Take It Off

Home > Other > Take It Off > Page 12
Take It Off Page 12

by J. Minter


  “Exactly. I mean, there are all these cultural stereotypes that women are materialistic, and they need to be coddled, and blah blah blah. But look at you! You need pampering and comforting, not me. All men really want is to crawl up someplace safe and warm. And women have been accommodating them since the beginning of time.”

  She seemed to be satisfied that she’d won the argument. So we read the International Herald Tribune, which is just as boring as the New York Times, because all the articles are basically from the New York Times, except there are fewer of them and they’re all the international interest ones about how, like, some beer maker in southern Germany whose family has made beer the same way for thousands of years is finally going out of business because of globalization and how sad that is.

  Then we got dressed in our old dirty clothes and Suki suggested we go out the back way, because maybe then we could avoid paying our room service bill, and it was probably smarter to save our money. I agreed, even though this seemed really wrong to me, especially since I had plenty of money, just not on me. And what if I wanted to come back here with a girl sometime, like Flan, and see what Mallorca was like when I wasn’t all stressed? But Suki was being her old, bossy self again, so we went down the back way all shifty like she wanted to. Before we did, I snuck two of the nice big hotel towels into her bag, just in case.

  That was when we saw the boutique. It was tucked into one of the back corners of the first floor, between the restaurant and the pool. A very short, older Spanish woman was sitting on a stool inside smoking and looking imperious. She was wearing an impeccable Chanel suit, and her hair was pulled back severely into a gigantic bun. Her eyebrows were drawn on in dramatic coal, and her eyelashes were thick, black, and definitely fake. I nudged Suki, and she reluctantly followed me in.

  As I looked over the couple pairs of designer jeans and T-shirts they stocked in the men’s section, Suki charmed the saleslady in Spanish. I admitted to myself that there was no way to acquire a new outfit and tore myself away, but by that time the shopkeeper and Suki had decided that Suki looked absolutely preciosa in a dusky pink Prada sundress. I don’t know how we pulled it off (mostly because it was transacted in Spanish), but somehow we convinced her to charge the Prada sundress, a pair of Allaia jeans, and a D&G T-shirt to our room. After excessive gracias, gracias, and de nadas, we went and changed clothes in the poolside change room, and slipped through the hedges on the far side of the pool.

  Is Patch the new Jonathan?

  Banquet tables had been erected on the deck, and a breakfast of eggs, sausage, toast, hot coffee, and juice had been laid out for the Ocean Term students once they cleaned up. Barker took his place once all the students had taken theirs. The minister of tourism and his deputy were at Barker’s left, and Stephanie and Patch were to his right. He said a few quick words, congratulating everyone, and then told them to eat. The students loaded their plates and ate as if they had been starving for days. The Ariadne moved at maximum speed, and by the time the plates were being cleared she was coming into the port of Barcelona.

  Patch had been to Barcelona a couple times. When his dad was in his architecture phase he had brought all the Flood kids there to see the Gaudi buildings, which were all very intricate and covered with mosaic and eccentric detail. But he had never approached it by water, and the city looked much more modern and industrial to him when he came at it this way. The harbor was wide, and huge tankers were crowding up the docks. In the early morning, the whole scene was glittery and futuristic and Patch was caught up in staring.

  He snapped out of it when Stephanie stood up next to him and said, “Now to announce the winners.”

  Patch didn’t really care about winners. He felt most comfortable in the limbo of travel, and he had liked the Ocean Term adventure for a while. But some of it was really forced and stupid, and the whole thing was losing his interest. He especially disliked the competitive aspect of it all, which seemed counter to exploring places in a real way. Stephanie announced the first- and second-place winners, and some of the teams in front of him were cheering for themselves.

  He looked over to see where his friends were. For a minute he couldn’t place them, but then he did and it wasn’t pretty. Mickey was jumping up and down and shaking his head like a boxer about to start a fight, and Arno was strutting around him and saying something that didn’t look cool. Greta stood up from the table and tried to step in between them, but Arno pushed her away.

  “And now, for first prize,” Stephanie called out, “will group number fifteen, Greta O’Grady, Arno Wildenburger, and Mickey Pardo, please stand!”

  Everyone looked over to where Arno and Mickey were squaring off. Mickey barreled forward, with his head into Arno’s chest, knocking him over. There was a gasp from the crowd of students. Then Arno and Mickey were rolling around on the deck, hitting and yelling at each other.

  “Stop them!” Barker yelled. Just then the boat stopped with a grunt, and the workers down below began securing it to the dock. Patch ran over and pulled Mickey away from Arno. They all stood panting for a second. Mickey’s lips were peeled back, like he might start biting.

  “Yo, what are you guys doing?” Patch asked.

  Arno straightened his shirt defensively, and Mickey shook Patch off. “Nothing,” they both said. Greta came up next to Patch.

  “I think at first they were fighting over me,” she whispered in his ear. “But then it started being about something else entirely. Mickey started talking about how Arno’s mother was a home-wrecker, and then Arno basically said that Mickey’s mom was a whore. That’s when they started fighting.”

  “Oh.” It occurred to Patch that without Jonathan calling them up all the time and putting out their fires, the crew was really falling apart. He was trying to think of a way to convey this to Mickey and Arno, but then he felt Stephanie’s hands on his arm.

  “Are you all right?” she gasped.

  Barker jogged up behind her, breathing heavily. The minister of tourism was close behind, and Barker seemed to be apologizing under his breath. He looked embarrassed. And furious. Arno stepped forward, smiling. Usually Arno was smooth enough to get himself out of these situations, but in this case he was too out of breath to fend for himself. Mickey howled and ran at him with a closed fist, landing it squarely on Arno’s jaw. Arno recovered, and leaped on Mickey, and before long all the kids were cheering them on.

  It took a few minutes for Patch and Greta to pull them apart, and by that time Barker was practically frothing at the mouth.

  “You ungrateful little brats!” he hissed. “There is no drinking on my ship as you know, but there is also no fighting. I made the mistake of selecting you as the winners of the survival test. You have proved yourselves most unworthy. You are banished! Banished!”

  Patch tried to intervene, but Barker waved him away.

  “Pardo and Wildenburger, go to your cabins and pack your bags. When this ship sets sail tomorrow, you will not be on it!”

  Suki and I simply cannot keep out of trouble

  At this point in the trip, I should have figured out that pretty much everything was going to go wrong. But I wasn’t prepared for what happened to us at the Mallorca ferry dock.

  When we got there, we saw a lot of sunburned people with vacation backpacks sitting on the benches and floors of the ferry building. Suki conferred with the ticket agent, and then asked me for a hundred and twenty euros. I handed it over and she took me aside and explained that, because the royal family was at their vacation residence in Mallorca, there was tightened security and they were only letting one ferry in and out a day. That meant we had to wait for the eight o’clock boat.

  “You mean, the Spanish royal family?”

  “Yeah.” She giggled. “You weren’t hoping for Prince William, were you? Just kidding.”

  I’m not sure what that meant, but I rolled my eyes at her.

  “Um, but listen. This is probably fine. They say the trip takes about eight hours, so we’ll probably g
et into Barcelona early tomorrow morning and we should still be able to make it on the boat before it leaves.”

  “Fine,” I said. I had no watch, so I could only guess, from the height of the sun, that it was about ten o’clock, leaving us about ten hours. “What are we going to do until then?”

  Suki released one of those pealing little laughs that I could so do without, and she said, “Oh, I don’t know, enjoy a gorgeous day in one of the most sought-after vacation spots in the world? Jonathan, come on.”

  So, for a morning and afternoon, we were proper tourists. We ambled through the twisted streets, reading old signs that described the history of ancient squares and looking up at crooked buildings with precarious-looking wrought-iron balconies. We saw a few little cathedrals, and one really big one, with soaring ceilings and an apse the size of my apartment in New York, and lots of very graphic paintings of horrible things that happened around the time of Christ. For those of you who haven’t been, Spain is a very, very Catholic country.

  At some point, I told Suki that I had about negative ability to do more sightseeing, so we decided to stroll slowly down the main promenade, where all the shops and things were, and maybe try and get a bite to eat before we got on the ferry. I was focusing on the restaurants we were passing, and trying to decide what looked the least romantic so that nobody would insinuate that Suki and I were a couple again. Suki wasn’t as interested in this, and she kept staring moonily at beautiful Spanish people and saying, “Buenas noches, buenas noches.” Then, all of a sudden, she said: “Isn’t that the racist that stole your watch?”

  I looked across the street. A lean, painted man disappeared into the crowd of evening strollers. I started running after him, pushing people aside and darting after the quickly receding figure. People all around me were laughing and yelling, “Cuidate!” and “Perdón!” annoyed as I ran by. I wasn’t even sure Suki had followed, until I became aware of flip-flops smacking behind me and a distinctly American voice yelling, “Ladrón! Ladrón!” When the crowd heard that, they started yelling, “Andale! Andale, Americano!”

  Soon we were off the main drag and back in the warren of the old town. The streets and the buildings were all made of the same brown stone, and both were narrow and weathered. I would catch a glimpse of the Savage, and then lose him around a corner, catch a glimpse, and lose him again. All of a sudden we were out on the Paseo Maritimo, and the Savage was gone. Suki came up behind me, breathing heavily.

  “Where’d he go?”

  “That way?”

  So we trotted east, trying to keep an eye out but not sure whether we were going the right way. Suki stopped a man who was wearing an official-looking uniform. I looked around for the Savage, and then back at the man. It was a hotel uniform he was wearing, and the man looked very familiar. He was the concierge of the Miramar.

  “Señor, Señorita,” he said in a sarcastically hospitable voice. “You must have come back to settle your bill.”

  Suddenly I couldn’t breathe, and I imagined that every one of my internal organs was about to fail one by one.

  Suki grabbed my hand and started pulling me away, but then the concierge grabbed my collar and pulled us back. He was stronger than he looked, and we went smacking into each other. He ushered us into the hotel—which, we should have noticed, was right behind us—and brought us over to the counter.

  “Let me see. Two ‘American-style omelets’ at twenty-two euros each. Two continental breakfasts at eighteen euros each. Two bottles of champagne, at fifty euros each. Three minibottles of cognac, at ten euros each. Two crystal champagne glasses, replacement charge, thirty-five euros each.”

  He looked up at me and paused. I held my breath.

  “… and there seems to be this other little charge. What could this be? Seven hundred and eighty euro at the hotel boutique?”

  I looked at Suki and let out a little whimper. She had been fidgeting with the hem of her Prada sundress, and now I feared that she might rip it.

  “That comes to thirteen hundred and eighty euros with tax and service charges, please.”

  Suki leaned over to me and whispered, “Maybe we could offer to wash dishes.”

  “Our boat’s leaving at eight. And I think that’s really soon.”

  “Ahem.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the remainder of the fifteen hundred Rob had wired me. After I had counted out eight hundred and forty-six euros, I was left with thirty-four euros. This was not good. I handed over the cash.

  “Gracias, señor,” he said sarcastically.

  Suki and I looked at each other with panic-stricken faces, and then she grabbed my hand and we ran out of the Miramar and down the dock like our lives depended on it. Which they pretty much did. I ran faster than I probably have ever, because I knew—and Suki must have known, too, because she was running even faster than I was—that this was our last chance.

  I waste time and money

  There is nothing more humiliating than running to catch a cab, or a train, or, say, a boat. You get all sweaty and everybody knows you’re desperate. Plus, it’s sort of counter to my whole theory of it’s not cool to need anything that badly. Of course, that sort of humiliation is increased exponentially if, having run and sweated and begged for them to wait for you, you are held in traffic for hours and hours. Or, on the ocean, as it were.

  When we reached the ferry, breathing heavy and scared shitless that we would be left behind again, the blasé stewardesses took our tickets and ushered us on. It was a big, modern boat, with several levels and a bar, and I promptly wasted a heaven-sent twenty euros that I found in my pocket on gin and tonics for us.

  We settled into our seats and looked out at Palma with all its busy streets and the night just about to begin, and agreed that we almost regretted leaving it. Then a few hours passed, and we still hadn’t moved. Nobody seemed particularly restless for what seemed like a really long time, and I got very agitated and Suki could tell, so she suggested that maybe it was a Spanish tradition to wait two hours in the dock and that I should lighten up.

  Eventually Suki went up and talked to one of the stewardesses, who was drinking red wine and smoking and looking very bored over by the bar. When she came back, she said:

  “Well, you’ll never guess what. The boat’s captain has been invited to dinner at the Spanish royal family’s Mallorcan residence, and the boat won’t be leaving until they dismiss him.”

  “Oh.”

  Then we decided it would be a good idea to combine the very last of our euros and spend it all on more gin and tonics, which we did. I don’t know how the hours passed, but they did, and eventually I made myself stop praying that, somehow, the Ariadne would be delayed as well, and fell asleep. When I woke up it was the dead of night, and the ferry was moving. Suki was sleeping next to me, her head rested on my shoulder. I looked out at the endless dark sky, and the endless dark water, and wondered how we were ever going to get home. An austere, rocky little island came into my view for a few minutes, and then it was gone.

  Arno does it for himself

  “Wildenburger!”

  Arno staggered to his feet. He had spent the night in one of the very dark, very small lower level detention cabins. When the door opened, the light was almost unbearable. He blinked several times, and then began to make out the face of Barker.

  “Wildenburger, I’ve contacted your parents and informed them that you won’t be completing the voyage with us. They are a most valuable client, but I’m afraid your behavior has been reprehensible.”

  Arno nodded and shifted on his feet. He hoped he could just be out of there soon.

  “Stephanie will escort you to the dock,” Barker continued, “while I inform Pardo of his situation. There is a car waiting to take you to the Barcelona airport, where your parents have arranged for a flight back to New York.”

  Barker turned and strode down the hall. Stephanie appeared, smiling apologetically at Arno. She was wearing the same cutoffs she always wore, an
d an oversize sweater that did nothing to disguise the size of her breasts. Her hair was down, and she looked pretty, like she’d made herself up in a new way or something. She put her arm around his waist and led him away from the cabin.

  “Your parents weren’t really that mad,” she said. “I could tell, because Barker was still angry after he talked to them. Usually, when the parents grovel he’s really nice afterward and feels good about kicking bad students off the trip.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Arno said. “That guy needs to get over himself.”

  “Uh-huh. He couldn’t even get ahold of Mickey’s folks, which would usually mean that he couldn’t kick Mickey off the boat. Legal issues, you know. But he talked to someone named Caselli? Who, like, basically claimed to be Mickey’s caretaker. So that made him extra mad, that he didn’t even get to yell at an actual parent.”

  Arno made a sound of disgust. Caselli was Ricardo Pardo’s studio manager, and he was sort of like Mickey’s caretaker. He didn’t go easy on him, but he probably wouldn’t bust him, either. This reminded Arno, unpleasantly, of how pissed he was at Mickey.

  “I think Patch is really going to miss you,” Stephanie said as they stood waiting for Barker to arrive. He looked at her, because he wasn’t sure why she’d said that. He caught a whisper of a smile, before she continued, “I mean, he’s probably going to feel really alone.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Arno said suspiciously. “Well, he’s still got Jonathan.”

  “Oh, Jonathan,” she twittered. “Yes, let’s hope he gets out of bed sometime in the next five days.”

  One of the other faculty members appeared with Mickey’s and Arno’s luggage. Then Barker appeared, with Mickey behind him. Arno gave him a long, cold stare. Mickey stared right back, and Arno could see he that hadn’t slept all night and was probably still sort of drunk on anger.

  “Pardo, Wildenburger, you two have been a great disappointment to me,” Barker said. “Now take your things and go.”

 

‹ Prev