Page 14 - Ferry Tales

Mallflower

You’re not trapped on a small boat with any of them for a river
crossing, so you don’t have to listen to any of their drivel, Cerberus.
No doubt you were momentarily baffled by that charmless young
lady who tried shooing you away before she got the point of your 126
teeth and did a long jump into the depths of darkness. But that was
entirely typical of the scrambled soufflé of self-justification she tried
to run by me on my poor old ferry.
“What?” she says, when I won’t get moving without the fare
changing hands. It’s not my favorite part of the job, but it does set
the tone for the crossing. “You mean you want, like, cash?”
“Yes, yes, that’s not fake eyelashes or dark glasses obstructing your
vision.” I am both prepared for the panoply of preposterous
pretenses and have no patience for them, old triple-threat flea-trap: if
I may paraphrase that play-writing fellow, their infinite variety
through the ages has become a stale and withering custom for me.
He thought he could delay me with infinite jest, like Scheherazade,
but I knew him well and wasn’t fooled. He wasn’t looking forward to
getting a few spears shaken back in his direction, let me tell you!
Anyway, this one must have had some really bad habits in life,
because she wouldn’t let it go. “I charge everything: why can’t I use
my credit card?”
“Listen up, Mallflower”—that was her name, Melanie
Mallflower—”you’ve got no credit down here. And you’ve incurred
your last debt: they’re all past due and in the claws of an infallible
collections agent. He’s waiting for you now.”
She takes a moment to observe the salient elements of her current
state of affairs and manages to hook them up with her past. “So I
succeeded. I really did kill myself this time.”
“Now you’re talking sensibly. Try not to rock the boat, would you?
It’s bad enough with the overflow from Phlegethon boiling across
the bow. Doesn’t do my pole any good, either.”

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