(Here's another installment about my interaction with the crew. Check out my Facebook page for some of their sayings.)
After
the events in Outsider, I wanted to
see Mark, but I didn’t think that was a good idea, for him or the rest of the
crew. No matter what his reasons were, he left the crew—and his absence made
the ship feel like a street where an ambulance has just passed, its siren
blaring and its lights flashing. Vehicles that were crouched next to the curb
can resume their courses, but the drivers feel the unnatural silence left after
the siren tore the air apart. They wonder where the ambulance is going and what
the consequences are at the end of its journey. They won’t talk about it
because they have their own paths to follow, but still their eyes try to catch
a last glimpse that might give them a clue to its destination.
Maybe
I’m a little afraid of showing up in Mark’s presence, too. You saw his reaction
to Sean’s appearance, after all. Sean was improbable; I’m almost impossible, as
far as Mark is concerned.
On the
other hand, Reggie never seems to mind my presence, at least after that first
time. I don’t know why. He’s better at reading people than anyone, except
Captain Lamont, of course, but I’ve always been afraid to ask him what he reads
in me.
“Do you
miss Mark?” I asked him once. (This was before the events in Another Shot.)
He gave
me a sharp look, as if asking why I don’t have his skill at reading people.
We were
alone, sitting in the conference room. He’d led me there without a word when I
walked up to him in the dock and asked if we could talk. He’d poured himself a
cup of coffee and settled into one of the more comfortable chairs on one side
of the room, so I sat in a chair nearby.
I found
it strange for us to be there. Reg is usually on the move, so seeing him
sitting in one place was a little unsettling. Of course, having him give me
that look didn’t help.
“That’s
a dumb question,” he said.
And it
was. It’s obvious he and Mark are good friends, and have been since they met at
an airport in the middle of the night. If you read my first novel, you know a
little about how they met, and ever since then, despite their differences,
they’ve kept in touch. They respect and trust each other; at least, Mark does.
I guess I didn’t know for sure if Reg could trust his friend again after Mark
quit the crew.
It’s one of the very rare instances when
Captain Lamont and Reg got it wrong: Mark didn’t quit because he felt he had to
punish himself. He quit because he didn’t think he deserved to be on such an
elite crew; he hadn’t earned a place there. He’s always been hard on himself—I
can relate to that—and didn’t see that the crew considered him one of them.
“I know
it is,” I said. “Sorry.”
I meant
to explain some of Mark’s motives to Reg, but he spoke up before I could.
“Let me
ask you something,” he said.
“Sure.”
“Will I
see him again?” Reggie asked.
I was
surprised. Surely the captain had instructed his crew not to ask me stuff like
that.
“I know
I’m not supposed to ask you that,” he said, leaning toward me, “but I need to
know.”
“I’m not
supposed to tell you,” I said.
When I
said it, his shoulders drooped and he kind of sagged back into the chair. I
might be a lot of things, some of them not so great, but I’m definitely not
made of ice.
“Listen,”
I said in a low voice, “you will. That’s
all I can tell you.”
He
nodded with an expression like that of a young boy whose friends have said
Santa is fake but whose parents swear Santa’s real: he wants to believe, so his
parents win out—this time, at least.
And
that’s one of Reggie’s best attributes: hope. He hopes for the best, even when
things don’t look good.
I was
simply hoping that lightning wouldn’t strike me down and Captain Lamont
wouldn’t ban me from the ship for breaking one of his rules. When I saw that
little glimmer of hope on Reg’s face, though, I knew either one just might be
worth it.
Keep hoping.
