Ship for Brains (Cruise Confidential 2)

by Brian David Bruns

  Surprisingly, I suddenly felt the same. Though I had told Leo I was not interested in confronting these men with my superior rank, I secretly wanted to. At first I worried that I was just backing out of a confrontation, but then realized how pointless the whole thing was. These small-minded men had not been attacking me, but merely protecting their own little world. There was no grand melodrama. There was nothing.

  I turned my back on them and walked away, never to see them again.

  Unfortunately, I did see the chief accountant again. Astoundingly, the paperwork was worse than the previous week. All week I thought I was on top of it, but apparently some gremlins had moved all my numbers around. Once again I began alone at 7 p.m. and churned out list after list of misaligned numbers. Again I was frustrated, angry, and a little scared. Again I had to call in Bill at midnight for assistance. Again he was furious, but far more so than the previous week. Again our combined efforts amounted to nothing, and by 3 a.m. we were again booted from the accounting office. But this week there was one big, nasty difference.

  I was stricken by food poisoning.

  “What’s your goddamn problem?” Bill snapped. “You’ve been to the bathroom three times and you’re shaking like the goddamn coward you are. You stink.”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “I can hardly see straight and have chills.”

  “What, salsa coming back to haunt you?” he chortled.

  “Not nearly as bad as what’s gonna come back to haunt you,” I bit back. “Tomorrow I’ll be fine, but you’ll have that shit for life.”

  “Next time just follow my lead and hump some hos,” Bill ordered. “See? Abstinence gives you cramps.”

  For twelve straight hours I worked through chills, sweats, vomiting, and diarrhea. At 3 a.m. we broke to take our luggage to the security chief for clearance, but immediately thereafter we were back at the accounting office. I began shaking so badly that Bill had to input the numbers. Worse, I became dyslexic in calling out the numbers and found myself having difficulty alphabetizing names. I know he would have hit me if he didn’t think I would pass out.

  Behind us paced the chief accountant, as ever in drill-sergeant mode. Each tap of his pen on the desk was a stab into the delicate sphere of agony that was my head. I was actually glad when diarrhea forced me to run to the toilet, because it eased the headache so sharply exacerbated by the Indian.

  After three or four millennia, 7 a.m. arrived, and with it our last chance to accomplish the gargantuan numbers task before the chief accountant took over: twice in as many weeks. Signing off Conquest with unfinished paperwork would have surely meant my firing and probably thousands in fines from Sundance. But by an absolute miracle, the numbers gelled at the last moment. It was such amazing timing, literally the last five minutes, that it felt staged. Bill kicked back his chair forcefully when we finished and stormed out. I, on the other hand, shakily pushed myself up from the table and fell into the wall.

  Fifteen minutes were all we had to gather our carry-on luggage and go. My entire body ached and reeked, and I was desperate for a shower, but there simply was no more time. Stinking and wretched, I labored with my backpack to the gangway, where Bill impatiently waited for me.

  “Jesus, Brian,” he chided. “You smell like shit.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You aren’t gonna throw up on the plane, are you? Just sitting next to you for the flight and smelling you will probably make me barf. Or are you gonna crap your pants waiting for the taxi? Or in line at the airport? I am still having some raw oysters at Acme before we get on the plane, you know. Jesus, you are making my life hell.”

  “Yes, Bill,” I simply said, fighting a shiver. The thought of raw oysters at that moment was not a good one. And the pressure on my bowels when the jet took off? Ugh.

  But Conquest was being left once and for all and I had complete closure with her. Though looking and smelling of filth, I was leaving vindicated. That said, I was very pleased to slink out without anyone I knew witnessing that last, parting image of me sickly and sullen. But really, who did I know that would even be up at 7 a.m., after all?

  Why Hot Cocoa, of course.

  “Buzz!” she shouted, rushing up the gangway to me with arms wide. Suddenly she reared back on the narrow metal stairs and regarded me skeptically.

  “He’s got the shits,” Bill explained helpfully.

  “Oh, too bad,” she said with a ravishing, mischievous smile. “I was going to give you a big hug and a kiss.”

  2

  Unlike Shakespeare’s Juliet, I have found names to be very important. She decried rhetorically ‘What’s in a name?’ and was willing to cast aside her and her forbidden lover Romeo’s family names as being irrelevant. Though certainly not in love with them, I, on the other hand, have found Carnival names to be singularly appropriate. My restaurant training on Carnival Fantasy was living the dream of going to sea and being surrounded by hordes of hot foreign women. On Conquest I was brutally conquered by the ship’s management, while my trials and tribulations on Legend were indeed epic.

  And Carnival Ecstasy? It was all that and a bag of chips. I marveled how the ship could live up to it’s name while lacking the sublime presence of my Bianca. But it did, and then some.

  Ecstasy ran three and four day cruises out of Long Beach, California. These would involve a stop at Catalina Island and the Mexican port of Ensenada, or both. Each cruise offered a day at sea, but no other opportunity in any way for art sales events. This made me nervous, but Bill was confident of reaching goal with a single auction per cruise.

  “Aren’t you a little concerned about this proverbial placement of all our eggs in one basket?” I had asked.

  “I know L.A. people,” he replied simply. “I will clear G2 easily.”

  Not convinced, I ominously warned, “As you no doubt recall, it was Abraham Lincoln who said, “The chicken is the wisest creature in all creation, for she doesn't cackle until after she lays her egg.”

  “What is it with you and fucking chickens?” Bill snapped.

  “I’ve never fucked a chicken, Bill,” I deadpanned.

  “Well, do it and quit your damn whining. You don’t even have to do the accounting on this ship, so just follow my lead and we’ll be fine.”

  Bill’s bravado was hardly reassuring, but his performance at the first auction more than made up for. Oh, did it! We far and away surpassed our entire cruise goals in those two hours. Within two weeks of arriving on Ecstasy we had shattered all its previous sales records and were the highest revenue earners on-board, surpassing the casino and, astoundingly, competing even with the total bar sales! When Carnival saw that merely two men were challenging the revenues of one of their largest departments, we were given carte blanche privileges on board. We strut like peacocks. We rolled in money. Women flocked to us.

  We were rock stars.

  The majority of my time on Ecstasy was spent on the Promenade deck at the Rolls Royce Café. This was the only source of cappuccino on the ship, making it highly important in this era of being defined by one’s coffee habit. This gem of a spot doubled as our art gallery, with its two walls angling into the coffee counter displaying our best artwork, floor to ceiling.

  If that wasn’t enough to catch someone’s eye, out in the main walkway was parked an actual vintage Rolls Royce, presumably with one helluva parking brake to refrain from rolling on the high seas. Beside its back bumper sat an easel proclaiming our auction hours to all who passed by on their way to coffee or to the lounge. Bill and I parked there ourselves, before the hood, throughout the evenings distributing free raffle tickets for the auction. This had less to do with advertising and more to do with a lack of anything else to do.

  Bill would come and go from the Promenade deck, usually only remaining in the evening to ogle those silicone-laden L.A. women as they strolled past in their nightclub attire. I was tasked with actually remaining in the area for hours at a time, which was pretty much where I would want to be anyw
ay. I was very much a coffee shop kind of guy, despite a lack of any coffee affectation. Besides, my cabin was about as bland as one would expect of a room walled by steel bulkheads. Sure, it was gloriously mine and mine alone, but I have never encountered a chamber in such dire need of feng shui in my life.

  Ecstasy had not started on such a high note, however. Our first day, in hindsight, was a laughable example of Bill’s and my auctioneer/apprentice relationship. It was also a metaphor for how much training, or lack thereof, he deigned to bestow upon me.

  Beginning on Ecstasy necessarily involves the ending on Conquest. That final day on Conquest, of course, was a nightmare of all-evening auction, followed by that all-night battle with intense accounting. This, while fighting vomiting, diarrhea, and convulsions, was followed immediately by flying halfway across the country and the pressures of signing onto a new ship. I nearly passed out during the survival training, for which I was roundly reprimanded, followed promptly by the further draining stresses of the auctioneer handover.

  After all that, a solid thirty hours of uninterrupted hell, with great compassion Bill demanded I join him in the crew bar!

  I replied that, perhaps considering that only minutes ago had I finally ceased vomiting, this would not be a good time for copious amounts of noise, alcohol, and cigarette smoke. He called me a pussy. I promised to join him every night for the next week, but he wouldn’t let up. His persistence was only topped by his selfishness.

  Bill was never wrong, despite being frequently so, and he smoothly pushed blame onto those around him. Usually these unfortunate souls were too intimidated to push back. True, at that first night on Ecstasy I had plenty to account for because of my second failure on Conquest, but his petty insults on top of everything else were hard to swallow. No wonder Doug hated him with such passion. Antonio Banderas had felt the same, but was too composed to say so. It took all of my cool not to rear up as Bill habitually, and falsely, accused me of all manner of little mistakes that simply did not matter. But tolerance is strength, and so long as I was not being truly trod upon I could handle it. That was just Bill’s way of remaining leader of the pack. Though I was learning nothing from Bill, he was paying me large sums of money for it. So I bit my tongue at the trivial.

  Bill had a dynamic, powerful temperament indeed. His was one of those personalities that made you defensive because you are not like him, even though you don’t want to be like him. He is at home on the ships, happy in the transience of the life and the lack of social accountability it provides. He had no desire to build anything or care for anyone. His only hobby was looking for another pair of tits. Other than money, he simply could not fathom anything beyond seeing a bigger pair than the last time. Except, perhaps, groping them.

  Yet, strangely, this audacity made him fun to hang around with. Bill needed an audience and a follower. While I was happy to occasionally be the former, I refused to be the latter. I chose when I wanted to retire for the night, something which Bill seemed unable or unwilling to do. He raged at my departures and refusals every single time. But I held my own through his every questioning of my libido. How he could consider me, of all people, prudish, is a marvel. No wonder he gave up on Antonio Banderas and Doug with open contempt.

  On one small thing, however, Bill and I were in agreement over: my need of a new suit. It’s all very well to be treated like a rock star, of course, but if you know you don’t look it, your mojo remains askew. Can’t have that, now. My current suit was excellent, to be sure, but it was lonely and worn seven days a week. I had been trying unsuccessfully to purchase a partner for it for months, but opportunity had been lacking, not to mention funds. But now, finally, my first paycheck from Sundance had trickled through the red tape to me.

  Alas, my first funds, as exciting as they were to receive, were limited to only being an associate on the Widow Maker for a few weeks. Cataloguing huge commissions on Ecstasy was nice and all, but they were yet months away from being received. Bill offered to loan me plenty of money, but I was loath to owe him anything. I opted to take a peek at our new port in Mexico for my suits, hoping to stretch a buck.

  My first trip ashore in Ensenada was hours wasted wandering the streets for a suit shop. It was not a pretty town, and the shabby buildings were close enough together to make me feel sweaty and dirty. That could be a nice feeling, such as in a wonderfully nasty bar or with a wonderfully nasty woman, but I was here for neither. I scraped the sweat from my neck, puffed impatiently at my cigar, and scrutinized the windows for evidence of formal attire. In hindsight, I should have scrutinized my path a bit more.

  I stumbled into a suit shop quite suddenly. Literally. Ensenada’s sidewalks were a jumble of broken concrete slabs as choppy as the sea itself, jutting up at every sort of angle imaginable. Pythagoras himself would have balked at identifying all those angles. I tripped and smacked face-first into a glass storefront, then slid squeakily to the ground.

  What a smack it was! I rubbed my forehead in mild shock, but it was my cheek that smarted in a most peculiar manner. Dazed and with wobbly vision, I watched my cigar smolder hotly on the sidewalk, its blackened end splayed out like a trick cigar Bugs Bunny gave to Elmer Fudd. Wincing, I rubbed the seared flesh of my cheek and suddenly a jolt of concern flashed through me as I realized just how badly I could have burned my face. I leapt up with a further embarrassing little dance to avoid a dizzied fall again, and stared at my reflection in the window. Fortunately the glass had not shattered. Unfortunately I realized that I was staring into the gaze of two mannequins in white suits and two wide-eyed employees.

  Too mortified to worry about my face any longer, I dusted myself off and entered with what little dignity I could muster. Both attendants were small, handsome men with pencil-thin mustaches. They wore the fruits of their trade smartly, at ease in white suits one frequently associates with Latin America. I glanced around the wares, but was disappointed to not find what I was looking for. While almost every jacket was several sizes too small for me, my main concern was the lack of my preferred double breasted suits.

  Sensing my frustration, one of the attendants smoothly approached. His trim mustache was accompanied by a line of beard that defined his jaw line with delicate precision. Communication was an issue when he asked,“¿Le puedo ayudar, señor? ¿Qué busca usted?”

  “¿Habla inglés?” I asked in Spanish. When he shook his head, I had already exhausted my language skills beyond ‘where is the shoe store?’.

  Very slowly I asked, “Do you have any double breasted suits?” He frowned and glanced at his companion, who shrugged. I wondered how to say ‘breasted’ in Spanish. I had a bit of experience in international pantomime, and thought I could surely figure this one out.

  “Uh, chi chis,” I stammered. Back home was a restaurant by that name and I vaguely recalled someone saying it meant ‘breasts’.

  He raised an eyebrow at me.

  “¿Mendigo su perdón?”

  I enacted a woman as best I could and cupped my pretend breasts. “Dos chi chis...?”

  “¿Desea el burdel?” he asked slowly, fighting a smile. His companion chortled from afar. “¿El sexo?”

  I sensed that ‘el sexo’ was more up Bill’s alley than mine. It suddenly struck me that burdel meant ‘bordello’.

  “No, no,” I replied, frustrated. I wracked my brain for every Spanish slang I could think of. After a few moments of standing there like a moron, I finally blurted, “Tits!”

  The man now raised both eyebrows, and gave his partner an amused glance. “¿Tetas?”

  “Sí, tetas!” I cried. “Dos tetas... suit... for me. Oh, uh, para mi. Comprende?”

  He shook his head, but I blithely blundered along. I knew that clothing was ropa, so I tried throwing that in there. “Dos chi chis... ropa... para mi.”

  “¿El brasier?” he said. “¡No brasieres aquí!”

  “No, no, I don’t want a bra. Double breasted... oh, forget it!”

  I stalked off, disappointed, while
the two men openly mocked me on my way out. I should have stayed, because I could have learned some fun, if not particularly useful, Spanish slang. One man pretended to cup huge breasts and shouted to his companion, “Guanabanas.” The other corrected him by illustrating small breasts and saying, “Oh, no, limoncitos...”

  Finally as I exited, I heard them muttering, “Gringo loco.”

  3

  Communication problems were not limited to foreign cultures, however. Connecting with Bill was equally vexing, like dealing with an unruly child. While Bill demanded I get new suits, he denied me much free time to obtain them in favor of his relentless pursuit of T&A. Finally I put my foot down while in home port on our third week, absolutely and irrevocably refusing to find a strip club. He was shocked, despite even the fact we were receiving an important art delivery this day. Thus I forced Bill to remain on board while I went shopping, which he sulkily agreed to. My little victory came with a high price, however, and I’m not just talking about the mess he left me in the art locker.

  Ecstasy’s art locker was an unused mustering chamber inside the ship’s surplus shell door. This was a second access through the ship’s hull, several decks higher than the waterline, for the occasional port facility that required such. It was rarely, if ever, used, and so the area intended for traffic flow was given to us. We filled it to the max. Rows of leaning canvases snaked across the floor right up to the bulkheads in every direction, leaving only a small floor space in the center of the room. I kept this area clear and, for the most part, clean. But this day Bill was punishing me for not letting him play.

  Scattered everywhere were shreds of cardboard and unruly coils of bubble wrap. Bill had gleefully torn open all the boxes of our art delivery and tossed aside the wrappings like a child on Christmas morning. I whimpered when I saw all the little bits and pieces dropped into the hydraulics of the shell door. It would take hours to get that cleaned up and back to safety code. I waded through dozens of torn protective corners and over literally hundreds of staples which dug themselves into the carpet as snug as a bug in a rug.