“You don’t understand, Philip,” spoke Marion Star Harding, perhaps his only friend in the world if you don’t count new-ish girlfriend Nada — *maybe* on that one, along with the whole girlfriend aspect actually. Maybe they’re just quote unquote friends too. “We have a chance to escape,” his friend here says, his partner in crime perhaps not presently but certainly in the past. “Turns out Newton knows a lot more than his brother Stewart about sim jumping and maintaining a ship to do such. I miss Stewart mind you but maybe it was all for the best that water—” Marion stopped here, realized he was being very insensitive in the moment. The death by unexpected and unpredictable sea funnel came only 2 weeks ago, suck suck GONE. “Anyway — Philip — what you say? I’ll bring Hucka Doobie obviously — we’re totally solid now in our relationship and I’m sure that she’d go where I go. And Nada — maybe the same? There’s room on the ship for her anyway.”
“She has a new *girlfriend*,” he spat out from the couch. “Iiii don’t think she’ll want to be going *anywhere*, not with *Lexi* around.”
“Now now, Philip,” said Marion turning toward him from the window and breaking off his loving gaze at Newton’s revamped beauty floating out there in the bay. “I’m sure they’re just friend friends.” Maybe like you and Nada, he thought, but kept to himself. “Anyway, she — Lexi — can go too. There’s room for 7 total people, Newton indicated to me just yesterday, an upgrade from 5 for the old version. Let’s see, that’s Newton the skipper, me, you, Hucka, Nada, and, yeah, there’s definitely room for Lexi. And even one more. Maybe that Greg artist fellow we chat with occasionally around town. He seems to be as eager to leave this cursed place as we are.”
“*You* are,” said Philip, not so sure about these big, new plans of Marion’s. He’d like to have the relationship more resolved with Nada before he commits to such a thing. Plus he has his pot field in back of Doug’s Money Laundering Mat. And his pots of opium plants atop the Nimble Thimble dance club. He can’t take all *that* with him.
“We’ll get you some more pot fields, some more opium plants,” Marion said to this when he raised his concerns. “We’ll make sure we go to — or settle down in — a place where all that is still legal.”
“*Here*,” Philip declares, putting his foot down in the place he’s suddenly decided to stay.
“Talk to Nada,” urges Marion. “*Then* make a decision.” I’ll talk to Greg myself, he also decides on his own. No use to bring Philip’s negativity along for that one.
(to be continued)
Sunklands 