by Emme Rollins
And so, unlike Atticus Ford, who largely jumped up and down the stage and seized everyone’s attention with his sheer charisma, I improvised with dancing.
Naturally, the haters were on to me again.
They said:
1. I couldn’t dance
2. I couldn’t dance to save Atticus Ford’s life, and that was why he was still dead and not spotted in Vegas like so many dead celebrities
3. I should just stop trying to be Atticus Ford, because I was never going to replace him.
But I wasn’t trying to replace Atticus Ford. I was just trying to carve out my own identity and my own niche. My manager told me I should grow a skin thicker than the bark of a rainforest tree, and I should just stop reading my YouTube comments.
It was harder than weaning myself off Candy Crush, which I played during our tour downtime hours.
Anyhow, the haters didn’t stop me from trying harder to prove myself. I studied the art of music and took my turns at writing songs for Red Velvet. Two of those songs were rock ballads with an Eagles tunesy country rock tone to them, and they became Top 10 Billboard hits. One even stayed in the Top 100 for 34 weeks. Another one was a Queen cover I did – ‘It’s a Kind of Magic’. That shot to No. 1 and stayed there for two weeks.
The haters were silenced. I could do it on my own.
So all that took four years. And during the last two years, after I had my own hit with a song that was penned my own hands, both music and lyrics, I let myself indulge a bit.
Oh yeah.
I didn’t swear off sex indefinitely.
I merely took a hiatus.
REBECCA
Kurt Taylor!
I don’t believe he’s here!
I don’t believe how I am thinking about him in exclamation marks!
I am a tempestuous, impetuous person, and my blood was boiling over in a quick simmer – like a kettle spilling over – when I threw the pail of dirty water at his face. I remember that face well. That deceptively handsome face, with his mouth twisted in a sneer whenever he favored me with a glance. Or sometimes he would give me a quizzical look, as if he couldn’t make up his mind where I stood with him.
Well, he certainly got the brunt of my anger. And he deserved every bit of it.
I hate him.
(There, I actually said it without an exclamation mark.)
I hate, hate, hate, detest, loathe Kurt Taylor, and I wished the earth – or in this case, the ship’s deck – would just open up a hole and swallow him.
The reason why I hate him so much makes me heartsick. Every time I think of it, a knife twists in my chest, and a burning pain spreads down to my gut and up my throat, flooding my brain with things I’d rather not think about.
Kurt Taylor stands there on the sun deck of the Princess Alexandria, staring at me. His jaw has dropped, and his hair is plastered on his forehead in wet, straggly strands. He always did have the most marvelous hair, which he keeps long, even in high school. I envied him that hair, especially since mine is mostly unmanageable without a ton of mousse.
His hair.
I mustn’t think of his hair. There was many a time in high school that I caught myself staring at that hair. In some classes, I sat behind him, and I was staring at his glossy auburn looks, which are slightly wavy at the back. At that time, it was shoulder-length. Even then, I had the compulsion to twine my fingers around it, just to see how silky it felt.
Now, his hair is longer than shoulder-length, but he ties it up with a band into a ponytail.
Mrs. Caldwell next to me says “Wow!” in that excitable, whispery voice of hers. Her eyes sparkle as brightly as her cataracts would allow.
“You got him good!” crows the kid who has come onto the scene. He’s the one responsible for me recognizing Kurt Taylor. So I owe him one. Or not, depending on how you look at it.
I drop the now empty pail onto the deck beside me. It strikes the floor with a clatter. My chest is heaving and my arms ache from lifting that heavy load.
The kid turns to Kurt Taylor.
“Aren’t you gonna hit her with that mop?” he demands gleefully.
Kurt Taylor doesn’t acknowledge the kid’s advice, thank goodness.
Instead, he closes his mouth, probably because soapy water is running down his face and hair and getting into it. The front and shoulders of his shirt is completely drenched. He is wearing some plain blue overalls which remind me of the kind our high school janitors used to don.
You can still see the outline of his hunky body underneath it, especially now that he is wet. You can see how well-filled his sleeves are. There are probably hard muscles inside those sleeves. His pectorals are probably hard as well, and now that his shirt is wet, his nipples are outlined like little pointed peaks.
Ooooo. The unbidden shudder trills between my legs.
I suppress it sternly.
His butt is equally tight as well, as are his thighs. He is as tall as I remembered. His eyes are still as blue as ever. They are now wide open with surprise. Shock. Remembrance.
Bad remembrance.
God, he’s beautiful. I have always thought so, that smug bastard. Unfortunately, his beauty also goes with cruelty. I only know it too well.
He doesn’t say anything to me. He is still too stunned. I suppose he doesn’t expect to see me working on a cruise ship. Then again, I didn’t expect to see him mopping the sun deck of a cruise ship on the Atlantic en route to the Bahamas.
You see, I purposefully did not follow Kurt Taylor’s career.
I did not, for instance, watch his performances on that program, American Rock Star, where they screen contestants for that awful rock band whose music I never liked.
I did not, for another instance, download his official Vevo channel on YouTube to watch his music videos as he gyrates and twists and shakes his well-shaped bum to dance moves I never knew he had when I watched him glide on the floor during our prom.
I completely refused to indulge in Googling his name to see which news channels he appeared on. I’ll admit I was curious, but I stemmed that curiosity by choosing to work harder than ever at my college courses.
It was difficult at first, but that curiosity wore off after a while, and Kurt Taylor became another footnote in the corner of my brain, to be tucked away and filed in a box and stamped with ‘DANGER: DO NOT OPEN’.
So I am fairly astonished to see him working a mop on a cruise ship.
But I can’t ask him his reasons for being here right now, because I have just dumped water all over him. He probably will never speak to me again for as long as we both shall live. Which might not be very long in my case if he has anything to do with it.
My cheeks feel warm. Whatever possessed me to lose control of myself like that? But Kurt Taylor had always done that to me – bring out the worst of my temper. I really can’t suppress my rage and negative energy around him. Never could and probably never will.
Before I can embarrass us both any further, I make myself walk away without another word.
*
Damn.
*
With these kinds of things, there are usually repercussions.
The bad thing about being in a ship is that there is an astronomical price to download anything on the Internet, either by the data plan on your cellphone or the ship’s computers in the business center. The staff go everywhere with pagers and walkie-talkies.
If I had a cheap Internet line on my cellphone, I would be furiously downloading webpages now as to find out why Kurt Taylor is on this ship.
I am in my bunk. Moping. Or at least, trying to mope while I speculate as to what happened with Kurt Taylor.
I am naturally too proud to ask anyone about him. I’m sure that snot-nosed kid would have given me the rundown. As it is, my pride is leaving me to speculate wildly as to why he is on this ship, washing the deck.
Some reasons may possibly include:
His latest album release has failed miserably. He is now irretrievably ba
nkrupt. Instead of working at Wendy’s and asking, “Would you like fries with that?”, he opts to hide away his sorrows at sea instead.
He has two million dollars to pay in back taxes and he’s on the run from the IRS.
He is in hiding from an overzealous fan who is stalking him and wants to make him her baby’s papa.
He is actually on the FBI’s witness protection program
He lost a bet to a band member and he has to perform janitorial duties as a penance.
This is probably the only time I have regretted being on a cruise ship during my four days on board so far. Not having Google at my beck and call.
*
I do not actually work for the cruise line. My job is more complicated than that. Uh . . . well, as complicated as complicated first jobs get, that is.
As a psychology major, I wanted to work with geriatrics, especially those who are pre-Alzheimer’s. I wanted to do a thesis to see if constant mental stimulation – like doing crossword puzzles or playing mahjong – would make a difference in delaying or even preventing the disease. But before I can get to the good stuff, the university sent me to a retirement home to talk to the senior citizens there. It appears that I have to walk before I can run.
Of course, it appears that the folks at the retirement home have been planning a cruise outing for about the better part of two years. And when I happened to show up on the scene, after three months into the job, they asked me to be their minder.
“It’s a very tough job, Rebecca,” the manager of the retirement home said.
“I know,” I said.
I was trying to contain myself from leaping into the air with glee.
“At any time, one of our flock here can get a heart attack.”
“I know.”
“Some of them are on medication, and you have to make sure they take their pills every day while you are there.”
“I know. It’s a very difficult job, but someone has to do it.” I nod sagely. “I have a system to remind them to take their pills.”
It was called ‘timed’ reminders on their cellphones, which they had to carry every hour of the day.
I have never been on a cruise ship before. I have never been to the Bahamas. So when they offered to pay my passage for me – on a discounted fee, under the senior citizens’ fare – I jumped at the opportunity.
As a ‘working’ staff on board, along with the other tour guides and cruise agents, I am required to carry a pager in case someone in my charge has a heart attack.
My pager beeps now.
Insistently. Annoyingly.
I share my cabin with a tour guide from New Orleans, and she is out on some deck activity now – probably playing parlor games with the retired folks.
I’m awfully jumpy whenever my pager beeps. It could be one of my charges keeling over from a heart attack. (Hey, they are old. It can happen on a ratio of one out of two.) It could be one of my charges actually keeling over and falling overboard, which would then necessitate someone jumping in after them to rescue them with a float and a line.
So I leap for the phone beside my bed now and punch in the extension that appears on my pager’s digital display.
“Rebecca Hall here? Did you page for me?”
An unfamiliar male voice resonates deeply on the other side. “Rebecca Hall? This is the Captain speaking. Can I see you in my office right now?”
Uh oh.
I swallow the sudden lump that has come into my throat.
“Of course, sir. Right away, sir.”
I put down the phone.
Why am I calling him ‘sir’? I do not report to him. I am not part of the crew. But he has such a stentorian manner of speaking that I am naturally falling into an obeisant state of mind, like hypnosis. I guess it is part of ‘working’ on this shift. You basically just want to bow to a higher authority, especially one with an appellation like ‘Captain’.
I scurry out of my cabin and make my way up two decks. The Captain’s office and quarters are near the front part of the ship so that he can be closer to the dock or whatever it is Captains need to be close to.
I pass a lot of people, some whom I recognize.
“Good morning, Mrs. O’ Donnell.”
“Yes, Mr. Craig. I’ve had my breakfast. Thank you for asking.”
“Where am I going in such a hurry, you ask, Mrs. George? No, I don’t have diarrhea. I just have to be in the Captain’s office.”
“Mrs. Halberd, are you all right? You look like a little green. After I come back from the Captain’s office, I’ll see about getting you some seasick pills.”
I finally reach the Captain’s office without further interruptions. The embossed name outside the door reads ‘CAPT. KRAZYCEK’.
I timidly knock the door.
“Come in,” says that deep, commanding male voice I heard over the phone.
I have not met the Captain yet. I have seen him from afar, and he is certainly very handsome. I open the door and enter.
The Captain is seated behind his oak-paneled desk, which has been polished to gleam. Various paraphernalia sit on this table – a tiny ship’s model, a complicated compass system, documents, pens, assorted bric-bracs. The walls are filled with more navigation equipment and charts. There are several books on the shelves, but I can see that these are behind locked glass cabinets so as not to allow anything to fall off while the ship lists.
Captain Victor Krazycek is as handsome as I remember him, though he’s a little too old for my tastes. He looks to be in his early forties, with black hair and stormy grey eyes which make me think of the ocean during a tempest – only that I have never been in a tempest. (OK, he’s not old old by most people’s standards, but I’m only twenty-three and he’s certainly old enough to be my father if he had me when he was twenty.)
I can well imagine a man who looks and carries himself the way he does to have garnered and to continue to garner a lot of female attention. I can also well imagine him sowing his wild oats at every port he calls. Probably a lot of children around the world can lay claim to Captain Victor being their father, and more probably my imagination is being carried away by the majesty of this man before me.
I clear my throat. He looks up at me intently with his piercing grey eyes that seem to look right through me. I almost have to take a step back with the impact.
“Captain, uh, Victor . . . you asked to see me?”
“Yes. You must be Ms. Hall.”
“Please call me Rebecca.” I say in a gush. Not for flirtation purposes, mind you, but it makes me uncomfortable to be addressed as Ms. Hall. That was what my most hated professor, Mr. Thurston, used to call me.
How nice of you to join us today, Ms. Hall. I trust you’ve had a good nap on your desk just now.
The Captain gestures to one of the two chairs before his desk.
“Please, sit down.”
I seat myself with a scrape of the chair. My pulse is racing. I suspect I am about to be admonished.
“Ms. Hall.”
“Rebecca.”
“Rebecca.” The Captain pauses to appraise me. I know I look a little sweaty and disheveled running around in the summer heat, and so I’m not at my best. “There has been a complaint about you from one of my crew members.”
Yes. I was expecting this.
“I can explain,” I say. “I – ”
“How can you explain something when you don’t even know what it is?” he chides.
Right. I must appear quite contrite, because he chuckles.
“You’re a feisty young woman, Rebecca. Now, on to the complaint. One of my crew members has made a complaint about you as to what happened this morning.”
My cheeks flush. “Captain, it was very wrong of me to lose my temper like that, I admit. But your crew member and I go a long way back, and he did something very terrible back then. Something I never forgave him for.”
His grey eyes dance. “So you knew Mr. Kartik before this?”
I am nonpluss
ed.
“Mr. Kartik?”
“Yes. Mr. Kartik was my crew member who made the complaint about you.”
“Oh.” I guess I was expecting him to say ‘Mr. Taylor’.
“So . . . do you know Mr. Kartik?”
“Uh, no, I don’t.”
He smiles. He must think I’m an impetuous dope.
He says, “Mr. Kartik observed you throwing a pail of water at Kurt Taylor, who is a guest of the state of New York.”
“Huh?”
“You did throw water at Kurt Taylor, did you not, Rebecca?”
“Yes, I did. And I do know who Kurt Taylor is. I just don’t understand the part about the ‘guest’.”
He gives me a quizzical expression. “Do you know what happened to Kurt Taylor, Rebecca?”
I frown. “No, I don’t.”
He raises his eyebrows as if to say: “Don’t you follow the news?”
KURT
After Rebecca Hall dumped the pail of dirty water on me, I stare at her retreating form for a whole minute, stunned.
Until the little tyke reminds me, “Hey, aren’t you gonna get changed? You’re dripping all over the floor. Ewwww.”
Right. First things first.
Muttering something inaudible, I grab my mop and the now empty pail and stalk off into the lower decks. I have my own cabin down there which I don’t have to share with anyone because of the predicament I’m in.
That’s right. A predicament.
It happened like this.
After years of hard work and building up my credibility as the lead singer of Red Velvet, I decided to let myself have a little fun. It was four years of backbreaking labor. I had sex occasionally, but most of the time, I was just too tired after fourteen hours of grueling work to get my pecker up. It isn’t impotence either. I’m too young for that. It was just sheer fatigue.