Кейт Кристенсен - The Last Cruise

Consuelo returned. “Who the fuck was that?”

“She said she’s a writer,” said Mick.

“What does she want with us?”

“I told her to fuck off.”

“She’s a guest.”

“I was polite.”

“You were polite,” repeated Consuelo, infusing the words with all the amused skepticism they could contain. Mick realized he was being teased. She was subtle. On hearing of her promotion to the meat station thanks to Mick’s recommendation, she had nodded at him briefly, a typically economical gesture Mick had interpreted as her version of clicking her heels together with joy.

“I want to talk to her,” said Consuelo. “On my break.”

Mick squinted at her. Consuelo’s face held a blank expression that revealed nothing. Mick went back to his quail. He felt a twinge of unease, but there was no reason for it, at least nothing he could pinpoint, so he let it go.

After another decadent dinner in the fine-dining restaurant, Christine and Valerie went back up to the crescent-shaped teak pool bar. They perched on high stools amid a talking, laughing, drinking crowd. People swam in the pool and floated on rafts. The same jazz band from the night before had set up on the other side of the pool. Valerie, who seemed to have thrown her determination to stay sober overboard, was halfway into her second martini. “Meanwhile, this hot Eastern European chef was a total dick,” she said. She had been telling Christine about her slow progress so far with conducting interviews. “He ignored me, anyway.”

“He was probably working,” said Christine. She flashed on the drunk, tough-looking Hungarian guy who’d sat next to her at the hotel bar in Long Beach, the one who’d hit on the waitress and made her run for cover. “I wouldn’t mess with professional chefs. They’re all supposedly ex-cons and thugs.”

“Just my type, right?” Valerie took a cigarette out of a chrome-plated cigarette box she’d pulled from her pocket and lit it with a sleek lighter. Christine hadn’t known she was in possession of all this equipment. Valerie had quit and started again through the years so many times Christine had lost track. Valerie loved renouncing vices, but she equally loved taking them up again, as if this cycle of abstinent virtue and decadent self-destructiveness were a private, seasonal rhythm that anchored her in some way. Christine, who always felt ploddingly steady and sensible, adored this about her friend.

“Who do these chefs think they are in their stupid white aprons and Crocs ?” Valerie said, exhaling a stream of smoke as she talked. “I mean, seriously. Why does cooking bring out the douchebag in men? Actually, writing does too. Actually, everything does.”

“Farming doesn’t,” said Christine. “At least, not as obviously.”

“I’m gonna stalk that fucker and make him talk to me,” said Valerie. “He’s too high up the food chain for my purposes, but now it’s a point of pride.”

“In other words, he’s hot,” said Christine.

“A hot douchebag,” said Valerie. “Just my type.”

“So let me ask you something. Why didn’t you try to get a job on a cruise ship if you wanted the real story? Like Barbara Ehrenreich. Instead of interviewing workers, work alongside them.”

“I’m doing the Studs Terkel thing instead,” said Valerie. “Like an update of Working. The socioeconomic landscape he was writing about has totally changed. I want to give contemporary workers that kind of voice. I see my cruise-ship chapter as an answer to David Foster Wallace’s snarky essay, which frankly hasn’t aged well.”

Christine laughed; this was so like Valerie, to appropriate the work of writers she admired while bragging that she would write something better. “It is? How?”

“Wallace just went on a cruise by himself as a skeptical dude with an attitude. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a brilliant and funny essay, but that all seems too obvious now. We get it. The world is so much bigger now, so much more complicated. And I want to go deeper. I want to uncover the real story. There’s a class structure on this ship, there’s an economy, there’s a system that mirrors the global one. There are thirty different nationalities in the working staff, the waiters and bartenders and cooks and room stewards and engineers and dishwashers. No Americans. All the Americans are above decks, in entertainment and on the bridge and among the guests. But below, it’s all foreigners, most from Third World countries. All cruise ships are the same.”

“That’s really interesting,” said Christine. “Seriously.”

“Hey, can I play you an interview I just did?” Valerie took out her iPhone. “I managed to get one of the cooks to talk to me, she works under the guy who snubbed me. I want to know what you think. Here.” She thrust her phone at Christine.

“Now?” said Christine, looking down at Valerie’s phone. After only one day without using one, it was jarring to look at the small lit-up screen.

“It’s short,” said Valerie. She clicked on an icon marked ISABELLA INTERVIEWS and handed Christine a pair of earbuds, which Christine obediently put on.

Valerie hit play, and a woman’s accented voice spoke into Christine’s ear. She sounded Spanish and tense. “I can give you a couple minutes but then I have to be back at my station.”

“What is your name and nationality?” Valerie’s voice said.

“Consuelo Fonseca. I’m Mexican. From Acapulco.”

“How long have you worked for Cabaret?”

“Six years.”

“Can you tell me a bit about your job?”

Christine heard an angry, scornful sound, a snort. “Sure. I’ll tell you a couple of things. We work sixteen-hour days for pathetic wages. Most of us, our contracts are being canceled at the end of this cruise.”

“They’re firing you?” came Valerie.

“Yeah. And you know why? So they can hire refugees to do the work we do, but for less money and longer hours. I’m talking desperate people, from Syria, Sudan. The owners of this company are shit. One of them is on board. I read an interview with him online where he said that the reason Third World workers like us are good at our jobs it that we’re culturally suited to them.” Her voice deepened as she imitated him. “ ‘The Filipinos always smile at the customers even when they’re tired from working so hard because they’re so happy and it’s such an honor to work for Cabaret. Workers from India are great like that too, always smiling, happy to work aboard these ships. Mexicans are the same. Always cheerful.’ ” She snorted again. “Look at me, so fucking cheerful. It’s bullshit.”

“So why did you stay with Cabaret all these years if the conditions are so bad?”

“Because there’s nothing for me in Mexico, no jobs, the economy is shit, and I’m sending money home and spending nothing. I don’t have time to spend money. I’m young and I can take it. My parents are depending on me. I need this stupid job. Like everyone else on board this ship. We all need these jobs.”

“But you don’t think they should hire these other workers? They need the jobs more than you do, even.”

“No. I don’t think that.” Consuelo’s voice was acid. “What I think is that they should stop treating us like slaves and not get rid of us to hire cheaper labor.”

“I get it,” said Valerie.

“So they’re dumping us and hiring desperate people, even more desperate than we are. Syrians running away from hell. Africans who will do anything to have a safe place to sleep, a tiny bit of money for their families. They’ll be treated like labor animals. It’s completely fucking wrong.”