“We should go and help,” said Rodrigo.
“No!” He heard Consuelo’s voice clearly. She stood with her arm raised theatrically in the manner of a rebel statue, lit by candlelight. Her voice was clear and ringing. “No one leave! It works better for us if we stay together and don’t give in!”
“People will be scared,” said a young woman Mick recognized from salad prep. “It won’t hurt us to see if they need anything.”
“We aren’t their servants anymore,” said Consuelo. “We’re equals now. And if we stay here, we have more leverage, if we stay true to what we’re doing. It’s better for us. No one leave!”
Mick could see how much she loved this role, resistance leader, venting her righteous anger in service of a cause instead of having to keep it suppressed on the line. She was flying high. Not even the news of the fire and the power going out had daunted her.
He pushed his way through the crowd and stuck his face near hers, tapped her on the shoulder.
“Did you poison Laurens? Tell the truth.”
“Poison—what?”
“He’s throwing up. He went to the infirmary. What did you do?”
She looked shocked, genuinely. “I would never do that,” she said.
“Did you people start the fire?”
“No! This is the first we’ve heard of it. Why the hell would we do that?”
He locked eyes with her for a beat or two. “If there’s a fire,” she called as he turned into the crowd, “then we’re all fucked. All we did was walk out.”
Exhausted, Mick stepped out of the lounge and stood alone in the dim, smoky hallway. He had no one to confer with. Kenji had taken Laurens up to the infirmary. Jean-Luc was a competitive, pouty meathead and would be of no help to him. Paolo had joined the walkout, and there was apparently no night crew now, either.
He couldn’t face going back to the galley alone. He craved a short glass of straight whiskey with a ferocious bloodlust. With no real idea of where he was headed, he found the nearest stairs and climbed upward, out of the smoke. A cigarette, jaj istenem, he wanted a cigarette.
Christine and Valerie had made their way up to the solarium at the very top of the ship to join a crowd of people. The ship lay on the calm ocean. Smoke from the fire hung over the open decks like drifting clouds of noxious incense. Without the soothing effect of the constant, low-level vibrations of the engines, everyone was full of nervous jitters, as if all the engines had transferred their energy to the passengers themselves, and the sudden lack of propulsion had awakened everyone out of their dreamy languor. Christine heard sharp voices, felt bodies moving around her in restless dislocation and fear.
From the front of the solarium came a bridge crewmember’s voice, amplified through a megaphone. She sounded very young, but calm and confident. “Everyone, hello, I have good news! The fire is out, and no one was hurt. And we’re working on getting the power back up for you.”
There were some wan cheers as flashlights were trained up to illuminate her. Small arrows of rain slanted down through the beams of light.
“Well, folks, we had a small engine-room fire,” she said. “Our crew has put the fire completely out with no damage to the ship, and the engineers are working on repairing the generators.”
“When will we have power back?”
“As soon as we can.”
“Is there a midnight buffet?”
“Not tonight. I’m sorry.”
She put the megaphone down for a moment while another bridge crewmember said something into her ear. She listened closely, nodded, lifted the megaphone again, and resumed.
“So we’re going to work through the night and do our best to have the power back up by tomorrow morning. Meanwhile, we need you all to stay warm and safe, so the captain is asking that you all go back to your cabins right now. I know it’s a bit smoky below, and the air isn’t working, so you’ll need to open your windows enough to let fresh air in. Keep your doors open if you have inner rooms. There’s emergency lighting in the hallways. The crew will be here to assist if you need us. So try to get some sleep, and we hope to have everything back up and running in the morning.”
“Oh man, this is fucked up, Christine.” Valerie’s voice vibrated through their pressed-together skulls as Christine put an arm around her and they leaned into each other. “I’m so sorry I brought you on this disaster cruise.”
“It’s not your fault,” Christine said. “Anyway, aren’t you glad I’m here? What if you were alone?”
She could feel Valerie’s anxiety subside. She liked having her arm around her friend. It made her feel motherly. It was not a bad feeling at all, this power to soothe and ground someone with your physical presence alone. Valerie’s shoulders and ribs felt as insubstantial as wicker.
Christine realized that she was ravenous. It was funny how quickly she had become conditioned to look forward to the midnight buffet. Normally, at home, she and Ed ate dinner at about six-thirty and nothing else till breakfast the next morning. Yet it had taken only a few days of sumptuous late-night spreads to get used to this nightly indulgence.
Laughing inwardly at herself, she realized that she felt irrationally cheerful about this situation, on the whole. This was the way she usually reacted when things went “pear-shaped,” as her mother put it. Maybe it was because, when Christine was growing up, any small catastrophe had caused her parents to focus on her and her sister instead of being their usual distracted and worried selves, as if having the barn wall collapse or the tractor break down or the lambing ewe die made them remember that they loved their children.
“Hey,” said Valerie. “There’s that guy. That chef.”
Christine caught sight of him, emerging from the stairwell nearby. Mick, she remembered. That was his name. When he saw Valerie and Christine, his knotted expression eased and he seemed on the verge of greeting them. Then his face went blank and he turned away, as if he’d remembered that he didn’t know them, or didn’t care if he did, and went off into the darkness.
chapter fifteen
As soon as it was light enough to see, Christine got out of bed and stood in her pajamas by the open window, hugging her arms to her chest to warm herself. The ocean looked pellucid and calm. The cabin felt stiflingly small behind her.
“Oh God,” moaned Valerie from beneath her covers. “Did we dream all that?”
Christine turned to address the fetal knot cocooned in its nest of blankets, hair sprouting onto the pillow. “I wish we had.”
“What’s going on?”
“We’re still adrift, I think,” said Christine.
Valerie unpeeled the blankets from her head and squinted at Christine. “Well, this is a plot twist I didn’t expect. Power outage. My cruise-ship chapter just got a lot more interesting. This could even be a book of its own.”
“That might be the one good thing in all this.” Christine stretched, hearing her joints crack, feeling her muscles elongate like rubber bands. She yawned so hard her jaws creaked. “I have to get out of here. Want to come?”
“I’m not awake yet,” said Valerie, pulling the covers back over her head. “Bring coffee if you can find any,” she added, her voice muffled.
In the bathroom, Christine peed and flushed the toilet. Nothing happened. So the plumbing wasn’t working: that was bad. Instead of trying to take a shower, which she imagined would be futile now, she pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, brushed her hair. Out in the hallway, it was so quiet she could hear her own footsteps as she padded along on the patterned carpet with its dizzying interlocking mod diamonds and ovals. No vibrations underfoot meant that the engines were still out. So was the air-conditioning. The door at the end of the hallway was propped open, letting a fresh bright breeze pour through.