Challenger Deep

  Instead, I seek out Carlyle at midnight, and ask him. I find him mopping aft, back toward the mizzenmast, clearing the deck of grime and the occasional brain.

  “The fo’c’sle?” he asks, pronouncing forecastle in the proper seaman’s way. “What do you want with the fo’c’sle?”

  “I just want to know what’s down there.”

  He shrugs. “We store the forward mooring ropes there,” he tells me. “Although it’s been so long since we’ve seen port, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ropes have evolved into higher forms of life.”

  “If I wanted to get in there, where would I find the key?”

  “Why would you want to?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  He sighs and looks around to make sure we’re unobserved. He respects my privacy on the matter, and doesn’t ask my reasons again. “There’s only one key to the padlock, and the captain has it.”

  “Where does he keep it?”

  “You’re not going to like it,” Carlyle warns me.

  “Tell me anyway.”

  For a moment Carlyle ponders the gray suds in his bucket, then finally says, “It’s behind the peach pit, in the socket of his dead eye.”

  108. Up or Drown?

  No matter how rational the world seems to be, you never really know what crazy crap is around the bend. I saw this in the news once: some socialite in a Manhattan high-rise takes an elevator from the penthouse to the basement garage, dropping down sixty-seven floors—sixty-eight if you count the mezzanine—to get her Mercedes and go to a gallery on Madison Avenue, or whatever it is that Manhattan socialites do with their time.

  What she doesn’t know is that a water main burst just a few minutes ago next to her building. So the elevator reaches the basement, and as the doors begin to open, the elevator is flooded by freezing water. What is she going to do? There isn’t even a worst-case scenario for this, because it’s beyond anyone’s imagination.

  In five seconds the water’s at her waist, then at her neck, and then she drowns, never knowing what the hell happened, or how such a horrific thing is even possible. I mean, think about it: drowning in an elevator in a skyscraper. That’s wrong on sixty-seven different levels, not counting the mezzanine.

  The weird thing is, hearing stories like this makes me feel a kind of kinship with the Almighty, because it proves that even God has psychotic episodes.

  109. When Ink Acts Up

  I go to the crow’s nest to ponder the obstacles and consequences to getting this particular boss key. The way I see it, it’s an impossible task. I sit at the bar, sipping my cocktail and sharing my dilemma with the bartender, because bartenders are known to give good advice, and I know that the crow’s nest personnel have neither love for, nor loyalty to, the captain. I’ve met several bartenders here. They work varied shifts, because the crow’s nest operates twenty-four hours a day. Today’s bartender is a slender woman with eyes a little too small for her face. She compensates with mascara and turquoise eye shadow, so that her eyes look a bit like two peacock feathers.

  “Best to forget it,” the bartender advises. “I mean literally. The less you remember it, the less important it will seem, and the less important it seems, the less anxious you’ll be.”

  “I don’t want to be less anxious,” I tell her. “At least not until I get that key.”

  She sighs. “Sorry, I wish I could help you.”

  She appears a bit miffed that I’m not taking her advice. Or maybe she’s miffed that I’m hanging out at the bar. The crow’s nest folk don’t seem to like when I hang around too much. Like any other service establishment, they want to move the customers in and out as quickly as they can. I prefer to take my time.

  On the barstool next to me is the master-at-arms. He has no cocktail, he’s just chatting up the bartender. She doesn’t seem to mind him being there. The leering tattoos on his arms regard me with emotions that range from curiosity to disdain, then the skull with a penchant for show tunes launches into a rousing “Hello, Dolly!,” which happens to be the name of the bartender. It makes all the other skulls complain.

  “How can you stand it when your ink acts up?” I ask him.

  For a moment he looks at me like I’m from Mars, then he says rather slowly, “I just . . . don’t . . . pay attention.”

  I suppose “not paying attention” takes a great deal of discipline. I know when my voices get out of hand, it’s like being in the middle of the New York Stock Exchange. At least he can muffle his with long sleeves and layers.

  “Have you ever seen the captain up here?” I say, but the master-at-arms seems to be ignoring me now, so I direct the question to the skull with a rose in its mouth, figuring it might be the mellowest one. “Does the captain ever come to the crow’s nest?”

  “Never,” says the tattoo through clenched teeth. “He’d prefer that no one did. The captain doesn’t like anyone messing with sailors’ minds but him.”

  “Then how come he doesn’t just shut the place down? I mean, he’s the captain, he can do anything he wants on his ship, right?”

  “Ha!” says the dice-eyed skull. “Shows how much you know.”

  “There are some things that not even the captain can control,” says the skull with the rose.

  “What kinds of things?”

  And the theatrical skull sings, “Storm fronts that linger upon the horizon; white plastic places where every thought dies in; swabbies and cocktails and parrots’ bright wings; these are a few of his least-favorite things.”

  The other skulls all groan, and I smile. If the captain isn’t all-powerful, perhaps getting that key isn’t as impossible as I thought.

  110. Garden of Unearthly Delights

  Hal and I sit in the rec room. He’s absorbed in his maps and I’m absorbed in my drawings, trying to be here and not somewhere else.

  “I wrote myself a chaos language,” Hal tells me. “Full of symbols and signals and sigils and cymbals. But due to its chaotic nature, I can’t remember it.”

  “Were the cymbals to wake you up when you got too boring?” I ask him.

  He points a finger at me. “Watch yourself, or I will mark you in your sleep with a sigil of hair loss, and you will turn into your father.”

  Sigils, as I recall from some dark comic book series, are symbols of medieval magic from back in the day when so few people were literate that literacy itself was seen as borderline magical. A man who could read was considered a genius. A man who could read without moving his lips was proclaimed either divine or demonic, depending on the agenda of whoever was doing the proclaiming.

  Today Hal is doing all the proclaiming, which is how it usually goes.

  “Symbols have power!” he announces. “You see a cross, it makes you feel something. You see a swastika, it makes you feel something else. Yet the swastika is also an Indian symbol meaning ‘It is good,’ showing that symbols can be mortally corrupted. That’s why I make up my own. They are meaningful to me, and that’s all that matters.”

  He draws a spiral punctured by a sine wave. He draws two question marks at odd angles bisecting each other. He’s right—they are powerful. He’s made them powerful.

  “What do they mean?” I ask.

  “I told you, I forgot the language.” Then he looks over at my sketch pad, noticing that I have copied his symbols and am adding on to them, turning them into figures that battle one another. I have corrupted his symbols. I wonder what he will do.

  “Your last name is Bosch,” he says. “Are you related?”

  I assume he’s asking if I’m related to Hieronymus Bosch—an artist who painted some pretty bizarre things that scared the crap out of me when I was little, and still dance around my head on bad days.

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  He nods, at home with uncertainty, and says, “Don’t put me in your Garden of Earthly Delights, and I won’t write death-symbols on your forehead.”

  Thus, Hal and I reach a mutual understanding.

  111. Ho
t for You

  I open my eyes in the middle of the night, and feel the familiar numbness of semiconsciousness combined with medication. My head is a fogged-in airport. All thoughts are grounded. Still, I can sense that I’m being watched. I force myself through my pharmacological haze and roll over to find someone standing beside my bed. In the dim light coming from the hallway, I can see green pajamas covered in cartoon sea horses. I hear a clicking sound, and it’s a few moments before I realize that the sound is the chattering of teeth.

  “I’m cold,” Callie says. “And you’re always so warm.”

  She makes no move, she just chatters. I look across the room to see Hal snoring away. Callie’s waiting for an invitation. I throw back my covers. It’s invitation enough, and she climbs in.

  She is cold. Not just her hands and feet, but her whole body. I pull the covers over both of us and she turns her back to me, making it easier to hold her and share my body warmth. We lie close like a pair of spoons. I can feel the ridges of her spine against my chest. I can feel her heart beating so much more rapidly than mine. Our bodies form a symbol, I think, as powerful as one of Hal’s—and it occurs to me that the most meaningful symbols of all must be based on all the different ways two people can embrace.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” she says.

  “No ideas,” I repeat groggily. I couldn’t have any such “ideas” even if I wanted to. When the meds are dialed this high, it takes away all stirrings. I’m actually glad for that—at least at this particular moment—because there are no expectations, and not the slightest hint of awkwardness. This is about one thing: keeping her warm.

  I’m worried, though. I know there are several pastels on duty and they have regular rounds, checking each room. Surveillance cameras are everywhere, too. The hospital makes every effort to monitor all aspects of our behavior, but there’s still room for human error. The fact that Callie is here proves it.

  “What if they see us?” I ask.

  “What are they going to do, throw us out?” she answers.

  And I realize I don’t care what they see, what they say, or what they do. Not Poirot, or the pastels, or even my parents. They have no part of this moment. They don’t have the right.

  I hold her tighter, pressing against her until I feel just the slightest bit cold, which means she’s taking some of my body heat. After a while her teeth stop chattering, and we lie there, breathing in unison.

  “Thank you,” she finally says.

  “You can come whenever you’re cold,” I tell her. I think to give her a gentle kiss on the ear, but instead I just snuggle a little closer and whisper into it. “I like being hot for you.”

  Only after I say it do I realize the joke. I let her think that I intended it.

  She says nothing. Her breathing slows, I doze off, and when I open my eyes again, I’m alone in my bed, left to wonder if it happened at all. Was it just another mind trick?

  It isn’t until morning that I find her slipper on the floor near my bed—left there not accidentally, not carelessly, but with mischievous purpose.

  At breakfast I will bring it to her, kneel before her, and slip it on her foot. And, just like in the fairy tale, it will be a perfect fit.

  112. Abstract Angular Angst

  In group, Carlyle hands out pieces of sketch paper and markers. “We’re going to give our mouths a rest today,” he tells us. “There are other ways to express ourselves. Today we’ll take advantage of nonverbal expression.”

  The creepy kid everyone calls Bones looks at Skye and offers her a nonverbal and sexually explicit gesture, which elicits another nonverbal gesture from Skye that involves a particular finger. Bones snickers, and Carlyle pretends he didn’t see the exchange.

  “The object today is to draw the way you’re feeling. It doesn’t have to be literal, and there is no right or wrong way to do it. No good or bad.”

  “This is kindergarten crap,” announces Alexa—the girl with bandages on her throat.

  “Only if you make it so,” Carlyle tells her.

  People look at their pages like the screaming blankness is already invading their fragile minds. Others stare at the pale green walls around them as if the answers might be there. Bones grins evilly and gets to work. I know exactly what he’s going to draw. We all do. And none of us is claiming to read minds today.

  This assignment is no problem for me. It’s what I do most of the time anyway. Sometimes with more passion and urgency than other times. Carlyle knows this, and perhaps this is why he chose an art project for today.

  In a few minutes my paper reflects a jagged inner landscape of sharp edges and deep crevasses. No sense of gravity or perspective. Abstract angular angst. I like it. And will until I hate it.

  Others are not so quick to draw.

  “I can’t do this,” complains Skye. “My head doesn’t see feelings as pictures.”

  “Try,” Carlyle says gently. “Whatever you put down is fine. You’re not being judged.”

  She looks at her blank page once more, then pushes it at me. “You do it.”

  “Skye, you’re missing the point . . . ,” Carlyle says.

  Still, I take the piece of paper, ponder Skye for a moment, and get to work. I draw a sweeping abstract something that’s a cross between an amoeba and a manta ray with eyes and mouths in unexpected places. It takes me about a minute. When it’s done, Skye gapes at me, wide-eyed. I expect her to offer me a single-digit gesture, but instead she says, “How did you do that?”

  “What?”

  “I have no idea what the hell that is, but it’s exactly how I feel right now.”

  “Skye,” says Carlyle, “I really don’t think—”

  “I don’t care what you do or don’t think,” Skye says. “He got me right.”

  “Me next,” says Bones. He flips over the phallus he’s drawing, so I can work on the other side of the page.

  I glance at Carlyle. He raises his eyebrows and shrugs. “Go for it,” he says. I like the fact that Carlyle rolls with the waves rather than fighting them. Good sea legs.

  For Bones, I draw a squiggle that turns into a vaguely suggestive porcupine. When I’m done he laughs. “Man, you are a true arteest of the soul.”

  Others are anxious for their turns. Even the crew members who are totally out of it look to me like somehow what I draw is going to save their lives.

  “All right,” says Carlyle, leaning back against the green copper bulkhead of the map room. “Caden can draw it, but when he’s done, you each need to explain what it means.”

  They thrust their parchments before me, and I feverishly translate their feelings into line and color. For the lore-master, I offer a prickly something-or-other covered with eyes. For Alexa and her pearl choker, I offer a tentacled kite caught in an updraft. The only one who won’t offer me his parchment is the navigator. Instead he draws his own map in silence.

  Everyone claims that I’ve gotten them right, and while they compare their inner selves, I go to Carlyle, a bit concerned. “Do you think the captain will approve of this?”

  Carlyle sighs. “Let’s just be here in the moment, okay?”

  And although it makes me edgy, I agree to try.

  113. Who They Were

  Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear, sent it to the woman he loved, and in the end took his own life. In spite of an artistic vision so startlingly new it took years for the world to appreciate it, his artwork couldn’t save him from the depths of his tortured mind. That’s who he was.

  Michelangelo—arguably the greatest artist mankind has ever seen—became so pathologically obsessed with sculpting David that he didn’t bathe, or take care of himself for months. He had gone so long without removing his work boots, that when he took them off, the skin of his feet came off with them. That’s who Michelangelo was.

  Recently, I saw a story about a schizophrenic artist living on the streets of Los Angeles. His paintings were gorgeous abstract masterpieces, and people were comparing him to the masters. Now
his works sell for tens of thousands of dollars because some rich person turned the media spotlight in his direction. He wore a suit and tie at the gallery opening, and when it was done, even with doors wide open to him, he went back to living on the streets. Because that’s who he was.

  And so who am I?

  114. Happy Paper Cup

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that.”

  “I asked if you’ve noticed any difference in the way you’ve been feeling, Caden.”

  “Difference in the way I’ve been feeling.”

  “Yes. Have you noticed any?”

  Dr. Poirot has the annoying tendency to nod, even when I don’t speak, which makes it difficult for me to know if I’ve answered the question or not.

  “Have I noticed any what?”

  He taps his pen on the desk thoughtfully for a moment. It distracts me and I forget not just the gist of the conversation, but its entire direction as well. It’s one of those days. What were we talking about? Dinner, perhaps?

  “Mutton,” I say.

  “Mutton,” he says. “What about mutton?”

  “I can’t be sure, but I think we’re eating the crewmen with no brains.”

  He considers this very seriously, then he grabs his little pad and scribbles out a new prescription for me. “I’d like to add Risperdal to your medication regimen,” he says. “I believe it may keep you here with us more of the time.”

  “Why don’t you combine the Ativan, the Risperdal, the Seroquel, and the Depakote into a single pill?” I suggest. “AtiRisperQuellakote.”

  He chuckles, then tears out the prescription, but knows better than to hand it to me. It goes into my chart, which will go to the pastels, who will bring it to the pharmacy, and a new pill will find its way into my happy paper cup before dinner.