Closet Spaceship Part 9

   I walked down the corridor in search of Nick, who was hiding out in the dining hall.  When I peeked through the doorway, I saw him slouched in a chair, holding a cup of coffee as if it were a pistol pointing in my direction.

   I raised both hands.  “May I come in?”

   He shrugged.

   I walked in and sat across the table from him.

   “You could just shoot me,” I said. “Although not with that.”

   The coffee cup clanked onto the table.

   “What do you want?” he asked.

   “I don’t know,” I said. “To talk to you, I guess.”

   “So talk.”

   “That’s not what I meant. You want me to go on for a few minutes about writing or something like that? No, you don’t.”

   “No, I don’t,” he said. “What do you think I did?”

   I smiled. “I mostly said that to get you to stop. But there is something: you—”

   “Listen,” he interrupted, “I did exactly what I told the captain. It’s not my fault I got so far away from the landing site. S**t, they act like I really was sightseeing. Reg won’t shut up about it.”

   He was referring to an incident in the first novel, when the captain and Hawkins arrived at the ship’s landing site with some angry colonists in pursuit and didn’t find Outsider there as they expected because Nick was busy trying to evade some colony ships that wanted to shoot him down. (If you want more details, read the novel. What else do you expect me to say?)

   “I know what you did there, Nick,” I said. “You had two ships on your tail, so you did what you had to do. Nobody faults you for that.”

   “So what, then?” he asked.

   I chuckled. “Sean told everybody he gave you the slip.”

   “So what? He did.”

   “Not exactly, did he? I believe your exact words were, ‘Get the hell away from me before I put a few holes in you,’ weren’t they? Oh, and something about a dumb kid.”

   Nick looked uncomfortable. “He tell you that?”

   “No, dummy,” I said, “I was there, remember? You can deny it all you want, but I heard what you said. He didn’t give you the slip; you sent him away. Not that he minded. He would have gone anyway, so maybe you should have been a little more patient.”

   Nick scoffed.

   “I know,” I said. “Patient isn’t exactly in your character profile.”

   “S**t,” he said.

   “Listen, Nick,” I said. “I’m not going to tell anybody. I’m not here to get you or anyone in trouble. I’m not going to run to the captain every time somebody ignores an alarm or does something stupid. He probably already knows anyway.  That’s not why I’m here.”

   “So why are you here?” he demanded. “Why don’t you just leave us alone?”

   “Because I’m a writer,” I said, “and because you won’t leave me alone.”

   He looked puzzled. “What do you mean?”

   “You don’t get it,” I said. “If you want me to stop coming, get a boring job and be boring yourself. Then we can leave each other alone. Until then, we’re stuck with each other.”

   It’s true: I’ve tried a few times to leave the crew behind, but it didn’t work. Someday I might stop writing about them, but they’ll never leave me completely.

   “Go on,” I said. “I know there’s a poker game upstairs.”

   When Nick left, he was walking, not running, so I suppose that’s progress.  We’ll see.