Adam Haslett - Imagine Me Gone

Seeing her live was a jackhammer to the frozen sea within me. I stumbled out of there higher than a mule on a horse. Which is when I saw Alec down at the far end of the promenade. It turns out he’d had a rough few days himself. Apparently, he’d been abducted by a child-prostitution ring down on deck 3. English, Russians, and he thought maybe Dutch. He was about to be sealed in a crate and smuggled to a Soviet resort on the Black Sea when he managed to secrete himself on the bottom of a curtained tea trolley that rolled him into the kitchens. I was obviously taken aback. Transshipment to Sebastopol would have been a suboptimal outcome for Alec. As I understand it, sex slavery is pretty much a nightmare. But what it makes me wonder is, Is there anything that

isn’t

happening on this ship?

Please don’t mention this last episode to Mom or Dad. They’ve got a lot on their minds at the moment, and we’re doing our best not to worry them with anything further. Alec says he’ll steer clear of deck 3 from now on and stay out of the casino during the afternoon hours when they allow minors to play slots. We told Celia but she said Alec was making it up. She’s currently reading a nine-volume biography of the Brontë family and doesn’t like to be interrupted.

I guess the lesson is, wherever you go, life follows you there, hunts you down, and abducts you (just kidding). We’re only two days from landfall in England, where Mom can be transferred to a tertiary-care facility. And on the last night of the crossing Donna Summer is performing again!

Come visit us soon!

Yours,

Michael

September 7

Dear Aunt Penny,

I was expecting to be writing to you from England by now but it turns out our trip has been extended. Dad, as you know, is a bargain wizard, a master at traveling in style for a fraction of the going rate. But this time he’s really outdone himself. About a week ago, scanning the horizon with my binoculars for the tip of Cornwall, I saw a bunch of islands off the port side, which in due course I was able to identify as the Azores. This certainly explained the “heat wave”! For days, passengers had been complaining about sunburn and doffing their evening cruising jackets like hookers. Everything got damp and no one felt like moving. The crew was initially circumspect, saying only that we could look forward to a big surprise. But by the time we had dropped anchor somewhere in the Gulf of Guinea, people wanted an explanation. The captain came on the PA and said that every once in a while Cunard tacks on a tropical excursion as a way of thanking their loyal customers. There would be no extra charge, he said, and free champagne.

At least for those still on the ship. It turns out Alec’s brush with that syndicate down on 3 is only the tip of the iceberg. At first, it just seemed like fewer people were coming to dinner, and we figured the heat had sapped their appetite. It made sense that the oldsters would keep showing up owing to their greater sense of form. As far as the tropical excursion went, we basically just sat parked in the baking sun. So the whole marketing angle got bogus in a hurry. I’ve been going down to the rec room every morning after breakfast to play video games, and two days after we’d dropped anchor, when I swung the door open I saw something peculiar: a row of naked guys in their teens and twenties lined up against one wall, with their wrists bound. At a stretch, I suppose it could have been some kind of gay event that they hadn’t put on the public schedule. That might even have explained the two crew members wiping their bodies down with baby oil. But if this was some kind of affinity group, why were so many of them crying? I was too embarrassed to tell anyone about it, especially Dad, so I just stopped going to the rec room.

But what really set off alarms for most people was seeing that first lifeboat head for the coast loaded with naked men yoked at the neck. That, I think, was the proverbial “wake-up call.” Turns out this puppy is a full-on white slaver! And quite a cargo it has.

Being late to Southampton was one thing. But there seemed no excuse for this. And the captain’s explanation — that the shipping company had a contract with the U.S. government to deliver extradited criminals to Gabon — struck many of us as thin. Just how many people did the U.S. regularly extradite to Gabon? And even if they were criminals, didn’t they at least deserve some protection from the sun? At our table, the Milfords said they were going to ask for a complete refund (including taxes and fees) and were considering circulating a petition. Sally Milford says Cunard has gone seriously downhill. And of course Mom is disappointed, not only that she’s still in traction, but also that our experience of an Atlantic crossing has been so different from her own earlier trips, of which she has such fond memories. I’ve seen Dad get high-handed with plenty of hotel employees, but this time he really went off on the purser, who was the highest-ranking officer he could reach. He told him he knew a member of Cunard’s board of directors (not true) and that those responsible for exposing passengers to this ugly business would be held to full account.

But let’s face it — those were the salad days. We were still getting three meals and dessert. Our waiter, Lorenzo, was still putting a flower on Celia’s cake plate every evening and the whole waitstaff sang their nightly happy birthdays and anniversaries. At least until half the diners had contracted dengue fever! Mom got kicked out of the sick bay like a two-bit malingerer to make room for that afflicted horde. But what really stank, literally, is that the ship’s sewage system got backed up — something about a broken pump — which meant we couldn’t flush the toilets anymore. They said they would send crew members around to slop them out at least once a day, but like a lot of their representations, this proved false.

Those lifeboats leave every few hours now packed with butt-naked passengers slickened up like competition weight lifters, chained from neck to toe, and they come back empty. Celia thinks the larger ones are being sold for blubber, while the fitter ones are likely to enter the agrarian sector or be traded on into the interior for other goods. She said she read about it in

National Geographic.

I told her that was impossible, that whatever was taking place here must be part of an underground economy. But she said no, she’d definitely read about it, and that the most common fear was cannibalism but that this was a racist stereotype. At worst, people’s fat was harvested for fuel, not food. Which was probably why none of us had been taken yet because we were too thin.

The truth is, I think Mom’s really pissed. Which always makes me nervous. I want to find a way to calm her down but sometimes she just gets in a state and there’s nothing I can do to end it. It’s scary.

Of course, she’s not the only one. The Milfords are fit to be tied. If I sign that petition of theirs calling for the captain to resign one more time I’m going to be had up for fraud. It’s all they talk about at dinner. They strike me as the kind of overwrought liberals who are glad for the opportunity to finally be outraged at something actually happening to

them.

I guess some people just want to drag you down with their obsessions so they don’t feel so isolated with them. But is that really the adult thing to do?

We’ve certainly gotten to know couples in the neighboring cabins better than we might have otherwise, like Jim and Marsha Pottes from Harrisburg. Jim says our situation reminds him of the Battle of the Bulge, though Marsha says

everything

reminds him of the Battle of the Bulge, and what does that have to do with slavery anyway? I like her. She’s always got an ice bucket of Lipton tea going, and she wears these one-piece jumpsuits that she doesn’t even realize would probably get her into Studio 54 if she rode in on a gazelle. But mention the Milfords to Jim and Marsha and they just roll their eyes. Sure, lashing Sally to a bench on the sundeck yesterday and horsewhipping her until she bled from her flank and then leaving her there, exposed to the sun, was harsher than necessary. But Jim’s point was that Sally’s not about to be rowed to the coast and sold, and so maybe she ought to just butt out now and then. Rome wasn’t built in a day (he says that all the time, too).