Look. Here’s the thing,” Meg said. “It’s not that I don’t like you. After all, I made you tea while you were sleeping in a bath, and I picked out some decent, not-stuck-up-asshole things for you to wear, that actually make you look cool. But I said I wouldn’t go out with you because I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
“Why would I get the wrong idea?” I asked.
“Because it’s not like either one of us has any alternatives. There’s no Plan B. And there is no place to go. It’s pointless. We’re stuck here.”
I stood there in my Rabbit & Robot socks and underwear, rummaging through Billy Hinman’s clothes, trying to find something that could reasonably compete with his sense of style.
“There are lots of places to go. This is the Tennessee, the cruise ship to end all cruise ships. We have a fake Lake Louise, a Rabbit & Robot amusement park, and public baths and sex clubs on Deck Twenty-One. Shit, we could even go shoot some monkeys if you wanted to.”
“Never.” Meg pulled on a tight black dress.
She looked amazing.
“Well, that was just a test to see what kind of person you are. I’d never do that either,” I said. “How about a visit to the library? There are more than one hundred thirty thousand actual books on the Tennessee.”
“Really?”
I knew a girl like Meg Hatfield would respond to books.
“Really.”
“Going to the library isn’t a date.”
“If you say so.”
I sighed. I didn’t know what to wear. I settled on some black dress pants, a white shirt, and a checkered bow tie.
“Not that tie,” Meg said.
I held up one with thin diagonal stripes and a print pattern of tiny sailboats on it, and Meg nodded.
Meg found some black heels and slipped her feet into them. “The main thing is, although I appreciate how you stuck up for me with that insane preacher—”
“Reverend Bingo.”
“Whatever. And the chimpanzee creeps on Deck Twenty-One—”
“That was beyond disgusting.”
Meg faced a mirror and brushed her hair, but I could clearly see she was watching me as I knotted my tie in it. “Whatever. What I mean to say is, if you think I need you to protect me all the time—if that just pumps up your sense of manhood—well, I don’t need it. I’ve done fine on my own.”
I pulled on the pants, tucked in my shirttails, and buckled my belt.
“No belt. Suspenders,” Meg said.
I switched. I was so frustrated and flustered by her. And what were we doing here, actually changing clothes in the same room together, like nothing mattered? I sat on the edge of the messed-up bed so I could tie my shoelaces.
“I’ve never thought that I was your protector, Meg. Besides, I’ve seen you throw shoes before. You’re a fucking assassin.”
Meg stopped pretend-brushing her hair. She turned to me. And then Meg Hatfield actually laughed. A real laugh. And I laughed too.
Maybe there was some hope for Cager Messer becoming a normal person after all.
But probably not.
“We should go,” Meg said. “We wouldn’t want Billy or Jeffrie to get the wrong idea.”
“Yes, and especially Rowan. By all means, wrong ideas are just . . . well, wrong.”
“Right.”
I put on one of Billy’s jackets, and Meg stopped me at the door.
“No jacket. Just the shirt and suspenders. It looks really . . .”
“Really what?”
I watched Meg swallow. Was she actually blushing?
Meg Hatfield was definitely not the kind of girl who would ever blush.
She said, “It looks really nice.”
I looked around for something to hold on to. I honestly thought my knees were going to give out, and that I’d die right there on the floor of my stateroom, but I managed to maintain bipedalism, which is probably the most significant human achievement ever, no thanks to King Carlos’s goddamned monkey sperm.
I went back to Billy’s closet and ditched his jacket. Meg held up her hand and pressed it right above my heart.
“Hold on,” she said. “It’s crooked.”
Then she reached up and straightened my bow tie. The edges of her hands lay against my chest. I wanted to kiss Meg Hatfield so badly in that instant that I actually felt myself salivating. But I suppressed the urge, because I didn’t want Meg Hatfield to get the wrong idea about me.
That was what some people would call a moment, right? Meg Hatfield and I had some kind of thing going on between us—if only for a second—and I was too stupid and clumsy to make anything out of it.
I hated myself so much.
Meg tilted my tie slightly and said, “That’s better.”
But it was so far away from being “better,” whatever “it” was may just as well have been strapped to King Carlos’s fetus face, jetting along somewhere on the opposite side of the galaxy from us.
Nothing was better.
I grabbed my tire iron—just in case—and we joined the others outside in the hall.