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Well, this has been an interesting weekend...
Angel was strangely subdued as we walked down to the boat on Friday morning. I was traveling heavier then I had wanted to. As well as my purple backpack and Lady Luck perched on top, I carried a large black purse Angel had given me and a big cardboard box containing the teapot wrapped in newspaper. I'd tried to leave it with Angel, but she had refused, and I would rather carry it then have a porter trailing behind us.
"Listen..." she said quietly as we got to the pier. "I'm really sorry...I mean for being so unpleasnt and everything...and I'm sorry about all those parties and stuff. I know you didn't like them. I just thought... I guess island life isn't for you, and I shouldn't have tried to make you like it."
I put down the box and gave Angel a big hug. "I know," I said. "And you did well. Even though I didn't really like it here, I needed to get away from the mainland for a while. And I discovered some things I never would have if I'd stayed there."
"What?" Angel asked, but a large man on the ship yelled, "Are you getting on or not, young lady?" and I had to give her a hasty kiss and run. The anchor was already being raised.
"I'll send you an email, and call me, please!" she yelled up at me. "Call collect, I don't care!"
"Don't worry, I'll call!" I called over the rail. I felt surprisingly homesick...for the Isle!
That feeling lifted as soon as we got out of sight. I seated myself and Lady Luck comfortably on the first-class deck, and thought of the future. I couldn't wait to show Cindy my new ID card. Of course, the picture was the standard ugly one, but Lady Luck was in it, and the card itself was spiffy and red, even showing my likes and dislikes. Vanity cards, Angel had called them. I liked it.
The other big change I wasn't so sure about. Angel had gotten me to go to her hairdresser, pointing out that my hair didn't look very good after a summer of sun and salt. It had been an hour of torture, with the hairdresser's hands brushing my fins every few minutes. But she seemed not to have noticed them and now my hair was shiny silver and twisted into two neat buns on top of my head. Best of all, my fins were hidden neatly by the thick, pulled-back hair. But...would Cindy recognize me? And would she aprove? I smothed the cloak Yama had given me. It wasn't that hot, and as well as being too big to pack, it went well with my traveling clothes of a short blue skirt over long blue pants, a blue top, and tall black boots.
Cindy was waiting for us when we got off the ship. She was sitting on the front of a white car. "I didn't know you had a car!" I said as I lugged my burdens over and took off my sunglasses. I knew that cars were quite rare, even in Barton.
I could see Cindy's surprise as her eyes swept over my hair and cloak, finally resting on my eyes. "If it hadn't been for your eyes, I wouldn't have know it was you," she said somewhat sharply. "And how'd you think I'd pick you up? On a horse? Besides, it's not my car, it's the station's. I just use it...all the time." The old smile was back as she hugged me and opened the car door. "You want to sit in front, and put your stuff in back?"
To sit in the front seat of a car felt like a great honor. I had only ridden in a car once, a long time ago on that holiday to the Port, and my mother (my Aekean mother, I mean, the one who raised me) had made me sit in the back because the front "wasn't safe". So it was a strange feeling, after putting my pack, purse, and box in the back and getting Lady Luck comfortable back there (she happily seated herself on the shelf under the back window), to buckle myself in beside Cindy. The radio went on as soon as she started the car, in the middle of a song. It was singing "You were there for summer dreaming..." Cindy ignored it and started to talk.
"Do you want to know about our family, Dawna?" she asked, in the tone of someone who dosn't want to say something but feels they must. I saw no choice but to say yes, but I meant it. I not only wanted to know about my family, I needed to.
Cindy sighed. "Father was a good man, but his two failings were a love of gambling and an inability to win. That's why his first...wife had dumped him. I don't know why she left Celeste with him though... She might have been a gold digger and a kid would get in her way, but I don't know." Her eyes were on the road ahead. "All I know was that he was rich once, and lived on the Isle de Gambino...although it wasn't called that then. He gambled too much and lost everything, barely kept out of jail...the Isle still had debtors prison then... Anyway, he managed to get to Durem with Celeste, and he vowed never to gamble again. He got a job as a government clerk, did well, met Mother, and they ended up getting married and having me. Father kept getting promoted, and there was even talk of him running for mayor of Durem... But then Mother got sick." Her face was still a mask. "I don't know what was wrong with her. They wouldn't tell me, I was just a child...but to even have a chance of saving her, we would have needed money we didn't have, even though we had a lot. So Father tried to get the money in the only way he could think of...to break his vow. He went to a little casino in Durem. He gambled. And he lost. And since he couldn't afford to lose, he kept gambling, and kept losing, untill in the end he'd gambled away everything we had and had only one more thing to put at stake." For the first time, her voice cracked. "His life. And he lost that too."
The radio was starting a new song. "Where have all the flowers gone?" came from the speakers. Now Cindy was silent, her face fixed again. Just as I was wondering if I should say something, she started to talk again. "His body was found outside the city walls then next morning. It was naked and..." Her voice was cracking again. "He had been shot in the head."
Another long silence. Then she continued, "Officialy it was suicide. But...the day after the funeral, the day before all the creditors came, someone who had been at the casino that night came to see us. He said it had been a bet between Father and the man who had gambled with him all night. He had gotten everything, and kept getting him to keep going, untill in the end, when it was all gone, he made a deal. If Father won, he would get everything back. If not...he would die. Father thought the man would let him win. He didn't."
Now I had to say something. "That was murder!" I burst out.
"Unprovable murder, though," Cindy replied. "I said creditors, because there were a lot of them. A lot of lawers - they didn't use lawerbots back then - all came swooping down on us the next day, all representing different clients who they said had gambled with Father." She smiled bitterly. "By the morning after, we hadn't a single peice of gold...or anything else, for that matter. And Celeste had run off with the best teapot, all the good silverwear, and most of mother's jewlery. Celeste was fifteen, I was eight."
"So that's when..." I whispered.
"Yeah..." Cindy went on. "She'd tried to get both of us to run off with what we could salvage, but Mother said she was dead already, so why run? And I wouldn't leave Mother... So we both ended up on the street in our worst clothes. They should even have taken those, but they couldn't throw us out naked, could they? I had one more thing too. I'd smuggled out the photo of me and Celeste... It was taken the day before Father tried to gamble. It's lucky it was the end of the roll of film and Celeste had it developed that day, or it would have been lost too. But...it's a little reminder that we were happy together once. I wouldn't be surprised if it kept me alive more then once." She sighed. "But nothing except maybe money could keep Mother alive, and we were out of that."
We were near Bass'ken Lake and she stopped the car. "How about we strech our legs?"
Ok, I've got to stop, I'll finish later.