Lawyer Wonderful and The Killer Kid

I like to look at everything in the office (inspect it like a child with an ant between her forefinger and thumb) the x-rated Chinese porcelain statues, the authentic scrimshaw, jeweled clocks and 12 foot fishing pole.  I put my nose right up to them, those mysterious objects (the marble arab with a bronze turban, law books, metal figurine of satan fingering an angel, stuffed talking shark bean bag), and look at them this way, then that way, every chip of paint and speck of dust, just to make sure they're just the way I left them every year before.  I never touch them, they are sacred in some way that I cannot describe.  I just look, with my nose millimeters away, close enough for my eye lashes to brush aside those specks of dust, if i was not careful, which I always am.  I just look, and only when Lawyer Wonderful has stepped away, he has never caught me inspecting such sacred things.  The photographs of his teeny bopper girlfriends in 1960 something, he's told me a million times, his wives, Toughy and The Ayatolla, all those fish, he holds them proudly next to Hattian men in far away lands.  I look once a week, sometimes twice if I'm lucky and there's extra work to be done.  I make my rounds of them all, slowly, carefully, methodically, marking each like a clerk taking inventory, then I listen for the latch across the hall, footsteps in the hallway, and scurry to my little orange chair with a towel across the back and old newspaper clipping about coast guard murders and the dangers of cigarettes no doubt, he left them there for me years ago.  My fingers fly across the key board, ten little birds skillfully pecking away.  I don't need to use the mouse any more.

"Killer kid?!"

Ctrl+P, click-click-whirr-whiz.

"I was waiting for you." I say. The pages float to the desk in front of him. He picks them up, absently adjusts the old foam visor, a teal blue that has faded with his hair along the years so that I imagine them akin in my memories, aging together.  Lawyer Wonderful and his teal blue tennis cap.  Neither exists separately to me.  After a pause he puts a pencil down and makes a mark, asks me what word I think is better, debates what we are really trying to convey to the client here.  Then, sometimes immediately, sometimes after some time he sits back.  Something we have wrote calls for a memory and he pulls out a page from somewhere in his mind.

"Killer kid," he says, and points out the window, "Certainly you know about Hell's Gate?"  I shake my head no.  "The Busking Sailor, someday she say's I''l sail around the world and she doesn't know Hell's Gate!  Well let me tell you, Oye-ya-ho-hoo, those currents…" I grin, he's told me a million times.  More million times than the teeny bopper girlfriends in Brooklyn, more million times than the scrimshaw collection and history of the musket in the corner by the fishing pole.  More than the story about how they took the door frame off to get the globe inside thats an exact (exact!) same model as the one in the presidential office in the white house.  More than the stories about Rabbi Goor, Cousin Dan and the adventures of Zeze and Bolivar.  But really if you count them they're all the same.  All one story, blended and weaved into one.  Our own secret mythology in the office.  Lawyer Wonderful is king and I his dutiful scribe, Killer kid.

"Alright!" he finally says, scooping my paper back up again.  Whether were still on the currents of Hell's Gate or migrated to a debate over using heretofore twice versus following once, doesn't matter anymore.

"I'm ready." I say with the same comfortable grin, like well worn jeans, favorite sheets.  He tosses the pages back, they float just as when I floated them to him, I scoop them with the same sweep of my arm.  I catch the old printer with my hip on the way to my computer room and clumsily catch it before it falls, this happens three times a night.

"Oh no!" he says, "She's destroying the office again!"  I laugh while walking away, settle in that orange chair, then let my fingers fly like ten little pecking birds again.

It's gonna be a long night.

Welcome

I slam my head into the boom with a loud resonating thunk and immediately begin to laugh.

“Oh…” says [GM] painfully, knowing the throbbing feeling exploding through my temples all too well. “Oh no.”

“Missed doing that.” I say through clenched teeth, gingerly rubbing my forehead.  I surprise myself to find I’m telling the truth.

“Welcome to The Sheerwater.” I hear him say with a laugh but I’ve already ducked into the dog house and am making my way towards the fo'c'sl to find some scotch bright and a rag.  I smile at the words, they seem to echo through me, filling a place in my heart with comfort and light that I thought just months ago was lost forever.  Welcome, yes.  Welcome back to this life I missed so dearly.  Welcome back to a natural state of my existence I shudder to think I strayed so far from for so long.  I feel alive, so alive, and whole, for the first time since… since when? I wonder to myself while I rummage through the clutter of maintenance tools that line the shelves in the foremost cabin.  Since I drove away from the beautiful  home of the [G] family in Indiana, blinking back the tears as I laid my hand on an empty passenger seat?  Since I lost Sabina and Occupig and the goat and Charlie, my belongings and home and everything else in Braddock?  Since Dylan sent me the photographs of my smashed childhood guitar and few precious belongings left behind in California?  Since the last time I sailed my dear Sparrow with my father?  Not then, I was certainly still broken then, even with the wind in my hair, and salt water on my sun kissed skin.  But maybe that summer, before that unspeakable thing was done to me and, though I was angry and wild and hurt even then too, I was working in the yards and felt perhaps this same contentedness.  Maybe a little before that too, when those sails I described once before were my only solace in the broken home hurricane I was bravely navigating through, a half starved teenager new to Queens finding comfort in the sea.  I find the scotch bright and rags, and push those thoughts away. 

“No, no.” I whisper to myself. “I don’t know that girl.  I don’t her.” Then look up suddenly, my cheeks flushed, embarrassed and horrified I whispered allowed, and glance up through the hatch and then towards the bulkhead to make sure no one was close enough to hear.  No one is near.  This time I silently thank my lucky stars and climb up on the shelves, brace my back against the hatch then push myself upwards to the deck, sunlight spilling out across my face, washing me in comfort and wholeness and joy again.  A seagull cries, halyards snap against the mast high above me, muffled shouts echo from our sister ship to port, the constant rattle of glass bottles in the recycling facility on shore carries through the wind like a melody, waves lap like rhythm and laughter.  [GM] is busy with a vacuum amidships.  Both my captains are busy aft, messing with the motor I think.  [GM] sees me and calls out.

“Ready?” He asks.  I grin and walk over, trying my best to keep my cool and not skip and twirl with glee like the urge bubbling up inside me begs.  I kneel down next to him on the deck, holding up my secondhand jeans with one hand, and present my findings from the cabin.  “Okay, now you go like this…” He says, and folds the rag against the mouth of a tin can, then flips it upside down.  The smell of turpentine explodes into the air, billowing up around us with the wind.  I breath in deep, soaking in the familiar smell, my favorite smell since I was a little girl, the smell that meant, I’m safe, I’m home, the only home I’ve ever known, and close my eyes for a second while he speaks, then take the rag and begin the long sweeping movements of wiping down the rail.  My arms ache from all the work, my fingers burn with raw blisters, the sun beats down on the small of my back where my t-shirt won’t stop riding up, the wind is too cool to be comfortable, and my head still throbs from colliding with the boom.  And god do I feel great.

Productivity, or something similar to it

I had visited every horse carriage stable in the city by 10am.  It was a mixed feat of walking boots and curiosity.  I didn’t land a job, as I had daydreamed when I hatched this plan in my head yesterday after talking to a carriage driver, but I did get acquire a slip of paper with instructions on getting my carriage license.  So I decided I’m becoming a horse cabbie.  Hell, worse things have happened, and at least I get to wear a sweet top hat.  As long as I pass the free course, of course.  I swung by the ASPCA on my way home and picked up a volunteer application.  By 11:30 I was back in the apartment with nothing left to do until 4 when I have work, which brings me to productivity.  I’ve found the amazing thing about having a dog is I can do absolutely nothing for hours and still feel productive, as long as I did nothing with my dog.  Take Monday for example.  I got stuck in Connecticut because of some DMV troubles and unfortunately ran out of money for puppy day care, so I got stuck with Brooklyn for the day.  Technically, I sat on a picnic bench for 7 hours and drew on my knees.   But because I sat on a picnic bench for 7 hours drawing on my knees AND watched Brooklyn, I felt like the day was some sort of enormous success.  And then there’s today.  I got A LOT done this morning, but since 11:30 I’ve done nothing but watch soap operas (for god knows what reason) and a Merlin marathon on the SyFy channel.  However, because I did this periodically giving Brooklyn treats and talking to him about every bizarre thought that ran through my head over the course of the day, so I feel kinda, sorta, productive.   And that’s all I’ve got to say about that, now I have some Merlin to get back too….