Bebop

“Isn’t this the shit!”

Michael looks at the ship from the companionway. He stares with wonder and surprise, he laughs that way, my brother’s way, high, it’s almost a squeak, it’s great. I sit at a noodle cart just some yards from the telescope ramp that’s buoyed to our lock. It feels good to think it. We have a ship.

“Michael.” I call. He turns from one of those low portals you have to bend at the knees to look out no matter how short you are. I gesture to the noodle cart and he walks over. I tell him Gou. “and tea.” I say. he orders two. It’s a promise unspoken we have made, for me not to embarrass him. It’s important to him, that’s enough for me. He gave a shit enough to learn Juo or whatever the fuck they call it now. The paper bowl is just warm enough on my hands, and dry enough to give my fingers the creeps. I have been holding perspiring water bottles all day, hydrating, its all I do anymore. looks like I am a swimmer.

“That’s the one?” he asks me and I nod my answer.

“Seven?” he reconfirms it. This is the dock number, or name. Its actually A7a. I nod again.

He looks sad. He’s thinking about something, someone. I can never guess, I never give him credit when I do. I’m wrong. “I don’t know” he says.

I nod, flicking yaki soba in my pie hole and jacking whole haf-cups of hot black chop-wood-carry-water ontop and getting It down. I nod like I know but I don’t. I vow to quit nodding.

“Let’s check it out.” I say and ditch my dish in the tub swash down the last hot tea and take a hot rag from the noodle guy, wipe my face then hands, drop two zenny on the table and turn.

“I don’t know” he says. He is done eating too. He is reluctant. I am up and moving to the iris, the cold as fuck arm, and beating feet to get to the lock and the ship that’s been run up by some port master goon. I breath into my hands. He is still standing outside the Iris. I tell him to come on, then punch in my code on the pad, my fingers almost sticking to the cold surface. Hot air gushes out and I step into the dark gray hall.

“They aren’t our memories” he tells me. Like I don’t know. Like I think it was the two of us, all those people. I know it wasn’t. I am probably off point. I ask him what memories weren’t ours. He tells me none of them were.

“Well I fucking bought it. I guess we belong to them now, the whole thing, all of it. It doesn’t have to be ours Michael, we can be smaller. We can be small enough to belong to something else, to this.” I turn and point to warmth and light and a whole new life. I think it is sinking in. No word judo will get him through the Iris. He’ll come if its right, if it isn’t, fuck all be damned he’ll spin down planet side and go sit on mom’s grave till they take him away again.

“We don’t have to win Michael. This doesn’t have to be right.” He is fighting some war in his brain. “Dude, fuck. At least check it out, you know, like a tour or something.” I turn and go in leaving the lock open. In the living room I turn on Blue and speaker phone the gangway. “It’s an homage! Anyway, great fucking song.” i feed in. I wait an hour longer than I think I will have to. I wait a long time. We don’t talk for a while.

“When we can, we have to find another ship.” he tells me as he walks in and sits on the couch.

I nod to him that I understand.

I do.