Chapter 12. Fish Pills
1
Sensation’s departing auctioneer met me on the gangway. He was a small, sweaty man with abundant, curly red hair covering his forearms. He looked exactly like Robin Williams. We shook hands, and he welcomed me aboard, saying with a glint in his eye, “I’m Robin.”
Seeing my raised brow, he grinned and explained, “When they tagged me with that in training, it stuck. I use it in auctions, and they love it. So as far as I’m concerned, I’m Robin.”
“Perish the thought I’ll be forever branded Buzz Lightyear,” I opined.
We had been walking up the gangway, but he stopped short so suddenly that I nearly ran into him. He turned about and regarded me skeptically. Finally he said, with a pronounced Australian accent, “You’re a Yank? Ain’t no Texan, are you?”
“I’m from Iowa,” I replied, to which he loosed a sigh of relief. He did not explain the odd question, but continued onward. We strode down the I-95, ducking beneath leaning towers of plastic-wrapped bread and cases of paper products. A cluster of Indonesian waiters hunkered around a plastic coffee mug drafted into ashtray service. Robin said nothing until we reached the purser’s office.
“You got the handover notes I sent?” he finally asked. “Good. Uncle Sam said you were on Ecstasy, so you know Sensation. Same class ship. We don’t have to bother with much, then, other than the inventory. We’re due for a new load of art, so our supply is very low. Should be easy.”
We took the guest elevators up to deck five and strode quickly down the passageway. About midship he unlocked a door to an interior cabin and announced, “Here’s the cabin.”
Not surprisingly, the auctioneer’s cabin on Sensation was the most dispensable guest cabin available. It was rather small, with two separate bunks pressed against two different walls. That was a surprise that I did not care for at all. What really struck me, however, was the smell: the room reeked of fish.
“I heard you are here with your girlfriend,” I said. “What’s with the separate bunks?”
I had learned over the course of my years at sea to take beds very seriously. While I no longer shared my bunk with my luggage, as I had as a waiter, I was keen to start sharing an actual bed with Bianca. That little bit of normalcy had become literally my only criteria when it came to judging accommodations.
Robin was about to answer when a very tall, attractive woman entered from the bathroom. She was six feet tall and, while pleasantly slender, still built solid. Her long hair was naturally blonde, but the last six inches were dyed black. She wore a cowboy hat and boots over snug blue jeans.
“He stinks,” she stated in answer to my question. “He belches all night, so I want as much distance as possible.”
“Hey, you can tell me,” Robin said to me. “Are all Texans so loud-mouthed, or did I just get a gem?”
“She certainly looks like a gem,” I replied. I offered my hand to her and introduced myself. Her grip was indeed as hard as diamond.
“I’m Vanessa,” she said. “You like cod liver oil?”
“Are you asking me on a date?”
She gestured broadly to the room. “We’ve got plenty for ya. I’m sick of ‘em. If I smell one more damned pill, I’m gonna puke. Lover boy here don’t eat no food, jus’ lives off cod liver oil.”
A quick glance proved that she wasn’t kidding. I counted no less than four bottles of cod liver pills of varying sizes. A fifth bottle lay on its side on a bunk behind where Robin sat, looking suspiciously as if it had dumped its contents between the cushions. The largest container, a family-sized jar with a wide mouth, was currently open. The smell of heavy fish oil almost visually emanated from it.
“Aren’t you supposed to refrigerate those once opened or something?” I asked in wonder.
“Bah!” Robin replied. “You Yanks always worry about stuff like that. Gimme a break. How you won the West beats me: I don’t think you’d last one week outback.”
“So’d you tell him yet?” she asked Robin.
He ignored her query, instead turning to me to say, “It’s a pretty decent ship, overall. You should do OK.”
“Tell him,” Vanessa ordered suddenly, pretty lips parting in disgust that she had to force the issue.
Robin reacted strongly, rearing up and out of his seat in anger. In a flash both were glaring at each other, faces flushed and postures frozen in defiance: she tall and leaning willowy-strong over him, he looking up to meet her with bulldog neck tensed and fists clenched.
“You shut up!” he spat with surprising vehemence. It was strange seeing Robin Williams seething with anger. I waited for the punchline. When it came, all I could manage was a groan.
Vanessa snatched up the nearest bottle of fish oil pills—the family-sized jar without the lid—and hurled it at him. Delicate globules of smelly fish oil sprayed wide, bouncing off Robin to clatter off the walls, the desk, the bed and everything else until they found every last corner.
“Damn you, woman,” Robin snarled, reaching for her. She gamely bounced back, but this was no game. She retreated nimbly and reached out to place her hand on his head. Robin swung at her, short arms pumping the air, but comically his reach was too short to touch her. They exchanged all manner of insults, voices rising until she screeched and he bellowed.
Finally he muscled his way past her amusing defense, and gave her a solid slap across the face. The sound was shockingly loud. Violence in person is completely unlike anything in the movies. It was immediate, intimate, horrible.
“Oh!” she cried in surprise, hair flinging wild.
I leapt in between the two of them, now shouting myself. I had no idea what was going on, even as I sensed this was not an unusual occurrence between them. Indeed, before I could interfere they both whirled upon me as one.
“This is none of your business, Yank!” Robin bellowed.
“I can handle this myself!” Vanessa echoed. She was already returning her attention to her adversary, adding, “I’m from Texas!”
Vanessa then delivered a tremendous blow of her own, a wallop that sent Robin reeling. Before he had a chance to recover, she shoved him onto the bed. Next came a sharp crack, a head hitting the bulkhead, and Robin collapsing. He gave a low moan, and instantly Vanessa was atop him. They began madly kissing, passionately rolling across the tiny bunk, and grinding cod liver pills into my future mattress.
I stared in awe, completely forgotten—as was, apparently, the handover. Though strangely keen on remaining and watching, prudence prompted a departure.
The handover was indeed fast, what, with the reduced inventory and the ship tour scuttled by angry sex. But Sensation was a Fantasy-class vessel, which I knew well both above and below decks. Sensation was a bit worse for wear, but when sailing from New Orleans it was no wonder. The Big Easy was not a town exactly known for hermetically-sealed, clean fun.
The cabin seemed to present the most immediate concern. It was small and ugly and stank. The room steward was thrilled beyond belief when I gave him orders to remove all the fish pills, even if they did continue to pop up for weeks afterward. The best thing about the cabin, other than free room service, was that it was directly beside the art locker. So close, in fact, that I felt safe creeping in my underwear into the hall on those nights the fishiness kept me awake.
2
One of the more annoying tasks cruise ship department heads are subjected to is the stage talk. On day one, the cruise director presents the cast of characters to the guests—twice—in the main lounge. Speaking before a large audience is arguably the greatest universal phobia of humankind, ahead of even claustrophobia. Because crew members lived in tiny metal boxes under the ocean, the latter was rarely an issue for very long. As an auctioneer, speaking was my job, but I suffered the usual jolt of nerves when literally under the spotlight. It’s brighter than most people think.
Half a dozen of us were crammed between the thick red velvet of the stage curtain and a coarse, cream-colored secondary. We duck
ed beneath ropes, stepped above speakers, dodged props.
“Would it were not so, would it were not so,” chanted my neighbor repetitiously. He was a very young, small man with hair gelled into short, artistic swirls. His mannerisms were undecided—clothing American, language Shakespearean, accent utterly undefinable—but his manner was most certain: he feared an oncoming cardiac arrest. Just watching him made my own heart palpitate.
“I abhor this!” he cried anew. “Ohmygod, is there a mirror anywhere? How’s my hair?”
“Right here,” answered a rail-thin man with pale skin and black hair. He tapped a small mirror mounted behind the curtain. A pronounced soul-patch relaxed beneath his lips. Indeed, his every fiber oozed complete calm. “At this distance, they won’t see any details. Stay chill, brother.”
“A tragedy—indeed!—set to befall me upon the stage,” the young vendor promised. “I’ll swoon, verily.”
“What do you do here?” I asked, trying to take his mind off the stage. “Where you from?”
“I’m the new tattoo artist,” he answered hurriedly. “Stefan, from Bulgaria.”
I exchanged a surprised glance with the thin man.
“We have a tattoo artist?”
“He’s from Bulgaria?” he asked in return.
“Airbrushed tattoos,” the youth explained. “I have a kiosk on the pool deck. And to answer your unspoken question, sir, my mother was English with a great appreciation for Shakespeare. It gives me comfort.”
“You don’t look that comfortable,” I said doubtfully. “I mean, come on. This is nothing compared to performing Shakespeare.”
“Perform?” he squeaked. “Who ever said anything about performing? I can recite Shakespeare all day, but I’d never dream of performing it. I have bad stage fright.”
“You know, Stefan,” I said. “I’ll tell you a little secret. A friend of mine was a standup comedian in New York City. He opened for some big names, even Jerry Seinfeld. I asked him how he handled looking out at all those thousands of people, and you know what he said? You can’t see them! The lights are right in your face, so it’s just you doing your thing. You won’t even know you’re on stage.”
“Just don’t trip on your way out,” someone teased from down the line. “They remember that.”
“But soft!” Stefan growled, fighting his fear with anger. “I took the simplest job I could find to get me beyond the Black Sea, and now they want me to recite King Lear upon the boards for thousands! I should have applied at McDonald’s.”
“I hear you, brother,” offered our chill companion. “But you get used to it. Really. The cruise director doesn’t call us out in any order, so you can go right after me. Just say your name, job, and country. Wave. That’s it.”
Stefan’s indignation flashed anew. He looked ready to hyperventilate. “But... must I not introduce the next person? I have to introduce the next person! There’s a next person that needs introducing! O, woe is me to have seen what I have seen!”
“Don’t bother,” came the calm instructions. “You have enough to deal with. If you can remember Shakespeare, you can remember your name and home.”
In an effort to buck himself up, Stefan brought a hand to his chest and quoted, “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.”
“Henry V?” I asked, absolutely floored by the erudition of this strange man.
“Julius Caesar,” he corrected before swooping into a mumbling chant of Shakespeare, like some sort of prayer. Instead of twenty Hail Marys for remorse, he was reciting iambic pentameter for repose.
The cruise director’s dialogue moved towards vendor introductions. Max, the flamboyantly gay assistant cruise director with curly blonde hair and pock-marked skin, stuck his head through the curtains and gave me the nod. I stepped up to the curtain, but our thin companion placed a hand on my shoulder to stop me.
“I’m Marc, by the way,” he said. “When you’re done waving, just introduce me and hand me the mic. I’m from Zanzibar.”
“You’re from where—?”
But Max was already tapping me on the back with the microphone. I had volunteered to lead because I heard somewhere that people generally remember only the first and last in line. I took the microphone from Max and strode onto the stage. I thought I was in control, but my knees began shaking when I looked at one thousand faces in the dark. Even the balcony was full! So much for the bright lights theory.
Man oh man, is everything different with a white-hot spotlight on you. Fortunately for me—and to the chagrin of my friends and family—once given the cue to talk, nothing could stop me. I talked my talk, grinned my cheesy grin and waved my cheesy wave. Once finished with my obviously perfect and awe-inspiring performance, I joined Max at stage left. He immediately began gesturing very suggestively with his eyes.
“Geez,” I said quietly to him. “Can’t you wait until backstage to flirt?”
“You forgot to introduce the next one!” he snapped, even as he smiled to the guests.
I felt like an idiot. Fortunately, I was well-practiced at such a feeling. Still convincing myself that I was all smooth and stuff, I moved to salvage the situation. As I brought the mic to my lips, I suddenly realized I forgot where Marc was from. Eyes burned into me hotter than the spotlight, and I just stood there, mouthing the air as if I had swallowed a bug.
Finally I croaked, “Marc... Zimbabwe!”
Mild applause meant that I was off the hook. I felt horrible for blowing Marc’s introduction, but he was still cool as a cucumber. He strode onto stage and effortlessly did his own little song and dance.
“Yes, good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I am Marc, the port and shopping guide, so you’ll see a lot of me this week. As my colleague has so eloquently observed, I am indeed from exotic Zimbabwe.”
He gave me a sly grin.
“And I would like to introduce you to a newcomer on Sensation, Stefan from Botswana!”
The applause quickly faded into an awkward patter, because no one came onstage. Instead we heard a faint scuffling followed by a loud ‘WHUMP!’
The curtain billowed out, revealing arms and legs thrashing upon the floor. The crowd started laughing, then burst into applause as the terrified tattooer scrambled out from under the curtain. Stefan all but sprinted to the center of the stage, hands sweeping over his gelled hair, over-eager to make up for his embarrassing loss of mojo.
Poor Stefan’s pains were not quite over. He spoke at great length, having apparently found his composure—but not his mic. It was too far from his mouth. No one heard a thing. A great, yawning silence descended upon the lounge. Stefan sensed something was wrong, but did not know what it was. He overcompensated by talking faster and faster. Fortunately, only those of us onstage heard his awkward rambling.
Max finally ran up to the hapless youth and, with comedic overacting, pushed the microphone closer. He pretended to chastise Stefan greatly, and the audience laughed appreciatively. From the stage, however, I noticed that Stefan did not take this well at all. His stage fright flashed into anger. Again overcompensating, he brought the microphone too close and his words were deafening and breathy, with a hint of a snarl. Had he quit then and there, his exit would have been somewhat graceful. Alas, when machismo reigns, misfortune follows.
“Sorry I forgot where you’re from,” I whispered to Marc at stage left.
“Stay chill,” he replied with a sly smile. “I’m from Canada. My trick to deal with nerves is to think of a different place every time, keep it fun. Last cruise I was from Angola. But I think I may have thrown off Stefan. Our boy isn’t doing too well.”
Indeed. Stefan had forgotten where Marc said he was from.
“I HAIL FROM BANANA REPUBLIC,” Stefan blurted, almost eating the mic. His face was visibly red now, no longer from embarrassment, but from anger. “I MEAN BANGLADESH, DAMMIT! I COME FROM THE LAND DOWN UNDER.”
The crowd rippled from Stefan’s curse.
“You’re from Botswana,” Marc whispered helpfully.
“I AM FROM BOTSWANA!” Stefan repeated with emphasis.
“Where the tall corn grows,” I mischievously added.
“WHERE THE TALL CORN...” Stefan began repeating with gargantuan volume-enhancement. Finally he caught on and stopped. At long last, fuming, he stalked off the stage.
Our duties done for the night and the ice broken, I invited Marc and Stefan to join me for a cigar in one of the lounges. Stefan surely needed an intravenous alcohol drip. We had a grand time, and when I finally returned to my cabin, I was excited about Sensation.
It didn’t last very long.
3
The storms were atrocious. Never had I encountered seas so rough as those that night. Conquest, which had also sailed the Gulf of Mexico route, had once outrun a hurricane with less turmoil. 100,000+ ton mega-ships rocked no more than your average shopping mall—albeit on Black Friday—but even taking into account the smaller size of Sensation, the pitching was unheard of. It was awful. And it got worse. And worse again. The rocking was so bad, in fact, that I backed up all the data on my personal laptop to CDs and kept them in a plastic baggy beside my life vest. Descending from multiple generations of Boy Scout Masters had taught me ‘Be prepared.’
Carnival handled the crisis well. Hallways and common areas blossomed with barf bag stations like flowers in spring. The stewards needn’t have bothered, though, because few folks left their cabins. While the bars were full—requisite to any Carnival cruise—the dining rooms were ghost towns. Room service was so overloaded that waiters were pulled from the restaurant to assist at all hours, day and night. Shows were cancelled, due to unsafe tilting of the stage, and shops were closed, due to the floor being covered with smashed bottles of perfume.
This gave me the brilliant, if misguided, idea of cracking open a bottle of cologne in my cabin to combat the smell. I now enjoyed a heavy fish musk.
Unsinkable Mister Brown (Cruise Confidential 3) Page 21