Кейт Кристенсен - The Last Cruise

When they finished lunch and went back to the galley, Kenji was waiting for them. “Chef Laurens is very sick,” he told Mick with his usual sangfroid. “He’s in the infirmary. I just came from seeing him. He’s going to leave the ship soon, a helicopter is coming, he needs a hospital.”

Mick stared at Kenji for a few seconds. Laurens was gone. No more shot at a job in Amsterdam. It was done, finished. Consuelo had scuttled his chances, and the engine fire had sunk them along with whatever stomach virus Laurens had caught. Oh well.

“So it’s just you and me then,” he said to Kenji.

“I guess so,” Kenji said. He quirked an eyebrow. “Your girl last night. She took a lot of people with her. They’re not working anymore. And Chef Jean-Luc told me to go fuck myself, he’s not working either.”

“Fuck Jean-Luc back,” said Mick. He had never liked that snooty asshole anyway. “And Consuelo’s not ‘my girl.’ ”

Kenji flashed him a sympathetic look and rested a fist on his shoulder. For him, Mick thought, this might have been the equivalent of a bear hug. “What are we doing for dinner, Chef?”

“Ceviche, grilled meat. We’ll use the braziers, cook on deck. We need to eat this stuff now before it goes bad.”

“Sounds good.”

While Kenji went off to direct the kids on the meat crew, Mick worked alone, salvaging the fish that was still edible, mixing it with citrus juice, minced red onion, and cilantro. He splashed lime juice a little too liberally in the bowl and looked up, half expecting Laurens to be hovering with an attitude of faint but chilly disapproval, questioning his decisions, frowning. But there was no one there.

He set the ceviche to steep in the still-cool walk-in. When he came out again, Jean-Luc and Paolo were standing by his station, arms folded. They weren’t wearing their whites. He hadn’t seen either of them since the previous night.

“Hey,” said Jean-Luc, chin set. “Mick.”

“What do you guys want?” Mick said.

Paolo gave a small bow; he was harmless, a diva. “Some meat,” he said. “And one of the braziers. We’re cooking on the main deck.”

“Why not on the pool deck with the rest of us?” Mick was aware of Kenji and the rest of his crew around him, watching this scene as they went on working. “It would be a lot easier that way.”

Jean-Luc made a clucking sound, shook his head. “I thought you had some balls, man. I thought you sympathized with us even if you didn’t join us. But I was wrong. You are Laurens’s puppy dog, just like Kenji.”

Paolo sniggered. Mick could feel the back of his neck getting hot. He didn’t look at Kenji, but he could feel his neutral, interested gaze from across the galley. Down the counter, Mick was aware of Christine listening too.

“Take what you need and get out of my kitchen,” he said.

“Thank you, Chef,” Paolo sang out. He turned to grab a platter of meat, but Jean-Luc held him back.

“One minute,” said Jean-Luc. “Hey, Mick. What do you think is going to happen to us when we get to land? Have you thought about what Cabaret will do to us, to make all this go away? I’ll tell you what. They are going to blame us for the fire, the sickness of Laurens, everything. They are going to prosecute us for sabotage, make us pay for the damages out of our own pockets. For something we didn’t do! They are even talking about throwing us in jail.”

“Bullshit,” said Mick. The suspicion he’d had the night before bloomed again anew. “How do I know you didn’t start the fire, anyway? Poison Laurens?”

“Of course we didn’t do that,” said Jean-Luc. “And you are being naive. The owner of the company is on board, you know. Everything I said? It comes straight from him, we heard this a little while ago. Cabaret will crush us. That’s what he said. And who do you think is going to be stuck with the bill, eh? That’s how it works. When there is trouble, when there is a disaster, we are the ones who pay.”

Mick looked around the galley. Kenji caught his eye and moved one shoulder, barely, as if to say, I’m not getting involved in this.

“So I want to ask you, all of you,” Jean-Luc was saying. “What are you going to do about it? Are you going to stand there and say nothing while your fellow workers are locked up like criminals? Do you really think they will let you keep your jobs for not standing with us? Of course not. You will all be fired, just like the rest of us. Heads will roll, man. This whole fucking ship. And if we don’t fight back now, those heads will be ours. All of ours.”

Mick could feel the anger coming off Jean-Luc in waves along with the rank smell of his sweat. The room was quiet and tense.

Christine’s voice broke the silence, clear and firm. “We have a boat full of people here waiting to get rescued. How is everyone going to eat if you all walk out? I’m on your side, I’m sure we all are, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to let people go hungry.”

“Who is this?” Jean-Luc said to Mick. “She’s not one of us.”

“I’m a passenger,” said Christine before Mick could answer. “And look, I know you guys are scared, but I think you’re overreacting. Even if what you say is true, even if Cabaret is going to come after you when you get back, there are journalists on board, like my friend Valerie, who I’m sure you’ve talked with, who can help you get the truth out. You obviously didn’t do anything. This is Cabaret’s fault for mistreating its workers and not having proper safety measures in place in case of an emergency. But honestly, all that is going to be much harder to sell if you start acting hostilely toward the passengers. That just makes it look like you have something to hide. It makes you look guilty as well as malicious.”

“She’s right,” Mick said, silently thanking her. “The passengers haven’t done anything to you, right? So if we want to keep working, that’s our fucking choice. And we all need to stick together now. We’re all in trouble.”

Jean-Luc’s neck puffed slightly. Then he shrugged. “Whatever. Allons-y, Paolo. Let’s get out of here.”

They ducked out of the galley, each carrying a platter stacked high with raw meat, Mick heard Jean-Luc mutter, “Poutain de merde.”

He looked around at his crew. “Everybody good?” They nodded. “Good,” he said. “All right. We need to start firing steaks in an hour. A couple of people can go up to get those grills going with Chef Kenji. The rest of you, let’s finish the meat prep.”

There was a reassuring chorus of “Yes, Chef” as they all resumed their tasks. After Kenji had gone off with his grill crew, Mick moved down the counter and stood next to Christine, who was scooping ground meat out of a large bowl and forming patties with it. “Thanks for saying that, earlier,” he said. “If you keep helping me out like that, I might have to promote you.”

“That would be great,” said Christine. “I want a raise, too. How do these burgers look?”

“A little big,” said Mick, reaching into the bowl. “About this size is better.”

They worked side by side forming burgers, trimming chops, making a dry rub for the ribs. Mick felt a strange sense of ease working with her, almost as if this were all natural, as if they were getting ready for a Sunday barbecue in the backyard instead of throwing together a meal of the most perishable stores for a few hundred scared people on a dead ship in the middle of the ocean.

At one point, more passengers trickled into the galley to volunteer for kitchen duty: Dora and John, an elderly black couple in matching baggy white T-shirts and tracksuit pants; and Freddie, a middle-aged white woman with a frizzy fuchsia-and-silver mane and a creased, bronzed face. “I cooked in my kids’ cafeteria,” she announced in a husky smoker’s voice. Dora was slightly stooped from the weight of her shelf-like chest, and big glasses hid almost half of her face. John looked even older than his wife; his grizzled face shone with sweat. But they all three seemed game and willing, despite the heat, so Mick gave them clean whites and put them to work.