Uncrashable Dakota (10 page)

“What do you mean it doesn’t apply to the Automat?”

A passenger with a spotty beard was badgering a crewman who was posting the weather alerts. Behind him skulked an embarrassed woman, studying her feet. The crewman had his back to Hollis, and as he reached up to fasten a notice to the wall opposite the pies, his unbuttoned cuff slid down his forearm. Black ink covered the bare skin.

“Well?” the passenger demanded.

When the crewman turned to reply, Hollis realized it was Marius and ducked behind a tall bistro table. If the ship had been cruising steadily in the proper direction, if his mother had been safely going about her morning, if his launch-day christening had been a great success, perhaps he would have crossed the promenade and revealed himself. But today he stayed put.

“The restaurants listed on this piece of paper
here
”—Marius slammed his palm against a tacked-up notice—“are the ones with free food.” His voice was much too loud, his syllables thick and woolly. Hollis wondered how many times Marius’s pocket flask had been guzzled and refilled.

“I don’t want to eat at one of those,” the passenger said. “I want to eat something from the Automat.”

“Be my guest.”

“No. You’re missing the point. What I would like is for that machine to serve me a piece of Key lime pie, and I would like it to be free of charge. I do not believe one single slice of Key lime pie constitutes an unreasonable demand, considering that we will now be arriving late to Southampton!”

Passersby, many of them walking and eating at the same time, couldn’t decide if they should stop to gawk or quicken their pace. Hollis felt like he was watching a performance and half expected Marius and the angry man to grin, join hands, and take a bow.

“Allow me to recommend the Key lime pie from Delmonico’s,
sir
.”

“I don’t want the Key lime pie from Delmonico’s.”

“It’s the same damn thing!” shouted Marius. Hollis flinched, along with a few nearby passengers. The man’s mouth dropped open as his red-faced wife, who could barely raise her eyes, took him by the elbow. Marius went back to posting notices. Hollis hadn’t planned on turning to Marius for help in the first place, but witnessing the crewman’s outburst swamped him with a new kind of dejection.

At the same time, Marius’s final retort had given him an idea. The trick of the Automat was that, besides the mechanism that opened the windows, there was really nothing
automatic
about it. Food wasn’t replenished all day and all night by some kind of wondrous engine or conveyer belt; it was cooked in a kitchen and delivered to the back of the display by runners from the Delmonico Grill at the end of the promenade. Since this ruined the mystique of the heavenly food windows, it wasn’t common knowledge.

Moving swiftly, keeping his head down, Hollis located a door between
SANDWICHES
and
FRUIT
. He snatched a filthy apron from a hamper just inside, and a cap spattered with what he hoped was gravy. The neat passenger-facing side of the Automat was all perky music and radiant lights, but the loading area involved a bewildering choreography. Runners moved up and down paths marked off by lines on the floor. Lights flashed above windows. Team leaders called out numbers. It was like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, where Hollis had once gone with his father to ring the closing bell. Except the stock exchange didn’t smell like roast chicken and cherry pie.

At the far end of the bustling line, he found that in addition to the kitchen annex on this level, runners were also receiving trays from dumbwaiters sent down from the deck above. Nico’s Café—Delmonico’s first-class cousin—was used for Automat supply at peak hours. He began to rethink his situation. He’d planned on slipping behind the scenes, grabbing a tray or two to complete his delivery boy disguise, and heading back out among the passengers. But if he could hitch a ride up and sneak out the back of Nico’s, he’d be practically at the entrance to the bridge.

A rough hand on his shoulder nearly made him strike out blindly. He caught himself in time and tried to act like he belonged, averting his eyes as a team leader barked an order and handed him a tub full of food-smeared plates to be washed. The man, whose apron was splashed with a single dot of tomato sauce in the area of his belly button, began rattling off numbers to Hollis’s new coworkers as they hurried past. Hollis struggled to see over the top of the enormous tub. When he reached the end of the line, a pair of hands took it away. Hollis raised the brim of his cap for a better look around.

“These are dishes,” said the runner who’d taken his tub, as if dishes were the last thing he was expecting.

Hollis ignored him and scanned the row of elevators.

“Don’t you turn your back on me. What the hell am I supposed to do with these? Hey!”

Hollis had to stop the runner from doing whatever the Automat crew did when somebody screwed up the chain of dish command.

“Shhh, it’s okay. I’m sorry. Give them back, please.” Hollis extended his arms, trying to stay meek and apologetic behind his hat.

“No, it ain’t okay. Wait a minute.” The runner, who had a few years and about fifty pounds on Hollis, narrowed an eye while the other spiraled lazily. That gave it away—he’d been a busboy at Nico’s on the
Secret Wish
, where Hollis had eaten lemon meringue almost every night.

“I’ll be damned! Hollis Dakota, bringin’ me the dishes. I know somebody who’s looking for you.”

9

“
SHHH
,
”
HOLLIS WHISPERED,
glancing around. The runner didn’t seem to care about the bosses seeing him idle. He just cradled the tub and shifted his weight. The dishes clinked. Behind them, a dumbwaiter slid open, revealing a steaming tray of pot pies balanced in a pyramid. Hollis grabbed the tray and held it out to someone passing by.

“Fifty-two,” he said, and the tray was taken away. “Who’s looking for me?”

“Your mama,” the runner said.

“Oh … she is?”

“This fella who popped back here earlier to give us the story with the weather, he also said that you’d gone missing and Mrs. Dakota was worried sick, and if we spotted you, we were supposed to tell a boss, who’s supposed to report it. And also we gotta have you stay put. Did you run away or something?”

Hollis wondered how far the alert had spread. It was probably for the best that he hadn’t known about it until right now, or he’d still be hiding out in Delia’s room. A wave of indecision made him want to climb into the tub with the dirty dishes and curl up.

“What’s your name?”

“George.”

“Okay, George. I need your help.”

“So.” The nonlazy eye was searing into him in a way that made him deeply uncomfortable. “You left her all alone, huh?”

Hollis was speechless. How did George know that he’d abandoned his mother?

“I get it,” George said. “I ran away myself. That’s how I know about you, because I can read it on your face. This one eye has the power of two. It
sees
things better.”

“Please don’t tell anyone I was here.”

George looked from side to side and lowered his voice to an absurd stage whisper. “You were never here.”

“I need to get up to Nico’s without anyone seeing me—think you can help me with that?”

Without another word, George opened a dumbwaiter and traded his dishes for a heaping plate of croissants. Then he led Hollis down the row to another dumbwaiter with a scrawled note stuck on its door:
OUT OF ORDER
. Without even checking to see if anyone was looking, he slid the square door up and ushered Hollis and the croissants inside the cramped space.

“Isn’t this one broken?” Hollis protested as the door slammed shut and he was engulfed in darkness. After a surprisingly smooth rail-and-pulley ascension, he thumped to a stop and emerged. His plate was two croissants lighter. He had to will himself not to devour a third, or else the “delivery” would be awfully meager. Now the
OUT OF ORDER
sign made sense: this was Nico’s wine cellar. Every available inch of space was filled. To get to the door, he would have to wade through a cityscape of corked tops. This was a bad omen: the last time he’d been in such a room, it had been a disaster.

*   *   *

I THINK WE LOST ’EM!

Rob struggled with the door handle. They were in a passageway beneath the ballroom. Sounds of the gala reverberated through the floor, but the footsteps pounding at their heels had gotten farther away. Hollis’s shoulder, which had supported the flat end of the propeller blade during their mad dash, was covered in thick smears of chocolate.

Come on, come on!

Finally, the knob turned and Rob slammed his hip against the door, dragging Hollis inside. But he moved too quickly. All four feet six inches of chocolate slipped from Hollis’s shoulder, leaving a melted trail along his ear and cheek. Struggling to hold on, Rob fumbled the propeller into the edge of a wine rack. Hollis realized with mounting terror that they were surrounded by hundreds of bottles with French labels.

He closed his eyes to avoid seeing them shatter—the noise was bad enough.

Time to go!

Rob grabbed his arm. Hollis didn’t open his eyes until they were out in the hall, just in time to see the irate pastry chef and two ballroom ushers skid around the corner—followed by a new pursuer. Hollis’s heart sank. It was his father. He looked to be in a state of total disbelief, as if Hollis had just been caught robbing a bank in an evening gown.

*   *   *

NOW, AS HOLLIS
crept past the bottles in Nico’s wine cellar, he ate a third croissant just to distract himself from the memory. With one hand on the door handle, he couldn’t keep from begging his father to please be there waiting for him when he opened it.

But of course there was only a kitchen full of chefs and runners, all gleaming steel countertops and quiet precision. The nearest cook had his broad back to Hollis and was hacking at a mound of skinned flesh with a cleaver. Hollis shut the door soundlessly behind him and hoisted the plate as if he were a waiter, keeping the brim of his hat low and the croissants in front of his face.

“Twelve-nineteen!” called a chef from across the kitchen. Two delivery boys entered through a set of swinging doors, received a pair of dome-topped platters, and moved fluidly back out before the doors had even stopped flapping.

Room twelve-nineteen
, thought Hollis. Now that he was back in familiar territory, his mind was practically a passenger manifest.
Julius Germain: spiritualist, author, publisher.
Croissants held aloft, Hollis marched across the tiled floor.

“Where you headed with those?”

“Seventy-four eleven.” Hollis mumbled, giving the delivery door a businesslike shove with his free hand. At the end of the hall, he was greeted by an enormous portrait of twin girls holding cats. He took a left and found himself awash in humid air—someone had left the door to the first-class steam room ajar. A bright green tropical vine had unfurled itself out into the hallway as if it were mounting an escape. Hollis nudged it back inside to join the rest of the transplanted Brazilian foliage.

When he reached the end of a long corridor decorated with Louis XIV wall sconces, he had the urge to fire off a message to Rob—
made it to the bridge!
—but didn’t want to break their silence until he had something better to report. Then he peeked around the corner and suddenly felt like a little boy playing a grown-up game.

The bridge was guarded by a pair of mismatched crewmen. One had scraggly hair tucked back beneath his cap, a wrinkled uniform, and two pistols in low-slung holsters. The other was well-groomed, with the square-jawed face of an actor and a perfectly round eye patch. He pulled a cigarette from his front pocket, placed it between his lips, and smacked his partner on the shoulder. The unkempt man fumbled with a match, striking it against the side of his pant leg until it caught on the third try.

Hollis hid behind a credenza full of sky-boots arranged behind glass doors—an Automat for shoes. He shoved a final croissant into his mouth, pulled off the apron and cap, and stuffed the disguise into an empty cabinet, along with the plate. The smoking crewman had given him a better, simpler idea. He fumbled in the satchel. Delia always had long-forgotten knickknacks stuffed in every closet, pocket, and knapsack she had used. This particular bag was no exception. Hollis retrieved a ragged handful and spread it out on the carpet.

A hardened piece of spruce chewing gum.

Several faded picture cards with images of holy men and women smiling benevolently; the back of each card said
KNOW YOUR SAINTS
—Property of St. Theresa’s Industrial School for Girls.

Two stick figures made of twisted wire that reminded him eerily of voodoo dolls.

A bone-white business card, upon which was printed a single black beetle that resembled the Dakota logo without being quite the same.

And finally, just what he needed: a book of matches labeled
Secret Wish
, leftovers from their last voyage. There was no better diversion than smoke. He flipped open the paper lid.

Empty.

Suddenly his transmitter began to click, sounding like pistol shots in the silence of the hallway. He hugged the satchel to his chest and slid beneath the credenza. Heavy footsteps approached. His heart pounded almost as loud as the sounder, which clicked a message:

CAREFUL SHIP CRAWLING WITH FAKES

Thanks for the warning
, he thought.

From his hiding spot, Hollis peered out at one pair of scuffed boots, followed by a second. The long piece of furniture creaked as one of the men leaned against it.

“What the heck was that?”

“Wasn’t nothin’. Noise of the ship, is all.”

“Let’s get back.”

“Well, lemme finish this.”

“Those things
stink
, Jasper. Anybody ever tell you that?”

“Anybody ever tell you
you
stink, Bill? How ’bout you let me smoke in peace for once. You’re like a complaint factory runnin’ overtime.”