“What, they can’t cook anything?” came a plaintive voice that belonged to an skinny elderly redhead in a flowered muumuu who could have been one of Miriam’s cousins.
“The stoves don’t work,” said Sasha. “They’re electric. We need the generators for them.” He turned to Miriam. “I’m going to go see if I can help fix them. I used to be a good mechanic, when I was young.”
“Yes,” Miriam said. “You should, of course you should.”
He gazed at her tenderly. “Will you be all right, my beloved? Can you eat something?”
Just like that, Miriam melted with love for him, all over again. “I’m perfectly all right,” she said.
He embraced her, and she clung to him for a moment, feeling all her fears and worries from the night before turning into fear for his safety. There might be another fire down there, some sort of catastrophe.
“Be careful,” she said, anxiously.
When he’d gone, she joined the crowd clustered by the food and collected a container of yogurt from the open refrigerator, a banana from the mound of fruit on the serving table, and a plastic spoon, and looked around for somewhere to sit. The cavernous table-filled space made her feel as if she were in school again, casing the cafeteria for allies. Then she spotted Rivka Weiss slumped all alone at a table by the window, her small head wrapped in a lime-green turban. Her face was averted, looking toward the ocean.
What was she doing here, Miriam wondered. Rivka never came to the breakfast buffet room. She and Larry had the palatial owner’s suite near the top of the ship, where she probably had her breakfast brought to her on a private balcony off her bedroom. Why had she come slumming it down here?
“Rivka,” said Miriam, walking up to her. “Good morning, how are you? Can I sit with you?”
Rivka looked up with a snap of her head. “I don’t mind,” she said automatically, before she’d even registered who it was. “Oh, Miriam,” she said, and turned back to look out at the bright water and hot sky.
Miriam was startled by her ravaged face, tormented and creased, probably by a pillowcase, without its usual artful makeup. Her arched, plucked eyebrows and downturned pale mouth, the turban swathing her coconut of a skull, made her look like an invalid in the immediate aftermath of major surgery.
“I’m so sorry about this mess,” said Miriam as she settled herself in the chair opposite her. “Have you heard anything more about what’s happening?”
“Larry is leaving the ship.” Rivka glanced at her again, her mouth working, saliva gathering at the corners, her eyes wide with pinpoint pupils. She had taken something, a sedative maybe. “He’s trying to get a military helicopter to come and get him. They only have enough fuel to take two or at the most three people at this range. I’m not going with him. I’m staying here. I can’t believe he would do this.”
“You should go,” said Miriam, feeling perversely charitable. “We’d all do the same if we were you, and no one will judge you.”
“He says it’s because he has an extremely important meeting with some Chinese investors,” Rivka said. “But that’s a big fat lie. He could reschedule it. He just wants to get out of here, that’s all. There’s no way the engines can be fixed. They’ll announce it soon.”
“Oh. I hope that’s not true,” said Miriam.
Rivka didn’t seem to hear her. “They came to get him last night to tell him the ship was on fire. And the first thing he did was to call for a helicopter.” She stabbed a bony finger at the table. “This is his ship! He’s responsible for it! For all of you!”
“But what can he do for us, really?”
“Stay here and suffer with the rest of us!”
Miriam was tempted to put her hand on Rivka’s to soothe her, but she was starting to feel angry at Larry herself.
“There’s a meeting with the captain and officers later this morning,” Rivka said. “Would you do me a favor, Miriam? Would you come with me? If I have to face Larry alone right now, I might kill him. Apparently the meeting is in a place called the ‘war room,’ which strikes me as appropriate.”
“I’d be happy to go with you,” said Miriam.
She couldn’t imagine what had changed overnight, why Rivka was treating her all of a sudden as a necessary ally, a confidante, even. For the first time ever, she almost liked Rivka for her staunch horror at her husband’s entitled defection from his own crippled ship. She remembered with disgust how Larry had herded her and Sasha out of the bridge last night, his hand like a sharp claw on her shoulder, the way he’d yelled at the bridge crew when it clearly wasn’t their fault. It made her sad, more than anything else, to see him behave that way, a man she’d liked and trusted for so many years. And it also made her feel queasy, that this was the person who had sustained the Sabra Quartet, provided the bulk of their livelihood and supported their performance career. She hated having to be beholden to such a jerk, having her outrage tempered by ancient loyalty and gratitude. Larry probably saw the Sabra as a tax deduction, a worthy cause to offset all the terrible things he did to have all that money. Well, the quartet was getting too old to play anymore. After their retirement, they could have nothing to do with Larry Weiss, ever again. Small comfort, but she’d take it.
chapter sixteen
The galley air was thick and sour, even though all of the ship’s doors and windows had been opened to let air circulate through the lower decks. Christine could feel occasional hot burps from outside permeate the inner crevices of the ship. It was no hotter today than yesterday or the day before. It was the lack of air-conditioning that felt strange, one more dubious luxury she had acclimated to in a few short days. In Maine, almost no one had it or needed it. Now, she felt its absence acutely as she stood at the prep counter, making cheese sandwiches. The cheese was sweating in the heat, half melted. The tomatoes and cucumbers were limp. It was a big comedown from the usual midday feast.
Working alongside her was a young married couple, Camille and Lester, who’d grown up together in a small village in the Philippines. Over the course of slapping hundreds of slices of cheese between hundreds of slices of bread, Christine learned that this was their first cruise working together in all their years with Cabaret, four for her, five for him. “So at least we’re together,” said Camille. She was a short, dark, skinny girl with a round face, glasses, and heavy straight black bangs. She looked like a teenager to Christine, but she must have been at least in her mid-twenties.
Lester had small, darting eyes, a thick scar running down one cheek, and an angular, anvil-shaped head. His piratical looks were, Christine had realized within two minutes of talking to him, completely at odds with his personality.
“It would be terrible to be separated right now,” he was saying in a gentle, thoughtful voice. He was almost in tears, imagining this hypothetical separation from his wife. “Especially if she was the one stuck here.”
Camille put a latex-gloved hand on his shoulder. Lester covered her hand with his own latex-gloved one.
Christine looked up as Mick appeared by her side, handing out drinks. “You have to keep drinking,” he said, passing her a bottle of iced tea, still somewhat cold. “It’s hot down here, especially if you’re not used to it.”