ABOARD ALFARAH
Carson lolls in the Jacuzzi, watching the Mediterranean skid past. It’s like every bone in her body has dissolved. There’s no reason to turn on the jets; she can’t possibly be warmer or any more relaxed.
“Well, there you are.” Iris appears off to her right. She smirks. “Look at you. You liked your massage?”
“Yeah.”
“And did we fuck?”
“No.”
“You dork! Why not? He’s hot for you, you know. He likes women with curves.”
Carson figured that out a while ago. “I’m easy, but I’m not that easy. He has to buy me a drink first.”
Both of Iris’s eyebrows arch like Halloween cats. “You know this boat’s, like, crammed with booze, right?”
“Not the point. He’s gotta buy me a drink.”
“Gotcha. Skin in the game.” Iris drops her green gingham shirt and shiny green bikini, then slides into the water next to Carson. She’s slender verging on skinny, with B-cup breasts, sharp hipbones, and the kind of peachy skin redheads get. “If you didn’t fuck, what did you do?”
“None of your business. Everybody walked away happy.”
“Oh, I love happy endings!” Iris claps and giggles. “Glad you came?”
“So far. How’s Celeste doing?”
“Okay. Happy about the dolphins, but still scared. I don’t blame her—I am, too.”
“Is it normal for parents to send hired guns to get their kids back from you?”
The question puzzles Iris. “Normal? Not really. The scarier thing’s when they send lawyers. But…well, you’ve probably figured out we’re wading in a lot of money. There’s always someone who wants to take some of it away from us. There’s the usual stuff, too. Guys who don’t understand what ‘go away’ means. Pickpockets and purse-snatchers. That’s what Vicki meant by ‘keep us safe.’ I’m the closest thing we have to security, and I’m not scary at all except first thing in the morning.”
“That’s me, now. The hired muscle.”
Iris twists and grabs Carson’s bicep. “No no no. Don’t make it like that. No. You hang with us, you party with us. You’re our new friend. But I bet you can see trouble way before we can. So you let us know or keep us out of its way. But I like hanging with you. And it’s not all about you being naked.” She thinks for a beat. “It’s a lot about you being naked, but—”
“Yeah. Keep digging that hole. Where are you from?”
“Newport.” Iris must see the lack of clue on Carson’s face, because she adds, “Rhode Island? Next to Connecticut and Massachusetts?”
“Got it.” Most Canadians have a better grasp of U.S. geography than people from the States do of Canadian geography, though that’s a low bar. “So, what’s your story?”
“What do you mean?”
“How’d you get here?”
“Oh, God, my origin story.” Iris settles into her seat and blows out a long breath. “Well, you know, it’s the same old story… Daddy sent me to boarding school because the stepmonster told him to. The Deerfield Academy’s this obscenely expensive place where I could hang with other kids from rich families who didn’t want them around. Remember Vicki’s origin story?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, Vicki and I are a lot alike—we’re smarter than we look and we get bored easy. Deerfield kept me busy. That’s also where I discovered I like femmes instead of hommes. That was a big light-bulb moment. After I graduated, Daddy sent me to Barnard. It’s a women’s college in New York City. Ivy League for girls. He had no idea he was sending me to Disney World. Think about it—every year, a whole new crop of cute little bi-curious freshman girls washed in, just looking for an older, more sophisticated woman to show them the ropes. I had So. Much. Fun.” She winks at Carson. “When I was done there, I decided to see the world. I met a lot of things, did a lot of people, had a lot of fun.
“About two years ago, I was at a café in Cannes when I saw this blond goddess walk by. And I said to myself, ‘Self, you gotta get you some of that.’” Iris leans into Carson. “It was Vicki. She’s as straight as you are. No fun at all. She’d already hooked up with Sebastian by then. We floated along the coast. Saw a lot, drank a lot, talked a lot. Solved all the world’s problems. Then we figured, with the money we could get to, we could actually do it. Vicki found Karl and Dareh and we started saving the world, one little piece at a time. And here we are.” She nudges Carson again.
That again. “What’s ‘saving the world’ look like?”
Iris waves the question away. “It’s boring. I have a much more interesting question—where are your clothes?”
“In the gym. You know, I think the whole ‘saving the world’ thing sounds fucking fascinating. Give me a hint.”
“Well, if you insist…” Iris sighs and perches on the pool’s rim. Carson can’t tell if she’s cooling off or showing off. “You know how charities are always begging for money? It’s because they’re always broke. We find civil society groups who’re doing good stuff in places that really need it, and dump money on them.” She flutters her fingers like falling snow.
That’s the big secret? “You said Vicki and Sebastian were ‘hooked up.’ They a thing?”
“Not anymore. That stopped last year. They’re still friends, though. Karl’s Vicki’s current project.”
Karl’s the kind of guy Carson would pick up for a weekend: tall, broad-shouldered, and sort of a pug. “She’s way out of his league.”
“You’d think, but not really. She likes ‘em tall and built. He played soccer in college when he wasn’t messing around with computers. I guess faces aren’t so important—Vicki just hit the jackpot with Sebastian.”
“What’s Sebastian’s story?”
Iris laughs. “Wouldn’t you like to know. Go ask him. I’m sure he’ll be happy to tell you”—she waves a finger at Carson—“especially if you go like that.”
Sure thing. Carson checks her watch: almost two. She had breakfast at her normal time and now she’s on the edge of starving. The weird meal times have been the hardest thing so far about being in Spain. She climbs out of the water to towel down.
Iris pays very close attention. “Those are real.”
Carson ignores her. “Going to lunch. Then maybe I’ll hit up Sebastian. With clothes on.”
As she walks down the steps, Iris giggles behind her. “Hit up or hit on?”
Carson wanders the ship after an enormous, buffet-like lunch laid out on the main deck’s fourteen-place dining table. She’s half being nosy and half figuring out what she’s up against.
From the bathtub in the sprawling owner’s suite that looks like half a nautilus shell, to the exotic wood and stone veneers on every surface, to the striking black-and-white photos of Islamic architecture on the walls, Alfarah looks more like a movie set than a real boat. What this thing cost could feed a small Third World country for months. Must be nice to be Michel.
Carson leans on the rail next to the Jacuzzi, sucking on a beer and watching the Med go by as she reviews what she’s found.
Unless someone else is missing, Vicki’s entourage tops out at seven people—three men, four women. Of those, Sebastian’s the only one who fits the picture of a bodyguard. Carson doesn’t get that he is one, though. Vicki’s decision to send him to get the cops instead of facing down Gangster Boy says a lot, as does his lack of proper fighting skills while he backed up Carson at Celeste’s attempted kidnapping. Carson doesn’t read a threat off the “tech gurus” Karl or Dareh, either.
What about the women? Iris is clearly Vicki’s right hand. She can follow people well and camouflage herself effectively. Vicki had Iris deal with Gangster Boy; that implies some level of courage. Does that equal a threat? Carson doesn’t see a physical threat from Iris, but she may present a social or political problem. Vicki listens to her.
Amabelle and Tamara are blanks. Carson tried to chat with them at lunch and got nothing back. Did they vote no on Carson joining the group?
Celeste seems entirely inoffensive. If she really is like Dom, she can’t lie to save her life and conflict terrifies her. She might accidentally get in the way of a rendition but wouldn’t fight.
Carson didn’t find any evidence of weapons when she nosed through the stuff the posse had left in the bedrooms. Not that she expected any.
So Vicki has no real protection that Carson can see. How has she dodged the MVD for the past six months?
On her way down from the sun deck, Carson finds Sebastian, Amabelle, and Tamara behind open laptops on the dining table at the bridge deck’s after end. Amabelle’s across the table from Sebastian, draped in an orange-and-gold beach cover-up; Tamara sits at the end between them, wearing a low-cut, red crop-top. They’re having what looks like a serious talk.
Carson stops next to the Sky Lounge sectional to parse the picture. Tamara’s aiming some impressive cleavage directly at Sebastian. Obvious much? Carson shakes her head—welcome back to high school—and watches Karl and Dareh play some kind of noisy space-marine game on the huge-screen TV. Great twitch speed, but no tactical brilliance. She then steps out onto the deck.
The conversation stops dead. Sebastian and the women all turn to stare. She’s reminded of walking into a police leadership meeting once when they were talking about super-secret personnel stuff. “Hey.” She tries to sound innocent. “Working?”
Sebastian says, “We are, yes.” It’s not a scolding, simply a statement of fact.
Tamara hisses, “Are you? Is this you being our security guard?”
Back off, bitch. “Don’t mind me.” She crosses to the stairs leading to the main deck with three pairs of eyes pushing her along. What was that? Fundraising is top secret?
Piano music drifts from the grand saloon. She remembers the white grand piano near the dining table.
The grand saloon is a huge, shiny space lined on both sides with big windows looking straight out onto water that seems close enough to touch. Three sofas arranged in a U around a massive, marble-topped round coffee table sit under two seamless concentric rings of light. It looks more like an overgrown jewelry box than a room in a boat.
Celeste’s on the piano bench in the back corner, entirely focused on the keyboard. Carson doesn’t recognize the music, but it’s pretty. She perches on the nearest sofa arm to listen.
Whatever Celeste’s playing, it has a lot going on. She gets to a part with a complicated rising-and-falling melody that meshes with an underlying rhythm. It repeats over and over, a bit different each time. Her eyes and mouth are set in a frown. Her lips get tighter with each repetition until she stops abruptly with her hands hovering over the keys. She closes her eyes, then nods in rhythm with what she’d been playing. Her face smooths out. Finally, with a nod, she resumes playing the same motif, this time subtly changed and delicate as hummingbird wings. Celeste smiles.
She stops and opens her eyes again. When she sees Carson, she jumps off the bench and rushes to her. “Lisa!” She crashes into Carson and wraps her in a hug so violent that they nearly tumble to the floor.
It was like this on the quay this morning. All the hugging and touching is starting to bug Carson—she hardly ever has this much physical contact with strangers. She pulls away from Celeste, corralling her hands. “Hey, calm down. How’re you doing?”
“Okay.” She holds up her left hand and points to the dark bruise on her wrist.
“That’ll go away in a few days. What were you playing?”
Celeste shrugs and lays her head on Carson’s shoulder. “My music.”
Once again, Carson flashes back to her brother Dom. He needed physical contact to feel safe. She sat like this with him for years. “It was pretty. I didn’t recognize it, though.”
“Oh. I make it.”
“You write your own music?”
“No, no. I hear it, and then I play it. Sometimes I do not make it right and I have to try again. It is frustrating. I know how it should sound, but I cannot make the right notes.”
“Is that what you were doing just now?”
“Yes.”
That explains the frown. “What else do you play?”
Celeste sits straight. “Many things. Let me show you.” She trots to the piano, thumps on the bench, then plays a familiar intro. After a moment, she sings.
J’ai toujours besoin de dire
Ce qui se passe en moi…
It’s “Your Song” in French. Her voice is small but clear and nearly as fragile as the cut-glass notes she’d played a few minutes before. She stops at the end of the verse, beaming. “Do you like that?”
“Yeah. The music you make…you said you know what it sounds like. Where’s it from?”
“I listen. I listen to everything. Everything that is alive has its own music. I remember it, then I try to make it. If I like it, I keep it.”
This is getting too woo-woo for Carson to process. “I don’t get it. Everything makes music?”
“Yes, if you know how to listen. People do not know how to listen.” She chews on her lower lip. Then she points at the sofa closest to the piano. “Sit there. When it feels good, close your eyes.”
Carson does what she’s told, more to not make Celeste upset than because she expects anything to come of it. Celeste’s good feelings about her seem to figure in whether Vicki’s posse lets Carson stick around. Once she’s settled, she says, “Now what?”
“I play. Listen. Do not think, only…feel.”
It starts simply: a few notes in a high register, almost like birdsong. Then something slow begins down low. More sounds layer in—complicated, freeform melodies that wind around each other. Carson tries to clear her mind and let the music wash over her, but when she does, the movie screen in her head fills with all kinds of strange, unconnected images. Or are they unconnected? There’s not time to think; there’s not room to think. She grabs onto the notes and follows them wherever they lead her, usually someplace where there’s something else happening just beyond the edge of her mental vision.
She doesn’t know how long she sits there, wrapped in the sounds and emotions the music brings her. When it ends, she’s both exhilarated from the experience and desolate that it’s over. She’s never heard anything like it. Ever. She’s afraid she never will again. “What was that?”
“What did you see?”
“Trees. Birds. Sunlight, rain. Ferns. Is that what a forest sounds like to you?”
Celeste nods solemnly. “That is the music the forest makes. I…I cannot make it all the same. This is a little part only.” She hunches her shoulders. “Do you like it?”
“It was amazing. Do you have more like that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Can you…play another one?”
Celeste blushes and glances down at the keyboard. “For you, I will play anything.”