He called Ski over. “Where are all my books?”
“I think your mother has them.”
“Get her up here. She’s probably down in the mess having lunch.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Swifty!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Post a lookout.”
“But it—”
“Post a lookout!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ski.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Put her in hand steering.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sparks.”
Sparks did not say, “Yes, sir,” but Captain Tannenbaume did not let that deter him. “Send a noon slip to the office. Pronto.”
There. Now there was no doubt as to who was in charge. Captain Tannenbaume glanced over at Mitzi. If she was impressed, she was wasn’t showing it.
He climbed up onto the captain’s chair, the only person on the ship allowed that privilege—at least from this point on. When he adjusted the chair, the heat gun fell from its mount, crashing to the floor. Mitzi turned her face away from Captain Tannenbaume. He wasn’t sure if he saw anything when she turned her head. He couldn’t be sure.
But when the aluminum paint tray came loose, making a soft, muted bang on the deck, he clearly heard her stifle a laugh.
Captain Tannenbaume waited for his mother to get to the bridge. In between dozing off in the captain’s chair, he amused himself by reading his mother’s night orders from the previous week. He had to admit she had good instincts. In order to make any kind of time at sea, a captain often had to act boldly—resist slowing the ship down in fog or heavy weather, allow closer CPAs, that kind of thing. If a captain took every precaution advised in books on seamanship and company safety regulations, he’d never keep a schedule. So when his mother arrived on the bridge, he had no hesitations about handing her the conn. Hell, her instincts were better than Swifty’s. At this point in the voyage, Captain Tannenbaume just wanted to get home.
“Okay, Mother,” Captain Tannenbaume said after he got out of his chair and stretched his limbs. “She’s all yours.”
Mrs. Tannenbaume looked at the chart. The GPS showed them off the coast of Morocco. They’d be in the Straits of Gibraltar in eight hours.
Captain Tannenbaume was already off the bridge, heading down the stairs when he heard, “Are we going to stop in Gibraltar for bunkers, sonny?”
He came back up. “Bunkers, Mother? Since when do you know about bunkers?”
“I’ve been talking to the engineers. I’ve taught them a thing or two about command, and they’ve taught me about their job.”
“What else do you know, Mother?”
“Well,” Mrs. Tannenbaume said, “I have been thinking about our fuel burn. It’ll be close, but I think we can probably stretch the fuel. What with the value of the dollar, why buy bunkers with euros? Why not wait until we get across the Atlantic and buy with good old-fashioned green backs? Also, we don’t have time to waste bunkering in Gibraltar. We’ve got a schedule to keep.”
Captain Tannenbaume could not believe his ears. His mother had been at this for a week and she was already talking about bunkers and fuel burn?
“Why don’t you let me worry about that, Mother. You have enough on your hands, don’t you think? The traffic’ll be getting heavy as we approach the Straits.”
“I was just thinking is all,” Mrs. Tannenbaume said, appearing hurt.
Captain Tannenbaume turned to leave. “And lay off the whistle, Mother. Follow the Rules of the Road. You’ll be better off, trust me.”
Captain Tannenbaume was halfway down the staircase and did not hear his mother mutter, “Rules, schmules,” as she stood at the windowsill and eyed a cruise ship, way off on the horizon on their starboard bow.
Captain Tannenbaume had not been at afternoon coffee time in longer than he could remember. As soon as he walked in the officer’s lounge, he remembered why. The chief was in the middle of one of his monologues and the engineers were hanging on his every word.
“Really,” the chief said, “the GPS shouldn’t be working now. Sparks shouldn’t have initialized it. It’s right there in the contract. Spells it out,”—air quotes—“’repair.’ Says the radio officer shall make his best effort at ‘repairing’ the electronics. Says nothing about initializing. That’s the mates’ bailiwick. Not that those dumb bastards could initialize an electric coffeepot if you asked them to. Dumb as a bag of hammers them mates. What’d I say about that third mate when he come aboard? What’d I say? A real”—air quotes—“’Swifty.’ And look at him now. Can’t even turn on a GPS.”
The electrician was the first one to spot Captain Tannenbaume. He immediately straightened up in his chair and cleared his throat. The others, the chief included, got the message that the captain had decided to join them. The chief made a show of staring at Captain Tannenbaume. Captain Tannenbaume knew why. The chief wanted the engineers to think coffee time was his show, that Captain Tannenbaume was a sort of interloper. Well, Captain Tannenbaume could care less what the engineers, especially that little shit of an electrician, thought about him being there.
Then Captain Tannenbaume saw that Mitzi was there, tucked away on the davenport with a magazine, separate from the others. He guessed that the engineers were shunning her. He’d seen this before. It’s what happened to every female crew member—the good-looking ones anyway. If she hooked up with one of the senior officers, either the chief or the captain, then even if they broke up, she was permanently off-limits to the rest of the crew. It was just an unwritten rule.
“Got tired of working on your desk, Cap?” The chief, as was his habit, looked at one of the other crew members when he said it.
Captain Tannenbaume would not take the bait. “As a mater of fact I have, Maggie.”
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” the chief said.
Captain Tannenbaume pulled up a chair next to the chief. “Yeah, well, be that as it may, Maggie, I need to talk bunkers with you.”
“I was wondering when you were going to get around to that. We’re stopping in Gibraltar I presume?”
“Well, that’s what I want to talk about. I know we always stop in Gibraltar for fuel, but have you seen the price of the euro lately? I thought we might try to stretch the fuel. Wait ‘til we get to the States to take on bunkers. Pay with good old-fashioned green backs.”
“Look,” the chief said, looking directly at the electrician. “I don’t know about foreign currencies and what makes the best sense money-wise. All I know is we need bunkers.”
“Well as captain I need to think about the dollars-and-cents of things, Maggie. I’m trying to do the smart thing here.”
Captain Tannenbaume made the slightest move of his head to see if Mitzi was listening. He saw that she had put down the magazine she was reading. He didn’t dare try to get a better look.
“Look,” Captain Tannenbaume said, “we always stop in Gibraltar for bunkers, just because that’s what we always do. But other company ships stop in Algeciras. So I thought that if we did take on bunkers now, that maybe we’d stop in Algeciras and buy bunkers from the same outfit. You know, get a better price that way.”
The chief looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“It’s called leverage, Maggie.”
“Leverage?”
“Yeah, leverage.”
“I don’t know about all that business stuff,” the chief said. “I’m an engineer. I know fuel burn. And I know we burn twenty tons a day and at that rate we’ll need to take on bunkers in Gibraltar like we always do.” The engineers all nodded their heads.
Captain Tannenbaume hitched his pant leg up and leaned forward in his chair. He dared a glance Mitzi’s way. He saw that she had her ear cocked in their direction.
“But, on the other hand, what if we pulled her back five or ten RPMs? We’d burn less fuel. And that way we wouldn’t have to take on bunkers until we got to New York. That way we’d really save money by buying in
dollars instead of euros.”
The chief leaned back and folded his arms tightly across his chest. “All I know is we always stop in Gibraltar. I don’t see why we’d get a better price in Algeciras. And I sure as hell don’t get why we’d be better off buying back home.” The chief tightened the grip he had on himself. “I guess I just don’t understand currencies.”
Mitzi was off the davenport by now. She came over to where everybody was sitting.
“Don’t you get it, Chief ? Either leverage yourself against the fuel distributor in Algeciras, or buy with cheaper dollars back in the States. Captain Tannenbaume is right.”
Mitzi looked at Captain Tannenbaume and he returned the compliment with a nod of the head. He could see that Mitzi was impressed with his line of reasoning.
“Of course,” Captain Tannenbaume added, “we can always make a futures contract. That may be the smartest play. It’s called arbitrage, Maggie.”
Actually, Captain Tannenbaume was not sure if it was called arbitrage or not. He wasn’t exactly sure what arbitrage was. And he wasn’t all that clear on the futures business. But he had read about it once, and he knew that people did those things. He was banking on none of the engineers calling his bluff.
“Arbitrage,” Mitzi repeated, and Captain Tannenbaume heard wonder in her voice. And the way she was looking at him made him blush, now.
It was so easy. All a guy had to do was not act so obvious. It seemed to him that the easiest way to a woman’s heart was to ignore her. Why had it taken him so long to figure that out?
HANDSOME SMOOTH
Mrs. Tannenbaume felt as if her son had tied her hands behind her back. He had taken away her most important navigational instrument: the ship’s whistle. For the last several hours, the God is Able maintained a steady bearing/decreasing range with the cruise ship on its starboard side, the classic scenario for a collision at sea. Mrs. Tannenbaume kept waiting for the cruise ship to change course but the darn ship was being stubborn.
“What would you do, Ski?” she asked.
“Come to starboard to pass under her stern.”
“Swifty?”
“Sounds good to me.”
Mrs. Tannenbaume looked over at Sparks and raised her eyebrows.
“I say maintain course and speed until we’re almost on top of each other and then blow five short blasts.”
Mrs. Tannenbaume and the others stared at Sparks in disbelief. Sparks, nonplussed by all of the attention, ignored their staring and went back to his cigarettes.
Of course, that’s what Mrs. Tannenbaume wanted to do, but she would need the whistle to scare away the other ship, and she didn’t dare go against her son’s explicit orders to lay off the whistle. Mrs. Tannenbaume stood at the windowsill and brooded over what to do.
The two ships got closer and closer.
Before long, everyone on the bridge was lined up at the sill with Mrs. Tannenbaume, watching the cruise ship getting bigger and bigger in their sights.
When they were within a half a mile of each other, Ski said, “I can’t take it any longer. We need to put her in hand steering.”
“Hey. Who has the conn here?” Mrs. Tannenbaume said.
Mrs. Tannenbaume walked out to the wing. She stopped at the far side of the wing and leaned over the side, cupping both hands to her mouth. “Yoo Hoo!”
The cruise ship, at a distance of a quarter of a mile, finally took action to avoid a collision. The ship turned hard to starboard and made a big round turn. The God is Able nearly skimmed the port side of the cruise ship as it moved past her. The passengers lined the railing and waved their arms and cheered at the fun maneuver the two ships had just made for their benefit.
When Mrs. Tannenbaume returned to the bridge, the crew gave her a standing ovation.
Mrs. Tannenbaume took their adulation in stride. She had a job to do. She would get the God is Able back in time for the unveiling of the Mariners Monument come hell or high water. And if she could not use the whistle, she would have to use her wits.
The ringing telephone silenced the cheering crew. Swifty walked over to answer it, but before he picked up the receiver, he looked back at the others. To Mrs. Tannenbaume it looked as if he was afraid to answer it. She held up her hand to stop him and walked over to answer it herself.
“Wheelhouse. Supernumerary Tannenbaume here,” she said into the phone.
“Mother, were you aware of that cruise ship?”
“Oh. Hi, sonny. Yeah, I saw the cruise ship.”
“I suppose you would have. It would have been hard to miss. Did you make a meeting arrangement with that ship?”
“Of course I made a meeting arrangement.”
“You did? What exactly did you agree to?”
“I said we’d meet starboard . . . ah, port . . . ah . . . what’s the difference? I got my point across, didn’t I? But anyhow, sonny, what about the bunkers? Are we stopping in Gibraltar?”
She listened as he explained about the exchange rates. She had heard it all before. It was her idea, of course, but she did not want to say “I told you so” to her son in front of the crew, so she played dumb.
“What a clever idea, sonny. Whatever you say. You got it. Straight through the Straits.”
“And, please, Mother, make proper meeting arrangements from now on.”
“I promise I’ll talk to every ship. Okay.”
Mrs. Tannenbaume hung up the phone and the crew let out another cheer. She knew that they were not really cheering for her. They were cheering for themselves. The crew had the bridge to themselves again. They knew that Captain Tannenbaume would not bother with the bridge as long as his mother did not blow the whistle.
“Okay, people. Back to work!”
Mrs. Tannenbaume did not have to tell them two times. Swifty had a hot towel on his face before the towel had a chance to get hot. Sylvia was back at her shampoo station, doing Ski’s hair. Mitzi worked the phone, calling the engine room to say her salon was back in business again. The engineers dropped their wrenches right were they were working and proceeded to the bridge without changing out of their boilersuits. When they all got to the bridge at the same time, a fistfight broke out between the engineers over who would get their nails done first. While they were fighting, Sparks slipped into the chair at Mitzi’s nail station and Mitzi began working on his hands. Sparks looked just like a Dalmatian on top of a fire truck, sitting in that chair.
Mitzi took his hands in hers. “How’s my Handsome Smooth doing?”
KICK IT UP A NOTCH
Mrs. Tannenbaume went straight through the Straits of Gibraltar. She kept her course and speed, and not once did she make a single concession for another ship. As Ski said, marveling at her feat afterward, “The woman parted the seas. She just parted the seas, man.” And she did it all simply by walking out to the wing and saying, “Yoo Hoo!” to any ship that got too close. It was a virtuoso performance.
They were now in the open Atlantic but were still in sight of some coastwise traffic coming from the north. At the moment, a tanker was proving particularly nettlesome to Mrs. Tannenbaume. It kept calling on the VHF, asking the ship on its port side (the God is Able) to please come to starboard. Because of its immense size, the tanker most likely assumed the smaller ship would eventually get out of the way—the tanker was big enough to saw her son’s ‘tween decker in half. But still Mrs. Tannenbaume kept her course and speed. When the two ships were in shouting distance, Mrs. Tannenbaume “yoo hooed” it out of the way.
Mrs. Tannenbaume could tell that Mitzi was watching her closely as she closed the bridge wing door behind her.
“You got chutzpah,” Mitzi said.
Mitzi was doing the second engineer’s hands. He was particular, like all of the engineers. He wanted a matte finish and it was coming out too glossy.
“So it’s Tannenbaume with an E, huh?” Mitzi said. “You’re not Jewish? So where did that son of yours get such a Yiddisha kop? You should have heard him talking business with the chief
. He talked circles around that dopey chief. He’s got saichel, that son of yours. He understands leverage. Leverage of all things!”
Mrs. Tannenbaume didn’t know what to say. Her son Jewish? From Mitzi’s mouth to God’s ears. She needed him to be Jewish if he was going to be head honcho at the academy. Or she needed him to at least act Jewish.
Mrs. Tannenbaume could not help but notice that Mitzi had been talking about her son all afternoon. Could Mitzi be falling for her sonny? She loved guys with a Yiddisha kop, that Mitzi. Most Jewish girls just wanted a mensch. Not Mitzi. Her guy had to have some horse sense or she’d run all over him, the way she ran all over Putzie. Mrs. Tannenbaume had to admit that she would not mind it a bit if Mitzi and her sonny spent some more time together. Maybe some of Mitzi would rub off on him.
“So how is Sylvia coming along?” Mrs. Tannenbaume nodded her head toward the young girl, who was at her shampoo station massaging Swifty’s head. “You think she’s ready for more? Why not let her run things up here for you. See how she does.”
Mitzi finished up with the second. “I have to admit,” Mitzi said when the second was out of earshot. “These engineers are beginning to get to me. They’re nothing but a bunch of whiners.”
“Why not take a break? Go below and talk business with my sonny.”
Mrs. Tannenbaume turned away when she said it. She could not bring herself to make eye contact with Mitzi while giving her the green light to cavort with her son, a married man. Then her eye caught Sylvia, not much more than a teenager, caressing Swifty’s head like a pro. Some marriage. Her sonny might as well have married a Labradoodle for all he had in common with Sylvia.
“Maybe I will,” Mitzi said, glancing over at Sylvia when she said it. “Maybe Sylvia wouldn’t mind it.”
A Commodore of Errors Page 28