Кейт Кристенсен - The Last Cruise

But it was strangely quiet in here, Mick thought. First nights were generally loud, wild, and late, the new crew getting acquainted or greeting friends they hadn’t worked with in a while. Maybe most people hadn’t come off their shifts yet; he didn’t know the schedules of the waiters and housekeeping staffs.

Just then, one of the Russians said something loudly and their entire table ignited in laughter. The guy tending bar, a voluntary position paid only in tips and social prestige, was evidently a Russian too: he yelled something across the lounge and threw a bottle of vodka over to the table. The guy who’d shouted caught it and opened it and drank from it, then wiped off the top and poured straight vodka into everyone’s glass with a flip of the wrist and a flourish.

The mood at the Jamaican table was dreamy and contemplative; maybe they’d found a place to enjoy a post-work spliff. Mellow, heavy-lidded, they peeled the labels off bottles of beer and bobbed their heads to the music on the sound system, some kind of synth-heavy pop with a female singer. Mick had no idea who she was. Her voice was husky, twitchy with alley-cat yowls. It was the aural equivalent of Consuelo’s perfume.

But the stoned, spaced-out Jamaicans were raucous compared to Consuelo’s table. Talking in low voices with their heads close together was not Mick’s usual notion of a group of Spanish speakers. In his experience, Hispanics and Latinos loved to mix it up when they drank, interrupting each other, flaring into opinionated rants and half-flirtatious arguments and hot riffs of arguing banter and hard laughter. These people were talking one by one, quietly, and everyone seemed to be listening instead of jumping in. Mick’s Spanish was passable, just good enough to make out the gist of a conversation. He listened hard, but their voices were too quiet, impossible to eavesdrop on.

Consuelo, who was facing Mick, caught his eye and kept her face impassive as she held his gaze. He had no idea what she was trying to telegraph to him. She thought he was hot and desired him passionately? He should mind his own business? He should fuck off? Probably the latter two.

He shut his eyes again and let the music and beer fill his head.

He felt another quick tap on his shoulder a while later with another whiff of her perfume. He opened his eyes as Consuelo slid into the chair next to him and sat facing the same direction he was facing, toward the bar, where the Russian bartender was smoking and leaning on the bar top and yelling over at his increasingly drunk compatriots. He had a grim face, colorless hair, and a huge nose. He saw Mick looking at him and held up a beer bottle. Mick nodded and caught the bottle as it flew toward him, twisted off the top, drank.

“Hey,” said Consuelo. “You looked like you were having a nice nap.”

“Thanks for waking me up,” he said. “Looks like a serious discussion over there. Are you talking about economics or science or something?”

“We’re plotting to take over the world,” she said.

She looked serious, but Mick was learning her sense of humor, he thought. He laughed; she didn’t. “Where are you all from, anyway?”

“Most of us are from Mexico, a couple from Guatemala. We know each other from past cruises. You know Rodrigo, right? He’s on our station. And Yvete is a croupier in the casino. A couple of others are room stewards. A couple of waiters.”

“They’re your friends?”

Her face went still as she looked over at the table. “In a way. Friends, yeah, sure.”

“What were you really talking about?”

“How pissed off we are about the layoffs. You know they’re canceling all our contracts after this cruise?”

Mick stared at her. “No,” he said. “I haven’t heard anything about it. Are they really?”

“I guess you’re in the clear, man. Also, do you know who’s on the boat? One of the owners of Cabaret. Larry Weiss. Should we poison his steak?”

“You think it would solve anything?”

“It would make me feel better.”

Mick nodded at her empty glass. “You want another glass of wine?”

She shook her head. “I’m going to sleep. My new boss is a bastard. I have to stay on my toes.”

She winked at him and got up, banging her knuckles softly against Mick’s.

Miriam unpacked her toiletries carefully, trying to keep them from getting mixed up with Isaac’s. Of course Rivka, in her willful ignorance of their divorced state, had put them into a room together, with a double bed no less, when she’d made the arrangements for them. As soon as she realized this, Miriam had marched straight up to a crewmember and demanded a room of her own. The ship was less than half full; surely they could accommodate her. But the boy had disappeared and Miriam hadn’t seen him since. She had had to rush to get to their rehearsal in the chapel, so nothing had been done, and here it was after dinner, and she was exhausted. She’d slept with Isaac endless times before, she supposed she could do it one more night, but tomorrow she was going to raise hell and get herself her own damned private cabin. She didn’t care if they docked her pay, she wasn’t spending two weeks lying awake next to this snoring old man, checking his damned scrotum for him every time he decided he might have cancer.

Isaac was still up in the casino with Larry and Rivka, watching Larry shoot craps and flirting with Rivka, on whom, Miriam suspected, he had a crush. She hoped he’d stay up there all night. But she knew he wouldn’t, and she also knew that she wouldn’t be able to sleep until he came back. She would lie awake, expecting him to come along any minute and rattle the key in the lock and turn the light on and make a racket getting himself into his pajamas and heaving himself down next to her, jostling her and disarranging the covers. Why bother falling asleep if she’d just have to do it all over again?

She climbed into the bed on the side farther from the bathroom, since Isaac had to get up in the night because of prostate issues, and God forbid he should have to go all the way around the bed. She plumped up her pillows, settled herself against them, opened her boring Norwegian crime novel, and began to read. Ten minutes later she was sound asleep with the book open in her lap, the lamp on, and her reading glasses still on her nose.

She awoke with a small gasp and floundered up from the depths of a deep, untroubled sleep to find Isaac, lying on his back next to her, staring up at the ceiling. He looked over at her.

“Good morning,” she said. “You were so quiet, I hardly knew you were there.”

“I lay here awake all night, not moving.”

“You didn’t.”

“Of course I didn’t.”

She sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes with the heel of one hand, bracing her back with the other. Sunlight streamed through the porthole. She got out of bed and stretched her arms skyward, as she did every morning, then bent over and tried to touch her toes. She repeated this ten times, grunting. Isaac heaved himself up out of bed and looked out the porthole. His white hair stood up around his head, sunlit, like a nimbus. He looked to Miriam like a saintly Einstein in pale blue-and-white-striped pajama bottoms and a white undershirt. It was not at all awkward to be sharing a bed with him again. It felt familial, like sleeping with an aunt or a cousin.

“I didn’t hear you come to bed,” she said.

“I tiptoed into the room like a mouse, so terrified was I from years of sleeping with you. You always flew into a rage if I woke you up. And I knew I’d lie there all night, too afraid I’d snore. I’d never sleep in a million years.”

“But you slept.”

“I slept very well,” he said. “Did I snore?”