“What do you guys want?” Mick said.
Paolo gave a small bow; he was harmless, a diva. “Some meat,” he said. “And one of the braziers. We’re cooking on the main deck.”
“Why not on the pool deck with the rest of us?” Mick was aware of Kenji and the rest of his crew around him, watching this scene as they went on working. “It would be a lot easier that way.”
Jean-Luc made a clucking sound, shook his head. “I thought you had some balls, man. I thought you sympathized with us even if you didn’t join us. But I was wrong. You are Laurens’s puppy dog, just like Kenji.”
Paolo sniggered. Mick could feel the back of his neck getting hot. He didn’t look at Kenji, but he could feel his neutral, interested gaze from across the galley. Down the counter, Mick was aware of Christine listening too.
“Take what you need and get out of my kitchen,” he said.
“Thank you, Chef,” Paolo sang out. He turned to grab a platter of meat, but Jean-Luc held him back.
“One minute,” said Jean-Luc. “Hey, Mick. What do you think is going to happen to us when we get to land? Have you thought about what Cabaret will do to us, to make all this go away? I’ll tell you what. They are going to blame us for the fire, the sickness of Laurens, everything. They are going to prosecute us for sabotage, make us pay for the damages out of our own pockets. For something we didn’t do! They are even talking about throwing us in jail.”
“Bullshit,” said Mick. The suspicion he’d had the night before bloomed again anew. “How do I know you didn’t start the fire, anyway? Poison Laurens?”
“Of course we didn’t do that,” said Jean-Luc. “And you are being naive. The owner of the company is on board, you know. Everything I said? It comes straight from him, we heard this a little while ago. Cabaret will crush us. That’s what he said. And who do you think is going to be stuck with the bill, eh? That’s how it works. When there is trouble, when there is a disaster, we are the ones who pay.”
Mick looked around the galley. Kenji caught his eye and moved one shoulder, barely, as if to say, I’m not getting involved in this.
“So I want to ask you, all of you,” Jean-Luc was saying. “What are you going to do about it? Are you going to stand there and say nothing while your fellow workers are locked up like criminals? Do you really think they will let you keep your jobs for not standing with us? Of course not. You will all be fired, just like the rest of us. Heads will roll, man. This whole fucking ship. And if we don’t fight back now, those heads will be ours. All of ours.”
Mick could feel the anger coming off Jean-Luc in waves along with the rank smell of his sweat. The room was quiet and tense.
Christine’s voice broke the silence, clear and firm. “We have a boat full of people here waiting to get rescued. How is everyone going to eat if you all walk out? I’m on your side, I’m sure we all are, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to let people go hungry.”
“Who is this?” Jean-Luc said to Mick. “She’s not one of us.”
“I’m a passenger,” said Christine before Mick could answer. “And look, I know you guys are scared, but I think you’re overreacting. Even if what you say is true, even if Cabaret is going to come after you when you get back, there are journalists on board, like my friend Valerie, who I’m sure you’ve talked with, who can help you get the truth out. You obviously didn’t do anything. This is Cabaret’s fault for mistreating its workers and not having proper safety measures in place in case of an emergency. But honestly, all that is going to be much harder to sell if you start acting hostilely toward the passengers. That just makes it look like you have something to hide. It makes you look guilty as well as malicious.”
“She’s right,” Mick said, silently thanking her. “The passengers haven’t done anything to you, right? So if we want to keep working, that’s our fucking choice. And we all need to stick together now. We’re all in trouble.”
Jean-Luc’s neck puffed slightly. Then he shrugged. “Whatever. Allons-y, Paolo. Let’s get out of here.”
They ducked out of the galley, each carrying a platter stacked high with raw meat, Mick heard Jean-Luc mutter, “Poutain de merde.”
He looked around at his crew. “Everybody good?” They nodded. “Good,” he said. “All right. We need to start firing steaks in an hour. A couple of people can go up to get those grills going with Chef Kenji. The rest of you, let’s finish the meat prep.”
There was a reassuring chorus of “Yes, Chef” as they all resumed their tasks. After Kenji had gone off with his grill crew, Mick moved down the counter and stood next to Christine, who was scooping ground meat out of a large bowl and forming patties with it. “Thanks for saying that, earlier,” he said. “If you keep helping me out like that, I might have to promote you.”
“That would be great,” said Christine. “I want a raise, too. How do these burgers look?”
“A little big,” said Mick, reaching into the bowl. “About this size is better.”
They worked side by side forming burgers, trimming chops, making a dry rub for the ribs. Mick felt a strange sense of ease working with her, almost as if this were all natural, as if they were getting ready for a Sunday barbecue in the backyard instead of throwing together a meal of the most perishable stores for a few hundred scared people on a dead ship in the middle of the ocean.
At one point, more passengers trickled into the galley to volunteer for kitchen duty: Dora and John, an elderly black couple in matching baggy white T-shirts and tracksuit pants; and Freddie, a middle-aged white woman with a frizzy fuchsia-and-silver mane and a creased, bronzed face. “I cooked in my kids’ cafeteria,” she announced in a husky smoker’s voice. Dora was slightly stooped from the weight of her shelf-like chest, and big glasses hid almost half of her face. John looked even older than his wife; his grizzled face shone with sweat. But they all three seemed game and willing, despite the heat, so Mick gave them clean whites and put them to work.
When everything was ready for service, he sent a few of his crew ahead with tongs and grill tools to coordinate with Sidney and whatever was left of his service team, sent others to run trays of hamburger buns and condiments, ceviche and salads to the pool deck upstairs, and then climbed up with Christine, Kenji, Lester, and Camille, each of them carrying a platter.
The sun had set and the ship rested on a flat field of water whose edges disappeared into the darkening horizon all around it, just turning violet, pure, without a hint of a sunset. The pool shimmered in the light from the tiki torches, its surface still and undisturbed. A crowd of younger passengers had gathered by the bar, their faces glowing in the light from the tiki flames, looking weirdly carefree in their summer camp outfits and tousled hair and tans. They looked as if they were at an actual party. Mick recognized Trevor behind the bar, kittenish as always, but instead of a Cabaret uniform he wore a tight black short-sleeved shirt unbuttoned to his clavicle, and a white pukka necklace to show off his brown chest. His hair was gelled into little ringlets. He could have been on his way to a Caribbean beach nightclub. Standing with him behind the bar was that friend of Christine’s, the writer who’d interviewed Consuelo. She was splashing various liquors into plastic cups, stirring mixers into them, garnishing them haphazardly, and handing them out to one and all, taking slugs of her own drink all the while.
Mick and Christine set the meat down next to one of the smoking braziers while Lester and Camille and Kenji took the other. The third grill was missing; Jean-Luc and Paolo must have moved it down to the main deck for the walkouts to use.
“Your friend,” said Mick to Christine as they slapped their steaks onto the smoking grill, “seems to be our new bartender.”