Take It Off

by J. Minter

  “It’s like a debit card, you know, linked to my checking account. I’m not sure how much is in there, but I think it’s probably around sixty dollars. Besides, shouldn’t we try and save as much money as possible?”

  The concierge was sneering at us.

  Things looked to be going south here, so I stepped forward. Who knew? Maybe he had heard of Penelope Isquierdo Santana Sutwilley, and maybe, just maybe, dropping her name would be better than a credit card. Maybe he would just let us stay, and I could pay with wired money tomorrow. But when I heard the word “senior” come out in my flat, American accent, I knew this wasn’t going to work.

  “Señor,” he said with a corrective accent. “May I to suggest to you the hostel? It is perhaps more in your price range.”

  He plucked a tourist map from the brochures on the counter and fanned it out in front of his. With a pen, he marked an X on the map.

  “We are here,” he said, and then dragged the pen through the streets up higher into the city. “The hostel is here. Bueno, you can take this,” he said, folding the map and passing it icily to me.

  “Thank you,” I said, feeling more like a teenager than pretty much ever. Suki and I turned and hurried out of the Hotel Miramar as fast as possible without actually running.

  Neither of us could think of anything to say, so we kept quiet and followed the map. It took us up into the old town—through the winding streets that I’d run through earlier that day. We could see warm windows up above, and the laughing and general noise of people having a good time at night. I was breathing in big, wistful breaths of Spanish air when Suki said:

  “So that was a great idea.”

  “What does that mean? Forgive me, but I think we could both use a good shower and a comfortable bed.”

  “Oh, yeah? Listen, Jonathan, you and I are stuck together for at least a couple days. So you’d better get used to the fact that I don’t live the way you do.”

  I didn’t even know what to say to that, so we just didn’t talk for a while. That was, of course, how we got lost. All of a sudden, we were on a street that wasn’t on the map with no idea how we got there. But neither of us was really feeling very helpful, so we just sort of kept walking. It was near midnight by the time we found the hostel.

  It was on a narrow street of apartment buildings, cheap shoe stores, and seafood restaurants, a tall narrow building with a dirty red and white sign that said HOSTEL LA CUCARACHA.

  “Oh, God,” I said.

  “Come on, rich boy,” Suki said.

  The lobby was small and dark and stank of old cigarette smoke. Several vinyl couches that were pretty beat up lined the walls, and above them hung a series of pastel still-life paintings. They appeared to have been done by some failed art student disguising his lack of talent by painting in a faux-cubist style. They were possibly the ugliest things I’ve ever seen. There were travelers sprawled all over the couches, most of them with dreadlocks, all of them speaking English in loud Australian accents. One of them was noodling on a guitar, and pretty much all of them seemed to be smoking and talking at the same time. It was the exact opposite of tranquil.

  Behind the counter, there was a doorway with a sign that said INTERNET over it. For a minute, I considered rushing in there for any news of Flan. Or—shudder—Rob. But then I realized that bad news could be extremely crushing right now, so I killed the urge and silently followed Suki up to the front desk.

  An older woman with gray bags under her eyes sat behind the counter. A cigarette was dangling from her mouth, and she exhaled and inhaled without removing it.

  “Oh, God,” I said again.

  Suki rolled her eyes and said, “Buenas noches.”

  A very long moment passed, then the woman behind the counter slowly rolled her eyes up to look. “Diga …,” she said, without moving any of her features and drawing the word out long.

  “Por favor,” Suki said, clasping her hands. “Por favor, una habitación para dos personas.”

  “Habitación privada?” the woman asked. I was pretty sure I understood that one, and stepped forward and nodded yes, looking probably more crazed than I’d meant to. The woman stared at me for a moment, and then turned back to Suki.

  “Bueno. Treinta euros, señorita.”

  Suki nodded and put the money on the counter. The woman handed her a key and her change and said, “Numero dieciocho. El piso tercero. Buenas noches.”

  I turned the edges of my mouth upward in Suki’s direction, doing my best to convey relief. She sighed disgustedly, and we headed up to see what La Cucaracha had in store for us.

  There’s always a party at Patch’s

  “Everything’s going to turn out fine.” Patch said this more for Greta’s benefit than out of any personal conviction. He did have to smile a little at the irony of the crew losing Jonathan, when Jonathan was usually the one going on about how they’d lost him, Patch, and how stressful that was. But Patch also just sort of knew that Jonathan cared more about comfort, and, well, things, and that it was going to be really tough for him being out there in the world.

  They were walking through the halls of the ship at night, heading for Patch’s cabin. The floor shifted with the water underneath their feet. They’d turned the ship upside down looking for Suki—computer lab, late-night snack bar, every corner of the deck. They’d combed the halls of every level and knocked on every door they could think of. Nobody had seen them.

  Greta nodded at Patch’s reassurance, but she still looked pretty worried. Patch realized that the only times he’d seen Greta, she’d been with Suki, or looking for her.

  “Listen, at least they’re not alone. I’m sure they ran into each other on the dock. We’re not going to land in Barcelona till the day after tomorrow. They can probably get a ferry, or maybe even a flight by then. J probably has his dad’s credit card and cash, which should cover it no problem. They’ll figure it out.”

  “But maybe Barker could do something …?”

  “If we tell Barker, he’ll kick them off the trip. This way, maybe they can still get back on. Nobody’ll know the difference.”

  “I guess.”

  They were coming to one of the remote, upper level cabins and they could hear music. It smelled a little like smoke, too, which was weird.

  “Isn’t that Prince?”

  “Um …,” Patch said as he reached for the knob of his door. By this time, it was pretty obvious that his cabin was the source of the music.

  Greta lowered her eyes sheepishly. “I think Suki might have mentioned something about you having a party tonight. She might have, uh, mentioned it to a couple of other people, too …”

  Patch pushed through the door and into what would surely go down as the party of Ocean Term 2005. His bathtub had been filled with ice and this strange Spanish beer that someone had bought a truckload of in Mallorca. Some kid had whipped out his iBook and was now perched on Patch’s desk playing the role of self-appointed deejay. Everyone was dancing, except those couples that had slipped off to the corners to discreetly hook up. And Mickey Pardo, God bless him, was on the bed singing along to “Little Red Corvette,” and pretending to drive. This mime was (not surprisingly) both convincing, and somewhat perverse.

  “Mickey!” Patch hollered over the crowd. The music was really loud, and Patch wasn’t sure Mickey would even hear him.

  Mickey turned to them, pretending to shift into a faster gear and sort of slap the imaginary steering wheel. “Move over, baby, gimme the keys,” he mouthed at them, “I’m gonna try to tame your little red love machine. Little Red Corvette! Baby, you’re much too fast …”

  Mickey jumped off the bed and came over to them. He looked Greta in the eyes and shrieked, “Yes, you are …” along with the song. Then he cackled and threw his head back. When he brought his eyes back on them, it was as though Prince had disappeared and he’d been transformed into Mickey again. “What’s up, dudes?”

  “Who are all these people?”

  “I dunno. Did
n’t you invite them? I had to hear about your party from Greta. Which, no offense—”

  “None taken.”

  “—was lame.”

  “Dude, I didn’t invite them. I just invited Arno and I was going to invite you and Jonathan, and—”

  “Oh, speaking of J,” Mickey said, “did you ever find Suki?”

  Greta shook her head.

  “They definitely got left on Mallorca,” Patch said.

  “Holy shit.”

  Just then, Arno came through the door.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Mickey asked, shaking his head in disgust because he already knew the answer. It had been about an hour since Arno left.

  “Sara-Beth got, um … sick …”

  “Sara-Beth Benny?” Patch asked.

  “Yeah, I had to take her back to her cabin.”

  They all took this in for a minute.

  Then Patch said: “Anyway, though, I was just saying that we’ve looked everywhere they could possibly be on this ship, and we’re pretty sure that both Suki and J got left on Mallorca.”

  “That’s impossible,” Arno said, laughing to himself. “There’s no Prada on Mallorca.”

  “There is, actually,” Greta offered. “I read about it in W.”

  “Oh.”

  “I think it’s going to be okay, though. But we should get all these people out of here, and come up with a plan.”

  Greta cleared her throat and stepped forward. The guys watched in surprise as she cupped her hands around her mouth, and screamed: “All right, everybody. This is a raid. Anyone still in this room in ten minutes will be subjected to drug and alcohol testing …”

  The kid with the iBook slammed his computer shut and dashed for the door. The room fell silent; then everybody started to run. The stampede forced Patch and Greta to one side of the door, and Mickey and Arno to the other. As they watched the last of the party-goers go off in search of another cabin, Mickey leaned over and whispered to Arno:

  “Suki’s friend is kind of really hot.”

  My nightmare has just begun

  “This isn’t so bad,” Suki said, after we finally jammed open the door to our room. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to patronize me or make me feel better. Number eighteen was on the top floor, in a dank corner that smelled of cigarette smoke. The room looked like some monk or other had just spent his final years slowly dying here. The walls were dark wood, the floor was linoleum, and the windows were shuttered. Over the smallest double bed I’ve ever seen hung a simple and gigantic cross. I’m not particularly religious or anything, but crosses like that still weird me out a little. I sat down on the bed, and then I realized that everything was going to get much worse.

  “This bed is so uncomfortable.”

  “Hey, at least we got a room,” Suki said, undoing the window latch and pushing open the shutters.

  “Have you touched the bedspread?! Touch it. It’s like sandpaper.”

  “It can’t be that bad.” Suki leaned out the window and looked at the scene below. “This is actually pretty. Come look. There’s a little square down below.”

  The last thing I wanted to see was a pretty little square. It was just going to remind me that we had been abandoned in a foreign country with no finances and no clean clothes.

  “Maybe later,” I said, and went into the bathroom and flipped on the light. As the neon lights stuttered on, I was met with a very harried, cranky-looking vision of myself. I tried to give my reflection a little talking-to: This is an adventure, it’s romantic. If only I had a few credit cards, a plane ticket out of here, and Flan, it could actually be sort of awesome. The thought of Flan gave me a little kick, like a sort of renewed zeal to get the hell out of here. I had to get back and protect her from Rob. I used the dry bar of cheap soap to clean up my face, and a dab of the cheap conditioner to get my hair back into form, took a deep breath, and went back into the monk’s cell.

  Suki was sitting on the windowsill, staring up at the night sky and smoking one of those weird cigarettes. It smelled like a harem in there, and it was actually a kind of romantic picture.

  “I quit this morning,” she said without looking at me, “but this seems like a pretty good reason to start again.”

  “Hey,” I said, trying to sound conciliatory. Suki didn’t respond, so I went on. “So, in the morning, I’ll call my mom and get her to wire us some money.”

  “In the morning? In the morning, it’ll be the middle of the night in New York.”

  “Um, no. It’s six hours ahead there, so if we wake up at eight it will be like two there.”

  “No, they’re six hours behind. If we wake up at eight—which is doubtful—it will be two in the morning there.”

  “Oh.” Could that be right? Then Rob hadn’t been at Flan’s at two in the morning! This was good, this was very good. I cleared my throat. “Should we try and call now?”

  “I don’t think we can get a phone card anywhere at this time of night. And besides, I’m exhausted. Let’s just wake up fresh in the morning, figure out what we need to do, and then try and get some money.”

  This sounded sensible, so I nodded and sat down next to her on the windowsill.

  “Listen,” Suki said, “I’m really sorry, but my parents are on this retreat in Provo where they take a vow of silence and don’t speak for three weeks. So I don’t think I’m going to be able to get any money from them to get us out of here.” She bit her lip when she said this, which struck me as needlessly coy, especially since I already told her that I’d pay for us to get to Barcelona.

  It reminded me why I so disliked this girl in the first place: She’d been a total tease with my guys. I know this lame, narcissistic type of girl pretty well. New York is full of them, except the better-dressed version. She’d created all this tension between Arno and Mickey, just because she wanted everybody drooling over her all the time.

  All I said was: “That’s cool. My mom’s pretty easy to track down, and it shouldn’t be a problem to wire us plenty of cash.”

  “Thanks.”

  I nodded to let her know it was no problem, and Suki blew smoke rings out the window. “I think what we do is, tomorrow, we check out of our hotel and find a ferry schedule and see what time the ferries run to Barcelona. When it’s morning in New York, we call and get some money transferred, and then we get on the next ferry outta here. Ocean Term is going to be doing their survival test all tomorrow, anyway, and hopefully we can sneak back onto the ship without anyone being the wiser. If, that is, they haven’t found us out yet,” she said.

  “My guys will be covering for us.”

  “Yeah, Greta, too.”

  “Sounds like a good plan.”

  Suki took several slow drags of her cigarette and I thought about how maybe my assessment of her was too harsh. Which was a charitable thought I had way too soon.

  “Well, I’m glad you had a chance to redo your hair,” she said.

  “What’s wrong with my hair?” I said defensively.

  Suki shrugged.

  “You’re the one running around with this Pocahontas look. I mean, you’re really one to talk about colonization when you’re pretending to be an Indian. Oops, sorry, Native American.”

  “Pocahontas?! Just because I’m a woman of color doesn’t make me a ‘Pocahontas’”—she was making the air quotes again—“I mean, that’s just so typical. Like any ethnic woman with braids—which by the way is a hairstyle that women of hundreds of cultures have worn over thousands of years—must be an Indian. Of course.”

  We stared at each other furiously. Suki jammed out her cigarette and lit another one.

  “It’s going to reek in here,” I said, not even trying for nice.

  “You know, Jonathan,” she said, taking a drag, “you’re the perfect example of this theory I have about the difference between men and women.”

  Oh, God. I could guess where this was going, and it was not going to be anything I hadn’t heard before. Then she smiled (wickedly,
I think) and pulled a bottle of wine out of her beach bag.

  “Vino?”

  And I felt like, Yeah, I do need some vino. I shrugged.

  “I bought this as a gift for my parents. But I think I could probably use it more then them right now.” Suki took a small buck knife out of the bag. Placing the cigarette between her lips, she quickly skinned the wrapper off the bottle’s neck, jammed the blade into the cork, put the bottle between her knees, and wrenched the knife out of the bottle. Incredibly, there was no spill or breakage. She held the knife up, with the cork on the end of the blade, for me to see. Taking the cigarette out of her mouth, she said, “Yes!” in triumph.

  “That was quite a show.”

  “Yes, which brings me to my theory,” she said, taking a swig and then passing me the bottle.

  “What’s that?” I took a swig. It was not entirely bad wine.

  “I think men are the peacocks, and females are the truly tough sex.”

  “Just because I care about my hair …”

  “It’s not about your hair. And don’t be such a narcissist. It’s not about just you. Dudes are at heart sensitive, and women are at heart strong and resilient. It’s just that guys always talk louder, because of history and, you know, all of that, and women are just so good at suffering in silence.”

  “Oh, come on. I’m a modern guy, okay? I’m not a sexist or whatever else you’re gonna call me. But guys still have to do all the hard stuff. They have to ask girls out, and they have to be confident, and they have to know, like, which restaurants to go to. Girls can just smile and get away with shit …”

  “Women do not ‘get away with shit.’ They let dudes get away with shit. Who gets their period every month? Who gives birth?”

  Suki stared at me with an incredulous, gaping expression that revealed a mouth of perfectly straight, gray red-wine teeth. Gross. The wine bottle was about half empty by now, and we were definitely on our way to finishing it. The conversation continued to get more heated, and spin more out of control. Then Suki stormed out of the room.