But of course it was tough to have to find a new job. Mick hoped he still had a job with Cabaret after this cruise. His dream life in Amsterdam with Laurens was probably out of the question now. But even if his contract was terminated along with the others’, he would roll with it, start planning for what to do next; he would waste no time being angry, fomenting resentment. He would go out with his head up, professionally. That was how he functioned. As long as he had a job, he did his work as well as he could and banked his paychecks. But of course he was lucky, compared to his coworkers. Many of their countries had been through revolution, coup, oppression, dictatorship, poverty, war, upheaval. Mick had been born during the end of Goulash Communism, Hungary’s mild version of Soviet rule. Budapest had been dubbed “the happiest barrack.” By the time he was old enough to notice his surroundings and form memories, the ravages of the war had largely been repaired, and Hungary had made a calm and seamless transition to democratic voting. As a teenager, Mick had hung out with his friends at the Moscow Square subway station in his Tisza shoes, feeling hip and retro, all of them freely mocking the uncoolness of the Soviet era while fetishizing its remnants and relics as newly chic. School trips took children to Memento Park to see “Stalin’s Boots” while teachers tried to educate them about the former communist regime that had already given way to a free market economy. They’d been lucky. They all knew it. It was good to be Hungarian, to live in their beautiful peaceful city while just to the south, armies fought bitter inter-ethnic wars and everything collapsed and splintered. Now, of course, Hungary’s government was sliding into autocracy, but Mick wasn’t there to experience it. His homeland was a faraway place, existing only in memory.
“So where are you going to go after the cruise ends?” he asked Consuelo. Trevor had gone off to pour vodka for a knot of dour, pale Russians. “What’s your plan? I assume you’ve got a plan.”
“Of course I have a plan.”
“Another cruise line?”
She looked sidelong at him and spoke carefully. “I’m done with cruises.”
“Are you going back to Mexico?”
“I’m going to get famous.”
“Right,” he laughed. “That’s an excellent plan.”
“That’s my plan,” she said, unsmiling, forceful.
“How are you going to get famous?”
“You’ll see me on TV.”
Mick stared at her. Then he grinned, not taking the bait. Right, of course, this was how she joked. He stood up, yawning. “My curfew is now. Good night.”
“Noches,” said Consuelo. “Hasta mañana, boss.”
“Don’t go,” Trevor called along the bar. “I almost had you.”
Down in his quarters, Mick undressed and took a shower, then fell into his lower bunk, naked except for a pair of clean underwear. The room was cramped, like all crew quarters: two bunks, small bathroom, old carpet, sallow fluorescent lighting, no window. His roommate was a chef on the all-night galley crew, room service and breakfast prep. As management, Mick should have had his own, larger room, but no matter; he and his roommate almost never saw each other. There was nowhere to store anything, so they pulled clean clothes out of their duffel bags, which were crammed against the wall, and shoved dirty laundry into the corner. This was how Mick had lived for years. He was used to it. By the time he got into his hard narrow bed, he was tired enough to sleep standing up in a cold rainstorm. This low down in the ship, below the waterline, there was little movement, but the hum and vibrations of the engine were ever-present. For Mick, it was like a white noise machine, a sleep aid that masked late, drunken, loud voices in the hallway, the throb of music from the room next door, every sound but the ones in his own private dreams. Over the years, he had grown to like sleeping underwater, the wild ocean just a hull’s width away, just an inch or two, from his dreaming head.
Late that night, after the captain’s table dinner, Miriam and Sasha stood outside by the railing, feverishly kissing. He was so tall, her neck bent backward. It made her even dizzier. His bristly cheek chafed her smooth one. His teeth knocked against hers. His body felt young and urgent. Her hands went under his shirt, and she pressed her hot palms on his flanks while his hand snaked into her dress to cup her breast. She swooned. They hadn’t had sex yet, but they were like a couple of teenagers all of a sudden. Miriam felt that if she couldn’t lie naked in a bed next to Sasha soon, she might explode. She was fifteen again, a young girl in an old woman’s body.
They badly wanted to tell the others, because they very badly wanted to switch bedrooms. Miriam was hoping Isaac would agree to move over and bunk with Jakov in the stateroom with two single beds so she and Sasha could share the stateroom with the big bed. But that meant Isaac would have to leave his place by his ex-wife’s side so she could sleep with his colleague and friend instead. They were, technically, divorced. But somehow that didn’t matter. Miriam didn’t know how to tell Isaac. Sasha didn’t know how to tell Jakov, who had nursed a long crush on Miriam himself, in spite of the continued existence of his own very devoted wife, Devorah. Miriam couldn’t believe Isaac didn’t see the sparks shooting off her skin, didn’t notice the lusty fire in her eyes, didn’t feel the new passion raging in her.
Miriam had known Sasha for her entire adult life, but now she realized she’d hardly known him at all. He seemed deeply mysterious to her, this man she’d worked and traveled with for more than forty years. She knew he was handsome, he was kind, he could be bossy, he was a brilliant violinist, he was occasionally overcome with emotion, especially when he played Schubert, and he had loved his wife and still loved their three children. She knew he’d grown up in Brooklyn in an Orthodox household. She knew he’d rebelled against his father after graduating from the Mannes conservatory and had become a lefty political activist for a while before emigrating to Israel, and shortly afterward had met Sonia, who became his wife. Miriam had always liked her, but she was a tough bitch, with good reason. Her parents and older brothers had all been killed in the Holocaust. She had been hidden as a child by a generous, heroic family in France until the war was over. Then she’d been sent to her Polish aunt, who’d miraculously survived Auschwitz, and who had brought her to Israel as a young girl.
Sasha had always been devoted to this force of a woman, but something had always pulled him to Miriam, she knew, just as she had always been pulled to him. Their spouses were so different from them. And they were the same kind of person, both of them practical and responsible on the outside, but inside they were frustrated romantics.
They whispered all these things, and so many more, into each other’s ears and necks and mouths, embracing on the deck for hours. As they ran their hands over each other’s bodies, Miriam felt how much strength was still there, how much juice and vigor. They laughed with giddy joy. And then they wept with how much time had been wasted, and was gone forever.
“Finally,” said Sasha.
“At last,” Miriam echoed him.
“I’ve loved you all along.”
“I’ve loved you, too.”
Oh, they were glorious, those headlong passionate hours.
But how would they tell Isaac? And Jakov, too. If Jakov had been the one whose wife had died, he would have charged right at Miriam like a lusty bull. But his wife was still alive, that lively, opinionated woman who cooked like a dream, hence Jakov’s girth. So Jakov couldn’t blame Sasha or begrudge him or Miriam their happiness, but he wasn’t going to be thrilled to hear the news of their love affair.
And Isaac—he’d never had to share Miriam with another man. The two short-lived affairs she’d had, he’d never known about because she’d protected him from knowing. She’d been discreet for his sake, and also for their children’s, although when she’d recently confided in her daughter, Rachel had applauded. Rachie had always gravitated to Sasha, even as a squinty-eyed, impatient, precocious little girl. Sasha had always known how to talk to Rachel. He’d never condescended to her. He’d treated her as if she were his equal, his contemporary. Miriam realized with a whole new rush of happiness that her daughter would be over the moon about her and Sasha, her skeptical sour-patch of a daughter who was never over the moon about anything.