Maybe the Moon

two, discarding several possibilities, all of them ghoulish. “Help with what ?”
    Neil smiled at me languidly. “I think there’s a brunch after the service.”
    “Oh.” A funeral brunch, I thought. Only in California. As we barreled on down the freeway, bound for God knows what, the event grew more and more surreal in my head.
    The dock for the Catalina Express was immediately adjacent to the Queen Mary , the classic thirties ocean liner, now dawdling away her declining years as a stationary hotel and all-round tourist trap. We had two hours to kill before our boat left, so we did the obvious, foolish thing and paid to go on board. The tickets were hideously expensive (Neil put it on his Visa card), and the approach to the gangplank alone nearly did me in. It seemed to wind along for miles, a grueling serpentine, routing us first through Ye Olde Phony English Village, then past a huge circular hangar containing Howard Hughes’s preposterous wooden airplane, the “Spruce Goose.” By the time I finally set foot on board the Queen Mary I was panting like a sheep dog in a heat wave.
    “Are you OK?” asked Neil.
    I fell back against a wall—a bulkhead; whatever—and swatted my chest several times with my palm. Neil hunkered next to me and offered me a handkerchief. I took a few broad swipes at my dripping brow and handed it back to him.
    A squadron of children, accompanied by a haggard middle-aged female, came to a dead halt next to us, enraptured by what they must have taken to be the first of the ship’s exotic attractions. The adult—a teacher, I guessed—gaped at us just long enough to embarrass herself thoroughly, then salvaged what remained of her composure and bustled the children away. I took a deep breath. Then another. Then counted to ten slowly. My heart felt like a small, desperate bird trying to escape from my rib cage.
    “Better,” I said at last.
    “You sure?”
    I nodded.
    “Can I get you some water or something?”
    “No,” I said. “Just shade. And a place to sit.”
    We retreated to one of the big lounges, a calmly elegant space, all curves and gilt and cool green frescoes. Neil hoisted me onto a sofa, then gave the ship’s brochure a hurried once-over. “This was a big mistake, I guess.”
    I told him we had no way of knowing that without seeing for ourselves.
    “Everything’s so far away,” he said. “Unless…” He looked down at the brochure again.
    “What?”
    “They have something called The Haunted Passageway. It’s kind of a ghost tour. Like a fun house.”
    “Kids in the dark? I don’t think so.”
    He smiled. “Good point.”
    “What sort of ghosts?”
    “Oh…some deckhand who got crushed by an iron door. Back in the sixties. According to this, they still hear him thumping sometimes.”
    I rolled my eyes, though I couldn’t help admiring the cold-blooded genius of the marketing strategy. The owners of this enterprise had obviously learned from experience that a pretty ship alone wouldn’t cut it with the American public; true Family Entertainment demands at least a smattering of gore. But that “ghostly” deckhand had been a real person, after all, who was mangled during my lifetime, a guy who probably still has a family somewhere, people who loved him and miss him and remember the real horror. Does it give them the shivers, I wondered, to know that he’s been reduced to a thrilling special effect, a scenic attraction in a spook house? Do they get royalties?
    “We could split,” said Neil, reading my mind.
    “We could.”
    Without further ado, we made our way back to the neighboring dock. The afternoon had turned unseasonably hot, and a gritty industrial haze hung over the harbor. A long queue of tourists, laden with scuba gear and ice chests and plastic tote bags, had already gathered for the Catalina Express . A vein in my temple commenced to throb in smart syncopation with my dread. I was beginning to think I’d made a terrible mistake.

    The voyage to the island took a little over an hour and a half. Mercifully, the smog lifted and the temperature dropped as soon as we were out of sight of land. The seats on the boat were airline style, really quite comfy, but the view they afforded was completely lost on me. Sensitive to this fact, Neil led me out to the slippery deck several times, where I clung for dear life to the bottom rung of the railing and made appreciative noises about the color of the water. A whey-faced lady in a sundress and