Natalie was standing in the middle of the floor, her long braid undone and dangling carelessly down the front of her T-shirt. Her sneakers had no laces, and her wrinkled shorts advertised the fact that she’d pulled on the first thing she grabbed.
“It’s gone,” she was saying as the other girls, in various stages of dress, paused, clothes in hand. “The box in the engine room is empty.”
7
AWARDS NIGHT
“Did you check around?” Shannon said, reaching for a cigarette, then slowly slipping it back in the pack. “How far can a turtle get, after all?”
“I looked everywhere I could. There are a lot of places I can’t get to in there, and the noise in that room is deafening. What will I do? Kevin’s birthday’s tomorrow, and they’ll all be waiting for me on the dock.”
“Have you asked Frank?” I put in.
“He’s not there.” Natalie sank down on one of the bottom bunks, then jumped up again. “The showers! I didn’t check the shower room!” She bolted for the door.
We weren’t that optimistic and resumed dressing. I changed from one T-shirt to another. “Anything could have happened to that turtle if Frank was the only one who knew about it,” I said. “She said she put it in a bigger box with a lid. Someone could have piled stuff on top of it, then mistaken the whole heap for trash.”
The door opened and Dianne peered in. “Who else is on galley duty for breakfast?” she asked. “Carlo needs some help up there. A busy day coming up.”
“Coming!” said Emily, and followed Dianne into the hallway.
When Dianne had gone, Lauren said, “Natalie can’t be that attached to a terrapin.”
“She’s attached to her brother and wanted to give him something really special,” I said.
Natalie, of course, came back from the shower room empty-handed.
“Come shopping with me in Annapolis this afternoon,” Lauren said. “There are some great shops—”
“I’m going to stay right here and search every inch of this ship,” Natalie declared. “I’ve already told Kevin I’ve got a surprise for him, and he’s so excited.”
“Well, at least braid your hair,” said Shannon, but she ended up doing it for her.
I don’t know how we managed it, but Pamela, Gwen, Liz, and I all got to go visit the Naval Academy together that afternoon. Annapolis was our last port of call on the cruise, and the farewell dinner was that evening, before the whole thing started up all over again with a new set of passengers on Sunday. We had to be back at the ship by four, not five, but there we were, arms linked, walking four abreast around the grounds (“the Yard,” they call it) of the Naval Academy.
There’s something about all those men in white—well, women, too, but we weren’t paying much attention to them. We watched the short video in the Visitor Center, but we missed the noon ceremony we’d heard about, when the Brigade of Midshipmen form for uniform inspection.
We didn’t have reservations for a tour, either, so we did our own walking tour, watching the “middies” in racing canoes out on the water, instructors giving orders through a bullhorn from a neighboring canoe.
Another crew was just coming in off the Severn. We watched the way their bodies moved in unison as they rowed, each man falling into the rhythm of his own particular job as they reached the shore, an exercise practiced to perfection.
“I’ll take the second guy from the bow,” Liz told us, one hand shielding her eyes from the sun’s glare on the water.
“I’ll settle for number four or five,” I said. “Four in particular. Woo! Look at that chest!”
“Yeah. That’s the first thing guys notice on us,” said Gwen.
When we left the river at last, we ambled through the Yard, around huge buildings with uniformed cadets murmuring a polite “Good afternoon” as they passed.
“Did that guy wink at us?” Pamela said, turning as a copper-haired midshipman passed by.
“He might have. I wasn’t watching his face,” Gwen said.
We entered a vast courtyard with buildings on all four sides—more like a town square. A place where Caesar might be crowned or something. We felt oddly conspicuous standing there by ourselves, no other visitors around, and suddenly from one of the doorways, a fiftyish man with stripes on his sleeve came walking briskly toward us. There was no “Good afternoon” from him.
“This is a restricted area,” he said, and pointed us in the direction we’d come. “Please respect the signs.”
All four of us began apologizing at once. He made no reply but stood with his hands on his hips until we were at least ten feet in retreat. Then he strode back out of sight, arms swinging. Sure enough, we’d passed a small sign that told us the courtyard was off-limits, but we were so busy checking out the middies that we’d walked right past it.
We were still giggling about it when we met up with more of our crew, all heading back to the shuttle the ship had provided. Some of our guys were bronze already from the sun, just a week into our season, and looked every bit as good as the midshipman who had winked. When Gwen sat down on Flavian’s lap at the back of the bus, Mitch slid onto the seat beside me. Unlike the caps the midshipmen wore, Mitch was wearing an Orioles cap backward.
“Impressed?” he asked me, eyes twinkling. “All those sailors?”
“Aren’t you?” I said. “But I don’t know how they stand it—all those rules and regulations. I thought we had it bad on the Seascape.”
“Yeah, I’m just contrary enough that if they said right foot, I’d lead with my left,” said Mitch.
I laughed. “Me too.” And then, thinking of Patrick, I added, “They see a lot of the world, though.”
“But where do you stop?” Mitch seemed thoughtful. “I mean, it’s not like you’ve seen one country, you’ve seen ’em all. There’s always some other place you haven’t been.”
“But that’s no excuse not to see any!”
He folded his large hands over his stomach. “No, it’s not. How about you?”
“I guess I’d like to see some of the world, but … I don’t know.” I shrugged.
“Thing is, I like where I live now. The marsh, the bay, the rivers, the ocean. Just like being here, that’s all,” Mitch said.
“Nothing wrong with that. But … if you’ve never been anywhere else, how do you know you wouldn’t like somewhere else better?” Who was I trying to convince? I wondered.
“Well, that’s like what I’m saying—maybe I would. But then, how do I know that once I’d moved there, I’d want to try some place after that?”
I laughed out loud. “Mitch, you’re hopeless.”
“Suppose I am,” he said, and smiled. “But then so was my dad and my uncle and my grandpa and his dad before him. We’ve been crabbers and trappers ’bout as long as anyone knows. But you give me the choice of waking up to geese calling overhead or some officer blowing his whistle in my ear, I’ll take the geese any day.”
“How do you stand the wake-up call on the Seascape, then?” I asked him as we neared the dock and the ship came into view.
“When you know it’s temporary, you can take most anything,” Mitch said. “The Canada geese and the autumn sky are still going to be here come September.”
Natalie was on edge, not only because she now had no great surprise for her kid brother, but because wherever the terrapin turned up, somebody would have some explaining to do.
“I looked everywhere I could think of on this level, and all Frank can offer is that it’s probably crawled in some unreachable crevice and won’t be discovered till it’s decomposed. Oh, man … I’d better tell all you guys good-bye now, especially if it’s in an air vent.”
“Quit worrying, Nat,” Emily told her. “And check your nails. Dianne wants top performance tonight.”
Pamela was supposed to work with me busing tables for the big farewell dinner—with filet mignon and lobster, baked Alaska and cherries jubilee—but she was nowhere in sight when dinner began.
“Has anyone seen Pamela?” Quinton asked me as I carefully maneuvered a tray of salad plates back to the galley.
“She was getting changed a half hour ago,” I said.
Quinton took the tray from my shoulder and balanced it on one hand. “Would you go look for her, Alice? Tell her to get up here double time.”
I took the stairs down to crew quarters and checked the showers, the stalls. When I didn’t see her in our cabin, either, I had a hunch she’d be on the top deck, since everybody else was at dinner. And as I emerged from the Chesapeake deck, I saw her perched on the edge of a chair, screaming into her cell phone.
“There’s nothing I can do!” she was saying. “You’ve got to figure this out for yourself, Mom! Get a taxi if you have to!”
She saw me motioning to her, and I could read the exasperation in her eyes. “You have friends! Somebody can go with you! Mom, I’m supposed to be on duty this very minute. They’re waiting for me… . I know … I know … I’ll call later. Bye.”
She stood up and dropped the phone in the pocket of her apron, her cheeks red, the way they get when she’s really mad.
I took the cell phone from her pocket. “I’ll put it down in our cabin,” I said. “You can’t have her ringing you during dinner, and you couldn’t answer if she did. Quinton’s asking for you. You’d better get down there fast.”
“Thanks,” Pamela said, and ran on ahead of me. But as she descended the stairs, she suddenly stopped, threw back her head, and wailed, “Damn it! Damn it all! I’m sick of this, Alice! Sick, sick, sick!”
She scooted on into the galley when we reached the main deck, and I went on down to our cabin. As I put the cell phone on her bunk, it rang again. I put a pillow over it and went back upstairs.
* * *
The farewell dinner went off without a hitch. There were champagne toasts among the passengers, to one another and to future cruises, and the captain told them—as he’d tell all the ones to come—that they were the best passengers he’d ever had on board. They clapped like they believed him.
It was late when the crew finally got their dinner. Thankfully, the passengers didn’t linger after they’d eaten their cherries jubilee because all bags had to be sitting outside staterooms by six in the morning, all passengers out of their rooms by nine. Most people packed up that night.
We did get a good meal, though, in preparation for all the work we’d do on Sunday. Quinton stopped by briefly to thank us for a successful week and to remind the housekeeping crew that we had only a few hours between the departing and the incoming guests tomorrow to get the staterooms in order.
After he left, Josh got up ceremoniously and announced that in celebration of a successful first cruise, the deckhands wanted to present some awards.
“Hear, hear!” somebody said.
“This is tough work,” Josh continued, putting on a sober face. “Blood, sweat, toil, and tears. Neither cold nor rain nor dark of night shall—”
“Cut the bull and get on with it,” Flavian shouted, and the other deckhands clapped.
“O-kay!” Josh continued. “To the deckhand who snores the loudest, Barry Morris!”
Huge guffaws from the guys. Josh reached into an old shopping bag and lifted out a harmonica. “We’re going to tape it to your mouth, Barry, so at least you’ll make sweet music when you snore,” he said. More clapping and cheering.
Josh turned back again as the coffeepot went around the tables a second time.
“To the deckhand with the largest bladder.” Louder laughter than the first time. “A man who has been known to stay at his post seventeen hours without once unzipping his pants.” Josh reached into the bag once more and produced a latex glove that we housekeepers use when cleaning the bathrooms. This one was filled with water. “For you, Curtis Isacoff. In case you ever find yourself in a situation you can’t handle, use this as a receptacle and let fly.”
Curtis laughed and reached out to accept the artificial bladder, mindful of the leak that had started around the twist tie.
“And our last award,” Josh said. “To the deckhand who eats the most and never met a food he didn’t like, Mitch Stefans.”
Mitch grinned, then looked nonplussed as the door to the galley opened and Carlo came out holding a chafing dish. When he reached Mitch, he leaned down to present it, lifting the silver lid with a flourish, and there lay Natalie’s terrapin on its back, legs flailing wildly.
Natalie shrieked and leaped to her feet, not knowing whether to be grateful or furious. “You guys!” she sputtered, lifting it gently from Mitch’s hands and turning it upright. “I looked everywhere!”
She was cradling it in her lap when Dianne stepped into the room to see what all the laughter was about. When she heard that Josh was giving out deckhand awards, she laughed and said, “Keep it short, guys, because the more bags you can bring down tonight, the less you’ll have to do tomorrow.”
We had managed to survive the first week of ten, and no one got fired. Yet.
8
STORM
We felt like seasoned employees when we started the second cruise.
All the staterooms were cleaned before the next group got on, and when we’d finished, then showered and put on fresh shirts, we presented the same enthusiastic smiles to the world as we had a week ago, welcoming the newcomers aboard.
Josh and Curtis carted luggage down from the Renaissance Hotel to the ship, and Flavian, Mitch, and Barry ran up and down the three flights of stairs carrying bags as though the ship would sail any minute. This time I was assigned to sit with Stephanie at the activities desk and be her girl Friday, escorting passengers around the ship as she directed.
I started counting the number of times we were asked, “When do we sign up for excursions?”
“I’ll be giving a short talk after dinner and passing around sign-up sheets then,” Stephanie had answered cheerfully.
“Does this ever get old?” I asked her after the seventh consecutive question.
“Not at all,” she said. “Every face is a surprise package—somebody else to know.”
It was sort of awkward having a conversation with her, knowing what I did, what I’d heard about her, anyway: three broken marriages to her credit—the first one her own; the second that of a deckhand, a friend of Curtis’s, whose wife and kids left him after his affair; and the third, that of the passenger on the Dutch line, which fired her as assistant cruise director when the news got out.
I could see why men were attracted to her, though. Along with her shapely legs and high cheekbones, she had expressive eyes that fastened themselves on every person who stopped by. But her skin seemed older than the rest of her—heavily made-up, with many small lines, like a ceramic plate with finely cracked glaze. Curtis was especially teed off with her because of his friend, as though the deckhand weren’t responsible too. But I think for the rest of us, Stephanie was like our job insurance. If they hired someone with her reputation, then our jobs were probably safe.
“I’ve heard that the big cruise ships are like floating cities,” I said, trying to make conversation with her, then desperately wishing I’d kept my mouth shut. I wondered if she thought I was referring to the one that fired her, if she suspected we’d been talking about her.
She knew. When my eyes met her steely look, I tried to change the subject: “Did you always want to be a cruise director?” I chirped. Arrrggghhhh!
She gave me a patronizing smile. “I always wanted to work with people,” she said, and turned to the woman approaching our desk. “Yes, may we help you? Oh, what a gorgeous necklace!”
“I’m looking for your gift shop,” the necklace woman said. “I do my Christmas shopping all year long, and I’d like first pick of whatever you have.”
“Actually,” Stephanie said, as though divulging a secret and leaving me out, “it’s in the alcove behind this desk, but we’re only open at certain hours. The thing to remember is that we put out something new every day, so you’ll want to check it of
ten.” Stephanie was good.
The woman scrunched up her face to mimic a disappointed child. “Can’t I just peek?”
Stephanie playfully returned the scrunch. “No,” she whispered, “but if you tell me your stateroom number, I’ll slip a preview list of items under your door.”
The necklace woman went off pleased with the deal. Stephanie assembled some price lists and a photo or two, and sent me up to the Chesapeake deck to deliver them. “Then see if you can help out in the lounge,” she said, and I knew I had been dismissed for the afternoon.
* * *
I was scheduled for one more week of housekeeping in the morning and busing tables at night before I’d be assigned to breakfast and lunch waitressing in the dining room. But by Sunday evening, I wondered if I’d even make it through the dinner hour, and I groaned as I climbed into my bunk afterward and sprawled out on the mattress.
“Even my blisters have blisters,” Yolanda complained. “Why was this Sunday even harder than the first one?”
“Because then we were high on adrenaline,” Lauren told her.
“Yeah, but you and Emily and Rachel have worked on cruise ships before,” Natalie said.
“New cruise, new boss, whole new experience,” Emily said.
It was a whole new experience, all right, because this time the ship didn’t sail till later that evening. Something to do with a misunderstanding about a food delivery, or a change in the forecast, or a storm in the Midwest that had delayed the flights of six of our passengers … maybe all of these.
In any case, when we got up the next morning, whitecaps were forming on the water. Captain Haggerty announced that we’d arrive in Norfolk later than scheduled, and we might be in for a little rough weather on the way. But, he added cheerfully, it was all part of the adventure, and he was looking forward to seeing us at the Captain’s Dinner that night. He suggested we stay inside, but there were already passengers at the railings on the decks above, practically welcoming the storm to come, as we departed the dock.