His New Stepsister. His Biggest Threat. novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: Christening

The christening was the first Saturday in August, at ten in the morning, at the company's dock in Long Beach.

The tug sat at the end of it with a blue tarp tied over her bow.

She wasn't old, like his.

She was twenty years younger and twice as strong, red and black, scrubbed so clean the crew had clearly been up since four.

Marva closed the Lamplighter for the morning for the first time in thirty years.

She said it was fine, since it wasn't her bar anymore and she could do whatever she liked.

"It's my bar," I said. "And I said you could."

"That's what I said."

The whole bar came.

The mailman in a tie. The sports guy in a Dodgers jersey, which the crew booed.

The nurses with a cooler of sandwiches. The bowling league ladies in matching shirts.

The crew's families came too.

Wives and girlfriends and one husband, and a pack of kids who ran up and down the dock.

The old man who'd owned the company sat in a folding chair at the front with his wife.

She held my hand and told me I'd been robbed in game 42.

"I wasn't robbed," I said. "I was out-bet."

"That's what I said," she said.

And at the back, in sunglasses, by herself, stood the executive producer.

I went over to her.

"You came."

"I was in the neighborhood," she said. "Long Beach is very nearly Culver City."

"It's thirty miles."

"I said very nearly."

She looked past me at the tug and the kids and the bar people and the boat people, all eating each other's sandwiches.

"We're doing a documentary about the Rematch," she said. "Our question writer pleaded guilty on Thursday. He's cooperating against your stepfather."

"Good."

"We'd like to film the wedding."

"There's no wedding."

She lowered her sunglasses an inch and looked at me over them.

Then she pushed them back up and went to get a sandwich.

The biggest deckhand rang the ship's bell three times.

Everybody went quiet.

Gannon stood up on a crate beside the bow.

He was in a clean white shirt with the sleeves rolled, and I knew he'd ironed it himself, badly, on the galley table.

"I'm not good at speeches," he said.

"We know!" his crew yelled.

He waited them out.

"Three months ago this company was being sold to people who'd have put every one of these guys on the street," he said. "Now it's ours. I didn't do that by myself. I had help from a lot of people in this room. Most of them were drunk at the time."

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