The one called Florence pipes up, “What happened to you girls?” She has the scratchy voice of a lifelong smoker.
“What do you mean ‘happened’?” Liz demands.
“I was shot in the head, ma’am,” Thandi volunteers.
“Speak up,” says Myrna who has a fuzzy white caterpillar of a mustache. “My hearing’s not so good.”
“I WAS SHOT IN THE HEAD.”
Liz turns to Thandi. “I thought you said you didn’t remember how you got the hole in your head.”
Thandi apologizes, “I just remembered.”
“Shot in the head!” Florence-scratchy-voice says. “Oy, that’s rough.”
“Aw, it’s nothing special. Happens pretty regularly where I’m from,” Thandi says.
“WHAT?” asks Myrna with the mustache. “Say it toward my left ear, that’s the good one.”
“I SAID, ‘IT’S NOTHING SPECIAL,’” Thandi yells.
“Maybe you should go to the healing center?” Florence suggests. “There’s one on the Portofino deck. Myrna’s already been twice.”
Thandi shakes her head. “I think it’s healing just fine on its own.”
Liz doesn’t understand this conversation at all. Her stomach growls loudly. “Excuse me,” she says.
Doris the pygmy waves her hand toward the buffet line. “You girls go get something to eat. Remember, you gotta get here early for the good stuff.”
For breakfast, Liz selects pancakes and tapioca pudding. Thandi has sushi, truffles, and baked beans. Liz eyes Thandi’s food selections curiously. “That’s certainly an interesting combination,” Liz says.
“At home, we never get half the things they have on that buffet,” says Thandi, “and I’m planning to try all of it before we get there.”
“Thandi,” Liz asks casually, “where do you think ‘there’ is?”
Thandi considers Liz’s question for a moment. “We’re on a boat,” Thandi says, “and boats have to be going somewhere.”
The girls secure a table near a bay window, slightly away from the other diners. Liz polishes off her pancakes in record time. She feels as if she hasn’t eaten in weeks.
Scraping the bottom of her pudding cup, Liz looks at Thandi. “So, I’ve never known anyone who was shot in the head before.”
“Can we talk about it after I’m done eating?” Thandi asks.
“Sorry,” Liz says, “just making conversation.”
Liz stares out the window. The fog has lifted, and the water is clearer than any water she has ever seen. It is strange, Liz thinks, how much the sky looks like the sea. A sea, she thinks, is rather like a soggy sky, and a sky rather like a wrung-out sea. Liz wonders where the ship is going and if she will wake up before it arrives and what her mother will say this dream probably means. Her mother is a child psychologist and knows about these things. Liz’s reverie is interrupted by a man’s voice.
“You mind?” he asks with an English accent. “You ladies seem to be the only people under eighty in this place.”
“Of course not. We’re all done here any…” Liz’s voice trails off as she sees the man for the first time. He is around thirty years old with sparkling blue eyes that match his spiky blue hair. Liz, like most people her age, would recognize those eyes anywhere. “You’re Curtis Jest, aren’t you?”
The man with the blue hair smiles. “Used to be, I suppose.” Curtis holds out his hand. “And who might you be?”
“I’m Liz, and this is Thandi, and I honestly can’t believe I’m meeting you. Machine’s about my favorite band in the whole world!” Liz gushes.
Curtis sprinkles salt on his french fries and smiles. “My, that is a compliment,” he says, “for the world is a very large place. I always preferred the Clash myself, Liz.”
“This is the coolest dream ever,” says Liz, feeling pleased that her subconscious has introduced Curtis Jest to the dream.
Curtis cocks his head. “Dream, you say?”
Thandi whispers to Curtis, “She doesn’t know yet. I only just figured it out myself.”
“Interesting,” Curtis says. He turns to Liz. “Where do you think you are, Lizzie?”
Liz clears her throat. Her parents call her Lizzie. All at once and for no apparent reason, she misses them desperately.
Curtis looks at her with concern. “Are you all right?”
“No, I…” Liz returns the conversation to solid ground. “When is the new album out?”
Curtis eats one french fry. And then another. “Never,” he says.
“The band broke up?” Liz has always read rumors of a possible Machine split, but they have never come to pass.
“That’s one way of saying it,” Curtis replies.
“What happened?” Liz asks.
“I quit.”
“But why? You guys were so great.” For her birthday, she has tickets to their concert in Boston. “I don’t understand.”
Curtis pushes up the left sleeve of his white pajama top, revealing his inner forearm. Deep tracklike scars, purplish bruises, and crusty wounds run from his inner elbow to his wrist. There is a quarter-inch hole near the crease separating Curtis’s biceps from his forearm. The hole is completely black. Liz thinks his arm looks dead. “Because I was a fool, Lizzie my lass,” Curtis says.
“Liz?” Thandi says.
Liz just stares dumbly at Curtis’s arm.
“Liz, are you okay?” Thandi asks.
“I’m…” Liz begins. She hates looking at the rotten arm, but she can’t stop looking at it either.
“Good Lord, would you put that arm away?” Thandi orders Curtis. “You’re making her sick. Honestly, Liz, it isn’t any worse than the hole in my head.”
“Hole in your head?” Curtis asks. “Could I see it?”
“Of course.” Flattered, Thandi forgets all about Liz and begins to raise her braids.
The thought of seeing the hole and the arm at the same time is too much for Liz. “Excuse me,” she says.
Liz runs outside onto the main deck of the ship. All around her, older people in various styles of white pajamas are playing shuffleboard. She leans over the ship’s railing and stares into the water. The water is too far away for her to see her reflection in it, but if she leans far enough over, she can sort of see her shadow—an indistinct, small darkness in the middle of an expanse of blue.
I am dreaming, she thinks, and any moment, my alarm clock will sound, and I will wake up.
Wake up, wake up, wake up, she wills herself. Liz pinches herself on the arm as hard as she can. “Ow,” she says. She slaps herself across the face. Nothing. And then she slaps herself again. Still nothing. She closes her eyes as tightly as she can and then snaps them open again, hoping to find herself back in her own bed on Carroll Drive in Medford, Massachusetts.
Liz starts to panic. Tears form in her eyes; she furiously brushes them away with her hand.
I am fifteen years old, a mature person with a learner’s permit, three months away from an actual driver’s license, she thinks. I am too old to be having nightmares.