Because It Is My Blood

VI I AM AT SEA; BECOME FAR TOO ACQUAINTED WITH THE BUCKET; WISH FOR MY OWN DEATH

FOR THE TEN DAYS OF MY JOURNEY, I did not have opportunity to play Hearts or any other game, aside from a game I affectionately dubbed Race Across the Container to the Bucket. (Yes, readers, I was seasick. I see no need to trouble you with the details except to mention that, once, I threw up so hard I sent my mustache flying across the room.)

This current plague did not allow me to sleep very deeply, but I did have hallucinations or, I suppose, waking dreams. One vision I had revolved around a Christmas pageant that was being staged at Holy Trinity. Scarlet was the female lead, of course. She was dressed like the Virgin Mary and she was holding a baby with Gable Arsley’s face. Win stood by her side, and he was supposed to be Joseph, maybe; I couldn’t tell. He was wearing a hat again and instead of his cane, he had a staff. To one side of him was Natty, carrying a box of Balanchine Special Dark, and next to her was Leo with a pot of coffee and a lion on a leash. Somehow I was the lion. I knew this because of my shorn mane. Natty scratched me between the ears, then offered me a piece of chocolate. “Eat one,” she said. And I did, and a second later, I was awake and running across the room again, to reacquaint myself with the bucket. I had no idea what I was throwing up at this point—I hadn’t eaten much of anything for days. My abdominal muscles hurt and my throat was terribly sore. It was lucky I had cut off all my hair because there was no one to hold it back for me. I was friendless and a fugitive, and I suspected there was no one more dejected and wretched in the whole world than Anya Balanchine.