The song finished to loud applause and whistles from the crowd. “Thanks for listening!” DB called into his throat mikes, waving. He tossed his signature graphite sticks into the crowd. “You’ve been a great audience! Thank you!” He high-fived the other musicians in the pickup group as the captain’s voice came over the intercom, telling everyone to clear the flight deck and return to duty stations. “You guys were great. Great. That was lots of fun . . . .”
The spotlights went out. From the stage, the Tomlin seemed to be a brilliant platform floating in blackness pricked by the running lights of the cruisers flanking her, the wakes streaming out phosphorescent and white from their bows. There were no other lights but the stars in this universe, and the horizon in all directions was the unbroken, dark line of the Gulf.
He hopped off the stage as the crowd began to disperse and sailors swarmed over the improvised stage to disassemble it. Michael walked over to Kate, who applauded as he approached. Babs and Lohengrin were already walking away, talking earnestly to Colonel Saurrat, commander of the UN troops. Rusty loomed behind Kate and Tinker. “Cripes, you guys were loud,” he said. Tinker wore the too-wide, open-mouthed smile of an awed fan getting to meet his idol.
Michael ignored Tinker, smiled at Rusty, and cocked his head toward Kate. “Well?”
“That was fun,” Kate told him. “Just what everyone needed, I think.” Her hand—her right hand, the deadly one—touched one of his arms momentarily, then dropped back to her side.
“You should hear the real thing sometime. If you liked this, you’d be blown away. I’ll get you guys tickets to our next show.” Whenever that might be . . . . The thought came unbidden, and he shook his head to banish it.
“That’d be fantastic!” Tinker said, his Australian accent broader than usual. “Sure. That’d be great. Just great. If you want, DB, I could whip you up something better than those mikes you use around your neck, though. I’d be happy to do it for you, mate. Y’know, I heard you blokes a couple times now; in New York on your first tour right after Egypt, and, let’s see, I think it was . . .”
“Hey, fella,” Rusty interrupted. “What’s say you and me get some chow, huh?” Rusty clapped Tinker on the shoulders, staggering the man, and half dragged him away. Kate chuckled.
“You have a fan,” she said.
“Fans are good. Sometimes. Hey, I’m thirsty and it’s getting chilly out here. Take a walk with me?”
Kate shrugged. “Sure.”
He walked with her toward what the crew called “Vulture’s Row,” the collection of catwalks climbing the island of the flattop. They went down a few levels, below the flight deck to the crew level. One of the crew lounge doors was open, and they went in, Michael snagging a couple bottles of water for them before they sat on a couch in the room. There was a TV set at the far end set to local broadcasts, a half dozen male sailors gathered around watching the screen, the sound tinny and distant. The channel was showing “spontaneous citizen protests” in Baghdad as Arabic lettering scrolled across below; there were bands of protesters filling the streets and firing weapons into the air. UN DEV ILS! proclaimed one of the signs, with a caricature of a scarab-browed face on it. MURDERER! said another, and on that one, a six-armed man beat his chest like a multiple-armed King Kong while smashing a minaret-adorned mosque.
“I talked to John,” Kate said. Michael grimaced around the mouth of his water bottle. “He couldn’t really say much over the phone, but he said that things can’t stay at stalemate for very much longer.”
“Fine by me. I’m tired of cooling my heels here. Let’s either go in for the oil or go home. One or the other.” Michael was watching the cartoon of himself jump up and down as the man holding the sign screamed invectives in Arabic.
“Home would be good.”
“But you don’t think that’s what’s going to happen? Or Fortune doesn’t.”
A shrug.
“Yeah, I get it,” Michael told her. “It’s all kinda weird. Hell, we’ve both seen what the oil crisis is doing, but maybe we can fix that. Maybe. I’ve talked to Kennedy and I know how important he thinks this is, and I’m with him, even if . . .” He lifted one set of shoulders. “Even if I’m not entirely sure that oil is what we should be going after right now. But I don’t mind being here.” Because you’re here, Kate. That means more than the rest. He didn’t say that. He didn’t have to. She knew his thoughts—he could see it in the way her gaze drifted away from him, as if she wanted to say something but had decided against it. “You think this is important, too, right, Kate?”
“I’m here,” she answered. “So yeah. I do.” Her voice was unconvincing.
“Yeah.” Michael leaned back and put his top right arm around the back of the couch. Kate didn’t move away; he found himself inordinately pleased by that. “Though I ain’t looking forward to another fight in the desert, I gotta admit.”
She frowned. “Maybe you should have taken John’s advice and gone to Africa, Michael. Or maybe just stayed back home this time, given where we’re going and what happened last time. They don’t like you here—you especially, out of all of us.” She nodded toward the television.
One of the sailors picked up the remote. The video of the Baghdad protests faded into a series of flickering channels. Michael was tapping on his chest softly, quick arpeggios of percussive notes, his throat openings flexing quickly to shape the sound. Kate’s hand touched one of his arms and he stopped the drumming. He put his middle left hand on top of hers so that she wouldn’t pull away. “So they don’t like me. Big deal. I’m glad that we’re together on this one, Kate.”
He saw her glance away with that, biting at her lip. “Michael—”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry.” He let go of her hand, but she left it where it was. It seemed a small victory.
“Michael,” she began again. “I want to stay friends, but I’m with John and you’re not going to change that. Please—quit pushing. It’s just pissing me off.”
“What pisses me off is that you don’t seem to notice the fucking she-bug in his head,” Michael spat out. Kate pressed her lips together, and her grip loosened on his arm and pulled away. “Sorry,” he told her as her eyes flashed angrily. “That was reflex—and a lot of pent-up crap that doesn’t have anything to do with you, or even with John. I guess . . . I guess that if you like John, then there’s gotta be something good about him. I’m just tired of all this fucking waiting around, Kate, and worried about what’s going to happen next. Sorry. Really. I won’t do it again.”
He could see that she didn’t believe him. She started to get up from the couch. He forced himself to remain seated and not rise with her to try and keep her there, when that was what he wanted to do most of all. “Kate, don’t give up on me. Not now. I’m here. I’m here and you’re here and at the very least we have to work together to get this done.”
Halfway up, she paused and sat again. “Michael,” Kate said, her voice quick, quiet, and earnest. “I need you to cooperate with everyone. Everyone: with John, with Barbara, with Lohengrin, everyone. None of us feels good about this, but I’ve made my arguments. And, well, I’m here. The lousy politics keep getting in the way of the Committee, and the publicity garbage that goes along with all this—yeah, that’s all getting to me, too. More every day. But . . . I trust John, and I believe that he’s trying to do the right things. It’s hard enough for him and the Committee to accomplish anything without us fighting among ourselves. So let’s stop.”