Кейт Кристенсен - The Last Cruise

“I would learn it,” said Miriam. “Just to say it now.”

After Sasha fell asleep, she got up and dressed and went down to the breakfast buffet room to try to find something for Jakov, though she knew he wouldn’t eat. She was worried about him. They should never have let him stay up all night. But he had looked so happy. Nobody could tell him to stop.

Coming toward her along the dim hallway was Christine’s friend, Valerie. The girl was drunk and lurching, one hand flat against the wall as she propelled herself along. She held something aloft.

“Hello!” said Miriam loudly, as if the girl were deaf instead of merely drunk. “Do you need help?”

Valerie leaned against the wall, her eyes skewed behind her glasses. Her short curly hair sprang away from her head in tendrils. “We’ve got power bars for breakfast,” she said, enunciating carefully, showing Miriam the bar she held, a small dark loaf that looked as if it were made entirely of chemicals. “Courtesy of Cabaret Cruises.” She took a bite and chewed with absorbed inward ferocity. “So kind of them.”

Miriam took her by the elbow. “Are you okay, sweetheart? Maybe you should get some sleep.”

“I am far, far beyond sleep,” said Valerie. “I think I’ll go back upstairs to think about life.” She looked directly at Miriam. “A warning about the breakfast room: it’s a shit show. The boomers are in crisis.”

She stumbled off. Miriam could already hear voices at the end of the hall. When she reached the open door to the breakfast room, she saw a blurred mass of people all talking at once. They seemed to be directing their comments at Kimmi, who stood alone, cornered, backed up against the empty coffee bar, massaging the air with her palms, apologetically.

“Calm down,” she said. “Everybody, please.”

A man yelled into her face, “Where are the goddamned tugboats?”

“Why aren’t they here yet?” came a voice from the back.

Looking into the crowd, Miriam caught a blurred impression of a helmet-haired woman’s toothy grimace, a balding man’s wide-eyed indignation, a shocked-looking pink-sunburned man in swimming trunks and polo shirt, a plump woman with a smudge on her cheek and a shock of white hair. She recognized some of them from the party. They’d been singing, laughing, just a few short hours before. Now, in the cold cloudy light of morning, with the wind rising and the temperature falling, everything had changed. The panic that had been dormant, clamped down by the heat, had awakened. Their voices sounded querulous, unhinged.

“When are we getting out of here?”

“It feels like there’s a storm coming.”

Miriam went over to stand next to Kimmi, hoping that two small women would be more effective than one. To her surprise, it worked. They quieted down right away. “This is an unbelievably bad situation,” said Kimmi, her voice clear, sincere, sympathetic. “I know, and you’re all being accommodating and patient. But we need to stay organized. We need to keep working together. If a storm comes, there are things we’ll all have to do to stay safe.”

The crowd had calmed down enough to listen while Kimmi spoke, but now Miriam felt another jolt of panic whip through the room.

“We could be in danger!”

“This whole ship stinks, it’s disgusting!”

“We’re living like animals!”

“I’m sorry,” said Kimmi into the eruption. “I’m so sorry.”

“When are they coming?” came a shout from the back of the room. “Why are they taking so long?”

Everyone waited for the answer.

Miriam could feel Kimmi fill her lungs with air, stand up as straight as she could. “Last I heard from the bridge crew, the tugs will be here tomorrow morning. That’s all I know. I’m sorry.”

Miriam saw fear and disappointment flicker through the crowd. No one had anything to say suddenly; the mood had focused into a compressed paralysis. In the absence of any further answers or reassurances, no one seemed to know what to do or where to go. They were caught in an inward-swirling spiral.

A short man off to the side said, “Is the storm going to be bad?”

“Probably not,” said Kimmi. “I hope not.”

Another shock wave crossed the room. A woman burst into hard sobs.

Kimmi put an arm around her. “We are all in this together,” she said. “You’re not alone.”

“We’re going to capsize! We’re all going to die!”

It was starting again, the panic, the shouting. Kimmi stood still for a moment, her mouth open. Miriam could feel Kimmi’s internal resolve give way as she turned and walked out of the room, her head down, her face blazing white. Miriam followed her out the door, along the hallway. Outside, on the deck, the breeze blew, almost chilly. From low on the horizon, gold bars of sunlight streamed through dark gray clouds to form swirling vortexes of bruised and gilded air. People had begun moving their bedding and belongings back inside, untying sheets, dragging mattresses, pillows under their arms.

Kimmi took a shuddering breath. “We can’t keep track of everyone,” she muttered as she walked, as if to herself. “The whole crew is trying. Some people have died of the norovirus and their bodies are down on the loading dock. There’s a rumor that someone fell overboard and drowned last night, but no one really knows, it’s just a rumor. What if it’s true? What do we do? We can’t get a new head count, everyone is going all over the ship all the time.”

They headed up to the catwalk. Miriam noticed again the hollow sounds that the metal stairs made underfoot, the handrail corroded in spots, rusted dark red where the blue-white paint had chipped off, now beading with water in the rising wind. At the door to the bridge, Miriam paused and looked inside at the several uniformed bridge crewmembers standing watch, staring through the windows. But Kimmi continued on along the catwalk without a word to them.

She stopped at a door at the very end, opened it, and turned to look Miriam in the eye. “I’ve been living in here,” she said as if she were confessing a guilty secret. “In the captain’s suite. While the captain has been sick in the infirmary.”

Miriam followed Kimmi into the spacious, airy suite. The rooms were decorated in navy blue and off-white, striped wallpaper with oil seascapes framed in gilt, sleek furniture, a panoramic curved window spattered with blowing droplets. It gave a full view of the darkening clouds and the ocean below, foam and spray blown off the heaving waves.

Kimmi pointed to the bedroom. “I have been sleeping in that king-size bed, all alone, while my crew slept down on the main deck with everyone else. I’m ashamed of myself.”

“Well, I don’t care,” said Miriam. “As for me, I’ve been living in the owner’s suite. And I did nothing. You took charge, it’s exhausting.”

“It’s my job,” said Kimmi, sitting on the bed. “I started working for Cabaret right after college. I studied music and theater, since I was like two I was always going to be a musical actress. Then I saw a Cabaret Cruise listing for an entertainment and cruise director, and I thought, hey, that sounds fun, traveling the world, making people happy. Didn’t exactly work out that way. Eight years ago and I’ll be thirty in September and what do I have to show for it? My whole adult life.”

“You’re so young,” said Miriam. “Still a kid.”

There was a shout outside the door. Kimmi got up and opened it. One of the young watchmen was rushing by. He stopped and pointed downward. “A ship! There’s a ship!”

Mick stood down on the little excursion dock in the windblown, drifting mist and spray. They had opened it yesterday to swim, and in everyone’s excitement after the airdrop, nobody had thought to close it. A shaft of ocher sunlight pierced the thickening clouds high above and shot down to illuminate the charcoal density all around him, as if he were at the bottom of a coal mine.