Кейт Кристенсен - The Last Cruise

“Do you like your job, Alexei?” she asked as he poured her martini into a glass.

“Making a drink for a beautiful woman on a beautiful ship at sea. Who would complain?”

“I hear they’re canceling all your contracts,” she said before she could stop herself.

He put her martini in front of her. “Yes,” he said. He didn’t ask how she knew. “But there are ten other cruise lines, maybe twenty. I’ll take a vacation and then I will get another job.”

She stared at Alexei’s face for any sign of panic or outrage, but his expression remained blankly benign. She took a gulp of booze and watched a group of adults in the pool playing water polo, splashing and dunking one another with vicious fun. She turned to face the ocean and watched the light on the sea surface, tracking the occasional cloud mass that sailed over the horizon to engulf the lowering sun before sailing on again.

She made her way along the deck and down the external staircase, two flights. The promenade was a wide, glassed-in, teak-floored hall that ran most of the starboard-side length of the ship, with double doors all along its inner wall that led to equally grand public rooms, the Starlight Lounge, the casino, the smoking room. The windows were multi-paned, gigantic, providing a glass barrier against the sea spray but no impediment to the view of the open ocean.

Now, the sun was dipping below the horizon through a misty curtain of faraway rain, staining the sky a lurid combination of intense cantaloupe pink and mango yellow that had just begun to fade. People strolled along in twos and threes, enjoying the sunset, doing laps. The light in the promenade was tinged with gauzy gold; it felt as if it came from the past, and Christine was sure she saw a ghost out of the corner of her eye, far down the promenade, and then another one, human-sized impressions of electricity in the air, kinetic disturbances of the light. Superstitiously, she felt that these imprinted echoes of long-gone people were good luck, and their eeriness somehow magically broke the slight unease she’d been feeling on this much-vaunted last cruise, with all its freighted symbolism and sentimental melodrama.

She turned back to the seemingly infinite parallel surfaces of the sky and water and let her eyes blur into a daydream. Soon it would be time to dress for dinner.

Scorching heat and sweat on his forehead and fiery steam and the fleshy demands of meat were a special kind of hellish earth-air-fire-water combo Mick dealt with every day and loved perversely, even the burns on his wrists and hands, the tiny abrasions and cuts and splashes of hot fat. He welcomed it all. It quieted his brain, this stainless steel inferno of raw and charred meat and the quick flash of knives.

For the first two days of the cruise he’d thrown himself into impressing Chef, keeping his hard-won respect, showing him he’d made the right decision. Laurens had confirmed the rumor Mick had heard: that he was leaving the industry after this cruise and opening his own restaurant in Amsterdam, of all the beautiful, fun, cool fucking cities.

“I’ll be hiring chefs to come and work for me very soon,” Laurens said. He was sitting behind his desk with his fingers steepled. His tone was noncommittal, cool. Mick, hovering in the doorway with that night’s menu for his approval, couldn’t tell whether Laurens meant he might be interested in hiring Mick himself, or whether he was speaking hypothetically about his plans.

“You’re currently looking for chefs, then?”

“I’m always looking for talented people who aren’t afraid to contribute to my vision,” said Laurens. “I want to be impressed. I want to feel inspired and excited. I want people I can trust to execute my ideas. It’s a rare quality I’m looking for.”

And he fixed Mick with a direct, challenging gaze. Mick was sure now that he wasn’t imagining it: Laurens was considering him as a potential hire for his new restaurant.

Until he’d proved himself and given Laurens something to be impressed by, Mick resisted articulating it consciously in the privacy of his own skull; but maybe, his subconscious hummed with percolating urgency, maybe, if Laurens liked Mick’s work, he might have a place there for him. The prospect of working on land, in a restaurant, with a regular schedule, living in an apartment, was so tantalizing that at the moment he felt that, if he had to do so in order to leave the cruise industry and work for Laurens van Buyten and live in Amsterdam, he would slice off his left nut, stick it on a skewer along with his left pinkie finger and his right ear, roast it all to dripping perfection, and feed this kebab to a starving dog in a cage. Luckily, Mick had skills and experience, and generally, that was all getting a new job required. But he had to shine. He had to dominate. He could not fuck up.

This was his first chance to distinguish himself after the initial success of the lobster thermidor. Chef hadn’t said a word to Mick about it until the following day, when he’d taken him aside and informed him that this dish would be one of three entrées on the menu for the second of the five captain’s table dinners for the cruise.

“Make it exactly as you made it for me. Do not alter one molecule. It was perfection. We’re also offering filet mignon with a red wine reduction, and for the vegetarians, a truffle risotto. It’s a beautiful, classic menu and the lobster is the pièce de résistance. It’s also the only entrée we won’t be offering on our general menu. It will be exclusive to this dinner.”

“ Oui, Chef.” Mick, jubilant, watched him walk away, then turned back to the duck à l’orange he was working on for tomorrow’s Home Cooking Night in the restaurant, to be offered along with boeuf bourguignon and paella, a dish Mick loathed both to eat and to cook because it was complicated and labor-intensive and in the end a waste of good seafood, because the rice just took over, but luckily the guys on the fish station were in charge of it.

“What the fuck did he want?” Consuelo asked when Chef was out of earshot. The question was rhetorical: she had heard every word.

“More lobster thermidor,” said Mick. “Get ready to outdo the last one.”

“We’re meat, not seafood,” she said, tipping a tray of roasted bones into a hotel pan in a hollow clattering rush.

“Not for the captain’s table dinner. He also wants filet mignon with red wine reduction.”

She grunted. “Easiest thing in the world.”

“Then it’s yours,” he said.

She cocked her hip against the counter edge and folded her arms and fixed Mick with a sideways, hooded glare.

“So you’re his butt boy,” she muttered.

“What?” said Mick.

“Nothing,” she said. “Congratulations.”

“No,” he said, advancing toward her, making her back up to get away from him. He stopped when they hit the end of the station. His face was right in hers. “You do not talk to me like that on my station.”

He held his face close to hers, so close their breath commingled in the short air between them. His eyes pinned hers. She stared back at him. Her irises were the color of cinnamon, reddish brown, flecked with the pale gold of ginger. He could smell that scent she wore, very slightly, rising in fumes from her warm neck, emanating from the thrum of her elevated pulse. It had no effect on him here. He felt clear, unconflicted. He was management. So be it. That was how you moved up in the world, you took opportunities when they came, and you acted with authority when you had to.

“Do you understand me?” he said, his voice even. “I want an answer.”

“Yes, I understand you,” she said clearly. “Chef.”

He stayed there for a few beats to make sure she got his point.