Chapter 51
Annie went back to her room and found a young man asleep in the hallway, the walkie-talkie on his shoulder chirping an alarm that he wasn’t hearing.
“Excuse me,” she said, giving his boot a gentle kick.
The man startled awake and sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Oh shit,” he said.
“This is my room. Can I go in?” The room that she’d been given in the Sanctuary had been much, much nicer. There was a balcony. A king-size bed. She didn’t even have a king-size bed at home. Though it had taken her a long time to fall asleep, Annie had slept better than she had the entire cruise.
“Oh, sure, I think so,” he said. Annie couldn’t tell if he was a boy or a man. It was getting harder and harder to tell the difference. Maybe there wasn’t one.
Annie stepped over him and unlocked her door. Maira was standing in front of her bed, packing. The cutout of Shawn’s face was stretched out on the floor like a rug.
“Hi,” Annie said. “I’m sorry about last night. It if helps, the guys missed most of the Prom too.”
Maira rolled her eyes. “Oh, I know,” she said. “I got so many texts. People are pissed. I heard Pancake did a good job, though. Where’d they put you?”
Annie thought about it for a second. “An empty room.”
“Well, that’s good, I was afraid they were going to make you sleep in some broom closet or something.
The ship sold out in like one day.” Maira put a pile of carefully folded T-shirts into her suitcase and heaved it closed.
“So, what did you think?” Maira asked. “Of your first cruise, I mean. You think you’ll do it again?
” She waggled her eyebrows like she already knew the answer.
“I don’t think I’ll do it again,” Annie said. “But it was perfectly satisfying. Sort of beyond my wildest dreams, really.”
What she liked most about opera was the enormity of it, the scale of feeling.
It was, to Annie, the only kind of music that came close to matching the intensity of what she had seen on the boat, only it was all onstage and in the orchestra.
So many operas ended in the heroine’s death—Butterfly, La traviata, La bohème, Carmen, Fedora, Tristan, Tannh?user.
Too many to name them all. She understood the dramatic satisfaction, but that wasn’t the kind of story she was interested in at the moment.
What if, instead of death, there was the turning of a page?
There had been too many stories about women who were punished.
Everyone was punished now and then. So what?
Let’s see what happens after that. Let’s see the women who know how their bodies work, the women with stretch marks, the women with lived experience—let’s see them.
It hadn’t been a mistake to come, not even close.
If Katherine had been there, it would have been something else—Annie would have been on the outside looking in.
Without her, she’d been a ghost floating through all of it, letting it pass through her invisible pores, at least until Maira had taken hold of her.
She never would have planned it this way—she never would have planned anything this way—but now it was how Annie wanted to move through the world.
Not alone, necessarily, just without self-judgment, without worrying about what other people thought of her.
And that was even without Keith. She wanted more.
They all did. Annie didn’t want to think of herself like a greedy Talker, chewing up facts like Pac-Man, but she did want more.
There was so much about Keith that she didn’t know.
A private ocean, just like anyone who had lived a life.
He would never have been able to tell her everything in one night, but that wasn’t even the goal.
The goal was to hear as much as her ears could hold.
She could hold his silence, too. Annie wouldn’t tell anyone about Keith.
She could still feel his mouth on hers, his breath in the back of her throat. All of that was just for her.
“I told you,” Maira said. “I can’t wait to do it again. No matter what. They can lock me in my room for a night. So what? This is still the best four days of my year. They keep showing up, I’ll keep showing up.” She paused, her overstuffed suitcase belching out clothes. “Now help me close this.”