But it was strangely quiet in here, Mick thought. First nights were generally loud, wild, and late, the new crew getting acquainted or greeting friends they hadn’t worked with in a while. Maybe most people hadn’t come off their shifts yet; he didn’t know the schedules of the waiters and housekeeping staffs.
Just then, one of the Russians said something loudly and their entire table ignited in laughter. The guy tending bar, a voluntary position paid only in tips and social prestige, was evidently a Russian too: he yelled something across the lounge and threw a bottle of vodka over to the table. The guy who’d shouted caught it and opened it and drank from it, then wiped off the top and poured straight vodka into everyone’s glass with a flip of the wrist and a flourish.
The mood at the Jamaican table was dreamy and contemplative; maybe they’d found a place to enjoy a post-work spliff. Mellow, heavy-lidded, they peeled the labels off bottles of beer and bobbed their heads to the music on the sound system, some kind of synth-heavy pop with a female singer. Mick had no idea who she was. Her voice was husky, twitchy with alley-cat yowls. It was the aural equivalent of Consuelo’s perfume.
But the stoned, spaced-out Jamaicans were raucous compared to Consuelo’s table. Talking in low voices with their heads close together was not Mick’s usual notion of a group of Spanish speakers. In his experience, Hispanics and Latinos loved to mix it up when they drank, interrupting each other, flaring into opinionated rants and half-flirtatious arguments and hot riffs of arguing banter and hard laughter. These people were talking one by one, quietly, and everyone seemed to be listening instead of jumping in. Mick’s Spanish was passable, just good enough to make out the gist of a conversation. He listened hard, but their voices were too quiet, impossible to eavesdrop on.
Consuelo, who was facing Mick, caught his eye and kept her face impassive as she held his gaze. He had no idea what she was trying to telegraph to him. She thought he was hot and desired him passionately? He should mind his own business? He should fuck off? Probably the latter two.
He shut his eyes again and let the music and beer fill his head.
He felt another quick tap on his shoulder a while later with another whiff of her perfume. He opened his eyes as Consuelo slid into the chair next to him and sat facing the same direction he was facing, toward the bar, where the Russian bartender was smoking and leaning on the bar top and yelling over at his increasingly drunk compatriots. He had a grim face, colorless hair, and a huge nose. He saw Mick looking at him and held up a beer bottle. Mick nodded and caught the bottle as it flew toward him, twisted off the top, drank.
“Hey,” said Consuelo. “You looked like you were having a nice nap.”
“Thanks for waking me up,” he said. “Looks like a serious discussion over there. Are you talking about economics or science or something?”
“We’re plotting to take over the world,” she said.
She looked serious, but Mick was learning her sense of humor, he thought. He laughed; she didn’t. “Where are you all from, anyway?”
“Most of us are from Mexico, a couple from Guatemala. We know each other from past cruises. You know Rodrigo, right? He’s on our station. And Yvete is a croupier in the casino. A couple of others are room stewards. A couple of waiters.”
“They’re your friends?”
Her face went still as she looked over at the table. “In a way. Friends, yeah, sure.”
“What were you really talking about?”
“How pissed off we are about the layoffs. You know they’re canceling all our contracts after this cruise?”
Mick stared at her. “No,” he said. “I haven’t heard anything about it. Are they really?”
“I guess you’re in the clear, man. Also, do you know who’s on the boat? One of the owners of Cabaret. Larry Weiss. Should we poison his steak?”
“You think it would solve anything?”
“It would make me feel better.”
Mick nodded at her empty glass. “You want another glass of wine?”
She shook her head. “I’m going to sleep. My new boss is a bastard. I have to stay on my toes.”
She winked at him and got up, banging her knuckles softly against Mick’s.
chapter seven
Miriam unpacked her toiletries carefully, trying to keep them from getting mixed up with Isaac’s. Of course Rivka, in her willful ignorance of their divorced state, had put them into a room together, with a double bed no less, when she’d made the arrangements for them. As soon as she realized this, Miriam had marched straight up to a crewmember and demanded a room of her own. The ship was less than half full; surely they could accommodate her. But the boy had disappeared and Miriam hadn’t seen him since. She had had to rush to get to their rehearsal in the chapel, so nothing had been done, and here it was after dinner, and she was exhausted. She’d slept with Isaac endless times before, she supposed she could do it one more night, but tomorrow she was going to raise hell and get herself her own damned private cabin. She didn’t care if they docked her pay, she wasn’t spending two weeks lying awake next to this snoring old man, checking his damned scrotum for him every time he decided he might have cancer.
Isaac was still up in the casino with Larry and Rivka, watching Larry shoot craps and flirting with Rivka, on whom, Miriam suspected, he had a crush. She hoped he’d stay up there all night. But she knew he wouldn’t, and she also knew that she wouldn’t be able to sleep until he came back. She would lie awake, expecting him to come along any minute and rattle the key in the lock and turn the light on and make a racket getting himself into his pajamas and heaving himself down next to her, jostling her and disarranging the covers. Why bother falling asleep if she’d just have to do it all over again?
She climbed into the bed on the side farther from the bathroom, since Isaac had to get up in the night because of prostate issues, and God forbid he should have to go all the way around the bed. She plumped up her pillows, settled herself against them, opened her boring Norwegian crime novel, and began to read. Ten minutes later she was sound asleep with the book open in her lap, the lamp on, and her reading glasses still on her nose.
She awoke with a small gasp and floundered up from the depths of a deep, untroubled sleep to find Isaac, lying on his back next to her, staring up at the ceiling. He looked over at her.
“Good morning,” she said. “You were so quiet, I hardly knew you were there.”
“I lay here awake all night, not moving.”
“You didn’t.”
“Of course I didn’t.”
She sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes with the heel of one hand, bracing her back with the other. Sunlight streamed through the porthole. She got out of bed and stretched her arms skyward, as she did every morning, then bent over and tried to touch her toes. She repeated this ten times, grunting. Isaac heaved himself up out of bed and looked out the porthole. His white hair stood up around his head, sunlit, like a nimbus. He looked to Miriam like a saintly Einstein in pale blue-and-white-striped pajama bottoms and a white undershirt. It was not at all awkward to be sharing a bed with him again. It felt familial, like sleeping with an aunt or a cousin.
“I didn’t hear you come to bed,” she said.
“I tiptoed into the room like a mouse, so terrified was I from years of sleeping with you. You always flew into a rage if I woke you up. And I knew I’d lie there all night, too afraid I’d snore. I’d never sleep in a million years.”
“But you slept.”
“I slept very well,” he said. “Did I snore?”
“If you did, I didn’t hear it.”
“So maybe you’re going deaf.”
“Eccch,” said Miriam. She went into the tiny bathroom and turned on the shower.
* * *
*
In the buffet breakfast room, Christine collected a cup of black coffee and a bowl of yogurt with
a scoop of fruit salad on top. Armed with her morning’s requirements, she headed up to yesterday’s nook and lounge chair, which she now thought of as her exclusive spot. Valerie was still asleep; Christine expected her to be out cold until early afternoon.
She arranged her breakfast on the table next to the chair and took from her bag the copy of Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust that she’d filched yesterday from the ship’s library, a windowless inner room on the sun deck with wingback armchairs and mahogany shelves and tasseled standing lamps. It was well stocked with books, including leather-bound editions of novels by Wodehouse and Cather and Wharton, much better than the schlocky charity-box crap she’d brought from the supermarket in Maine.
Instead of reading, she looked out at the view as she drank her coffee. The water swelled, rising and falling in heavy rhythm. The ocean looked like a miniature mountain range in constant liquid motion, dark fluid granite peaks veined with white, shifting, collapsing, forming new peaks. The dome of air from sea surface to sky-top was shot with bits of quick gold, charged with ions, dancing with refracted sunlight.
Nearby on the deck, there seemed to be a kerfuffle going on between a tall, indignant old man and a baffled crewmember, who looked hapless and very young.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said someone behind her. “Good luck, Sasha.”
Christine turned and beheld an elderly woman a few lounge chairs over, staring down the deck in consternation. She was small and slender, and she looked simultaneously elegant and fierce in her gray long-sleeved T-shirt and peg-legged white trousers, her chestnut hair pinned up with a sparkling clip. Her small face was swathed in oversized sunglasses.
The woman noticed Christine and politely took off her sunglasses to look her directly in the eyes. “He’s up in arms because they’re making us share rooms. The ship isn’t even half full, but they won’t change it. I have to sleep with my ex-husband, can you imagine?”
The tall man walked off down the deck as the crewmember began straightening deck chairs, looking hangdog.
“Is that him?” Christine pointed to the tall old man’s very straight retreating back.
“No, that’s our first violinist. My ex-husband plays the viola. The cellist is around here somewhere. We’re a string quartet.”
“Oh,” Christine said, recognizing her. “I heard you playing during dinner last night. You were wonderful.”
“Thank you,” said the woman. “We’ve played together for a very long time. I’m Miriam, by the way.”
“Christine,” said Christine.
“Do you mind if I join you?”
“Not at all,” said Christine, hoping her face didn’t betray her hesitation. She had never been particularly fond of talking to strangers first thing in the morning.
Miriam brought her coffee over to the empty deck chair next to hers. “Are you from Los Angeles?”
“Oh no, not at all,” said Christine. “I’m from Maine. I’ve never been on a cruise before.”
“Lucky you. I’ve been on far too many. Well, it’s my job. And it pays well. We usually get our own rooms, though.”
“I’m sharing a room with my friend,” said Christine. “She invited me, so I can’t complain, but I didn’t realize how small they were going to be.”
“They’re usually bigger. But this is an old ship. And at least you don’t have to sleep with your ex-husband.”
Christine laughed. “I’m still on my first, and he’s at home.”
“Good for you. Kids?”
“No. Not yet. Do you have any?”
“I have two,” said Miriam. “A boy and a girl, the lights of my life. Rachel and Avner, their names are. I have grandchildren, too.”
Christine felt an unaccustomed urge to pry, or maybe it was just curiosity. She found herself liking this woman. “Did you always know you were going to be a mother? Or did you decide at some point?”
“It wasn’t a choice,” said Miriam. She seemed to welcome Christine’s interest. “It was an important thing for us all to have children. Our population was decimated, Israel needed people, to work and learn and carry on our traditions, we needed soldiers in the army, we needed the next generation of Jews.”
“That makes sense,” said Christine. “For me it’s completely different. I think all the time about overpopulation and extinction and climate change.”
Miriam put a hand on Christine’s arm. It felt surprisingly heavy and strong, like those little birds at the aquarium. “Two more won’t make a difference to the world. But they will make all the difference to you.”
“Maybe,” said Christine.
Miriam peered closely at her. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-six,” said Christine. “I know, I’m getting old.”
“Oh, you’re so young. Just don’t stay stuck. That’s the real mistake. Whatever you decide.” Miriam suddenly looked ancient and wise to Christine, all her elegance revealed to lie lightly on her, like a shimmer of fairy dust. But her eyes blazed as brightly as a girl’s. “Don’t be afraid of change.”
Christine felt a rush of relief, hearing this, although she wasn’t sure why. “Thank you,” she said. “That’s a good way to look at it.”
“I’ve never been afraid of change,” said Miriam. “That way, you don’t have to regret the things you didn’t do.”
“What’s it like, having your ex-husband in the quartet with you?”
Miriam laughed. “It’s a little like being married still, only without the headaches, because I don’t have to live with him. We live in the same building and we work together, but I have my own apartment, I can do as I please.”
Christine tried to imagine herself and Ed divorced, still working the farm together, but living apart, with their own individual lives outside of farmwork. She found the idea very attractive and didn’t quite know why.
“That sounds great,” she told Miriam.
“He still drives me crazy, so it’s half great,” said Miriam, waving a hand as if to send the other half of Isaac packing. “Neither of us remarried and we’re together all the time, so it’s like we never really split fully.”
“I work with my husband,” said Christine. “We’re together all the time, we work hard on our own land, and it’s a good life.” She hesitated. Sitting here in the hazy sea air, so far from land, gave her a feeling of safety, as if whatever she said would stay here in the ocean. “But sometimes I feel invisible,” she added slowly. “Like I’m disappearing.” She felt instantly sheepish for confessing something so fanciful.
But Miriam, to her credit, didn’t laugh. She didn’t say anything. She just went on watching Christine with her keen warm gaze.
* * *
*
Mick was supposed to meet Chef van Buyten at 1100 hours in the small office off the main galley. When he arrived at 1058, the two other executive sous-chefs were there already. They’d been introduced in the meeting the day before, but he’d forgotten their names. One of them was French, that much he remembered. The other was Asian, Japanese maybe. They were the same rank as Mick, but technically slightly above him in station, since they worked in the main galley, and Mick was running the buffet.
The Frenchman, small but wiry with muscle, sat backward in the chair by the inner wall, his shaved bullethead covered with a pugilistic stubble of black hair. He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses made even thicker and blacker by the echo of his thick, black eyebrows. He was also heavily tattooed, at least on his forearms and neck; the rest of him was hidden in his whites. Instinctively, Mick had no interest in provoking him. He knew the type. Quick-tempered for no good reason, prickly and unpleasant, and not as good as he thought he was, which Mick suspected was the real source of his bad temper.
The other sous-chef glanced up briefly as Mick came in. His black hair was neatly clipped. He was soft-bodied and round like a baby, and had a
huge head with a sweet round face, but his eyes looked weary and old.
“Mick,” Mick reminded them both. He sat in the empty chair farthest from the desk.
“Kenji,” said the Japanese dude. He had a seemingly natural puckish expression he managed to parlay into a glower.
The Frenchman’s thick lips twisted. “Jean-Luc,” he said with apparent bitter condescension.
Mick almost laughed, but checked himself.
“Chef,” the three of them said in ragged unison as Laurens came in and sat abruptly in the chair they’d left him, the one behind the desk. His pale, freckled face held no expression. He bared his teeth at them all, but it wasn’t a smile, and his eyes flickered from one face to another. “First, I’d like to hear from each of you how you think it went last night. Kenji, you first. Talk to me about the fish.”
“Oui, Chef,” said Kenji. “I think most thing come out good. I think we have good rhythm, my team perform well. When we get hit with a lot of order for two hour, we stay cool, don’t lose our shit. Rodrigo did good, cooked perfectly. Stefan had some trouble with his timing a couple time at the beginning. All in all we did okay, very good. I was proud of them.”
“What could you have done better?” Laurens fired back. “What did you fuck up? What went wrong?”
Mick waited for Kenji to get defensive, bluster, try to cover his ass. Instead he said, “Nothing wrong, Chef. Stefan had trouble with tricky timing of fillet of sole at first but he learn quick. We did very well. No send-backs. Everyone happy, Chef.”
Laurens kept his gaze on Kenji for a moment. Kenji looked back, unperturbed. His eyes even ticked closed a millimeter. Mick was impressed: this guy had sangfroid. Either he wasn’t afraid of Laurens or he was an excellent actor.
“Mick,” said Laurens.
The Last Cruise Page 9