Unsinkable Mister Brown (Cruise Confidential 3)

by Brian David Bruns

  Bianca studied my face, undecided. Finally she said, “OK.”

  4

  An hour later we were sitting in the office of Ovidiu, a recruiting agent for Carnival Cruise Lines. He was a slender man with a handsome face, a very handsome wardrobe, and an extremely handsome office. His suite comprised the entire second floor of a brick building, featuring numerous windows looking into a lush interior court. Light filtered in through an angled glass skylight and past his mezzanine entrance, making it look like a bridge over a jungle.

  “Americans can’t handle ships,” he said.

  “So I hear,” I replied, giving Bianca an amused look. She sat in the chair beside mine, looking relaxed but serious.

  “What is it you think I can do for you?” Ovidiu asked. “I am a recruiter for Romanians, not Americans. There are no American recruiters, of course.”

  “So I hear,” I repeated. “Why is that?”

  “Because none apply,” he replied thoughtfully, leaning back. “Why would you want to? The work is very hard, and the money is very small.”

  Bianca raised an eyebrow, and Ovidiu hastily added, “For an American.”

  “I’m not thinking big,” I said. “It’s just a waiter job. I’ve been in restaurants for a decade.”

  “Not on ships, you haven’t,” he pointed out. “Do you know computers?”

  “He knows computers,” Bianca interrupted, before I could protest.

  “Other than doctors, who are supernumeraries anyway, and entertainers, who have their own agencies, the only position I can even think of for an American would involve computers.”

  “I just want to be a waiter, man,” I repeated.

  Ovidiu leaned forward skeptically. “Why?”

  “My reasons are irrelevant.”

  “No, they’re not,” Ovidiu insisted. “Why would they bother with someone who will just quit? They’ll want to know your story before they even think of meeting you. And believe me, they’ll need to meet you.”

  “I want to be with Bianca,” I explained. “If we have the same job, we can be together. That simple.”

  “I see,” he said, nodding. “Well, in my ten years at Carnival, I’ve never seen even one American. I would not even talk to you, but Bianca is a good employee and a friend. Again, what is it you think I can do for you?”

  “You can think Romanian-style,” Bianca answered for me. “Not American-style.”

  Ovidiu thought for a moment, frowning. “No, that won’t work. The bribes are to convince me, and you don’t need to worry about that. Really, Bianca, I would sign him on if I could. I can’t.”

  He opened a drawer from his desk and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. We declined his offer, so he casually lit one for himself. He leaned towards me, elbows on the desk.

  “You want to know why Bianca doesn’t need to bribe me?”

  “Suddenly I’m not so sure.”

  “Bianca is the only one who almost beat me. Almost, of course.”

  I looked at Bianca, but she said nothing. Her delicate wiggle of satisfaction was corroboration enough.

  “As agent to cruise ships, my job is to screen people. If I like them, and there is a job opening, I find the right place for them. Bianca applied for the restaurants. That’s the highest paid job, so everybody applies for it first. It is also the toughest, so I don’t let them by easily.”

  He paused, grinned, and offered Bianca a cigarette again. This time she accepted, leaning forward to accept the light with a creak of her leather skirt.

  “She said she worked at a certain restaurant. I called the owner and he said, ‘oh, of course, she has worked here for years!’ That, of course, only meant she could lie and bribe. Romanian-style. Turns out, she only volunteered there for a summer.”

  Bianca shrugged, explaining, “I needed to learn restaurants.”

  “I knew she was lying, but couldn’t catch her. She was too smart. She had asked all of her waitress friends penetrating questions and listened close. I asked her this and that, and of her experiences here and there. She had an answer for all of it. The performance was amazing.”

  Bianca laughed, and added, “Until Ovidiu pulled his bloody secret weapon from the filing cabinet!”

  Reflecting upon what I knew of Romanians thus far, I presumed this meant a large knife.

  “A linen napkin,” Ovidiu clarified. “I told her ‘You said you know half a dozen napkin folds. Show me.’ She wilted before my very eyes, like a Gypsy had spit in her ice cream. I told her to relax, go have a cigarette, then come back. I had her paperwork done by then.”

  “All that to be a waiter?” I asked. “It’s not rocket science.”

  Ovidiu leaned back again. He casually blew his smoke into the air, then looked me in the eye.

  “You have no idea what you’re getting into, do you?”

  5

  My final night together with Bianca was a short one. We were to leave Braşov very, very early in the morning, and retired accordingly. I would not see her parents in the morning, so we said our goodbyes before bed. Pops hate goodbyes as much as I, so we kept things brief. I gave Lucky a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. To my surprise, Piti gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. I had forgotten that such was an old tradition in Romania. Now I understood how scratchy an unshaven cheek was.

  Bianca and I headed into the bedroom together, which prompted a great amount of fussing from Piti. He began barking like a câine rau and pointing to the living room’s fold-out bed. Bianca tried to soothe him, but he would have none of it. Fortunately, Lucky stepped up and yelled over his protestations. Bianca laughed, then pushed me into the bedroom before Piti could recover his senses.

  “What did she say?” I asked.

  With a snicker, Bianca translated, “She said, ‘What you think they were doing in Egypt?’”

  As the door closed, I caught a glimpse of Piti. His eyes stared at nothing, wide with utter shock.

  Bianca and I snuggled into the tiny bed, and immediately got down to business. Or tried to, anyway. Every other kiss loosed a horrible screech from the bed. While the nails-on-the-blackboard noise made me cringe, the thought of her parents hearing did so to Bianca. Each time we froze, waiting impatiently in the silence with beating hearts, then eventually began the whole process all over again.

  Finally the kissing got too hot, and we leapt out of bed to find a better way to continue. With each step, however, the floor squeaked an alarm. We spun about, assaulted on all sides by turncoats, while kissing and grabbing and laughing and—most importantly—looking for something to brace against. My eyes feverishly passed over the couch-bed filling one wall, windows along the entire length of another, closet doors dominating a third, and the fourth holding the bedroom door and a long, low shelf.

  “Don’t you have any walls, dammit?” I whispered, half frantic, half laughing. But the joke was on me when we knocked over a shelf and the contents cascaded over my head to strike the floor with a loud clatter. So much for continuing!

  Outside the door we heard a muffled, ‘Jesus Gras!’

  6

  We woke at 3 a.m. for the return to Bucharest. We drove more or less in silence. What was there to say? The dream was over. The pain of saying goodbye swamped any enthusiasm for the upcoming battle to meet again.

  Eventually I landed back in Nevada. Some homecoming. I was no longer even sure where home was anymore! My first order of business was to feverishly check for an email from Bianca. There were three in just our first day apart. Some were better than others:

  “I fight to get my senses back and to re-enter in my cool independent snaky skin. I used to enjoy the pattern of my skin and now I have to get back into it, even if I'm still shivering when thinking of your touch and lips exciting every inch of it. The cold rain stopped just now, but is still gloomy and Brasovy. I ate some M&Ms to feel better because I can’t stop thinking of you.”

  “I still have to pack my frogs, and to take off on thursday night. My dad was upset today becau
se it was such a nice weather, and yesterday, when you left, it was raining the whole bloody day, so Albisoara got wet like a sweaty horny American that I know. We checked a furniture store and we found some nice couch for my living room. Is comfortable and dark brun like a Carpathian bear, and it was inspiring me sensual thoughts of you and me sliding on it. What did you do to me that a couch gets me going?”

  “Tommy called me to tell me some more how much in love he is with me and how he can't wait for me to make up my mind and agree for him to protect and spoil me all my life. Jesus Gras, this guy sent his brain fishing. This starts to annoy me. Thanks to your bald English language, I could write him that I went in Egypt with a friend, so nobody can figure out if it's a ‘he’-friend or a ‘she’-friend. I hope he won't react anti-clockwise direction, when I'll tell him that I fell in love with his co-citizen. I hate to justify my actions! I shouldn't have accepted to spend those days with this guy, but I didn't think he will fall so violent for me. Now I have to walk on egg shells to avoid this bamboclat's heart attack.”

  7

  I wasted no time in corroborating that Americans had almost no options to work on cruise ships. All my calls to Carnival headquarters in Miami came to naught, with nary an agency or expert to help. I tried a Canadian agency, to no avail. If I was not an entertainer of some sort, be it musician, dancer, or DJ, I needed to pursue the information technology angle. But that path meant separation from Bianca, so why bother? True, I could potentially start on the cruise director’s staff, but the salary was a painful $1000 a month. No thanks. Restaurant or bust.

  Even so, I readied my life to switch from turf to surf. I rented the spare bedroom of a friend’s house in order to put all my belongings into storage. This allowed me to gather my pennies for another flight. I wanted to be ready for an interview of some sort when Bianca’s ship, Carnival Conquest, arrived in New Orleans.

  Conquest was Carnival’s brand-new class of vessel, being constructed in the shipyards of Montfalcone, Italy. Bianca signed on while the ship was still in wet dock, as part of a special team selected to give new ships their shakedown. During the transatlantic crossing, they needed bodies to practice on, so the big dogs enjoyed a little executive privilege and played passenger. Thus Bianca could interact with Carnival’s senior management. As one could imagine, the stress was very high to please the top tier of a multi-billion dollar, 30,000 employee operation, but the perks were commensurate. Bianca had the ear of some very influential people.

  While Conquest received her finishing touches, Bianca’s duties were light. Delays were not an uncommon feature of the Mediterranean, so the crew had numerous, awkward bits of free time. The proximity of internet cafés meant that Bianca’s efforts on my behalf would have been easy to report, had any been possible. The big dogs were set to arrive—but had yet to arrive.

  Thus, Bianca did what any sailor would: she lived every second of shore leave like it was her last on earth. Her emails were full of exciting snippets, which only served to whet my appetite further:

  “Trieste. This is an absolutely charming place. All the streets and squares look like museums, they all are so serene and grandiose, that you have nothing else to do but stare and contemplate, lost in Renaissance thoughts and images. Is strange, you don’t feel history, like you do in Romania, but feel art in the highest and the most pure form. Italy is definitely a masterpiece.”

  “I almost collapsed when I entered in San Marco Square. Is like a dream. You instantly transfer yourself in the past, feeling like wearing cape and mask and spade. The Cathedral, the Doges Palace, the Bridge of Sighs, were miraculous in the setting sun. You and I have to be back here someday. I fell in love with Italy. What you see in pictures or movies, is a pale reproduction of the outstanding reality.”

  “I love you, my optimist, eternal positive and smiling darling. The day I wrote you the message from Venice, I was already very tired after I slept 5 hours in two nights, and I walked 20 hours in Milan, Venice and Montfalcone. I was missing you, because I was supposed to share all those wonderful impressions with you, and you were so far away, so I got a little bit depressed. But now I’m cool, and confident, so I’m ready to fight for my everlasting love and to wait patiently/impatiently for the time we will meet again. I will enjoy every minute with you, because sailors are used to living the moment, like we did when you came to turn me upside down.”

  When Conquest sailed off for her Atlantic crossing, every person of importance was aboard, but not every thing. Namely, the satellite hookup for internet access. Having exhausted my limited options in America, there was nothing left but to wait for Bianca’s progress. I think we both knew it would fall on her shoulders all along. News arrived haphazardly in sporadic emails from borrowed satellite phones and stolen moments at managers’ computers:

  “I couldn’t find the big man’s email address, but if he’s not onboard I’ll talk to him as soon as I reach the States. If you don’t mind, I’ll introduce you as my fiancé. I know we’ll work everything out. Something tells me, you Gemini, that we are meant to succeed together. Kiss you stickily. Bianca.”

  “Checked with mucho people, but I couldn’t get to a conclusion. Some managers say we’ll be in New Orleans on Nov 12th and we’ll stay 3 nights, other ones say that we’ll be there the 14th, and we’ll stay 2 nights. I didn’t meet the boss yet, I don’t know where that guy is hiding. I’m ready to start the offensive. If he won’t show up until I lose my sick patience, I’ll somehow find and invade his cabin. Don’t worry, I don’t mean that ship-style.”

  “You can apply for restaurant, bar or even trainer or cruise director. He'll figure out where he needs you reading your CV. It's confirmed that we'll be in New Orleans Nov 12th between 9am and noon. My love, that will be your turn to strike. Bianca, the fighter.”

  “Tonight I have to bodyguard the dining room between 2 and 5am. Rasclats! I hope I won’t work breakfast afterwards, otherwise me kaput. I saw the boss today passing by, he shook my hand, but he was in a hurry, so I even couldn’t ask him when he is available.”

  “I talked yesterday with Dan, the maitre d’ and told him about our sentimental and inter-continental adventure. I asked him his support for getting you on the ship, and he promised to help. He was very happy seeing me so in love and asked me why the hell I don't go to live with you in States, and I said that we are much too adventurous to settle down. Anyway, the ship life will be a challenge for you (me got already used to it). I'm telling you, there are so many temptations on board, that maybe you will tell me thanks for cooperation, I have to check some young hot chicks, which are similar rice on the ship.”

  “Dan told me to call the Mean Indian, and he asked me when "this Brian guy" comes around. I told him I'm supposed to meet you in New Orleans when we arrive. He said: get a visitor pass for him, and we'll give him meeting with me and Mladen. So, my love, get ready, you are almost in. Those guys I dealed with are the most powerful and influential in the company. Cedric the Mean Indian is first interview and he is the scarecrow. So impress him, my love, as you know to do so naturally, and there is no more obstacle between us. Except your mother, maybe. I'm kidding.”

  “Is confirmed on 14th you'll have the appointment with the Gods. I think it was the right decision to choose the restaurant. You can get the best money, but I warn you, it's one of the toughest jobs. You have all chances to get screwed up bad after only a few months.”

  Chapter 9. Iceberg, Dead Ahead

  1

  In the morning I walked from my hotel in the French Quarter of New Orleans to the banks of the vast, sluggish Mississippi River. Under grey skies I followed the levees towards the cruise terminal, shivering in the cold. Having never been to the South before, I had erroneously assumed it was always warm. For thirty minutes I hopped and huffed in the damp, chilled air outside the gates because port security had surprisingly not received a boarding list for the day. Finally they tired of my badgering and opened the gate, leaving me to ship security.

&nbs
p; Getting aboard Carnival Conquest was all around hard, even beyond my complete reliance on Bianca. She got me the interview, which had me nervous enough, but when I earned the enmity of the Security Chief I was really pushing my luck. As it turned out, that morning had been randomly selected by the U.S. Coast Guard for the ship’s inspection. Even on a ship with established routines, this was a hugely stressful event. On a ship still cluttered and chaotic, it was crippling.

  “You’re not even on the list,” snapped the chief, after several irritated minutes of explaining marine basics to this obvious landlubber. He was a middle-aged Asian gentleman wearing a black sweater over a white uniform. His watch looked like it cost more than my entire three-week vacation in Romania—including seven days in Egypt. “Come back after noon, when the fire drill is over.”

  I returned at the appointed time, but my name had not been added to the list of cleared visitors.

  “I have a meeting with Cedric the... Indian,” I protested. “Can’t you call someone? I flew all the way from the West Coast to be here today!”

  This resulted in numerous impatient phone calls. During each heated exchange, the chief glowered at me more deeply from behind the luggage scanner. Only reluctantly did he let me board.