Unsinkable Mister Brown (Cruise Confidential 3)

by Brian David Bruns

  Bianca stomped right past him, and past the stove, loaded with steam-spouting lids and bubbling sauces, to throw open a cupboard. She grabbed a bag of pretzel sticks, tore open the top, and smacked them on the table.

  “Here you are, my sweet,” she said, smiling smugly.

  “What is this?” Radu asked, holding up a broken pretzel stick with profound disappointment.

  “Freudian symbolism,” Bianca muttered. Then more loudly added, “That’s all you get until Adi comes home.”

  “Who cares about Adi?” Radu retorted loudly. “I am here!”

  With a sniff, Bianca spun on her heel and departed, leaving Radu to his crumpled bag of broken pretzels. Things went downhill from there.

  “Adi,” Radu grumbled. “Ha! He is a good man, but not the provider I am. I work in Germany to provide a better life for my family, with my own two hands. I bought new computer, for example. I bought new stereo.”

  “All Laura wants is a real bed!” Bianca’s voice called from the hallway.

  “You’ll like the stereo when you come dance at my home!” he yelled back. Then he gave a dismissive wave and said, “Women! I bought all new fixtures for the bathroom, so Laura could keep herself pretty. Now she wants a bed! What for? Our baby keeps us busy all night, so no time for sex anyway.”

  Time slowed to a crawl as Radu shared with me his profound insight into Romanian politics. As a product of the revolution, he wanted nothing to do with the current president, a long-time member of communist dictator Ceașescu’s regime. Radu thought he was a jerk. Radu thought he was corrupt. Radu told me every single reason why. I secretly prayed for Piti to show up, but only after first checking Albișoara’s glove box. When Adi arrived with one of their daughters, it was the most ecstatic moment of my entire visit to Romania.

  As I shook Adi’s hand, I gazed upwards to assess his height at easily 6’5” tall. Aside from prodigious height, Adi was otherwise mercifully opposite of Radu, being robust and healthy in appearance, with tanned skin, thinning hair, and an extremely generous smile. Within seconds he was pouring himself wine and proving himself a real ham. Raluca, an enthusiastic six years old, was every bit her father’s daughter.

  Radu wanted food. Adi wanted wine. The ensuing argument was in Romanian, of course, but the body language was universal. The conversation moved away from the subject at hand and reverted to who had the most toys. Radu and his two hands won that battle; his new bathroom and computer trumping Adi’s new kitchen cupboards. It is amazing how much can be understood when we just shut up and observe—and observe I did, for Bianca had no hope or intention of translating for seven people. Radu, of course, was quick to translate everything of importance that he, himself, said.

  Over a forkful of scrumptious pork schnitzel, I asked Cristina, “What do you want for your birthday?”

  Via Bianca, she answered, “All I want is a good night’s sleep, a relaxed morning with Adi taking care of Raluca and Antonia—she’s too young so friends are caring for her—and making breakfast, and the whole day to just relax.”

  Adi reached a lengthy arm around her and gave her a reassuring hug. They were a very smiley couple, unlike Laura and Radu.

  “But first,” Cristina added, “I want to dance with my husband.”

  The evening was much like the wedding, only of smaller scale. We ate, then danced, then ate, then danced. We drank throughout. A small music box was fired up, and Cristina had her dance with Adi. After only one, however, she trudged into the kitchen to clean. She refused any offers to assist, relenting only after Adi promised to do everything in honor of her birthday—after another wine and another dance, of course. Facing the inevitable, Cristina gestured to Bianca.

  Silk fluttering and leather stretching, Bianca swirled through the living room like a dream: Adi and Radu’s dream, apparently, based on the way they argued over each dance with her. The sisters directed narrowed eyes to them all, and I feared the annoyance was for Bianca. After all, she was the exotic one radiant with a joy of life that us ‘normal’ people did not possess, and frequently viewed with skepticism that hid jealousy. Bianca had no children and a figure that showed it. She was well dressed, well traveled, and had money. It just didn’t seem fair.

  Eventually I realized they were dismissive of Bianca rather than challenged by her, and mostly just disappointed with their husbands. Perhaps they longed for a time when their men fought for their own hand in a dance.

  Much to my surprise, I spent most of the night talking to Raluca. It started when Radu plunked down at the table, having lost the next dance with Bianca. He lit a cigarette, and then spoke to Raluca. I heard my name in there somewhere. She began giggling.

  “Mister Brown!” she said, pointing at me.

  Radu blew a line of white into the air, and grinned. When directed at me, his smile looked hideous, but when directed at Raluca it just looked goofy. Though a misogynist, he was not a monster—though I usually thought them synonymous. But he was good with kids. Radu finally explained, “I asked her if she knew how to say your name in English.”

  “Funny how everyone thinks my name is Romanian,” I commented wryly. I turned to Raluca and asked, “You are learning English?”

  Her dimpled cheeks answered by turning red.

  “Wow. How old are you?”

  “Six!” she answered cheerfully, holding up the appropriate number of fingers.

  “Cristina said she’s learning body parts,” Radu said. “Ask her if she knows what is ‘elbow.’”

  Instead, Raluca’s face took on a mischievous look. She held up her hands with overt drama and intoned, with as much gravity as a six-year-old could muster, “Two hands!”

  Radu retreated with a grimace, unable to cope with being unmanned by a little girl. My time would come soon. I pointed to various body parts and asked, ‘How do you say this?’ Raluca, the adorable little voracious monster, never tired of the game and after an hour I ran out of body parts. I began floundering for things like epiglottis.

  Adi was a real ham, and the highlight of the night. He was a very, very insanely happy drunk—and drunk he got! The wine and Coke emptied faster than a gas tank in a Hummer. Indeed, every time Adi refreshed his drink, he toasted Detroit. I thought this rather odd, until Bianca explained that his friend had won the U.S. Green Card lottery and settled there.

  Alas, the time came when Radu wanted to leave. Laura obediently gathered their things and pretended that Radu led the way home. Whenever he staggered down the wrong path, she waited dutifully until he corrected his mistake. This appeared to be a practiced routine.

  Eventually Adi’s bombastic tales of conquering Detroit slowed, too. He repeatedly muttered thanks to me for my ‘services’ to Raluca, griping in quieter and quieter terms that for the next three weeks he’ll be up to his ears in ‘elbows and noses.’ Cristina quietly stroked Raluca’s hair as she slept on the bench in the breakfast nook. Snuggling in my arms, Bianca softly translated Adi’s dimming murmurs. What followed was a very touching and heartfelt moment. Adi was not just a clown, but a genuine, caring man who wanted to provide the best life possible for his family. He wanted to move to Detroit, knowing there was a large community of Romanians there to help Cristina adjust to their new home. There he would work for the railroad—the only thing he knew—and pay for Raluca to have the best education, where she would grow up and be a doctor. He finally drifted off to sleep on the kitchen floor, head resting on the base of the stove, with dreams for his family.

  3

  Bianca and I retired to what was akin to a torture chamber. The bed was a fold-out couch with a mattress that delighted in shifting its limited padding to maximize the discomfort from an iron bar under our backs. I could not fathom how Adi and Cristina slept on that rack nightly—only thumbscrews could have made it worse—and was downright baffled how they could maintain a cheery attitude.

  This was the first time Bianca and I were able to share a bed. Since our first kiss after the wedding, we had been trying like cr
azy to find alone time, to no avail. Even had her father allowed us to sleep together in their apartment—and he most certainly had not—we would have been paralyzed in fear over the noisy fold-out bed. Every time I rolled over, I worried the whole bloc woke up. It was that bad. Thus, we had been left to steal snippets of passion in afternoon corners, work ourselves into a frenzy, then have to smile when called into the next room for dinner. Our growing love made us feel as vibrant as teenagers again, and being treated as such only enhanced the feeling.

  Thus I was more than merely excited when it was time for bed, whether or not it was on a torture rack. Stealing kisses like children was fun, but we were adults and inclined to go further. Yet when I saw Bianca, I started laughing.

  “You no like my Thousand Lips pajamas?” Bianca asked, spinning to show off the white silk shirt and pants, covered all over with red lips.

  “Let’s see how many of those lips I can kiss before—”

  “—before?” she interrupted, teasingly. “Hey, babaloo, thin walls. Raluca is right behind that wall. Behave.”

  Adi’s horrendous snoring came through the wall loud and clear. Despite being in another room, it seemed like we were all in the same bed as one big, happy family.

  Fortunately sleep was furthest from my mind—there were a thousand lips to attend to. Our passion had been smoldering for a week since the wedding, and now it threatened to burst into a full conflagration. Our lips were wet and wanting and our enthusiasm flared with every kiss. Yet we had to slow down. Slowing down was hell.

  But I was blinded with passion for Bianca. My mind was completely and utterly on her, and I couldn’t stop. I had never felt such incredible, insatiable desire before—never before been enslaved by emotion. I saw nothing but red in the blackness. Her sighs and moans, her gasping breath, all filled me with a strength and power I did not know I possessed. Finally, in a glorious moment where I lost awareness of all but those lips, we cast aside inhibition. She shuddered and her whole body rocked. I felt it throughout my entire body—my hips, my gut, my chest, my whole being—all shaking with sensations too intense to handle.

  We made so much noise, I had no idea. The squeaking was horrendous, but I couldn’t hear anything past the blood pounding in my ears and the panting. The whole world was gone. Never before had I ever been so focused on anything, so unaware of my surroundings.

  Afterwards, when I buried my face in her neck, slippery from sweat, reality crashed over me like an ice-cold wave. The ragged heaves of Adi puking his guts out tore through the night, flimsy walls doing nothing to lessen the ugliness of the sound. Raluca’s whining for him to stop so she could sleep were somehow both adorable and heartbreaking.

  Pain stabbed through my back and it seized up. Bianca tried to squirm off the iron bar under the mattress but she, too, groaned as her muscles blazed in retaliation at such abuse. Too pained to do anything further, we lay and listened to Adi’s vomiting. We tried to laugh, but were too bruised from our sport on the gridiron. Yet despite all this, if I ever had a chance to relive that moment, even once in my life, I would be the luckiest man ever.

  The next morning the only thing that hurt worse than my back was my empathy for poor, poor Cristina. For her birthday, all she wanted in the world was a good night’s sleep, to rise late, and have her family take care of everything for a whole, glorious day.

  What did she get? A sleepless night sharing her daughter’s tiny bed, on one side listening to her husband vomit continuously for several hours, and on the other her cousin and new boyfriend noisily knocking boots till dawn—in her bed. Obviously unable to sleep, she had risen and spent the long, cold night blearily cleaning the dishes from the big party and making breakfast not only for her family, but her guests as well.

  Chapter 6. I’m Turning Japanese

  1

  One thing was for sure: Bianca and I needed a vacation in our vacation. Her family and homeland were wonderful, but we wanted hot days on some beach and hotter nights under some sheets. When Bianca suggested Egypt, my heart leapt with joy. Ever since I was a child, I had fantasized of the Great Pyramid. Bianca was proving to me time and again that dreams can come true.

  “I always fantasized about a night in the best hotel,” Bianca said dreamily. “Where royalty and celebrities stay. Just one night.”

  “I don’t know,” I commented. “I’m living a fantasy in some pretty crappy Romanian blocs.”

  “Babaloo,” she chided. “Anyway, we no play royalty today. We’ll book through a Hungarian agency, because they have better quality. But promise me some day you get me a room where royalty and celebrities stay!”

  “Deal,” I said.

  Because we chose a Hungarian agency, the departures were from Budapest. Surprisingly, the fastest way to reach Budapest from Brașov was to drive halfway across Hungary. Thus we took a train to Cluj in western Romania and from there hopped onto a bus for a drive through the night. Actually, it was not a bus, nor even a smaller autobus, but an autocar. The ungainly offspring from the unholy union of bus and van, the Romanian autocar was born with eight seats in the space meant for four. The driver, I presume, did not understand the Hungarian language Magyar, based upon his suicidal disregard for traffic signs. Taking this methodology a step further, he didn’t read Romanian, either. It was a terrifying midnight drive on horrible, broken highways snaking through narrow mountain passes.

  Crossing the border from Romania to Hungary was the stuff of Hollywood—or cardiac arrest. A vast field of concrete separated us from Hungary, the few structures present more bunker than building. In a bleak, black night of slashing rain and frigid cold, the bus was waved to a stop by armed guards in wool overcoats and warm hats. At a glance, there was little difference between a Russian soldier and a Romanian one, and I felt like I was living in a Tom Clancy movie. These facilities were built during the communist era to keep citizens locked inside their own borders, making our phrase ‘America: Love it or Leave it,’ sound insulting.

  The autocar’s door opened and a grumpy guard barked for everyone’s papers. Passports were handed forward and received with disdain. The sentinel bantered with the driver for several minutes, and the conversation grew heated. More than a few of the passengers showed signs of real concern. These people remembered all too well decades of denial and oppression by their own government. The driver reluctantly pulled the autocar up to a drab, partially lit bunker and turned off the engine. We plunged into a silence broken only by rain hammering the roof.

  Time crawled by tensely, but fifteen minutes later the forlorn sentry returned, approaching alone in the rain across the concrete plain. The driver obediently rolled down his window, and they again argued in Romanian until the sentry became irate. Suddenly everyone in the autocar stared at me. Accusing murmurs slid through the dark vehicle. I had rarely in my life felt so helpless and uncomfortable. Suddenly, breaking my back on Cristina’s bed didn’t sound so bad.

  Bianca leaned forward to explain, “They looking for a Japanese man.”

  “Where?”

  “Here, bambo.”

  “What, in our bus? There’s only a bunch of old Romanian women, you and me.”

  “I know,” she whispered back. “Something is wrong.”

  The sentinel demanded forcefully for the side door of the autocar to be opened again. We all perked up at the chilly wind—or the automatic rifle slung across his back. The sentinel suddenly jabbed a finger at me and began a tirade of angry-sounding accusations.

  Bianca answered the man’s queries, but he did not seem satisfied. He pored over my passport with his flashlight at length, then disappeared again into the night. Someone hastily closed the door against the bitter wind.

  “He thinks you Japanese,” Bianca said with a mixture of amusement and annoyance.

  “Me? Do I look Japanese to you?”

  “Obviously not,” she snapped. “But the idiot couldn’t tell you are over six feet tall and one hundred kilos.”

  “I also happen to be
white,” I added. “Most people would say frightfully so.”

  “Apparently the rasclat driver told the first sentry that we had all Romanians and one foreigner, but somehow they got Japanese out of American. Where do they find these guys?”

  I resisted the urge to say ‘Department of Homeland Security.’

  Another five minutes passed even more tensely, and I grew annoyed and nervous that my passport was being tossed around by people so inept as to think I was Japanese. True, between World War II and the revolution, it was rare indeed for a Romanian to have actually seen anyone not white, but this was ridiculous. I was about to offer to talk with them, but more visions of Cold War-era movies made me just shut up and wait. Finally, sometime well after midnight, the sentry returned our passports and motioned for us to roll on through to Hungary.

  Intent on recovering lost time, the driver drove even more erratically, if that were possible. In an effort to settle our nerves after the border checkpoint and ignore the crazy driving, Bianca and I began to whisper back and forth sweet nothings. These turned into rather explicit reminisces about what we had managed to accomplish thus far, which then turned into a full-on list of proposals to maximize the freedom of a hotel room. I figured our words were safely anonymous in a bus full of aged Romanian women, but was brought up short when a lady behind us commented something trivial to her companion… in English. Bianca’s face turned so red that her round cheeks looked like apples.

  But beyond my desire to flirt with Bianca, and even beyond the desperate hope to merely survive the drive, I wanted nothing more than to sleep. I was beginning to suffer from severe jet lag and a wild two weeks in Romania. I had to tear my eyes off the road because otherwise the adrenaline jolted me awake faster than the hits from curbs and fenders. I twisted sharply to lay my head on Bianca’s lap. I don’t remember ever actually sleeping, though she claimed otherwise, because when I drifted off my hand thumped to the floor. She would retrieve it and hold it, but that woke me up. The process would repeat, over and over again, all night long.