by Pat Murphy
She managed to stay out of the conversation, eating her dinner quietly, until they were just finishing the main course. Then Alberta turned her attention to Susan. “So, Susan, what do you do and where are you from?”
“I’m a librarian,” Susan said. “I live in San Francisco.”
“Oh, that’s a lovely city,” Alberta said. “How nice that you two girls could come on the cruise together. No men to tie you down.”
“You are leaping to conclusions, dear,” Bill said. “How do you know that Susan doesn’t have someone special back home?”
Alberta laughed. “Women’s intuition,” she said. She looked at Susan. “You aren’t married, are you?”
Susan hesitated. That question, once so normal, now confused her. It was an innocent question, she knew that. But it felt like a demand for a long explanation. I was married for many years, but then my husband ran off with his personal trainer, a buffed blonde with a perfect smile. I don’t really understand why—my friends all say it was some kind of mid-life crisis, but he was only thirty. I thought that was supposed to happen at forty. I keep wondering if it was my fault, if maybe we should have had kids, if maybe I should have done something different. I just don’t know. I kept thinking we’d get back together but then we got divorced. But you know, I still don’t feel divorced. I don’t feel married either. I feel like I don’t belong anywhere. I feel like a part of me is missing. Not my husband. I think I’ve gotten over missing him. But a part of myself that I used to have. That’s gone somewhere, and I don’t know how to get it back.
“No,” Susan said. “I’m not married.”
She avoided looking at Tom, remembering suddenly that she had mentioned her husband in their earlier conversation.
“So you can just do whatever you want.” Alberta smiled, relentlessly cheerful. “What fun.”
Susan managed to nod. Everyone was looking at her. She didn’t know what to say.
“Have you decided what you’re having for dessert?” Tom asked Alberta. Susan glanced at Tom, grateful for the interruption. She wondered if he had asked solely to divert Alberta’s attention. While the others debated the relative merits of Grand Marnier soufflé, chocolate raspberry roulade, and apple fritters with vanilla-cinnamon sauce, Susan pushed back her chair.
“I’m sure you’ll all excuse me.” Susan smiled brightly at the others. “I need to get some air.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” Pat asked.
“Oh, no—I’ll be fine. You stay and enjoy dessert.” She turned away quickly, before Pat could insist, and hurried out of the restaurant.
“I think she may be feeling a little seasick,” she heard Tom saying. She didn’t know why he was covering for her, but she was grateful that he was.
As she stepped out of the dining room into the atrium, she felt the ship move beneath her. In the atrium, three decks were connected by a spiral staircase. The decor was hard-edged and slick—all marble and glass and chrome. Stained glass fixtures in the ceiling appeared to be skylights, but she knew there was another deck up there. Mock skylights, just another illusion. One level up, there were boutiques selling souvenirs and “cruise wear,” extremely expensive casual clothing.
She climbed the spiral staircase up one level, to the promenade deck. Opposite her, a glass elevator filled with passengers dressed in cruise wear rose toward the next deck.
The ship moved again. Looking up at the elevator, she felt a wave of vertigo. In her nervousness, she had had two glasses of wine with dinner, and she felt the effects now. She turned away from the atrium blindly, pushing through a door.
A gust of cool air slapped her in the face as she stepped onto the promenade, a wooden deck that ran around the ship. She took a deep breath, glad to be out of the overheated dining room. She stepped to the railing and looked out over the dark waters. The moon was not yet up, and the stars glittered in the black sky.
Sailors, she knew, had once navigated by the stars. She looked up at the sky and wondered where she was going.
Tom made his way along the walkway around the ship’s uppermost deck. He was heading toward the bow of the ship, where there was an observation platform called Cyclops’ Lookout.
The ship’s movement created a steady wind that cut through his windbreaker. He walked close to the side wall—the outer wall of Penelope’s, one of the Odyssey’s five restaurants.
The walkway was deserted. It was almost midnight—past time for bed after a long day—but one of the security guards had notified him of a potential problem, and he had to check it out. A woman was standing on the observation platform at the bow of the ship. She was alone, the guard had said, and she didn’t seem to be doing anything—just standing there and staring out to sea.
Tom had been on the security staff of cruise ships for the past eight years. Three times, he had been aboard a ship where someone decided to jump. Once, when he was a security guard, he had been the one to find a pile of folded clothes, set neatly beside the railing, with a note tucked into one of the shoes.
Tom remembered holding that shoe, a burgundy leather wingtip, and thinking that its owner had never intended to travel in the tropics. This man had come on the cruise, planning to leave it permanently in the middle of the ocean, planning to dive overboard a few hundred miles from New York harbor, out where his body would never be found.
Tom was an easy-going guy, but that had pissed him off. Why had that man chosen to kill himself aboard Tom’s ship? And if he insisted on killing himself, why had he left his clothes behind for Tom to find?
Tom did not like loose ends, and those clothes were a loose end, a disruption in the smooth workings of the ship. Tom’s job was to keep order aboard, and those clothes, however neatly folded, were a symbol of disorder. Those clothes had generated no end of trouble for the security office. It had taken two days to figure out who was missing. Then there had been stacks of paperwork—people to be notified, explanations to be made, letters to be written.
For weeks afterward, Tom had found himself noting the shoes of the passengers, unconsciously on the lookout for shoes inappropriate to cruising. If he had spotted someone in leather wingtips, he didn’t know what he would have done. Fortunately, the other passengers wore sandals and running shoes and other appropriate footwear.
The Odyssey was patrolled regularly by security watchmen. Every area of the ship was visited by a guard at least once an hour. When Tom had become head of ship’s security, he had increased patrols in the areas where people might be likely to jump. If a security guard spotted a potential jumper, he alerted Tom. It didn’t happen often.
Tom stepped onto the observation platform and a blast of cold wind stung his face. The woman was standing at the railing to one side of the deck, staring out over the water. The wind was whipping her curly hair into tangles. She was, he noted with an odd sense of relief, wearing casual, rubber-soled shoes that were perfectly appropriate to a cruise. She had her arms wrapped around herself, hugging herself for warmth.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “Are you all right?”
She turned to look at him, and the wind whipped her hair into her face. She pushed it back and he realized that it was Susan. “I’m fine,” she said.
He leaned against the railing beside her. From where he stood, he could look straight down into the dark waves. The half-moon was rising. In its silver light, the ocean water moved like a living thing, restless and uneasy. If he looked toward the bow of the ship, he could see the sundeck, where a maze of glass wind screens created many small wind shelters. On a sunny day, each one would be occupied by sunbathing passengers. They were deserted now.
“I really wasn’t seasick,” Susan said. “I just didn’t want to answer any more questions about who I am and what I do and where I live. I don’t want to answer those right now.”
Tom could sympathize with that. He could guess at some of the reasons she didn’t want to answer questions. On the bridge, she had mentioned her husband, and he had noticed th
at she was wearing a wedding band. But at dinner, she wasn’t wearing the ring, and she was clearly uncomfortable talking about her life. Trouble in her marriage, he figured.
“I guessed as much,” he said.
“You did?” She looked worried. “I hope Alberta didn’t realize it.” He shook his head. “Alberta didn’t notice a thing.” Alberta, he thought, probably wouldn’t have noticed anything was amiss unless Susan had burst into tears at the table.
“Thanks for covering for me,” she said. She wasn’t smiling, but she seemed more relaxed than she had been at dinner. She had lost her beleaguered look, and the tension around her eyes had eased.
Tom nodded sympathetically. “No reason you have to answer anyone’s questions,” he said. “Your life is nobody’s business but your own.”
She looked out to sea. Then she said, “I threw my wedding ring overboard.”
Tom blinked, startled by the sudden admission. She continued watching the water for a moment, then turned to look at him. “Aren’t you going to ask why?”
“I guess you didn’t want it anymore,” he said carefully.
She considered that. “You’re right. I just got divorced. I figured it didn’t belong to me anymore. And I didn’t want to sell it or anything. It was jinxed.”
“I can see how you might feel that way,” he said.
“It’s so strange not to be wearing it,” she said. “Harry and I weren’t always happy—in fact, I guess we were unhappy a lot of the time. But he was my anchor. Being married kept me grounded.”
“Sometimes an anchor is a good thing,” Tom said. “And sometimes it just drags you down.” He shrugged. “But what do I know about it. I’m just a sea-going cop in a fancy uniform.”
She studied him thoughtfully. “Are you married?”
He shook his head. “Not now. I was married once, a long time ago. Just for a few years.”
“What happened?”
A simple question. The answer hadn’t seemed simple at the time of his divorce, but now it seemed simple enough. “I was a cop in Boston at the time, and I worked nights. She decided she didn’t want to be married to someone who wasn’t around to party with. I decided I didn’t want to be married to someone who couldn’t deal with my job. So we got divorced. Then I quit being a cop and I joined the merchant marine.”
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
“I needed to do something different,” he said.
She nodded, staring at the waves. “I know what you mean. I’m glad I threw it overboard.” She touched her left hand with her right, as if feeling for the ring. “I like it out here. We’re moving; we’re off on an adventure. It feels like anything could happen.”
Tom smiled. He had felt that way when he shipped out with the merchant marine at age twenty-five. Back then, standing in the icy wind on a midnight shift had been part of the adventure. He had loved every minute of it.
“I know what you mean,” he said.
She glanced at him, frowning just a little, as if she were trying to figure him out. She didn’t quite believe him, he thought.
“I felt like that on my first trip out,” he said. “But tonight’s too cold a night for me to be looking for adventure. I’m heading back inside. Do you need help finding your stateroom?”
“I know exactly where it is. But I suppose I should go in. Pat will be worried.” She bit her lip, still staring out to sea. “I hope I can get to sleep,” she said, half to herself. “I haven’t been sleeping well, lately.”
“I’ve always found that I sleep very well aboard,” Tom said. “The waves rock me to sleep.”
She followed him as he headed back past Penelope’s. It turned out that she didn’t really know where her stateroom was. He stopped her from making two wrong turns and took her to the right corridor. At her stateroom, she let herself in and he said good night.
It was just past midnight. Tom knew that the casino would be hopping. The bars, he was certain, would be full of passengers drinking bon voyage drinks. In the all-night restaurant, passengers would be ordering midnight snacks. But here, where there were only staterooms, it was quiet. Just one man at the end of the corridor, hurrying away. Tom caught a flash of pale skin as the man glanced back over his shoulder, then he disappeared around the corner.
Strange that the man was in such a hurry, that he had glanced over his shoulder like someone who didn’t want to be caught. Tom walked quickly to the corner and glanced down the adjoining corridor. No one was there. The recessed lamps in the ceiling filled the corridor with a soft, even light, leaving no shadows, no dark corners.
Pat was already asleep when Susan slipped into the stateroom. The curtains were open and moonlight shone through the sliding glass door. Susan undressed quietly and pulled on her cotton nightshirt.
Lying in bed, she touched her left hand. She could still feel the impression that the ring had left on her finger—a valley where the ring had been, a slightly callused ridge of flesh beside that valley.
She wondered what would happen to the ring. She imagined the circle of gold sinking in the dark water, buffeted by waves. Maybe a fish would eat it. Maybe someone would catch the fish and find the gold ring inside. She imagined that and smiled. The ring, which had brought her bad luck, might be someone else’s good luck.
She closed her eyes and felt the ship rocking beneath her. Rocking her to sleep, she thought. Lulled by the steady motion, soothed by the rumbling of the ship’s engines far below, she drifted into sleep and dreamed of a gold ring, sinking in the deep ocean waters, a golden circle drifting in the darkness. In her dreams, it changed from a golden ring in the dark ocean waters to a golden space ship, a flying saucer against the night sky, humming with a rhythm that matched the Odyssey’s engines.
BAD GRRLZ’ GUIDE TO PHYSICS
OBSERVATIONS REGARDING THE HEAT DEATH OF THE UNIVERSE
It’s my first morning on the Odyssey, and I’m up at dawn, observing a skirmish in the ongoing struggle for the destiny of the universe.
I’m on the sundeck, which is on the same level as our stateroom. I’m leaning against the railing and sipping a cup of cappuccino from the Olympus Eatery, the ship’s twenty-four-hour cafeteria.
Here at the bow of the ship, the decks are staggered like the layers on a wedding cake. One level up is the observation deck, labeled on the map as Cyclops’ Lookout. Above that is the bridge. The windows of the bridge reflect the rising sun. Around me, the maze of glass wind screens on the sundeck cast interesting shadows in the dawn light.
From my vantage point, I can observe the battle that is being waged here on the Odyssey, an ancient war between two opposing forces. No, not good and evil. That’s the old Judeo-Christian view of the world and really kind of a waste of time. Take philosophy if you want to worry about that stuff. I’m a physicist and as a physicist I’m concerned with a more significant struggle—the struggle between order and chaos.
The cruise ship staff is on the side of order. From where I stand, I can see them bustling about and cleaning things up. There’s a guy hosing down the deck, washing off the salt spray. There’s another guy painting one of the white railings. The railing is already white, but he’s making it even whiter, so white that it will be blinding in the noonday sun. There is another guy polishing the wooden railings and still another guy washing the glass sunscreens.
Everywhere I go on this ship, it’s startlingly clean. For someone who lives in a seedy section of San Francisco’s Mission District, this is both refreshing and unnerving. I am accustomed to deterioration and dirt. Where I live, there is dog shit on the sidewalks, graffiti on the buildings, and a thin coating of urban grime on everything.
As any physicist can tell you, grime is a natural occurrence. Disorder and decay are the way of the universe. The second Law of Thermodynamics says so. Entropy—the tendency for things to become disordered—always increases. Basically, everything goes to shit.
Eventually, the second Law will lead to the Heat Death of the Univers
e. Death, decay, and disorder are inevitable. There’s no changing that. You can put all the energy you want into a system—cleaning up your desk, washing the dishes, doing the laundry, finding a place for everything and putting everything in its goddamn place. But in the end, entropy will win.
Suppose you decide to clean house—a futile endeavor if you ask me. As you work to battle disorder in your house, your efforts are fueled by the food you’ve eaten. Your body breaks down orderly sugars into simpler, more chaotic forms, adding to the disorder in the universe. Your body produces heat, a disordered form of energy. Ultimately, all your efforts create a small pocket of order—a house that is temporarily clean. But you have, with all your work, increased the disorder in the universe as a whole. As you fight the good fight, you are aiding the enemy.
The ocean is a corrosive force: salt water rusts metal, peels paint, grimes glass. Yet here on the Odyssey, the brave crew is at war with the ocean’s entropic effect.
Last night, after dinner, I asked Tom, the friendly officer who dined with us, about this obsession with cleanliness, having noted it on my first day aboard. Tom says that this obsession is Company Policy. (I swear he said it in capital letters, just like that.) The Company will not tolerate rust or dirt or decay. Their goal is a perfect ship, so sparkling clean you’d think it had just been dipped in bleach.
When I pointed out the futility of this endeavor, Tom nodded. He seemed to realize that they are battling in vain. The Heat Death of the Universe will win.
There are some on the ship who have not aligned themselves with the forces promoting order and tidiness. Ian, the ship’s self—styled “Consulting Propellerhead” appears to be a force for chaos. Max Merriwell, the author who is teaching the writing workshop, may be another troublemaker. At first glance, he appears to be a friendly, dumpy, good-natured, old fellow. But he has more than his share of names, and I think he bears further observation.
I’m not sure about Officer Tom. His job is that of security officer, a position dedicated to keeping order. But I sense in him an easy going nature and a fondness for joking that seems at odds with a sincere dedication to order.