“You take the back of the barge,” Charlotte told me, and pressed a laminated cheat-sheet into my hand. “Tell everyone it’s your first day and they’ll go easy on you. Heck, I claimed it was my first day all last summer and no one knew the difference. It’s not as if anyone would take the Barge of the Bay cruise twice in the same year.”
The barge was a broad, flat vessel with no propulsion of its own. A tugboat at the front dragged it back and forth across the bay. A quick glance at my cheat-sheet informed me that a century ago, the barge was used for hauling lumber from the forested regions of Pinyin Bay (the city) across Pinyin Bay (the water) to Strangeberg, which was then known as Cliffton. And in return, Cliffton sent loads of gravel from their infamous bluffs.
I was already so bored I practically fell asleep standing up. And when the wind pulled the cheat sheet out of my hand…I may not have tried all that hard to catch it.
I boarded the barge behind the tourists, doing my best not to feel mortified about the blue polyester blazer with bright yellow piping. After all, the tourists were here to look at the bay. Not my unfortunate wardrobe.
And in their hot pink Back to Nature T-shirts, frankly, they didn’t look much better.
Still, given that I tend to be a bit of a clothes-horse, presenting myself to a large group of people in such a ridiculous outfit was bound to leave me feeling self-conscious.
And when I’m nervous…I talk.
A chubby guy hanging off his seat snagged me as I was going up the aisle and said, “I forgot to bring my motion-sickness pills. Is this going to be a rough ride?”
“Not at all,” I reassured him. “The barge only rocks when the Pinyin Eels are spawning.” Though I had no actual knowledge of the mating rituals of eels—let alone whether or not they’d get busy enough to churn up a barge—the answer seemed to satisfy the tourist. And that’s what customer service is all about. Keeping everyone happy.
But then the woman behind him asked, “Are those eels a native species, or were they introduced to the area?”
“I’m sure whatever introductions occurred were entirely proper,” I said confidently. Judging by the titter that rippled through the crowd, it was the answer they’d all been hoping for.
Being a tour guide was a lot easier than I thought it would be.
I took up my station at the back of the barge while the crowd got settled. Up front, Charlotte appeared to be giving me a very concerned look—but given that I now shared an attic with someone who also had resting grim-face, I didn’t take it personally. After all, that deep crease between her eyebrows wouldn’t have simply disappeared unless she’d had Botox on her way up the gangplank.
An elderly man directly in front of me was so eager to feel the sun on his wrinkly skin that he took off his shirt. But when the breeze picked up and skittered across the water, he thought better of it and put it back on, and the folks with sweatshirts tied around their shoulders or waists girded themselves against the wind. I probably should have been thankful for the polyester blazer. Let’s face it, though. That was never gonna happen.
The tugboat tooted its whistle, and we were off. Once the barge got going, it was a pretty smooth ride, though the guy who forgot his pills was looking a little green around the gills. I said, “In old-timey days, the Barge of the Bay hauled gravel and lumber.” I figured that factoid should either distract him from his nausea or bore him to sleep. But my strategy didn’t exactly pan out—the tourists all decided the single fact I knew about the barge meant it was open season for Q&A.
“Why is the Ferris wheel yellow?” one of the nature lovers asked, pointing to the shore where the ride in question embarked on a slow rotation.
The answer was most likely that yellow paint was on sale when the caretakers were looking to spruce it up, but people don’t like hearing about the practicalities of running a tourist attraction. “The yellow paint commemorates the golden hair of the mistress of the man who created the ride—Joe Wheeler.”
“I could’ve sworn Ferris was the inventor’s name,” someone murmured.
“Of course, Mr. Ferris himself didn’t build this particular instance—Joe Wheeler did. That’s obviously what I meant. And then he painted it yellow. Next question?”
“How deep is Pinyin Bay?” someone asked.
I hadn’t the faintest idea, though I suspected if I couched my reply in nautical terms, it would sound pretty official. “Several leagues.”
A few of the naturalists went puzzled. Since “nature” was their area of expertise, it was possible they actually did know how long a league was. Should I have said two? Twenty? Two hundred? No clue.
“Next question.”
A woman with binoculars pointed toward the far end of the Boardwalk. “What’s that fence for?”
I shielded my eyes and followed her gaze. Maybe thirty feet from the spot where the plank walkway ended, a tall wooden fence marked the outer edge of the beach. It had been there as long as I could remember. Sabina and I had always just called it The Fence when we raced each other to reach it. And dry sand can be surprisingly hard to run on.
With the authority befitting an official tour guide, I said, “It keeps wolverines off the Boardwalk.”
The naturalists looked even more puzzled.
The guy who’d been unsuccessful in his de-shirting said, “You mean, the animal?”
“We’d hardly need to protect the area from comic book characters, would we?”
As the tourists all craned their necks to get a better look at The Fence, which I’d just rendered infinitely more entertaining, Charlotte stomped up the aisle, snagged me by the blue polyester sleeve, and hauled me over to the farthest corner of the barge. “What on earth are you telling these people?” she whispered—very assertively, I might add.
I reassured myself that the wetness I felt against the side of my cheek could very well have been the spume coming off the bay. But the barge wasn’t really going fast enough to cause any spume. And it smelled of butterscotch candy.
She hissed, “Watch what you say! You never know who will be listening. There are no wolverines in Pinyin Bay. The mean depth of the water is seventy-five feet. And the Ferris wheel was painted yellow after voters chose the color in a local referendum.”
Huh. Now the festive Better Dead than Red lawn signs that cropped up a few years back made way more sense.
“What about The Fence?” I asked.
“Who cares about some old fence? Stick to the script.” She shoved a new copy of the laminated page into my hand, turned to the cluster of curious tourists, and said apologetically, “You’ll need to cut Dixon a little slack—it’s his first day.”