Unsinkable Mister Brown (Cruise Confidential 3)

by Brian David Bruns

  Eager to test my hypothesis, that evening I put on my best suit and readied to wander the ship. Even as I was reaching for the door, a knock upon it surprised me.

  Who could possibly be calling upon me? I had only been onboard a few hours and had met no one other than Alanis, who had signed off. I opened the door and was pounced upon by a very beautiful, very young brunette in a sparkling sequined evening gown.

  “You’re Brian!” she said energetically, stepping forward. “I’m Karrie with a ‘K’! I’m from Texas!”

  I retreated under her assault of enthusiasm. She had particularly pretty lips, urgent with lipstick fire engine red. But her smile was engaging and honest.

  “I see,” I said, stammering out a reply. “I’m Brian. Oh, yes, you knew that. How did you know that?”

  “I worked for Rachel!”

  Was everything she said so buoyant? She said everything with such wholehearted zeal that by comparison I looked almost dour.

  “Who’s Rachel?” I asked.

  “You know, Rachel,” she repeated, flashing her radiant smile anew. Her teeth twinkled as much as her dress. “The auctioneer, silly. I used to work for her. I’d like to work for you, too! You didn’t bring on any other staff, did you?”

  “Uh, no,” I said replied, brain struggling to recall the handover notes. Karrie with a ‘K’ was extremely distracting. “I’d be happy to keep you on. Oh, that’s right, you’re one of the two singers for the shows.”

  She presented herself with a flourish, arms spread, and said, “Ta dah!”

  “Would you, uh, like to come in?”

  “Love to!” she said, skipping past me. She bounded across the cabin and immediately slid onto the bed. She rolled luxuriously back and forth over the comforter, sequins shimmering in satisfaction.

  “Make yourself at home,” I commented wryly from the doorway.

  “I just love your bed,” she purred. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a real bed! I like my cabin, sure, but I don’t have a real bed.”

  “If you were older, I’d be tempted to offer it any time,” I quipped lightly.

  “And if you were younger, I’d be tempted to accept,” she shot right back, grinning.

  “Already?” a gruff female voice called from behind me. I spun about to see a petite woman with short-cropped blonde hair gazing up at me with baby blue eyes. She wore a black dress with frilly cuffs and a plunging neckline. Like Karrie, she was also pretty, but in a more mature manner. She had strong features, a strong voice, and even strong mannerisms.

  “You certainly move fast, mister,” she teased, poking me in the chest. She had strong fingers, too. Her voice was engagingly sassy and gruff.

  “This isn’t what it looks like!” I said quickly.

  Karrie stopped her frolicking, half rose from the bed dramatically, and raised a hand with all the aplomb of the Supremes. With a crystalline voice, she sang, “Stop! In the name of love.”

  I looked back and forth between the two women, completely at a loss.

  “It’s mingling time, silly!”

  “You ready to go, mister?”

  “Are you, uh, the other singer, then?” I asked, trying to keep up.

  “That’s right,” she said, offering me a very firm handshake. “I’m Laureen.”

  “And that’s Karrie with a ‘K’ in my bed,” I commented. “I’m starting to really like this ship.”

  Karrie bounded past us and back into the hallway. She spun spritely, then danced her way down the hallway.

  “Is she old enough to be away from her parents?” I asked Laureen.

  Laureen laughed. She hung onto my arm and pulled me down the hallway.

  “You ever been on a six star ship before?” she asked. “No? Well you’re in for a ride. Let me fill you in.”

  Chapter 19. The Burning Spot

  1

  Laureen nudged me through the lounge, this way and that, via my arm. She laughed and smiled at everyone we passed, interspersing bits of wisdom and warnings of expectations.

  Into my hear she said, “This is the main lounge where Karrie and I schmooze nightly—hello Frank!—it’s usually enjoyable, but not always fun and games—Mrs. Redding, great to see you again!—unending cocktail conversation can get a little maddening by the end of a contract.”

  “I can imagine,” I muttered, somewhat awed by what I was witnessing. We waded through the dark recesses of a lounge that radiated outward from a large, circular bar. Every cluster of low-backed seats was brimming with well-dressed men and women of obvious means. Unlike the lounge scene I was familiar with in Las Vegas—where everyone was young and sexy and they knew it—these were classic gentlemen and ladies, replete with waxed mustaches and tails, real fur and frills.

  “You do this every night?”

  “Every single,” Laureen agreed. “We have a daily three drink allowance. You, on the other hand, better be Mr. Moneybags or you’re in trouble.”

  “I’m in trouble,” I agreed.

  A pair of nearby ladies overheard me, and tilted their heads conspiratorially with a click of pearl necklaces. Laureen trilled an overtly loud and high-pitched laugh.

  “Oh, Brian, darling, you are marvelously amusing!”

  As soon as we passed, she gripped my arm tighter and whispered huskily, “Don’t do that again or you can kiss this cruise goodbye. If you don’t act like you belong, they’ll avoid you like the plague. Can’t be seen relating to the little people, now, can they?”

  “I’m sensing that my predecessor may have had difficulty with this.”

  “She did,” Laureen agreed. “And her sales suffered for it. But stick with us girls, Bri Bri, and we’re gonna change all that!”

  Laureen released me in favor of an appletini, and soon Karrie, Laureen, and I were tag-teaming the guests. The singers swept the old men off their feet, of course, which left me to dazzle the little old ladies. I was decidedly nervous over such a proposition. Fortunately, flirtation came naturally, and it in fact turned out to be a lot of fun. It also exercised my memory in unexpected ways.

  Mrs. Mowry, for example, the widow of a prominent oral surgeon in Seattle, found my having earned the dentistry merit badge in Boy Scouts simply delightful, but surprisingly spent a great deal of time testing my dental knowledge to see if I was, as she said, ‘trying to fleece an old lady.’ Mrs. Greenblatt, on the other hand, claimed to be related to Grenville Dodge, the progenitor of the Transcontinental Railroad, so I interrogated her to see if she was pulling my leg.

  Eventually the girls pulled me from Mrs. Miller—third ex-wife of a Gemini-era NASA administrator—and informed me it was time for dinner.

  “We’ll be late,” Karrie bubbled. “Can’t have you late to your first table!”

  “My first table?” I asked, confused.

  “Come on, mister,” Laureen said, once again hauling me away by the arm. “I see I’ve got my hands full with you.”

  We strode into the exquisitely decorated dining room, where I found it difficult to not ogle over the delectable displays of food. After a decade in the fine dining business, I was not easily impressed by food presentation. Radisson Seven Seas Mariner impressed me.

  “This has to be a mistake,” I said, shuffling my feet to slow the girls’ tugging me to the hostess stand. “What kind of masochist would want to dine with a salesman?”

  “Art auctioneers are officers,” Laureen explained with amusement in her growly voice. “And all officers host a table. No choice, mister. We have a choice though, don’t we Karrie?”

  “We do!” Karrie answered spritely.

  “We do,” Laureen repeated. “But I think we’ll take pity on you and join you at your table.”

  The maitre d’ directed us to ‘my’ table, where we found two couples already waiting at a round that sat ten. Wine was served prior to the first course, and the girls and I chatted idly with our assigned guests.

  Suddenly a heavyset, bald man rushed up to me. He was visibly agitated and sweating pro
fusely. His upper lip glistened with perspiration and with every fidget, his head flashed with reflected light.

  “I’m Randy Young from Chicago,” he bellowed, holding out a clammy hand.

  “Hello, sir! My name is Bri—”

  “Where’s the Chief Financial Officer?” Mr. Young interrupted. “I need to sit with the Chief Financial Officer. Are you the Chief Financial Officer?”

  “Uh, no,” I stammered, glancing to Laureen and Karrie. “I assume he’ll be here soon if he’s not already...”

  “It would absolutely be our pleasure to bring Andre to you, Mr. Young,” Laureen said, smiling. Mr. Young glanced away nervously, and Laureen caught my attention by emphatically nodding her head towards a slender man in officer’s dress uniform on the far side of the dining room.

  “Yes, I see he’s already arrived,” I agreed, pretending to be on the ball. “If you would excuse me, Mr. Young, I would be happy to ask him to join us.”

  “I’ll do it!” Karrie offered, already spinning away.

  The Chief Financial Officer, Andre, was a small Dutch man with light brown hair and a shy smile. He formally introduced himself to Randy, just as the beginning of dinner was announced. We all sat down, more wine was poured, and dinner began. As an appetizer I enjoyed a medley of iced seafood, followed by a baby spinach salad, a lemon sorbet, and finally a divinely prepared Chilean sea bass. The food was magnificent. The wine was magnificent.

  The conversation wasn’t.

  Randy never shut up the whole damned dinner. Not once did he let anyone else say a word. Even the food didn’t slow him down, as he was only too happy to talk with his mouth full. Oh, how I longed for the gossip of the little old ladies—their manners had been impeccable!

  During the appetizer Randy droned on about his newly successful accounting practice, and how his mastery of numbers had pulled him from the streets. A real rags-to-riches story, he claimed. Over the salad he branched off into his hobby of tracing his family tree—not easy when none were men of means—yet the traces of his forebears had convinced him that they, too, were number-savvy heroes. For dinner he moved on to his favorite sport, and we were ‘spellbound’ by descriptions of his bowling prowess—complete with a mock demonstration of his release, wherein he accidentally knocked a tray out of a waiter’s hand. Plates broke, shrimps flew, but the man played on. By dessert, I was mercifully too drunk to really focus on his personal mastery over bowling statistics, specifically his quantifying of home-lane advantage.

  While he demanded the attention of the entire table the entire time, he never once actually spoke with Andre, whose presence he had so excitedly demanded. I presume he merely wanted to brag to ‘someone of numbers’.

  “You originally from France, or what?” Randy finally said to Andre over dessert. “Andre’s French, right?”

  The Chief Financial Officer blinked back to consciousness.

  “Why yes it is, Mr. Young. My mother is French, though I was raised in Rotterdam.”

  “That in France?”

  Andre smiled blandly as he answered, “The Netherlands, Mr. Young.”

  “I know some French,” Randy asserted. “When I rescued my dog—hey, art guy, you listenin’?”

  “Hmm?” I said, suddenly leaning back from Laureen, who I had just requested throw me overboard. “Oh, of course Randy. I’m rapt with attention.”

  “Rescued him from a couple big dogs in the burbs outside Chicago,” Randy continued, puffing up with pride. “He was just a little guy, you know, and was in danger of being torn to pieces. There were two German shepherds among the pack, I remember, and he was just a little bichon frise. You know, those useless little fuzzy French dogs? And I thought, what’s a little Frenchy gonna do when faced with these big German bad-asses? If you can’t play with the big dogs, and all that. Little Frenchy’d probably roll over and die rather than fight, right? So I jumped into the brawl and kicked some ass—er, butt, pardon—just like America at D Day. I threw my bowling bag at one, scaring it off, and charged the other. Everyone else scattered.”

  Randy was too caught up in himself to notice Andre’s eyes flash with each continued inference to World War II.

  “So I called him Le Mutt,” Randy continued, beaming at his own cleverness. “He’s not a very good dog, though. Slobbers a lot and doesn’t listen.”

  “Like my ex-wife,” I observed.

  Andre’s irate gaze turned away from Randy and leveled on me.

  “Oh, would you look at the time!” Laureen called loudly. She rose from her seat, effectively cutting off the conversation. Everyone else fairly leapt to their feet.

  “We have a rehearsal tonight,” Laureen apologized to the table, tugging on my arm.

  “Tonight?” Karrie said, frowning.

  “Yes, dear,” Laureen replied sweetly, though her eyes rolled expressively, “Remember there’s a new schedule for this cruise.”

  “Since when? Oh, yes, of course!” Karrie said, finally getting on the same page.

  As we hurried out of the dining room, Laureen muttered, “I used to like bowling...”

  The three of us regrouped at my cabin, taking full advantage of my balcony. The sky was clear and the stars beckoned above. It was a wonderful evening, all things Randy aside. We chatted and got to know each other over a bottle of sparkling water—all of us having had way too much to drink. Eventually Karrie departed, citing a late-night date.

  “At this hour?” I asked. “I know I talk as much as Randy, but my topics of conversation are scintillating and titillating and other big words, too.”

  “Somnambulistic,” Laureen quickly growled. “Monochromatic, unimaginative—”

  “Thank you, Laureen,” I interrupted. “But really, Karrie with a ‘K’, should even I fail to entertain, you don’t need polite excuses. Just run. That’s what most pretty ladies do.”

  “No, really,” Karrie said. “I’m seeing a shoppie. He gets off at midnight. Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow at the lounge.”

  “Ugh,” I said, my head swimming. “Another round of all that?”

  “Seven days a week, mister,” Laureen sassed.

  Karrie left, and a moment of silence settled over Laureen and I. The wind from the sea fluttered over us, damp and chilled. The quiet was not uncomfortable, however. For some reason, Laureen and I felt like old friends. Perhaps we were just both mature enough to not feel obligated to fill every moment with distraction. We just leaned on the railing and enjoyed the moment.

  After a while I turned around to look back into my cabin, which glowed warm and inviting. I stared at the huge bed and sighed.

  “That bed is perfect,” I muttered.

  “That was the worst come-on ever,” Laureen chided, slugging me in the arm.

  “What? Oh, no no,” I replied, chuckling. “If I were to make a move, you would be powerless to resist my Casanova-like smoothness. Duh.”

  I turned back to viewing the waves slosh below us.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I was just thinking about my girlfriend. She’s obsessed with a real bed.”

  “I heard that!” Laureen exclaimed. “She on ships, too? When she coming aboard?”

  “After two months,” I said. “I have that long to sink or swim here. It works out well, though, because after two months we go into dry dock. That’s three weeks long, as I recall. Anyway, when Mariner returns to sea, so will we. Together.”

  “Sounds like you got it all worked out.”

  “Not really,” I admitted. “This ship is our last chance for a life together. We’ve been working at it for two years now, and still haven’t found a way. It’s Mariner or bust. I must make this happen. I can’t be distracted by all the fine wine and gourmet dinners. My girlfriend is slaving away eighty hours a week! It’s just not fair.”

  “Fair?” Laureen said gruffly. “Ain’t nuthin’ fair at sea, mister. You just gotta do the best you can and hope everyone else does, too.”3

  2

  The next morning I spent organizi
ng my art gallery. It was not a gallery, per se, but much better. A section of wide, comfortable corridor along the starboard side of the ship had been designated for my art, with floor-to-ceiling windows providing perfect light. Walking down the corridor, a guest was flanked on both sides with easels presenting my best, rarest, and most expensive art. At the end waited my desk, whereas at the beginning was the harpist.

  Yes, a harpist.

  Ethel was not just some chick in a toga plucking a lyre, but rather a master musician brandishing a six-foot single-action pedal masterpiece of polished wood. Her touch made the very air shimmer. When playing aggressively, the air in my chest actually throbbed as far away as my desk. Ethel was surprisingly young of age but old of soul, and when not entertaining guests in the adjoining lounge, she was sneaking their finger-sandwiches.

  “Hey, Bri Bri!” a husky voiced called. I looked up from my files and saw Laureen and Karrie standing over my desk. Both were dressed for the port, Mexico’s Cabo San Lucas.

  “Your horny gorilla girls are here to claim you!” Karrie said, bouncing excitedly in her red bikini.

  I blinked at Karrie.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Our favorite drink here in Cabo is called a horny gorilla,” Karrie explained. “This is one of the only party ports, so let’s get a move on.”

  “I see. Well, I have work to do, so I must regretfully decline.”

  “You’ve got plenty of time, Bri Bri,” Laureen said brusquely. “And from what I just overheard in the hall, sounds like you’ll have Hot Man eating out of your hand by the end of the cruise.”

  “Very Hot Man,” Karrie emphasized.

  “Ugh,” I said, “Don’t remind me. This morning Van den Hoffer tore into me in front of all the other officers. Turns out I was supposed to be at a revenue meeting. Of course, it wasn’t in my handover notes. So not only did Hot Man have to call me at my desk, he reprimanded me for not being prepared to explain last cruise’s poor sales. That I signed on yesterday didn’t seem to sway him in the least.”