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  Daisy

  Four Years Ago

  “The murderer is right in this room. Sitting at this table. You may serve the fish.”

  Professor Botwin, a schorly older man with a big white bushy beard and a seemingly endless collection of sweater-vests, pressed pause on the film. He stood at the front of the cssroom, row after row of desks on ascending steps, and turned on the microphone pinned to his chest. “Now then. This is one of the most iconic lines from a film packed to the gills with iconic lines. Who wants to offer an opinion as to why?”

  I sat near the back of the css, scribbling down notes into my notebook. My body was stiff from early morning practice and my head was buzzing with an excess of caffeine, but I was enraptured by the whole thing. I’d always loved old movies, and decring a film studies major had been the logical extension of that. Sure, my dad found it weird, always had, but since my whole future was tied up in hockey I may as well study something I actually liked while I waited to get to the big leagues. And this one was perhaps my favorite of all: a whole css dedicated to screwball comedies!

  I tapped the end of my pen to my temple while I wracked my brain. It was a good line. I’d heard it before, and genuinely hadn’t known it was from this movie until today. So what about it made it as iconic as it was. Maybe the delivery? The weirdly sexy way in which William Powell said it? Well, I couldn’t phrase it like that without revealing some stuff I wasn’t ready for anyone to know. But still, it begged the question: what made the line iconic?

  I started to raise my hand, but someone else beat me to the punch.

  “You there, in the far back corner,” Professor Botwin said, pointing towards the opposite end of my row. “What have you got for us?”

  I couldn’t quite make out who it was at the far end, but his low voice rang loud and clear. “It’s about tone,” he said. “It encapsutes the whole thing. The mystery and the intrigue, through the first part, and the snarky, almost flippant sense of the humor through the second part. In its own way, it tells you everything you need to know about what kind of movie this is all at once. ‘The murderer is right in this room. Sitting at this table. You may serve the fish.’ Just perfect.”

  “Very good answer, young man!” Professor Botwin excimed.

  I was inclined to agree. The whole ‘screwball comedy mystery’ thing was on full-dispy with that one line. It was brilliant. Also, damn, this guy had a sexy voice. The way he delivered the line was even hotter than the way Powell had in the movie proper

  Obviously, I wasn’t going to do anything with that reaction, but still: I had a funny feeling his words would be etched into my brain for a while.

  Now

  My eyes damn-near bugged out of my skull as I realized what I was looking at. My dad’s security detail was here, on this boat, and were part of the murder mystery party. One of them was the victim, and was currently being carted off below deck on a stretcher while doing a shockingly good job of pying dead.

  Shit. Shit shit shit shit-

  “Mixed bag, acting-wise,” Adam whispered into my ear.

  “Yeah,” I said ftly, my mask threatening to slip off.

  “The little guy pying the corpse is convincing though.”

  “Not bad for a security guard.”

  “What?” Adam said.

  “That guy works for my dad. He’s one of his men. So’s that big linebacker-looking dude by the drinks,” I said, running my nails over my fingertips and fighting off the urge to start chewing on them. I didn’t know how long I’d be able to keep winning that fight.

  “Oh shit.”

  “Yeah,” I nodded.

  “So, if they’re here, and involved in the production, then this whole thing is almost certainly… Oh, shit!”

  “Yeah,” I growled.

  “Okay, first off, I wanna say I’m really fucking sorry for not believing you.”

  “I appreciate that,” I said. “Though don’t beat yourself up too much. This one is out there even for my dad.”

  “Does he normally have these kinds of resources?”

  “It’s news to me,” I said. “But in fairness, I’ve basically not spoken to him in four years.”

  “Huh? I thought he only just found out about you being trans.”

  “He did. But four years ago, I got injured. My father is disgusted by ‘weakness.’”

  Adam squinted at me, tilting his head to the side while he seemed to ponder something.

  “What?” I asked. “Why are you staring at me like that?”

  “Nothing, just… Uh… Processing what you just said. Your dad is a real asshole.”

  “Yeah, no kidding,” I breathed. It came out harsher than I intended, or at least I thought it did based on Adam’s flinch. I put a hand to his shoulder. “Sorry, that was-”

  “Don’t apologize,” Adam said, squeezing my hand. God, his grip felt good. Steadying. Which was sorely needed right now. “Let’s get this figured out, okay? We can make ourselves scarce. Maybe wait below deck while they do the murder mystery stuff?”

  “Good idea. Unfortunately, right now, everyone is a suspect. Let’s try to avoid drawing attention to ourselves-”

  “And what about her?!” the other security guard, the big linebacker-looking white guy around my age, said while pointing directly at me.

  Dammit! “Umm… What about me?” I said.

  “Nobody here knows you, dy,” he said, marching over towards Adam and I.

  My mask slipped a little lower as I was forced to improv. “I’ve been on the ship for twenty minutes. When would I have had time to poison the punch bowl?”

  “Who said anything about poison?!”

  “What else would it be? The guy took a drink and then literally died. Did he choke on air? Realistically, it was poison.”

  “That’s exactly what a murderer would say!” the big guy excimed, jabbing a finger towards me.

  Adam grabbed his hand by the wrist and squeezed. “No touching her,” he growled.

  Hawt, my brain said. I shook my head, trying to focus. “It wasn’t me.”

  “Then who was it?!”

  “How do you even know the killer is here?” Adam said. The other party guests were starting to give us dirty looks, like we weren’t pying along well enough. “This isn’t exactly a locked-room mystery here, cupcake.”

  “‘Cupcake?’” the big guy squinted.

  “All I’m saying is, this isn’t exactly a clear cut case of ‘The murderer is right in this room. Sitting at this table. You may serve the fish.’”

  “Yeah!” I said. Wait a sec…

  “In fact, what if it’s you?” Adam said, jabbing his finger right back at the big guy (who’s wrist he still hadn’t let go of). “Every accusation is a confession, after all.”

  The way he said that right now… He’s a cinephile like me, it’s entirely possible he just really likes The Thin Man, but something about his delivery-

  “In fact, I think my wife and I here are the most qualified to investigate, given we’re the only ones capable of being objective in all this!”

  Did he just say ‘my wife’? Oh, damn that is… Oh, that’s getting me hot and bothered… No, no focus up! The way he said that just now… Something familiar about it. The low, soothing tone of his voice and the flippant sarcasm and screwball sexiness…

  “As such, Nora and I will be interviewing suspects in the deck below! We’ll take a guest-list from Captain Hepburn and bring suspects down for interrogation, see!”

  Everyone looked so confused even I couldn’t misinterpret it. Did he call me Nora? Like Nora Charles-

  “But first, wifey and I are going below deck to reconvene!” Adam said, finally letting go of the big guy’s wrist. He offered me his hand, because he paid attention to and remembered what I said (swoon), and I took it while he pulled me towards the stairs. “Come on, sweetheart. It’s time to parley, see!”

  Is he doing an accent? Damn, love the commitment. He’s almost hot enough right now that I can focus on that instead of how terrified I am of this whole situation.

  Almost.

  As we went to the deck below and convened inside of a cozy cabin with hardwood walls and a carpeted floor contained within a wide berth of gss and metal, Adam pulled me down onto a bench with him.

  “That was… That was really cool just now,” I said. And familiar. Very familiar. Why are you so familiar, Mr. Kurosawa?

  “Thank you, though given I pulled it out my ass, we’ll see how well it holds up.”

  “Right, right,” I replied. Where do I know you from? We went to school together, briefly overpping, but did we actually meet? “What, uh, what was with the wife thing?”

  “We’re going full Nick and Nora here,” Adam said. “Can’t beat the cssics, you know. Think you can be my Mrs. Charles?”

  “Does that mean I’m gonna have your babies?”

  Adam blushed. “Uh…”

  “Or at least one baby who we never see again after a brief appearance?” I said, trying to reassert my internal sense of equilibrium.

  Adam chuckled. “Sure?”

  “I’m teasing you, Adam.”

  “Call me Nick. If we’re surrounded by your dad’s goons here, it’s better if we don’t use real names.”

  In spite of myself, in spite of my terror and anxiety and exhaustion, I smiled. “In that case… ‘Well then, Nicky, I love that you know such lovely people.”

  “‘That’s the spirit, pretty girl. You’re a very nice type.’”

  “‘You got types?’”

  “‘Only you, darling. Tall blondes with wicked jaws.’”

  “I’ll show you a wicked jaw. Put it to good use,” I said, breaking off our quote-fest with an innuendo of my own. It was calming me down considerably, which was necessary if I was gonna get out of this mess at all let alone without a public meltdown.

  He had that effect. No matter what was happening, if the past couple days had proven anything, it was that Adam Kurosawa’s proximity was downright soothing to me. Almost… Almost nostalgic.

  “I might wanna take you up on that offer ter,” Adam said, which conjured images of me down on my knees, his hands running through my hair, whispering sweet nothings into my ears while I deep-throated him. “But we should probably deal with the problem at hand, first.”

  “Probably, yeah,” I said. “Hm. I have an idea.”

  “What’s your idea?”

  “The other security guard, the big linebacker guy.”

  “Cupcake?”

  “Heh. Yes. Cupcake,” I said. “We need to get him in here first. Pump him for information. He’s the most likely to know what’s going on.”

  “Shouldn’t we focus on finding the other guy, too, though?” Adam asked. “The little guy will have information as well. And what if he’s reporting back to your father right now?”

  “Good point,” I nodded. “Okay, how are you interrogating perps?”

  “I imagine it’s not much different than business negotiations. You ask a million questions until you get the necessary information about someone.”

  “Okay, then you should handle that part,” I said.

  “Gotcha. Imma go full Nick Charles. Use rapier wit and cunning intellect to my advantage.”

  “Excellent.”

  “I do worry about you going through the ship alone, though. What if your father is here somewhere? What if this is an eborate ploy to get you alone and take you?”

  “Then I’ll just have to scream for you,” I said with a wry grin. “Since you’ll always come to my rescue.”

  His eyes darkened. I wasn’t sure why, but he got this look about him like… Like his confidence had just spiked? Maybe. “You really believe in me, don’t you?”

  “So far, your record is immacute,” I said.

  “That’s true,” Adam said. “Guess I’ll have to keep up the good work.”

  “Cool,” I nodded.

  “And just remember, when you’re out there, you’re Mrs. Charles.”

  “Fuck yeah, I am.”

  He looked down at the ground, eyes darting nervously in spite of his gentle smile. “And when you’re with me, you can just be you. No matter what that looks like, you can just be you.”

  My eyes widened as memory rang like a gong inside my mind. Those words… I’d heard those words. Combined with the familiarity of Adam’s delivery of a certain line, the sound of his voice forming those words, brought something out of the foggy recesses of my brain.

  Of my final hockey party, senior year.

  I’d had a meltdown, thrown everyone out, but one person stuck around and… And talked me through it. Hung out with me, made sure I was okay. I couldn’t remember his name or his face, but his voice, and his words… His voice was the same as the young man from my css, and his words were the same (or at least very simir) to Adam’s words in the here and now.

  “Daisy? Where’d you go?” Adam said, knitting his brows together.

  “Nowhere,” I said, pstering a fresh mask to my face. I could not afford to have a meltdown or an existential crisis. I needed to focus. This whole situation was a convoluted mess, but I had to survive it. And where Adam fit into it all… I could figure that out once I was off this boat. “Nowhere at all. I’m right here. And I’m ready to go be your Nora.”

  “Excellent. Go knock ‘em dead, wifey.”

  ***

  I managed to get the big guy downstairs to Adam without too much fuss, even if everyone looked deeply confused by what I was doing. They must’ve been told to expect some on-set rewrites or something, though, because they seemed to be going with the flow.

  I nodded to Captain Hepburn as we passed on the middle deck before taking the stairs to the bottom. The silver cloud cover had been burned away by the te-winter sunshine, sparkling off the kewater. The water itself was choppy, and I felt the boat swaying up and down over the waves as it sailed forward. I reached the changing area where Adam and I had gotten dressed for the party, and was surprised to find I had company all the way down here.

  It took me a second to recognize the little guy, mostly because they were shimmying into a purple party-dress. They wore a bra stuffed with breast-forms, and had dark red lipstick and face full of foundation applied, and a long raven wig was atop their head.

  They locked eyes with me.

  I locked eyes with them.

  “This isn’t what it looks like,” they said.

  “Oh really? Then what is it? Because to me this looks very interesting indeed.”

  “I’m not-”

  “Working for my father? Bullshit.”

  They blinked. “That’s what you… Oh. Oh shit, it’s you. From the boat.”

  I blinked. “Yeah. It’s me. Aren’t you here to bring me back to my dad?”

  They drew a deep breath as they finished putting on their dress. “Yeah. Uh, about that. We don’t actually work for your father. He just thinks we do.”

  I blinked again, rapidly this time, marching over to them and grabbing them by the shoulders. “I’m gonna need you to eborate on that. Right the fuck now.”