Then, right before me, the water began to swirl and dip, and suddenly it was far below us, as if we were perched high up in a cliff of water.
And then we began falling, and as everything in my body seemingly stopped—my heartbeat, my breathing, everything but my now electric sense of fear—I knew this had been a stupid, stupid mistake. This is bad, my instincts flashed at me, as if I could do anything about it, as if I could do anything but wait for one more fraction of a second before that gray, pearly, freezing water hit me. And in one enormous gulp it had me, it had us, it had the whole raft. As we plunged in headfirst—“we” meaning me, Jamie, and Denny—it smacked us with a wave of breath-sucking cold water that drenched us as if we weren’t wearing any gear at all. When we emerged from the wave with a collective gasp, I was amazed that I was not in the water but still in the raft, clinging to the board as the current bounced us along and we headed toward another deep-water canyon ready to suck us in. Then I realized my new super-cute cat-eye glasses were not only wet but barely clinging to my head, and without thinking, I reached up with my inside hand and ripped them off, afraid of losing them in the next drop because there was no way insurance was going to cover something I had lost in the wilds of Alaska. But once I had them in my hand, I had nowhere to put them—I had no pockets in the slicker, and there was no time to undo the rubber jacket to get to my own sweater underneath. We were getting closer to the next set of rapids, and as the rushing of the water grew louder, I put my glasses in my mouth just as the raft turned diagonal and shot us down into another valley of turbulent water, and I hung on to the board as best I could, carrying my eyewear like a little dog would carry a stick.
I grunted as another wave swallowed us, and I grunted as the river tossed us all over, and I grunted some more as we fell into another dip. I couldn’t do anything but squall like a terrified hominid as everyone else who possessed the gift of language beyond primal sounds screamed as the waves of the river hit us again and again. My mind raced. This wasn’t the way this day was supposed to happen. We were supposed to float down the river, not tumble. I wanted to serenely glide past the scenery, not cling to a piece of plywood, grunting like a silverback with my glasses clenched between my teeth. As I was catching my breath but still too afraid to let go of the wood, we were finally pushed into a wider part of the river, which, though still swirling, was much calmer. The guide paddled us over toward a landing, where the two rafts I had watched disappear were already docked and were emptying of tourists.
My hands were frozen and still gripping the board when we docked, and I was finally able to look over at Jamie. She was drenched, with droplets of water clinging to her face. Denny, of course, was the first one out of the raft, and he leaped up and clambered over Jamie like a bow-legged squirrel, not even bothering to look back for his wife, whom I’m sure was probably too busy checking the dryness of whatever food supply she had tucked in her eighteen-hour bra anyway.
Jamie offered me her dripping wet hand and helped me out of the raft, and I followed her into the boathouse, where we removed our fisherman outfits and rubber boots, so traumatized we couldn’t even say a word to each other. Under her yellow slicker and life jacket, Jamie looked like she had just stepped out of a pool entirely clothed. I looked like someone had dumped buckets of water over my head. Someone handed each of us a napkin with a loose assembly of a Hickory Farms summer sausage chunk, a slice of cheddar cheese, and a Ritz cracker. Someone else gave us paper cups with warm apple cider in them, which we gulped down.
That was enough warmth to enable my mouth to begin to form words again and release the frozen clench my jaw had been locked in to keep my glasses from flying out of my mouth when I was hit with the g-force of a river tsunami.
“That wasn’t a serene float, that wasn’t even Splash Mountain,” I was finally able to say. “I feel like I just got waterboarded. I would have confessed to dating Carrot Top after one more wave!”
The sun was setting. We were freezing as we walked over to several large display boards with photos of people in rafts plastered all over them.
“Oh my god,” Jamie finally said as she raised a soaked, puckery finger up to one of them in which a woman in the first row looked bravely ahead, her teeth clenched, her expression steadfast; the next person had his gray, middle-aged head barely peeking out of his raincoat like a turtle; and the next one, hair plastered to her head in a wet helmet, eyes wide and googly, fleshy face bisected horizontally by what looked like a twig, was about to encounter one of the many waves that was rising up to smack her in the face like a mother’s impatient hand. Two additional outstanding features in this photo were the delight of the river guide, who was looking directly into the camera and grinning, and the possibility that a beehived someone in the last row appeared to be enjoying a bite of some sort of pastry.
“Oh, I get it,” I sighed, looking up at a sign stating that each photo of us teetering on the brink of a watery death was ten bucks. “I need undeniable proof that we did this, otherwise people are going to say we got drunk and made the whole thing up. I’m going to get one, are you?”
Jamie nodded. “I’ll put it in a frame next to my picture with Dolphin Man,” she said as she took the final bite of her meager sausage slice. “But this is the last damn time I pick an activity based on the snacks.”
To be honest, we were still feeling cheated about the lack of post-river-rafting/near-death selection of eatables, so as we were perusing the menu selection in the Italian restaurant on the ship that night, we decided it was only fair that we compensated ourselves for the ordeal. “I’m ordering everything I want,” I announced to my friend. “I’m getting the chicken, the gnocchi, the salad, the cheese plate, the soup and I am asking for two desserts. I am eating like a buffet person tonight! Don’t try to stop me. You cannot. I have the appetite of a beast and the manners of a windowless passenger. I am insatiable.”
“Why stop there?” Jamie said eagerly. “Let’s get a pizza, too. And I’m going in for the antipasto cart. I want it all. We are owed.”
As we ordered, even our waiter seemed astounded at our degree of gluttony as we rattled off each selection and continued to elevate our debauchery with each additional demand.
“And bring us a bottle of wine!” Jamie said delightfully as she concluded.
But after the third course, we began to slow down, and when our second entrée arrived, we were nearing exhaustion.
“I never thought I’d say this,” I said in wonderment to my best friend, “but I’m tired of chewing! My teeth are going to be so sore tomorrow. It’s like they tried to jog.”
“I know!” Jamie agreed. “How smart was it to order flan and mousse for dessert! All we have to do is swallow. Oh no! Don’t look now, but here comes payback. I forgot all about the fifteen-cheese pizza with the meat-stuffed crust!”
We tried to act excited as the waiter brought it to our table and put a slice on each of our plates.
“That looks so good,” I said, bravely trying to smile. “Look at all of that cheese. It’s like a cheese blanket. There’s enough cheese on that pizza to strangle someone. If you stretched all of that cheese out, I bet it would measure a length as long as my intestines.”
“Mangia,” the waiter replied disgustedly and with a bit of a sneer before he turned and walked away.
We both stared at the slices before us as if they were roadkill and we were at the Clampetts’ for dinner.
“Get this away from me,” I finally said as I pulled my napkin off my lap and placed it over the pizza. “I can’t stand to look at it. I wish we could give it to another table or abandon it at the buffet, where another family could take it as their own.”
Suddenly, Jamie’s eyes lit up.
“I have an idea,” she whispered as she leaned in closer to me.
Fifteen minutes later, we were walking back to our cabin, the square box in Jamie’s hands holding a three-pound meaty crust pizza within it.
“You are a genius,” I said
to Jamie as we both beamed, because there, at the end of the hall, were James and Ardhi, busy making their nighttime rounds.
“We’ve brought you something,” Jamie said as we got closer to them, then handed them the box.
“Pizza?” James asked excitedly. “You brought us pizza?”
Jamie and I nodded.
“Thank you!” Ardhi added. “But we can’t take it here, we’ll get in trouble if anyone sees. Put it in your cabin and we’ll eat it when we turn down your beds.”
Remembering the image of sad James and Ardhi faces being left behind at the next port of call, I wasn’t about to argue about their rights to hunger and sustenance, or the fact that when that layer of cheese began to solidify, it was going to take a blowtorch to get it pliable again. It frankly wasn’t my problem. We had tried to do a nice thing, and I knew we should simply leave it at that.
So we went to our cabin and attempted to digest for a while until the boys showed up with big, wide smiles of anticipation. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that the pizza had hardened like an old lava flow, but regardless, it was most likely better than anything they were going to get out of a vending machine down on their deck.
So Jamie and I left them to their pizza and wandered about on deck for a while until we passed the Sea-Saw Lounge.
“Maybe we should get a drink,” I suggested, and Jamie was game, so we went in.
Suddenly, Jamie gasped when she saw an easel with a sign proclaiming that evening’s entertainment.
“Can you believe it?” she cried. “Can you believe our luck?”
I shook my head and smiled. “A talent show!” I said, almost clapping my hands.
“Not just any talent show,” Jamie added. “It’s the passenger talent show! Oh, goody, goody, goody!”
We grabbed a table right near the stage and had been sitting there for approximately three seconds when a waiter asked for our order. It had been a rough day, we agreed, so maybe a twelve-dollar cocktail was in order, especially since the glasses were neon pink plastic and held about a liter. The waiter had taken only two steps away from our table when another waiter popped up and asked for our order, then another, and another. There was more staff in that bar than I had seen anywhere else on the ship, and their aggression rivaled that of the Dolphin Man and his camera pimp. I almost felt dirty; it was as if we had somehow entered a red-light district in Thailand and they were peddling virgins, attacking from every direction and trying to coerce every potential john with a cruise ID card to pick their virgin. And it didn’t stop once our drinks came; in fact, one waitress told us to order several drinks at once to save on the time it would take her to walk back and forth to the bar. But at twelve dollars a piña colada, I wasn’t about to waste my money. I didn’t want to seem windowless, but I had approximately twenty thousand calories and four courses in my belly that my digestive system had to process and file before it could even begin attending to the alcohol, and to be honest, I’ve never let go of the college drunk in me. If I’m going to spend thirty-six bucks on booze, it had better be shooting out my nose by the night’s end, and I’d better have some good bruises to show for it the next day, but at my age, when that happens you don’t have a good story to tell the next day, you just end up sitting in a circle and spilling your guts to a collection of alcoholics (including at least one C-list celebrity) in a rehab center somewhere in Florida, so that’s the end of that.
The talent show, however, was another matter. It was full steam ahead. Frankly, I think the world would be shocked to know just how many middle-aged, balding men would haul an electric guitar and an amp onto a cruise ship and stow it in a cabin the size of a McDonald’s bathroom stall, because on our boat alone, there were four of them. This means that the number of Eddie Van Halens running around come Halloween are at epidemic proportions, and that sadly, an infinite amount of unrealized Angus Young fantasies are just waiting to spread their wings, shake out their ponytails, and fly aboard a Carnival cruise ship on talent night. Ain’t we got fun.
Not that any of them had a chance of winning, not once she showed up, because as preposterous as it was to bring an ax and loudspeaker on vacation with you, it was even more insane to pack a pair of Rollerblades, a mini boombox, a flowing costume, and the recorded score for your “routine” and actually plan on using them.
I mean, honestly, I don’t know where the Roller Queen imagined she was going to hone her craft, being that the walkways on the decks were more often than not merely several feet wide and all it would have taken would have been an errant crouton or a smear of butter to send those wheels flying overboard, past the balconies and Ardhi’s and James’s deck to the frothy surf below, only to become a small, forgettable segment on 48 Hours Mystery about the looming dangers of cruising, inline skating, and wayward salad-bar fixings.
And that was too bad, too, because a little practice would have done her a world of good. The second the new-age harp and electric-piano music began, she was off to a strong start as she launched herself across the small stage in her chiffon and spandex ethereal finery, floating in an arabesque just like Michelle Kwan, except you would have to add three decades, 30 to 40 percent body fat, a divorce or two, a need for an extra-strength hair conditioner and a not-so-closeted gay boyfriend whom I suspect doubled as her costume designer and who snapped pictures from his seat on the other side of the stage. She completed the glide, and it was looking hopeful as she skated across the floor, waving her arms in the spirit of liturgical dance, all aflutter, and as the intensity of the routine music grew, it was obvious that she was going to make her first big move and astound us all. I couldn’t wait. Then, in a maneuver worthy of a superhero, she threw both arms and one leg up as she caught air, her transparent fairy sleeves whipping around, and she spun, spun, spun in an axel jump and had almost rotated halfway until her orbit was grounded by gravity and the 40 percent body fat and she hit the hardwood floor of the stage with an echoing, resounding thud. She seemed stunned for a moment, and from several feet away her boyfriend/costume designer furrowed his brow and mouthed, “Get up! Get up!,” his fists gripped tight, pounding against the air. She fumbled for a second, planted her hands on the floor, and raised her hind end, which was wrapped in a bounty of shiny black reflective spandex, made even more luminous by the rays of the spotlight that was directed at it and reflected off of it. It glowed like the moon—maybe even the sun—as she tried to get back up on her feet, but her tools of talent became her biggest obstacle. With every attempt, her feet shot out from beneath her like billiard balls, again and again, her ass raised high in the air, her shirt flipped over it onto her back, the moon glowing, glorious, and bouncing along the horizon with each attempt. Her boyfriend looked ready to burst into tears. But she didn’t. Determined, she finally rolled around on the floor and then grabbed a column close by, and on the third or fourth try, was able to hoist herself up after being floor-bound for a good four and a half sips of my drink.
I was mesmerized, my eyes glued to her, unable to avert them for a second. She skated around the stage area again, waving her arms, extending them, flapping them like wings, running her fingers over her face. When she started gaining speed I knew she was going to go in again for another spin, and when she raised her arms for the jump, even I clenched my fists and furrowed my brow, entirely uncertain as to what I was hoping for. Thud! She spun out on the hardwood again, and this time she looked angry, as if the floor had reached up and grabbed her in mid-flight and pulled her back down to earth. This time she rolled over adeptly, grabbed the seat of an empty chair, and popped back up, and then skated around in a circle like a lost pigeon until the music stopped.
It was the best talent routine I had ever seen—part Isadora Duncan, part Jerry Lewis telethon—and I guess I would have felt some sympathy for her if she hadn’t skated right back to the stage after the talent contest was over and she had bitterly lost to a red-haired lady who, it was obvious, owned a karaoke machine and a Mr. Microphone at home as she belte
d out an office-party-worthy version of “Cabaret.” The Roller Queen picked up precisely where she last fell down, skating around and around as she forced her poor, supportive boyfriend to take picture after picture of her in defining poses, going back and checking the image for herself after each and every shot, for a good twenty minutes afterward, with no shame whatsoever. It was almost like an encore, and Jamie and I were so thrilled with the delights we had witnessed that we could barely walk back to the cabin we were laughing so hard.
“Spandex was a bad decision for her,” I commented. “About as good an idea as mixing booze and tranquilizers.”
It was when I opened the door that I immediately saw it sitting on the bed, looking up at me with little blue paper dots for eyes.
“Holy Christ,” I said as I recoiled. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Oh, look,” Jamie said. “That’s so cute. Look! The boys made a walrus out of a towel for us!”
And yes, in a certain light, you could say that it might have been a walrus, as the towel was shaped in an arching upside-down U shape, with its “tusks” represented by a bold swath that protruded from the very center of the upside-down U. But in the available light, I didn’t see a walrus, per se. I saw a cookie, plain and simple. Not the kind of cookie that comes out of the oven, but the kind of cookie that falls out of your body and into the dirt in Africa that you try to pick up with an even dirtier stick during a stress-induced nightmare.
“That’s a cookie,” I informed Jamie.
“That is not a cookie,” she replied. “It’s a walrus.”
“It’s not a walrus, it’s a cooter,” I corrected her.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied. “You’re drunk.”
“Hardly,” I answered. “I had one drink.”
“You had four drinks,” she informed me. “You didn’t even notice as they took away one piña colada and gave you another. You just kept sipping.”