One of Our Thursdays Is Missing - Jasper Fforde [120]
“Do you remember that waitress at the Paragon? The perky one who answered back a lot and was wholly disrespectful?”
“I think so.”
“You didn’t get her number, did you?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Never mind. Written Thursday, eh? Know where the real one is?”
“No, sir.”
“Bummer,” he said, and walked off towards his cabin.
35.
We Go Upriver
For those with adventure on their minds, a trip watching the neverseen Euphemasaurus might be considered. For a fee, intrepid holiday makers will be taken into the Dismal Woods in the far north of the island where they will spend a pestilential four days being eaten alive by insects and bled white by leeches. Recovery is said to be three to six months, but the blurry pictures of “something in the distance” can be treasured forever.
Bradshaw’s BookWorld Companion (7th edition)
Within a few minutes, the captain ordered the mooring ropes cast off, and with a blast of the whistle, a shudder from the deck and the venting of steam from the pistons, the sternwheel began to rotate and the boat pulled slowly away from the dock.
For a moment I watched the Great Library recede, and I suddenly realized that I was very much here on false pretenses. I wasn’t Thursday, and I was here on the coattails of a mystery that I had singularly failed to uncover. It was frustrating because, this being Fiction, most of the relevant facts would already have been demonstrated to me but safely peppered with enough red herrings to ensure I couldn’t see the true picture. Thursday would have spotted it all and indeed, given her “absent” status, had done so long ago. I still had no clear idea as to what was going on, but I was fortified by the simple fact that I was here, not cowering in a cupboard back home being bullied by Pickwick. Luckily, my thoughts were interrupted by the adventurer, who asked me to meet him in the bar in an hour, and after that I went to find my cabin—a cozy wood-lined cubbyhole with the sink bolted to the ceiling to save room. There was no electricity, but a single porthole gave ample light. I unpacked the small case I had brought with me, and after freshening up I stepped outside, then stopped. I was next door to Cabin 12, where the mysterious passenger was staying. I heard raised voices from within.
“. . . but I won’t take your place at the talks,” came the voice. I leaned closer, but the conversation was muted and indistinct from then on, and I hurried off towards the captain’s quarters, which were situated just behind the wheelhouse, two decks up.
The senator was already there and had ensconced himself in a large and very worn wicker chair, from which spot he contemplated the river traffic that floated past as we made our way out of the Ungenred Zone and into Comedy. The captain and the helmsman were also present, and they expertly steered a path around the many underwater obstructions, islands and sandbars. I decided to try to act as much like the real Thursday as I could.
“Do you expect a clear run up the river, Captain?” I asked.
The captain chuckled.
“It’s always eventful, Miss Next. Someone will doubtless be murdered, there will be romantic intrigue, and after that we’ll pass a deserted village with a lone survivor who will ramble incoherently about something that we don’t understand but has relevance later on. Did you meet the adventurer? Youngish chap. Handsome. He’s probably met you before.”
I said that I had, and both he and the senator laughed.
“What’s the joke?”
“He’s the fodder. There’s always at least one on a trip like this. Someone for you to get attached to, probably sleep with, but who then dies on the journey, probably saving your life. You won’t tell him, will you? It’ll ruin his day.”
“I’ll try to keep it under my hat.”
“Do you have the route all planned, Captain?” asked Jobsworth, who was sipping on a pink gin handed to him by a steward dressed in starched whites.
“We’ll stay on the Metaphoric until we’ve entered Comedy and moved past Sitcoms,” replied the captain, pointing to a map of the river, “and after that we follow a tributary