Authors: Pat Murphy
The rest of the page was blank.
She recognized the lines as another hexagram from the
I Ching.
On the shelf above the desk, there was a copy of the
I Ching,
the same book that her college roommate had used to read fortunes. She took it down and found the hexagram. It was titled Chun: Difficulty at the Beginning. The name, the text said, related to a blade of grass, pushing against a stone as it sprouts from the earth.
She was sitting down in the chair, preparing to read more about this hexagram, when she heard the sound of a hand on the door. Startled, she stood up, just as the door was opening.
In Susan’s stateroom, the door opened. Susan turned in her sleep, rising toward wakefulness. She could hear Pat saying good night to Ian. For a moment, Susan blinked in the dark stateroom. Her stateroom. Then she closed her eyes and sank back into sleep.
“Sometimes dreams are simply dreams,” Gitana said. “And sometimes, they are something more. It all depends on who is doing the dreaming.”
—from
The Twisted Bandby Max Merriwell
Ian looked up when someone tapped on the door. “Come in,” he called. Max Merriwell opened the door and stepped into the office.
“Hey, Max,” Ian said. “Good to see you.”
The writer looked surprised to see Ian. “Hello, Ian. I was looking for Tom.”
“We share an office. He’s making the rounds of the ship. He’ll be back in a few minutes. Sit down. Make yourself at home.”
Ian was glad to see the writer. He found Max intriguing. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” Ian asked. “Osvaldo just brought a fresh pot. He knows how I like it, so it’s stronger than most of what you get on board.”
Ian poured Max a cup of coffee. He provided Max with a napkin and insisted that he try a biscotti. “Osvaldo’s decided that I need to eat more, so he always brings cookies when I ask for coffee. Try one.” Max sampled a biscotti. “Wonderful,” he said. “There’s a little Italian deli near my apartment that makes biscotti, and I’ve missed them.” He sighed and considered the cookie in his hand. “It’s a very nice ship, but I do miss being at home.”
“You live in New York City?” Ian said.
“In Greenwich Village,” Max said. “I’ve been in the same apartment for twenty years now.”
Ian imagined Max’s apartment. Tiny, he guessed. Rent-controlled, of course. Crammed with books and papers. In
There and Back Again,
Bailey Beldon, the main character, lived in a cozy space in a hollowedout asteroid—a warren of rooms packed full of interesting things. Ian imagined that Max’s apartment was similar to that asteroid.
“Coming on this trip was an experiment. I felt I needed a bit of a change.”
“Tom told me you were working on a new book,” Ian said.
Max shrugged. “Still playing with ideas,” he said. “Nothing solid yet.”
“What brings you to see Tom?”
“I found another note under my door.” Max pulled a scrap of paper from the pocket of his sports coat and held it out to Ian. “I thought Tom might like to see it. He was very interested in the other note I received.”
Ian unfolded the paper. It had been torn from a spiral-bound notebook. Beneath a hexagram from the
I Ching,
a few sentences were scrawled in exuberant, looping handwriting: “A blade of grass pushes against a stone. A first meeting, beset by difficulties. Rain and thunder fill the air. When it is a man’s fate to undertake such new beginnings, any premature move might bring disaster. To overcome the chaos, he needs helpers.”
“Ah, that’s appropriate,” Ian said. “The lower trigram is K’an, the abysmal. Dark and dangerous water. The upper trigram is Chen, the arousing. Its image is thunder.”
Max smiled. “You’re a student of the
Book of Changes,”
he said.
Ian looked up from the hexagram. “I consult it on occasion. As I recall, the Wilhelm-Baynes edition of the
Book of Changes
says that this hexagram indicates the way in which heaven and earth bring forth individual beings.”
“Do you recall the course of action suggested?” Max asked.
“Let me check.” Ian called up the appropriate hexagram on his computer screen. “The commentary warns that times of growth are beset with difficulties, arising from the profusion of all that is struggling to take form. To bring order out of the confusion, the superior man must seek out helpers.”
Max nodded. “Interesting,” he said. He did not seem surprised by the note or its interpretation.
Ian considered the note again. “Do you have any idea who is sending you these notes?” he asked.
Max rubbed his beard thoughtfully. “Well, yes—I have some idea. I have seen similar handwriting,” he admitted.
“You have? Where was that?”
“In my apartment. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and write notes about whatever I’m working on. In the morning, I never remember writing them.” He chuckled. “Sometimes, the handwriting on those notes doesn’t look like mine.”
“Sometimes it looks like this?”
“Sometimes it does. And sometimes it looks like the writing on the other note I got.”
“So you’re writing notes to yourself?” Ian asked.
Max shrugged. “In a sense, everything a fiction writer writes is a note to himself. It’s all part of the creative process. Every writer has his own methods. Perhaps mine is more unusual than some.”
Max glanced at the clock on the wall, then set his coffee cup down, and stood up abruptly. “Look at the time,” he said. “I’ll be late to my own class if I’m not careful.”
Susan woke up early. She had slept soundly and she was ready for breakfast. Pat was already gone—she had mentioned the night before that she might go for an early morning walk around the promenade deck. That girl had too much energy for her own good. Susan considered going to look for Pat, then decided that she would rather have breakfast by the pool and finish reading
Wild Angel
before heading for workshop.
It was early, but the day was already warm. The pool sparkled in the bright sunshine. Susan chose a lounge chair in the shade, ordered a cup of decaffeinated coffee, a fruit plate, and a yogurt from the poolside waitress, and settled down to read her book.
She read to the end of
Wild Angel,
then closed it with a sigh. Like all of Mary Maxwell’s books,
Wild Angel
had a happy ending. The villain was punished and the good were rewarded. The would-be Temperance lecturer ran off with the traveling circus, and Sarah turned her back on civilization, returning to her wolf pack. Susan was glad of that. Sarah belonged with the wolves, she thought.
She had just set the book on the table beside her when she saw Mary, the woman who had rescued her from the gombey dancers. Mary waved. “Good morning!” she called.
“Mary! How great to see you!”
Mary looked elegant and comfortable in shorts, sandals, and a crimson blouse. She carried a canvas beach bag; a scarf patterned with scarlet hibiscus was looped casually around the handle. It looked strangely familiar, but Susan couldn’t place it.
Mary pulled over a chair from a nearby table and sat down.
“What’s that you’re reading?”
Susan handed the book to Mary. “It’s the latest Mary Maxwell book. I think it’s one of her best. Or I guess I should say one of Max’s best. Max described Mary Maxwell so well that it seems like she’s real.”
Mary leaned back in her chair, an odd expression on her face. “How did he describe her?” she asked.
“Let’s see. He said she was totally fearless. She likes to travel and she’s always getting into trouble—but she always gets out again. Actually, he said she liked to stir up trouble just for fun. She sounded a bit like my friend Pat.”
Mary nodded thoughtfully.
“I’m going to be going to Max’s workshop soon,” Susan went on. “Why don’t you come along? He’s a very interesting speaker.”
“No thanks,” Mary said. “I have an appointment at the beauty salon in half an hour.” She pushed a hand through her hair. “I’m going to cut this mop off. I’ve heard the salon staff is excellent.”
Susan pushed her own hair back, making a face. Her hair had once again escaped the clip at the back of her neck. In the warm weather, the curls were turning to frizz. She reached back and used both hands to lift the hair off the back of her neck so that the breeze could cool her. “In this weather, it would be great to have short hair.”
“I think so. It’s worth a try.” Mary leaned back in her chair, studying Susan’s hair. “Have you ever thought about cutting yours short?” Susan hesitated, her hands full of hair, startled by the question.
She had been wearing her hair long since she was in college.
“Let me hazard a guess,” Mary said. “Your husband—your ex-husband, I suppose—liked it long.”
Susan nodded. “That’s what he said.”
“Well, he’s no longer entitled to an opinion, is he?” Mary leaned forward in her chair, studying Susan. Susan caught a whiff of her perfume—a familiar, floral scent. Jasmine? “He liked it long, but so what? What do you like?”
Susan released her hair, then pushed another wayward lock out of her eyes. When she was a child, her mother had insisted she keep her hair long. Harry had said her long hair was beautiful. Susan had always gone along with their opinions.
“I’ve always worn it long,” she said. “I don’t know what it would be like to cut it short.”
“Unknown territory. Terra incognita. Here be dragons.” Mary was smiling now. “Those are always my favorite parts of explorer’s maps. The unknown seas where the dragons coiled, waiting and watching. You don’t know what might happen, out there in the unknown.”
Susan smiled back. How wonderful to compare something as simple as a haircut to an adventure into unexplored seas.
“Of course, you have to keep in mind that there are all kinds of dragons,” Mary went on. “In Western tradition, dragons are generally hostile, devouring maidens and laying waste to kingdoms. The Greeks and Romans didn’t believe that—their dragons lived underground and didn’t make trouble. But Christianity lumped those pagan Greeks and all their dragons together and made them symbolic of sin, grinding them under the heel of Saint George and his pals.” Mary shook her head ruefully. “I prefer the dragon of the Far East, a benevolent, playful creature who flies without wings, a symbol of yang, the principle of heaven. I’ve always admired that sort of dragon.”
Susan thought about dragons and unknown territory and her ex-husband and the disadvantages of being a good girl. It was definitely time for a change. “Maybe I’ll get my hair cut,” she said softly.
“I’ve always found that changing my appearance is a useful step when I’m changing my life,” Mary said. “Do you want me to make an appointment for you?”
“Oh, I can’t put you to that trouble.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll be there anyway. What time is that workshop over?”
“11:30.”
“I’ll make an appointment for 12. Would you like to join me for lunch, after?”
“That would be great.”
Mary glanced at her watch. “I’d better be going. I’ll meet you outside the salon at one.” She headed off to the salon.
A few minutes later, Susan realized she had just enough time to get to the workshop.
Max was talking about character development when Susan slipped into the chair beside Pat, smiling apologetically. Max returned her smile, and kept talking.
“Some authors begin by observing people they know, writing long descriptions about what they wear and how they stand and the kind of car they drive,” he was saying. “And that’s all very well. It’s useful to know whether your character wears faded jeans or three-piece suits. But I’m more interested in a character’s interior landscape than in what they are wearing. What I want to know is how their clothes reflect and reveal that inner landscape.”
Susan took out her notebook and pen.
“So we’re going to try a little exercise in character development and description. I want you to choose one article of clothing that belongs to a particular character. Describe that piece of clothing in such a way that I know its owner, know something about how that character thinks and feels. I’ll give you five or ten minutes to try it. Any questions?”
Alberta had a question, of course. She wanted to get the rules very clear before she could begin. Yes, he meant any article of clothing at all. A shirt, a shoe, a hat, a piece of lingerie. Well, yes, if she wanted to write about a shoe, she could write about a pair of shoes, since they could be viewed as a single article. Yes, she could choose to write about a pair of gloves instead, if she liked.
He was still fielding questions when Susan started writing.
“The silk scarf was looped carelessly around the handle of her bag,” Susan wrote, “though she wasn’t a careless sort of woman. Impulsive, perhaps, but not careless. She liked the scarf for its intense colors, reds and golds reminiscent of the burning embers in the heart of a fire. She liked the way it looked on the handle of her bag.”
Susan hesitated, remembering a fashion article she had read a few months ago. Her mother had given her a subscription to the fashion magazine for her birthday. Susan had little use for its advice, but she dutifully paged through each issue. She remembered an article about learning to “accessorize,” a word that Susan thought was awkward and ugly. The photos accompanying the article had shown cool, disdainful women wearing silk scarves. One wore hers in a graceful bow around her neck; another had hers knotted around her waist to make a stylish belt; a third wore hers like a shawl, draped elegantly over her shoulders. The heading on the page said something about the “amazing versatility of a simple scarf.”
Susan remembered checking the prices of the scarves pictured.
The cheapest had been 150 dollars. She knew that in her hands, all those expensive scarves would misbehave, knotting and crumpling and, no matter what she did, looking just plain silly. But in the hands of the fashion models, these scarves were versatile. Susan suspected that Mary accepted the scarf’s versatility and took it farther than any of the fashion models would dare.
“She recognized the scarf as a square of fabric that had many possibilities,” Susan wrote. “It was such a versatile article of clothing. She could wear it around her neck as a fashion accessory. In a medical emergency, she could fashion it into a sling. If she needed to make a daring escape, she could tie it together with bed sheets and throw it out the window as an improvised ladder, trusting to the strength of the silken fibers. Or, if a situation called for anonymity, she could fold her scarf into a triangle and tie it over her nose and mouth like a bandit in an old Western.