Кейт Кристенсен - The Last Cruise

Cigarette smoke curled, made a haze. Miriam caught a glimpse of Rivka on the couch by an open window with her feet tucked under her like a girl. Here they all were in the owner’s suite, Miriam mused, the owner himself gone, and the whole ship joined in music.

Kimmi struck a chord on the accordion. Her singing voice was trained and commanding: “Sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. Both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea.”

“It’s Miriam’s Song,” said Miriam in Sasha’s ear. She remembered the quartet’s first rehearsal in the chapel, when Kimmi had come rushing in looking for a Bible. Back then, Sasha had been a grieving old man, and Miriam had been Isaac’s roommate.

“The Song of the Sea,” said Sasha, his eyes gleaming at her, remembering too.

Christine resurfaced in her bed in the cabin after being submerged for hours in a profound, dream-filled sleep. She wasn’t even sure where she was at first. Lying there, returning to herself, she felt the deep silence around her as a pressure in her head.

“Valerie,” she said into the darkness. Her mouth was dry. Her voice sounded like a weak little chirp.

She reached over for her flashlight and splashed the small cabin with cold light, dim now, because her battery was dying. Valerie’s bed was empty. The air coming through the open balcony doors was humid and warm and thick as someone’s breath. Faint music wafted from somewhere high above.

She threw her blankets off and sat up. Finding that she was still dressed, she got out of bed, slipped on her sandals, and went out into the hallway, spooked by its emptiness, sickened by the stench of raw sewage. Her flashlight lit a murky path to the stairwell, and up several flights. When she emerged onto the aft outside deck, into fresh air and moonlight, she turned it off and saw a warm light coming from one of the high suites above her. She heard people singing, laughter, a violin playing high, fast notes, horns joining in.

She made her way slowly up to the bridge deck and along the catwalk, running her hand along the railing. Candlelight poured from the windows and doorway of the owner’s suite; a crowd thronged the living room, spilling out onto the catwalk. She heard laughter and cheers and looked in as Sidney, the maître d’, launched into what sounded like an old sea shanty in a loud, rough, but surprisingly tuneful voice, “Where it’s wave over wave, sea over bow, I’m as happy a man as the sea will allow, there’s no other life for a sailor like me, than to sail the salt sea, boys, sail the sea…”

Standing at the edge of the crowd, Christine felt invisible, or as if she’d emerged from a coma into a surreal circus, or as if she were still asleep and dreaming. Everyone around her was caught up in the music, drunk and laughing and jubilant.

Theodore appeared next to her on the catwalk, nudged her. “What’s up, farm girl?”

“Hey,” said Christine. “Have you seen Valerie?”

“Hours ago. Up on the solarium deck hanging out with that crowd.”

He handed her a bottle of something. She took a swig and handed it back, feeling whiskey warm her gullet.

“Stay here,” Valerie said. Feeling antsy, but not wanting to be rude, Mick did as he was told while she went down the short staircase to the bar to get another bottle of wine. The almost-full moon hung low in the sky, splashing the surface of the sea with cold brilliance, turning it into a shimmering, shifting rug. The music coming from one of the suites below shifted to a slow jazz song with a simple but tricky melody. A woman’s smoky, rich voice, a cascade of trombone notes, a strong satiny ribbon of violin, twined together and clustered in his solar plexus, forming a knot of feeling that all at once melted into longing. “Since you went away, the days seem long, and soon I’ll hear old winter’s song…”

Valerie reappeared, handing him a fresh bottle of wine. She sat down next to him and slipped a cigarette from his pack, handed him another, lit them both. He was well on his way to being truly drunk, and it felt good. Every time he thought about getting up and going down to the party to look for Christine, Valerie seemed to read his mind, and pull him back toward her with the tug of expert redirection. She made him tell her about what had happened between Consuelo and Laurens. Then he found himself talking about his foiled desire to go and work for Laurens in his new restaurant, his failed romance with Suzanne, and his past in Budapest, the Eszterházy, his sister. While he talked, Valerie kept maneuvering her body to keep contact with his, applying pressure with her hand on his thigh, making sure to brush his shoulder with her cheek, taking slow drags of her cigarette so he’d notice her mouth, imagine it elsewhere. He knew this dance. He’d done it before. It always ended exactly where the woman wanted it to end. He didn’t know how to bring about any other scenario. Rejecting women who wanted him, walking away from their need, wasn’t something he was good at. He wasn’t sure he wanted to, anyway. And he knew that Valerie could read this. She had done this dance as many times as he had, she was an expert at spinning the web, and he was caught in it now. The music went on, shifted, got louder and more raucous, then quieter, then the quartet played alone, a moody, sweetly melodic piece Mick didn’t recognize because he knew fuck-all about music really, but it was beautiful.

Well into the early hours of morning, as they drank the third bottle of wine, or maybe it was the fourth, they stopped talking. Their shoulders were pressed together. They’d let their knees fall inward so they were touching, too. He felt as if their two bodies had formed a self-contained little cave where they’d taken shelter together for the night, and their conversation had been a stream of words and breath, keeping them warm. He was aware that they were alone now. Christine had never come. The other stargazers, vaping and drinking and laughing on the deck with them, had all left, gone down to bed, or to join the party down below. Mick imagined Christine was down at the party too. He wanted to go and find her. He felt very drunk. On a surge of determination, he pulled himself to his feet, resting his hand against the wall of the solarium, and staggered a little over to the railing.

Valerie got up too, stayed with him.

“Wait,” she said. “Can we just take a minute? I feel kind of dizzy.”

She leaned into him, looking out with him at the pinkening predawn sky. She slumped, her head lolling on his shoulder. She started to tip over. His arms went around her to keep her from falling down. She exhaled hard, as if with relief, and pivoted to face him, sliding her arms around his neck. The muscles of their thighs pressed against each other. Her body felt insubstantial, droopy, so that he had to hold her up. Her expression was flickering, turned inward. In a flash of intense longing, he thought of Christine, her steadiness and strength, the light in her eyes when she’d promised to teach him to swim. But Valerie was the kind of woman he had always known he deserved, dark and chaotic and bitter. Her mouth tasted like peaty smoke and warm metal. He gave himself over to her with the nihilistic half-sober awareness that the gods were smacking him down yet again.

“Okay,” she said with drunken fervor. “We really need to fuck right now.”

She put her hand on his crotch and rubbed it slowly, felt his cock harden, slid her hand down his waistband. He was filled with lustful dread, mindless, animal. In a fluid practiced series of motions, she turned toward the railing and lifted her dress and reached behind her and undid his pants and moved her underwear to the side and slid his cock inside her. She let out a low, guttural shriek, not entirely of pleasure, moved her hips backward to enfold his cock as he thrust into her. His mind shut down, floated off like a balloon while he thrust at her and she groaned and mewled and arched her back like a cat.