We Are Pirates: A Novel (24 page)

“For cocktails at sunset,” they might reply. “The orange glare of the setting sun behind the Golden Gate Bridge, yes, that would be fantastic. And to stand on the deck of
Outside the Box
, or even lounge on these slick, blue couches, tucked like window seats underneath the portholes, and stare out at the flickering water, yes. All the liquor, awaiting in half-full bottles behind the rolled-up maps, closest to the captain’s chair. Individual bottles of club soda, tonic water, ginger ale, all above a special ice maker making ice, letting it melt back into the machine and freezing it again, in an endless cycle of unearned luxury. A few free napkins, flowered and purple, scattered out when you got the door open, one sticking in a pool of blood and a few others tumbling down the woven blanket that you found in another cabinet and used to cover dead Roger Cuff.”

“It was Amber who remembered the gun, and found it between his bloody legs,” Gwen would say. “We had nothing on board the
Corsair
, only what we brought ourselves, and a lousy, malfunctioning coffeemaker with a few packs of coffee. We would have starved had not our better fortune provided otherwise for us. Manny had garbage bags with him, he’d learned from his own prior journeys, and went down as soon as Amber had the news. They had two pounds of coffee and two pounds of espresso, all crammed into the tiny freezer along with a packet of frozen shrimp dumplings and one of tiny cinnamon rolls for breakfast. In the fridge, smoked salmon. Cream for the coffee. And then two planned meals. I guess he and the girl were going to be on the boat all weekend. Two steaks bundled in butcher paper and a bag of greens for salad. In a brown sack, a small pile of scallion pancakes, probably from the farmers’ market, where I’ve seen them sell them. A cardboard box of black bean sauce. And, wrapped in plastic, pre-broken with a little hammer like they do it,
bang bang bang
like we had done, a chilled, cracked crab. They would have it, licking the sauce off their fingers, with one of the chardonnays tucked into the bottom shelf. You have to admit, that sounds fantastic.”

“It does,” they would admit. “But you’ll pardon me my opinion, that there must be more to a journey than the foodstuffs acquired.”

“When you’re at sea,” Gwen would probably reply, “it’s not food. It’s
fuel
, for further exploits.”

“So the exploit fuels the next exploit, and the next the next, and so on? Is there nothing more, nothing else?”

“Is there ever?”

“Well, I—”

Here Gwen was quoting from a tense bout in a late chapter of
Marauders.
“What have you chosen for your life, that it is more than a stepping-stone thrown into the water? And is even this meager step-step-step, this precarious way to stay above the churning chill, not done without theft and even bloodshed of those less fortunate?”

“Even if that were worthy of some consideration,” they would likely sputter—

“In France there were riots over bread,” Gwen would reply calmly. “Here on the counter were two baguettes and a stick of unsalted butter. All the cupboards above opened up and with sweeps of Manny’s huge arm it was all bagged away. Sugar cubes and tiny squares of chocolate, jars of roasted peppers and smaller jars of olives. Sea salt, which I thought was funny. Get it? Olive oil, sesame oil, dipping oil, drizzling oil, and then Amber began to laugh. Manny didn’t know what was funny, but Amber bounded back up the shiny wood ramp to show me. Then I started laughing too.”

“What was it?”

“Vinegar.
Amber Dawn Vinegar.
The vinegar her dad makes. She brandished it over her head, and the two of us ran back up the stairs to get on deck. She had the idea to crack it over the helm of the boat, like champagne in old movies.”

“A christening.”

“Yeah, I guess, I’m Jewish. We were laughing so hard. But when we got to the deck it was slippery.”

“From rain.”

“No, the storm hadn’t started yet. From the blood of her, the gore of how we did it.”

“This is what I mean.”

“I was laughing too hard to stop. Amber dropped the bottle and it bounced on the railing and fell into the sea. It didn’t break, I think.
Amber Dawn Vinegar
!
”

“I see.”

“It was funny.”

“I have to go,” they would say. “Thank you. Good luck. Goodbye.”

Gwen found herself laughing so hard on deck that even Amber looked a little nervous. Otherwise she was alone, although it seemed that she had been
reasoning
with someone, not simply arguing alone and shivering. Gwen shook her head but kept laughing. There was a joke so vicious and funny she could not say it:
All hands on deck.

There was a hand on deck.

Manny came up the stairs with a white envelope sticking out of his pocket and a garbage bag, clanking and bulging, over his shoulder. He handed the bag to Amber and then picked up Gwen the same way, her view of the world hilariously upside down, her legs kicking with how funny it was all the way across the plank. From a distance she must have looked like a struggling captive. He laid her down on the deck of the
Corsair
, starboard side, no, wait, port. The wood felt solid on her trembling leg, and she breathed and watched the others. Cody, the amateur, was walking like a tightroper across the plank with a case of wine. The sunlight flickered like a bad bulb, and Gwen turned to watch some roiling clouds, out past the bridge.

“Monster storm,” Manny said, standing over her. “No skin off our backs, though.” He took the envelope out of his pocket and opened it for her. Inside was made of money, bills crammed into a reluctant, creased stack. “Haven’t told the others,” he said. “Twenty-five thousand dollars I counted, just shoved into the back of a drawer. We could buy a clear blue sky.”

Gwen felt laughter in her throat like a chained dog, and only trusted herself to nod. Manny tucked it away.

“What’s next?” Cody said, plunking the box down with a glass rattle. He had killed, without orders to do so, and still he did not know what to do.

“Next, I saw a fire ax down there,” Manny said. “I’m going back to bash holes in the bottom when everyone’s off. We need her sunk without a trace.”

Gwen could not imagine how an ax could help with a fire, not at sea. She gripped the
Corsair
’s side and noticed for the first time a tiny metal loop on the side of the boat, attached to a rope that dangled down into the water. There had been no mention of such a thing in
The Sea-Wolf.
Cody moved the box across the deck, for no reason except not to meet Gwen’s eyes, the disobedient wretch.

Amber’s shadow fell over her. “Are you—” She couldn’t finish it.

“Yeah.” Gwen decided to try to shrug. “Are you?”

“Yeah. I don’t know.”

“Cody shouldn’t have—”

“Yeah. But we did it too.”

“We did,” Gwen said, her eyes full of the mayhem.

“Water, I guess,” Amber said, “under the bridge.”

Gwen shrugged or something, and began to pull up the rope.

“And you forgot this.” Amber handed down the knife, which had been wiped nearly clean.

“Thanks.”

“I’ll keep the gun.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Manny said there’s a storm,” Gwen said. “He said he’s going to chop holes in the boat so it will sink.”

“That seems like a lot of work.”

“Yeah.”

“Verily.” Amber sat down next to her. It seemed to Gwen she had something behind her back. “
And
, he’s not in charge. Errol’s the captain.”

“Is he coming?”

“He found a closet, it’ll be a minute.
And
, it was our idea.”

“I know.” Out of the water rose a bucket, yellow and badly cracked, at the end of the rope, dribbling seawater down into the splashes.

“So we knew,” Amber tried, “that people could, that it would get violent.”

“We must have known,” Gwen said.

“Well, we know now.
Wench.
”

“
You’re
a wench.”        

“It’s the life we chose. Right? Isn’t it?”

“It is,” Gwen said. “It must be.”

“They’ll call it a spree, I was thinking. You know? When something like death keeps happening? A spree.”

This word had not been in their books. “Sounds like perfume. A pirate spree.”

“A murder spree.”

“Yeah. What’s behind your back?”

“You will not believe it.”

“Believe it,” the parrot echoed.

Errol came across the plank, dragging a garbage bag behind him and holding a bouquet of rolled-up maps. He was wearing a new hat. Gwen smiled at him, a real smile unruined by laughter. “I like this hat,” he said.

“I like it too.”

“I know you.”

“Yes, Gwen.”

“Part of the crew.”

“Yes.”

“You like my hat?”

“We all like it,” Amber said.

“I found it.”

“I found a bucket of water,” Gwen said, hoisting it on deck.

“I win,” Amber said, and produced a wooden box. It was about the size of a bread box, which at the time was a standard of measurement, and had a long key with a silly tassel stuck in the lock.

Errol pointed at it as if it were long lost. “What in the name of seven red devils?”

“Rummaged for it in the bedroom,” Amber said.

“But what is it?” Gwen put the bucket down. “What’s inside?”

Amber frowned for a second at Gwen’s hands but then gave her a crooked, crooked smile. “Would you believe? Would you even believe it?”

“Open it,” Gwen said.

Amber opened the box. “There’s a lot of other stuff too,” she said, rifling around. “It’s like any box. Somebody’s watch. Bikini photo. Coins from someplace. But then look at this.” Her hand emerged triumphantly with a square of gray folded paper, about the size of a magazine, a little tattered and covered in blue lines.

“What?”

“Fucking treasure map,” Amber said with deep joy. “Look at it. Unravel it.”

It was. The world opened up for Gwen to see. The whole crew gathered over, Manny even hoisting the birdcage like a lantern. It was sketchy, as parts of the world still were. There was nowhere that was truly off the map, as the world, all of it, had been mapped, but there were still patches here and there, like a little park near the Fillmore, that were not quite fleshed out on the globe but were built and maintained in schemes and imagination. The treasure map was a map of Treasure Island, man-made across the bay, and an architect had pitched the story of this adventurous place and what it could look like. The lines on the paper dreamed of a hotel, with gambling if they could circumnavigate the law, or at least spa treatments and entertainment, reachable by boat or from the exit off the Bay Bridge, identified on the paper with two broad lines in an
X
, marking the spot.

“No way,” Gwen said, with her hands on it.

“No way,” squawked the parrot.

“Way,” Amber said. “Look, it’s a hotel.”

“But there’s no hotel on Treasure Island,” Manny said. “I pass there every morning.”

“Maybe it’s not finished yet,” Amber said. “Look, on the side here.” Someone sometime had written OPENING NIGHT BEACH PARTY
!!
across the shoreline.

“It’s a secret hotel, I bet.” Amber said. Gwen blinked at the glimmer of it, a shiny palace obscured on an island. “It’s not open yet, and when it is it’s a big splash.”

“But in the meantime something’s hidden,” Gwen said.

Amber leaned over Gwen’s shoulder. Gwen wanted to keep her there forever. “Our next exploit,” she said.

“Look,” Manny said, “I’m very tired. We haven’t slept in forever. Let me sink this boat and we’ll all get some rest.”

“Won’t they see
our
boat?” Cody asked. Gwen couldn’t help it and wanted to hit him. The bloody mess they had to sink, the misdeeds of impulse from this wrong boy, this stowaway almost, amidst their numbers. She had planned everything but him. She started to snarl something, but Manny patted her silent. “Take it slow,” he said. “Slow and steady wins the race.”

Gwen knew this was not so. In swimming competitions the winners were very fast. “No,” she said. “We should go now. Beat the storm. The hotel would be a good place. We could even dock the boat there and wait it out.”

“What about me?” Errol demanded, and Gwen put her hand on his shaky shoulder.

“You’re the captain,” she said.

“That’s right,” Errol said. “I have a problem sometimes with my memory.”

“We raided a boat,” she said.

Errol’s eyes sparked up. “Then I want a complete account,” he said. “A complete account of all the treasure. What did we steal?”

“Food, mostly,” Gwen said.

“That’s just what I’d steal,” Errol said, with gusty relish. A drop of rain fell on his nose. “What’s that river?”