Alice on Board

by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

  “To all you good people who are sweltering along with the crew, I can tell you that I’ve been in contact with the front office almost continually since we lost power,” he said, pausing as if for applause, but he got only silent stares from the crowd.

  “It’s certainly unfortunate that you have had to endure a disabled ship in the middle of your cruise, and the weather only adds to your discomfort. We had originally discussed the possibility that our sister ship, the Spellbound, could be launched immediately to pick you up, but that turns out to be not only impractical, but impossible. So without wanting to delay you any further, I am negotiating with a salvage company to tow us in.”

  “You mean they’re going to junk this ship?” a woman asked in dismay.

  “Why not?” a man yelled. “That’s what it is.”

  Haggerty looked uneasy. “No, ma’am, I should have been clearer. Salvage companies offer many services, and one of them is providing tugs to pull or push a disabled vessel into port.”

  “So what’s to negotiate?” another man asked. “We want to get off. We’re all baking out here.”

  “I will definitely get you all off this ship, as soon and as safely as possible,” Haggerty said. “But the front office has the final say on what the cost will be and where we’ll be towed. They should reach a decision by the end of the day.”

  Now everyone began talking at once. One man even leaped to his feet. “That probably means we won’t get towed till tomorrow! We’re down to crackers and prunes, and this is one hell of a way to treat paying passengers. Pay whatever they damn want and get us off here!”

  “Amen!” yelled someone else.

  Haggerty was getting testy: “One of the things I learned in the navy is to expect the unexpected. Good sailors know there will be ups and downs.”

  Even I knew he was treading on thin ice—that is, if we had any ice.

  “Well, this ain’t the navy,” yelled a man who needed a razor. “I’m a retiree with six years of combat in ’Nam, and I didn’t sign on for ups and downs on a cruise ship.”

  “I understand and applaud you, sir,” Haggerty said. “And I would be glad to talk with you longer, ladies and gentlemen, but I’m expecting some calls. And the sooner this is settled the better.”

  “After we’re towed back, then what?” someone called after him. “Will the company pay our hotel bill?”

  But Haggerty was out the door, heading for the bridge.

  18

  END OF THE LINE

  The temperature climbed even higher the next morning, both in the air and in misery. Angry passengers gathered in the lounge and dining areas, watching the doorways for any sight of the captain or first mate.

  “Probably abandoned ship,” somebody joked, “Check the lifeboats—see if they’re all here.”

  Quinton made a brief announcement: A decision had been made that we would be towed, but the question was whether it would be back to Norfolk or to Baltimore. When noon came, then one o’clock, and we still sat idled, tempers reached the boiling point.

  The WTOP helicopter flew over again, and people yelled and waved, fruitlessly calling up to the crew. Someone had printed WANTED: KFC on the floor of the top deck, probably five Magic Markers’ worth of ink, and we could see the photographer on the passenger side of the copter, taking a photo.

  “Just got a text from my dad,” I told the others. “He said it was on the news last night. Wants to know if we’re okay.”

  “Tell him to send a care package,” Gwen said.

  Most passengers didn’t even want us to come into their staterooms because they were such a mess. We gave out the last of the clean towels. And Stephanie organized another Trivial Pursuit game in the lounge, with items from the gift shop as prizes.

  Funny the way you can change your mind about a person. In all the trouble we were going through on the Seascape, I hadn’t heard Stephanie complain once. I hadn’t heard her gripe when our paychecks were late. Hadn’t heard her grumble that it was damn hard to entertain 110 people in 100-degree weather on a stinking ship that was going nowhere.

  Her clothes were wrinkled and sweat-stained, the same as ours, and her hair needed washing, too. Yet she helped carry pillows and blankets to the observation deck, same as us; and she tied up the plastic bags of used paper plates and napkins, same as us; she was as bone-tired as everyone else, yet she managed to look more optimistic and encouraging than we did.

  Maybe it was all a sham and maybe she had a few more marriages to wreck in her future, but didn’t she deserve a second chance? She sure rose up a few notches in my esteem.

  “Is anything happening at all?” we asked Frank when he surfaced in mid-afternoon for the slim lunch pickings offered to the crew. “What’s holding things up?”

  Frank looked even older than his sixty-some years. “The deal is that headquarters is sitting on its haunches because it doesn’t want to pay what the salvage company is charging. And, not surprisingly, salvage wants the pay up front. Damned if I’ll ever work for this line again.”

  It was almost four when I heard a huge cheer from the lounge deck. I dropped the stack of paper cups I was placing on the buffet table for dinner and ran upstairs. Passengers were crowded along the rail, waving at a large tug coming our way.

  “What a relief,” Dianne said beside us. “And they’re towing us to Baltimore, saints be praised. More expensive because Norfolk is closer, but then the cruise line would have to pay travel expenses for all the passengers to get from Norfolk to Baltimore.”

  You’d think the seven men aboard the Samuel Dawes were heroes, the way passengers cheered when they pulled alongside us. Ken McCoy opened the side door on the main deck to let their pilot come aboard. Barry and Mitch were studying the tug.

  “Can she pull a ship this big?” Barry wondered aloud.

  “You watch,” Mitch said.

  Nothing is ever as simple as you imagine, though. The Samuel Dawes had brought fourteen cases of bottled water for the passengers, and these had to be carried aboard. Then there were papers to sign and a discussion between the towboat crew and Captain Haggerty, an inspection of the bow, another discussion with Frank, and two news helicopters this time to take pictures of the hookup. But once the cable was attached and we actually began to move, we caught a whiff of a breeze—the first in several days—and felt energized once again.

  We were traveling at only half the normal speed, so I had no idea how long it would take to get to Baltimore. But when we passed Tangier Island in the early evening, another cheer went up as we slowly saw land appearing on first one side of us, then the other. There were more fishing boats, and of course we were the big attraction.

  The company had arranged for a hastily prepared fried chicken dinner to be brought out to the ship from a restaurant on Tangier Island, and we watched as the food was transferred to us at the stern without our having to stop the tow—large plastic cartons of potato salad and cole slaw hauled up in a net. Fishermen seemed as delighted to deliver the food as we were to get it, broad smiles on their red, weathered faces.

  After our “last supper,” as Emily called it, passengers began packing up their things, and most opted to sleep in their staterooms with the doors open, now that we were manufacturing our own breeze.

  The rumor was that the crew would stick around Baltimore for a week while the generator was replaced, then do the last and final cruise of the season, but who knew?

  We bedded down after midnight wherever we could. Some of us sat on the floor at the bow of the lounge deck, our half-closed eyes focused on the lights of the tug, the chug of the motor lulling us to sleep.

  Gulls woke us at dawn.

  I found myself slumped with my head on Mitch’s shoulder, knowing that my breath must be awesomely awful. It was comforting to feel his arm around me. I liked the way our feet splayed out in front of us, the sneakers and deck shoes that were scattered among the legs; liked the naturalness of the heads tipped this way and that, arms limp, all of us room
mates on this crazy ship.

  Liz and I got up eventually and went down to the “stink hole,” as we’d taken to calling the crew toilets, to brush our teeth. We were on housekeeping duty this week, so we didn’t need to help at breakfast, what breakfast there was. But we stopped at the dining room and picked up some oranges for our sleep mates.

  I sat crossed-legged on the deck facing Mitch, pulling back the thick peel of my navel orange, lifting a segment and putting it in his mouth, then one for me. I didn’t know when anything had tasted so delicious as the freshness of that orange with a breeze on my face from a ship that was moving at last.

  It took the rest of the day to reach Baltimore, and everyone gathered on deck as the harbor came into view. We were greeted by two smaller tugs that helped nudge us into a berth, plus a Coast Guard cutter, there to be sure we did it safely.

  We stewards did our best to look spiffy and act professionally as we commiserated with passengers in the lineup to get off.

  “Well, you’ve certainly had an experience” was about all we could offer.

  Captain Haggerty had shown up after dinner the night before—when stomachs were full, of course—and thanked the passengers for their patience. He explained that refunds would be mailed to them from the front office but made no promise to pay for a hotel once they disembarked. He also thanked the crew for their help and determination, but there was no promise of a hotel for us, either, and certainly no tip envelopes to pass out.

  The gangplank was lowered to much cheering, and several reporters and photographers stood by to interview passengers about being “kept at bay” or “stranded at sea,” as various passengers put it. I saw Dianne wince as one woman, eager to be interviewed, lifted her arms in the air in a victory pose and shouted, “I survived the worst cruise ever!”

  Ken bravely shook hands with each passenger who left the ship, and so did Quinton. But Haggerty seemed to have slipped away unnoticed by us all. Finally it was just the silent ship and us, and we set to work stripping any beds we hadn’t done yet, bagging the last of the trash, exchanging our white shirts for comfortable tees.

  Most of us had contacted home by now, and I called Dad at the Melody Inn to tell him I was off the ship but would finish all ten weeks if I could.

  “What an adventure, huh?” he said, laughing. “I wasn’t worried about you, honey, but I knew it must by darn uncomfortable. Where are they putting you up tonight?”

  “I don’t know. Quinton is going to talk to us in an hour or so, but I’ll be fine,” I told him.

  Sure enough, Quinton gathered us all on deck shortly after I’d talked to Dad. “The home office said they’ll be caught up on bills by tomorrow, including paychecks. Let me know if you want to pick yours up in person or have us send it on to your home address. Your last paycheck, for this past week, will go out in about ten days.”

  “What about the final cruise of the summer?” Gwen asked.

  “We won’t know till tomorrow if they’re canceling or not,” Quinton said. “It’s asking a lot of you, I know, to hang around for a week. If you’d rather go home now and come back for the final cruise, we’d be happy to have you. And if you decide to end your job today, we understand. I’ll be at the branch office on Charles Street tomorrow after ten with more information.”

  Some of the deckhands had already taken off. Lauren and Emily went to stay with a friend, but six of us girls—Natalie, Gwen, Pamela, Liz, Yolanda, and me—plus Barry, Mitch, Josh, and Flavian, stood on the deck considering our options.

  “Where you guys going to crash?” Flavian asked us. We had no idea.

  Barry knew someone he thought would put the guys up for the night, but all we girls wanted was to find a motel and take a shower.

  We sat down on some benches outside an ice-cream place while Josh looked up motels on his BlackBerry. We wanted a place we could walk to, if possible.

  “The Renaissance?” Josh asked.

  “Are you kidding?” Gwen said, looking at the expensive place many of our passengers had stayed before boarding the Seascape.

  “Pier 5 Hotel?”

  “Get real,” Pamela told him.

  We finally settled on the Silver Motor Lodge and told the guys we’d meet them back on the dock at seven. Then we piled into a taxi van.

  It was a crummy motel, a one-story building that had seen better days, and two of the letters on its neon sign were missing. They made the six of us take two rooms, so we divided up, three to a room. But a shower had never, ever felt so delicious. I shampooed three times just to feel that wonderful tingle and finally, reluctantly, let someone else have a turn.

  We felt almost human again when we met the guys, then went to the Hard Rock Cafe. Despite our protests, they said they were paying, and we sat at two adjoining tables trading food back and forth, enjoying the huge fried onion that looked like a wig. It was great to be in a noisy place, with loud music and people laughing and air-conditioning. I felt that someone could lock me in a refrigerator, and even after an hour, it would still feel good.

  We walked around Harborplace afterward, stopping to watch a mime, who pretended he was trapped in a box; danced a little outside a bar. Around midnight, when our sleep-deprived nights caught up with us, we looked for a cab back to the Silver Motor Lodge.

  After the guys had put us in it, however, and waved good-bye, we noticed that they’d climbed into the cab behind us and were following along.

  “They got the same motel?” asked Liz.

  “I thought they were staying with a friend of Barry’s,” said Gwen.

  We started giggling, bursting into laughter each time our cab made a turn and theirs followed. The driver was also laughing, and it came as no surprise when we reached the motel parking lot that the guys got out there too.

  “Yeah?” Pamela said as they looked sheepishly in our direction. “And where are you guys sleeping?”

  “On the floor?” said Mitch.

  “Are you kidding?” I told them. “The rooms are doll-size.”

  “We’re out of money,” said Josh. “We spent it all on dinner. Honestly.”

  “We said we’d pay!” Natalie reminded them.

  “That’s when we thought we could stay with Barry’s friend. Turns out he’s not home,” said Flavian.

  “Listen, you guys,” said Gwen. “They wouldn’t even let the six of us stay in one room. ‘Six girls, two rooms,’ the woman told us.”

  “Two rooms? You’ve got two rooms?” said Mitch. “Come on! You’ve got to let us have one.”

  “How are we going to get you in there?” I said.

  But it wasn’t hard, actually. Our two adjoining rooms were along one corridor that ended at a door to the parking lot. No one could get in from outside without a key card, but it was easy for one of us to open the door from inside.

  So the six of us girls came in the front entrance and said good night to the manager at the desk. She was a pink-haired, middle-aged woman in a thin nylon blouse with a black bra beneath and a cross around her neck. She had a tattoo of a guitar on her bicep, and her cherry-red nail polish was chipped.

  “You have a nice evening?” she asked, not even taking her eyes from the reality show she was watching on TV.

  “Yeah, the best,” said Pamela.

  “Checkout time’s eleven,” the woman said, and we passed her desk, made the turn, and walked all the way to the end. Yolanda opened the outside door, and the guys silently filed in.

  This was almost too easy.

  “Got to be bedbugs or something,” Natalie said after we’d closed the door behind them.

  “Shhhh. If we don’t wake them, they won’t bite,” said Mitch.

  “Hey! Adjoining rooms,” said Flavian.

  “And the door locks,” said Gwen, giving him a look, and we laughed.

  “Party time!” said Josh. “Who’s going with me to get the brew? We passed a place just down the road.”

  “I’ll go,” Mitch offered. A half hour later they were back, bot
h carrying a six-pack in each hand. They tapped on our window, and Liz went down the hall to let them in. We gathered in the guys’ room.

  “Bottle opener?” Natalie said.

  Flavian produced the ship’s flashlight key chain, whose anchor, we discovered, was also a bottle opener.

  “To us,” said Mitch, raising his bottle.

  “To the Seascape. May she rest in peace,” said Flavian.

  “Aw, come on, she’ll be good as new,” Barry said. “She’s refurbished!” And that got a laugh from all of us.

  “Shhhh,” Liz warned.

  Someone suggested playing beer pong, but we didn’t have enough beer for that, even though Liz and I wanted only one bottle. We were sprawled—all ten of us—on the two double beds and the floor.

  So Barry opted for a game he called Truth or Fabrication.

  “Drunk or sober?” asked Yolanda.

  “That’s up to you,” said Barry. He dumped Natalie off the chair where she had been sitting.

  “Okay,” he said. “One at a time we have to sit in that chair and tell the others the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to us.”

  “Yeah, right. Like we’ll tell the truth,” said Liz.

  “That’s where the rest of us come in. If we decide you just made it up, or it’s not embarrassing enough, you have to do whatever embarrassing thing we think of.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “We’ll spill our guts and you’ll still humiliate us.”

  “No, we won’t. It’ll be democratic. We’ll vote,” said Barry, and opened another beer.

  What would I choose when it was my turn? I could practically remember every year of my life by my most embarrassing moments. Eating crayons in kindergarten? Asking Donald Sheavers to play Tarzan and kiss me? Dinner at Patrick’s parents’ country club and bringing the napkin home in my bag? Bleeding through my white skirt at the dentist’s office? Reciting the wrong poem in seventh-grade English? Falling down the stairs my first day of high school and wetting my pants?

  Fortunately, the game started with someone else. Liz told the hilarious story of putting her push-up bra in the dryer and starting a fire. I knew it was true because I’d run across the street to comfort her and was there when the fire chief came out and warned her about putting rubberized products in a dryer. We gave Liz a thumbs-up.