Miriam looked over at Jakov. He was gazing at her with tender, stricken sorrow. But he had no say in the matter, and everyone knew it, Jakov most of all.
They all sat in their seats and ran through the Six-Day War Quartet, and for the first time, they played it without a single mistake.
Valerie was sitting up in bed, staring into her laptop screen, tapping away with one earbud in her ear. A pot of coffee sat on a tray on the nightstand.
“Did you read the history of the ship in the brochure?” Christine asked as she brushed her hair.
“No, why?”
“It’s an interesting story,” said Christine. “You might want to talk about it in your story about the cruise.”
“This ship is only interesting because it’s old.”
“She’s beautiful, too. And a lot of famous people have sailed on her.”
“You’re such an elitist,” said Valerie breezily, still typing.
“Why is that so bad?” said Christine. “So I like some things more than others because they’re better, so what?”
Valerie didn’t answer, so Christine went into the bathroom and closed the door. She looked into the mirror as she brushed her teeth and made a snarling face. Her mouth was misshapen by the brush, rabid-looking with the foaming toothpaste. She had been reveling in dressing for dinner every night in beautiful clothes, and drinking martinis and dancing and being flirted with by Brooklyn hipster dudes and cruise-ship captains. It had all reminded her that she was still youngish and even attractive. But this morning she had woken up with a sense of caution, hearing her mother’s voice telling her to know her place, not stick her neck out, act right so people wouldn’t talk. She vowed to reclaim her low-profile New England humility. She was much more comfortable that way.
“Maybe you should include a chapter about farmers in Maine,” she said to Valerie as she took her bathing suit off the balcony railing where it had been drying and stuffed it into her bag. “We’re struggling low-level workers, by any standards. It’s hard to raise crops and livestock in rocky, thin, acidic soil and Zone Four winters and short growing seasons. It’s kind of insane that we do it at all, much less succeed at it.”
Valerie went on typing as if Christine hadn’t spoken. Her silence wasn’t hostile, Christine thought, but more like the oblivious absorption of a professional to whom a layperson was speaking words that had nothing to do with her, and were therefore outside of the realm of her attention.
“And speaking of struggling,” Christine went on, opening the door, “it’s time for my busy day by the pool. You coming?”
“I’ll meet you up there in a bit,” Valerie said without looking up. “I just have to finish this. God, I wish there were fucking Internet in this fucking ocean. I’m kind of dying without it. Or cell service at least. I can’t even text anyone.”
“Who would you text if there was?”
“No one,” Valerie said. “You.”
They both laughed as Christine headed out the door.
chapter twelve
Mick arrived eighteen minutes early for his shift. Laurens hadn’t shown up yet, but that was normal. Still, Mick’s mouth was dry and his heart was beating too quickly. He wanted to dive into work immediately, immerse and submerge himself in physical labor, the harder, the better. It was the best way, really the only way, to block out mental stress. And he was nervous and on edge. It wasn’t just Laurens’s curt dismissal of him after his fuckup, dashing his hopes for a job in Amsterdam, nor was it whatever he’d been sensing in the crew lounge last night, the anger and tension of the layoffs. Mick was angry at himself. What the hell was he doing on this cruise, anyway? Why had he agreed like a lapdog to forgo his vacation, bribed by a promotion that meant nothing in the end? And no extra pay. And no Suzanne, no Paris.
Consuelo was already on the line, prepping braised pork chops. She flicked a look over at Mick, but didn’t say anything. The rest of the crew was there too, hard at work. No one seemed startled to see Mick arrive early. They were all involved with their various meat projects, searing and breaking down and braising. A glance at the meat station was like a snapshot of controlled carnage: flesh, bone, blood, gristle, skin. It was like a surgery room, all gleaming stainless steel and sharp, specialized instruments, and the chefs were swathed in white like doctors, working silently as if they were saving and healing live bodies rather than cutting up dead ones.
Mick hauled many pounds of thawed vacuum-sealed racks of lamb out of the cold storage room. At his station, he slid the first untrimmed rack from its plastic package. With his butcher’s knife, he removed the shoulder blade by paring it away. He made an incision at the rib-tip end where the shoulder blade had been removed, then peeled away the fat, slicing with the knife to free it gradually while using his other hand to pull it off in an unbroken swath. He set the pure white fat aside for sausages. Then he fine-trimmed the remaining fat and trimmed the tendon, scored the membrane down the center of each bone, and pulled fat away to expose the bones so they stuck out all in a row, naked and elegant. His attention had to be unbroken, his hand precise; if he slipped even a little, he could cut himself or wreck the expensive meat. This was New Zealand lamb, leaner and smaller than American and full of grassy, gamy flavor. His knife was freshly sharpened, its blade so keen it melted through the fat. He found himself humming under his breath.
He flipped the rack over and, with his boning knife, trimmed the flap of fat and membrane from the exposed two inches of bone. He used the butt-end of his knife to get the bones perfectly clean, as clean as ivory. He stacked the first beautifully frenched rib rack in a hotel pan and moved to the next and did the same thing all over again, and then again. Time melted by like the fat under his knife. Then he was aware of Consuelo at his side, restless. He glanced over at her.
“Hey,” he said. “Good morning.”
“Chef,” she said. “Can I talk to you a minute?”
“Let me finish these up.”
“You’re finished, it looks like.”
It was true; he was cleaning the bones of the last rack.
He set his knife down, going over the marinade recipe in his mind. “Go ahead.”
“This is a general question,” she said. She looked as bleary as Mick felt. Her face was puffy, and her eyes were bloodshot. “Why did you sign on with Cabaret?”
“Why not?” said Mick. “I wanted to get out of Budapest. I was going nowhere.”
“Okay. And where do you see yourself going after this? You asked me that last night. Now I’m asking you. Are you staying with Cabaret? They didn’t cancel your contract, right?”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly, squinting. “Maybe, maybe not.” He peeled off the gore-smeared latex gloves. “Now I’m ready to get back onto land again. Chef Laurens is opening a place in Amsterdam. But that’s out now, right. So I don’t know. No idea.”
Consuelo’s face was hard, blank, and her eyes stared into Mick’s. He couldn’t tell what she thought of this plan, or why it was so important for her to grill him about his future. And he didn’t have time to ask, because Laurens was there, silent and small and pale, inspecting everything and taking in the morning’s progress without seeming to look directly at anyone, but not missing a single detail. Mick was sure he’d notice if anyone had missed a spot shaving or was hung over, and would draw his own conclusions and keep his own counsel about them until it was appropriate for his own purposes to air them.
“What’s going in your marinade for the rack of lamb?” he asked Mick, standing at his elbow, checking the frenched racks. His tone was bland and everyday. He broadcast no punitive static. The air between them was clean.