Scotty looked up at the balcony, his red palms raised as if to ask,Where is everybody?Sarah waved him up too.
“You want them?” Sarah said to Jonathan. “They’re yours. If any of them punch you in the face, it’s not my fault.”
She stepped around him to get to the DJ table. Pancake looked up at her, bobbing his neck to whatever beat was coming in next. “WhenShawn comes up, tell him to meet us in the Sanctuary. And then just play Boy Talk for as long as you can. If you need me, call me, but you can fucking do this, okay? Just melt their fucking faces. I believe in you.” She cupped a hand on his narrow shoulder. It wasn’t enough time. If the guys didn’t come back, they were in breach of contract, and so was she. Sarah decided that the ship had sailed. Where theAmerican Fantasysailed next, she couldn’t control. Clearly, she couldn’t control much of anything.
“Aye-aye,” DJ Pancake said. He tipped up his bucket hat—today’s was festooned with marijuana leaves—and his face was pure concentration. Sarah watched as he cued up “Yes or No,” which would confuse Shawn and make the crowd lose their minds. It didn’t matter how many times they heard a Boy Talk song on the cruise; the power could not be diluted. “I can do it.”
“I know you can,” Sarah said.
47
Sunday, 11:04 p.m.
Deck 7
The guys trickled in. Corey first, who saluted Keith and Annie and then went straight back to his room. Then Terrence and Kelsey, who took a bottle of wine from the bar and said, “Be right back.” Annie looked at Keith for explanation, but he didn’t have one to give.
“You can totally go if you need to talk to them,” she said. “Or I can go—I don’t mean to be in the way.”
“For the first time in a long time, I’m actually okay here,” Keith said, and then felt his cheeks burn.
Jonathan came in rubbing his hands together. “Okay, gang,” he said, “Let’s circle up. We have some healing to do.”
Keith raised an eyebrow. “I think we’re past healing, respectfully, but if you want to try, you’re going to have to go get them all.”
Sarah burst through the door, followed by Scotty and Shawn. “I’m good at Whac-A-Mole,” Sarah said. “You all stay. I’ll get Corey.”
“Who’s with the Talkers?” Keith asked.
“Pancake,” Sarah said, already moving. “Pray for him.”
Scotty looked at Keith and then at Shawn and said, “I’m getting something to eat,” leaving the brothers to finish their conversation.
“Yo,” Shawn said. He didn’t sit. He hardly moved from the doorway.
“Hi,” Keith said. He wasn’t sorry, and so he didn’t apologize.
“Haven’t seen that since the nineties,” Shawn said. “Fisticuffs.”
“Yeah, and that was usually you getting rough with other people’s bodies. Getting rough on other people, period. I’ve taken a lot more punches than I’ve thrown, that’s for sure. We all have except for you,” Keith said. “Guess I finally hit my limit.”
Shawn took off his sunglasses. There were no camera flashes, no stage lights, no excuses. His skin was as tight as a drum. It was a mask; Keith could see that now. “For good, you think?”
“I don’t know,” Keith said. “Maybe.”
Shawn thumped a fist against his own chest and exhaled a small sound that sounded like a whimpering dog. Keith wanted more, but he wasn’t going to get it. Shawn was incapable of allowing truths that didn’t fit into his plan. At any other point in his life, Keith would have waffled, would have given his brother what he wanted, but Keith had decided that he wasn’t going to do that anymore.
Scotty trotted out with a plate heaped high with turkey and strawberries, wiggling his body back and forth, oblivious and totally himself. Maybe that was the goal, getting tothat—there was no hope of happiness if Keith didn’t draw a line around what he could and could not accept.
“Actually, yes,” Keith said. “Maybe not forever, but for now, yes.”
Scotty leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Yes, yes, yes,” he said. “That’s my boy.” Keith’s heart sank, even though he knew that Scotty would understand.
They all fit in the Sanctuary sitting room, barely. Keith surrendered his seat on the couch to Sarah and Annie and Kelsey, which meant that all of Boy Talk was on the floor. The night was so odd already that no one seemed to notice or mind that a strange woman had been added to the party. Terrence sat nestled in between Kelsey’s knees. At first, Scotty sat against the couch too, but then Sarah pointed a few feet away, to a part of the floor with no fabric anywhere near it, in case the fake blood he was covered with would stain. Keith put his back against the lip of the shallow pool, and his brother slid down next to him, planting his feet and looking straight ahead. His bicep muscles flexed and jumped—Shawn was never still, not even now. Bobby and Corey sat at either end of the narrow oval, at which point Jonathan sighed a happy sigh and rubbed his hands together.
“Team,” he said. “This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to start by checking in with ourselves to see what we want before we start sharing with the group. I’m sure you all saw the signs when you came aboard this ship—What’s your fantasy? That’s the line, right, for this ship? Well, that’s where I want you to start, too. You can’t get out of one situation until you have a new destination, right? If you get in your car and don’t know where you’re headed, you’re just going to drive around in circles. So, I want you all to start and just take a few minutes and think about it. What’s your fantasy? What do you want?”
“This is some touchy-feely bullshit,” Terrence said, shaking his head. “I’m not fucking doing this.”
