Different For Girls
Zoe was in love with the pilot, and she wasn't at all happy about that. It was true, she'd been the one to start courting him, but she hadn't expected things to go this far. She'd hoped for a few weeks' distraction: a way to get him out of her head, and a way to convince him that those longing looks he cast in her direction weren't worth the energy it took to keep his eyes open. A misguided plan, to be sure, but she hadn't been thinking clearly. She'd been thinking about his body under hers.
The pilot had a name. He'd informed her of that fact after his first month on board, in the context of being sick and tired of hearing her refer to him constantly and disparagingly as "the pilot." She'd told him that she would refer to him as she pleased, and he would learn to like it. It had sounded convincing when she'd said it, and he'd seemed convinced.
Now, she was doing the convincing, and the person who needed convincing was herself. It had become a lost cause, this campaign to keep thinking of him as the pilot, because the pilot had a beautiful name, and she wanted to stretch it out like taffy while she held him down naked on her bed. James Washburne Warren, Junior. While he protested that she ought to come up with something shorter, and "Wash" would do him fine if she had no objection, she considered other possibilities: sweetheart, bao bei, husband.
She liked the sound of "husband." If she'd still been capable of fear, that would have frightened her.
But Zoe had to be courageous. Mal wanted to be, wanted to rule over them all with that swagger he almost deserved, but she'd always been the one to pick up that slack. The pilot was competent and clever in addition to great in the sack, but gunfire made him flinch. When he was naked and licking Zoe's breasts, she liked being able to protect him, but on land and as a member of the crew, he was a liability. If she lost him, they were grounded; if she lost him, she lost him.
And then there was the new mechanic, who Mal had hired on some fatherly impulse. Nineteen, rosy-cheeked, disturbingly cheerful, and none of those were qualities that Zoe had much time for. Zoe couldn't complain about the improvements in the way Serenity ran. She wasn't well-schooled in the particulars, but there were fewer sputters and breakdowns, and they were getting farther on less fuel.
She knew she shouldn't complain about the other thing. It was unkind. She wanted to appreciate Kaylee's determination to be her new best friend, wanted to enjoy it and feel flattered by the offer. But all that optimism was insufferable, and more often than not, Zoe wanted to flick Kaylee off her arm like a mosquito.
She found Kaylee stringing fairy lights around the door to her bunk, and she almost complained to Mal. But Mal wasn't in any state to hear others' gripes, especially when the gripes were about something as trivial as tackiness where Zoe didn't want to see it. She went up to the bridge to get a little distraction. It seemed like the air was clearer up there, and she knew it was all the fault of James Washburne Warren, Junior.
"The lights?" he said. "I think they're cheerful. This boat could do with a little more cheer, don't you think?" He surveyed her. "You don't think. I am sleeping with a cheerless woman. I always knew it would come to this."
"I'm not cheerless," she said. She stroked his cheek. "You cheer me up."
He was wearing one of his awful garish shirts, red with orange flowers. The bright colors set off the blue in his eyes and the gold in his hair. She gazed at him until he put his hand on the back of her neck and pulled her down for a kiss. "If it's that big a deal," he said, "you should go down there and tell her." He creased his brow, made a face that might have been comical purely by accident. "Is it that big a deal?"
"No," Zoe said. "I should let it go. She's sweet enough, keeps Serenity in good repair..."
"Doesn't leave her dirty hookah in the kitchen sink like the last one?"
Zoe chuckled. "She's worth keeping, no question. It's only-- she acts like I ought to be nice to her. I'm not nice to anyone, but apparently, for her, I'm supposed to be--"
"You're nice to me," he said.
"You trade it for sexual favors," she said.
"Listen," he said. "I've been meaning to ask her for a while to check the starboard nav stabilizer. Why don't you go down to the engine room and ask her how that's going?"
"You know, you could just get on the intercom and ask her your own self."
He raised his eyebrows, made his round little eyes plead with her puppyishly. "Maybe she'll give you a manicure," he said.
"It's the starboard nav stabilizer?" she said, but she didn't wait for an answer.
When Zoe got to the engine room, Kaylee was hanging a hammock with one hand and wiping her nose with the back of the other. "What's up?" Kaylee said. She was pasting on a smile, but her eyes were rimmed with red.
"The pilot wants you to check the starboard nav stabilizer," Zoe said. "Is... something wrong?"
"With the stabilizer?" Kaylee said. "Nah. It's a little off, but it'll last us till I can replace the grav switch proper. Do we got money for a new one?"
"I don't know," Zoe said. "The captain's the one who keeps an eye on the money."
"Oh," Kaylee said. "Okay." She tightened one of the ropes that held up the hammock, but when she tested it, the ropes slackened.
Zoe could see why the ropes weren't holding: they were tied in granny knots, bound to come undone under human weight. "Here," Zoe said. "Let me help." Before she'd finished checking the strength of the hitch on the first end, Kaylee was tying the other just as she'd done.
"Once I saw how you did it," Kaylee said, "it made sense." She patted the tight canvas. "You wanna give it a try?"
"No," Zoe said. "No, you go on ahead."
Kaylee climbed up and lay on her back with her hands behind her head and her knees bent into peaks. "You weren't asking about the nav stabilizer," she said.
"Shen me?"
"Before. When you asked if something was wrong?" Kaylee said. "You weren't asking about the nav stabilizer."
"It's what I came down here for," Zoe said. She didn't want to have to say more. She'd run her errand and shown just enough human consideration to justify herself. But Kaylee'd been sniffling and rubbing her eyes, and Zoe couldn't convince herself that it was nothing more than the noxious dust that gathered behind the engine. It was part of that whole problem she was having, convincing herself of things.
"You ain't gotta try so hard," Kaylee said, "to pretend to be my friend."
Zoe had always prided herself on subtlety about her dislikes. She wondered if she had overestimated herself that badly, or if Kaylee was as quick to spot a well-intentioned lie as she was to learn new knots. "We ought to at least get along," Zoe said.
"We ain't had no quarrels," Kaylee said. "That's all we oughta hope for, ain't it?" She laughed, and it seemed like there was no reason for it until she added, "What, you think 'cause we're the two women, we gotta be best girlfriends? I reckon I got a better chance of that with Wash."
"Don't you tell him that," Zoe said.
"Why not?" Kaylee said. Her lower lip trembled, and Zoe feared that at any moment, Kaylee would give her an emotional incident to clean up. "I thought he liked me," Kaylee said.
"He does," Zoe said. "He thinks you're cheerful. Even likes those lights you put up."
"They ain't too much?" Kaylee said. "I was worried, a little."
Zoe took in the deep breath she'd need for the long list of reasons why those lights needed to be packed up and never seen again, but she couldn't convince herself to be so cruel. Kaylee'd released her from that responsibility. "They're fine," she said.
Kaylee lay in her hammock while Zoe waited an interminable while for a gracious moment to make her exit. It was harder, somehow, knowing that Kaylee didn't expect a thing of her. "I'll go tell the pilot you're working on the stabilizer," she said. "After all-- you're doing all you can do, aren't you?"
"Yeah," Kaylee said, not moving from her spot. As Zoe made for the door, Kaylee added, "You should hear the things he says about you when you're not around."
"What things?"
"Good things," Kaylee said. "Really good things."
Zoe watched Kaylee, waiting for her to say what the good things were. She couldn't ask: she had a lot of courage, but not that kind.
Kaylee shifted in her hammock. She looked too brave to be a girl who might have been crying not ten minutes before.
"Were you homesick?" Zoe said.
"Homesick?" Kaylee said. "No."
"Then what?"
"Oh, I don't know," Kaylee said. "Happy, afraid, excited, all those things you are when it's all just right but too much just right, so you hold it in. Until you're alone, and safe, and all them things can't stay inside you no more." She sniffled, like those things were fighting to get out of her again.
"I understand," Zoe said. "You don't think I do, but I-- I'm still that girl." Zoe feared this was when she was supposed to give Kaylee a supportive hug, but it looked like Kaylee was making a point of not demanding that.
"I don't reckon I'd want to meet anybody who'd never been her," Kaylee said.
"Do you have any more rope?" Zoe said. "A narrower gauge, maybe?"
"Yeah," Kaylee said, hopping out of the hammock. She rummaged in a few toolboxes before coming up with a ball of twine. Zoe took the twine and cut off a few inches' worth with her pocket knife. She curved it into a loop, tied the ends together in a secure square knot, and frayed them so they looked almost like a jewel.
"I have to go ask a man to marry me," Zoe said.
"Be strong," Kaylee said. "Cry a little."