* * *
*
When Christine and Valerie arrived just after dinner, the air-conditioned Starlight Lounge was already half full of mostly gray heads and hands fanning programs, chattering voices rising from the small tables and semicircular booths. The lounge was a large interior room with no windows; it was on the promenade deck, but it felt underground, louche. The small raised stage had a sparkly linoleum floor that resembled ersatz starlight, its blue faux-velvet curtains parted, footlights beaming upward. Waiters circulated with trays held high, serving fancy, colorful cocktails in giant glasses garnished with tiny paper parasols and wedges of exotic fruit. Paddle fans turned overhead.
The talent show wouldn’t start for a while, but there were plenty of people to watch in the meantime. The other passengers had proved to be an odd and entertaining group, Christine thought: mostly older American couples, the usual suspects on any cruise, but there was a wide variety even in this normally homogeneous assemblage: a gaggle of California hippies; several well-preserved glamour babes and their younger male companions; a few dignified black couples who looked out of place only because they were so well dressed and conservatively elegant compared to everyone else; and quite a number of gay pairs, both male and female. There were also, of course, a number of fat, pinkish human adults in mass-produced clothing, but fewer of these than Christine had expected, because she had expected an entire boatful.
“This should be fun,” said Valerie. “I predict five drunk stripteases, four lip-synching drag queens, three bad comedians, two okay musicians, and a semiprofessional emcee.”
“Are these seats taken?” said a voice.
Christine looked up. “Miriam! Have a seat.”
She hadn’t seen Miriam since the captain’s table dinner, and hadn’t been able to speak to her. But she seemed like a different person now. An unmistakable glowing aura radiated from her.
“This is Sasha,” Miriam said, gesturing at the handsome gentleman at her side. He had black eyes and a well-shaped nose, broad shoulders and a full head of salt-and-pepper hair. He wore a cotton button-down shirt and blue jeans. He was sexy, no matter how old he was. “Sasha, this is my new friend, Christine.”
“I’m happy to meet you,” said Sasha as they seated themselves in the two other chairs at the table.
Christine widened her eyes at Miriam, and Miriam twinkled her eyes back at her. “And you must be the friend Christine has told me so much about,” she said, turning to Valerie. “Forgive me, I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Valerie,” said Valerie, who couldn’t hide the fact that she had no idea who these old people were and didn’t care.
“And what are you young ladies doing on this boat full of old people?” asked Sasha. He had a low, gravelly voice tinged with an accent.
“Oh, I’m trying to get a little work done,” said Valerie. “I’m a writer.”
“I’m on vacation,” said Christine.
“What do you do?” Sasha asked.
“I’m a farmer,” said Christine. She was getting a little tired of saying this every time she met someone. She wished she had something more interesting to offer about herself.
“Great combination,” said Sasha. “A writer and a farmer.”
“Oh. We’re not together,” said Valerie. “Though if I had to marry a girl, it would totally be Christine.”
“I used to be a writer,” Christine said, feeling defensive. “In New York.”
“So how long have you two been married?” Valerie asked in a skeptical voice. Miriam and Sasha exchanged an amused look.
“I was married for forty-three years, and my wife passed away last January,” said Sasha. “Miriam and I have just fallen in love after more than half a century of friendship and working together.”
“Oh,” said Valerie. She looked consternated by this for some reason.
“That’s amazing,” said Christine. “I’m so happy for you, Miriam. Both of you.”
Their drinks arrived, tropical and festooned, tart with just the right amount of sweet. Kimmi flew onto the stage out of the velvety darkness and grabbed a microphone. “Thanks for coming, everybody! So I’d like to introduce tonight’s first act, a singer from Brazil. Give it up for Beatriz Oliveira! Accompanied by our very own house band, the Kool-Tones!”
The jazz quintet off to the side raised gleaming horns in a salute, the drummer simmered his sticks on the floor tom, and Valerie’s friend Beatriz took the stage in a skintight fuchsia dress.
“I’m feeling mighty lonesome,” she sang in a smoky whisper. “Haven’t slept a wink…” Her interpretation of “Black Coffee” began with all the appropriate pathos, but as it went along, she sounded increasingly defiant, like a woman who was not resigned yet to her fate. Her face opened like a flower in water, blooming, her eyes alight with a glinting, self-possessed sexual straightforwardness that belonged to the present-day era, her own time. “My nerves have gone to pieces, my hair is turning gray…” As she sang, Christine watched Miriam and Sasha out of the corner of her eye. They were holding hands on top of the table, leaning into each other with abstracted yet fully awake expressions. He drew her in close, Miriam looked giddy with joy, and Christine felt a pang of vicarious envy. She missed being in love. Marriage wasn’t about heady, swooning romance and it never had been, she knew that full well and accepted it, but the small whiffs of vicarious helium she was breathing in were enough to set up a powerful and irrational yearning for it, just once more, in some small way, the way a reformed alcoholic seated next to a happy drunk at a dinner party might crave some booze.
“They’re so lucky,” Christine whispered to Valerie, nodding toward Miriam and Sasha.
“I bet you miss Ed right now,” Valerie shot back.
“No,” Christine said bluntly. “Not at all.”
Valerie leaned against her, and they both laughed in the old way, with a shared sense of generalized scorn for men, glad to be unencumbered, independent, free.
chapter thirteen
Laurens was on Consuelo all night. He abruptly left the pass, where he’d been overseeing plating and garnishes, to stand directly behind her, as close as he could get without touching her; so close, Mick knew, that she could feel his exhalations from his nose on the back of her neck. Every now and then he’d correct her flatly, jabbing his finger to point at the offending action. “You waited too long to turn that,” he said. “Three seconds too much and a chop is ruined.” A minute later: “Don’t heat the fucking sauce till it boils, you break it that way.” Mick could feel Consuelo tightening, bracing herself, maintaining control and calm through strict, years-long internal discipline. Laurens was cool and icy; she was cooler, icier. Mick would have reacted exactly the same way. She was a pro, and he was proud of her. There was no reason for Laurens’s treatment of her tonight except that Laurens probably sensed that she wasn’t subordinate enough. She took too much pride in her work and invested too much ego in it for his liking, for the good of the kitchen’s overall morale, and so she required further taking down. He was doing his job, and she was doing hers.
“Yes, Chef,” she said for the tenth time, stepping aside so Laurens could show her the way he wanted the meat plated. Almost nine minutes had gone by since he’d stepped back to correct her, and she hadn’t cracked, not even a little. Her eyes were on her work, not flickering, not slitting. Her hands were steady. Laurens was testing her, poking at her, determining her weaknesses, and she was rising to it. But Mick kept close tabs on her anyway. He’d vouched for her and brought her with him to the main galley. So if she exploded at Laurens, or flashed any temper, Mick would be called upon to step in somehow and smooth things over. All his antennae were tuned in, his muscles tensed for intervention.
Laurens lifted the sauté pan of sweetbreads Consuelo was cooking in butter and held it under his nose, breathing in their steam, then shook it gently, assessing
their turgor. “Did you blanch these?”
“Yes, Chef,” said Consuelo.
“When you sauté sweetbreads, blanching robs them of flavor.”
“Yes, Chef,” she said.
Mick felt a surge of pride in her. She was tough. Laurens was right, also. She shouldn’t have blanched them.
“It makes them easier to slice but it’s lazy. They’re better unblanched.” Laurens put the pan back down.
“Yes, Chef,” said Consuelo. Her voice sounded steady and earnest.
Just as Mick relaxed his grip and started to submerge himself in his own rhythm of work, Consuelo turned to Laurens, casually, as if she were about to add something to her submissive agreement.
“I have a question, Chef,” she said. Her voice was low and calm. “What if I told you that you were wrong and the sweetbreads are better this way? What would you do to me? Would you send me to my room?”
Laurens stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. He didn’t move. He had no expression at all.
Mick inhaled sharply and choked on some spit and began coughing hard. He bent over, low down, so he didn’t spray the food.
“I disagree with you, Chef,” said Consuelo. “The way I make them, they come out both tender and delicious-tasting. Look. Try some.”
While she spoke, she sliced off a piece of sweetbread with her eight-inch chef’s knife’s razor-sharp blade, impaled it on the tip of the knife, and dipped it into the sauce waiting to coat each serving, a rich-looking tomato sauce. She held it out to Laurens, stuck on the point of the knife, right in front of his face. It dripped red.
He looked at her. His face was white, and his voice held no emotion at all. “We will discuss this when dinner service is over,” he said. “Now, back to work, everyone.”
Consuelo winked at Mick and carefully ate the bite off the tip of her knife. “It’s fucking perfect,” she told him with a cold smile.
“Back to work, you heard him,” said Mick, not smiling back. No point in saying anything. The damage was done.
His ears thudded with his heartbeat. In the back of his throat, he felt the itch of another cough, but he suppressed it.
It had all happened in one minute, at the most, but he felt as if the waves of energy that powered the kitchen had been profoundly disturbed. For the rest of his shift, the rhythms were off. Laurens was tightly wound, and the tension in the room caused everyone’s movements to slow, bodies to fight for balance. All the other chefs seemed to be trying to stay on top of things and be perfect to make up for Consuelo’s unthinkable, terrible insurrection.
The rest of the dinner shift was as weirdly tense a night as Mick could remember in all his years working in a kitchen. People looked at one another furtively, grimly. No one looked at Consuelo. Mistakes turned into minor catastrophes and were surfed over, corrected, dealt with. Mick and Kenji, on opposite sides of the galley, exchanged quick eye contact a couple of times, telegraphing irritated bewilderment to each other with a flick of their eyes. Kenji’s fish station hit the weeds several times. A tray of charred cod had to be thrown out when black smoke churned from the salamander. A pot of béarnaise sauce was scalded beyond repair. On the meat station, Mick had to micromanage Rodrigo and Tony in addition to keeping his own stuff going. Consuelo was the only one in the kitchen who had been letter-perfect all night. Her sweetbreads, the waiters reported, were generating raves.
“Compliments to whoever made these,” one of the waiters had said, loudly, so that everyone could hear. “From the old lady who doesn’t like anything. The one who sent back her filet mignon the other night.”
Consuelo didn’t respond. She barely acknowledged the compliment or looked at the waiter. And she didn’t look at Mick once all night. Of course she knew he was baffled and upset with her, that he was watching every move she made. Her insolence surrounded her; he could feel it bubbling, hot, rash, triumphant. The piece of sweetbread dripping with sauce at the end of her sharp knife, extended toward Laurens’s face, was seared on his memory.
Goddamn her, he thought, even though what she’d done wasn’t so bad in itself. She’d disagreed with Laurens’s assessment of her technique and offered him a sample of her work as proof that it was up to snuff. But in reality it was far worse: she had challenged and even threatened the executive chef in front of the whole galley. They had all seen it, and they all knew what it meant. And Laurens knew it too. That was the unforgivable thing. Not the letter of the act, but the spirit. In the old maritime days, on an eighteenth-century ship, the captain might very well have had her thrown overboard. Instead, Laurens would put her off the ship as soon as they came into port in Honolulu.
As well he should, Mick thought. Although Mick wouldn’t necessarily have run a kitchen the way Laurens did, he preferred working under a control freak like Laurens to a chef who was more lax and volatile. He liked rules, liked knowing where he stood. The harder and more exacting the work he was required to do, the more comfortable he felt. This only doubled his anger at Consuelo: Laurens wasn’t even that bad! And yet, in spite of himself, Mick couldn’t help worrying about what would happen to her now. And this combination of protectiveness and anger reminded him of the way he’d worried about his younger sister, Beata, with her buzz-cut hair and tattoos and blackout drinking and stash of drugs and all-night raves in the ruin bars, stupid girl, coming home totally fucked up, defying their father to hit her the way Consuelo had defied Laurens to fire her. Authority, male: not their favorite thing.
Mick had simply wanted their father to run a more orderly and efficient household, to be an effective head. Beata had been emotional, egotistical, whereas Mick was always pragmatic, interested primarily in survival. Beata had died in a motorcycle accident at nineteen. She had been sparky and charismatic, just like Consuelo; they also shared outsized pride and temper and a cavalier refusal to play the game, a self-defeating stance that only ever bit them in the ass. And it made Mick sad. He liked Consuelo. He wanted her to do well. She was a talented chef, bright, skilled.
But then he remembered that she’d fucked things up for him, too. Whatever ground he’d regained with Laurens after his faux pas at the captain’s table dinner was lost. He had failed to keep Consuelo in check. It wasn’t his fucking fault, but he couldn’t tell Laurens that when he and Laurens inevitably discussed the incident later. Instead, Mick would have to take responsibility for her, apologize, act contrite. It made him seethe with frustration. It was one thing to watch someone torpedo her own job, another thing entirely to be implicated in her behavior and held responsible for it.
He managed to get through the shift by going from one thing to the next, trying to focus on what was at hand, immediate. And when it was finally over, the last meal served, the last tray of leftovers stored, the equipment clean and wiped down, the floors swabbed, they all straggled over to the pass and gathered around in their usual raggedy ranks for the end-of-night meeting. Most nights had gone extremely well, which meant that this gathering was usually short, sweet, punchy, and even festive, with bottles of beer handed around, maybe a pan of leftovers passed with a fork, everyone exhausted, sweaty, relieved. But tonight the galley was silent. The tension from earlier had deepened to a blanket of smog. Kenji raised an eyebrow at Mick, who answered with a shrug so small his shoulders barely moved.
Laurens had been in his office for the last few hours, between service and the closing staff meeting. It was a power move, like everything he did. He never fraternized with the other chefs or staff. He wasn’t given to lingering. As always, his arrival in the galley caused the room to go quickly silent. Everyone stood still. Consuelo waited next to Mick, holding her knife case, though she breathed evenly, her arms loose by her sides. Mick was impressed in spite of himself at her cool. His own hands were clenched.
“Hello, everyone,” said Laurens. He looked very pale. His eyes were rimmed red. He held one arm across his stomach as if he w
ere protecting it. He stopped at the head of the pass and looked around at their faces, stopping on Consuelo’s while he spoke, looking directly at her. His voice sounded a little weak, but he didn’t hesitate. “We had a situation tonight. It could not be handled during service without disrupting the passengers’ dinner. I am going to deal with it now. Consuelo, from the beginning you have been a problem in this kitchen, and what happened tonight was inexcusable. You will be put off the ship in Hawaii. Please leave my kitchen now and do not come back.”
Consuelo hefted her knife case lightly from hand to hand. “Yes, Chef,” she said in a clear voice. Mick imagined for an instant that she was about to take her fish knife from the case and stab Laurens through the heart. But instead she walked out of the galley, her back very straight, her gait unhurried. The door swung behind her.
“And everyone else,” Laurens began, but he stopped as one by one, without a word, the crew turned and followed Consuelo out.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Laurens said to their departing backs. “I didn’t dismiss you.”
No one answered him. Mick watched in astonishment as the most obedient and lowliest of his staff, every ranking color of neckerchief from dishwashers to line chefs, filed out the door. He tried to catch someone’s eye, anyone’s, but no one would look at him. The displaced air of their bodies blew against his cheeks along with an animal smell of sour sweat.
Laurens turned to Mick and Kenji. They were the only two left in the galley. “What the hell is going on here?”
Kenji looked at Mick with the same baffled expression. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Me neither,” said Mick. “I’ve never seen this happen before.”
The Last Cruise Page 16