by Hy Conrad
“Luther, of course.”
“Of course.” He was referring to Luther Washington, a young, ambitious, very clean entrepreneur who ran a small limousine company that Monk had bought using the reward money from an earlier case.
“Luther and I have been working on this for days behind your back. I even let him help me pack.”
“So this wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want you to talk me out of it again—you and your talk of islands and submarines and old boats. I knew what you were doing.”
Monk had me there. All the same, I made a mental note to arrange a serious sit-down with Luther. Luther’s help could get Monk into way too much unsupervised trouble.
“It’s my business, too,” he added, pouting like a five-year-old.
“It’s your business, too,” I agreed. “I’m proud of you.”
“And it won’t be so horrible. The ship is barely rocking.”
“That’s because we’re in port.”
“And the room’s not too small.” He looked around. “I can make it work. It was cheaper than your room, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
He lowered his voice, even though there was no one else in the room. “You paid for the single supplement and I didn’t. I don’t know why they try to charge single people extra money. But it’s not right. So I didn’t check that box, and it saved us a lot.”
I was beginning to get that bad, familiar feeling. Here we go!
“Adrian, the single supplement means you get the room to yourself. If you don’t pay, the cruise line will pair you up with someone else. A stranger.”
He laughed and shook his head in disbelief. “No, that can’t be right.”
“Yes, it is right.”
“They can’t make me sleep with a total stranger. It’s against the law.”
“No, it’s not.”
“How about maritime law?”
“Adrian, we need to go to the hotel director and get you a single room.”
“This is a single room.” He pointed to the second bed. “That? That’s a cushioned shelf.”
“Don’t argue. I think the ship is full.” I grabbed him by the sleeve, and we were almost out of the cabin when the inevitable appeared in Monk’s doorway in the shape of a man, blocking our exit with the sheer volume of his bloated stomach.
You would have thought from the way the man was weaving back and forth that the ship was already at sea. “Whoops,” slurred the balding, aging frat boy. “I’m looking for cabin 457. Hey, this is 457! We’re all in the wrong room.”
“You’re in the wrong room,” said Monk, clever as always.
“Hey, are you my roomie?” He was smiling and looking at me. “Let’s toast. You, me, and my buddy Jack.”
“My name’s not Jack,” said Monk.
“Not talking about you,” said the man as he pulled a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s from behind his back.
“You wish,” I said, then waited a second until he breathed. The man’s stomach was like a wave going out, giving us just enough room to squeeze past him into the hall. “Adrian, come on.”
Monk and I took the main staircase a flight down to the lobby. The ship’s horn was sounding one long blast. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the break in the rail where the gangway was being slowly lifted up and away from the Golden Sun. I did not point this out. Instead, I led Monk into a sharp left turn.
When we arrived at Guest Services, we were lucky enough to find no one in front of us. “There’s been a mistake,” Monk blurted out to the man in the ex-Marine crew cut behind the counter. “You gave away half my room.” It actually wasn’t a bad blurt. I’d expected worse.
“Hello, Bill,” I said cheerily to Bill, hotel manager, Santa Fe, New Mexico. I smiled. “How are you today, Bill? My friend here needs a new room. He didn’t understand the concept of a single supplement.”
“I can’t live in the same room with anyone,” Monk said. “It’s a medical condition.”
“It kind of is,” I agreed. “We need a private cabin. Whatever you have.”
“We have nothing,” Bill said. “I don’t even have to look.”
“Could you look anyway,” Monk pleaded, “and then say something different?”
“I wish I could,” Bill said with real sincerity. “I mean, this ship never sells out. But this week? Not a free bed anywhere.”
“What about the infirmary?” I asked. “You must have a bed in the infirmary.”
“It’s not really set up for that,” said Bill. “Besides, he’s not sick.”
“What about the morgue?” Monk asked, displaying a hopeful grin. “You’ve got to have a morgue.”
“Sir?” Bill leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Yes, we do have a morgue, but it’s not something we like to broadcast.”
“Great. Then Natalie can sleep in the morgue and I’ll take her room.”
“I am not sleeping in the morgue,” I said.
“Why not?” Monk asked. “It’s clean. It’s quiet. It’s cool.”
“It’s a freezer,” I said.
“No one will be sleeping in the morgue,” Bill said, almost shouting the news.
“Well, then, I need to get off,” Monk said. At least that’s what I assume he said. You couldn’t really hear him, due to the three short blasts of the horn that were signaling our departure from Pier 35. Beneath our feet, the deck began to rumble gently.
Monk didn’t react quite the way he normally did in such an emergency. And believe me, I’ve been through plenty of them. After slowly digesting the news, he settled into a corner of the lobby, his back to the wall, and began with half an hour of deep breathing. Some might call it hyperventilation. I could see he was trying his best to be brave.
This coping process was interrupted by another long blast of the horn and the PA announcement of the lifeboat drill.
From the moment I considered the possibility of Monk getting on a ship, I’d pictured him trying to deal with a lifeboat drill—the orange vests, the lining up next to other people, all the official talk about sinking ships and little boats.
But when it really happened, he was frighteningly calm. He let me put on his flotation vest and followed me to our mustering station on the starboard aft section of the Granada deck. He didn’t say a word as one of the waiters explained to our group of twenty the procedures in case of a shipwreck, including the possible need to reinflate our vests by blowing into a tube while bobbing in fifty-degree salt water.
Some might have called his condition catatonic. But it was his way of coping. I knew Monk wasn’t processing any of the emergency information. To be honest, neither was I. Neither were half of the other passengers. They were too busy either chatting aimlessly or making Titanic jokes.
I knew Monk’s calm couldn’t last. In fact, I was concerned that it had lasted as long as it did. Finally, when the drill was over and we were heading back up to our cabins, I made the mistake of talking.
“You can take off the life vest,” I said gently.
Monk suddenly came to life. He grabbed at his vest with both hands as if I’d just threatened him. “Over my dead body,” he growled. “Over my dead, drowned, bloated body that little fish are going to nibble on the ocean floor where my bones will scatter and eventually become part of a coral reef.” A second later, he was taking the stairway two steps at a time, past his floor and my floor and on upward.
“Adrian, please.” I was chasing him and had a sinking feeling—no pun intended—of exactly where he was heading.
When I caught up, he was on the highest level—staff only—and had forced his way past two officers and onto the navigation bridge. “I need to get off,” he shouted. His manic voice echoed off the rows of shiny equipment. “It’s an emergency.”
The entire bridge snapped to a kind of mental attention. “What emergency, sir?” someone shouted back.
“I can’t live with my roommate.�
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The captain was there at the wheel, front and center. To his credit, he didn’t laugh or yell or kick us out. Instead, he turned command over to his first officer, then led us into a small communications room next door.
Captain Sheffield was probably still in his forties, square-shouldered, with a military bearing. He was blessed with a high mane of wavy white hair, perfectly groomed, which he obviously considered his best feature.
“You know,” he told Monk, “you don’t have to keep wearing the vest.”
“I do if I want to avoid being a coral reef.” Monk had strapped it on so tight that it was starting to affect his breathing. “I need to get off.”
“You should have been here half an hour ago,” said the captain. “That’s when the port pilot went back with his boat.”
“What about turning around and dropping me off?” Monk suggested. “Like a do-over.”
The captain explained that this couldn’t be done, and even if it could, the port of San Francisco would require another docking fee and pilot fee, which couldn’t be authorized because of a simple roommate problem.
Monk’s other suggestions for evacuation were also rejected. The ship did not have a helicopter. We wouldn’t be allowed to commandeer a lifeboat. And, although Monk had learned how to swim years ago from a correspondence course, he wasn’t very good at it.
Our next approach was to go back down to level four and try to reason with Darby McGinnis, Monk’s new roommate. I checked my watch as we walked. Monk’s first little catastrophe had caused me to miss the B. to Sea orientation meeting, and I was in danger now of missing the captain’s welcome cocktail party.
Back in Monk’s cabin, Darby McGinnis seemed to be a genial, easygoing guy. Instantly, I figured he and Monk wouldn’t get along. At the end of their twenty-minute discussion, Darby had—very unreasonably—refused to bunk in the morgue. He’d also refused to swim to shore, since he couldn’t swim either and claimed to get panicky even in a bathtub. Why do people like this go on cruises? I don’t know.
Darby also refused to sleep in the hall and refused Monk’s idea of sharing a room with me on level five. Actually, I’m the one who refused that. But Darby agreed that we would need to at least have a drink first. Everything with Darby seemed to require a drink first.
It wasn’t much later, when we were alone again, that Monk made his final plea. “How about you and Malcolm Leeds?” he asked. “I know Malcolm’s here. The two of you can shack up in his room and I can have yours.”
“We are not shacking up,” I said firmly.
“Why not?” Monk countered. “He likes you. You like him. I get to have a room to myself. Everybody’s happy.”
“Adrian, you are not pimping me out so you can get a single room.”
“Pimping?” He shook his head. “Natalie, that is disgusting. And selfish. You know I’d do it for you if the situation were reversed.”
I couldn’t help gasping. “You’d do it for me?”
“Yes.” He looked sincere. “If the roles were reversed. If you were magically me and I were magically you, I would certainly share a room with a man I liked so that you, meaning I, could have a room to myself.”
I knew that in Monk’s fevered mind this statement made perfect sense, which was a sign that I should stop arguing with him.
The two of us had wound up at the rear of the Valencia deck, in lounge chairs pressed safely back against the wall. If I craned my neck, I could see past the railing to the last little specks of San Francisco, disappearing in the distance. This was not how I’d imagined spending my first evening on board the Golden Sun.
“You didn’t respond to my hypothetical argument,” he said. “I would switch rooms with you.”
“Really? Then let’s pretend you did. Thanks for the room, Adrian. I appreciate it.” And I got up to leave.
“Where are you going?” he asked. “What about my disaster?”
“I’m going inside,” I said over my shoulder. “I’m chilly.”
“What room are you in? Natalie?”
I pretended not to hear.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mr. Monk and the Lifeboat
According to the schedule, the captain’s welcome cocktail party would last until six thirty. After abandoning Monk on the Valencia deck, I had time to slap on my red name tag and hurry down to the lobby. Once there, I got my hands on a much-needed glass of white wine and began scouring the room for Malcolm. We had made loose plans to meet here and then sit together at dinner.
As I walked into the lobby atrium with its winding staircase and polished marble, I saw a fair number of the passengers milling among the display of raw vegetables and plastic wineglasses. A large ice sculpture gleamed in the center of it all.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting from this at-sea business conference. Perhaps more business? By my rough estimate, about half of the people here were older couples or families with children, none of them with red name tags, and none who might be interested in Monk and Teeger’s shiny new brochure.
At a little raised platform at the front of the lounge was Mariah Linkletter. The captain had just finished with his welcoming remarks, and she had taken back the microphone to tie up the last few details.
“Thank you, Captain Sheffield,” she said, as if a king had just deigned to speak. “We are so excited to have you all with us on the Golden Sun. I have to confess this coastal cruise to Mexico is my favorite of all of our itineraries. The forecast for the next week looks wonderful. And we’re so glad to welcome the B. to Sea Conference. This is their tenth time with us and every time, we all have such great fun.”
There was a smattering of applause and a few little whoops. Then Mariah continued, outlining the exciting schedule for this evening and tomorrow. I would try to list the events for you, but honestly, I wasn’t even listening.
“I missed you at the B. to Sea orientation.” It was Malcolm, a concerned smile on his lips, coming directly at me with a glass of white wine in each hand. I took the larger one.
“I had a little emergency,” I whispered.
A serious-looking man in a blue blazer shushed us. We apologized with a nod and stayed shushed through Mariah’s cruise director pitch, which ended with a standard plea to please let her know if there was anything she could do to make our voyage more enjoyable. Something about the way she said it actually made you believe. Here was a girl who seemed to treat every little cruise like a brand-new adventure. I knew that was all part of her job, but it didn’t stop me from liking her.
At the end, I led an enthusiastic round of applause, then turned back to Malcolm. We toasted with our white wines.
“Did I miss much at the orientation?”
“Yes and no. It was a chance to introduce yourself, which would have been helpful. You said you had an emergency?”
“My phobic, OCD partner decided to join us at the last minute.”
“He’s here?” Malcolm instantly seemed to understand. “Is this going to be a problem?”
“No, it’s not,” I said emphatically.
“Good.” He sipped at his wine, using the moment to glance around the lounge. “So, what do you think?”
“I thought this cruise was going to be all business,” I said, letting my disappointment show.
“I thought so, too. Apparently the organizers couldn’t fill the ship. Natalie, I’m sorry. The last time I did this, it was packed.”
“It’s still packed. Just not with the right people.”
“It’s going to be great.” He slipped his hand on my arm to reassure me. “I met some contacts already. One’s a top-notch defense lawyer. He’s dying to meet you.”
“You’ve been talking about me?” What a simpering thing to say! I could have kicked myself.
“And I hope you talk about me.” Malcolm hadn’t seemed to notice my simper. “That’s how networking works. It’s better to build someone else up. You can return the favor for me.”
“Right,” I said. “Go
od strategy.”
“I’ll be sitting at the lawyer’s table tonight. I’ll save you a seat.”
“That would be great,” I said and watched as he waved hello to a man across the floor in a gray, expensive haircut and a Tommy Bahama shirt.
“So I can count on you?” he added. “You have to start making connections right away.”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
A pair of toddlers, dressed identically in polka-dot skirts with bows, started playing a noisy game of tag in the space between us, and when I glanced up again to find Malcolm, he was gone. Just as well. I sipped my wine and pretended to mingle.
I have had my share of standing alone at cocktail parties. There are certain tricks you can do to make yourself look less pathetic, such as appearing to search the crowd for someone or standing near a conversation and pretending you’re taking part.
Captain Sheffield, still looking freshly pressed in his whites, was in one of these groups, and I absentmindedly drifted his way. A woman near his age, stylish and expensively dressed, was hanging off him, looking attentive. I don’t know how I knew this was his wife, but I did. Perhaps it was the proprietary death grip she was exerting on his arm.
“Hello,” said the captain as I made eye contact. It took him a second before remembering me. “Did your friend get his problem straightened out?’
“I’m sure he’s dealing with it,” I said, then took the opportunity to make my formal introduction. “My name’s Natalie Teeger.” If I was going to make a success of this week, I had to get used to introducing myself.
The captain responded by taking my hand between both of his and cupping it warmly before letting it drift away. “Nice to officially meet you, Natalie.”
“And my name is Sylvia. I’m the captain’s wife.” The expensively dressed woman did not offer to shake. “Did Ms. Teeger have a problem, Dennis? You didn’t mention a problem.”
“It was just a cabin thing,” I said apologetically. “We shouldn’t have even bothered him.”
“I see,” said Sylvia. And within the next ten seconds, she guided the captain’s arm and his attention back to the rest of their little group, edging me out of their inner circle. Time for a second drink.
