Florida Heatwave (28 page)

During the first of my sailings, before my familiarity with the ship had made travel less arduous, I had seen our supper servers use a rear entrance to the dining room. I assumed it led to part of the kitchen, but they never carried anything out or back in. A next-morning investigative walk suggested that they were ducking out to restrooms to sneak smokes—and that the doorway was a fine way for me to avoid the imbecilic line at the maitre d’s podium.

I nursed a rum and soda in a piano lounge that afforded two-bit versions of the Rat Pack’s best songs and a view of the late-seating supper line. When the caterpillar began to inch forward, I signed my tab and strolled to my special entrance. I chose a table for eight near the door and ordered a bottle from the wine steward before being joined by two couples from central Michigan who met through their bowling league. Three women from Atlanta took the other places, former college friends now raising children and, I would learn, suffering idiot husbands. Not sure what to make of the wine steward, they quibbled about what color wine they might like and compared by-the-glass prices on the menu.

I offered a glass of my Pinot Gris to the woman on my left, the Mona Lisa with searching eyes at the lifeboat drill. I wanted to believe, just then, that she had picked my table and that seat on purpose. She accepted the wine and introduced herself as Margaret, though her chums called her Marge. As dinner progressed, I refilled her glass several times, then ordered another bottle to the amazement of the bowlers. At some point Margaret and I determined that we were Diana Krall and John Prine fans, that sushi would have been better than our prime rib and overcooked veggies, and that I was unmarried and traveling alone.

We were watching the others finish their desserts when Margaret looked down and picked a piece of lint from her low-cut silk blouse. She said softly, “Every once in a while you look at my breasts.”

“It’s a habit I picked up in junior high. I apologize.”

“It’s nice for a soccer mom to get noticed,” she said. “Should you and I meet in the hot tub?”

“What time?”

She unobtrusively looked at her watch. “It closes at eleven. How about ten forty-five, ninth deck, aft.”

“It’s directly above my stateroom, three decks up,” I said.

She laughed as if I had said something charming, then said, “Take that bottle back to your room. Chill it, and we can finish it under the stars.”

I was on an elevator decorated like a disco saloon and smelling of fried food when I had my only doubts. What I needed most at that instant was the swampy smell of twilight in a North Florida slash pine hammock. Was I becoming as evil as the three killers through my orchestrations? I am sure that a Google search would offer hundreds of pertinent quotes about getting even. But in revenge, as with murder motives, each case is different.

I became so lost in thought, I got off on the wrong deck and had to weave my way through a sports bar to find a stairway I recognized. The bar had seven ultra-wide high-definition TV screens on the walls. The patrons had their eyes glued to rebroadcasts of football, basketball, soccer and baseball. Why, I wanted to shout, did you leave your Barcalounger at home?

If it hadn’t been a certain route to my sex alibi, I would have bailed on the hot tub. It stank of chemicals with no guarantee that they could fight bacteria. Sitting back in the stew I could see the wake behind the ship, lights of the Upper Keys to the north and I imagined that I could see a glow from the south, from Cuba. The stars, so numerous they were frightening, hung bright and low. There was no one else on the afterdeck, but I heard music from somewhere, a bad version of a fine Elton John song.

Margaret arrived with a “mega-Long Island tea” in a plastic cup. More Pinot Gris for me. A bit tipsy, she climbed the short ladder, crouched, slipped into the water butt first and drifted back toward me. Her free hand, behind her back, found my knee and slid up my thigh for a soft grope.

“Since you were so appreciative,” she said, and slipped the straps off her shoulders, “I suppose we can let these …”

“Let me guess,” I said, rubbing an erect nipple. “Your husband calls them ‘puppies.’”

“That was his high school habit that stayed forever. Can you keep your hand under the water, in case someone walks by? As far under as you’d like.”

I slipped my fingers inside her suit, felt shaving nubbies and her matted tuft of pubic hair. She moved her knees apart to assist my probing. I wondered if a more sober woman might be reluctant to expose her genitals to the bath water.

“Look,” I said, “this really isn’t the romantic moment I’d hoped for. Maybe it’s this mystery froth floating here.”

Margaret tilted back her drink. “I agree,” she said. “It’s hard to appreciate the starry night when the chlorine makes your eyes water.”

“Shall we go to my stateroom? Show our appreciation to the pillows?”

“I haven’t got that much time,” she said. “My friends—our husbands all know each other, watch football games together, that kind of stuff. I need to get back to the room before they get ideas. I mean, even friends wag their tongues.”

I helped her readjust her shoulder straps. We kissed and made a date to meet ashore the next day in Key West—for a drink and perhaps a few hours in a hotel room. Margaret would call my cell phone at high noon.

I returned to my cabin too energized to sleep. No sign of Arso, though—after the first two cruises—I knew enough about his habits not to expect him at that hour. I put on a pair of Levi’s and a sports shirt and went for a walk. I was up for anything except the lizard-packed piano bar. Even the all-night pizzeria. I passed the dregs of a Texas Hold ‘Em Tournament, a traffic jam of wheelchairs for the portly at the Midnite Deli—the snack shop that specialized in cappuccinos, milk shakes, giant cookies, chocolate-covered strawberries and eight kinds of cupcakes. I finally gave up on it all and wandered back toward my stateroom.

What I didn’t need at this point was a leaper. According to news accounts, our suicidal brethren have forsaken traditional bridge, subway, and tall-building leaps for the cruise ship railings of the Caribbean. What the news fails to mention, of course, is that most jumpers have gone over on homeward legs of the voyages. Does it take a genius to figure out that they’re plunging after visiting foreign ports where Zoloft, Paxil, and Prozac are sold over the counter like cough drops? Pills that will be mixed with each other, and with booze, and with the melancholy of hangovers? Fodder for another discussion, I agree. My point is right then, on our first night underway, I didn’t need anyone to take the plunge, to throw off the ship’s schedule.

I used the do-it-your-damned-self phone codes to order a pre-sunrise wake-up. As I fell asleep I mentally scripted the conversation I would employ to engage Arso in the morning. But it proved unnecessary when I received the glory gift, the visitation—or revenge—of the hot tub three decks above me.

Opportunity works best. Perfection is often an accident.

It woke me at two a.m.—a liquid sound I mistook for the ship’s wake. The nightmare of a possible suicide yanked me from a deep sleep. Except for a slight adjustment to avoid a distant fishing craft, there would be no other reason to change course on a straight leg of our journey. Then I heard splashes—never a good sound at sea—and pressed the courtesy light button just above my pillow.

Water was seeping over the elevated bathroom doorsill. That meant that at least three inches of water covered the floor in there. The room carpet darkened as the flow continued, with most of the water draining off toward the passageway. I tossed my camera bag and two pairs of shoes onto the bed and scouted the floor for anything else I owned. A good sign: the water’s chemical smell told me that it was not seawater. It also told me that the hot tub, at this late hour, had received a fresh, strong dose of disinfectant.

I phoned Arso and found him already awake. The folks in the cabin next to mine had called to report warm water spurting out of their shower drain. He assured me that a maintenance team was en route and the problem would be fixed immediately. If I wished, I could be moved to another stateroom.

“That’s something we can discuss,” I said. “I’m not sure I want to move.”

I pulled on a pair of shorts. Arso knocked on my door. He winced at the chlorine stench when I opened up, then stood back to survey the damage.

“You don’t look like you just got out of bed,” I said.

Arso shook his head, dropped his eyelids. “I have been unable to sleep. I received a message after midnight, from Belgrade. My mother is ill and I must call when we reach Key West.”

I pointed at my telephone. “Call from right there. Put it on my bill.”

“I am not permitted,” he said. “They would know it is me. I would lose my job.”

“What will you do in Key West?” I said, knowing the answer ahead of time. “Pump quarters into a pay phone?”

“There’s a place … I have a way to do this.” Arso looked anxious. “Please forget my problems. We must fix your room and … What do you plan to do in Key West? Will you see sights? Do you like to be a tourist?”

“I’ll probably rent a bicycle,” I said. “See Ernest Hemingway’s house and his favorite bar, eat shrimp and take pictures.”

What I really wanted to do on the overrun island was to find one small detail of life that no one had ever appreciated. Perhaps on another trip, well into the future.

“You get that bicycle, you watch your streets,” said Arso, “and find a free map. One time I did that bike riding without a map, I got so lost, I kept arriving at the cemetery.”

“I hate when that happens,” I said.

“Yes, yes.” He laughed and drew a finger across his Adam’s apple. “That made me worry.”

“One thing I need to do in port is call Costa Rica and Jamaica,” I said, aware of the answer before asking: “Is there a phone bank in Key West where overseas calls are cheap?”

Overacting, Arso drew down the corner of his mouth, put dread in his eyes. “If I told you, they’d kill me.”

Do tell.

I reminded myself not to let superstition cloud my thoughts.

A week before my brother transferred out—to the Italian Alps, before going “in theater,” as he termed it—he came back to our hometown in North Florida. He rolled into town in a red Mustang Cobra that rumbled like an old Boss 429. He saw a few of his old friends and went through the motions of saying goodbye to our failing father who probably wouldn’t remember it the next day. At eleven a.m. the day he left, he and I stood on our dad’s porch drinking warm beers.

“Remember those old stories,” he said, “about guys who shipped out to Nam and left behind a pristine Corvette? Then they never came back?”

“And their parents kept their bedrooms intact for the next forty years? And the Corvette with only 9,000 miles on its odometer stayed in a garage until some collector paid a fortune for it?”

“I don’t want that jinx riding with me,” he said. “You’re going to drive me to the Hertz office in Gainesville so I can get back to base. And I’m signing over the car’s title so you can sell it next week. When I get back from this deployment, I’ll spend that money on a Viper because I’m plain over this Ford. If I don’t come back, you can piss away the cash however you want, after you pay a titty dancer to do her thing in front of my urn. Got it?”

I slept through sunrise and the ship’s entrance into Key West’s harbor, but was fully awakened by the rumbling of tugs there to assist our approach to the dock. The bathroom had yet to be swabbed and deodorized; I elected not to shower before strolling to the breakfast buffet. The line for sausage, bacon, eggs and muffins reminded me of dorm cafeterias in my college days. The fresh fruit line was remarkably short, so I opted for health. I saw no sign of Margaret and her friends.

Thirty minutes later I found the hallway and hatch that led to the pier.

The air carried a damp, silvery haze with thin clouds drifting westward. I scanned the sky in search of a promising tropical patch of blue.

“It’ll burn off by noon,” said a ship’s officer at the gangway.

Was I wrong to expect something more original?

I said, “Maybe even clear up by midday?”

He shrugged. It had blown past him.

I left the ship with the first throng of passengers but wandered the pier by the Westin Resort and kept my eye on the ship’s crew gangway. For some reason my thoughts went back to Rosa, the lanky “titty dancer” I had hired to perform for my brother’s ashes. She was an employee of the venerable Café Olé on I-75 south of Gainesville and a third-year Architectural Design student at the University of Florida. We held the “service” in a ground level room at a Comfort Inn in Alachua where she insisted that I remain fully clothed and pay her fee before she began. She took off everything—there wasn’t a hair on her body south of her chin—and danced to a medium-tempo Celine Dion tune. In tears, she kept on dancing for the next five songs on her portable CD player. Before driving away in her Mini Cooper, she gave me her cell number and asked me to call her sometime for a “normal” dinner date. I took her out a few times, even shed my clothes on several memorable occasions. But I never could separate her presence from the image of my brother’s urn full of ashes, so we drifted apart. These days, maybe three times a year, she emails me jokes or humorous photographs.

After twenty-five minutes of strolling the pier—shop to shop, from air conditioner to air conditioner—I saw Arso and a male friend descend the crew gangway to the concrete dock. I followed the pair to Front Street and watched them go into the clothing store I suspected was a phony, a dodge for the illegal phone bank. A hokey tourist shop was right across the street—rubber alligators, batch-priced postcards, shell necklaces, authentic Key West ashtrays. The aisles and fellow browsers kept me well occupied and out of sight until I saw Arso and his pal heading up Fitzpatrick toward Captain Tony’s. I browsed palm-decorated coffee mugs until I figured the two had ordered their first beer.

My face wouldn’t be known in the phone bank, so my attire had to broadcast minimal fashion, maximum need. A dark blue ball cap worn backward, a brown dress shirt buttoned to the top, dark green trousers, a black belt. I walked to the rear of the clothing store and put my most stupid, cold-eyed expression against the door’s one-way window. To my relief and amazement, the buzzer sounded. I was in.