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vi. The Prima-Donna Life
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There was an old, grey and black tape inside the dirty-white FedEx envelope, a map stuck to the side of the bubble-wrap interior. It held Big John Routledge's voice, one Blair hadn't heard since he used to come work on their boats nine months ago.
She made him a glass of grapefruit juice once and his fingers grazed hers, callused and covered in an inky-black substance. She almost frowned at the way he could squash her like an insignificant bug with those rough hands of his and, back then, the morals she believed were more askew than hers in the other side of the island. But he shot her a toothy-smile from under that greying mustache of his and she offered him a nod before leaving him on the boat with his son in the cabin.
He sounded different back then, not like he did on the tape. John B tossed it over the map and it thumped across the smooth paper. Then he flung himself against the doorframe and cried because it all came as such a shock to him he couldn't keep the tears from coming out like the sand inside an hourglass. He had used up all the time with his father, and now he was paying the price. But there was the map laid out on the table, that of the Royal Merchant, Big John said, and there was an X right in the middle of it, with coordinates scribbled in a messy handwriting she didn't recognize. They didn't match the post-it that led her to the island. Was that a good thing?
The man found the Royal Merchant, a wreck rumored to be holding up to four-hundred-million dollars in gold. Blair's jaw fell when he told them over the scratchy tape. He had high hopes for his and his son's future, confident he'd find the money and give them a better life. Then he said he might die, after vanishing for what felt like years, and John B couldn't take it anymore.
When he calmed down, he told his friends (and Blair) all he knew about the shipwreck. How much it held, how the weird man in the lighthouse spoke of it, how his father was so obsessed with it, how the square groupers who robbed his house took all of his father's research along. But it didn't matter, because they had his father's tape and the boat's exact placement. Though they didn't know where it was yet, it was a win in their book.
And maybe it took a little bit for the Pogues to accept the fact that Blair was in on it now, that she couldn't just walk away and pretend it didn't happen, that they could make history as teenagers and that she could make her father so proud of the girl she turned out to be. Maybe it was pretentious and obnoxious, but the prima-donna life always was. She told them she didn't want the money, she already had so much of it she didn't know what to do. Eighty-million, she'd spend it all on cigarettes and lipstick, so she thought it would be better to leave it to the people who actually needed it. JJ got angry at that, he said he "didn't take charity work". But he secretly wanted her in on the chase and so he ended up swallowing his tongue and putting in a good word for her when the Pogues huddled outside the office and left her tracing her perfectly-almond-shaped nail over the rugged surface of the map.
