Hail looked uneasy and asked, “Where do you want to eat?”
“It is a date, then,” Kara goaded him. “Let’s see. How about Asian tonight? During the last few days I think I’ve eaten everywhere except for the Asian restaurant.”
Hail was already feeling manipulated and they hadn’t even made it to the end of the hallway. Dealing with this woman was going to be tricky.
They reached the first staircase and Kara asked, “With all the money you put into this ship, I would have thought you would have installed elevators.”
“Oh, we have elevators, but climbing stairs is the only exercise I get these days,” Hail told her.
“Well, we need to get you into that fancy gym I’ve been using. How about later tonight we do a little workout together?”
She said the word workout almost sexually and Hail couldn’t help but connect the dots in his mind.
“We have some other business we need to take care of first. We’ll see how our time plays out,” Hail said, reaching the top of the stairs, pulling the door and holding it open for Kara.
Kara fluttered through the opening and said, “Thank you.”
They both took a break on conversing and continued to walk through the circular hallway that connected all the restaurants.
The door to the Asian restaurant had black block lettering painted on the white steel door that read ASIAN. The unostentatious outside of the door was the opposite of the inside of the door.
Once Kara had entered the restaurant, she actually turned around and looked at the other side of the door. No metal, no block lettering, no strange bulkhead shape; but what she did see was dark teak wood that hand been handcrafted. Dozens of animals had been carved into the surface of the expensive wood and then the entire door had been covered with a thick clear layer of varnish. The walls of the restaurant were paneled with dark wood. Modern looking box lanterns hanging from the ceiling led deeper into the room. The chairs at all the tables were dark, but the table tops themselves were made of a lighter colored wood. The brighter surface reflected light from the lanterns and made each seating arrangement pop. There were no table cloths on the maple wood tables, just pairs of chop sticks folded into white napkins. Other than that, the only items on each of the tables were a single yellow sunflower lying next to a thin Chinese vase.
Hail pulled out Kara’s chair and she sat down, setting her purse on the unused chair tucked under the table to her right.
Hail seated himself opposite Kara. He reached over and picked up the sunflower and placed it into the neck of the vase.
Hail watched Kara as she scrutinized the place. There were only two other tables that were occupied. One table had a young man and woman sitting at it that she hadn’t seen before. The other table had two young men she thought were pilots. The 3D windows in this establishment were showing a night scene. Four eighty-two-inch 3D windows displayed a crisp image of the street outside. Other than people with Asian features, the pedestrians looked just like any other group of people walking by a restaurant on a chilly evening. They wore modern clothing, mostly jackets and thick hoodies. Most of the people outside were younger and instead of cars, everyone seemed to be driving scooters. There were brightly lit signs, some neon, some colorful backlit plastic advertisements in all shapes and sizes, but all of the writing was in Chinese. Kara could read and understand most of them.
“Do you know where this video was taken?” Kara asked, pointing at the fake windows.
“Sorry, I really don’t,” Hail said, checking his phone for any updates.
Hail looked up and Kara who gave him a confused expression so Hail expanded on his response.
“This really wasn’t my gig putting all this together. My friend that you met, Gage Renner, he contracted all the design elements, as well as the construction of the restaurants out to vendors who built the rooms. Part of that design was the electronics, the screens that look like outside windows, as well as the video that would be shot and played on the screens.”
Kara didn’t say anything. She waited to see if Hail had more to tell her.
“I cut the check,” Hail said, “and that was my major contribution to the restaurant buildout.”
Hail flashed a smile and then let it go.
“Who is Gage to you?” Kara asked. “Where did you meet him?”
“Have you spent some time with Gage?” Hail asked.
“Yes. I ran into him at the gym and he was nice enough to show me around a little.”
“What did you see?” Hail asked.
“Gage showed me the school department of the ship, the classrooms and such. You have quite a large gaggle of teenagers in training. Don’t you?”
“Living every day is training you for something,” Hail replied noncommittally.
Kara said, “Then Gage showed me your flight simulator area.”
Her smile conveyed a sense that she had been shown an area that was off-limits.
“Did you have fun there?” Hail asked, returning a smile that conveyed that she would only be shown what they wanted her to see.
“I crashed a Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor straight into the ground twice and once into a mountain.”
They both laughed.
Hail said jokingly, “You will not be our pilot the next time we fly.”
“You are right about that,” Kara said with a laugh.
A waiter appeared at their table. To Kara, he looked as if he were just old enough to serve and drink alcohol. He had black hair and was tall and skinny and had a few zits on his face. The first thing the young man did was reach over and remove the flower from the vase. He set it on the table.
“Here are your menus,” the man said, handing a folded leather list to each of them. “Might I suggest a Banshu Ikkon Kaede no Shizuku sake for you tonight?”
Hail had a blank expression on his face.
Kara answered, “No, that’s a little dry. I would prefer Garyubia sake if you have it?”
“Yes, we do. I’ll be right back with that.” The waiter left and Hail looked admiringly at Kara.
“Very impressive,” he said.
Kara shrugged it off and said, “I’ve been in a lot of countries and spent more time in bars than I care to remember.”
Hail asked, “Is that part of your job?”
Kara looked more serious and asked, “Which part do you mean? Knowing everything there is to know about sake or sitting in bars a lot?”
“Both,” Hail asked.
“They both go along with one another,” Kara stated. “It’s like knowing everything there is to know about race cars because you spent a lot of time at the track.”
Hail nodded and there was a lull in the conversation.
Kara looked around a little more before saying, “So, we were talking about Gage,” she offered. “He seems like a nice guy. What is Gage to you and how did he get stuck on this boat.”
“Ship,” Hail corrected.
“How did Gage get stuck on this ship?” Kara complied.
“He was my roommate at MIT. We were on the same degree path and shared similar interests in nuclear power. After school, we kind of lost touch with one another. He was pursuing a failed marriage while I was doing the same.”
Hail stopped telling his story for a moment and asked Kara, “Have you been married?”
Then as an afterthought he added, “Or are you married?”
Kara smiled like she owned the world and said, “Are you kidding. Give all this just to one man?” She laughed at her own joke, but Hail sensed that Kara had some issues with intimacy. If so, then they were similar in that respect.
Kara continued, “No, marriage is not for me. At least not right now. I mean fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce.”
“Right here,” Hail said, raising his hand. “Done that and bought the tee-shirt.”