Which is why, one afternoon, after beating Jules at chess seven times in an hour and a quarter, I decided to follow Adrian, to see where he disappeared to.
I waited until Jules had gone off to swim. It wasn't that I didn't want him to join the expedition, but I was a bit worried that if Adrian saw us following him, he might get upset with Jules – and I figured the poor guy had enough to worry about at the moment, without adding that to his load.
The reason Jules was able to go swimming at all was because we'd secretly followed Barry Barnes to the games room, where he'd made a little kid cry by pushing him off the retro pinball machine – then he'd started a game, using the kid's credits, so we knew he'd be occupied for a while.
I waited for Adrian to walk past, then began tailing him – which is no easy feat in a wheelchair. In fact, I almost lost him in the first minute, when he got into the lift.
I'm not so hot on stairs.
Truth is, I'm not even tempted to try a kamikaze-style descent just to 'feel the buzz' – even though I've seen Jackass more than once, so I'm aware of the incredibly stupid things you can achieve in a shopping trolley (or anything with wheels – wheelchairs included). And I watch the extreme sports channel regularly, especially the skateboard stunt shows – so I guess, all things considered, that it's not true what they say about the corrupting influence of TV.
As it was, I was lucky.
According to the indicator, the only floor the lift stopped at on the way down was E-Deck, and there isn't exactly a whole lot going on in that section of the ship – not during the day, at least.
When the lift came back up, I rolled in and rode it down to E-Deck.
There's one really interesting thing I've noticed about a cruise-liner.
With all those passengers and crew crowded onto one ship, you'd think you'd find it difficult to get away from people, but, in the end, you can still find places where there isn't a living soul in sight.
And when you do, it's truly creepy.
The corridors seem to suggest all sorts of eerie threats – fuelled, no doubt, by a few too many horror flicks about ghost ships, and all those scenes in Titanic, after the ship hits the iceberg, when Rose is schlepping around looking for Jack in the bowels of the ship, knee-deep in ice-cold water, with the old girl (Titanic, that is, not Kate Winslet) creaking and groaning like she's about to split in half (which, actually, she is about to do), and the lights flickering off and on.
Of course, it might just be a good healthy dose of claustrophobia – especially down on E-Deck (which has no portholes and feels about as closed in as a coffin).
Whatever the reason, when I rolled out of the lift and into the empty passageway, I was beginning to feel like this whole adventure wasn't the best idea I'd had since last Thursday.
I mean, how much did I actually know about Adrian?
That he was related to Jules?
That should have been a point in his favour – except that Jules was also related to Aunt Pru (as, of course, was Adrian), which did indicate a slight contamination of the gene pool. There's a very fine line between weird and interesting and just plain dangerous.
Mind you, the thought of Adrian doing anything the least bit violent or creepy (unless you count his scarily authentic impersonation of Michael Jackson's 'Bad' – complete with the single glove) was almost a joke.
Then again, you could probably say the same about most serial killers, too. You've seen the interviews on Lifestyles of America's Creepiest Serial Killers:
He was a good neighbour – always mowed the lawn on weekends, and he was great with the kids.
But not so great with the total strangers who ended up in plastic bags under the house ...
I've really got to stop watching late-night Foxtel.
Of course, knowing which deck he was on and actually being able to find him were two different things.
I rolled along the corridor, looking for clues, like one of those sniffer dogs they use to find missing kids.
Nyet.
Even sniffer dogs need a scent to go on. I had nothing. It was like looking for a phantom.
Except ...
There were no cabins on this part of E-Deck, only storerooms, a few unmarked doors, and the Polynesian Nights Dance Club – which, as the name suggests, only opened at night. After eight, to be precise. It was a large room, with tables set in a semicircle around a large dance floor, and the DJ's desk at one end behind a bank of speakers and coloured disco lights.
Being under eighteen, I'd never actually been in there – but then again, neither had most of the people on board who were over eighteen. It was a throwback to the Eighties, and although some of the passengers could still vaguely remember the Eighties, I'm willing to bet that 'getting down' and 'shaking that booty' weren't activities that were all that high on their list of priorities – especially as by eight o'clock, most of them were either tucked up warmly in their beds, or sleeping (snoring loudly) sitting up in the comfortable chairs and padded booths of the Tahitian Lounge on B-Deck.
All of which didn't explain why, as I was now beginning to strongly suspect, Adrian was spending half his waking hours down in the Polynesian Nights Dance Club.
Which was why I decided to go in and ask him.
I tried the door and found it unlocked, so I pushed my way in, trying to be as quiet as possible.
I needn't have bothered. Adrian was facing away from me, in the middle of the dance floor, and he had his iPod headphones jammed firmly in his ears.
How did I know?
Two clues:
a) he was moving his hand up and down and snapping his fingers in perfect rhythm and
b) he was singing.
At least, I think it was singing.
I heard it, as soon as I opened the door. It's a phenomenon known as 'iPod Voice' (it used to be called 'Walkman Voice', then 'Discman Voice' – and when they change the technology again, it'll probably be called after whatever new device everyone under the age of forty just has to have), and even if you've never heard of it, I'll bet that you've heard it.
It's what happens when you plug button earpieces into both your ears, turn the volume up as loud as the machine can crank it out, then decide to sing along with the song.
Inside your head, what you're singing sounds great – but that's because you actually can't hear what you're singing (due to the fact that you've got a million decibels of studio-engineered sound blasting away at your auditory system, sending it into overload, and what you can produce with your puny vocal chords just can't compete, so what you think you sound like is only an illusion).
You're actually a whole lot louder and a whole lot less tuneful than you might think. Ask any regular train-traveller, or anyone with an older brother who's into Heavy Metal.
What you're actually doing is imagining what you sound like, and because only about one person in a thousand can actually hold a tune when they can't hear themselves, you end up sounding (to anyone unfortunate enough to be within the fallout zone – who, incidentally, can't hear what you're hearing through the earphones) like a Tyrannosaurus Rex with gastric influenza.
As iPod Voice goes, Adrian's wasn't all that bad – he was stage-school trained, after all – but I still couldn't make out what he was singing. It sounded like a cross between AC/DC's Greatest Hits and Michael Bublé sings Frank Sinatra (which is the kind of thing my dad listens to when he thinks he's alone in the house – Michael Bublé, I mean; I don't think he was ever an AC/DC fan). Of course, it could just as easily have been Britney Spears sings Celine Dion, for all I knew.
(Don't laugh – she's done weirder things lately!)
Not that it matters. The only thing that did matter at that moment was that Adrian didn't know I was there.
I sat and watched him for a few seconds, then pushed the chair forward onto the dance floor beside him.
Scaring the juice out of him.
'What are you doing here?' he asked, after he'd pulled the speakers out of his ears and
got his breath back.
'I could ask you the same question,' I replied. I know it's a cliché, but it's a very effective one, if you want to put someone on the back foot.
'Me,' he began, 'I ... I'm ...'
Which helped a whole lot.
'Look,' I went on, 'I'm not going to tell anyone. I just wanted to know where you keep disappearing to. I'm curious – what can I say?'
He considered for a moment, then he must have decided that the jig was up, so he might as well come clean.
Which he did.
9
A Simple Case of Scared
to Death
JULES' STORY
'Karaoke?' I asked.
Now, if there's one thing that annoys me in a conversation, it's when the person you're talking to repeats the last thing you said, and turns it into a question.
Like when they ask you who your favourite sports celebrity is, and you say Tiger Woods, and they say, 'Tiger Woods?' as if they didn't quite hear you (which is, of course, clearly not the case, seeing as how they invariably repeat exactly what you said – except for the fact that it has now become a question).
What they're really trying to do, most of the time, is to let you know that they think what you just said is about as believable as a car-salesman gushing that he, too, thinks that ABBA is the greatest band that ever strapped on a guitar (which one guy – who must have been all of twenty-three, and was therefore hardly even born when ABBA was really big – actually told my mum when he was trying to sell her an old Subaru Sports Wagon with rust in the tailgate and suspicious black smoke clouding around the end of the exhaust pipe).
Needless to say, we didn't buy the car. Just because my mum was too polite to point out that he needed to work on his customer-schmoozing skills doesn't mean that she's a push over.
We don't have a lot of money, but she always seems to score a halfway decent car, so I never have to ask her to drop me off three blocks from the school to avoid embarrassment – which was what Ricky Pulbrook had to do when his mum ended up with an '86 Lada (a strange vehicle of Eastern European heritage, which sounded like a diesel tractor, and had about the same sex-appeal rating as a Borat swimsuit, and which she got saddled with because the salesman discovered, in a friendly pre-sale discussion with Ricky's dad, that they both shared a tragic passion for the Fremantle Dockers – even though the only picture in the salesman's office that didn't feature four wheels and a bikini-clad model was a signed photo of the entire Brisbane Broncos premiership-winning team).
All of which goes to show that for me to do it – repeat the last thing Suzi said and turn it into a question, I mean – I had to really be surprised.
Suzi, as it turned out, also gets pretty annoyed when people do the repeat-it-as-a-question thing to her, and she showed it by giving me 'the look' and saying, 'That is what I said. There aren't exactly a whole lot of words that sound like "karaoke".'
(Which is, of course, true. I've racked my brain, and the only thing I've come up with is 'okey dokey', but that isn't really a word, so I don't think it counts, anyway.)
'Look,' she went on, 'I'm only telling you what Adrian told me. He said he talked the entertainment coordinator into letting him use the nightclub during the day, when it's closed, to practise his karaoke.'
'But why would he ...?' I began – then I stopped, as the question answered itself. After all, this was Adrian we were talking about. Why should practising karaoke alone in a deserted nightclub, when you could be up on deck, soaking up the sun or swimming in the pool, seem any more peculiar than bursting into a chorus of 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina' at school, when members of the First Grade football team are in the immediate vicinity, looking for victims?
'He wants the thousand dollars, to pay for extra singing lessons.'
Suzi volunteered the information then paused, waiting for the predictable response.
Sometimes, I fantasise that she's actually a scientific researcher, and that I'm the subject of a highly complex experiment, aimed at seeing if I'll bite every time someone makes a statement that just begs for a supplementary question.
Of course, I bit. What else was I supposed to do?
'What thousand dollars?'
Looking just a little too self-satisfied (the way she does about two moves before a surprise checkmate – which after eighty-seven straight losses isn't exactly a huge surprise), she pulled out one of the ship's daily newsletters (which I, of course, never bothered to read), and pointed to the side-box at the right-hand bottom corner, which advertised the Gala Farewell Karaoke Competition and Family Fun Night – First Prize: One Thousand Dollars!!!!
If it wasn't for the fact that Adrian was entering – and practising so hard to put on a stellar performance – I might have been tempted to try the karaoke thing myself. Even though my voice sounds like I've been gargling wet cement and I dance (as Suzi was kind enough to point out) like a chimpanzee having a seizure, the lure of that kind of prize is almost irresistible.
And, of course, there was no way I'd spend it on singing lessons.
But, in the end, I didn't enter – a fact which, I'm sure, didn't significantly alter Adrian's chances of winning, but at least it gave me the opportunity to make him feel good, by encouraging him in the lead-up and cheering him on on the night.
'What are you singing?' I asked him, the next time he emerged on deck.
'I think I'd like to keep that a surprise,' he replied, so I didn't push it.
In the end, 'surprise' was something of an understatement ...
I suppose I've already mentioned the problem I was having with Jenna Hamilton – or rather, the problem I was having without Jenna Hamilton, seeing as how I was being my usual wuss self, and finding a hundred reasons not to break the ice by actually talking to her.
When you think about it (which I do a lot), talking to a beautiful girl is a bit like jumping off the high platform at the pool. You know it won't actually kill you – I mean, for all the stories they tell you of people landing wrong, and splitting their stomachs open, so that their intestines pour out into the pool and they die an agonising death, I don't know of anyone who's ever actually met anyone it happened to (or, more to the point, anyone who knows anyone it's happened to – or even anyone who knows anyone who knew someone who saw it happen to someone else, or ... you get the idea).
Logically, you know that once you launch yourself into space and yell 'Geronimo!' (or whatever it is you're supposed to yell when you find yourself fifteen metres in the air, with nothing but ... air all around you, and only the water to aim at), you're going to end up landing feet first, and surviving the ordeal like just about everyone else in the history of platform-jumping.
The thing is, what you get, when you stand up there on top of the high platform at the pool, is a simple case of scared to death.
And a simple case of scared to death is exactly what I had every time I made up my mind to go up and talk to Jenna Hamilton.
Of course, when you're scared to death at the top of the high platform, the other kids (and old people and girls) all move past you and take the plunge, until you're left there on your own, staring down at the water. Finally, you make up your mind that you didn't really want to do it anyway, and begin the slow, degrading climb down.
When you're scared to death about going up and talking to Jenna Hamilton, something similar happens. You stand there watching, until someone else goes up and starts a conversation – or until she decides that it's time she went inside to do whatever it is that bikini goddesses do when they go inside (a whatever which remains forever a mystery to those unfortunates who fail the 'going up and talking to her' test).
Then, you stand there for a while, and stare at the place where she was standing when you still had the opportunity (now lost) to go up and talk to her, until, finally, you make up your mind that you didn't really want to do it anyway, and begin the slow, degrading walk back down to your cabin to stare at the mirror and think up new ways to call yourself an idiot.
<
br /> Or, you find Suzi, and start a conversation about what you both think Adrian might be planning for his big performance item on the Gala Farewell Karaoke Competition and Family Fun Night – First Prize: One Thousand Dollars!!!!
'I just hope he doesn't go with "Tomorrow",' I said, when Suzi suggested that it was odds-on to be a show tune. 'I don't know anyone who ranks Annie as their favourite show. And besides, it's supposed to be a girl's song.'
'What's Annie?' Suzi replied – which, when you think about it, summed up my point exactly.
The thing is, I sometimes forget that not everyone has a cousin whose great dream is to go to New York and star in a Broadway musical.
Playing point guard for the New York Knicks, maybe – or even pitching for the Yankees – but Broadway?
And what's really embarrassing is to realise that you've just said something out loud that shows you've absorbed enough of the Broadway obsession, by sheer exposure, to sound like you're actually interested in musicals yourself – which, for the record, I'm absolutely not.
At least, not much ...
10
The Rays of Motu Lagoon
THE WORLD ACCORDING TO SUZI
There haven't been too many moments in my life when I've been truly and completely surprised.
There have been things that happened that I didn't exactly predict – like meeting someone who managed to reach the age of fourteen or fifteen without developing a trace of Wheelchair Aversion Syndrome, or turning on the news and finding that the lead story was good news for a change – but a real surprise?
Nyet.
Which is why our day-trip to Moorea blew me away.
I generally didn't go on any of the day-trips they organised when the ship docked (except for Bora Bora, and that was only because my father and Jules insisted – and you know how that turned out).
It was just too much of a hassle, lining up at the purser's office to book, then going through the whole song and dance of getting me on board the tender to take me ashore, just so that I could sit there in the hot sun, watching people climbing over rocks, or surfing, or buying sexy little bikinis which they could wear next time they were strolling around the pool on the Lido Deck, showing off their curves and their incredibly long (and unscarred) legs ...
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