“I’m an ass,” she muttered to herself, slouching to her feet. She headed back to the bathroom again, for the third time in an hour. “Stupid. And ugly, and a little bit dumb on the side.” She looked at the bathtub speculatively. “Guess I could always drown myself. Or cut my wrists. Or something.” Let the fuckers win. She blinked at the mirror-wall on the other side of the room. “I’m an embarrassment.” The figure in the mirror stared right back, a dark-eyed tragic waif with a rat’s nest of black hair and lips the color of a drowned woman’s. Breasts and hips slim, waist slimmer, arms and legs too long. She stood up and stared at herself. Her mind wandered, seeking solace a few nights back. What did Blow see in me? she wondered. No way to find out now. Should have asked him when I had the chance … She was alone here, more isolated than she’d ever been. “I’m a waste of vacuum.”
On her way back into the bedroom she spotted a blinking light on the writing desk. For want of anything better to do she wandered over. It was something to do with the blotter. “What’s this?” she asked aloud: “Ship, what does this light mean?”
“You have voice mail,” the ship replied soothingly. “Voice calls are spooled to mail while guests sleep unless an override is in force. Do you want to review your messages?”
Wednesday nodded, then snorted at her own idiocy. “Yeah. I guess.”
Message received, thirty-six minutes ago. From: Frank Johnson. “Hi, Wednesday? Guess you’re asleep. Should have checked the time — I keep weird hours. Listen, the story went out okay. Sorry I missed supper, but those social things don’t work for me real well. Ping me if you feel like hitting one of the bars sometime. Bye.”
“Huh. Ship, is Frank Johnson still awake?” she asked.
“Frank Johnson is awake and accepting calls,” the liaison network replied.
“Oh, oh.” Suddenly it mattered to her very much that someone else was awake and keeping crazy hours. “Voice call to Frank Johnson.”
There was a brief pause, then a chime. “Hello?” He sounded surprised.
“Frank?”
“Hello, Wednesday. What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing,” she said tiredly. “Just, I couldn’t sleep. Bad thoughts. You mentioned a bar. Is it, like, too late for you?”
A pause. “No, not too late. You want to meet up now?”
Her turn to pause. “Yeah. If you want.”
“Well, we could meet at—”
“Can you come round here?” she asked impulsively. “I don’t want to go out on my own.”
“Uh-huh.” He sounded amused. “Okay, I’ll be round in about ten minutes.”
She cut the call. “Gods and pests!” She looked around at the discarded clothes, suddenly realizing that she was naked and what it must look like. “Damn! damn!” She bounced to her feet and grabbed her leggings and top. She paused for a moment, then wrapped the sarong around her waist, dialed her jacket to a many-layered lacy thing, threw the other stuff in the closet for sorting out later, and ran back to the bathroom to dial the lights up. “My hair!” It was a mess. “Well, what the fuck. I’m not planning on dragging him into bed, am I?” She stuck her tongue out at the mirror, then went to work on the wet bar in the corner of the main room.
When he arrived Frank was carrying a bag. He put it down on the carpet as he looked around, bemused. “You said your friends were paying, but this is ridiculous,” he rumbled.
“It is, isn’t it?” She looked up at him, challenging.
He grinned, then stifled a yawn. “I guess so.” He nudged the bag with his foot. “You said you didn’t want to go out so I bought some stuff along just in case—” Suddenly he looked awkward.
“That’s okay.” She took his arm and dragged him over to the huge floppy sofa that filled one side of the main room. “What you got in there?”
He pulled out a bottle. “Sambuca. From Bolivar. And, let’s see, a genuine single malt from Speyside. That’s on Old Earth, you know. And here’s a disgusting chocolate liqueur from somewhere about which the less said the better. Got any glasses?”
“Yep.” She walked over to the bar and came back with glasses and a jug of ice. She sat down cross-legged at the other side of the sofa and poured a glassful of chocolate liqueur for herself, pretending not to notice Frank’s mock shudder. “You weren’t at dinner.”
“Those fake formal feast clusterfucks don’t do anything for me,” he announced. “They’re there to make the rich passengers think they’re getting a valuable service — more valuable than traveling deadhead in steerage, anyway. I guess if you do business or are in shipping, you can make a lot of contacts that way, but in general the kind of people I’d like to talk to over a meal don’t travel by liner.” He looked at her sharply. “Enjoy yourself?”
She nearly took the question at face value, although his tone suggested irony. “I nearly threw up in a plant pot after making a fool of myself.” She winced. “She asked for it, though.”
“Who did?” Frank raised his glass: “Your health.”
“Bottoms up. Poisonous toy bitch kept going on about how great being ReMastered was—” She stopped. Frank looked stricken. “Did I say something wrong?” she asked.
“Was she a blonde? Head half-shaved at one side to show off a tattoo?” Wednesday stared at him through a haze of conflicting emotions. “Yes,” she said. “Why?”
He put his glass down, rattling on the tabletop. “You could have been killed,” he said shakily.
“What do you—” She leaned toward him. “You said they run Newpeace. Concentration camps, secret police shit. Do you think they’re that dangerous here, though?”
“They’re dangerous everywhere!” Frank straightened up and picked up his glass, took a hefty mouthful, and coughed for a while. “Never, never, push a Re-Mastered button. Please? Tell me you won’t do it again?”
“I was drunk.” Wednesday flushed. His concern was immediate and clear, cutting through the fog of worry. “Hey, I’m not crazy.”
“Not crazy.” He chuckled edgily. “Is that why you didn’t want to go out on your own?”
“No. Yes.” She peered at him, wondering why she trusted him. Alone with a gorilla after midnight and he wonders if I’m crazy? “I don’t know. Should I?”
“You should always know why you do things,” Frank said seriously. “Inviting strange men for a late-night drink, for example.” He picked up the liqueur bottle. “Want a refill? Or should I fuck off now before we both end up with hangovers tomorrow?”
She pushed her glass toward him. “Stay,” she said impulsively. “I feel safer while you’re around. Couldn’t sleep, anyway.” A faint smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Do you think I’m crazy?”
Aas days passed the boredom subsided somewhat. She’d stayed in her room for the whole of the next day, playing with the ship’s extensive games library, but most of the other online players were old hands who had forgotten more about strategy than the entire Magna tournament team. After a while she ventured out, first to see if there really wasn’t anything she could find to wear, then to visit a public bar with Frank. Who introduced her to fresh zero-gee farmed seafood and single malts. Then she’d spent some time with Steffi, who had hastily introduced her to her old friend Sven the clown and made her excuses. Sven, it turned out, also knew Frank: it was a small world aboard ship.