“True,” Corey said, shaking his head. “Can’t blame me for your own failures.”
“He’s an asshole!” Keith said, flailing his arms again. “He’s always been an asshole! I don’t care how hard he works! And you don’t care, because as long as he’s here, you get to keep doing this, you get your fucking public, you get your cruise, you get your world tour.”
“It’s business!” Shawn said. “This is a business.”
“But you’re my brother!”
Annie closed her eyes. She shouldn’t be seeing this. No one should be seeing this. Maira started rocking back and forth, shifting her weight from foot to foot. A woman on the other side of the elevator looked at her from across the room and pointed.
“Maira, they mad at you too?” she asked. It was the woman from the beach, and from the theater, the woman who’d been staring down Maira all weekend.
“Oh, you wanna go too?” Maira asked.
“What?” Annie said, her body already flooded with adrenaline. “Maira, please don’t.”
The woman shrugged off a bedazzled denim jacket, leaving it at her feet, and slowly skirted the room.
“Theresa, don’t you dare come a step closer,” Maira said. “I gave you your money back.”
“Some of it!” Theresa said. She had a perfect tube of bangs. Annie wondered if it was a costume or not—sometimes it was hard to tell. Everyone got stuck in one time period or another. It couldn’t all be old men wearing handsome fedoras. Some people had to live in the ’80s forever.
Maira exhaled loudly and put her phone in her pocket. “Okay,” she said. “You asked for it.”
“No, Maira, she didn’t ask for anything! What on earth is going on!” Annie looked over at Keith and Shawn, who were panting at each other like gorillas, and Corey, who had wiped the blood from his face and was smiling like a coyote, sharp and dangerous. It was a full zoo, and Annie didn’t want to meet whatever animal Maira turned into. She had promised a fight, Annie remembered, but wasn’t that part of adulthood, making promises you had no intention of keeping?
Maira marched up to Theresa. In one swift motion, Maira grabbed her by the hair and threw her to the ground. The woman shrieked and scrambled back up to standing, one shoulder of her minidress torn.
“Whoa!” Annie said, taking a big step back. “Help!”
Lars the Viking quickly walked Maira back to the wall. Next to him, Maira looked like a child in a time-out. Annie wanted to remindhim of the fun they’d had, how charmed he’d been, but it didn’t seem like the time.
A young woman with a walkie-talkie rushed over. “Miss, we have a no-violence policy, and so we’re going to take you to your room now.” She paused. “And yes, I understand the irony here,” she said to Maira. “Tyler, can you please escort this guest to her room and make sure she stays there?” A guy with a neck tattoo nodded and gingerly held Maira by her elbow, like she might hit him too. She raised her hands in the air and said, “Oh, but it’s okay for them! Fine! I’ll just miss the last night! That’s great! I see how it is!”
Annie opened her mouth to say goodbye, but Maira didn’t turn to look at her. The kid with the neck tattoo—he couldn’t have been older than Claudia—was clearly terrified of Maira, which Annie appreciated. There was some power in being an older woman after all.
One of the other beefy security guards checked on Theresa, but she brushed them off, tending to her bangs. “Hope you have somewhere else to sleep,” she called out to Annie, then tossed her hair over one shoulder and walked out onto the lido deck.
Annie looked up and caught Keith’s eye. He was bent over with his hands on his knees. Annie remembered when Claudia was fourteen or fifteen, at her very worst, and would pant and hiss if Annie asked for any details about school, her friends, tests, homework—Claudia’s eyes would practically turn red, so overtaken with rage that her body didn’t know how to process. That was what Keith looked like. Annie took a half step toward him but then stopped herself. He was breathing heavily, and she watched his chest rise and fall. Out on the deck, DJ Pancake was playing “Push It” by Salt-N-Pepa, and Shawn growled, balled his fists, and said, “What the fuck, man? It’s too late!”
42
Sunday, 9:34 p.m.
Deck 10
Keith could feel the blood pumping through his body. It felt like the second they walked onstage, only bad. He was all fury, all hurt. Bobby was trying to clear the Talkers out of the room, but there were too many of them, all in their spangly dresses, and the security guards had their hands full. He took a deep breath, and then another. This was not a scenario he and Dr. Robert had explored.
Sarah snapped her fingers. “Terrence, Scotty, you go and get things started, okay? You’re the main attraction right now. Please move it.” She pointed toward the DJ booth. “Pancake is ready for you.”
They nodded. Terrence unglued himself from the wall, setting Kelsey free, and led her around Keith, giving him as wide a berth as possible. Scotty patted Keith on the back and followed.
“Corey, you okay?” Sarah asked. Keith looked over at him. Corey looked smug as ever. He was better than okay. He was Teflon. Corey nodded.
“Then you go too. Just get out of here, please. Go do your job.” Sarah pointed again, then turned her attention to the rest of the room. Most of the Talkers had been herded out, but one woman remained.Keith knew her. She was the one person on the boat who seemed to actually see him, who somehow knew he wasn’t okay. She’d asked him about the opera, with the wind blowing her hair across her cheek.
“That was your roommate?” Sarah said to the woman still standing there, staring at him. Keith didn’t know her name. He wished he knew her name. He wished everyone on the entire boat would vanish except for her. The woman nodded, and Sarah said, “Okay, just hang on for a second.”
Keith straightened up, and Corey walked over to him on his way to the door. Keith raised his hands in defeat. “I’m never doing this again. I will never get on this boat again. I’m barely doing it now. I’m not going to Japan. I’m not going anywhere,” Keith said. He pointed at Jonathan, who was lurking in the back. “You can have them,” Keith said.
