With the breakneck pace at which we’ve been running from the God Men, my sleep cycle is worse off now than if I was only suffering from the time difference between here and home. I keep checking my watch, wondering what Nonna is doing at that moment, where I would be. Would I be with her at the lake house? Or would I have stayed in Ann Arbor this summer, currently out with the few friends at school I haven’t managed to chase away from my strange schedule?
At some point, while Bes and Cec remain inside the helm, I slink down into the cabin and decide to snoop around. The only things of interest I come across, though, are a notepad and fountain pen in the nightstand drawer. Grasping both in my hand, I have the greatest urge to write something.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I write to my nonna. Though I haven’t needed her for some time, that doesn’t mean I don’t miss her terribly, the way I might lament a lost limb. If she were herenow, she would know just what to say to help me feel better. But I’d rather she not be caught in the crossfire with me.
I find it therapeutic: the smooth pen scratching against the rough paper, regaling to her everything that’s happened to me since landing in Cairo. I have more to say than I realized, the last seventy-two hours surreal even in my own memory.
When I’m done, I stare down at the half-dozen pages I’ve scribbled on in nearly intelligible scrawl. I wish I could find a way to send these to her. To let her know I’m alive and unhurt. But I can’t risk them getting into the wrong hands. And there’s no point in keeping them either. They served their purpose—they allowed me to get everything off my chest the only way I can right now.
I take one last glimpse at the words I wrote, then rip them into confetti and shove them deep inside my empty pocket. If Bes or Cec found them, I’d never live down the humiliation.
Now I’ve aired my grievances, I sulk back onto the deck to keep Cec company while Bes drives the boat through the endless open sea.
Somehow, Cec manages to be even more talkative than he was in the car, speaking up with random bouts of conversation when things get too quiet. His stories have no real substance to them, and I think he’s merely trying to fill the silence. The only true purpose it serves is allowing me to glean that his loss of sight is a recent development. I want to ask him more about it, but he’ll tell me in his own time.
After stopping to quickly refuel in Capri, at the recently-opened Marina Grande, with no further incident, it takes us about fourteen hours to get to our next stop: the Port of Civitavecchia. Bes claims it’s close enough to Rome that we’ll pass by the city on our way. He tries to point it out to me through the helm’s grimy window in the dark, but all I can see is shadowy buildings and warm electricity dotting the coast.
The longer I’m confined to this small space, the more irritable I become, despite the open air. It’s a strange feeling: I see land and sea and sky, but they’re all out of my reach.
Helplessness for my precarious situation suffocates me, like a wool scarf wrapped tightly around my neck. I’ve been in all sorts of danger before, but this time is different. This time, there’s the God Men. After all I’ve been through in the last few days, I honestly have no idea if I’ll ever get home, if I’ve put my faith in the wrong people.
For now, I have no choice but to wait and find out. That doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.
In one of my many walkabouts around the boat, I ensure Bes and Cec are elsewhere before I lean against the railing and toss my inked secrets overboard. They float for a moment as we speed away from them, buoying like fallen leaves on a lake, until they grow soggy and sink down into the depths of the sea. A pressure pushes hard on my chest staring at the spot they once were.
That wasn’t as curative as I thought it would be.
I tear my gaze from it and stare up at the stars slowly appearing in the sky as the last remnants of the sun leave it, wondering if I’ll ever get to go home.
As if on cue, Cec sidles up to me, announced by the tapping of his cane.
“There’s an old Italian proverb: ‘Count your nights by stars, not shadows; count your life with smiles, not tears.’”
I can’t help my own smile. “You’re a cheerful people, aren’t you?”
“We are, despite the current political debacle. It’s been torture going to school in England. The food is shit, the people are pasty, and they’re all sobroodyall the time.”
“Something Bes picked up, I see,” I note. “The brooding, not the shitty food and pastiness.”
In my mind’s eye, I recall the way Bes’s Italian-Egyptian skin warms in the sunlight, his brown eyes bright. The space beneath my stomach warms oddly.Definitely not pasty.
“It’s no excuse, but he means well,” Cec goes on. “Bes has had a hard life—harder than most people three times his age.”
Dragging my attention from the sequin skies, I regard Cec. Despite not being able to see anything, his gaze sticks on the stars, a tranquil smile tugging at his lips. He’s completely at ease, perfectly content with his affliction. I have no disabilities—unless people consider a mild fear of water and tight spaces a disability, which I don’t—and I’ll never be as comfortable in my own skin as Cec is.
“I wish he’d talk more about himself. It might help build my trust in him.”
“He’ll tell you, eventually, oncehetrustsyounot to judge him.”
I glance over Cec’s shoulder and through the helm window at Bes. He’s concentrating on one of the meters at the helm, wiping the sweat from his pinched brow with the back of his hand and then pushing his glasses up his nose.
“Then why didyoutrust me so easily?” I ask softly, gaze remaining on Bes.
“As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I take no issue in airing out my dirty laundry. I’ve never been afraid of any person’s judgment, even before when I could see their condescending expressions.”
“But Bes isn’t like me,” he continues as I shift my attentiveness back to him. “I hide behind humor and being a right gobshite, while Bes chooses brooding and well-fortified emotional walls.”
“Take heart, Miss Hawkins,” he keeps on before I can respond. “If you stick around long enough and cease your ill-fated attempts at escaping, he’ll show you his true colors. He might even let up on the brooding. Which has doubled since you’ve gotten here, by the way. I don’t know what you’ve done to him,but he’s become insufferable. I can only stand him for so long when he’s like this.”
