Irresistible

by Andrew J. Peters

  A decision was made for them when a troop of men tramped up the stairs to the wheelhouse. Peeking out from behind the captain’s chair, Brendan saw a wild-eyed, rain-soaked Arab in a headscarf and fatigues casing the cabin through the crosshair scope of his assault rifle. Three men came up behind him. From their position, low on the floor, Brendan and Ahmed were unseen at first. Brendan tried to steady the trembles of his body.

  A cry hailed, and the rifleman edged around the captain’s chair with his weapon pointed at Ahmed. Both Brendan and Ahmed threw up their hands. The gunslinger shouted at them in a foreign language. His companions joined in. It sounded like angry, curse-filled accusations.

  Ahmed answered them in their language, assuring, pleading. Brendan winced as the pirate’s rifle pointed at him. Ahmed’s voice rose up, and words went back and forth between him and one of the guys standing behind the rifleman.

  The one word Brendan caught from the foreigners as they looked him up and down: “American?”

  The pirates gestured for the two of them to stand, and one of the guys came around and bound their hands behind their backs with cords.

  Ahmed spoke quietly to Brendan, “They’re some kind of political dissidents. They’re taking us prisoner.”

  Chapter Twenty

  CAL WAS BACK in a freight hold headed out to sea. It was a situation that put to mind the incredible variations of absurdity in the world, like taking the wrong exit on an interstate highway and doubling back to the interstate only to take the same wrong exit from the opposite direction. He was grateful to have escaped from the demented fisherman. Though it sank in quickly he had a whole new host of troubles.

  He was a stowaway on a military cruiser manned by seamen from a foreign nation. He had nothing to show his identity nor a particularly compelling explanation as to how he’d come to be aboard. From the conversations he‘d heard among the uniformed men overseeing his platform of crates being loaded into the boat, it sounded like they spoke Arabic. Peeking out from a slender gap between the crates, he hadn’t recognized their tan camouflage uniforms. Their flag patches were not from any country with which he was familiar. They were dark-skinned Arabs wearing black berets. Were they friendly allies of the United States, or from some rogue nation in the Middle East?

  The hold was vast, and it was starved of light since they’d lowered him into it with a crane and sealed its overhead hatch. Cal was safe from detection for the moment, and he longed to stretch out from his cramped position. He was also thirsty, hungry, and shivering from the cold. He figured he had time to bide until the ship reached its next port, and he would have to figure out how to sneak off, or to somehow present himself on sympathetic terms.

  Could he have been so lucky as to have stowed away with bottled water and something to eat? Cal groped around the top of one of the wooden crates, feeling for grooves where he could wrench one open. He found a place to dig in his fingers, and he pried and jostled the nailed-down lid. With a mighty effort, he uprooted nails on one side and then the other. He lifted the lid open just enough to dig his hand inside the box and feel around, displacing the packing shred. And discovered a familiar texture and shape. The neck of a glass bottle.

  Cal brought the bottle out. By its size and weight, he judged it to be wine. Not exactly the quenching drink or nourishment he was hoping for. But for Christ’s sake, after everything he’d been through, a guzzle of wine was a marvelous idea.

  How to open it? He felt a wrapper around the top, where presumably it was corked. Naturally, it couldn’t have been a twist-off cap, the way his luck had been going lately. Cal carefully snuck out of the crates with the wine in hand. Feeling along the steel deck of the hull, he decided on a spot to crack it open. He knelt down on the deck. In a swift motion, he bashed the neck of the bottle on the deck at a slanting angle, creating a sharp and echoing shatter. Cool liquid spattered on his pants and spilled onto the floor. Fortunately, the crew was above deck, too far away to hear Cal’s act of desperation.

  Cal righted the wine to preserve its contents and felt around the jagged neck. Bringing it close to his lips, he tested out the shattered glass rim very carefully with his tongue. Cal tipped the bottle back to spill some of its contents into his mouth, sloshing the rich, fermented liquid around to make sure he wasn’t about to swallow slivers of glass.

  He drank it down. It was delicious and velvety like liquid black cherries. The military seamen had gotten the shipment from Samos. Everyone knew the Greeks had invented wine and their hearty soil produced the best in the world, so Cal’s uncle had always said. Cal took another cautious drink, and then another and another until there was no more. He’d never been so gluttonous, but his thirst and frayed nerves demanded it.

  Desperate situations taught new knowledge about oneself. In this case, locked up on a foreign military cruiser—perhaps to be trapped for many days, with the possibility of being tied up and blindfolded as a political hostage when he was discovered—Cal learned he was not opposed to drinking away his sorrows. He fished out another bottle from the crate, cracked open its neck on the deck, and sat, propped against the cargo platform, to empty it in judicious glugs.

  He was soon light-headed and merry. When this ordeal was all over, he would do a circuit of talk shows to tell his story. He could write a book about it. Maybe Brendan’s father could adapt it into a biopic like Captain Phillips with Tom Hanks or Wild with Reese Witherspoon.

  Cal giggled. Who would they cast as him? He would insist on someone Greek, and hot, with gravitas, like Criss Angel, if he dyed his hair blond and could act. Brendan would have to be played by someone handsome and a little quirky and endearing. Maybe they could find real gay actors to play real gay people for a change. It was about time for Hollywood to do a big budget movie like that. Cal imagined movie premieres, red carpets, and award shows, until he started feeling sluggish and numb. He fell asleep in the pitch-black cargo hold.

  CAL STIRRED AWAKE to the sound of a heavy door shrieking open in the void above him. Lights blinked on in the hold, and he heard voices from a distance. Cal propped himself up on his elbows, catching sight of himself in the light for the first time. He looked like he’d lost badly in a game of paintball as a result of his messy binge. He scurried back into the cover of the crates.

  Spying out from his nook, he spotted two military officers descending into the hold from a towering, industrial staircase. He hadn’t noticed that way in before. He hadn’t noticed much of anything about the hold while he’d hidden in the crates. It was the size of an Olympic swimming pool and three or four stories high. Some dozen beds of crates were lined up in rows in the middle of the deck.

  The two officers looked and sounded like they were out for a casual excursion. They had moustaches and beards, tan uniforms with medals, and decorated caps. Stepping down to the landing, they headed straight for the stacks of cargo. One of them held a crowbar and the other a pair of goblets.

  They’d come to sample the wine? Cal made himself as small as he could, wedged between the crates.

  The clack of their shoes against the metal deck traveled toward him, and then he heard a startled mutter. An animated conversation broke out. Dreadfully, that had to be about their discovery of the broken bottles and the puddle of wine Cal had left behind. Brisk steps drew closer, and the officers barked back and forth in Arabic, now standing at the site of his wine-pilfering vandalism. The crate with the pried-open lid was right above Cal’s head. A pair of shiny, black oxford shoes appeared at the edge of the platform. In favor of being dragged out from hiding, Cal stood and showed himself.

  The two men backed up on their heels in alarm.

  Cal raised his hands above his head. “I’m really sorry. I can explain.” That was promising a lot more than he could deliver, but what could he say?

  One of the officers shouted halting words in Arabic. The other gauged Cal warily, clasping a crowbar at his side like a weapon.

  “Really, this is all the biggest mix-up,” Cal said. “I di
dn’t intend to come on board. I was a fugitive. And before that, I was being held hostage by Romanians.” He glanced at the mess he’d created on the deck. “I don’t normally do this sort of thing. I mean, I’ve never done this sort of thing. I’ll clean it up. As soon as I get back to my husband, we’ll pay you back for all the damage. It was just two bottles.” Cal’s cheeks burned. He looked to the men with a hapless grin. “Looks worse than that, doesn’t it?”

  The officer with the crowbar narrowed his eyes at Cal. “You, American?”

  “Yes. Well, Greek originally. Part German and Polish on my mother’s side.”

  The two men deliberated in their native language. The guy with the crowbar stepped closer. He had more medals on his cap and his epaulets than his partner. His eyes lit up with a touch of humor. “How do you come aboard?”

  “It was an accident,” Cal said, relieved the tension appeared to have thawed. “I was running away from this crazy, Greek fisherman. He found me in a lifeboat. I thought for sure I was saved. But he wanted to keep me captive. He followed me to your pier, and I thought I could duck into these crates, just until he lost my trail.” Cal shrugged his shoulders with a smile. “Bad idea, huh?”

  The guys went back and forth with conversation, disbelieving, chuckling, and pointing out Cal’s wine-stained, ill-fitting clothes. It might have been humiliating in other circumstances, but Cal found himself nodding and laughing along with them nervously.

  The head officer confronted Cal soberly. “You come with us.”

  “I’m all yours. Hey, if you have a phone on board, I can call my husband, and he’ll explain everything to you.”

  The man waved for Cal to step out from the platform. Cal squeezed his way through the crates and clopped down on the deck.

  “We make investigation of this,” the officer said. “Meanwhile, you are prisoner.”

  That put things into harsher focus, though Cal supposed he couldn’t blame them for being concerned about security. “I’m getting used to that,” he said. “You know, you might just try the U.S. embassy. I’m pretty sure this has all been reported to them.”

  The officers said nothing. They flanked Cal and walked him toward the stairwell.

  “I really appreciate you guys taking this so well,” Cal said. “Where’s the boat headed anyway?”

  The officers exchanged a glance. The lead man told him, “This is the Abbas Barundi of the Royal Navy of the Sultanate of Maritime Kindah. We are returning home. When we reach port, His Majesty, the King, will make judgment of you.”

  Cal’s eyeballs widened. This did not sound good.

  ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, it was not so bad being a prisoner on the Abbas Barundi of the Sultanate of Maritime Kindah. The officers escorted Cal to the ship’s brig, which he had entirely to himself. His cell room had a cot with freshly laundered linens and a clean toilet and a sink. The young sailor who came by to watch over him spoke some English. His manner was friendly, and he had a pleasant face, with a trim beard and moustache, and curled, jet-black hair poked out from beneath his naval beret. He brought Cal a clean change of clothes, albeit a gray-and-white striped prisoner’s jumpsuit. But the drawstring trousers and the roomy, short-sleeved shirt were comfy, and the uniformed young man even gave him a pair of pedi-foam slippers, like the kind they gave to patients in hospitals.

  Passing a glance over Cal’s wine-stained lips and sodden feet, the sailor offered to escort him to the bathhouse. There, Cal stripped down and washed up as modestly as the situation permitted, in a communal shower room, with his very accommodating warden staring at him the entire time. Maybe he hadn’t encountered many Caucasians in his young seafaring life.

  The sailor brought him a towel and asked if he would like something to eat. Cal took him up on that offer enthusiastically. They went back to his cell, where he locked Cal up. The young man returned in short order with a tray loaded with plates of food—chicken kabobs, rice with vegetables and lentils, flatbread, yogurt and cheese, and an ice-cold can of Coca Cola.

  It was such a big meal Cal asked his guard if he would like some. The sailor’s face darkened, and he politely declined. Taking a peek up and down the gray-painted corridor, he waved for Cal to come out and sit on the floor to eat, and then he brought out a transistor radio from a cargo pocket in his fatigues. The sailor turned it on and tuned into an Arabian pop music station. He sat down cross-legged in front of Cal, shrugging his thick, dark eyebrows at his clever contrivance of some entertainment for the two of them.

  Cal dug into the food with a plastic fork and smiled at his companion. It was far more fresh and tasty than he’d have expected from a military galley.

  “My name’s Callisthenes, but everyone calls me Cal,” he said. He looked at the badge above the sailor’s shirt pocket, but it was written in Arabic. “What’s your name? Or should I call you by your military title?”

  The sailor fingered his badge, grinning bashfully. He may have been Cal’s age or younger. “I am only ensign,” he said. “You say Faraj bin Abdullah Al-Moghadam.” He emphasized, patting his chest, “For you, I am Faraj.”

  “Faraj,” Cal repeated. He scarfed down some more food and wiped his mouth with the paper napkin Faraj had brought him. “This is really delicious. I haven’t had a real meal since the rehearsal dinner. For my wedding. I don’t even remember how long ago that was.” His face went slack. “I don’t even know what day it is.”

  “This is Friday,” Faraj told him, looking pleased with himself at his fluency in English. “This is twenty-seventh day of September.”

  Cal’s mouth hung open for a moment. “I’ve been gone for five days. My family probably thinks I’m dead. My husband—”

  He halted for a moment. It was Cal’s first chance to unburden himself of the facts to anyone, and even though Faraj was a stranger, he looked like the kind of person who might understand. “We had a fight. Right before I was kidnapped by the Romanians.”

  He told Faraj the whole story, from the condom and tie appearing out of nowhere on the morning of his wedding to the fisherman from Samos who wanted to hold him hostage in his cliffside cabin. “I miss Brendan so much. He’s my soul mate. We were supposed to have our honeymoon in Mauritius. Then I was going to get my master’s degree in classical studies, and he was going to take a course in nonprofit management. He’s going to start his own charity for homeless gay youth. How amazing is that?”

  Faraj smiled at him, in a general sort of way. “You like Arabian music?” He looked to the transistor radio. “This is very famous singer from Lebanon. Make beautiful melody.”

  “Yes. I like it,” Cal said. “It’s kind of like Bollywood. But I don’t mind the shrieking as much.”

  Faraj’s brow narrowed. “How you make life in America? They say everyone is criminal there. Only very rich survive. And very rich is hating Muslims. And fat. How you are not fat?”

  “Oh. I guess I’m just lucky. It must be genetics. I eat whatever I want.” Cal shoveled in another forkful of chicken and rice and chewed it down. “And I work out sometimes, but honestly, I don’t really enjoy it. Especially the cardio machines. My husband, Brendan, he works out all the time.”

  “You have beautiful body,” Faraj said. “Like rich, American movie star.”

  “Thanks,” Cal said. “But believe me, I’m nobody famous back in America. I’m just a broke, college grad. We’re basically a dime a dozen. I’ve never even met a rich American movie star.” Cal thought on it. “I once saw Kevin Bacon on the street in the West Village, but that doesn’t really count. Everyone in America has run into Kevin Bacon. And he’s a lot shorter than he looks on TV. ”

  “Why you pierce nipple?” Faraj asked. “This is punishment for crime?”

  “Oh no,” Cal said. He hiked up his shirt to show Faraj the piercing. “I did that willingly. On my twenty-first birthday. It was my best friend Derek’s idea. We were both supposed to get our nipples pierced, and I went first and he chickened out.”

  Faraj stared at the l
ittle stainless steel barbell ring bisecting Cal’s nipple. “This is for making sex games?”

  “Oh, not with Derek.” Cal let his shirt fall down. “I just liked the way it looked.” He blushed a little. “It does make your nipple a lot more sensitive, which can be fun.” Cal looked at Faraj instructively. “American men get all kinds of piercings. I know a guy who has a Prince Albert, and his scrotum pierced in a dozen places. He looks like an underwater sea creature. Do you know what a Prince Albert is?”

  Faraj’s face screwed up. “This is obese black man with voice of pervert, Bill Cosby?”

  Cal giggled. “That’s Fat Albert. Prince Albert is British.”

  Faraj fell back on his thoughts. “Is it true American men make shameless lust together in light of day, in middle of street?”

  Cal pshawed. “I hope you don’t mind me saying it, but that sounds like propaganda to me. It’s true, things get a bit raunchy at Pride parades, but that’s only once a year. Or maybe your government only broadcasts footage from Palm Springs. I’ve never been, but I’ve heard that clothing-optional resorts are very popular there.”

  “You have very beautiful, how you say, penis.”

  “Wow. Look at that. A little warming up, and your English is really good.”

  Faraj gazed at him earnestly. “I have big penis.” He rustled with his belt buckle. “I show you, and we touch each other with mouths like dogs.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary, Faraj.” Cal said. “I mean, I’m flattered. But I’m engaged now, and we don’t have that kind of relationship. Don’t get me wrong—I think sexual liberation is wonderful. But in my opinion, most open relationships are doomed to fail.”

  Faraj reaffixed his belt, looking crestfallen. Cal glanced kindly at his young admirer.