Matthew looked up at her with mild surprise. ‘You some kind of cargo boat fanatic?’
‘Cargo boat passenger whose boat looks like having sailed.’
Matthew raised an interested eyebrow, then turned his glass round in a big hand as he thought. ‘Valiant Ellanda. Container ship. Right? Big mother.’
Esther nodded, enthusiastically.
‘Sailed last week.’
Esther nodded again weakly.
‘Then guess you got a little time to kill.’
‘I wish. Due back at college in ten days.’
‘They’ll live.’
Esther looked at the bar. ‘I’m military. Scholarship.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
Matthew was looking at her more closely now, continuing to study her face as he drained the last of some yellowish spirit that had filled his glass. Without even looking at the barman, he gestured with the empty vessel and it was filled nearly to the brim. Esther looked away, reminded of Benny and the tiny, unpleasant ritualistic mannerisms that all alcoholics shared.
‘What they do then, if you’re late? Shoot you?’
‘Put it this way: military students don’t get a lot of slack to dress up in tie-dye vests and wave placards. And you sure as hell don’t get to pick when you show up for semester.’
Matthew tipped the glass back and emptied half of it, baring his teeth in a snarl as the liquid drained down his throat.
‘Bummer,’ he croaked.
‘You got that right.’
Matthew turned his head back up to the TV and leaned forward on his elbows. Esther waited to see if the conversation would be continued and when it was clear that it would not, she drained the rest of her beer and made ready to go. She picked up her pack.
‘We sail for Texas. Two days’ time.’
He spoke as though talking to the game-show host.
‘Sorry?’
‘Port Arthur.’
Esther’s heart beat a little faster, then it slowed and sank.
‘My ticket’s non-refundable.’
‘Aw, bullshit. Most companies say that stuff. They’ll do a deal.’
Esther shook her head. ‘Not with this ticket. Even the cheapest cargo ship ticket is way out of my reach. I’m only here ’cause a geek I dated at college has a dad who works for the shipping company. Man, to think I put up with that guy’s bad breath and stinking taste in movies for at least two months to get that ticket.’
She paused and looked at the floor.
‘And just on account of wanting to see some shitty old temple they’ve only just half dug out the grit, I’ve blown it. Big time.’
Matthew was still looking at the screen, but he was smiling. ‘What’d he make you see?’
‘Waterworld, for one.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Yeah.’
Matthew stared at the screen a little more, then looked at his wristwatch. ‘Gimme an hour then come by the boat. Captain’s pretty easy going.’
Esther put her pack down slowly. ‘For real?’
‘No risk to me, honey. He can only say no.’
‘What rank are you?’
Matthew turned to her, a quite different look in his eye now, one that was difficult to read but undeniably harder than when he’d last looked at her. ‘First officer.’
Esther cleared her throat, embarrassed, though not quite sure why. ‘Right. Great.’
He looked back at the screen and Esther took the hint.
‘An hour then.’
He made no reply.
She hooked the pack over her shoulder and made for the door. ‘Thanks for the beer.’
‘Sure.’
The plywood door banged shut again and although there was still an inch left in his glass, Matthew Cotton gestured to the barman. It was important to think ahead. After all, he would have drained that inch before the bottle was uncorked.
As the giant crane swung on its arc, the sun shining between the criss-crossed metal girders strobed across the deck of the MV Lysicrates, and bugged the tits off its first officer.
Matthew Cotton blinked against it as he leant heavily on the ship’s taff rail and watched Esther’s predicament with amusement. He was leaning heavily because he was only a few drinks away from the oblivion he’d been chasing since noon, and he watched with amusement because her ire was becoming comical.
‘Give the greasy little sucker some cash,’ he mouthed at her, then took another deep swallow from a can of thin South American beer.
As if she’d heard him from the unlikely distance of fifty yards, she turned her head and squinted up at the ship, gesturing violently again at the vessel to the undernourished harbour security guard, who was no longer even looking at her. The guard flicked his hand dismissively in her direction as though warding off a fly, and shifted his weight from one bony leg to the other. She towered above this little man, and perhaps if he hadn’t sported an ancient gun in a battered leather holster by his hip, she would simply have elbowed him out of the way and walked on.
That option not open to a woman with an instinct for survival, she was vigorously pursuing the only other one, which was to shout.
In a moment Matthew would rescue her, but for now he was using the time just to look. There hadn’t been the time or space to examine her properly in the smoky little bar, but now he was in a position to study her without fear of spiky feminine reprisal.
She was too far off for him to take in close detail, but already he liked the suggestion of athleticism in her angry body, the way she was practically stamping her foot, and when she mashed an exasperated hand into her hair he imagined he could register its shine.
He smiled and wiped his mouth clean of the acrid beer foam; shifted a drinker’s phlegm from his throat.
‘Hey! Hector!’ His shout made the diminutive man look up lazily. Though he couldn’t make out her words, Matthew assumed she had been braying at the guard in English that merely increased in volume as understanding diminished. No matter what her circumstances were, and if he were honest he was so loaded now he could barely remember their conversation, she was just your average American back-packing kid. Shout down what you can’t control. He raked around for his best Spanish.
‘Let her aboard. She’s a passenger.’ He hesitated, then added for no reason other than mischief, ‘A little something for the crew.’
The guard scratched at his balls and did nothing. Matthew waited. He knew these people. To react to anything immediately was a sign of defeat. Esther waited too, her eyes narrowed to slits in Matthew’s direction.
The weary Peruvian hand motioned again, this time obliquely directing her towards the gangway, then the man squatted down and got busy picking his teeth, as though all along his objection had been that she was preventing him from performing this important task.
She took her time coming aboard, pulling on that enormous back-pack complete with tent, hanging tin mugs and water bottles, then walked slowly forward with the