We Are Pirates: A Novel (14 page)

“I remember you,” Errol said.

“I’m glad.”

“You come here all the time.”

“Yes.”

“Because you stole things.”

“Yes.”

“And you read to me.”

“Yes. Today I wanted to talk to you,” she started again, “about something, okay?”

“I have a problem with my memory.”

“It’s okay.”

“I worry about it, though. What’s that river?”

Gwen knew this part of the territory. “The Nile. But it’s okay. My friend and I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“
Senile
, that’s it. Who’s she?”

His finger pointed at Amber, Gwen was pretty sure, although he was looking straight at Gwen. His eyes were hungry and angry, not cloudy at all. They looked, Gwen thought, like Gwen’s.

“I’m Amber.”

“Nice to meet you, milady.”

“I come here all the time too.” She said this every time.

“No.”

“Yes, several times.”

“Quiet, wench!” Errol shouted, and then immediately burst into laughter. Gwen and Amber laughed too. Gwen could see that this would be something they’d keep saying: “Quiet, wench!” She could even hear it over the roar of the wind sweeping across the sea.

“That’s from what you read to me, right?” Errol said. “Sometimes I remember everything fine.”

“Yes,” Gwen said. It was true. “Amber and I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“A parley, eh? You’ll find me willing.”

“We want to do it.”

“
And
,” Amber said, “for real.”

“What for real?”

“Pirates,” Gwen said steadily. Errol waved in her face, indicating his disgust with her kneeling. She stood up.

“You already steal things,” Errol said. “That’s why you’re here. Otherwise you would be with your friends.”

“I am with my friends,” Gwen said. Amber put her hand on Gwen’s shoulder.

“You have something on your hand, too,” Errol said. “What is it?”

Gwen and Amber held their hands together, fist against fist, for Errol to read. He read the words. “We want to do it for real,” Amber said. “We’re summed for something else.”

“
Summoned
,” Gwen said.

Amber grinned. “Quiet, wench!”

“Did you tell me that already?”

“Yes.”

“What’s that river?”

“Not the river,” Gwen tried, “the sea. We would take to the sea.”

“Pirates,” Errol said uncertainly.

“Brethren,” Amber had learned, “of the coast.”

“You can’t do that,” Errol said. “Not anymore.”

“Yes,” Gwen said. “You can do it in the present day. There’s an equivalent.”

“It can’t be the same thing.”

“It is too. It
is.
”

Amber was nodding beside her, but Gwen knew she was the one who had to talk. She had a better grasp on it. She knelt again and put her hand on Errol’s hand. He read it again: the word
ho
. They had made them yesterday, with their hands so close together Gwen didn’t realize how stupid it looked when it was away from
tally
. Now it didn’t make any sense, just when she was trying to make it clear. She looked into Errol’s eyes
.

“We’ll do everything,” she said. “We have a boat. We have supplies or we can get them.”

“At the drugstore,” Amber said.

“We have maps. We have knives. And we have the spirit of rebellion.” Gwen looked down and then up again to see if that had worked. It was from a book, of course, but it sounded right. It sounded true. She
did
have the spirit of rebellion, even if “spirit of rebellion” was not something that was said, not at the time this story takes place. “But we’d not stand a chance without you on the open sea. We don’t know how to sail. You’ve been in the Navy. I think we can get you out if you will come with us.”

“And be pirates,” Errol said. His hands were moving on his knees, shaking back and forth in a tremolo Gwen had never seen on him. He also, for a minute at least, did not say he was worried about his memory. “Where are we?”

“The Jean,” Gwen started, “Bonnet—”

“No, no,” Errol said. “San Francisco, right? San Francisco?”

“Yes.”

“I
knew
it!” He slapped his own knees. “This whole town is at sea level.”

“What does that mean?” Gwen said.
Sea level
made it sound flat, and the city was entirely peaks and valleys.

“The time to start is
now
!” Errol sort of roared. “If I am crazy enough to listen to you, milady, you’ll find me willing.”

“
Really
?
” Maybe it was the good day they had hoped for.

But then Errol frowned suddenly. “Your parents,” he said. “Your father surely would not let his two daughters do such a reckless thing.” His shoulders shook a little, a flick of aggression, or a shrug.

“Our parents aren’t here,” Amber said, and this was when it happened. Before, even with the plan in their heads and the ink on their hands, everything was still intact. Nothing had ruptured. Nothing had happened. Smooth as glass. But now there was movement, and it was all because there was no one there to say it could not be so.

Errol stood up. This was always a gamble, and Amber and Gwen waited for him to find his sea legs. One shaky hand grasped the end of his metal, medicinal bed and the other stretched off uncertainly toward the window until Gwen took his hand in hers.

“What are you doing?” she asked gently.

Errol smiled a big smile. “Do you know what I like about the idea?”

“What idea?”

“Pirates!” Errol shouted. “It’s a life of adventure, grommets.”

Gwen blushed.
Grommets
were apprentice sailors. But Errol was shaking her hand off and heading for the door.

“There’s a map!” he said. “I know there is!”

Gwen watched him get, lose, get, lose, sort of get back his balance. “A map of what?”

“I see it every day during chair dancing!”

“Chair dancing?” Amber asked.

“Chair cha-cha-cha,” he snarled, and led the stumbly way out. The way down the halls was a trail that still lost Gwen sometimes, but the captain was out front and proud and got them all there in one piece. The
solarium
was the word for it, like a birdcage with panes of glass where fresh air should be, bad furniture and plants laid out for the residents and a real birdcage in the corner. The sun shown through too hot, and there were famous paintings chopped up on the tables, for people to fit together, as was the elderly custom at this point in history. Just one woman was trying. Errol wrinkled his nose and pointed to a garden by the wall.

“Look,” he said, “at all these.” Gwen followed his finger to some large flappy flowers, lined up in pots. “A beautiful semaphore, the fat lady says. What is it?”

For a moment Gwen could not remember the word either. “Orchid,” she said finally, but Errol was already nodding.

“The worst gift in the world. Someone gives you an orchid, and then what? You have an orchid. It is an insult.”

Gwen nodded in fierce agreement. She also was pretty sure that
semaphore
was not the name of a plant. “I see your controversy,” she said.

“It is all an insult,” Errol said. To shake his head he had to steady himself on a table, and a few pieces of Mona Lisa fell to the floor.

“Hey,” the old woman said, but calmly.

“You said there was a map,” Amber said.

Errol lit up. “So I did! So I did! So I did! So I did!” He reached through the orchids and took something off the wall, flat and large, that sent an orchid crashing. He banged it down on the puzzle and the woman took off her glasses.

“I was working on this puzzle,” she said. “Put that somewhere else.”

Gwen knew what Errol would say, and like a prophecy he said it. “Quiet, wench!”

“We’ve all had enough of your nonsense,” the woman said and stood up. She had a little bell tied to her walker, though the birds in danger would have to be flightless and slow. Errol fluttered a hand at her and stared down into the reflective glass. Gwen and Amber appeared on either side, their faces floating over a hand-drawn world. Errol stared and stared, and then looked around quickly as if he’d been asleep.

“Girls,” he said, “what is this?”

“It’s a map,” Gwen said. It was the yellowed kind, with serpents in the corners and words spelled with the
A
and the
E
Siamese-twinned. Her stomach dipped, but then, to her amazement, she recognized the shape of the shore. She was, she thought, a good grommet. “It’s California.”

“From the Navy, I remember this,” Errol said, nodding very seriously. The old woman muttered something and rang her way out. “Before the fandle-dandle you have now. Phones that tell you where the car goes. We used this map to cover every last place.”

“Everything’s in Spanish,” Amber said.

“Used to be,” Errol agreed. “Unless it’s a forgery.”

Amber brushed some dust off the glass and then looked at Gwen uncertainly. “It looks like it just came with the place.”

“That’s it,” Errol said. “Falsity on paper, to lure enemies into open water.”

“It’s true,” Gwen said, from one of the books. “The pirates made fake maps sometimes. Ships would think it was a shortcut, when it was a lagoon.”

“An ambush,” Amber said.

“Leave them stricken on the deck,” Errol said. “Weaklings and fools bother me everywhere. I have a problem with my memory.”

“No,” Gwen said, looking at California, “you don’t. You’re vital to the success of the venture.”

Amber rattled her fingernails on the map. “
And
, what about me? Am
I
vital to the success of the what’s-it?”

“Of course you are.”

“I don’t know anything. They wouldn’t let me in the lamest navy.”

“You are a forger,” Gwen reminded her. “Not of maps but of scrawl.”

“I can do anyone’s handwriting,” Amber admitted, and Errol gave her a captain’s smile before glaring at the doorway.

“Don’t interrupt!” he growled. “We are in conference!”

“I hear your conference is disturbing Mrs. Hinterman,” Manny said calmly, and reached out with a palm surprisingly pale. “Give me the map.”

“I’ll fight to the eyeteeth for it!”

Gwen blinked. Combat she was sure would happen eventually, bloodshed inevitable, but maybe right here in the solarium was not the best idea.

“You cannot take things off the wall,” Manny said.

“Every penny I’ve had was stolen from me,” Errol said, his knuckles tightening on the frame. Gwen looked at it again, the corny fake-old gilted curlicues. “Every penny.”

“You’re in a nice room,” Manny said, grabbing the other end. Errol tugged but then surrendered at once.

“I don’t like you,” he said, but mildly, and slumped down into a chair.

“I know,” Manny said, and tucked the map under his arm.

“I have a problem,” Errol said wistfully, “with my memory. What’s that river?”

Everyone said the name of the river. “Let me help you settle down,” Manny said, and gave a deep, quaking sigh. “I’m, how do you say it? Too old for this shit.”

“This is Manny,” Errol said, his manners reconvening. “He is a man, which is why I call him Manny. And I don’t like him.”

“Let’s settle down,” Manny said. “Tea?”

“
Tea
,” Errol said, giving an order.

“Tea,” Manny agreed wearily, and left. Errol flicked more pieces of the puzzle to the floor. Gwen helped him. She learned in fifth grade that nobody knew what the woman was smiling about, and that was in, what, 15-something? Spanish Armada days. If nobody knew then, they wouldn’t know now.

“What’s the level of peril?” Errol asked.

Gwen dropped a border piece. “What?”

“We are plotting piracy, are we not?”

“We
are
,” Gwen said, relieved he was still on the subject.

“Well, what is the level of peril? Compared to the expected gain?”

Gwen recognized this one, from the story that ended with nothing but corpses on the deck. “Compare it not to expected gain,” she said. “Compare it to what paucity you have.”

“What’s paucity?” Amber asked.

“Nothing,” Gwen said, with a look at the orchids. “Everything’s been stolen from us, too.”

“We have nothing,” Amber agreed, “and nobody will leave us alone.”

Errol kept flicking. “So you have a score to settle?” Gwen thought of Nathan Glasserman, wet from the pool. He’d called her Spot.