The Jetsetters

by Amanda Eyre Ward

  “Right,” said Cord. “You’re right.” He could picture Handy, who had been famous as a child. Once in a while, as they sat with their Big Books open before them, sipping coffee, Cord caught a glimpse of the prepubescent star Handy had been, singing his catchphrase, It’ll all come out in the wash! Handy wasn’t exactly wise, and he was full of words that could be needlepointed on a pillow, but as far as Cord could tell, “working the program” meant listening, staying sober, and keeping your thoughts to yourself. Every other avenue had led to self-hatred and despair, so he was trying, he really was trying.

  “Okay, so you’re getting in a taxi? You need me to find you a flight?” said Handy. “You need me to meet you at JFK?”

  “I’m not getting on the ship,” said Cord. Yet he walked toward it, pulled by some mysterious force. A man in a white jumpsuit waved to him, beckoning Cord to hurry. There was a banner saying, WELCOME TO FUN!

  “I’m not getting on the ship,” repeated Cord, marching toward the banner. He couldn’t just ditch his mother. How could he ruin Charlotte’s last adventure?

  “Good decision,” said Handy. “You’re doing the right thing. You need me to stay on the phone, man?”

  “I’m good,” said Cord.

  He was going to board the ship. He’d have courteous conversations with Matt, whom Cord had never been crazy about, but whom he now detested. Regan would try to win back her man, and Cord would be forced to watch. He’d squire his mother to buffet dinners and the Twitters Comedy Club, gritting his teeth as she pointed out his possible wives. Cord would pretend he was proud of Lee, who had taken her talent and squandered it, who was shallow and vain. (To make matters worse, her shallowness and vanity were a bit like Cord’s, so made him feel not just annoyed but culpable.)

  Cord did understand what he was doing. But the thing about being an addict was that it didn’t even matter that he understood what he was doing—that he’d done the same thing a hundred million times and every time it had come to ruin. It was reptilian: familiar, appealing, seemingly unavoidable. An alcoholic’s chain of logic, excuse after excuse, zipping up a close-fitting suit of martyrdom: he had to board the ship, and in order to stay on the Marveloso, he was going to have to drink.

  Hurray!

  He could taste a fruity concoction already, something pink and heavy with rum. Ah, a shot! The fire on his tongue and a welling up from the pit of his stomach: instant ease and well-being! The pain of his multiple lives would disappear. He could buy into the myth that they were happy. For the hours he had booze in his system, Cord could forget what he owed Giovanni.

  The porter was gesturing frantically now, waving both arms in the air like a nutjob at a Yankees game. “The ship!” yelled the porter. “The ship is closing! The ship is leaving! Hurry, please! You must run!”

  If Cord stayed still—just didn’t move a muscle—he would be okay. The ship of family dysfunction would set off into the Aegean and he’d be on solid ground. “Cord?” said Handy. “You there, man?”

  “I’m losing you,” said Cord.

  “Okay, man, call me when you—”

  “Can’t hear you,” said Cord. He pocketed his phone, picked up his bag, and began to sprint. A series of people in white jumpsuits with Splendido name tags welcomed Cord, checked his papers, took his bags, escorted him through a metal detector, and pointed him down a hallway. A large door was propped open, and outside it, a metal drawbridge led into the ship. For a moment, on the drawbridge suspended above the water, boyhood Cord rose up within him: Wow! A ship!

  Boyhood Cord was weak, vulnerable. Cord stuffed him down.

  He pressed on, into a mirrored hallway lined with portholes. He picked a direction at random and found himself inside a futuristic discotheque. The walls were seemingly made of glowing boulders, and the chairs looked like the ones aboard the Starship Enterprise—armless, blob-like. One entire wall was made of booze: rows and rows of backlit bottles of every shape and color. Cord’s salivary glands woke up and began clamoring for grappa, Jägermeister, crème de menthe.

  Cord glimpsed a trivia contest in full swing: groups of people crouched around bar tables, scribbling with tiny pencils. A young blonde with a German accent, perched on a stool, read an answer into her microphone. “The color of a polar bear’s skin? Is? In fact? BLACK!” she cried.

  Some passengers cheered, but several looked crestfallen. “I’m so sorry,” an older man implored his wife. “I really did think it was pink.”

  “I know you did, honey,” said his wife morosely, peering into her empty glass.

  Cord spied a grand staircase and began to ascend it, trying not to mar the gleaming banisters by touching them with his sweaty hands. He had never seen so much chrome in his life! Everywhere, everywhere, there were sweeping expanses of metal, polished to reflect flashing lights so bright Cord hoped none of his fellow cruisers were prone to seizures.

  Above the Jetsons disco, Cord wandered down a hallway lined with the most awful artwork he had ever seen. An enormous painting of Michael Jackson and Ringo Starr riding tigers was placed next to one of a gorilla gazing into the eyes of an airborne owl. “Please, peruse,” said a dark-haired woman who had materialized in front of him and slipped a glass of champagne into his hand. “This one,” she said, her voice husky and accented. She gestured to a painting of Robert De Niro wearing a white suit, brandishing a gun in front of a neon-colored lion. “Is special,” she said. “Is a limited edition.”

  “It’s so special,” Cord agreed.

  “Drink,” said the woman. “Is a compliment.”

  Cord clutched the glass. Who would know if he brought it to his lips?

  “Champagne auction, it takes place tomorrow,” said the woman. “But for you, it takes place today.”

  “Uh,” said Cord. He kind of did want the painting. Gio adored kitsch. They could hang it over their bed, or in the living room above the fireplace.

  Later, he would wonder what it was that had made him buy the art—the woman? The peaceful, knowing lion? De Niro’s “devil may care” expression? But in the moment, it felt like nothing. He handed the woman his Sail-N-Shop card. “I’ll take it,” he said.

  After signing the papers that would commit him to almost a thousand dollars for a joke of a painting, Cord wandered along a dim hallway lit with sconces. He skirted a bizarre statue of a girl petting a giant egg, rushed past an entrance labeled SPORTSMAN’S BAR, and climbed down some stairs.

  In the bowels of the ship, he discovered a strip mall with a gelato stand, a coffee bar, and a multitude of shops. Rows of overpriced things no one needed lay before him: watches, M&M’s, Marveloso room diffusers, neon-colored sarongs. The ceiling was somehow covered with shining stars.

  Were they underneath the water? Cord tried not to freak out.

  Three clean-cut youngsters in uniform stood behind a precarious configuration of perfume and cologne bottles. They sprayed the pricey liquids liberally, but a cigar bar at the end of the mini-mall dominated Cord’s olfactory input. “Free champagne and two-for-one Versace pour Homme eau de toilette natural spray?” asked one of the perfume team, a tall girl who’d gone to town with her green eye shadow.

  “Why would I want two?” said Cord.

  “I no speak English so much,” said the girl, giggling fetchingly. She handed Cord another glass of champagne and spritzed, moving her arm in a dizzying figure eight. Cord sipped deeply, breathing in cigar smoke and European cologne.

  The Marveloso truly was a marvel, a Xanadu dome of pleasure. Cord entered a room that could have been Liberace’s ballroom, had Liberace installed ten stories of stairs inlaid with cut crystals and invited a few thousand frumpy guests to mill about his ballroom in bathing suits. There were maroon banquettes with glittering chandeliers above them. Potted palm trees rose from herringbone-patterned carpet. The walls looked to be made of marble, and fountains lit with neon stro
bes exploded every ten feet.

  In the center of the room, a birdlike woman in a ball gown pounded on a grand piano. The woman’s bony shoulder blades were a sight to behold as she gave the notes of “Memories” her absolute all, her head thrown back in ecstasy, giant beehive hairdo remaining, remarkably, intact.

  “Smile, sir!” cried a guy with an elaborate camera around his neck. Dutifully, Cord smiled. A flash blinded him, and when his vision cleared, he saw the singer.

  A man so massive he could have played linebacker for the Georgia Bulldogs, the tuxedo-clad singer employed a big set of lungs to fill the room with sound. “Touch me! It’s so easy to leave me! All alone with the memory…of my days in the sun!” A cadre of women in flip-flops and oversize T-shirts, their hair still wet from the pool, swayed piano-side and sang along.

  Cord approached a glass elevator, stepping in when the doors opened. It was the brightest space he’d ever inhabited, and when it started to rise quickly above Liberace’s ballroom, he was honestly awestruck, staggering backward into two teenage boys holding soccer balls. “Watch it, old man,” said one; the other said something in Italian and they laughed. Flushed with humiliation (was he an old man? Really?), Cord got off the elevator at the next stop, and found himself standing next to a jam-packed indoor pool. Four hot tubs were full to the brim.

  “Two-for-one Nutella crêpe?” asked a man in a toque.

  “Pardon?” said Cord. Something was happening above him; he glanced heavenward to see that a retractable roof was sliding open, exposing a purplish sky. “Whoa,” said Cord.

  “It’s two-for-one Nutella crêpes,” the guy next to Cord repeated. “You buy one but you actually get two.” Was Cord disassociating? He felt as if he were on acid. The crêpe man was looking at him expectantly. A line had begun to form behind Cord, and a man with a ton of body hair wearing only a Speedo was standing too close. The crêpe man winked. Did Cord imagine it?

  “Oh, sure,” said Cord, handing over his ship card.

  He walked through a set of double doors, emerging on the outdoor pool deck. People were everywhere: oiled up, carrying plates piled high with food, slurping drinks, dancing, reading, dead asleep (or—eek—dead?). A three-story waterslide snaked above him. Cord nibbled his warm, sweet crêpe. A DJ spun Salt-N-Pepa’s classic “Push It,” and Cord’s hips started to sway to the beat. Despite himself, he murmured, “Oooh, baby, baby. Baby, baby.”

  Where was his luggage? Where was his family? Where was his dignity? Could he stay on this ship for the rest of his life?

  Push it good. Push it real good!

  From the football-field-size pool, jets shot into the air, then fell in arcs back into the turquoise water. Glass panels lined the edge of the ship, and beyond was the deep, mysterious sea.

  Cord craned his neck to see three massive smokestacks belching plumes of exhaust into the evening sky. The lonely voice wanted to talk about climate change, about being a part of the solution and not the problem, about droughts and famines, refugees in the water, and the demise of humankind, but Cord didn’t want to listen.

  Beyond the “Aqua Zone” was the entrance to an insane buffet. There was mediocre food as far as the eye could see: burgers, pizza, fruit salad, chafing dishes filled with pastas, stews, and casseroles; cakes, pies, Jell-O molds, éclairs, slabs of meat being carved, and why were there framed drawings of Native Americans in headdresses behind the dessert station? Why the marzipan piano? Who cared? Honestly, seriously, who cared?

  Cord grabbed a warm, clean plate (don’t think about germs, no, don’t even think about salmonella) and filled it, humming “Push It” and eating taquitos directly from the tray underneath the sign reading PLEASE USE SERVICE UTENSILS AT ALL INSTANCES.

  Yo yo yo yo, baby pop—yeah, YOU! Come here, gimme me a kiss. Better make it fast, or else I’m gonna get pissed.

  He ate a burger, ate some kind of noodle and salmon dish, finished off a slice of apple pie and a marzipan mouse. He just abandoned his empty plate and floated into a hallway, down some stairs, and into a packed Las Vegas casino.

  The casino walls were painted with murals of other locales: Havana, Istanbul, Monte Carlo. Marble columns sprouted metal palm fronds and globular lights. It couldn’t have been 8:00 P.M., but women in sequined gowns tossed chips, and tuxedoed staff spun roulette wheels. There were the ever-present grayish-skinned guys zombified before a row of slot machines.

  “Free champagne and two-for-one cash money bingo?” purred an adorable fellow who emerged from nowhere (from Cord’s wildest dreams?).

  He would have one, just one drink, and then he would go back to the open-air Aqua Zone and watch the sky turn crimson, the clouds purple above the vast, astonishing ocean. It was so easy, after all the pain, and all the sober, sad, plodding work.

  All he had to do was say yes.

  REGAN AND MATT HAD not had sex in over a year. It was excruciating to be alone together, jammed in a tiny cabin. Matt was sprawled on the bed, and Regan sat as far away as possible, brushing her hair at the vanity table. How much she’d once loved touching him! But now the thought of being physically close to her husband made her feel ill. Regan tried to remember the last time they had even been alone—it seemed as if the girls were always with them, or within earshot.

  Matt turned to her. “Come here, honey,” he said. “You’re so far away.”

  Adrenaline throbbed in her veins as she steeled herself, moved toward the bed. Maybe this was how spies felt as they girded themselves to steal state secrets. Matt opened his arms. “Too many clothes,” he said.

  Regan pulled her silk top over her head and stood before her husband, the full glory of what he’d once called “the absolute best boobs in Georgia” on display. Her heart hammered in her chest. She hid the stretch marks on her stomach with her hands. The chilled cabin air was giving her goosebumps.

  “Oh, my sweet one. I’ve missed you,” said Matt.

  She wanted to say, I’ve been right here all along. Was Matt saying that he missed sex, or that, seeing her now, he remembered everything they had to lose? She lowered herself to the bed, and it felt like the scariest thing she’d ever done to allow herself to be held.

  “I’ve missed you, too,” she lied.

  Her life before Matt had been so painful and bare. It was as if she’d been living without skin, and he’d coated her in love. She had once thought it would ruin her to feel that way again. But now she was like a panther in the zoo, casing the enclosure night and day, alert for a chance to escape.

  Regan knew what she had to do. She just needed to shut her mouth and open her body to the man who had turned her from a naïve idiot into whatever she was now—a predator, a woman who daydreamed of murder.

  “Kiss me,” said Matt. She could do it, and she did.

  WHEN LEE WAS THIRTEEN, Charlotte (with the help of a Catholic addiction counselor named Robby) had organized a Sunday afternoon intervention for Winston. Robby had told Lee to lead her father into the dining room, where everyone else was waiting. He explained that an element of surprise was useful: Winston wouldn’t have time to mount defenses and could more easily be convinced to fly to rehab in upstate New York.

  Lee knew her father drank too much. He was mean, perhaps abusive. But still, she wanted to win him, loved him mightily, and craved his approval. So as she knocked at the den door, rehearsing Robby’s line (“We have a surprise in the dining room, Dad”), she hated Charlotte for making her betray her father.

  “What?” said Winston. They weren’t supposed to disturb him in the den.

  “It’s me,” said Lee.

  “Ah, Lee Lee,” said Winston. “Come in.”

  She turned the knob. The shades were drawn and Winston sat in his leather recliner, a glass of scotch on the Oriental rug, a smoking cigarette in an ashtray. “What is it?” he said.

  Her stomach roiled. She always felt rev
ved up around Winston, ready to run. You never knew how he would hurt you. Lee had once written him a note that said, If you love me, you will stop drinking. She’d hidden it in his underwear drawer. It was all she had to threaten, and she’d innocently believed it was enough. It was not enough.

  “We have a surprise for you in the dining room,” said Lee.

  He stood, sighing. He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. “An intervention, I suppose?” he said.

  Lee blanched.

  “Even you,” said Winston bitterly, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t have thought even you.”

  “Dad, I…”

  “Just skip it,” he said. Winston picked up his glass, strode to the dining room, pushed the swinging door open. “Well, what do we have here?” he said.

  Lee’s siblings, along with Charlotte and Robby, sat at the dining room table. Lee joined them reluctantly. They addressed Winston as they had been trained: here’s what your drinking has done to me; here’s why you should go to St. Joseph’s right now, after this meeting, it’s all arranged; we love you. As each of them spoke, nine-year-old Regan crying so hard she could barely speak, Lee had thought, Fuck this. She saw the contempt in her father’s eyes, and traitorously, Lee agreed with him: this blubbering, this vulnerability, was a joke.

  When it was Lee’s turn, she looked up from the carefully prepared script, a dot-matrix printout describing a litany of Winston’s terrorizing behavior and drunk driving, and she said simply, “I love you, Dad.” Charlotte reached over and took Lee’s hand. Lee shook her off.

  Winston looked at his family banded together in the naïve hope that they could change him. Without a word, he walked back to the dining room door, pushed it open, and exited. They heard the den door slam shut. Lee looked around the table at her ashen-faced mother, her young and pathetic siblings, and disappointed Robby. She understood that they were weak. Lee stood, and left the room.