Though Carrie held her alcohol well, I knew she was tanked. Before I retired, I wanted to make sure she got back to her cabin all right. Upon reaching her cabin, I found the door wide open and she was not inside. Her laughter tinkled from across the hall. The door behind me was also wide open, and I recognized it as the guest comedian’s cabin. The old man sat upon the chair heavily, like a grandfather spinning yarns to a cluster of children before a fireplace. Carrie and two other ladies lay strewn across his bed, listening with rapt attention.
They waved me in, and the wrinkled, white-haired comedian offered me a cup of coffee.
“I always bring the real deal,” he said, rising to pour me a cup. “Ship coffee is like paint thinner.”
“I quite agree,” I said, taking the steaming brew. It smelled delicious and tasted even better.
“But not fresh thinner, mind you,” the man clarified gravely. “Had the captain himself painted a masterpiece called ‘Black ship at night’, and put all his brushes into an old mason jar filled with thinner; even that fails to describe it. But the crud that settles on the bottom of the jar? That, my friend, is ship coffee.”
“Profound,” I congratulated. “I see you’ve given this a lot of thought.”
“Part of my contract with Carnival is that I have a coffee machine in my cabin,” he explained. “I don’t drink and I’m too old for sex. So, on ships, that leaves only good conversation and good coffee.”
“Both rare commodities among crew,” I agreed.
Carrie patted the bed beside her. I climbed onto the bed to lounge next to her. Time flew as the comedian made us laugh and laugh, and laugh some more. Like many comedians on ships, his shows for guests were necessarily family oriented and, thusly, clean. But in his own cabin with his own private audience, the comedian let loose with all sorts of jokes about sex, politics, and religion. His grateful audience was already primed with alcohol, so it was a grand exhibit. We were shocked when he announced it was nearly 4 a.m. and time for him to retire.
Carrie’s drink had finally caught up with her, and I had to help her across the hall to her room. I was instantly jealous of Carrie’s cabin because of the huge, full-sized bed. There was hardly any room to walk at all, not that Carrie needed any. She flung herself onto a thick, lustrously soft alpaca blanket. It was rare for anyone to bring such a comforter on a ship, but evidently Carrie felt the special bed required a special blanket. It was dangerously inviting, even if Carrie hadn’t motioned for me to join her while unzipping her dress. I sat at the edge of her bed, pondering what to say.
But I needn’t have bothered. She passed out.
I sat there, indulging in one of those moments where you debate through an alcohol-thick mind what to do. I pulled off her shoes and she rolled over to snuggle with a pillow. I tenderly adjusted the alluring blanket over her, then stumbled back to my cabin like a good boy.
And what did I get for behaving? In bed by 3:45, and at 4:00 the awful screeching of the halls being waxed woke me up. I should have stayed with Carrie!
3
“So,” Bill said to me the next day in the art locker. “You joining me in Ensenada later this afternoon?”
“No,” I replied. “I’m meeting with Tina. She said she had something she needed to talk to me about.”
“I’ll bet,” he chortled. “Maybe she’s mad you screwed Carrie last night.”
“What?” I squawked. “Where did you hear that?”
“I had breakfast with the comedian,” he explained. “I’m starting to get jealous of you, which is bullshit. You’re banging hot-ass Tina, hot-ass Carrie, hot-ass but no-tits Petra, and even ugly Vladka on the side.”
“I have slept with no one,” I defended heartily. “And Vladka’s not ugly. You’re such a jerk, man. What’s wrong with you?”
“Bah, Vladka’s skinny with no tits, a flat ass, and bad teeth,” he continued. “But what I don’t get is why you still pretend to be faithful to your Russian.”
“Romanian!” I snapped. “And I am faithful. I made a promise. Why is that so hard for people to understand?”
“Whatever,” he scoffed, then changed the subject. “I requested my vacation, you know. We have the repositioning cruise coming up, but I want to get off before then. I told the fleet manager that you would be good to take over Ecstasy while I’m gone.”
“That’s awesome!” I cried, “But very early. I don’t know if they’d let me already.”
“Well, they have a plan for that. The fleet manager said you wanted to go to October’s training class or something. You can whet your whistle on Ecstasy for one cruise to show your stuff, then go to advanced training with your chick from the Urals.”
“The Carpathians,” I corrected. “You know, Dracula’s castle?”
“Goddamn it,” Bill complained. “I was actually trying that time.”
But I was too excited and heady to bicker with Bill. “Where you going on vacation?”
“Thailand.”
“That sounds awesome,” I said. “Why Thailand?”
“You’ll see why. But I need to clear the photos from the memory stick in my camera. You know how to burn those to a CD?”
“Sure,” I replied. “But I may have to look at them in the process. Is that OK?”
“You can make copies for yourself for all I care,” Bill answered gruffly. “Then you’ll forget about Romania and want to join me in Thailand.”
Bill’s reason behind Thailand became vividly clear when I transferred his photos. Intrigued by his choice of words, my curiosity got the better of me and I had to peek. He had mentioned some great photos from earlier that week when he had gone out to Venice Beach. The photos revealed that he had gone with his Thai room stewardess, but he had not bothered with any photos of the beach. Rather, he had a dozen pictures of them together in a hotel room taking a bath together and, well, other things. Picasso’s Woman with Bracelet Receives Gentleman with a Cat ain’t got nuthin’ on Bill!
4
Tina had made it abundantly clear that she had something important to discuss with me, so we arranged to meet at a restaurant called Mango Mango. Her machinations were evident immediately, because when I arrived she was already with another man.
“Ah, Brian!” she called. “Meet Auggie. He works in the gift shop.”
Auggie was a powerful man easily six foot four inches tall, and was clearly the largest man on-board beside Joshua Tree. But while Josh was merely bulky, Auggie’s physique was well-defined and obviously well-used. His features were blunt, almost brutish, with a nose obviously broken at least once in the past and several scars across his shaved head. As rough as this countenance was to behold, his big smile was warm and genuine.
Tina could not keep her hands from caressing Auggie’s massive shoulders, yet her attention was obviously directed at me. With great delight she commented, “Carrie is mad at you, you know.”
“Carrie is? Why?”
With a smug air, Tina explained simply, “Last night, of course.”
“Nothing happened last night,” I said. “I was a perfect gentleman.”
“Oh, I know,” she articulated. “I know.”
I rolled my eyes and debated walking out right then. What kind of creep did Tina expect me to be? Carrie had passed out! While I couldn’t win, that did not mean I had to flee. Instead I ordered a mango margarita, for which this place was famous.
“Auggie here played football in college,” Tina bubbled. “Where was it again, dear?”
“Quebec,” he answered. “I was a defensive tackle.”
“I didn’t know they played American football in Canada,” I said, marveling that I had not recognized any French Canadian accent.
“With all due respect, dude,” he rebutted with a grin, “Most Americans know nothing about Canada. We have a large football program. In fact—”
“Oh, let’s not talk about football!” Tina interrupted. “There’s so much more interesting things happening. Did you know on our repositionin
g cruise we are visiting Acapulco? I can’t wait to see the clubs!”
Tina had obviously planned this meeting so Auggie and I would vie for her attention. She was not prepared to deal with boy things like football. Her chagrin deepened when we began discussing engineering history.
“The repo cruise, yes,” I agreed. “I can’t wait to see the Panama Canal. One of the architectural wonders of the world.”
“Begun by the French, you know,” Auggie added. “By de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal.”
“Ferdinand de Lesseps,” I said with a complimentary nod. “But de Lesseps drastically underestimated the jungle and didn’t account for the continual flooding of the Chagres River.”
Auggie beamed. “You’re right!”
“I’m currently reading a book on the Panama Canal by David McCullough. It’s called The Path Between the Seas.”
Tina groaned, but Auggie leaned in. “Did you know the Americans had to literally remove all the mosquitos from the Canal Zone? Image removing each and every mosquito from a jungle!”
“Why would they do that?” Tina asked, despite herself.
“Malaria,” I answered. “The connection between malaria and mosquitos was discovered after the French left, by Dr. Gorgas, I believe.”
“I can’t believe this!” Tina lamented. “I’m surrounded by librarians! Auggie, I thought you were a football player.”
“I was,” he said simply.
“Let’s go to Papas & Beer,” Tina offered, realizing the situation was not going the way she had envisioned. She opted for a place too loud to converse. “It’s just across the street. We can do body shots!”
“I was born in France,” Auggie continued, ignoring her. “I lived there until I was ten and listened to stories as a child about Panama. My great grandfather died working on the canal.”
“You’re French?” Tina wailed.
“Auggie is short for Augustus,” he explained. “The Roman emperor? I grew up on the Mediterranean coast.”
Tina, finally beginning to realize the situation she created was now completely beyond her control, commented, “My mother would die if she knew I was talking to a Frenchman.”
Augustus looked at her in surprise. “Why?”
“Freedom fries!” Tina shouted. “Freedom fries!”
Auggie and I both rolled our eyes. The look of betrayal on Tina’s face was precious.
“You see?” Auggie said to me, indicating Tina’s behavior. “We are very different than Americans, but have one big thing in common: ambition. That’s why both of us wanted to build the Panama Canal. We are like brothers, and brothers squabble over petty things.”
“Petty?” Tina barked. “You’re saying 9/11 was petty?”
“Not at all,” Auggie replied calmly. “We weren’t talking about 9/11. Americans always do that, by the way. Look, in the first Gulf War France was your biggest ally. Way, way more than England. But it ruined our economy. And this current mess America got itself into violates the United Nations. Why would we ruin our own economy again for your mistake?”
“Because we asked you to!” Tina retorted. “You’d be speaking German if not for us.”
“And you’d still be an English colony if not for us,” Auggie replied sweetly.
I tried to change the subject back to engineering. “What I want to know is how the French were the world’s foremost engineers for so long. I was on Majesty of the Seas, built by the French, and it was the worst design ever. And it had all these stupid, soldered lips across the halls that served no purpose.”
“America has the best military in the world,” Tina muttered to the bar, sulking.
“Yes,” Auggie agreed.
“And France has, what, the best wine and cheese?” I said, playfully repaying the compliment.
Auggie grinned back at me, making his broken nose twist ungainly. It made his reply even funnier when he said, “Style before substance.”
5
All good things must come to an end, and Bill’s and my time in Ecstasy was about to change forever. On the last port of call on our last cruise before repositioning to the Gulf of Mexico, Ensenada gave us one helluva farewell.
The day started with quiet reflection and sizzling carnitas at a crowded curbside table. Eventually Auggie happened by and joined me. Because he worked in the gift shop and was therefore free until midnight, we indulged in a few margaritas. From there we wandered the streets in a nice buzz, until we heard our names falling from the sky above. A dizzying glance up revealed Bill waving at us from a balcony. Our trek upstairs was rewarded with some big ass green drink oddly called a ‘purple hooter’. Then came some beers. Then came the drinking games.
I refrained from too much liquor, still hoping to have a bit of sobriety for later in the day, but Bill and Auggie were going full-on. Bill insisted on a strip club, and things went downhill from there.
There’s little enough dividing line between strip club and brothel in the U.S., and none whatsoever in Mexico. The most popular establishment of this kind in Ensenada was clearly Club Paris, only a few blocks away from Papas & Beer. The exterior of the building was nondescript, but the interior promised something special, all right.
Within five seconds of walking in, we were escorted to a table and brought icy, sweating Coronas. Five seconds after that the small, sweating waiter loudly demanded we pay for the drinks—ten dollars for a Corona in Mexico! He also demanded a sizable tip. Already suffering nasty visions of Salsa in Cozumel, I decided to bolt.
As I finished off my beer and prepared to leave these two juveniles to their fun, Bill barked at the waiter to bring the hot chicks before he brought any more overpriced beer. Instantly from behind a curtain bounced three exceptionally gorgeous Mexican girls with fake tits. While the label ‘girls’ was probably a misnomer, it was a close call. I wanted to leave. Bill wanted to stay. And Auggie?
Auggie was going absolutely insane. He was so filled with lust that he made Bill look prudish and me look dead.
“My God!” he cried, leaning back to look at us as his stripper wiggled nicely on his lap. “I must have her! I’ve got to screw this chick or I will die!”
“Calm down, Auggie,” I started to say, but Bill interrupted me.
“Take her in the back, man,” Bill said. “Where do you think we are? You ain’t in Canada, amigo.”
Auggie began shaking in his seat, convulsing as if suffering a seizure. His stripper was so freaked out that she leapt off him and padded away to safety.
“Jesus, Auggie,” Bill chided. “Calm down, man.”
“I can’t help it,” he admitted. “Tina’s got me flopping on the end of her line like a fish. I need release!”
The music changed away from Spanish hip hop to begin a flamenco beat. Speakers hidden in the dark all around us resonated with the sounds of clapping hands and Spanish guitar until we felt the beat in our chests. All stage lights converged on the red curtain at the back of the stage, shivering just enough to tease us and the smoke that swirled about. The music began to build, and suddenly the curtain parted to reveal a woman of devastating beauty.
Somehow, a Spanish Catherine Zeta-Jones stepped out from the movie Zorro and onto our stage in Mexico. She had lustrous black hair bound by a red flower, and golden hoops from her ears glinted brilliantly. Upon the shoulder of her flamenco dress were red bundles of lace that accented the chocolate skin of her bare arms to perfection. The top of the dress was a tightly laced black bodice, below which flowed multiple tiers of red laced skirts.
As one, we all gasped. She was stunningly beautiful. She grabbed her skirts and spun with the music, kicking and thrusting her hips to the hot Flamenco beat. It was a mesmerizing performance, so entrancing as to be sublime. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, she began unlacing her bodice and the back of her dress. She spun about, creating a pattern as the light shimmered off the tips of the loose laces of her dress, and her voluminous breasts risked breaking free.
Auggi
e began shaking in his chair again.
With a dramatic whirl, she dropped her skirts to the stage, revealing long, dark legs and a superb bottom snugly trussed in fishnet stockings and nothing else.
“Oh... my... God...” Auggie breathed.
I concurred. For the first official time in my life, I was struck speechless.
“I must have her!” Auggie roared. His words were loud enough to carry over the music, and the Flamenco Goddess floated off the stage and light into the dark towards us. She leaned into Auggie seductively, her heaving bosom barely hidden behind the loosely laced bodice, and whispered in his ear. His face drained of color with each word. I couldn’t hear what she said, but could detect her sexy Spanish accent. That was hot enough.
“I can’t!” he cried to her.
“You can!” Bill said.
So drunk that he could barely enunciate, Auggie screamed at the Heavens with all the rage and self-loathing of Hamlet decrying the cruelty and betrayal of the world.
“Oh God!” he cried, “I don’t have any money!!”
He began desperately pawing at his watch. “I have a Rolex, think she’ll take a Rolex? I’ll give her my Rolex!”
“Calm down, Auggie,” Bill said, becoming all business. He leaned away from the stripper on his lap and motioned to the Flamenco Goddess. They conversed briefly, then she stepped back to wait.
“What is she waiting for?” Auggie said with a painfully defeated voice.
“She’s waiting for you,” Bill said. He handed Auggie a thick wad of cash and said, “You can pay me back later.”
Auggie gaped at Bill in much the same fish-like manner as he had the Flamenco Goddess, then abruptly leapt up. He took the dancer’s hand and she led him across the floor to disappear behind a blue velvet curtain.
“She’s so hot I’d be done before we even started,” Bill commented, “That’s OK, though, ‘cause I’d still have an hour just staring at her.”
Ship for Brains (Cruise Confidential 2) Page 26