You, too.
Walking towards the superstructure, Evelyn Jolson eyed the bubbled rust and paint of the steel staircase going up. It tilted some, inward, but maybe it was supposed to. Maybe it made hanging on easier in the thick of storms and whatnot. The first three steps came with measure, but she moved up quickly after that. The steel didn’t complain.
There were three levels above the main deck, each smaller than the one below but all much more than she’d expected. Rooms with brass tubes and hanging compasses and enormous square boxes that could only be radios from generations past. The paint, a uniform gray with an occasional warning in black or yellow, did nothing for her vision. The shapes would work, but the color would not. In her head she already pictured the huge hose of a sandblaster taking it all down to bare metal. Ripping out the tubes and the conduits and military trifles, leaving only the bulk.
At the top level, surrounded by thick, yellowing glass, was a stately metal chair that must have been home for the Captain. Beside it a table stood, with a microphone and a coffee cup slot. Certainly important for the Captain to have his coffee cup. She scraped at the glass, but the yellow held. It would have to be removed before the artwork was sunk. No...it would have to be bashed. One didn’t just “remove” the glass on a ship of war. There’s no energy in “removing.”
She dropped down a level to find one pane already missing. Looking out over the weather-ravaged deck, she wondered what she might use as an anchor point for the hundreds of yards of thick hemp rope she planned on weaving all about the exterior. And there would have to be cuts made throughout the deck. Big cuts. Squares and circles and triangles to let the ocean life gather and play deep inside her artistic whim.
Evelyn rubbed her lips.
Projects of immensity were her specialty, but this would be the first piece of art over five hundred feet long she’d ever done. And the first living art, as well. She’d always been fond of destroying her pieces after a finite time, tearing apart the corpse of a muse that didn’t haunt her anymore. There’d be no such luxury this time. This muse would be something greater. Always something greater.
Abandoning the window, she descended the ladder to the main deck and wandered behind the superstructure. There she discovered more doors. Bare passageways and rooms with curious tables. Acrylic walls with maps supported by angle iron from the ceiling. So much to see.
The water was lumpy, but Genuit couldn’t tell any more than that. Not in the scarce lighting the one open hatch offered.
He could see the remains of four army jeeps lined up on the starboard bulkhead. A hammock hung between a mid-deck support and piping just aft of the hatch. Shapes decorated the bulkheads and dangled through the space from lengths of nylon rope obviously tied off somewhere in the shadows. Most confusing was the immense scattering of trash and wretched stench.
He kicked an unlabeled can and it rattled off to splash in the lake making up the fore section of the space. Another watery lump.
Ms. Jolson’s idea was grand. Her best yet. This part of it, the front-end work of making the old Navy LST seaworthy enough to tow to Catalina, would be painful. But Genuit knew the right names to get it done. Lots of folks out of Long Beach Naval Shipyard would jump at the chance to be part and parcel to an Evelyn Jolson project. With the right money afforded, of course.
And, as with any Jolson work, the right money would always be afforded. She had more benefactors than the Queen had crumpets.
He walked port, kicking around the sea of garbage in search of more hatches. There had to be bilge access somewhere.
At the grayish limits of the lighting he found two boxes. One stacked with masking tape, the other piled with newspaper. He bent over to read the date on the top issue.
The echo of bone reverberating through the tire iron nearly made Jong dance. In fact, it did. Just a small two-step, but still a dance. He shuffled some afterwards, for effect. Shuffled right on over to the chain fall hanging from a centerline overhead girder. Jong slowly rolled through the operating chain to feed out the hook, listening to the soft and repetitive clink of the links as they fed into and out of the gear teeth. The smoothest of mechanical hums. He started tapping time with one foot.
With a couple feet of slack on the floor, he dragged the interloper in the suit over and did a quick double-loop around both ankles. Then he looked back at the hatch.
There was still the lady. No time to do this with the music it deserved.
Quickly he pulled the operating chain in the other direction, lifting the load chain, the hook, and the man. Still, it took two, maybe three minutes to get him airborne and hanging straight down. With the man’s head clear of the deck by just an inch, Jong wrapped the body vigorously with the operating chain and knotted it about the man’s arms. Then he grappled it and walked out into the water. Out into the shadows. With the list taking him deeper, he didn’t stop until the upside-down body was waist-deep.
“I miss the lovely pop-pop-pop of bubbles,” Jong whispered.
Evelyn stared at the hatch, suspicious of the silence. Lloyd Genuit couldn’t walk softly on socks through a bed of down. If he was down there, he most certainly wasn’t moving.
Still, he’d gone down. She watched him. And she would certainly have seen him by now if he’d come back up. Lloyd wasn’t a patient man.
But then she wasn’t a patient woman. She tapped her foot.
Three taps floated up from below.
She tapped again...
...and they returned.
Evelyn stared out over the line of ships. There were twelve, maybe fifteen in a row. Some with high decks, some low. Turrets without barrels, hemispherical housings with parallel slots. Conical peaks and geometrically perfect railings. Ragged, spiderweb netting.
But no people. No shapes that moved. No one to go for help. Nothing functional!
He might need help. Nothing sinister...just assistance. He could have slipped. There was water down there, and the decks were steel. Slippery steel.
She tapped her foot one time, and one tap came back.
No way. One tap was playing, and Lloyd wouldn’t be playing if he needed help. In fact, Lloyd didn’t play. Ever.
An echo?
Evelyn tried the first step, then the second. Nothing happened.
She took the rest of the steps in quick succession, stopping only when she stood firmly on the lower deck. Light streaming through the hatch above held her, but cast shadows deep in every direction.
Trash littered the floor, and vehicles of some sort hulked against the wall ahead of her. There were ropes with dangling objects. Steering wheels and chrome parts and little metal widgets. Nearest to her, four straight rods of steel, of increasing length, drew a rope down until they nearly touched the floor.
“Do you miss his sounds?” a voice asked from outside the light. Evelyn spun around. Everywhere was darkness. Every sound an echo.
Another half turn and she found him next to her.
A man, a small man. Dressed from head to toe in swathes of newspaper and tape. Even a hat, a wrinkled bowler, made of Sunday funnies. He smiled and cocked his head.
Where the HELL is Lloyd? she signed.
The man backed up, his eyes wide.
Evelyn clapped her hands, and he smiled. He clapped back. Then, with a tire iron he drew from behind his back, he tapped each of the dangling bars of steel. They rang in successively higher notes.
Evelyn crossed her arms and scowled.
“You can hear?” he asked.
She nodded.
“But you cannot speak?”
She nodded again, slower. Then she lit into him, backing him up with a hand-flung stream of epithets. She raised one hand as high as she could, swaggered for three steps, spread her arms to show confusion, then finished it again with where the HELL is Lloyd?