate Bridge, improbable and orange, looked like it had been stuck into the sea just seconds ago. Out here they could do anything, and nobody could do anything about it. Gwen lit an imaginary cigarette, her courage and determination gathered tight. The knife was in her hands, and she was breathing smoke.

“
Sick
,” Amber said beside her. “I’ve never seen water so blue.”

“Sunglasses,” Gwen said, without turning around.

“Quiet, wench,” Amber said, but she took off the sunglasses that had been left absently on a shelf below, blue and angular, belonging to an actor waking up just now with a splitting head. “Oh,” she said. “Now it just looks like normal water. But it’s okay. It’s better that it looks more real.”

“Getting close,” Gwen said, and looked up at the flag flying over the mast. She had always wondered about the pirate flag, as it announced from afar intentions that seemed better kept secret. Only now, at this time in our nation’s history, did she see why it worked: people thought it was a joke. The woman now, in the robe on the deck, must have been thinking so. Soon they would be close enough to see her smile.

“Heaven in a handbasket!” cried Errol. “I see great success for us in this our first venture! Treasure—and a treasure map!”

“Treasure map,” Amber repeated quietly, and Gwen finally turned because she had to see her face. A treasure map was unlikely—they weren’t stupid—but still Amber smiled like it could be true, the reluctant sunlight turning enthusiastic in her bared eyes and on the blade of the other sharp knife of Gwen’s. Amber’s knives had been distributed—a long, rusty saw for Errol, two small blades for Manny and a meat cleaver for Cody Glasserman, very sharp and wide as a woman’s thigh. Gwen raised and lowered herself on her toes and handed the binoculars to Amber.

“Looks like just two of them.”

“Yeah,” Amber said. “Ew, the guy’s naked.”

“What?” Cody said, trading coffee for the binoculars. “Let me see.”

“Steady now,” Errol said, adjusting the wheel. “Arm yourselves, grommets.”

“Armed,” Gwen said.

“Armed,” Amber said.

“Armed,” said the parrot.

“I’ll do the talking,” Gwen announced, and everyone nodded. How did she live, she wondered, or any of them? How did we live before this?

“Hey,” said the woman on the boat. “Be careful, you’re close on that end.”

“The starboard end,” Gwen corrected.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “What are you guys—”

Errol interrupted her with a shout from the wheel, with the words comprising the title of the present volume.

“Okay,” she said, and then “Hey!” to the crackle of wood as the
Corsair
pulled up to their side. Cody unswung a hinged plank and rested it just inches from the woman’s bare feet.

Gwen put her coffee cup down, cold and coldly. “We are boarding,” she said. “You will give us food, water, and everything of value this sorry vessel is holding. And then, perhaps, we will let you live.”

“What?” the woman said. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“No,” Gwen said, and felt the fury surge into her heart, just as promised. They had never been kidding. They had been serious the whole time. In quick, quick steps, she boarded
Outside the Box
,
her boots loudly clacky on the wood.

“No, no, no,” the woman said, waving her hands in front of Gwen. Gwen thought she probably hadn’t seen the knife yet. “Roger!”

The man—Roger, it must have been—stepped out of the door and then doubled back down the stairs when he saw they weren’t alone. Gwen’s cohorts hooted with laughter at his nakedness as they followed her onto the boat.

“Surprise, surprise!” Errol called. Amber stood at Gwen’s side and Cody helped the captain aboard. Roger leaned out of the doorframe again, with his quizzical hairy chest.

“What is this?” he said.

“Food,” Gwen said again, “water, and everything of value on this boat.”

“What?” the man said with a chuckle. “Hold on, let me get dressed.”

Gwen shook her head, and then in one fast movement, as if she had done it before, jabbed the knife in an arc and left a thin red line on the woman’s arm. The woman shrieked, and the man stepped back out.

“What?” he said. The woman was holding her arm and sat down as the blood moved past her fingers. “What?”

“She
cut
me, Roger,” the woman said, in a tone of voice that could not quite decide to be alarmed.

“Seriously?” Roger said.

Errol clumped heavily toward him, his saw out and toothy.

“What is this?” Roger said.

“We told you,” Errol said. “Get us what we demanded and you will consider yourselves lucky for the rest of your lives. Resist and you will see us rip her open with a cutlass, tear the living heart out of the body, gnaw at it, and hurl it in your face!”

Roger blinked and then laughed a little, but the woman raised her arm. “She really cut me,” she said. “Do something.”

“I don’t know what to do,” Roger said, with a graying shrug Gwen knew from her father. “I’ve never had this happen.”

“You’re not
having it happen
,” Gwen said. She took her imaginary cigarette out of her mouth and threw it into the sea, rather than on deck, where it might start fires. “It’s just
happening
.”

“Look, get out of here,” Roger said. “Away with you. I don’t have time for whatever it is that—”

“
Water
!
” Amber cried. “
Food! Everything of value! On the deck right now or we’ll keelhaul the both of you
!
”

The woman blinked. “What?” she said, all anybody said. “What’s
keelhaul
, again?”

“Dragging a person over the keel,” Gwen said quickly.

“And what’s the keel?”

Why wasn’t this working? Everyone was on deck, brandishing knives, and still these two were just looking at them curiously, as if there was nothing that could hold them, as if pirates were so out of bounds as to actually be unimaginable. But Gwen had imagined this for years! For a long time, anyway. Weeks! She pushed herself past the woman and led Amber toward the door where Roger was standing. His body was thick but halfhearted, sickly in the gray light, and Gwen could see that his penis was not quite soft. Ew.

“Look,” he said, and took a step backwards on the stairs. “Get out of here. There’s a radio. I’ll call—”

Gwen reached forward with both hands and shoved him, hard. He fell on his ass and bounced down the other three stairs, landing loudly on the floor of the cabin. The woman made a noise, rough and gaspy. “
What
?
” Roger said. “What the hell?”

“
I told you
!
” Gwen screamed. She followed him down the stairs and looked at the controls of the boat, metal and mechanical like science fiction. How difficult could this be, that nobody could understand it? There was a small box that looked like a speaker, with a curled cord and a brown mouthpiece and several buttons: this was obviously the radio. It should all be like this. She pulled the mouthpiece until the cord was in reach of the knife and in two cuts it was done.

The woman screamed behind Gwen. Roger rubbed his shoulder and stared warily at the cut, limp cord. “Manny!” Errol called up on deck. “Come up and fetch that rescue boat! It’s better than ours.”

“We have no rescue boat,” Amber said from the top of the stairs.

“We do now,” Gwen said, and they both smiled.

“Get the hell out of here,” Roger said, pushing himself backwards along the cabin. His naked body wiped against the floor, and pushed up a corner of a small carpet held down by a table. There were cabinets everywhere. “Get out! This is my boat!”

“No peace beyond the line,” Gwen said. “No law and no property neither.”

“Fuck,” the man said, backing up further, “you. This is ridiculous. You’re a little girl and you don’t know what you’re doing. Be reasonable.”

Where does trouble come from? There was a huge
clump
on deck, the whole boat shaking as Manny came on board. The woman screamed, one more time, the way the appearance of a black man makes everything suddenly scary, and Errol came down the stairs as Roger reached the back wall, clawing at cabinets of wood that was either fake or made to look fake. Past him was one more staircase, where the bedroom was, and the mess, full of snacks maybe. Gwen was hungry.

Errol’s breath came in heaves, from effort or perhaps mirth. “D’ye hear?” he asked the two girls. “D’ye hear?
Reasonable.
What have we to do with reason? I’ll have you know, rascal, we don’t sit here to hear reason. We go according to justice.”

“Listen to this,” Roger said, and slammed the cabinet door. Gwen had never seen a gun before except in the holsters of cops. One cop had held one up at an assembly.
If you ever see this, don’t pick it up. Tell an adult.
Roger did something with the gun, something that clicked, and then he turned the gun not at her but at Errol.

“Put that down,” Amber said, and Gwen was
so
proud of her. “Put that down and give everything to us.”

But Roger Cuff was too happy with his line. He said it again. “Listen to this.”

“Give it all to us,” Amber said again, coming down the stairs to take Gwen’s side.

Roger Cuff sneered at her. “Get off the boat now or I will shoot your grandpa here dead. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, girlie, but this is my property.”

Girlie? Property?
Gwen shared a look with Amber at all this nonsense. “Better to leave blood,” Amber reminded her.

“Than wish it had been spilt,” Gwen finished, and they stepped to him.