The Last Cruise

by Kate Christensen

  * * *

  *

  After Kimmi went down to greet the catamaran, Miriam went back to the owner’s suite to check on her friends. Jakov was still asleep, and Isaac’s bed was empty. Both bedroom doors were closed. The instrument cases were cluttered in a corner of the room, the Six-Day War sheet music still on the music stands.

  On her way out to the balcony, she paused to look at Jakov. He lay on his back, his face in profile pale in the stormy daylight, but he was sleeping peacefully for the first time in days. Maybe playing music all night, laughing, singing, had helped after all. His eyes were still, no fluttering. His big stomach hardly moved with his breaths.

  She realized that he was dead.

  “Jakov,” she said, hoping she was wrong, not daring to touch him. “Jakov, wake up.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Jakov!” She said sharply, loudly this time. “Time to wake up!”

  His arms lay very still along his sides.

  Miriam was breathing fast, gasping now. She went into her and Sasha’s room. “Jakov is dead,” she said wildly. “I can’t find Isaac.”

  “He’s in with Rivka,” mumbled Sasha, half asleep still.

  “In with who?”

  “Oh my God,” said Sasha, waking up. He jumped out of bed and put on a robe and went into the living room. Kneeling by the daybed, he laid his open palm on Jakov’s forehead, his neck, his wrist. He slapped Jakov’s cheeks gently, lifted an eyelid and peered at his glassy, unseeing eye. Miriam felt like a coward for not touching him herself, like a terrible friend.

  “Jakov,” said Sasha tenderly, drawing out the name. “He went in his sleep, without pain. He went in peace.”

  Sasha started to cry, making small grunting sounds deep in his throat. He put his arms around Jakov and lifted him to hug his shoulders. Miriam stood stone-faced, staring at Rivka’s door, willing Isaac to come out. She didn’t want to knock, didn’t want to know what he was doing in there, what they were doing.

  “Isaac,” she called finally in a loud, sharp voice. “Isaac! Come out, Jakov is dead.”

  The door opened, and Isaac and Rivka came into the living room in their pajamas.

  “Achi!” Isaac shouted. He went over to stand with his hand on Sasha’s shoulder, leaning on him for support, offering comfort at the same time.

  Rivka went to Miriam and, without saying a word to her, put a hesitant, tentative hand on her back. Miriam felt herself stiffen and start to pull away, shocked, despite herself, that Rivka had spent the night with Isaac.

  Oh, what did it matter? Jakov was dead.

  She put her arm around Rivka’s shoulders and pulled her into the circle, and for a long time, the four of them stood in silence around their friend. Then Rivka broke away, went into her room and got dressed, and went down to the infirmary to tell them.

  “Our dear Jakov is dead,” said Miriam when she’d gone. “After everything else. After all this.”

  “It is more than my heart can bear,” Isaac said. “Truly, it’s too much.” He clutched his heart and looked at Miriam. “I feel it breaking. My brother is dead.”

  “He was my brother too,” said Sasha. “And Miriam’s. He was family to us all. I never thought he’d be the one to go first.”

  “Who then?” said Isaac suspiciously. “Me?”

  Miriam looked tenderly at the two men she loved most, assessing their health, their spirits, as she had done for so many decades, out of habit, without premeditation or consciousness of doing so. Isaac looked flushed, his hair in more disarray than usual.

  “Isaac, were you schtupping Rivka all these years? How could you not tell me? Please don’t waffle, just get to the point.”

  “Nothing happened between us until now,” said Isaac. “She was married to our boss. And I had to protect the Sabra. That was all. That was my first and only thought. But Miriam, you always mattered the most to me. So me and Rivka, so what? You and I are each other’s family.”

  Miriam was shocked to find a little tear coming into her eye. “Oh Isaac,” she said. She felt so close to him in that moment.

  He patted her shoulder and stroked her wet cheek. “But you and Sasha! I never saw that coming, I was shocked, I really was. I was caught off guard. I’m still a little unnerved. I feel a hole in my heart about it.”

  Sasha was gazing at Jakov. “It’s over now,” he said with deep sadness. “The quartet. Our brother is dead. It’s come to an end.”

  chapter twenty-five

  The rain started in the middle of the afternoon. The sea surface churned with crisscrossing waves of a lucid, eerie green, whitecaps blowing off in foamy chunks. By evening, it was hard to tell the sea from the sky. It was all water and motion and wind, the waves coming from all directions, colliding.

  It took well into the night for the storm to reach its full intensity. At least Christine hoped this was its full intensity. She and Valerie were sitting on Valerie’s bed, in their cabin, huddled together, staring at each other through the darkness, fully dressed and wearing life jackets.

  The ocean moved itself around them, the ship’s long body climbing nose first up a mounting wave, then a moment of suspension when it hung on the peak, cresting, and then a lurching drop and a sideways slam against the pavement of the wave’s trough.

  “Holy shit,” said Valerie. “What was that?”

  A gust of wind and spray rattled the balcony door. Then came a vertiginous slow spin as the ship swung around and was hit broadside and tipped, heeling starboard, then just as slowly righted herself, then tipped to port. Christine felt her whole body clench in the slow climb up another wave, the brief suspension at the quivering crest, the fall onto the hard sea surface. Then came another roll into the trough and the slow, steady, determined bounce of the old ship, righting herself again, letting out cries deep in her frame that sounded like the full expression of her anger at having to take any more battering shocks to her old system.

  Valerie crawled into the little bathroom to dry-heave over and over into the shower while Christine braced herself in bed with her feet against the outer wall, staring through darkness at the black sliding door, her eyes straining, imagining she saw seaweed, flecks, small iridescent fish, bits of driftwood blown against the glass. A few times, she fell into an exhausted stupor that started to turn into sleep, but then another wave came, and she jolted awake again and remembered where she was and what was happening. Any one of the oncoming waves might be powerful and steep enough to swamp the Isabella, plow her under with water, keep piling it on, weigh her down until she couldn’t come back up, bury her and send her spiraling slowly down to the bottom of the ocean. And after every wave came another wave. The Isabella staggered, recovered her balance, suffered another insulting sideways blow, pitched to starboard until it felt as if she’d never make it upright again.

  But she always did, rudderless and powerless though she was. She seemed to have an internal sense of equilibrium. Whoever had designed her had known what he was doing, Christine thought. She had been refurbished twice, but the shape of her bones and lines had never changed. Her original designer’s expertise was saving all their lives.

  As if to prove her wrong, the ship jolted and pitched. Christine and Valerie crashed into each other and the wall. The room tilted. They landed on the floor, rolled, and lay there, trembling, too shocked to say anything for a moment.

  “We’re going to die,” said Valerie. “This is it.”

  “No,” said Christine. “We’re going to be fine.”

  They heard two loud, high blasts, short and long, that signaled an emergency, and then a voice came sharp and commanding over the PA system: “May I have your attention please. Everyone, go immediately to your muster stations. I repeat, go to your muster stations. Please don’t panic, this is a precaution only, we are not in immediate danger, I repeat, this is a precaution only.”


  “Oh my God,” said Valerie.

  “Time to go,” said Christine. “Pack your things. Now, Val.”

  She had already sealed her own phone and wallet and plane ticket home in a plastic bag, zipped into the inner pocket of her jacket. She watched Valerie stuff things into a shoulder bag, her iPhone, notebooks, laptop, jewelry, a cashmere sweater, her expensive Williamsburg designer dress. Christine thought of the green ball gown she’d worn to the captain’s table dinner, the gloves and shoes and jewelry, how much they’d cost, Ed’s future consternation when he got the statement and saw the amount there among the charges for propane, fuel, and groceries. She saw the ball gown drifting down to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

  “Should I bring my shoes?” said Valerie. “Shampoo?”

  “No!” said Christine. “Let’s go.”

  They went out into the hallway and joined the mass of terrified people making their slow way to the stairs. Christine could hear Valerie’s rasping breath behind her as they plunged through the crowd, and then she lost her and couldn’t find her again. Emerging from the stairs onto the lifeboat deck, standing in the press of people at Muster Station Two, Christine caught a contagion of hysteria. Her vision zoomed in again and again through a black, cone-shaped tunnel. She felt a hard pressure on her chest, seeing strangers’ faces in the blowing rain, hearing a hard wash of waves and the banging and creaking of the crew, their frenzied shouts as they prepared to load the boats and winch them down. Dizzy, short of breath, she lurched against the railing and caught herself. The lifeboats looked like death traps, far too small for the hordes of people being herded into them, strung by cables, hanging high above the churning, dangerous sea surface, flimsy and precarious.

  Christine knew all at once beyond a doubt that when her turn came, she would not be able to get into one of those jam-packed capsules. The image of the octopus trapped in its little tank kept flashing in her brain. She looked around for Valerie, but she didn’t see her anywhere. The crowd was too closely packed behind her to go back, so Christine fought her way along the deck toward the nearest staircase leading up, where the tide of humans streaming down wasn’t as thick, and pushed her way upward. “Excuse me,” she said, “sorry,” and she threaded through faceless bodies, heard heavy breathing, low moans, keening, the sounds all animals made when they were afraid and in distress.

  As she ascended, she began to breathe freely again with relief. Her vision cleared. Bursting onto the catwalk that led to the bridge, she felt triumphant, as if she had escaped to freedom.

  * * *

  *

  Miriam, Isaac, and Rivka left the suite together to climb down to the lifeboats, but Miriam was quickly separated from the other two on the thronged staircase. Sasha hadn’t come back from down below. He’d gone down at some point during the storm to monitor the engine room’s fire-damaged hull, fearing a leak. She could only hope that he’d heard the PA announcement, the clear directions to head for the muster stations. And she hoped even more that he would have the sense to obey it. She made her way through deckwide pandemonium, windblown shouting and chaos, people vivid in the bilious dawn light in their neon orange life vests. In the high winds, the lifeboats shuddered and swayed in their berths against the hull of the ship. Crewmembers had begun to untie ropes and instruct people to embark. It was clear from their gestures and shouted directions to one another that, in the absence of power, they were preparing to lower the lifeboats manually, once they were filled with people, winching them by hand the whole distance of several decks down to the turbulent surface. They looked so fragile, precarious, these lifeboats, creaking and swaying as they hung there. And everyone was going to have to get into these things and ride them down to the ocean, trusting in the ability of the exhausted and clearly panicked crew. How the crew planned to get themselves down, Miriam had no idea.

  Where was Sasha? She looked around for him and saw only a sea of strangers’ faces. She was not getting into one of those things without him, she was not leaving him behind on this ship. They had to go together. Determined to find him, she began fighting her way back to the staircase, beating against the flow of people surging onto the deck.

  She hesitated, imagining herself searching for him in the dark labyrinth below. She would never find him. But she could have the bridge crew page him on the PA and tell him to go to his muster station.

  Instead of going down, she went up.

  * * *

  *

  At some point after daybreak, Mick realized that the storm wasn’t going to last forever. And then, just as he was thinking about where to go, the biggest wave of all knocked the ship sideways, kept coming, rolling and tipping the ship until she lay flat on her side. He rolled against the inner wall of the restaurant bar as the side of the ship rose and hung there, suspended. Then she fell back, slowly righting herself as she slid down the other side of another immense, invisible wave. Bottles of booze clinked and rattled overhead. A martini strainer landed on his shoulder. On the other side of the bar, he could hear the tables and chairs shifting, sliding, toppling, plates crashing onto the floor, the wall panels chafing against one another, flexing.

  He left the wrecked, tumbled restaurant and made his lurching way through the hallway and up the grand staircase, then along the promenade and up the inner staircase to the bridge. The ship was a mess. It smelled of booze from broken bottles, and shit and urine and vomit. Everything that wasn’t bolted down had slid and bounced during the night. Although the ocean was still turbulent, the ship was rolling less dramatically now, so it was possible to walk without falling against the walls. All the sick people had been moved down to their cabins for safety during the storm, but many others were up and about already, restless, panicky. Everyone wore a neon-orange life jacket. Some people stared out the windows at the still-violent sea in the uneasy morning light, huddled together; others crouched in corners, clung to columns, to one another. Some of them had cuts on their foreheads, abrasions on their arms. Locks of white and silver-gray and dyed blond and jet-black hair fluttered and waved and pasted themselves to brows. Voices were quavering, hoarse, shocked.

  He made his way, squeezing through the throngs of people, until he reached the staircase leading up to the bridge, then climbed upward as fast as he could go. When he came in, he was surprised to find the captain in uniform, sitting almost doubled-over in one of the bridge command chairs. He looked severely pale and sickly. A handful of other bridge officers were there too, wearing life vests over their uniforms. One of them stood by the PA system. Several others clustered around the doorway. Mick saw Kimmi, clinging to the console under the windows, looking out.

  “Go down to the lifeboats,” she shouted when she saw Mick. Her cheek was gashed and bleeding. She looked pocket-size, ancient. Her life vest was huge on her. Her twiglike arms stuck out of the armholes. “He’s making the announcement right now.”

  “Why aren’t you down there?” he asked her, lurching across the room to stand next to her.

  “I’m going soon. The crew is too. Everyone needs to get to their muster stations. There’s a U.S. Navy ship coming to pick us all up, just three hours away.”

  “Why aren’t you down there?” Mick repeated.

  “Go and get into a boat,” said Kimmi.

  He turned and staggered toward the door as an old, white-haired man entered, out of breath, soaking wet, his clothes and head smeared with something tarry and black. “I just came from the engine room,” he shouted to the crewmembers. “There’s a crack in the hull, it’s coming in from everywhere, there are crewmembers still down there.”

  An enormous wave hit the ship. They all went stumbling and hurtling across the bridge. Mick hit the control panel so hard he chipped a tooth. He went temporarily deaf. His arm went numb. He looked at the others. They looked as dazed as he felt, checking themselves for damage to their bodies and faces. A crewmember helped the captain off the floo
r, back into his chair. Outside, it was impossible to tell what was happening. Sea and sky had merged, and there was no up or down. Mick’s shoulder throbbed. Maybe he’d torn something in there. He stuck his tongue against his chipped front tooth and ran it over the new sharp edge.

  “Time to go down,” Kimmi shouted.

  Another person had come in, an older woman. When she saw the white-haired man, she gave a cry and rushed to him and flung her arms around him. “There you are, oh, Sasha! Thank God I found you. I looked by the lifeboats and you weren’t there.”

  “I was in the engine room,” the man said. “We’re leaking, I have to go back down.”

  “No. You come with me,” she said fiercely. “We’re going to the lifeboats.”

  “Where are Isaac and Rivka?”

  “Down at the muster station. I came to find you. I won’t leave without you.”

  Mick was making another attempt to stagger toward the door when Christine burst in on a fresh wet gust of wind. “Good morning!” she shouted.

  He couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “Hello!” he shouted with half-hysterical, giddy abandon. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  Christine laughed, beaming at him with a jaunty hilarity that was completely at odds with their predicament. Mick felt a rush of love for her so intense he thought his heart might explode. Swimming through the pitching air, he threw his arms around her. She hugged him back hard. They stood for a moment, swaying with the force of their contact. Her body felt strong and warm. He never wanted to let her go.

  “When we get off this ship,” said Mick into her hair.

  She pulled back to look into his face as the ship bucked again. “Yes,” she said clearly. Holding on to each other, arms tightly around each other’s waists, they each shot out a hand to steady themselves on the console panel, tumbling into the elderly couple.