Atomic Lobster

by Tim Dorsey

  “What’s that?”

  “Sixty-gig personal digital movie viewer,” said Serge. “Five-inch LCD screen in the letterbox format. Big-time movie magic in the elegant simplicity of a compact, travel-friendly package. I downloaded all my flicks into it.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a cruise. I don’t want to stay cooped up in my cabin the whole time.” He turned it on. People began screaming and drowning. “This way I can walk around the ship enjoying movies.”

  Serge began unpacking.

  Coleman hung his beer bong from a mirror.

  Rachael found the key to the mini-bar.

  Serge ran by.

  Coleman sat back on the bed with rolling papers.

  Rachael came over with an armload of miniatures.

  Serge ran the other way.

  For Coleman and Rachael, any type of trip in straight condition was cause for panic. To be on the safe side, they began toking and pouring. Serge ran by. He probed every nook, switched every switch, set the electronic combination on the safe, tightened the roll-proof luggage restraints, turned the temperature all the way down in the micro-fridge, changed the safe’s combination, tested the ship’s internal phone system—“Hello?” “This is Room Service.” “Just checking”—stowed all his gear, restowed it, reset the safe, grabbed a digital camera, stuck his personal movie viewer in a pocket, opened the door to the hall and called to Coleman and Rachael. “Let’s not waste time in the room.”

  Sunset was a postcard.

  It drew an overflow audience to the pool deck. A Calypso band set the mood. A dozen daiquiri bars had Disney World lines. Some passengers swam, others lounged and read paperbacks by the fading light. But most were at the western railing with drinks and cameras.

  Serge and Coleman leaned against their own remote section of rail, apart from the others, toward the fantail with the lifeboats. Serge was busy with his camera, and Coleman stuck his head inside the neck hole of his T-shirt to light a joint under current wind conditions.

  Click, click, click. Serge lowered his camera and turned to the headless man. “What a view! I’m in a fuckin’ fantastic mood! How about you? Can you dig it?”

  “Absolutely.” Coleman’s head popped out. “Big boats are perfect for smoking dope.”

  “That was in Moby-Dick, right?”

  “No, really. Absolutely safe. Ocean breeze clears the smell, and you hold the joint over the side. That way, even if The Man spots you, just flick it in the water. What’s he gonna do?”

  Serge paused and lifted his chin toward the horizon. “This has to be the most majestic sunset I’ve seen in my entire life. Let’s stop and take it in the way God meant it to be.” He reached in his pocket and began watching his personal movie viewer.

  Coleman looked over at the tiny screen. “Where do I know that theme song from?”

  “This thing also downloads old TV shows. It’s The Love Boat.”

  “I loved that show,” said Coleman.

  “American classic,” said Serge. “Populated entirely by guest stars whose careers had been tagged ‘do not resuscitate.’”

  “Is that Charles Nelson Riley?”

  “I’m still pissed they canceled Lidsville.”

  Rachael returned from one of the drink lines sipping a zombie. She wanted a hit of Coleman’s weed and tapped him on the shoulder.

  Coleman jumped. “The Man!” He flung the joint over the side. The wind brought it back. A small explosion of sparks in Coleman’s face. “Ahhhhh! My eyes!”

  Rachael chased the windblown roach across the deck and stomped on it.

  “Don’t ruin this for me,” said Serge. “The Skyway bridge is coming up. I’ve always wanted to sail under the Skyway.”

  Coleman blinked a few times. “I’m not blind. Good.” He looked over the railing. “Wow! We’re way the hell up here!”

  “People don’t realize the incredible freeboard these things have,” said Serge. “The swimming pool back there is like twenty stories high.”

  “Doesn’t look like we’ll be able to fit under the Skyway.”

  “We will,” said Serge, “but just barely.” Click, click, click. “Let’s dig the approach.”

  Rachael arrived with a flat joint. “Got a light?”

  “Here.”

  She stuck her head inside her shirt.

  FORTY-SIX

  MEANWHILE…

  The highway trooper was out of his patrol car, pleading desperately. Suicide counselors arrived. “It’s not as bad as you think. Let’s talk…”

  “What’s to talk about?” said Gaylord Wainscotting, hitching a leg over the railing for his death leap.

  “Don’t do it!”

  “Life’s not worth living.” Wainscotting pushed off, diving from the highest point of the Sunshine Skyway bridge.

  He fell a short distance and splashed into the swimming pool of the SS Serendipity. He bobbed to the surface and looked around. “Fuck.” He got out and took a seat at a bar.

  Three people walked behind his stool.

  Coleman and Rachael tugged Serge’s sleeves. “Stop!” “There’s a bar!”

  He kept walking. “There’ll be another shortly.”

  “How do you know?” asked Coleman.

  “The first law of cruise ships: Passengers must always be within thirty feet of booze.”

  The trio continued across the Lido Deck, passing the Poolview Bar, the Oceanview Bar, the Terrace Bar, the Vista Bar, Tradewinds, Windjammers, Rumrunners, Schooners, Barnacles, Harpoon Hank’s, Crabby Bill’s, the Rusty Anchor, the Crow’s Nest, the Captain’s Table, and the Poop Deck.

  “Coleman…Coleman?” Serge looked around. “Where are you?”

  “Serge! Look!” Coleman stood with arms outstretched. “I can touch two different bars at the same time. Jesus loves me.”

  “Will you stop fooling around and come on?”

  Rachael’s turn to veer off. She headed up a staircase to the highest sundeck on the ship, wrapped around one of the smokestacks.

  “Where’s she going?” asked Coleman.

  Serge directed his attention to a sign near the bottom of the stairs. CLOTHING OPTIONAL.

  “What’s that mean?”

  Serge told him.

  “Wait,” said Coleman. “You mean all these years I’ve seen that sign, there were naked babes?”

  “This is what I keep trying to tell you,” said Serge. “If you’re going to live in this country, you need to speak the language.”

  They continued toward the bow. A growing crowd had begun following Serge. They passed an elevator. The doors opened. The Davenports stepped out.

  “I can’t believe my baby’s getting married,” said Martha. “It’s going to be the most beautiful wedding ever. They’ll stand right there under the waterslide.”

  Debbie squeezed Trevor’s arm. “It’s going to be a sunset ceremony.”

  They walked by the restrooms and into the atrium.

  A restroom door opened behind them. An immense figure with one hand stepped out and headed toward the stern, continuing a sweep of the ship for his prey. He passed a handsomely chiseled man in a white uniform walking the other direction. An Iowa State freshman clung to his arm. “You’re really the captain?” They climbed through a port hatch onto the forward deck and heard yelling.

  A man stood precariously at the very point of the bow. Dolphins frolicked below as the ship knifed through the sea. Serge raised his head into the wind. “I’m the king of the world!”

  He stepped down and turned to the crowd that had been following. “Okay, you guys try. Let’s build that confidence!”

  Someone with big, floppy shoes stepped up. “I’m the king of the world!” The next person with a rubber ball for a nose: “I’m king…” Again and again.

  A retired couple from Walla Walla reclined on a pair of loungers facing the other way. The wife was trying to read. “What’s all that noise?”

  Her husband looked over his shoulder. “People yelling ‘I�
�m the king of the world!’ Like in Titanic.”

  She turned a page. “Who’s yelling?”

  “Bunch of clowns.”

  “No kidding.”

  Four elderly women walked in front of the couple.

  “Any sign of Steve and his friends?”

  “No,” said Edna. More yelling from the bow. “What are those clowns doing?”

  “Titanic.”

  “That reminds me,” said Ethel. “I saw this beautiful necklace in the galleria called the Heart of the Ocean, exact replica of the one Kate Winslet wore in the movie.”

  “Just a cheap fake.”

  “No, the duty-free lady told me it was one hundred percent genuine tanzanite. Very rare.”

  “A gem so rare it can only be found on cruise ships.”

  The women stepped through a hatch and onto the starboard passageway. “Where are those guys?”

  They scooted over to make way for an oncoming line of six men in shorts and tropical shirts, the same ones who had formed the undercover perimeter around the cruise terminal the day before. Foxtrot’s backup team.

  Actually, they weren’t a real backup team. The primary unit was unavailable, on stakeout at Orlando International for a major ecstasy shipment from Rotterdam. These were six desk agents who constantly filed requests for a field assignment because they’d never had one. This was their first case. They were the Backup Backup Team. They were jazzed.

  “I can’t wait to meet Foxtrot!”

  “How will we know who he is?”

  “We’re not supposed to know.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re just backup. Foxtrot will only reveal himself if something goes wrong. If not, we’ll never know who he was.”

  “Darn, I was hoping to meet him.” They all stepped through a hatch onto the forward deck. “The guy’s a freakin’ legend.”

  “Freakin’ head case from what I hear.”

  “That’s what makes him so good—”

  “I’m the king of the world!”

  The tropical shirts stopped. “What’s that yelling?”

  Serge was back up on the rail, showing the others how to project with more intensity. He climbed down. “Just keep repeating and you’ll get the hang of it. I’ll check back later.” He headed toward the starboard hatch. Coleman followed. “I still don’t understand how we got this cruise so cheap.”

  “There are even better deals,” said Serge. “When you’re older, you can be a ballroom dancer and take all the cruises you want for free.”

  “Free?”

  “Rich widows need someone to dance with.”

  “What do you have to do?”

  Serge nodded politely at the approaching line of tropical shirts. “Just don’t step on their toes during the fox-trot.”

  “Fox-trot?” said Coleman.

  The tropical shirts turned as the pair walked by.

  “You hear what that guy just called him?”

  Two floors below, Promenade Deck, Agent Foxtrot anonymously joined the thick foot traffic flowing down nightclub row. It was called Boulevard of Dreams. Everyone had life preservers.

  An emergency bell clanged three times. Passengers streamed up stairwells to their muster stations for the Coast Guard–required safety drill at the beginning of every cruise that everyone hated.

  “Hold up!” yelled Serge, running into a restaurant and waving a preserver over his head. “Did I miss anything?”

  “Sir, you’re on time,” said the calming voice of the crew member in charge of the muster station. “Just relax.”

  “Relax?” said Serge. “On one of these boats? Not after that rogue wave hit your other ship. Didn’t flip like in the movies, but all those ambulances at the dock probably weren’t the photos you wanted to see in the papers.”

  “Sir,” the crew member said in an urgent whisper. “Please lower your voice.”

  “Oh, right. Better not get them hysterical to the point where they start counting lifeboats, because there aren’t enough. I counted.”

  Something crashed into Serge from behind. “Coleman, what are you doing with that life preserver around your face?”

  “Can’t…breathe…”

  “Because you got the strap around your neck three times. Put down that drink and let me help you.”

  “Sir, is your friend okay?”

  “Not even close.”

  Serge finished refitting Coleman’s flotation device, and the crew member got everyone’s attention. “The safety drill will now begin….” More of a talk than a drill. All the brainless things you’re not supposed to do. “…No open fires in staterooms, no hanging off the outside of balconies—”

  A shrill, piercing sound. The safety leader covered his ears in pain.

  Serge waved something in the air. “Look at this really cool whistle I found in my life preserver! Can I keep it?”

  “Sir, please…”

  “Sorry.”

  “As I was saying…” The safety leader resumed his seemingly endless list of instructions. He stopped and looked around. “Do I hear screaming?”

  Serge held up his movie viewer. “Poseidon Adventure. The original, not the remake with Kurt Russell…Ouch, that guy just fell in burning oil.”

  “Sir, please turn that off for the remainder of the safety drill.”

  “Sorry, you’re right. Undivided attention!” Serge pulled a signal mirror from his pocket and held it to his face at a forty-five-degree upward angle.

  The safety leader forgot where he’d left off, and started his talk again from the beginning. Someone bumped into his back. He stumbled and turned. Serge stumbled the other way and caught his balance.

  “Sir…”

  Serge angled the mirror to his face again and began walking. “I’m listening. Go ahead.” He passed in front of the safety leader and crashed into a table.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What’s it look like?” Serge tripped over a chair. “Learning to walk on the ceiling.”

  “This is the safety drill!”

  “Exactly. I’m doing extra credit for the capsize part.”

  “Sir!”

  Serge passed in front of the safety leader again. “Can’t be too prepared for the capsize part, especially ceiling-walking. Make one wrong turn at a chandelier and you end up banging on the sealed bulkhead of a flooding compartment: ‘Dear God, I’m sorry for not paying attention during the safety drill! Glub, glub, glub, glub, glub.’ That’s no way to take a cruise.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  THAT EVENING

  The sky grew dark over the Gulf of Mexico. Passengers began filling the Nautilus Dining Room for the first formal seating. Moonlight shafted through portholes.

  Serge was already planted in the middle of a large corner booth, napkin tucked into the neck of his life preserver. He chugged his third cup of coffee. Coleman finished another glass of champagne and signaled for the waiter. Not pictured: Rachael, shoplifting in the boutiques.

  Others arrived at the booth. A wide polyester couple. Serge stood smartly. He elbowed Coleman.

  “What?”

  “Up!”

  They shook hands. “Serge A. Storms, Tampa.”

  “Vernon Haymaker, Muncie. This is my wife, Pearl.”

  They sat. Serge sparkled with caffeine interest. “So, Vern, what do you do?”

  “Plastic injection molding.”

  “Really?” Serge leaned forward on his elbows. “That’s utterly fascinating! Would I recognize any of your work?”

  “You know those little plastic scoops in powdered drink cans?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s us.”

  “I use those! Small world!”

  “Been there twenty-three years.”

  “So you must own the company now.”

  “No, I work on the line.”

  His wife nudged him. “You don’t just work on the line.” She turned to Serge. “He watches the temperature gauges.”

  “Good f
or you!” said Serge. “Very important position! Don’t listen to the talk behind your back. Remember that big plastic-scoop explosion in Thailand? Poor bastards blown out factory windows with scoops melted in their hair. Except the guy at the temperature gauges who was vaporized on the spot.” Serge held up an empty cup. “Waiter, more coffee.” He bent forward, lowering his voice. “Heard a few guys fell in the vat of molten plastic, but they didn’t throw out the batch. Just hushed it up and shipped the scoops out anyway. That’s why I stopped using scoops.”

  More synthetic fiber arrived. Serge jumped up. “Serge A. Storms, sunny Tampa!…”

  “Earl Pope, Newport News. This is my wife, Opal.”

  “So, Earl Pope…Hey, I just realized we got an Opal and a Pearl at the same table! If the next couple has a Ruby, I’ll absolutely shit myself! What’s your line, Earl?”

  “Post-sandblasting.”

  “Post?”

  “You know how they sandblast dry docks at the shipyards?”

  “Of course.”

  “Someone has to scoop up the sand.”

  “That’s you?”

  The next table: six eavesdropping men in tropical shirts.

  “We’re not supposed to be this close. Violates protocol.”

  “But it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to study his technique….”

  Next table: Martha Davenport swelled with joy as she gazed out a dark porthole. “Just think, Debbie: That was the last sunset you’ll see single.” Trevor: Just think, this is your last night a free man.

  Diagonally across the restaurant was another large corner booth. A single person ate a slab of meat with his hands. The waiters had tried seating five different couples at the table, but they all suddenly lost their appetites. That was just fine with the lone diner. Tex McGraw methodically scanned the room. His eyes came to rest on a lean man with a napkin tucked in his life preserver.

  “…Just a puddle by the time they finally got the sandblaster turned off,” said Serge. “Ooooh, here comes our food.”