Vertigo Park and Other Tall Tales (24 page)

Before we disembarked, though, one of the other passengers you wouldn’t want to meet pointed out that this story had a happy ending and would make a good Movie of the Week called “A Woman Named Jonah.” We all grinned, but in my heart I knew we were all guilty and that there was moral complexity in what had happened, so it wouldn’t have been such a good Movie of the Week, even if it had the old lady slip overboard by accident. Besides, we had all signed releases promising not to speak to the press about the cruise or sell rights to our experience, because it
was Easel’s conceptual art idea and no one should make money on it but him. The caterers had already sworn to silence, since loose-lipped employees don’t get asked back. I’m only telling you because I know no one listens to you. Also, there’s some rule that the censors won’t allow the Whom to be depicted by an actor. My wife says she would have liked to see me as played by a handsome man, but that might just have stirred up trouble at home.

So, it was back to my workaday grind at the Marine Prosthetics dock. As for the old woman, you remember her. She didn’t want to be a bother, and the fact that she had survived loomed larger than that she had been nearly killed, so in a sense she did know something like nostalgia in her lifetime. I haven’t heard from any of the others since then, except I sometimes read about Easel’s coma and wonder whether that’s a joke, too. The Whom certainly never came back, or built any skyscraper here, and I didn’t even get to eat my fill on his cruise. That’s my story, and I promise it’s true, as sure as you and I are bound for Heaven. If you’re no wiser for it, then either you or I must be to blame.