Read Online We Are Pirates: A Novel by Daniel Handler - Free Book Online Page B

“I don’t know what that means.”
    “It means, what do they teach you in school? Are you here for some kind of project?”
    “No, punishment.”
    “Good, I’m glad. I don’t like the school project kids. You know you’re going to die when they come at you with a tape recorder. Tell us about the Navy. You want to know about the Navy?”
    “No.”
    “Good. Are you here for some kind of project?”
    “Punishment,” Gwen said again, but felt bad about it and so added, “I’m your companion,” which made it worse, but Errol didn’t notice or forgot that he did notice.
    “What’d you do?”
    “Stole stuff.”
    Errol was putting a pinch of cereal in his mouth, and now he coughed long and hard at it. Gwen took a step toward him, but no more. He coughed and coughed, but Gwen did not do anything and could not think what to do. “As I live and breathe,” he said.
    “Are you okay?”
    “What did you steal?”
    “Candy, mostly.”
    “That’s just what I’d steal. Did you steal it from here?”
    “No, from a drugstore.”
    “What did you steal?”
    “Candy, mostly.”
    Errol stared at her for a moment and then grinned. “From where?”
    “The drugstore.”
    “Did I ask you that?”
    “It’s okay.”
    “I have a problem with my memory.”
    “That’s okay.”
    “It’s not a big problem. I worry about it, though. What’s that river?”
    “What river?”
    “The big one.”
    “Mississippi?”
    “Not the Amazon, the one in Egypt.”
    “The Nile.”
    “That’s it. Se-nile. I made it up to remember. I worry about it, though. I have a problem with my memory. But I used to remember everything, even when I was a kid. What do you think about that?”
    Gwen could not think about that. Errol surely had always been old. Gwen could not imagine him younger than he was. “I guess it’s funny how life turns out?” she tried.
    “Not last I checked,” Errol said with a snort. “Raisin! Raisin! Want to help me?”
    Gwen smiled. She felt as if something, a balloon, was untied from her and flitting toward the ceiling. She took another step forward and found a raisin.
    “Raisin,” she said.
    “Raisin!”
    “Raisin!”
    “Raisin! Do you really want to know about the Navy?”
    “No.”
    “Good. Raisin! I hate talking into the microphones they bring around here. When I have something on my mind I write the newspaper. I write them every day.”
    “Raisin! I know—Peggy told me.”
    “That Peggy’s fat. I don’t like her.”
    “Me neither.”
    “ Don’t ,” he said deliberately, “ don’t like her. ” Gwen started to answer, but Errol lifted his fist and slammed it down into the tray. Cereal went everywhere, and the bowl bounced off a wall to spin on the floor, clattering, clattering, clattering, grumbling to a standstill. They looked at each other.
    “Well,” he said, as if he were telling her something that she of course knew already, “I’m not going to do it for you.”
    There was something about the quiet, perhaps because of the crash before it, that stung Gwen’s eyes, but she knelt down to try and sweep up. “You don’t have to do that!” Errol barked. “They have a staf f ! You’re a companion, right?”
    “Yes,” Gwen said, still on the ground, and Errol’s eyes slowly fell on her and smiled.
    “I know you,” he said.
    “Yes—Gwen,” Gwen said.
    “That’s it,” he said. “I don’t like this place.”
    “Yeah.”
    He opened his fist and one last raisin knocked its way down. Raisin! “Keep busy and keep your mind off your problems. Make friends! That’s not going to keep my mind off my wife. She’s dead.”
    “Of course not,” Gwen said, getting mad at whoever, Peggy probably, had told him this. “Of course it wouldn’t. Friends don’t help.”
    “No, they do not,” Errol said, with a fierce nod like he knew all about Naomi and her daggery ways. “Do you know? Do you know how she died?”
    Gwen said she did not know.
    “I didn’t talk about her for two