He reached over and cupped her face with his hand and kissed her. “I was just dreaming about you,” he said. He kissed her again. “I dreamed you were living in my house in Jaffa.”
They lay silent for a while with the chilly air blowing harder through the balcony door, the rushing, sucking sounds of the ocean. Then Miriam climbed on top of Sasha, stretched herself onto the whole length of him, stomach to stomach, nose to nose. He ran his hands along her naked back and lifted her hips in his hands. They both gasped aloud as he entered her, grinning at each other, holding perfectly still at first, and then gradually moving together. When they were breathless and sweating, she laid her head on his chest and settled her legs to nest in his.
“I loved my dream, Miriam. I wish for that more than anything.”
She lifted herself up and looked down at him and studied every wrinkle, every fissure in his face, and her chest ballooned, her head felt light. “I could die right now. Now I’ve had this, I can go.”
“Don’t go,” said Sasha, smiling at her.
“It’s an amazing feeling, to me. I’ve never had it before.”
“Yes you have. It’s like klezmer, like Schubert. There’s no word for it. There ought to be. Happy melancholy. In German, I’m sure there is a word but I refuse to learn it.”
“I would learn it,” said Miriam. “Just to say it now.”
After Sasha fell asleep, she got up and dressed and went down to the breakfast buffet room to try to find something for Jakov, though she knew he wouldn’t eat. She was worried about him. They should never have let him stay up all night. But he had looked so happy. Nobody could tell him to stop.
Coming toward her along the dim hallway was Christine’s friend, Valerie. The girl was drunk and lurching, one hand flat against the wall as she propelled herself along. She held something aloft.
“Hello!” said Miriam loudly, as if the girl were deaf instead of merely drunk. “Do you need help?”
Valerie leaned against the wall, her eyes skewed behind her glasses. Her short curly hair sprang away from her head in tendrils. “We’ve got power bars for breakfast,” she said, enunciating carefully, showing Miriam the bar she held, a small dark loaf that looked as if it were made entirely of chemicals. “Courtesy of Cabaret Cruises.” She took a bite and chewed with absorbed inward ferocity. “So kind of them.”
Miriam took her by the elbow. “Are you okay, sweetheart? Maybe you should get some sleep.”
“I am far, far beyond sleep,” said Valerie. “I think I’ll go back upstairs to think about life.” She looked directly at Miriam. “A warning about the breakfast room: it’s a shit show. The boomers are in crisis.”
She stumbled off. Miriam could already hear voices at the end of the hall. When she reached the open door to the breakfast room, she saw a blurred mass of people all talking at once. They seemed to be directing their comments at Kimmi, who stood alone, cornered, backed up against the empty coffee bar, massaging the air with her palms, apologetically.
“Calm down,” she said. “Everybody, please.”
A man yelled into her face, “Where are the goddamned tugboats?”
“Why aren’t they here yet?” came a voice from the back.
Looking into the crowd, Miriam caught a blurred impression of a helmet-haired woman’s toothy grimace, a balding man’s wide-eyed indignation, a shocked-looking pink-sunburned man in swimming trunks and polo shirt, a plump woman with a smudge on her cheek and a shock of white hair. She recognized some of them from the party. They’d been singing, laughing, just a few short hours before. Now, in the cold cloudy light of morning, with the wind rising and the temperature falling, everything had changed. The panic that had been dormant, clamped down by the heat, had awakened. Their voices sounded querulous, unhinged.
“When are we getting out of here?”
“It feels like there’s a storm coming.”
Miriam went over to stand next to Kimmi, hoping that two small women would be more effective than one. To her surprise, it worked. They quieted down right away. “This is an unbelievably bad situation,” said Kimmi, her voice clear, sincere, sympathetic. “I know, and you’re all being accommodating and patient. But we need to stay organized. We need to keep working together. If a storm comes, there are things we’ll all have to do to stay safe.”
The crowd had calmed down enough to listen while Kimmi spoke, but now Miriam felt another jolt of panic whip through the room.
“We could be in danger!”
“This whole ship stinks, it’s disgusting!”
“We’re living like animals!”
“I’m sorry,” said Kimmi into the eruption. “I’m so sorry.”
“When are they coming?” came a shout from the back of the room. “Why are they taking so long?”
Everyone waited for the answer.
Miriam could feel Kimmi fill her lungs with air, stand up as straight as she could. “Last I heard from the bridge crew, the tugs will be here tomorrow morning. That’s all I know. I’m sorry.”
Miriam saw fear and disappointment flicker through the crowd. No one had anything to say suddenly; the mood had focused into a compressed paralysis. In the absence of any further answers or reassurances, no one seemed to know what to do or where to go. They were caught in an inward-swirling spiral.
A short man off to the side said, “Is the storm going to be bad?”
“Probably not,” said Kimmi. “I hope not.”
Another shock wave crossed the room. A woman burst into hard sobs.
Kimmi put an arm around her. “We are all in this together,” she said. “You’re not alone.”
“We’re going to capsize! We’re all going to die!”
It was starting again, the panic, the shouting. Kimmi stood still for a moment, her mouth open. Miriam could feel Kimmi’s internal resolve give way as she turned and walked out of the room, her head down, her face blazing white. Miriam followed her out the door, along the hallway. Outside, on the deck, the breeze blew, almost chilly. From low on the horizon, gold bars of sunlight streamed through dark gray clouds to form swirling vortexes of bruised and gilded air. People had begun moving their bedding and belongings back inside, untying sheets, dragging mattresses, pillows under their arms.
Kimmi took a shuddering breath. “We can’t keep track of everyone,” she muttered as she walked, as if to herself. “The whole crew is trying. Some people have died of the norovirus and their bodies are down on the loading dock. There’s a rumor that someone fell overboard and drowned last night, but no one really knows, it’s just a rumor. What if it’s true? What do we do? We can’t get a new head count, everyone is going all over the ship all the time.”
They headed up to the catwalk. Miriam noticed again the hollow sounds that the metal stairs made underfoot, the handrail corroded in spots, rusted dark red where the blue-white paint had chipped off, now beading with water in the rising wind. At the door to the bridge, Miriam paused and looked inside at the several uniformed bridge crewmembers standing watch, staring through the windows. But Kimmi continued on along the catwalk without a word to them.
She stopped at a door at the very end, opened it, and turned to look Miriam in the eye. “I’ve been living in here,” she said as if she were confessing a guilty secret. “In the captain’s suite. While the captain has been sick in the infirmary.”
Miriam followed Kimmi into the spacious, airy suite. The rooms were decorated in navy blue and off-white, striped wallpaper with oil seascapes framed in gilt, sleek furniture, a panoramic curved window spattered with blowing droplets. It gave a full view of the darkening clouds and the ocean below, foam and spray blown off the heaving waves.
Kimmi pointed to the bedroom. “I have been sleeping in that king-size bed, all alone, while my crew slept down on the main deck with everyone else. I’m ashamed of myself.”
�
��Well, I don’t care,” said Miriam. “As for me, I’ve been living in the owner’s suite. And I did nothing. You took charge, it’s exhausting.”
“It’s my job,” said Kimmi, sitting on the bed. “I started working for Cabaret right after college. I studied music and theater, since I was like two I was always going to be a musical actress. Then I saw a Cabaret Cruise listing for an entertainment and cruise director, and I thought, hey, that sounds fun, traveling the world, making people happy. Didn’t exactly work out that way. Eight years ago and I’ll be thirty in September and what do I have to show for it? My whole adult life.”
“You’re so young,” said Miriam. “Still a kid.”
There was a shout outside the door. Kimmi got up and opened it. One of the young watchmen was rushing by. He stopped and pointed downward. “A ship! There’s a ship!”
* * *
*
Mick stood down on the little excursion dock in the windblown, drifting mist and spray. They had opened it yesterday to swim, and in everyone’s excitement after the airdrop, nobody had thought to close it. A shaft of ocher sunlight pierced the thickening clouds high above and shot down to illuminate the charcoal density all around him, as if he were at the bottom of a coal mine.
He had come down here with the sort of half-idea of throwing himself into the churning ocean. There were worse ways to die. Drowning was supposed to be pretty pleasant, he’d heard. Once you gave yourself over to it.
He pictured his body drifting down through the black depths to the ocean floor. It was so typical; of course he had ended up with the best friend instead of the girl he was in love with. He was always selling himself short, shooting himself in the foot. Just like with Laurens, with the Eszterházy. He wasn’t capable of taking action beyond the bounds of his place in the world. Instead he was stuck watching, standing by, while other people took what they wanted, as if his own life, his own future, didn’t matter. And it didn’t. Not anymore, anyway.
He shivered. It was getting cold. The waves had picked up and were splashing over the side of the dock, spray hitting his face. He’d eaten so little last night, drunk so much wine. His lungs felt burned. The back of his throat ached.
As he stared into the water, he saw a shadow moving across the dark bars of stormy sunlight. Looking up, he almost fell off the platform. It was a boat, but Mick was sure at first that he was hallucinating. It was a catamaran, with a sleek white spaceship-like cabin sitting between its two hulls. A massive, rigid sail lined with solar panels stuck straight up from its middle like a fin. More solar panels were mounted on the roof of the cabin, as well as two small windmills. Even more surreally, four blond, tanned children stared at him over the side. They were waving at him. Smiling. Holding iPhones, taking pictures.
chapter twenty-four
The Solar Wind slid over to the Queen Isabella without a sound. No noisy engine, no sails or ropes flapping in the breeze. It was no wonder Mick hadn’t known it was there until it was right on top of him. A man waved at him from the cockpit on deck. He was as blond and tan as the children.
“We’ve been hearing about you guys for days,” the man said, shouting over the wind. “I can’t believe you’re still stuck out here!”
A woman’s head, blond also, appeared. “I can’t believe we found you!” she said. “Hi! Do you speak English?”
Mick stepped back and clutched the doorway. “Where are you from?” He half expected them to say “outer space.”
“Palo Alto,” the man called back. “Here, catch!” The man maneuvered closer to the platform, and the tallest of the blond kids threw Mick a line. Mick caught it and tied the end of it to a cleat at the back of the platform, looping it around three times and under itself and tightening the end, hoping it would hold. The man handed the steering over to a teenage boy Mick assumed was another son and went over to join his wife and the other kids at the railing.
“I’m Skip Henderson,” he called. His longish hair blew off his high bony forehead. “This is my wife, Phoebe, and our kids. We’re on our way to Hawaii.”
“Mick Szabo,” Mick yelled back. He felt lightheaded, crazed, as if his eyes were bulging out of his head. “I am the chef.”
“Beautiful ship!” Skip was looking up at the side of the Isabella, leaning back and craning his neck. He seemed very excited to be here. “Is everyone okay on board?”
“We’re okay, yes,” called Mick. “A lot of people are sick.”
“I heard you had a fire,” Phoebe said, keyed up, her voice high on the wind. “It’s all over the news. I can’t believe we found you.”
“What a piece of luck, right?” Skip shouted. “We saw some flickering lights last night, and heard music. We thought we were going crazy. But when it got light, there you were.”
“Dad,” a boy yelled, “can we take the dinghy over?”
“No, stay there, Connor, we gotta book in like three minutes.”
Mick heard pounding footsteps behind him. “Hello!” came Kimmi’s high, clear voice. “Ahoy!”
Two young men in uniform tumbled through the long, narrow gear room behind her and jumped onto the small landing dock. They had obviously flung themselves down the stairs and were breathing hard.
“I’m Kimmi,” she yelled. “And these are the bridge officers, Ivan and Eduardo. The captain and some of the other officers are sick with norovirus.”
Mick looked at the three of them on the little dock, seeing them through Skip and Phoebe Henderson’s eyes, knowing he looked exactly as filthy, sweaty, and unhinged as they did. It was as if these people had emerged out of civilization, out of real life, a proper well-fed normal family on a clean, modern boat, to find a band of stranded savages, gone mad on their creaky old desert island.
“So listen,” Skip was saying. “We’re going to have to get out of here pretty quickly. There’s a nasty storm on the way, and we have to stay ahead of it.”
“A storm,” Ivan said. “Is it going to hit us?”
“Yeah. You’re going to get blown around some. Do you have any navigational capabilities?”
“No,” said Ivan. “No power at all.”
“I was just telling Mick here, you’ve been on the news. Phoebe just put a photo up on Twitter. It’s all over the Internet already.”
“People are retweeting it like crazy,” said Phoebe, looking at her smartphone.
A big swell moved under them, and then another. A wave broke against the low dock, splashing everyone on it.
“This is a total trip,” said Skip. “I cannot believe we ran into you. You’re on the edge of the void. There’s no one out here.”
“Except you,” said Mick.
“By sheer luck. We were headed for Hawaii but we decided to take a detour because we wanted our kids to see the reality firsthand. We just sailed through hundreds of miles of trash. It’s outrageous. Just north of here. Otherwise we wouldn’t have run into you.”
“You’re headed to Hawaii?” Ivan asked.
“Yeah,” said Skip. “I wish we could give you a tow. Or take you all aboard.”
Mick glanced over at Eduardo, Kimmi, and Ivan. They were all staring at the Hendersons with identical rapt, yearning expressions, hungry to keep them and their boat there, not let them go on their safe and merry way with their radio and food and Internet and children and clean clothes.
* * *
*
Christine stood at the portside railing, surrounded by people. The wind blew hard into everyone’s faces and whipped them with globules of cold spray as they all looked down at the Solar Wind below, the top of its magnificent solar sail reaching almost to their feet.
With warmth, even tenderness, Christine watched Mick among the people below on the excursion dock. His untucked shirttails blew around his torso. She studied his dark, unhappy face as the officers and Kimmi talked to the people on the catamaran.
> “What are they saying?” said someone near Christine.
“Look at those kids,” said someone else.
“How did they find us?”
“Who are they?”
“They have Wi-Fi,” a woman said in a low voice just to Christine’s right. She was looking at her iPhone. “Look, I’ve got a signal.”
A flurry swept along the deck as other people appeared nearby, turning on their cell phones for the first time since the power outage, stabbing and mashing at them as fast as they could. Others held them to their bewildered faces as if they expected the boat to be equipped with its very own cell tower as well as a Wi-Fi antenna.
Christine thought briefly about e-mailing Ed, but her mind went blank trying to imagine what she’d say to him. She felt a hand slide onto her arm. Without turning to look, she put her hand on Valerie’s and pulled her in close.
“Did you bring your phone up here?” Christine asked. “Everyone’s e-mailing. Except me.”
Valerie leaned into her. “Who would I write to? You’re already here.”
Christine silently accepted this as a sort of apology, whether or not it was intended as such, even though Valerie didn’t really owe her one.
“Okay, except my editor,” Valerie was saying, typing quickly with both thumbs. “She won’t believe what’s going on, it’s such a good story.” She stopped typing and stared at her screen for a moment. “Good, it sent. And I can’t even with all these three hundred other messages, I’m just going to let them wait.”
Valerie turned off her phone and put it back into the pocket of her hoodie. Down below, an officer tossed a rope to the man on the Solar Wind and it drifted away, bucking and pitching slightly on the waves. The kids on board waved. Everyone waved back at them. The people around Christine seemed to deflate as the Internet connection vanished. But they all stayed crowded together by the railing, watching the boat disappear, first into the fog and spray, where they could still catch occasional glimpses of the tall fin of a solar sail, flashes of white bobbing off in the distance, and then over the horizon, where the sky was lighter, where the storm hadn’t reached yet.
The Last Cruise Page 28