“Wait, no action the entire time?” Christine said, laughing. “Are you not even checking out the men?”
“What men? Everyone’s paired up and over sixty. Luckily for us. You’re married to a farmer. And I’m married to my book.”
When the waiter returned to inquire about the young ladies’ desires for dinner, Valerie ordered the steak tartare and the squab, no starch. Christine eyed the menu for a moment, enjoying the choices, then settled on shrimp cocktail and steak Diane. “I’ll take her starch, too,” she added.
Valerie snorted. “Farmer,” she said.
Christine settled back in her cushioned chair, feeling lucky and glamorous. “So what did you learn today at school?”
Valerie pushed her glasses up her nose and fiddled with her bangs. “I’m trying to figure out the hierarchy,” she said. “It’s going to be hard to penetrate the crew and staff. They’re so separate from us when they’re not working, and passengers are definitely not welcome in their world. And while they are working, they never seem to have time to talk. Also, Cabaret is a really powerful corporation, so they don’t want to say anything that might jeopardize their jobs. I don’t know. I think what I have to do is find out where they hang out on their time off, when we get to Hawaii, and get drunk with them, or pretend to get drunk. That’s the only way I’m ever going to learn anything real. But I have to stay sober. Seriously.”
A few hours later, Christine found herself on the dance floor in the Starlight Lounge, chaperoning a brazenly tipsy Valerie. While Christine had been drinking steadily and enthusiastically all day, she had eaten well and paced herself and so had managed to keep her wits about her. Valerie, on the other hand, was drunk in the manner of someone who had been determined not to drink and then caved and gave herself over to it with precipitous abandon.
“You’re too gainfully employed for me,” Christine overheard Valerie saying to the man she was fake-ballroom-dancing with. He was a news photographer by day and video artist by night named Jake who, it turned out, lived three blocks away from Valerie in Brooklyn. He worked for a celebrity news-and-gossip website called PopRocks.com that Christine had never heard of.
“Hey,” Valerie said into Christine’s ear as she and Jake went waltzing by, “should I go make out with Jake in a lifeboat?”
Christine was entrapped in the determined arms of Jake’s colleague, Theodore, a serious, slightly pudgy journalist who was “actually a poet.” Christine was only dancing with him because Valerie had accepted for both of them. But Theodore was mistakenly flattered and intrigued, and Christine kept having to maneuver his eager body a safe distance from her own while he crooned along with “Blueberry Hill” into her ear in a not-bad baritone.
“I don’t care,” said Christine, laughing, but they’d already danced out of earshot.
“How about you?” Theodore asked. “Do you want to make out?”
Her wedding ring was apparently invisible to him. “I’m married,” she said.
“So am I,” said Theodore, pressing himself against her.
“Oh please,” said Christine, strong-arming him away from her. “Stop it, seriously.”
When the song ended, Christine went over to Valerie and tapped her on the shoulder. “I’m cutting in,” she told Jake, linking her arm in Valerie’s. “We have to go.”
Valerie let herself be pulled without protest out of the Starlight Lounge and up to the pool bar at the top of the ship. “Oh my God, Chris,” she said in Christine’s ear. “Thank you.”
Behind the bar stood a tiny, pale, dark-haired woman. “I am Natalya,” she told them in a flat bored voice, placing napkins in front of them as they seated themselves on two stools in the center of the bar. “I am happy to serve you. What’s your pleasure tonight?”
“I’m already drunk,” said Valerie. “So I think I’d better take it easy.”
“Really?” said Christine.
“Fuck no,” said Valerie. “I’ll have a martini, very dry, stirred, straight up, olives. Let’s do this.”
Christine laughed. “Make that two.”
A moment later, with casual flips of her wrists, Natalya set two brimming martini glasses on the napkins in front of them. “Enjoy,” she said in her dead voice.
“Cheers,” Valerie said, knocking her glass against Christine’s, and licking the booze off her wrist. Christine chewed a big, hard, gin-soaked green olive and looked around at the hanging strings of light, the rustling palm fronds, the surface of the pool, shimmering and rocking. She felt the ship underneath her, light but solid, felt its buoyant forward momentum from the powerful engines firing many stories below. Because of Valerie, she had been thinking all night about the workers who kept the ship running for all the vacationers whose pleasure came at their expense. But she was unable to feel terribly guilty about it at the moment. The olive left a rich, oily, salty film on her tongue that made her instantly crave another one. She took a gulp of the icy martini. It went down her gullet as smooth and hard as liquid glass.
“Natalya,” said Valerie, a little too loudly.
“Yes,” said the bartender from the shadows. “Another round?”
“Not yet,” said Valerie. “I’m wondering if you have time to talk to me about your job. I’m a journalist. I’m writing a book about workers. I’m on this cruise to collect stories from the people who work on this ship. I’m not here for fun.”
“You look like you are here for fun,” said Natalya. Her tone was insolent. “I am sorry but I have no time for talking.” She had been standing idly, gazing out at nothing, but now she picked up a rag and began to swab the bar top.
“See?” Valerie murmured to Christine. “They don’t want to talk to me. Oh well. Who can blame them? I wouldn’t want to talk to me either.”
Christine gave her a little nudge of pretend agreement. They both laughed.
Mick was almost done shaping the sausage patties. Next to him in the cold room, Consuelo was slicing strips of bacon with a long, sharp knife and layering them in a shallow stainless steel pan. Their breath steamed in the air. They had been discussing the night’s weak spots, strengths.
“Nice job on the sliders,” he said now. “They couldn’t get enough of them.”
“Thanks, Chef.” He felt her swell with pride. Its warmth filled the space between them. Good. He had systematically beaten her down through the night. Now he had her; she was on board.
Mick was dying for a cigarette. He only smoked after his shift these days. Consuelo stacked the last neat, thick bacon slice and sealed the pan with plastic and slapped a strip of tape on it and took a Sharpie from her apron pocket and marked it with “Bacon,” her initials, and the date. She stripped off her latex gloves and trashed them while Mick finished the last little meat patty, sealed and marked the pan. His gloves came off; he flexed his fingers, ready to get out of the kitchen and head for the crew lounge to throw himself into a chair, light up, and crack a beer. His crew would work for a few more hours, and the night service crew was just arriving for their shift, but his work was done until 0600 tomorrow morning. He thought ahead, mentally making Hollandaise. He hated fucking brunch. The worst meal ever invented. Including fucking high tea. Forget it. It was a good idea not to think one second beyond that first long, slow, cold, bubbly gulp of beer prickling in his nose, that first inhalation of smoke piquing his lungs.
Consuelo followed him out of the cold room, expertly dodging the other cooks rushing around, the old kitchen dance. On his way out Mick said his good nights, checked everything again, but there was nothing else for him to say or do tonight; they’d had their post-closing meeting already, the ones who were done, and Paolo was in charge of the night crew, thank God. Mick knew him from other cruises; he was Argentinean, a fruit bat, a prima donna, but a hard worker and solid under his theatrics and tantrums.