by Daniel Pyne
“That’s me. I got a little lost getting here; I think I typed in the wrong address on my phone.”
“The port doesn’t fare well on Google Maps, no. Waze is better but so aggravating.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be concerned with, truly.” That light melody Irish makes of words. “I’m First Mate Mulligan. We need to hit our window of shoving off. Bit like an airport runway, timing is all. Miss your turn, and you’re back of the line.” Mulligan takes Sentro’s battered duffel and small rolling suitcase from the trunk of the car. “This the sum of it, then?”
“You mean my luggage? Yes. Please, I can carry that.”
“You can, and you will, once we get you on board.”
A couple of other crewmen have come down to help collect Sentro’s luggage, but they just stand staring, awkward, because the first mate can easily handle both of her bags himself.
“Captain says we’re set to go, Mr. Mulligan.” Sentro catches herself scanning their faces to rank them on a threat scale. Stop.
“Groovy.” Mulligan waves the crewmen back to the ship and gestures for Sentro to walk ahead of him. “Freight don’t wait. Welcome aboard, Ms. Sentro.” When she grasps the greasy gangway handrail, she understands why they all wear gloves.
“Well, there’s a thing.”
Tugging her rolling bag off the elevator, she can’t at first find the source of the comment, as her eyes are slow adjusting to the gloomy corridor ahead.
“Determined to show us all up, are you?” A woman’s voice, disembodied.
“No.” Sentro flattens herself against a bulkhead wall as a wheezing, obese male passenger with a trio of huge metal trunks comes the other way and directs a crew member to squeeze them through the narrow door of his berth. Given the size of the ship, the cramped quarters are a slight disappointment and a reminder: boats and their OCD nautical restraint. The female voice asks something else that gets lost in the ruckus of the fat man’s luggage. “What?” Then Sentro sees her: a rumpled young woman who clearly knows she looks good in anything has stepped out of an open doorway. Sentro guesses, from the accent, she’s a product of the British Commonwealth.
“Fontaine Fox. Hullo.”
Pale skin and that tangled jet-black just-had-sex hair Sentro has seen in Vogue at the salon where she gets hers cut and always wonders how it’s done; the Fox woman seems to take hard note of Sentro’s minimal baggage as it comes past her.
“Or is there a matched set of leather luggage and a mahogany wardrobe meeting us at another port, like in the novel.”
“What novel?”
“Any one of them. You know what I mean. Where they steam across the Atlantic and dress in tuxedos and have issues.”
“Aubrey Sentro.”
“What?”
“My name.”
Fontaine laughs. “I thought you were speaking in some romance language I’m not acquainted with.” And then: “Really?”
“Really.”
“Americans and their unusual names.”
“I guess.” Sentro sparks to an odd, primal thrill of connection, like meeting a possible soul mate on the first day of school.
Her cabin is on G-deck, with all the other paying passengers. Just below the bridge, it’s bright, plain, but comfortable. One of the singles, not a suite. Desk. Chair. Love seat. Built-ins. A minibar-size refrigerator and rounded window looking back over the stubby stern-deck stacks of cargo.
Tugs are urging the huge ship out of the crowded port. Sentro dumps her bags on the bed, shrugs off her pack, senses eyes on her, and turns. The Englishwoman is angled in Sentro’s cabin doorway now, her body loose, slender but not lean, in the way of a lucky someone who never has to work out.
The wordless pause between them then is odd. A regauging? Fontaine Fox has one of those efficient smiles that doesn’t need to ask for any encouragement.
“That’s it, then. Your ‘things.’”
“What? Oh. Yeah.”
“Having a go at us, it would seem.”
“I’m sorry; I don’t understand.”
“Trying to show us all up as dilettantes,” Fontaine translates, gesturing vaguely with a long hand of manicured nails lacquered black, “with your oh-so-economical kit.”
“Oh.” Sentro looks at her two small bags. “Is it? I never know what to bring.”
Fontaine says, “Me neither. So I bring everything. You, it appears, bring nothing.”
“I don’t have much.”
“And you’re one of those who launder.”
“I guess.”
Fontaine’s bright eyes bear down, amber, intent. Sentro has the dizzy feeling that this pretty younger woman is flirting with her. More awkwardness ensues. No one has flirted with her in years. Sentro feels the dull weight of her age.
“Well.”
Sentro makes an effort: “Nice meeting you.”
“I hope so.” And seeing Sentro acceptably rattled, Fontaine gestures again, vaguely, at nothing and tenders another efficient smile before she disappears from the doorway.
As the Jeddah slowly leaves the harbor, heads downriver toward the open sea, Sentro walks out to the stairs, where a small open deck allows her to watch the skyline of Baltimore drift away. There’s a lingering guilt that she told her children last minute she’d be taking a quiet sea cruise but not exactly where and how. They should be used to it by now. Jeremy seemed jaded but nonplussed (“Of course you’d do this now—have a safe trip; try to make some new friends, for Chrissakes”). Jenny wasn’t answering her phone.
She won’t miss them because she long ago learned to carry them with her; she has no feelings one way or the other about the city any more than she does for her house; after all these years, entries and exits are second nature; anywhere is interesting; attachments create vulnerabilities that can be tactical distractions. For a long time after she began to work projects in the dark corners, she worried over the way she could disappear Dennis and her children, push them into some safe, soundproof room deep inside her, where they couldn’t be touched but also wouldn’t disrupt her focus.
Where, for the duration of the assignment, they could cease to exist. An occupational hazard, was what her colleagues called it. Collateral damage. The price we pay.
But that’s not really what it was.
Dennis had it right all along. The job didn’t change her. It suited her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Flat-screen TV, comfortable chairs, a game table—there’s a welcoming reception in the common room for the eight paying passengers to meet and mingle with some of the officers and senior crew. Crudités, brie, and prosecco; the roll of the ship is barely evident as it makes its way down the Chesapeake Bay. The captain, evidently a Spaniard from his precise Castilian enunciation, presents fit and elegant, with a continental skunk streak of white through his wavy, swooped-back hair, as he delivers a well-rehearsed toast.
“And so I’d like to welcome you all aboard our humble Jeddah. It’s not a Princess Cruise, but I think you will find it has its own roguish charm.”
Everybody has a name tag. The overweight man has written only Bruce. There’s a shaggy-haired duo, the Gentrys, Jack and Meg, who appear to be newlyweds; two sinewy, ageless Scandinavians have both unhelpfully identified themselves as Nelson; the bashful Tagalog has scrawled something unreadable in an abomination of grade school cursive.
The captain’s salutation drones on and on. “You have chosen the waterway less traveled, following the venerable tradition of the tramp steamer, seeking ports of call at the pleasure of its clients . . .”
Again, out of habit, Sentro finds herself idly assessing the tactical exposure of her position in the common room, finding the points of egress, possible cover, the way she always does when she enters an enclosed space. Stop. She reminds herself that she’s on vacation, where the credible threat level is, well, probably nil. And this leads her to wonder if her concussions have opened some new level of introspection she’d rather not explore. Circul
ar thinking ensues, killing time, really, until she feels a light touch on her shoulder, and someone leans against her from behind to whisper, “So, hmmm, let’s see what we have.” The Englishwoman. Her breath moist and warm on the nape of Sentro’s neck.
“. . . Or, as the great novelist wrote,” the captain intones, “‘in order to attain the impossible, one must attempt the absurd’ . . .”
To her frustration, Sentro draws a predictable blank on the woman’s name.
“Blushing Bride and Groom.” She’s nodding toward the newlyweds, and then the Swedes: “Some looks-to-be Scandinavian Gristle. A Man So Fat No One Will Travel with Him. The Tawny East Asian of Mysterious Origins.”
Sentro angles her eyes to look over her shoulder at the name tag stuck above a slight swell of breast: Fontaine Fox. Use it in conversation. This close, Ms. Fox leaks a splash of expensive perfume, and perhaps a brush of purplish lip gloss, but no other makeup. Sentro, in an aside, asks, “Which great novelist is he talking about, Fontaine?”
“Cervantes.” And then, correctly deducing that Sentro has drawn another blank: “Don Quixote?”
“I saw the musical at a dinner playhouse with my dad.”
“Of course you did.” Her eyes are amazing. When was the last time Sentro noticed that in anyone?
“Man of La Mancha.”
“Not quite the same, sorry.”
Polite applause as the captain concludes his remarks. The Swedes and Bruce No Last Name step up like field trip students to ask him questions about his ship. First Mate Mulligan is on his fourth full glass of wine; two of the junior officers are making side-eyes at Fontaine’s plunging T-shirt neckline and murmuring in what sounds like French. The Tagalog pretends to be interested in one of the framed maps on the wall above the refreshments. The newlyweds stand side by side, fumble fingers down low, and smile, mute.
“You’ve got it all figured out, then,” Sentro says.
“Well. Except there’s you and me.”
Sentro turns to face her. “What about you and me?”
“Star crossed, I should think.”
“What?”
“Once we get around to the fucking. You’re not married, are you?”
Sentro feels the hot blush race up her neck to her ears and offers a suitably dumbfounded silence to counter the melee that erupts in her head.
As if realizing she’s overshared something, Fontaine Fox looks mortified. “Oh hell. Sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—and yes, afraid I am always this candid.”
“I mean, I’m flattered,” Sentro begins to explain, “but I’m not—”
“You don’t need to commit yourself.”
“And you’re very attractive, but—”
“Very. But.”
“But I don’t, I mean I’m not—”
“Did I misread where your eyes just went?”
“Probably. Name tag. My memory is a little—”
“Not into same sex, is what you’re saying?”
“No. Yes.”
“Which?”
“Not really, no.”
“Hm.”
“And yes, I am . . . was. Married. To a man.”
“Me too, how fun.” Fontaine is nonplussed and upbeat. “The truth of it is—Aubrey Sentro—I’m a bit hopeless. And, well, randy and impetuous, those who know me and judge me would also tend to say. But. Mostly hopeless, which explains, you know, why I’m here, on a slow boat, avoiding Mr. Fox, as it were. Whilst I drift away and contemplate the best way to disentangle myself from him . . . and, well . . . sizing up my limited onboard options? I’m not keen on swinging, so the Scandinavians and the just-wed White Stripes cosplay band are out.
“I don’t do crew; the executive officer seems a bit weedy, his second too Irish by half; the adorable little South Asian has a crucifix around his neck, which tells me he’s either Catholic or born again, and I don’t wish to be cause of his eternal damnation. Which leaves you and the plus-size bloke. Call me a fat shamer, but I’m confident Bruce won’t fill the bill.”
This is way more than Sentro wanted to know, but she’s been able to gather her composure while it was said; it’s not the first time she’s been propositioned by a woman, and it just took her by surprise. She’s intrigued by Fontaine, thrilled to have the awkwardness of traveling alone so thoroughly mediated. Lurid overtures won’t be a problem unless Fontaine Fox chooses to make them one. “I’m sorry.”
“Apology unnecessary.”
“Good.”
“Attracted will do”—Fontaine shrugs—“for now.” Then she smiles her see-you-later smile while offering a toast: “Fuck the French.”
She chugs her prosecco. Hands the empty glass to Sentro. “Ciao.” And glides away to mingle.
Passengers dine with the crew in the officers’ mess, directly adjacent to the common room. Sentro is seated at the captain’s table with the Gentrys, Big Bruce, and the enigmatic Tagalog. Soft light flares in over the mainland from the dying sun; out of the shelter of the bay, the long lazy sway of the ship on Atlantic waves takes some getting used to.
“It was a Snow White theme,” Meg, the new bride, is telling them. “With a touch of Tim Burton. We wrote our own vows.”
Bruce guffaws. “Were the groomsmen dwarves?”
Worried, both the newlyweds chuckle and chime, “Oh no.”
“Instead of the exchange of rings,” Jack elaborates, “we did the, you know, glass slipper.”
There’s an uneasy pause, as if nobody’s quite sure what they’re talking about. Fontaine Fox holds court at the other dining table. Gales of laughter. Mulligan’s bloodshot gaze never strays far from the Englishwoman’s tremulous décolletage.
“Slipper, that was Cinderella,” Bruce says to the couple.
A baffled look passes between Jack Gentry and his bride, and Sentro offers, helpful, “Fairy tales share so many common themes.” She’s looking at Bruce. “True love, for example.”
Jack and Meg say, “That’s us.”
Bruce scowls. “And death.” He saws at his rib eye, lips moving, keeping his own counsel.
The captain, who has introduced himself as Gonzalo Montez from Getafe, points his fork at the Tagalog.
“And you, señor. What folly brings you to my ship?”
The Tagalog stares at him, deer caught in headlights. Sentro guesses he doesn’t speak English very well. Bruce snorts and, mouth still full, starts to launch into a half-intelligible diatribe about how somebody should do something about “all the unchecked immigration from Islamofascist lands in the South Seas.” Irritated, before she can stop herself, Sentro translates the captain’s question into passable Tagalog, and the young traveler brightens and responds eagerly. She has to tell him more than once to slow down; her understanding of the language has never been more than serviceable, and she’s surprised she remembers anything after all these years. Everybody at the table waits and watches her with a mix of curiosity and disbelief. She’s tipped her hand; she’ll need to proceed with caution.
“His name is Charlemagne,” she translates for Captain Montez. “From a village on the island of Marinduque.” Recognizing the word makes Charlemagne grin. “Software engineer, if I understood him correctly”—of course she did—“working on some, I’m guessing, artificial intelligence thing at Johns Hopkins?”
“Multimodal sentiment analysis,” the Tagalog interjects, evidently triggered by keywords in Sentro’s loose translation.
“He had some time off,” she continues, “wanted to take a vacation cruise, but his English is so poor he was afraid to book on a regular tourist ship.”
“Those Princess boats have people who speak all kinds of languages,” Meg says.
“He heard that freighters often have Filipino crew and thought it would make the trip more enjoyable.”
“Likely story,” Bruce mumbles and mops his plate with bread.
“It’s true!” The captain raises his voice as if it will make him more understandable to his passenger: “Normally I ha
ve two, three sailors who hail from the Pearl of the Orient Sea. But I am sorry to say, lo siento, not on this trip.”
Again, Sentro translates the captain. The Tagalog nods, grins back, grateful, gold incisors gleaming, and then blushes and stares intently down into his food, self-conscious.
“Lucky you speak his language.” Montez, studying Sentro, states the obvious.
“Just enough.” She leans into the truth to shore up her cover. “I had to learn a bit of Tagalog for my job.”
“And what did you say your occupation was, Ms. Sentro?”
“I sell insurance. Why?” This instinctive pushback (lie, dissemble, deny) comes out a little more aggressive than she intends, and the temperature at the table briefly drops. She takes a big breath. The hole she’s digging feels like it’s just getting deeper.
Charlemagne saves her. Gathers his courage, pushes back his chair, stands like a schoolboy and blurts something out, bold, a speech. An aria. Extended, gesturing, passionate, ending in tears. From what Sentro can understand, it’s the story of his emigration, his brother’s brutal death at the hands of vigilante policemen, part of the savage drug war waged by President Duterte. Was the brother dealing? Yes, of course he was. But only in desperation after he’d been laid off from his job when the mine where he’d worked lost its foreign investors and closed. Poverty came crushing down on the family. Charlemagne was fired from his job because of his brother’s reputation. His sisters were reduced to working in dance clubs and hostess bars. Finally, Charlemagne found a way to flee with his mother and family: refugees sponsored by the Mormon Church, relocated to California—an apartment, a new job, safety. America saved him, he says. God and America, which, he posits, may be one and the same. But his mother suffered deeply the dislocation from her ancestors and died not too long ago of a broken heart. His sisters blame Charlemagne for her death. For leaving the village, bringing them all to Manila and then across the sea. For his brother Arvin’s addictions. On Marinduque, they tell him, his brother would still be alive. He has reeled across the country taking contract work in Denver, Chicago, Atlanta, and Baltimore, where he’s found permanent employment, a possible fiancée, and a quiet boat holiday, during which he hopes to gather his thoughts before he undertakes this scary new responsibility. Husband. Father. Yes, she’s pregnant. Sentro can’t tell if Charlemagne is having second thoughts about his future wife or simply feels the weight of life bearing down again. She wonders if, on this cargo ship, he’s running away.
