The Unfortunates Read Online Free Page A

hot under the beak—sauced, washed, squiffed. George turns and backs politely out of a conversation to join them. If nothing else, she’s raised her son to weave in and out of chatter as well as she.
    “Julia, hello! You know my mother? Hey, did I tell you Iris and I had this boat for our honeymoon? You won’t believe its history. Oil guy used it as a floating brothel in the eighties. Port of Los Angeles. Mirror and shag, stem to stern. All restored, obviously. I’ll show you the stateroom. It has the most amazing bathroom, marble and nautical gargoyles jutting out of the walls. You’ll hate it, come on.”
    “Yuck,” the woman says. “Gargoyle.”
    To CeCe he mouths, You’re welcome , and hurries the woman away.
    “You can’t run far on a boat!” CeCe calls, but they do not hear. It is hot. The sun’s directly overhead. The boat rocks beneath her. The guests are no longer eating, but lolling on deck chairs, drinking in a torpor. The servers work the perimeter, sweating. CeCe moves to a new seat with cautious success. She hears Mrs. Baker murmur to Mr. Turner, “I don’t care about gardening,” as a white, folded napkin slides from her knee. Someone asks loudly, “Is anyone getting a signal?” CeCe smiles at a man in a tight straw hat wiping his forehead, saying, “—well, clay’s better for your knees and the bounce of the ball.” What is his name? Iris’s cool face is above her. Iris, nodding, listening to Mrs. Warren tell of her journey through Nepal, as together they pet the dog. Iris, beautiful like an actress in front of a camera, but also beautiful as the camera—blank, lodestar, animal.
    “Nepal,” CeCe says. “What fun.”
    Iris sits down beside her. “Everyone’s having a great time. Nobody would’ve made a party like this, except you. Are you feeling okay? I get nervous at these things. I try to seventy percent listen, that’s my trick. Do you want me to run around and wake everybody up? Breeze is back, feel it? That’ll help.”
    Here is the good-hearted and clever child she never had. Here is the child she hates.
    “Do what you like,” she says. “Take the dog with you.”
    There is an unexpected grinding noise below. She turns to Iris, but Iris is gone.
    “Hallo, anyone home?”
    CeCe rises—it’s fine, she’s strong enough for now, a good time for her to stand. She takes hold of the rail and looks down. Four teenage girls in swimsuits sit in a speedboat, its motor fracturing the green mirror of the water. The radio is on, broadcasting a summer song, a man’s voice calling, “All, all, all the million girls go,” followed by a thumping and a scratching and a moaning sound.
    “No,” she says. “Nobody’s home.”
    “Hey, hi! I’m Clover, the Rhavs’ daughter? Is my mom on board?”
    A few of the guests rustle themselves out of their chairs.
    “Hi, Mom! Mom, can we come up? We packed this huge picnic basket and we left it on the counter. We haven’t eaten for like a hundred hours.”
    “Girls!” Mrs. Rhav hisses, looking at CeCe. “This is an event! You can’t come up in your Skivvies.”
    “Can you throw us down a burger or something?”
    “We’re starving, Mrs. Rhav!”
    “There sure are a lot of you for nobody being home,” the girl in a black bikini mutters. She slides from the front to the backseat, bone-bent as a snake.
    “We don’t have hamburgers,” CeCe says.
    The Becks’ son joins the crowd. He sticks his arms out over the water, claps the backs of his hands together, and barks like a seal.
    “Jeremy, you’re retarded,” Clover shouts up, on beat with the music. “Come down and swim.”
    “There’s an idea,” the ambassador says.
    The guests disappear belowdecks and return in their swimsuits. One by one they teeter down the metal steps. George is by CeCe’s side. An appropriately pleading chorus rises from the mouths held above water: “CeCe, it’s warm!”; “Change into your suit!”
    She was glad they hadn’t noticed she spent