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The bed is too soft against Anne’s skin. Every part of her feels raw, an open wound that stitches can’t hold shut. Her nose keeps itching like blood is still there, but it’s gone, wiped away carefully with a clean cloth by Max’s slow, steady hands. Anne never allowed hands that weren’t Jack’s to get that close to her. But Jack isn’t here now, and it was Max who had knelt in front of her and promised to protect her. Max who had cleaned her face, warning her of each movement, while Anne sat stiffly and could barely feel the cloth’s touch. Max who had led her away from the mess, into this room, and left while Anne took off her blood-stained clothes and crawled into bed. Anne has had blood on her clothes more times than she even remembers. Some of it’s been hers, but most of it hasn’t. And yet the images of it on her clothes, on the floor, are burned into her eyes every time she closes them.
She doesn’t know how long she’s been in this room. Sometimes her eyes drift shut but it doesn’t bring sleep, just the blood and the bodies on the floor.
The door creaks open, announcing Max’s return. Anne clutches the sheet tighter around her. The thin fabric is keeping her together, holding closed the open wound of her. Max has already seen her back. Max has already seen her. But Anne doesn’t want anyone to see her right now.
Max crosses to the other side of the room, in Anne’s sight. She holds Anne’s hat like it’s something delicate, precious.
“It is as if it never happened,” Max says softly. Anything tying Anne to the event is gone. Max and her girls have already put together a story that explains it all away, wrapped up in a neat bow. All Anne has to do is say the same.
Anne likes that part of Max. The part that could be so careful and clean and clever. Does she like that part of Max because it reminds her of Jack, always fussing over his clothes and trimming his facial hair, or coming up with a plan for everything, or weaving an ugly event into beautiful words? Does she like Max for the ways she’s like Jack, or the ways she isn’t? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe some part of Anne needs the things she doesn’t have, the things that Jack and Max do have. Maybe she’ll always need them to fill the rotten parts inside her.
Max puts the hat in a small cabinet by the bed, and closes it safely inside. “These will not fit you, but they are clean,” Max continues. In her hands are shoes and a bundle of fabric Anne realizes is a dress. She hasn’t worn a dress in so long, but she can recall the stiffness of one against her skin, the bottom closing around her legs. A ghost from her old life.
She’s so far gone from that life, but why does it feel so close right now?
The room is silent, and Max begins to leave.
“I was married to a man once,” Anne says hoarsely. She doesn’t know what brings the words out. Maybe the sight of a dress. Maybe some desperate hope that she can explain what happened. What she is. That if she can get the rot out of the wound, she won’t fester along with it.
She hasn’t spoken of her old life once in all the years since Jack took her out of it. The words coming from her don’t feel like her words. The things they speak of don’t feel like things that really happened to her. They happened to some girl in an old dress, and they sound like something out of one of those stories Jack loves so much. She keeps her head turned away because she doesn’t want to see Max looking at her like she’s some injured kitten.
The words bring back the weight of his hands, the flames searing her skin, the drunk smiles of his men as they took their turns. It didn’t occur to her that there was anything she could do. She was a wife, and all that meant was that her husband did what he wanted, and she did what he wanted too. She knew there were wives out there who had it just as bad, or even worse. She never even dreamed about leaving and being on her own. He surrounded her so completely she couldn’t see around him.
And then Jack came, and he sliced through that life with one quick stroke. One stroke of a blade, and it was all over, and Anne wondered why she hadn’t thought of it herself. Maybe she was supposed to figure it out eventually. She could’ve grown and got strong, until the day finally came when she would have picked up a knife and ended it all herself. But Jack did it for her, and she was so grateful it was never something she thought to question until now. She just threw herself into the new life with him. She grew and got strong and learned to fight because that was what the men around her did. It was too late to go back and save herself, but there was something in knowing that she would have been able to do it now. But did it ever make her one of the pirates? Maybe not. Maybe a real pirate wouldn’t have murdered a crew. Surely if she was really one of them, she’d be at sea right now, not shivering in bed. Will she ever be at sea again? Her head is swimming with questions she can’t answer, doesn’t want to think about. She wonders if this is why Jack talks so much, if saying his thoughts helps quiet down how painfully loud it must be in his head.
She desperately looks to Max now, unable to stay turned away. Max has seen her now. What’s the use in hiding?
“If I'm not what I was when I was born, and I ain't what I've become instead...what the fuck am I?” Anne isn’t a wife anymore. She hasn’t been a wife in a long time. The only other thing she’s ever been is a pirate, and that’s been taken away now. If both of those are gone, what else is she?
There’s no answer for it. Not from her, and not from Max. There’s no answer at all, and Anne closes her eyes. This time, she sleeps.
It feels like she doesn’t actually wake up until she’s standing in a room, in a dress that isn’t hers, and there’s a man in front of her. A man talking, expecting her to do something. Something that makes Anne’s ears buzz, unable to take in his words. Unable to move.
Why is she in this room, in this dress that doesn’t fit? She remembers staring into the dirty mirror, trying to make herself look right. She remembers Max’s hand stroking her hair, telling her to eat, but she doesn’t think she actually did. There was a man—a name that sounded like Jack?—and now the man is here. Here, waiting for her to do—
Another of Max’s girls is there. Anne can’t really take in her words either, but she understands enough to know she is being dismissed. A failure as a pirate, and now a failure as a woman. There is nothing left for her, not now.
The hallway tilts until there is only the floor beneath her. Her heartbeat roars like the ocean in her ears, and it makes the ache in her chest worse. Suddenly Max’s arms wrap around her, soft even through the stiffness of the dress. No one besides Jack has ever held her like this, with such love and tenderness. Max rests her hands on Anne’s cheeks. She isn’t afraid to touch Anne, like so many are. Max is not afraid; she didn’t act afraid even when Anne held a knife to her throat before kissing her. She’s braver than she should be. Max isn’t a wife or a pirate, and she’s not a whore, like Anne used to think. She’s Max, and even though Anne couldn’t explain what that means anymore than she could explain her own feelings for Max, Anne knows who she is, and Max knows who she is. She knows. Maybe someday Anne can be as lucky.
Anne’s eyes are damp. She can’t speak, so she does the only thing she can manage, and rests her head on Max’s shoulder while Max holds together the last remaining threads of her.
—-
Anne is still in the dress, later. She doesn’t know how much time passed from being on the floor to being at this table, Max across from her.
Anne is still in the dress. She’s given up on adjusting where the dress slides down her shoulder, and just lets it hang there. When she started being a pirate with Jack, her clothes didn’t fit either. But Jack had been able to make them fit, all with a needle and some thread. Could those two things ever make this dress fit her the right way?
“I know how you feel,” Max says.
Anne thinks she really might. They’re more alike than she would have wanted to admit. Now, she can’t deny it.
“Not that long ago, I was lost. Without friends. Without identity. I thought there was no life for me that I understood and I felt as though that meant there was no life at all.”
Anne doesn’t speak or look up from the bowl in front of her. She still hasn’t eaten.
Max is talking about building a new life. Does this mean Max is about to offer her a new life? Will she take this one with the same blind trust and gratitude that she took the one Jack gave her?
Max is still talking, now about expanding her operations. She’s talking about spies, Anne realizes, and looks up.
A partner with knowledge of the seas. A partner Max can trust.
Anne knows the sea. She’s been studying it all these years. She knows the tides, knows how a ship cuts through it, knows the names of ships and how to recognize them and fight the men on them if needed.
And she can be someone Max can trust. Max gave her refuge inside this brothel when anyone would have left her. Anne can be quiet, she can go ignored among large crowds of people. She can keep secrets. She can be Max’s spy.
It sounds like something in between Max and her secrecy and tricks and Jack and his neverending search for grandeur. Something more like her, time to be at sea and bring part of that ocean back here with her. A special role just for her. She imagines sailing with Jack, ears alert for information that she can take back to a room at the brothel with Max. Maybe this role can fill the gaps inside her. Maybe there is more to her than being left behind and falling to the brothel floor in a dress she never wants to wear again.
Maybe there is still a new life out there.
Anne still doesn’t speak, but she knows her answer.