Thomas Prescott Superpack (61 page)

Speaking of the door, you could see the outline of the pirate leaning against the door through the foggy green glass. At the lifeboat, after the four of us had turned around, the African had pointed his gun at us forbidding us to move. He was clad in cut-off military fatigues and a ratty muscle shirt. His hair was tied down in thick cornrows. His teeth were capped in gold. He could have been any rapper in America.

The radio on his hip chimed and he held it to his ear, then spoke into it. In English, broken but still understandable, he said, “Four by de lifebats.” Then he proceeded to speak in his native tongue, which was full of clicks and clacks. After his conversation, the African waved his gun at us and said, “Walk dat way. Don make mey shoot you.”

Leading us around the outside of the ship to the front of Deck 7, he then ushered us into the salon.

And here we were.

There had been two women sitting in the waiting room when we’d arrived. To say they were startled when the four of us marched into the salon ushered by an African holding a machine gun would be an understatement.

Minutes later, the six of us had been joined by the old couple from the Veranda Cafe. The door opened and the woman stopped cold. “This is the worst salon,” she said, shaking her head. “This is nothing like the salon I go to in New York. No, I don’t like this salon at all.”

The old man rolled his eyes.

A minute after that, we became ten.

The door opened and a tall man with a curvy woman walked in. Both were dripping wet. The man was dense like a linebacker, his barrel chest covered in thick black hair, and he wore those tight swim trunks Europeans are known for. He also wore a defiant sneer, his enormous, retina-scorching white front teeth grinding together. The woman was a bottle blond, almost a bottle white, and was clad in the skimpiest bikini ever made, the white fabric just partially covering the nipples of her three-sizes-too-big surgically enhanced breasts. Both held champagne flutes in their hands. Mimosas.

The tall man was barking, “Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am?”

I don’t think Little Wayne knew who he was or much less cared. I, unfortunately, knew who he was and I
did
care. Well, I cared that I was locked in a room with him. Yes, that’s right. Gilroy and Trinity had joined the party. I looked around for some peroxide I could drink.

After the initial shock had worn off, compulsory introductions were made.

The two women, Berta and Reen, were from Oregon. I guessed they were sisters. They had an appointment at eight to get their hair done, but they’d been so excited they’d been in the waiting room since six.

The old couple was Walter and Marge Kohn from Boston and New York. They had houses respectively in each. They, or at least
she
, hated everything that wasn’t made, located, or associated in some way with either of the two cities.

And then you had Gilroy and Trinity. Douchebag and Bimbo.

“How did this happen?” asked Berta. Or Reen.

Gilroy shook his head in disgust. “I’ll tell you how this happened; the people that run this ship don’t know their ass from a hole-in-the-wall. That’s how. We’re out here in the middle of fucking nowhere. A boat loaded with
multi-millionaires
such as myself. What do you think is going to happen? We should have had military chaperones at all times. That’s the truth. This area is crawling with pirates. I knew this was going to happen. I knew it. I fucking knew it.”

He was silent a moment, then added, “Shit, these guys are probably going through our rooms as we speak. I don’t know about ya’ll but I got a twenty thousand dollar designer watch in there, and a couple hundred thousand dollars cash. Ah, shit. If these guys get their hands on my Black card, there’s no telling what they can buy. I mean there’s no limit. They could buy anything.”

I was tempted to tell this buffoon that if he knew this cruise was so dangerous, then why did he sign up for it and that no one told him to pack his designer watch, and surely no one told him to bring a couple hundred thousand dollars cash, and if one of these pirates with eight names got hold of his Black card and tried to buy, oh say, a machine gun, or a nuke, American Express might find the purchase suspicious.

“Actually, these waters are extremely safe,” said Frank. “Off the coast of Somalia and up north you might have to worry about pirates. But not down here. This is freak.”

Gilroy took a swig of his mimosa, but said nothing.

Reen—or Berta—said, “How do we know these guys aren’t Somalians?”

“They’re not,” replied Frank. “And it’s
Somali
not Somalians.”

“Where are they from then?”

“I’d guess South Africa, Mozambique, or Zimbabwe.”

“And how would you know that?” shot Gilroy.

“Easy. I overheard him speaking Zulu. Those are the countries that speak Zulu.”

“And how exactly would you know what fucking Zulu sounds like?”

Frank blinked a couple times, then said, “There are three distinct clicking noises in the Zulu language. One that sounds like the sucking of teeth, one that sounds like the popping of a bottle, and one that sounds like the walking of a horse. And I know, because I watched a show on it.”

Gilroy sank into his chair.

I almost started clapping.

“Aren’t Zulus cannibals or something?” asked Reenerta. “Are they going to eat us?”

“I don’t think they’ll eat us,” Frank said, with a shake of his head. “That they speak Zulu doesn’t mean a whole lot. Most of the people in the eastern provinces speak Zulu, from the small villages to the big cities. And he had a passing understanding of English, which means he’s been around white people at least part of his life. Probably a hired gun. A mercenary.”

Susie turned to him and asked, “Do you think they’ll hurt us, baby?”

He shrugged.

Gilroy grunted and said, “They’re not going to hurt anybody. They’ll take everything they can find, ransack the rooms, then be done with it.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” Susie rebuked.

“Sure I’m sure. They’ll take everybody’s money, take all the jewelry from the boutique, and then scram.”

“Ransom.”

The word chilled the air. Hearts paused. Buttholes clenched. Mouths went dry. I turned to Lacy. Her eyes were still red and puffy. She’d been crying since having to leave Baxter in the lifeboat. In fact,
ransom
, had been the first word she’d spoken in over an hour.

“What? Somebody had to say it,” she said, wiping snot from her nose.

I’d been thinking it since I’d seen the man jump overboard.

“Fine by me,” Gilroy said with a flash of his prized Chiclets. “I’ve got ransom insurance. When you are in my financial position you have to, you know. Got to have ransom insurance.” He looked around the group. “Don’t tell me none of you guys have ransom insurance.”

Trinity looked at him and smiled. “You have ransom insurance, baby. Oh, you think of everything.” Her boobs jiggled as she hugged him tightly.

I didn’t hate it.

The next ten minutes were spent listening to Gilroy recount how he’d gone about getting ransom insurance, which company insured him, and why all of us were idiots for not having it. By the end of his diatribe I was ready to knock on the door and ask Little Wayne if I could borrow his rifle for a second.

Lacy whispered, “I hate him.”

After Gilroy wrapped up his presentation, there was a subdued quiet. Susie broke the silence with, “I hope the pirates get done before lunch. They were supposed to do cheese steaks.”

Lacy and I looked at each other, both fighting down smiles. That was our Susie.

Marge Kohn had an opinion on this matter and said, “You want a good cheese steak, you go down to Riverfront and 143
rd
in Queens.”

“134
th
,” corrected Walter.

This led Gilroy to tell a seven-minute anecdote about cheese steaks. I thought being in a Jeep with this guy for eight hours was bad enough, this was going to be torture.

I noticed Lacy staring directly across the room where Berta and Reen were sitting. I followed Lacy’s gaze. Reen was holding Berta’s hand. Stroking it.

I mentally drew a line through the word
sisters
in my head. And I once called myself a detective?

“You were getting married later today, weren’t you,” Lacy said.

At one point, on the first day, Lacy had stumbled across a group of fifteen lesbians. One of the couples was rumored to be having a civil union ceremony held sometime during the cruise.

I’ll blame the pirates on my taking this long to piece this together. I mean, come on, the frumpiness alone should have been enough.

“Later tonight,” Berta said with a smile. “In District 9.”

District 9 was one of the clubs on the ship, which I could only assume was named after the Peter Jackson directed movie of the same name. The movie is an allegory of modern day apartheid in South Africa, of course, this time, with aliens. If you haven’t seen it, it’s pretty good. The movie, not the club.

Marge leaned towards them. “Which one of you is getting married?” she asked, revealing she was capable of smiling.

“We’re getting
married. . . to one another.”

Marge looked confused. Walter sighed audibly and said, “They’re lesbians.”

“
Lesssssssbbbbbbbbbbbiannnnnnnns?
”

Something tells me Marge didn’t watch much
Ellen
.

Reen patted Berta’s hand and said, “Oregon doesn’t recognize same sex marriage, so we decided to have a civil union ceremony. This cruise was going to be our honeymoon, but then
Berta had the idea to have the ceremony on the ship.”

“I think anyone should be able to marry anyone,” remarked Trinity.

“Now don’t go saying that,” Gilroy said, patting Trinity’s leg. “Marriage is the union between one man and one woman. We can’t have anyone just up and marrying. Soon you’ll have men marrying goats and women getting married to trees.”

Susie leaned forward and said, “And just out of curiosity, how many of these one man and one woman unions have you had?”

After being in the same Jeep as Gilroy for eight hours, Frank had decided to Google him when we returned to the ship and see just how full of shit the guy was. The verdict, half-full. Gilroy Andrews was an extremely successful oil driller in Georgia. Or had been. He’d once been worth around 20 million, but after four divorces, and a half dozen ill-advised drillings, his net worth was down to around three million.

Gilroy shot Susie a look but said nothing. I doubted Trinity knew she was well on her way to being number five.

The subject changed when Susie slapped Frank’s leg and said, “My insulin.”

Frank puffed out his cheeks and said, “Shit.”

Lacy cut her eyes at me and I knew she was thinking about her own meds, which were in her fanny pack, which was in the lifeboat. She’d been so preoccupied with leaving Baxter that she hadn’t thought of her meds. Multiple Sclerosis is an enigmatic disease. There is no known cure and even the cause is something of a mystery. Over the course of a day, Lacy took ten different pills. On her current regimen she’d only had one flare up—a three-week bout of severe dizziness—in the past year and a half. If she missed a couple doses, or even a couple days, nothing might happen. But then again, something might.

Susie, on the other hand, had diabetes and Susie just so happened to be the worst diabetic
ever
. Most people with diabetes could control it by taking insulin once or twice a day. I had watched danish-and-Pepsi-loving Susie shoot up five times yesterday and six times the day before that.

Susie put her head in her hands and said, “Oh, God.”

We didn’t have time to sympathize or strategize or even ponder the impasse. The door to the salon opened and a man stepped in. He was slight, with black hair and silky brown skin. I thought for a moment he was there to rescue us, but it only took an instant to realize he wasn’t. He was one of them. He was their inside man. He was the reason we didn’t try to outrun the pirates.

Ganju something or other was a security officer. I’d run into him late one night. He was having coffee at the 24-hour cafe and watching a soccer match on television. He was intensely invested in the game, his entire body applauding and condemning each touch of the ball. I asked
him who he was rooting for. Manchester United, he said proudly. I was curious how this tiny brown man, obviously not indigenous to the UK, had become so enchanted by this team and inquired as much. And that is when I learned about the Gurkhas. I asked about Nepal and he answered in clipped sentences. I asked about Everest, which elicited not an angry response, but a heated one, and he explained that his son, a Sherpa for the rich climbers, had been crippled by the mountain. He asked me where I was from and I told him, but I knew he was just being polite. I could tell from personal experience—say when Erica wanted to talk and I wanted to watch the last ninety seconds of the Seahawks game in fucking peace—that all he wanted to do was watch the match. I told him his next 20 coffees were on me, slipped him a hundred dollar bill, and left him alone.