Ship for Brains (Cruise Confidential 2)

by Brian David Bruns

  “I’m inclined to agree.”

  “Jesus, Brian,” he chided. “Even here with a stripper on your lap you sound like a goddamn librarian.”

  Then Bill’s lady led him behind the blue curtain. That, of course, was my cue to leave. To my surprise, however, Auggie came lumbering back to the table in just a few minutes. Now it was my turn to again gape like a fish.

  “What the hell are you doing back already?”

  “I screwed a hot stripper!” he boomed with a slur.

  “In three minutes?”

  “That was only three minutes?” he asked blearily, falling into his seat. He was so drunk that he couldn’t even stand.

  “You have a fifteen hundred dollar watch and didn’t bother to check it? You paid for an hour with her!”

  He swayed dangerously in his seat and repeated moronically, “But I screwed a hot stripper.”

  “At my age,” I commented, “If I was that fast I’d have a heart attack.”

  “Well...” he admitted, “She took care of me, anyway.”

  “Wow,” I marveled. “That was a lot of money for a couple of minutes and only having to wash your hands. Maybe I’m in the wrong business.”

  Auggie just grinned stupidly at me and asked, “You know what? I screwed a hot stripper!”

  “You sure did,” I congratulated. He was too drunk to hear my snicker.

  All night Auggie staggered around Ensenada proudly shrieking his accomplishment to everyone. No less than twenty unsuspecting victims were accosted in the street by his drunk self-congratulations. Every time I turned my back, I ended up hauling him off a bewildered innocent. Once he came back without a shirt, for some reason.

  His raving included children. A group of local kids loitered around a vendor’s cart sitting beneath a street light. Auggie barged right up to them, though he knew no Spanish. He tried to compensate with volume.

  “Ay!” he cried. “You know what? I... yo... screwed a hot stripper! Comperndy, kids? Comperndy bonita? Ha, bone-ita! I’m funny!”

  The children understood nothing, of course, but were greatly entertained by his failing efforts at equilibrium. But the fruit vendor was not at all impressed by this screaming, staggering, powerful sailor. The vendor shooed him away with cross words and threats of policía. Yet Auggie was undeterred. Finally realizing that his words did not have the proper effect on his audience, he began illustrating with motions.

  “That’s enough,” I said, grabbing his hands to stop the carnal miming.

  “Yo bone hot carne mama!” he cried as I drug him down the dark street away from his intended audience.

  Auggie was a huge guy, so my struggle to get him back to the ship was difficult. I pushed and prodded, but he tugged forcefully back. He tripped on the sidewalk and dropped like a stone. That seemed to have broken his will, so with his arm around my shoulder, I hauled him off. He wouldn’t shut up the entire agonizing trip.

  But the problems were just beginning. Crew members are not allowed to come aboard drunk, and it would be hard indeed to hide Auggie’s inebriation. We stopped just out of sight from the gangway, and I propped him up against the wall.

  “OK, Auggie,” I said clearly and forcefully. “We need to get you on the ship.”

  “No!” he cried, “There is no hot mamacita carne grande on the ship!”

  “That’s OK,” I said, “Because you already did her. Remember?”

  “That’s right!” he declared brightly. “I did! I screwed a hot stripper!”

  “The first thing we need is a shirt. I guess I can buy one at a shop around here. Do you have your ship ID?”

  Auggie’s attempt to pick through his pockets was pathetic. As I scanned the area for a shop selling T-shirts, a petite Bulgarian crew member approached. Before I could stop him, big, brawny Auggie leapt out of the shadows and bellowed at her, “I boned a hot stripper today!”

  With a shriek, the poor woman leapt back in terror. Auggie was lucky she wasn’t carrying mace. She crouched protectively, but was reassured when I wrestled her assailant back. Only then did she recognize Auggie as her coworker in the gift shop.

  “Auggie!” she snapped at him, waggling a finger. “They’ve fired two people this last month for drunkenness! What’s wrong with you?”

  “We need to get him in bed,” I said to her. “Can you help us distract security?”

  She marched over to Auggie and promptly kicked him in the shin. Hard. Auggie howled in pain and grabbed his shin. It was a mess trying to hold him up as he hopped around on one leg.

  “What was that for?” I asked.

  “For scaring me!” she snapped at Auggie. “And the price of my help. Now you have an excuse for his staggering. See? He’s bleeding. Just say he tripped and hurt himself.”

  The Bulgarian pulled from her bag a souvenir T-shirt that barely fit across Auggie’s broad shoulders. We tag-teamed security, with me distracting with questions like, ‘I have an MP3 player here, do you need to scan that? Here’s my bag, I don’t think I have any metal in it, let me see...’. Meanwhile the Bulgarian helped Auggie get his ID into the card reader because he was unable to hold it without dropping it.

  Amazingly, we made it through security. Getting Auggie to his cabin was a nightmare, because he was too drunk to tell me which way to go. Just when I thought he would end up sleeping in my cabin, he slurred that we were there. Auggie flopped onto bed and, just before passing out, murmured, “I have to be at work at midnight.”

  “What?”

  “Get out!” he roared, suddenly flaring to life. “I have to be at work in an hour!”

  “OK, OK,” I said, stalling as I set his alarm for him.

  Just before midnight I called Auggie’s cabin, but there was no answer. I decided to stroll by the gift shop and check that he’d made it. When I arrived he was standing ramrod straight behind the counter, over-compensating for his obvious inebriation. A middle-aged, somewhat portly guest was chatting with him about football.

  “My son played football, too,” she was saying. “But never attended college. He says he likes vodka, so I want to get him the best vodka in the world. Any suggestions?”

  “That’s easy,” Auggie answered. “Grey Goose.”

  He handed her a bottle, and she beamed up at him with gratification.

  “Sure looks pretty,” she said. “You say it is the best?”

  Auggie showed her literature on all of its international awards and credentials, and she seemed satisfied. Then suddenly she began spluttering with indignation.

  “Why, this is from France! Oh, I’ll never... ugh! I’ll never buy anything from those horrible little people who don’t support our holy war in the Gulf.”

  Auggie remained silent, but glared down at her.

  “You do agree, don’t you? You look like a good, solid American boy.”

  Auggie rumbled like a volcano about to blast apart and spew fiery destruction. Amazingly, the lady was unaware of her imminent danger. She just looked up at him, waiting. Finally she asked, “Where are you from, anyway?”

  “France!” he thundered, towering over her.

  In terror, the woman dropped the bottle with a crash and fled. Auggie stared at the deck bristling with dangerous shards of glass. He ignored it and marched over to the snack aisle. He popped opened a can of Pringles and began cramming them into his mouth. When another lady wandered into the shop, he marched menacingly right at her and shouted with a mouthful of chips, “I don’t want anyone in my store right now!”

  She fled, screaming, and Auggie blithely chomped away.

  6

  And so came an end to my glory days on Ecstasy with Bill. We had made a killing here, but the ship was repositioning to a different home port and Bill wanted nothing to do with it. We stood together for a moment before the gangway, waiting for clearance.

  “This is your chance to get into the big boy club,” Bill said tiredly. He was obviously hung over, but had already bragged about how drunk he was going to get on his fli
ght over the Pacific.

  “I must admit that I’m nervous,” I said as the security chief finally waved us through. “I’m not going to have an associate for my cruise, right?”

  “You won’t need one,” Bill said. “It’s a two week cruise, man. Lots of time. When you dock in Miami, there’ll be another auctioneer to take over from there and you go on vacation. To your communist shit-hole or wherever.”

  “Just me and the Ecstasy,” I said, possibilities swirling through my head.

  “Not exactly,” Bill said, hefting his suitcase on the gangway. “Sundance is sending someone here for the first four days to make sure you know what you’re doing.”

  My excitement melted. I asked, “Who?”

  Bill’s answer was a smug smile. I watched him depart down the gangway and disappear across the pier. Slowly I turned about to glance up at Ecstasy. My ship. My first step to getting my Bianca for good. But who would they send to supervise my performance?

  “Well, my little tadpole!” an arrogant voice called behind me. “You claim to be frog worthy. We shall see.”

  Part 4: The End of the Beginning

  Eating words has never given me indigestion.

  —Winston Churchill

  Chapter 17. Fear and Apathy in Acapulco

  1

  My nemesis from auctioneer screening, Lucifer, boarded the ship in all his hyena-like glory. His traveling had obviously been wearying, as he slouched visibly and his hair was in wild disarray. It made his pronounced ears look even more dog-like, complimenting a snaggletoothed grin large and fierce.

  Lucifer wore his usual blue pin-striped shirt with white French cuffs, though this time it was so unkempt as to appear pulled from a garbage can. The horrendously wrinkled article was half-pulled out from his pants, and a ring of perspiration darkened his slovenly belly. This want of an iron was perhaps less due to travel than to his manner of packing: his only luggage was a gargantuan sack which he drug across the floor. It appeared designed to hold a set of golf clubs, but its disproportionate lumps bore evidence of clumped clothing.

  Disheveled and sweaty as he was, Lucifer still strut as if he owned Ecstasy.

  “Why, if it isn’t the Father of Lies himself,” I greeted with a forced smile.

  I extended my hand, which Lucifer absently shook. His sweating palms were unpleasant. Without ceremony he hauled his bag to the elevator and kicked it before the doors. Spinning around, he contemptuously looked me up and down.

  “Asking for your own ship this soon is pure arrogance,” he barked without ceremony.

  Before I could retort, Lucifer jabbed the elevator button and added, “I like that.”

  That’s a first, I thought.

  “From on high I was pleased to learn that you have begun to talk the talk,” he continued. “But I wonder if you can walk the walk?”

  As the elevator doors opened, he kicked his luggage so as to block access for anyone else.

  “On Lido I’ll explain why you have been so blessed with my presence.”

  “Shall I kiss your ring?” I mocked.

  “You shall kiss my ass,” he retorted as the elevator doors closed.

  Fifteen minutes later I sat in the Lido restaurant watching Lucifer eat. It was disgusting. He ordered a triple burger, without cheese or any pretext of nutritional merit. I watched him scrape from the white bun any bits of toasted onion, as well as discard the lettuce, onion, and tomato as having no place in his culinary regimen. He squeezed ketchup over the top so liberally that it flowed down the flanks like lava from a volcano.

  I was rapidly becoming uncomfortable with my comparing of him to a hyena, because he provided such ample evidence in support of the analogy. He ripped apart his meal without even a ruse of civility, tearing off huge mouthfuls of food as if trying to secure it from a squabbling rival. It was revolting. Ketchup splattered everywhere from his violent, rending bites.

  “I am not playing the same role as in Pittsburgh,” Lucifer mumbled with a mouth stuffed with half-chewed beef and fat. Ketchup streamed from the corner of his mouth in suitably predatory fashion. “On land I am there to break, but at sea I am here to help.”

  “I see.”

  “Ah, but you won’t see!” Lucifer rejoined sharply, losing onto his belly a flap of grease-soaked bun. “I will be in the shadows.”

  “Lucifer lurking in the shadows to ‘help me’,” I replied drily. “Finally I have proof for my mother that there is a worse alternative to my atheism.”

  “I know where you should be,” he mouthed crassly. “And that’s where I will be. If you’re not there, then Bill loses his vacation.”

  Lucifer ate without speaking for a while, obviously preferring his burger to anything I might have to say. Yet he was far from silent: I cringed at his noisome chewing and the wheezing breath between gulps. I pondered the import of his presence, my stomach churning at more than just his poor table manners. What if I didn’t anticipate everything he thought was important? What if there was some event that was common to auctioneers that Bill, in all his arrogance, eschewed? Further, I was terrified of Lucifer’s hyper-critical eye reviewing my first fully autonomous auction. And I was rusty, because Bill didn’t even give me five minutes of podium time.

  “Well,” I began slowly. “It’s a fourteen-day cruise, but we are low on inventory. I’m planning four auctions.”

  “I am here four days,” Lucifer said. “You’ll do the first auction before I get off in Acapulco.”

  So much for stalling until he left!

  “I’ll get you a copy of my scheduled events,” I offered. “Tomorrow we are in port all day, so I’ll only hand out raffle tickets and such on the Promenade. The next day I’ll have the first auction. I want art-excited people to attend an auction first, rather than my lecture on—”

  “A lecture, of course!” Lucifer interrupted, showering me with bits of burger. “I expect nothing less from a goddamn art-loving loser such as yourself.”

  “The lecture will be the day after the auction,” I explained. “Because I don’t want people to attend a lecture and feel they have satisfied their art cravings for a few days, you know?”

  “Oh, I know,” Lucifer boomed. “I’m shocked that you do, my little sea slug. Care to lecture on color as well?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You had plenty of shite to say about pink shirts in Pittsburgh. Perhaps you would prefer to lecture on color coordination and fashion as well? I think you’d make a better interior decorator than art auctioneer. You seem gay enough.”

  “And I think you’d make a better janitor than a trainer,” I snapped. “You swept up more dust dragging your luggage than half the cabin stewards on board.”

  Lucifer chortled appreciatively as he masticated yet another grossly overdone bite. Sensing that my temper was getting the better of me, I opted to change the subject.

  “Have you heard any news about Charles and Tatli on the Majesty of the Seas? When I left, they weren’t doing so well.”

  “They weren’t,” Lucifer agreed. “They had lots of problems, but I went to their ship. Charles followed my orders and now they are doing fine.”

  Of course, I thought cynically. I bit my tongue.

  “And what about my class of trainees? Anybody else asking to be an auctioneer yet?”

  Lucifer’s eyes flashed as he boorishly chomped with his mouth open, teeth stained red with ketchup. He did not answer.

  2

  The next morning I sighed as Petra handed me a cappuccino. I stared deep into the cinnamon-dusted foam, seeking comfort. Instead I found a sneeze.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “He’s going to eat me. I just know it.”

  Though the Rolls Royce Café was empty but for the two of us, I still leaned in conspiratorially before explaining further. “Lucifer is going to eat me. You should see the way he tears flesh, with bloody teeth like in that Dalí work, Men Devouring Themselves. When you hear me screaming, don
’t try to help. Just run, ‘cause it’ll be gross.”

  I glanced at the café’s walls, filled with neat rows of artwork hanging floor to ceiling. I had taken great care in their arrangement, but was already second-guessing all my labor. Was this not art I was to feature as mystery works on tomorrow’s auction? The flyers I had printed featured the same artists, didn’t they? And what about those easels marching up to the bumper of the vintage Rolls Royce? Was it enough?

  “I need to get a bracelet that says WWLD.”

  “What’s that mean?” she asked, frowning in confusion.

  “What Would Lucifer Do?”

  “Brian,” Petra soothed. “You’ll be fine.”

  “What if he walks by and doesn’t see me working? Maybe I should be, oh I don’t know, scrubbing the artwork or something.”

  “I’ve never seen you like this before,” Petra chided gently. “If Bill didn’t intimidate you, which is amazing in itself, why would you let this guy?”

  “Bill did intimidate me,” I admitted. “At least a bit. But this guy is horrible. He gets off on destroying the hopes and dreams of man.”

  “You act like he really is Lucifer.”

  “Close enough,” I agreed. “Tonight I need to be on the ball advertising tomorrow morning’s auction. The flyers are ready and scheduled for delivery into the staterooms and I bribed the cruise director for a larger advertisement in the ship’s paper for tomorrow. I am advertising free champagne mimosas in all the relevant places. I am about to put signs on some of the artwork scattered around the ship, as well.”

  “Sounds like a lot.”

  “It is a lot,” I replied. “But help me go through it again. What do you think the guests will be doing tonight?”

  “The show,” Petra answered. She paused a moment before asking, “You aren’t doing any promotions with any... entertainers... are you?”

  “Oh hell, no,” I said, almost recoiling. “The last thing I need right now is another Tina drama. Or Carrie. Or Joshua... are they all dysfunctional, or is it just me?”