The Last Cruise

by Kate Christensen

  “Who is that?” Mick shouted to Christine over the roar.

  “That’s the owner!” Her upturned face glowed in the lights. Tendrils of hair flew around her head.

  “The owner of the ship?”

  “The owner of the ship! How do you not know that?”

  “Mi a fasz!”

  The Hungarian epithet sounded funny even to Mick’s ears. They grinned at each other in the wind.

  “Who was the first guy?” Christine shouted.

  “My fucking boss!” Mick shouted back.

  The helicopter rose slowly, pivoted to put its head down in a wide banking turn, and buzzed away like a giant dragonfly, back the way it had come. In its wake, there was a vast silence, a collective feeling of depressed letdown. As the winking lights receded toward the horizon and the sound of the engine faded, people trailed back to the pool, the buffet table, the tables and chairs. The band’s instruments lay abandoned on lounge chairs. A group started to gather around the bar as before, but now the conversations were muted, the festivity dampened. Mick’s crew drifted away, probably down to the main deck to join the walkout crew’s party. Mick stayed with Christine at the grill. They worked side by side in silence, handing burgers and steaks to the few people who came up asking for them. No one seemed very hungry anymore.

  Sparks from the brazier floated upward and twisted high into the darkening air with the smell of charred flesh. It was like a burnt offering to one of the ancient gods, thought Mick with a tipsy half-superstition, wishing those gods still existed. The atmosphere around the ship had been churned and disturbed by the helicopter, as if its coming and going over the horizon had made an invisible rip in the fabric of the sky that had sealed shut again behind it.

  Looking out at the ocean’s vast and wild void, Mick felt a deep sense of dread. They were completely alone out here.

  part three

  THE SONG OF THE SEA

  chapter eighteen

  When Miriam stepped out onto the balcony to do her morning stretches, she was assaulted by the sunlight, even though it was still early. It was their fourth morning adrift without power or propulsion. There was no breeze. The air hung like a gauze curtain, trapping the heat against the water. She tried to take a deep breath as she touched her toes, but her lungs felt compressed by the heavy air. How was this the middle of the Pacific? It felt more like the inside of a coat closet. Behind her, in their bed, Sasha was still asleep, lying on his back naked, one arm flung upward on the pillows above his head, the other hugging his stomach. She envied him, being so deeply asleep. She felt wide awake and restless. Her entire body itched from prickly heat and lack of a shower.

  The day of their expected arrival in Hawaii had come and gone, and since then everything, it seemed, had worsened. News had filtered from the bridge through the ship that one of the tugboats had had to turn back because of engine trouble, and another one had been sent out to join the first one, so the pair wouldn’t arrive to tow the Isabella to land for at least two more days. The slower return journey would take five days, at least, which meant another week on board before they reached the Port of Long Beach again. Some cruise, thought Miriam.

  On the plus side, Cabaret had promised an airdrop of supplies that afternoon. It was about time, because food and water were running low. The crew had rationed bottled water, two liters per person per day, but people helped themselves freely to alcohol, and no one tried to stop them. If they wanted to dehydrate themselves and stay blotto, that was apparently their business.

  Meanwhile, the lower decks were fetid with the stench of overflowing toilets steeping in the heat, uncollected garbage, and rotting food, while the upper decks looked like a crowded tropical refugee camp. Almost fifty people were sick with norovirus, with more succumbing every day. The makeshift clinic on the promenade deck was crowded with stricken crew, passengers, and officers alike, all of them vomiting and feverish, racked with intestinal pain. Miriam felt terrible for them, being so miserably sick on top of everything else. Though the crew had managed to rig two of the toilets in the clinic with hoses and swimming-pool water for the sick people, everyone else was using the now-obligatory bio-bags. Miriam hated pooping into a plastic bag so much, she’d become severely constipated for the past three days in order to avoid it, and she knew she wasn’t the only one.

  The crewmembers who’d walked out on their jobs, those who weren’t sick, were still camped out on the main deck. They stayed there day and night with nowhere else to go and, now that Larry had left the ship, no one to bargain with. They spent their unproductive futile protest in cruise-like activities: drinking, card games, sunbathing, playing guitars. Miriam felt a half-resentful pity for them, all those poor kids with no future and no chance of winning their jobs back. They were stuck here, just like everyone else, mired in frustration, anxiety, and helpless inaction. What good was any of it?

  As for the crewmembers who’d stayed on the job, still wearing their now-rumpled and stained uniforms, they had no water or power to do laundry, wash dishes, mop, vacuum, or cook, but they tried stoically to keep things clean and orderly, serve three meals a day, presenting at least the appearance of dedication to their jobs. Since the tiny windowless crew cabins belowdecks were too airless and hot and reeking for habitation, most of them slept outside on the main deck in lounge chairs or on mattresses, side by side with the crew who had quit, and the passengers they were supposed to be serving. These various factions seemed to coexist peacefully, for now. That was the one advantage of the heat: it tamped down tempers, the tantrums and fights that never felt far from erupting, if only because it was just too hot to yell or throw things or punch anyone in the head. Also, everyone seemed united by one common purpose: to get the hell off the ship and back to land.

  At least, Miriam thought with half-guilty relief, her own living conditions had improved. At Rivka’s insistence, the whole quartet had moved into the owner’s suite after Larry had left in the helicopter. Compared to their cabins far below, Rivka’s suite was a palace. It sat in the middle of the bridge deck, spanning the width of the ship so there were windows and balconies on both sides, which created a cross-breeze whenever any air moved. The rooms were decorated in striped beige-and-cream wallpaper and fluffy white rugs over cool white-plank flooring. It was all very luxurious and bright, and Miriam felt grateful to be able to stay there, never mind that it was Rivka’s fault that the Sabra was on the ship in the first place.

  Jakov and Isaac had daybeds tucked into separate alcoves in the living room, and Sasha and Miriam got the smaller, unused second bedroom, with a balcony of its own and a queen-sized bed. Rivka had offered the room to Miriam and Isaac first, which required a lengthy explanation from Miriam that she and Sasha were a couple now, and forced Rivka to acknowledge, at long last, and with much disingenuous blinking and stated confusion on her part, that Isaac and Miriam had been divorced for at least twenty years. In the end, Rivka had acquiesced with a bemused skepticism that made Miriam want to slap her, but there it was.

  As she crept quietly through the spacious living room out to the catwalk, Miriam heard Jakov groaning in his sleep on his daybed. He had a fever, pains in his chest, and a dry cough. It wasn’t the norovirus; he’d had worsening heart trouble for years, which wasn’t contagious, so he’d been spared the infirmary quarantine. But Miriam was worried about him. He seemed to be getting worse, like everything else around here.

  She made her way down the stairs to the breakfast room, passing a few people sitting in the stairwell of the upper deck. More stood at railings, looking out at the morning sun on the ocean, while others lay sleeping in deck chairs under motionless white bedsheet ceilings. Unlike the military precision of the crew’s camp, the passengers’ cobbled-together tent city looked scruffy and ragtag, all sagging sheets and rumpled blankets. The passengers themselves looked little better, on the whole, their general mood seeming to hover between anxious waiting, fest
ering outrage, and a collective paralysis of will, gone slack in the heat. People sprawled in underwear and T-shirts on mattresses, publicly asleep and half naked, vulnerable as homeless bums in doorways. Others wandered around aimlessly, looking wild-eyed, dazed, hair sticking up, Band-Aids stuck on various places, chests peeling, noses red from sunburn. Miriam’s heart went out to them, so far from home, normally dignified and settled people with houses, grandchildren, histories, longtime careers and jobs they’d retired from or still had.

  From the breakfast buffet room, she fetched a plastic cup of the food the kitchen crew had provided: raw oats and cut-up, overripe fruit, soaked overnight in water to make a half-fermented, pasty gruel, and ladled out of a large soup pot. They were calling it “muesli” in a feeble attempt to make it more appetizing, but it looked revolting.

  Ascending to Rivka’s suite out of the grimy chaos of the rest of the ship, Miriam felt the usual twinge of guilt that she got to live in luxury when so many others, some no younger than she was, had to sleep on deck chairs in the open air. What was worse, most of them had paid for this cruise. She had to remind herself again of all the lawsuits that would be filed when they got back to land, the millions of dollars in payouts Cabaret would have to make to these people for their many days of discomfort. From that perspective, it almost seemed worth it, but of course not entirely.

  “Don’t bother with that, I can’t eat it,” Jakov said, waving away the food as she held it out to him. He lay flat on his back on his couch in boxer shorts and undershirt.

  “You need to eat something, Jakov,” she said, lowering herself into the chair by his bed. He hadn’t eaten anything in two days. “Even if it’s just a couple of bites. You need strength to recover.”

  “What are you, my mother? I have no appetite! This might be a good thing.” He patted his belly.

  “Oh Jakov,” she said. She wished there were enough water to give him a cool bath, ice to offer him to suck on; things she’d done for her children when they were feverish. But she didn’t want to eat that stuff either, to be honest. He closed his eyes again, and she got up and carried the cup of food to the balcony off Rivka’s bedroom. The door was open, and Isaac and Rivka sat looking out at the ocean. Miriam sat down beside them in an empty chair.

  “How is Jakov?” Isaac asked, rousing himself.

  “Not too well,” said Miriam. “He won’t eat. Does anyone want some breakfast?”

  Rivka ignored her. Isaac took one look at the cup and looked away again without a word. Just to spite them both, Miriam forced herself to take a bite of the sweet, sticky gruel. It wasn’t so bad once she got started. She was hungry.

  “Where is Sasha?” Isaac asked, managing to infuse the question with pathos, jealousy, accusation, and genuine interest, all at once.

  “Still asleep,” said Miriam. “He lies awake all night. He wishes he could do something to help. But those engines down there aren’t anything like the ones he learned how to fix in the war.”

  “The big hero,” said Isaac.

  “Well, he is a hero,” said Miriam, possibly a little too defensively. “He wishes he could help save us.”

  “While we sit here like pashas,” said Isaac.

  She laughed. Isaac looked pleased, as if he had won something. He had always been able to make her laugh, even when they were fighting.

  “And Larry, sitting in a hotel room in Honolulu,” Rivka burst out. “Speaking of big heroes. I hope he chokes on a fishbone.” She stared belligerently at Miriam and Isaac. “Do you know how much money he has? And Cabaret, do you know how much their yearly profits are? They could double everyone’s salary, all the workers in the whole company—triple, quadruple, even—and not feel a thing. Do you know, just the other day, I heard Larry talking about how it isn’t good for workers to be paid too much or be treated too well, because it makes them soft and lazy. He said that! Larry! My husband!”

  “That’s horrible,” said Miriam, uneasily. Rivka’s rage helped nothing, as far as Miriam could see. It just made everything worse, in fact. What was the point of dwelling on all this?

  “He never used to be like this,” she said. “He used to be the nicest guy I knew. Kind, generous, with a strong work ethic, and every other kind of ethic. How did he turn so corrupt? I don’t think I realized what a terrible person he’d turned into until I saw him get into that helicopter. I’m finished with him now. That was it.”

  “He’s been very generous to us, the Sabra Quartet,” said Miriam with feeble and half-hearted loyalty. “For many years.”

  Rivka turned to look at Miriam. Her eyes glittered. “Do you want to know something else? This ship is a rusted piece of junk. They painted over the rust. You can see it! Just painted right over it. They cut so many corners it’s a wonder this thing even floats.”

  Miriam felt Rivka wanting her to share in the outrage, to echo it back to her and draw it out of her even more so they could sit there in a hot, sticky web of it all day. She got up, too agitated to sit still any longer.

  “I have to go,” Miriam said, tossing her empty cup and spoon in a wastebasket for the crew to pick up when they came through. For all she knew, they were throwing it all into the ocean at this point. And who could blame them?

  “Where to?” Isaac asked accusingly.

  “I can’t sit still,” Miriam told him. “I think I’ll wander around and see if I can help somehow.”

  “Write if you get work,” said Isaac.

  * * *

  *

  Christine was awake and lying in bed, looking out through the open balcony door at the dawn, when Valerie came in. Her eyes looked red-rimmed.

  “Hey,” said Christine. “Where were you all night?”

  “On the main deck,” said Valerie. She stood over Christine, panting gently, as if she’d just been sprinting. “I’ve been listening to the crew’s stories, taking notes as fast as I can write. God, I hope I can do this justice. It feels so much bigger than one chapter of a book. The story of this cruise could be a whole book in itself.” She paced around, restless, clicking her ballpoint pen, riffling the pages of her notebook. “The whole industry is so corrupt, it’s almost hard to believe some of these things. Murders and rapes on ships, covered up. People disappearing, and falling overboard. The workers are basically owned by the company. They even tell them when they can go to the bathroom! These people have absolutely zero rights. No wonder they’re striking. They have nothing left to lose.”

  Christine got out of bed and pulled on yesterday’s grubby shorts, put her hair up in a ponytail, and rubbed some lotion on her face. “I’m off to work,” she said. “You’re on the night shift, I’m on the day shift.”

  Valerie laughed. “I hope your boss lets you take breaks. I hope he feeds you. The food that most cruise workers get is horrible. It’s crap. While the passengers eat like lords and ladies.”

  “Well, now we’re all eating crap together,” said Christine. “I just hope there’s enough to go around.”

  “I can’t remember when I last ate anything.” Valerie sat on her bed, opened her notebook, and began scribbling notes.

  “You need to eat,” said Christine.

  “Yeah,” said Valerie absently.

  “Can I bring you some food?”

  Valerie didn’t answer. She didn’t even look up as Christine walked out.

  When she got to the galley, Mick was already there, his cheeks stubbled, dark hair standing up in tufts. No one else was around yet. He looked bleak and tired, but seemed to brighten as soon as she came in. He handed her a warm can of Coke. She popped it open and took a swig as they stood shoulder to shoulder, aiming their flashlights into the pathetically empty storeroom. For the first few nights, they had grilled whatever they could on the braziers. All the fragile perishables had been used up, along with the sturdier fresh food, the potatoes and onions, eggs, apples and carrots
. Now, the oats and nuts were gone. They had plenty of rice and pasta and polenta, but no way to cook them. Yesterday, they had run out of bread after using up all the stacked cases of thawed frozen loaves.

  “These cruise ships don’t give you much extra,” said Christine. “It’s lucky there’s an airdrop coming.”

  “How about raw cornmeal mush with sugar? There’s maybe enough for two days. And after that, wheat flour mush with sugar.”

  “Well, there’s plenty of sugar.” They stared at the two enormous bags, unopened. “And oil,” she added, looking at the three ten-gallon drums. “We can mix oil with sugar, I guess.”

  “With maraschino cherries,” said Mick. “Two cases. I don’t know why. We also have capers.”

  “Hey. There must be some rats on board, right? Don’t all ships have them?”

  “Rat tartare with capers,” he said without missing a beat.

  They had been flirting in the past couple of days, enjoying the easy attraction that fizzed between them as if it were their mutual reward for working so hard.

  “The trick is to catch them,” said Mick.

  “I’m pretty sure I can think like a rat. I know I could eat one. I’ve eaten squirrel stew before, and it was actually pretty tasty. If it comes down to starving or eating a rat, it’s not even a choice.”

  Mick’s laughing eyes caught hers in the sharp light of the electric torches.

  Their gaze held a moment too long, on purpose, before they went off to see about lunch.

  An hour or so later, as they were putting together a sorry meal of scraps, Christine heard Valerie’s voice coming from the gloom near the swinging doors.