We Are Pirates: A Novel (9 page)

“Are you?”

“What?”

“Are you going to eat that, Gwen?”

“I’m eating
toast now
,” she snarled, and then turned to Phil Needle with very fake calm. “Thanks for the toast, Dad.”

This fancy kitchen he could not afford, and it was a minefield.

Marina wouldn’t quit. “Because if you’re not going to eat it—”

“I’m
going to eat it.
”

“—then you’re wasting apples.”

“I’m
going to eat it
!”

“They cost money. They don’t grow on trees.”

Phil Needle looked down at the front section of the newspaper, which at the time this story takes place showed a photograph of a senator who was resigning his position in order to spend more time with his family. Phil Needle also wanted to spend time with the senator’s family. Look at them! Such beaming daughters! Not like Gwen, who was giving her mother a look of such violent nonchalance—
I don’t give a fuck—
that she might as well have said it out loud.

“Talk to her,” Marina said to him. “I’ll finish your suitcase.” Her robe ruffled with every step out of the kitchen. Gwen glared at everywhere. Phil Needle wished he could give her a tiny package with whatever it was inside, whatever her scowling little soul desired, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t, and since he couldn’t, would she just goddamn stop?

“I know,” he said, and sipped the last of his coffee, “that you’re having a hard time right now.”

Gwen replied that right now her time was fine.

“But I know, since the time at the drugstore—”

Gwen said that the drugstore thing was a long time ago.

“But you’re having a hard time, am I right?”

Gwen said that he wasn’t necessarily right all the time, okay?

Before Gwen he knew such people. To them he said:
Sleep it off.
Or:
Go get laid.
Or:
Sorry, it won’t happen again, boss.
Gwen turned to him now and asked him to leave her alone. He wanted to. Instead, he took the envelope off the stack of papers he had ready for his voyage. They were in a neat stack, just the sort of stack he had hoped his assistant would put them in before he had to travel on business. He’d stacked them himself. He put the envelope down in front of his daughter and waited for her to ask what it was.

“It’s tickets,” he said finally, to his silent kid. “Tickets to Tortuga, like you asked me for. Tonight. But Gwen—” Gwen’s wide, joyous eyes were already wary around the edges, eyeing the worm, knowing surely that there was a hook somewhere. “You know you can’t go to the Fillmore alone. There are two tickets here, one for you and one for your mother.” He put down his mug, reeling it in, the job of a parent, to steal his child’s happiness after offering it as a possibility in the first place. “I haven’t told her about it. I know you guys have been fighting, and so I want you to go together. You can either make peace with your mother or these tickets will go to waste.”

Gwen didn’t say anything. She did not say it was not fair, or that Phil Needle was the lowest viper that had ever crawled. She just stood, making up her own mind, her face as blank as a light switch. There she was. And there was his wife, with a
bonk-ruffle bonk-ruffle
, wheeling his suitcase down the stairs. And out in the courtyard, a young woman, hardly more than a girl, was standing near the benches, peering around as if she’d just woken up. Were homeless people in his building? With the fees he paid?

“I put in one more shirt,” his wife said, “if you have to stay past Sunday.”

“There’s no way,” Phil Needle said. “The conference is over with the weekend.” The young woman was heading toward his door. Should he call the police? It was six-something in the morning.

“I hope it goes well,” Marina said. She patted Phil Needle’s hand, but she was also looking out the window. It wasn’t until the girl started to knock that Phil Needle realized it was Levine.

“There you are,” she said when Marina slid the door open. “I’m sorry, but I need forty dollars.”

“What?”

“I’m really, really sorry,” Levine said. Gwen had already retreated behind him, like she used to as a shy toddler. “I took a cab here and it’s outside waiting. I forgot my purse at home. I can’t believe it.”

Phil Needle pointed to her purse. “That’s not a purse?”

“That’s my clothes,” Levine said. “I packed light, just underwear, et cetera. I figured we didn’t want to check anything. I’m sorry.”

“You’ll need ID for the airplane,” Marina said. “Phil, who is this?”

Phil Needle felt as if a jar of marbles had just been dropped on his floor. “This is Levine,” he said, and reached for his wallet. “This is who works for me.”

“The meter is running,” Levine said, and stepped closer to the money. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Needle,” she said to Marina, with a slight smirk at the robe.

“Oh, call me Marina,” Marina said, the
Oh
in a tone she reserved for people who forgot their purses at home. Phil Needle curled up the bills.

“Here, go and pay your cab,” he said.

“You’re not taking a cab?” Marina asked.

“No, I’ll park the car in the short-term lot.”

“Do they let you do that for a whole weekend? Maybe you should just take that cab.”

“
I’ll do it
,” Gwen said, with sudden ferocity. In a flash the money was out of Phil Needle’s hands and Gwen was sprinting across the courtyard. “
I’ll do it
!
” she called again, and then disappeared toward the elevator. Marina frowned after Gwen and then looked down at Phil’s inked hand.

“Were you holding a pen?” she asked him.

Phil Needle looked at his hands, and then at his wife, and finally found himself meeting Levine’s amused eyes. All these wrenches, around which he had built his works. Holding a pen? A bag full of underwear, et cetera? Somewhere, a trophy was being made—forged—for him, and all he had to do was get out of the house to get it. It was like a million performances he had seen, where someone else got all the glory and ovations on stage. Some people clap, and stand, and then others decide to join them in the clapping and the standing and then other people have to stand up just to see what’s going on, and the last stragglers agree to join the ovation, just because everyone else is clapping and standing and destiny has arrived. He was leaving the house. He was embarking. He did not notice, that Friday, on the counter, that the tickets he had given Gwen were already gone. He did not notice this because it was his destiny being forged for him this morning, not that of his daughter, who was already downstairs and opening the door of the taxi. Could not someone give this man a hand? It was his turn, if someone would just start clapping for him. If one person would just applaud his efforts, Phil Needle was sure his ovation would begin.

Chapter 4

Everything’s ugly in an airport. Phil Needle rose on the escalator as if descending into rapids, the area lousy loud with bustle and cross-purpose. Hordes of church teens, bronzed European mothers with children but no bras. All these people and he’d never sleep with any of them. He looked with real regret at a young woman with tight, eager legs, hurry-hurry-hurrying her way out, her bracelets rolling down her arm to clatter against the handle of the bag rolling behind her. (That’s one who died, on Roger Cuff’s boat.)

“What are we on?” he asked Levine.

“What?”

“What did you book us on?”

“Winter Air.”

“What?”

“Winter Air.”

“What’s that? What’s Winter Air?”

“It’s the cheapest thing on the computer. It was really cheap.”

“I’ve never heard of Winter Air.” He took a little bite of doubt while Levine headed toward a big neon
I
, for “Information,” and stood in front of a sign with birds on it who were thanking Phil Needle for not smoking. He tried to think of a title—
American
something,
Visions of America
, which sounded nice until he thought of vision and radios. Levine, over at the I, pointed one way; the guy at Information pointed the other. The announcements were a scuffle of interrupts, someone’s name called for, called for, called for, until Phil Needle began to be emotionally involved with Catherine Vogel and why she couldn’t meet her party at the baggage claim area.

Alma Levine returned and led him. In one of the odd angles of the airport, where the architect’s trapezoid met the budget, was a counter for another airline, with a banner reading WINTER AIR hung over the original’s logo. The effect was startlingly Third World, and the woman behind the counter looked like his mother, who was dead. Phil Needle didn’t want to think about it. She was on the phone.

“I’m just kidding,” she said, and hung up. “I should tell you straight off that I’m American. There’s some problem on the tarmac, so I’m just here as a stopgap.”

“I’m going to Los Angeles,” Phil Needle said hopefully.

“One or two?”

“Two,” Phil Needle said, pointing at Levine.

“No, no, what flight number?”

“One,” Levine said, and then, “I left my purse at home.”

The woman clickety-clacked many, many letters into the computer, as if writing a paragraph about the plane. “Ooh,” she said, with a toothy frown. “The plane’s delayed. This is the problem I was talking about.”

“How long?” Phil Needle asked.

“We’re not supposed to know until nine.”

“It’s nine-oh-seven,” said Phil Needle, and the clock on the wall.

“You know what I mean,” the woman said, also like his mother. “Is there anything else I can help you with? The flight’s canceled.”

Catherine Vogel
,
Catherine Vogel.
“What?”

“Just now,” said the woman, typing again. “This happens a lot with Winter, I have to tell you. Let me see if I can put you somewhere.”

Phil Needle found it was too early in the morning to summon the outlaw spirit. “Yes,” he said, and wanted a banana muffin. “I really have to get somewhere.”

“I’m American, like I said, so this will take a sec.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Just a sec. Okay, the two flights are collapsing.”

“What is that?”

“Winter is collapsing them, One and Two. Unfortunately, Two is also delayed. All progress is incremental, huh?”

“I hear that,” Levine said with a solemn nod. Phil Needle was not sure what language everyone was speaking.

“When are we leaving?”

“About an hour.”

“An hour’s not bad,” Levine told him.

“Exactly,” the woman said. “You can get a hot dog and go to the bathroom. Is your ID in your purse?”

“
Everything
,” Levine said, “is in my purse.”

“And you?”

Phil Needle looked back at her. He, no, was not in Alma Levine’s purse. “And me what?”

“We’ll get you squared away,” the woman said to Levine, and then to Phil Needle, “Identification.”

Oh. Phil Needle handed himself over. At this time in history, this was done.

“There you go. Departs Gate D-Fifteen.”

“D?”

“No, B.”

“Wait, C? Cookie?”

“Yes, Cookie-Fifteen,” the woman said, and Phil Needle opened his eyes from a dream in which Eleanor was so sad and ghastly that he could not remember the rest of it. He was on the plane now, rattling down the state, the rigmarole with Levine at security over and blurred and leaving him in an aisle seat, having written, he saw slowly, “Possible Titles” on the top sheet in a new notebook, and “America,” and given way to dozing. Levine was across the aisle with her head tilted forward so she could see out the window, half-blocked by the arm of the man next to her. The man’s arm was in a cast, a stabilizing mass of plaster used by doctors at the time this story takes place, stabilized for some reason at an upward angle so it looked as if he was waving, or holding a hand puppet:
Hello! Hello!

The flight attendant knelt down to sift through a drawer full of tiny bottles stored in a wheeled cart. She found the vodka and then she smiled at him with happy teeth. “Something to drink?”

“Ginger ale,” Phil Needle said, Eleanor’s ranting still in his ears and eyes.

“Do you want the can?”

“What?”

“The can?”

“Sure.”

“I think I’ll have ginger ale too,” the woman next to him said brightly, and fanned herself with the information about what to do in an emergency. She had a bright red jacket on, pinned with a badge for a candidate who had already lost, but Phil Needle had found her warm when she rubbed past him on her way to her assigned seat, in the uneasy intimacy of their unfair close quarters. “My name’s Jane.”

“Phil Needle,” Phil Needle said. In a minute he and Jane would learn they had the exact same birthday. The flight attendant handed him two cups of ice and two cans of ginger ale, like he and Jane were supposed to work things out for themselves.