He fled from the room, his head hot and seething with shame. Finished with his work for the night, he went straight down to the crew lounge, still in his whites, since he’d put on spanking clean ones for the presentation upstairs.
The lounge was crowded. He stormed to the bar and ordered a shot of whiskey and a beer.
“Looks like someone had a bad night,” the bartender said. His name was Trevor; he was a Haitian room steward, slight and very young, with hooded eyes and skin so dark it glistened. Sometimes he sang along with the music on the PA in a trembling falsetto.
Mick downed the shot, took a long slug of the beer. “A little better now,” he said. “I’ll take another shot.”
He sat alone in the lounge watching the mafias converge, consult, conspire. Tonight it was primarily the Jamaicans, the Greeks, and the South Africans, with two Indian guys over in one corner, keeping to themselves and talking in low voices in what was probably Hindi. The groups had no apparent common currency; they sat apart, in discrete cliques as delineated as schools of fish, eight or so in each group, men and women, mostly young, healthy, good-looking. Normally, in and between these ethnic and nationalistic huddles, there was flirting, there was drunken but mostly good-humored posturing, there was loud talking, blowing off steam. Tonight was weird, like the first night had been. The conversations felt private, without theater, and the atmosphere in the room was tense, thick, loaded.
“What’s up tonight?” he asked Trevor. “There’s something going on, I can feel it.”
“Oh yeah,” said Trevor. “I can’t keep the drinks going fast enough.”
Mick caught the flicker of Trevor’s eyes toward the South African group. “So what’s going on?”
Trevor gave Mick a measured look, assessing him, reading his loyalties. Trevor knew exactly what was up, Mick thought, but he wasn’t telling. Maybe because Mick was senior kitchen staff, so he was high enough up in the chain of command to be considered an outsider, or worse, management.
“Bad day all around, I guess,” Trevor said, pouring. He set the squat brimming glass in front of Mick. The amber surface trembled slightly with the vibrations of the ship. He stepped back with his palms flat on the bar top. While Mick downed the new shot, Trevor sang in his high, trembling voice, “You go to my head, and you linger like a haunting refrain.” His lips made a soft purse on each “you” with a tilt of his head, as if he were blowing kisses at Mick.
“Nice voice,” said Mick. “You should sing in the talent show tomorrow.”
“It’s for passengers,” said Trevor. “Let all the old ladies do their thing.”
“Crew can perform.”
“What are you performing?” Trevor asked. “A striptease?”
It was flattering to be flirted with like this. If only Trevor were a girl, Mick thought.
“I don’t want to scare anyone,” he said. “I’ll wait until the Halloween show for that.”
“There’s no Halloween show for us,” said Trevor quietly, his voice cutting under the hubbub. “You know Cabaret is canceling our contracts, right?”
“I heard. That’s terrible.”
“They didn’t cancel yours?”
“Not that I know of.”
“The rest of us, after this cruise, we’re done. Fired. Out of a job.”
“I’m sure the other cruise lines will take you on,” said Mick. “Experienced workers? Isn’t everyone always expanding?”
“Easy enough for you to say,” said Trevor, not flirting anymore.
“I’m sorry,” said Mick.
“Also easy for you to say.”
“Listen,” Mick said. “I’m only a boss on this cruise. I got bumped up because they were short a man. Normally I’m with all of you, working under the same conditions, same hours, same pay scale. Don’t treat me like one of them. I’m not one of them.”
Mick felt turbulence at his right elbow as someone jostled him, sliding onto the barstool next to his. He smelled that spicy scent she wore.
“Hey,” he said to Consuelo.
“Hey,” she said back.
Trevor’s fluid expression immediately went jovial again. “What’s your poison?” he said like a noir-movie bartender, with a pretty good New York accent.
“Give her whatever she wants,” said Mick. “She works with me, she works her ass off. I owe her.”
“Yes you do,” said Consuelo. Mick could feel heat, perhaps from a recent hot shower, coming off her skin; her face looked scrubbed. Her hair was slicked back, and she’d rolled up her sleeves to reveal, or maybe show off, the tattoos on her sinewy, slender forearms: on one, a small blue Earth with the words EN PELIGRO DE EXTINCIÓN arched over it in Gothic script; on the other, CHINGA TU TIO SAM across a miniature of the old American army-recruitment-poster figure in his top hat; and above it, a simple cartoon Popeye-style ship’s anchor with a tiny, intricate monarch butterfly perched on it, whatever that meant. Beata, Mick’s little sister, had sported similar symbolic protestations. Seeing these tattoos on Consuelo made him miss her.
Consuelo looked past him at the Greeks over in the corner and then flickered to the South Africans. “Trevor, what’s the word?”
“Sad,” said Trevor. “Mick refuses to do a striptease for the talent show.”
“I would pay him not to do one,” she said. She tapped a finger on the bar top while she thought. “Wine, please. Anything red, whatever.” She turned to Mick. “How’d it go upstairs? Did they like the food?”
“I fucked up,” he said. “Chef was pissed.”
She took a gulp of wine like a hungry animal at its trough. “What did you do?”
“Talked too much.”
“Chef is a fucker.” She drank greedily again.
“He’s all right. It was my fault.”
“No,” said Consuelo, “he’s a tyrant.”
“He has to be. It’s part of his job.”
“No, he’s worse than most. Control-freak asshole.”
“Are you drunk already? You can’t say that to me. I’m your boss, technically.”
“Fuck that,” she said. “Outside of the kitchen, no one is my boss. And after this cruise, I have no job.”
She was still sparking with heat, but now it struck him that the source was internal. It was anger. Not at Mick, but at something connected to him, associated with him, his temporary executive power. Flames crackled in her skull and shot their light out through her eyes. And it wasn’t only Consuelo he was feeling it from. Even Trevor’s flirting with him held a flash of insubordinate aggression under the fawning sweetness.
Mick reached along the bar and picked up someone’s abandoned cigarette pack. Trevor raised an eyebrow, but went on washing glasses without a word, so Mick took one of the cigarettes and lit up.
There was a dark thing growing here in the crew lounge, like smoke from a damp, slow-burning dirty fire, expanding into a choking fog. Mick didn’t like it. And he didn’t share it. The Isabella was, so far, a pretty good ship to work on, with an American captain and officers and a small passenger list and good conditions, except for the crew’s quarters, which were damp and moldy, but how much time did anyone actually spend in their tiny dark room except to sleep? So they were being let go, so what? They’d find jobs on other ships. Cabaret wasn’t the only company, not by a long shot. This entire crew could apply to Disney, Royal Caribbean, Holland, Princess, Carnival, Norwegian, any of the other fleets, and they might even find better pay and conditions.