The Umpire Has No Clothes

by Walter Witty

  The only sound in the narrow hallway outside their tiny stateroom was the faint hum of the ship’s engines. She traversed a quarter of its length before reaching the first elevator landing. Punching the call button, she waited, expecting to join half a dozen middle-aged revelers on the way up to the buffet on deck eleven. But when the door opened, the elevator was empty.

  “I’m in luck,” she consoled herself aloud, wondering if she should try that luck later in the ship’s casino on deck seven. Maybe Russ would even upgrade to a bigger cabin, then. One with a porthole, at least.

  Fat chance, the small, recriminating voice inside her head chimed. She recognized the voice as her mother’s. Mother, who, since her divorce, had never liked any man she’d dated, except perhaps the sensible, more responsible Bill Thorne, who drove a Lexus instead of an old red Corvette. (‘Vintage,’ as Russ put it.) Or Alec Andros, the shy bookworm whose smile wasn’t nearly as smooth and sexy, albeit genuine and respectful. Would either of them have put her in an inside cabin for her honeymoon, as Russ had? Obviously not, although what mother didn’t understand was the attraction she felt to the masculinity that emanated from Russ—and how deceptively safe he made her feel. It had been so easy to tumble for him, too—this man every Fifty Shades of Grey fan wanted. It had been like a robot falling for a magnet. True, she had to face the fact that Russ only umpired Little League, and had only scored two national shaving commercials before a more recent string of failed auditions. But did that mean he’d never score a movie role, or that the script she’d signed onto by marrying him was destined to be the role of Kate Winslet in Revolutionary Road?

  INT. DECK ELEVEN DINING ROOM. 8 A.M..

  Connie approaches the breakfast buffet. A drink station stands opposite, with two fresh urns of coffee at the ready. She glances around the room in curious disconcertion. No one is visible in the seating areas or behind the counters. She pokes her head through an open door into the kitchen, and calls.

  CONNIE

  Anyone here?

  She starts to spoon some eggs onto a plate in line, samples a hot slice of bacon, then stops. She walks around the entire room, and through the kitchen, encountering no one. Dumbfounded, she stands before the coffee urn, pours a steaming cup and tastes it. Then she sets it down and leaves the dining room, walking slowly in reverse, watching for movement. A sign reads “Breakfast 6:30—9:30.”

  EXT. POOL AREA. 8:05 A.M..

  Connie emerges onto the pool deck, and looks over the rail at the activity area. The deck chairs all are empty. In rising panic, she runs back to the nearest elevator landing and quickly descends one floor via the stairs.

  INT. DECK TEN. 8:07 A.M..

  She bangs on the nearest stateroom door. There is no answer. She tries the next stateroom. She sees a courtesy phone, runs to it, but finds it dead. She finds another stateroom with door ajar. She sees that the bed is mussed, as though the occupants have just left.

  CONNIE (entering)

  Hello? Hello?

  She looks into the bathroom, then the closets. There are clothes and luggage. She tries the phone. No dial tone. She tries the TV. The cruise director is narrating a pre-recorded rundown of the day’s events: bingo, glass blowing, 80s trivia, wine tasting, Albert Pujois retrospective. She flips channels, but it’s the same rundown on all channels. She walks to the window and looks out at the open sea. To the right, in the direction the ship is heading, storm clouds appear on the horizon.

  INT. MANY DECKS. 8:10 A.M..

  In full panic, Connie runs along the hallways, past empty and silent lounges, shops, casino, theatre, then up to the bridge. There she encounters a solid steel door with a sign reading “Authorized Personnel Only.” Finding it locked, she bangs on it.

  CONNIE

  Open up!

  Exasperated, she sees a red fire alarm button inside a plastic cover. She hesitates, then opens the cover and punches the button. At first there is no reaction, then a ship-wide muster alarm sounds. She goes back out on deck overlooking the pool area, and watches for people to emerge, but no one does. Then the alarm goes silent.

  INT. DECK EIGHT. 8:14 A.M.

  Connie arrives, running, to her own stateroom. Trembling and fumbling with her pass key, she finally flings open the door to see an empty bed. Russ is gone. In the bathroom she sees his shaver beside the sink, and there is a wet bath mat on the floor. She stumbles out, then sees the notice showing where to congregate for the lifejacket drill, and rushes out to the side deck where they’d been instructed to go whenever an alarm sounded.

  When she burst out onto the teak deck amidships, she found Russ standing there in tee shirt, sweat pants and sandals, half shaved. His eyebrows furrowed in perplexed incredulity as she approached, and he lifted one arm in a sweeping gesture toward the line of securely fastened lifeboats behind him. “Where is everybody?” he asked in askance curiosity. “Where were you?”

  She ran to him, and collided with him, propelling him backward from the number 6 etched on the shuffleboard court beneath them into the Minus 10 panel. “There’s no one on the ship,” she whispered urgently, while catching her breath.

  Still, he did not hold onto her the same way she did. Instead, he stood limply, as though digesting news about the Lakers losing to the Scarboro Shuttlecocks. “What?”

  She shoved him away from her. “Did you hear me? There’s no one on the ship!” She wondered if slapping him might help, but then let words do it for her, telling him everything she’d done, ending with, “What in God’s name has happened, Russ? Where in hell has everyone gone??”

  Russ scowled, looking down at the numeral ten at his feet. Then he suddenly seized her hand as though she were a disobedient child, leading her inside and back toward the front of the ship. He said nothing on the way, only squeezed her hand tighter the more vacant public areas they passed. When they finally arrived at the bridge’s locked metal door, he knocked hard, listened, and then kicked at the handle impotently.

  “I’ll need something,” he said. “I’ll be back. Wait here.”

  “I’m not waiting here! Where you going?”

  “To the gym.”

  Not letting him out of her sight, she followed him down one flight to a room where several dozen exercise machines encompassed a semi-circular tinted window facing forward. Russ went to the free weights and selected a twenty pound iron dumbbell from an upright rack next to a treadmill. Then he stepped past her, still glaring straight ahead in grim determination.

  The third time Russ bashed at the handle of the bridge’s door was the charm. The thing snapped cleanly off, leaving behind a twisted metal cylinder with no projection to leverage. In anger, he next wailed down on it, succeeding only in bending the twisted nub even more. After this, he slammed the dumbbell repeatedly against the door itself until his frustration finally ebbed.

  Great idea, champ, Connie heard her mother’s voice echo inside her.

  As though he’d heard it too, Russ dropped the dumbbell and walked out. She followed him up and around the exterior bridge deck to where it ended at a four foot rail. There, he leaned over the rail and peered beyond it to the left. Then he climbed over and reached up to grip the nearest of several large hinged wipers in order to lower himself onto the narrow walkway beneath the long, flat glass bridge window. She saw him lean forward, then, cupping his hands to peer inside. When he returned, though, his face had drained of all expression.

  “What is it?” she demanded.

  Russ climbed slowly back over the rail before answering. “It’s nothing,” he announced, his voice oddly vacant. “There’s no one at the helm.”

  She remained frozen in place, uncertain she’d heard him correctly. Because of this, she did not react quickly enough to follow him. Instead, she watched him disappear. When he returned, moments later, he carried the dumbbell, and again passed her without a word. As he climbed over the rail once more, however, she stopped him with a warning. “You really think that’s smart?” she asked. When he turned toward h
er, she pointed toward the horizon behind him, where a dark line of thunderstorms approached. “With a broken window, wouldn’t the ship’s controls short-circuit in the storm or something?”

  He considered it, then nodded. “We’re off course, heading southeast. So we have to get to the radio, Connie.”

  “How about a crow bar?” she suggested. “Maybe there’s a fire axe down in the crew quarters somewhere. You could cut through the wall.”

  INT. DECK THREE. 8:44 A.M..

  Russ searches the crew quarters, finding a laundry room and a supply room full of painting and cleaning equipment. He finds a tool box, takes something. He passes an open stateroom door, and goes inside when he hears running water. He flings open the bathroom door to find a steam filled shower with no one there. He cuts off the shower, then sees a tuxedo laid out on the bed, with shoes and pants beside it. A name tag reads “Gonzalez.” A framed photo shows a group of many foreign employees around an ice sculpture. He picks up a book beside the bed, and turns it over to see the title: “The Bermuda Triangle: An Illustrated History.” He turns pages, seeing images of lost planes and ships. He is tracing a map with his finger, as if plotting their own position on it, when he hears the ship’s horn blast. He rushes out, past movie posters for Angels in the Outfield, Mystery Alaska, Bend It Like Beckham, Heaven Can Wait, Jerry McGuire, Bad News Bears, and Titanic.

  EXT. DECK ELEVEN. 8:48 A.M.

  Connie is startled by the loud blast, and drops her whisky glass, which shatters next to the pool bar where she sits. Ominously dark, it begins to rain, so she goes back inside.

  INT. DECK TWELVE. 8:50 A.M.

  When Russ appears, he is carrying a small hand axe. He uses it to pound on the bridge door.

  RUSS

  Is someone in there? Open up! You hear me?

  CONNIE (in disappointment)

  Is that all you could find?

  Another longer blast sounds, then an alarm. He tries the hand axe on the wall next to the door, but it proves useless on the reinforced inner shielding. In distress, they look outside. The rain is coming down hard, and the seas are rougher. Connie begins to cry, and turns to Russ for comfort. Suddenly, music starts up: “Rock Around the Clock.” Russ leaves her to rush out on deck and look down at the pool area, which is now all lit up with colored lights. Just as suddenly, then, all power goes out. The radar transmitter stops turning, and the engine stops. Now they are drifting in silence in the rain. Thunder is heard. As Russ turns around, his expression telegraphs fear.

  She followed him out into the growing storm, mindless of the howling rain. She felt numb with disbelief. This isn’t happening, she told herself. Yet here they were, together alone for the very first time, all the same. You’ll wake up one day, and there you’ll be, stuck with this guy, she remembered her mother saying. It’s a mistake, dear. Just like buying the Fifty Shades of Grey boxed set.

  She walked to the rail, beside where he stood, and put her arms around Russ once more. It was not for her comfort this time, but for his. He was trembling now. Maybe he was crying silently, too. If so, she couldn’t tell for sure. Certainly he could disguise it, standing here in the rain. He could say he was cold, in his tee shirt, too. Mr. Macho. Mr. Fix-It. What would he do now? What could he do? He’d failed at everything so far. She’d failed, too, to think things through. After their whirlwind romance, and just before graduation, it had all seemed like a game-winning touchdown as the clock ran out. But now, as Connie Baumgartner no more, it felt like she’d snatched the title of trophy wife to Russ Thompson like a baton on the last leg of a one-legged relay race. A purchase she’d made with the same youthful energy and natural beauty that once inspired whole fraternities to chase her. Now, indeed, after resisting more charming advances in favor of playing Barbie to his Ken, what she felt approached REGRET.

  “This is insane,” he said.

  “What?”

  “This.”

  “What is this? What’s happening, Russ?”

  “Maybe it’s. . . something supernatural,” he conceded. “Something to do with. . .the Bermuda Triangle.”

  “Stop it! Stop sounding like the History Channel!”

  He shook loose of her, as though ashamed of his reaction, and went back inside. His dark hair seemed comically matted by the rain as he took the hand axe once more, this time inserting the edge of it into the hinge between the metal door flange and its frame. Then he found the dumbbell and used it as a hammer to wedge the axe like a fulcrum, separating the two sides enough to free the bolt. Pushing the back of the axe blade to the right then did the trick.

  He flung open the door. They both stared inside. The room was empty.

  “This can’t be happening,” he said, a waver in his voice now.

  They moved into the room. There was nowhere inside to hide. A hatch leading to the exterior walkway, for access to the bridge window and deck, was sealed and locked from the inside. The instruments, including the radio, was dead.

  “We should have gone to Alaska,” she muttered. Only when Russ turned to look at her did she realize that she’d spoken the thought aloud. She defended it by adding, “You should have booked a honeymoon suite.”

  “This is. . . my fault?” He asked the question as though awakening alone for the first time, himself. As if actually wanting to know the truth for a change.

  “Yes,” she said, in reply.

  “Is that what your mother thinks too?”

  “Look around you. Maybe she was right.”

  His face finally hardened. “Well, there’s plenty of affordable suites now,” he pointed out. “Maybe you and your mother should move into one of them!”

  “Maybe we will,” Connie retorted, and walked out.

  INT. DECK TEN. 9:11 A.M.

  After using a penlight in the dim hallway, Connie drags her suitcase into an open penthouse suite. It is luxurious and spacious, unused, with a wide sea view window. There is a bottle of champagne in a bucket of mostly water. She opens the bottle, and pours a glass. She goes to the window and looks out at the ocean. She gulps her drink while watching the darkening storm.

  EXT. DECK TWELVE. 9:12 A.M.

  Russ fires a test flare pistol into the sky, and watches the flare rise, sputter, and finally fall. He counts the remaining flares in the box he’d found, and goes back inside.

  INT. DECK TWELVE & EIGHT. 9:15 A.M.

  Russ puts the flare box back into the utility cabinet on the inside wall of the pilot’s bridge, then takes a flashlight to the stairs opposite the elevator landing, descends to deck eight, and returns to their inside cabin, using the flashlight to guide him in the dark. Seeing that Connie’s things are missing, he punches his fist into the wall, regains his composure, then quickly changes into warmer clothes, including a suit coat, and goes to find her.

  INT. DECK ELEVEN DINING ROOM. 9:22 A.M.

  Russ enters the dining room on eleven, sees Connie’s tray on the buffet line, with eggs on a plate, and coffee behind it on the drink station line. Then he hears a sound from the stairwell/elevator landing, and goes to investigate. On the landing he hears a shuffling sound, and determines that it’s coming from the elevator, which has no power. He pounds on the elevator door.

  RUSS

  Someone there? . . .Connie?

  There is a deep, low growl from the elevator. In shock, Russ stumbles backward. He turns toward the stairs, and descends.

  INT. DECK TEN. 9:24 A.M.

  Choosing the starboard side of deck ten, he runs along the dim hallway with his flashlight. When he is almost to the next elevator landing, he hears a deep growling ahead, like a lion. He stops and turns back in fear, then descends the stairs at the previous landing.

  INT. DECK SIX GALLERY. 9:48 A.M.

  Russ stops to rest while passing through the photo gallery displaying images of passengers for sale. In each photo the same pretty staff girl, dressed as a pirate, stands next to individual passengers. But only she is in focus. The passengers are out of focus, cloudy and indistinc
t. Shining his flashlight, Russ finds his own photo, and in that one he is in focus, while the girl is out of focus, and resembles someone he only vaguely recognizes. Suddenly he hears faint music playing, and runs off to investigate.

  INT. DECK SEVEN NIGHT CLUB. 9:52 A.M.

  Russ cautiously enters a brightly lit lounge/bar where jazz is playing to see a full display of desserts and chocolates on two central serving tables. The ice sculptures look fresh. As he approaches them the music stops, and the lights go out. He hears a growling sound. He cuts on his flashlight, flashing it around, then backs slowly out, and exits to the outside rear deck, where he ascends via the exterior stairs.

  EXT. DECK TWELVE FORWARD. 9:57 A.M.

  Emerging onto the upper deck in the howling rain, Russ looks over the rail at the pool area, and all around. He steps back under the overhang. He goes to the bar there, peers into the storage room behind it, then pours himself a tall glass of whisky and sits down, pulling his suit coat tightly closed at the neck with his free hand.

  INT. PENTHOUSE SUITE. 9:57 A.M.

  There is a knock at the door. Startled, Connie goes to it, looks out the peep hole, then opens it. There is no one there, but on the floor next to the doorway is a room service tray. She takes it inside, sets it down, and lifts the lid of the silver cover to reveal eggs, bacon, hash browns, croissant, fruit, coffee. There is also a printed note reading, “Your photos are ready in the photo gallery.” She sits heavily, dumbfounded, upon reading the note.