Helmut Goes Abroad

by Matt Sheehan

  “Please, call me Rick.” He stood up and we shook hands. He was about my height and weight, and he had a firm handshake. His hair was neatly trimmed, and his uniform was crisp and spotless. “Shamus has told me all about you.”

  “Like what size women’s panties would just barely fit me.” I wanted to play it cool, but I just couldn’t help myself. Shamus almost choked on his beer, but Rick took it in stride.

  “That’s not really my field of study. Perhaps you would like to discuss that with the other doctor on board. He would be more comfortable dealing with—” he brought his voice to a whisper, “—gender confusion and other types of emotional issues.”

  It could have gone two ways. He was funny, but the joke was on me. Overhand right of death or laugh out loud. The tipping point was the way he sold it. Completely deadpan, just like Shamus. I laughed and sat down at the table. Shamus started laughing so hard, his eyes teared up.

  “So this is what you’ve been up to this whole time? Playing pranks on unsuspecting passengers?”

  Rick answered, “Only the ones who deserve it...present company excluded, of course. That was his idea.” He pointed at Shamus, who did his best Who, me? look. “I have to admit, the frozen underwear gag is brilliant. That one’s going to get some play in the future.”

  “How did you guys come to realize that you both had poor impulse control and bad judgment?”

  “Shamus was my target the second I saw him and Willie in the dining room. We don’t allow animals on the ship, let alone at the first-class tables. I figured he was some rich eccentric who had paid off the first officer. I didn’t realize he was on a secret mission.”

  I gave Shamus the exasperated look I give him, well...always.

  “Really?”

  He just shrugged.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll keep that fact to myself. So anyway, I had some green dye all prepared for his shampoo and hot pepper sauce in a syringe for his toothpaste, and as soon as I saw them leave the room, I used my master key to let myself in. Wouldn’t you know it, as soon as I was ready to adulterate their products, Shamus and Willie unexpectedly returned.

  “Now, I’m pretty quick on my feet, and I explained my presence in his room as part of a quality assurance program—making sure the maids were keeping the rooms stocked and spotless.”

  “I knew he was lying.”

  “Not true at all. While I was busy pulling the wool over Shamus’s eyes, Willie went into the bathroom and closed the door. I heard the toilet lid being put up and a little bit later the toilet flushing and the lid being placed back down.”

  Shamus was smiling and looking very proud.

  “I was obviously impressed.”

  I rolled my eyes, but it went unnoticed.

  “We got to talking about some of the other things he had trained Willie to do, like...” He looked at me and started to mentally scramble. “Um, I can’t remember exactly...”

  “Did it involve my shoes or my tires?”

  Shamus was pretending to be interested in the people dancing on the other side of the room, even though he hates dancing and people, but I caught an almost unperceivable smile on his guilty face. True to his word, Rick was quick on his feet, especially considering the empty glasses on the table that smelled of fruit and rum.

  “Tires and shoes? That doesn’t ring a bell. No, I remember now. It was getting beers from the fridge. That, and I had already seen his table manners.”

  I let it go. “So what pranks have you been pulling? Other than frozen underwear. Sha and I loved pranks as kids... he just never grew out of it.”

  Shamus was suddenly paying attention again, and there was a glow in his face. “Helmut, it’s been great. We’ve done the cellophane-over-the-toilet gag, short-sheeted beds, glued coins to the ground and watched people try and pick them up. We filled the floor of one room completely full of little cups of water.”

  “And no one complains to the captain or whoever’s in charge around here?”

  “Sure, we get complaints all the time. But nobody suspects the ship’s doctor. And I rotate the gags, so it seems like different troublemakers rather than one diabolical genius.”

  “I’ve got the perfect idea for tonight,” Shamus said to Rick. “There’s a switchboard here somewhere that controls all the phones, right?”

  “Sure, why?”

  “Can it be shut down somehow?”

  “I think there’s probably a fuse that could be pulled.”

  “We’ll also need as many copper staters—or other worthless coins—as we can dig up. The more we find, the bigger the gag.”

  Rick was puzzled. “Coins and telephones. I don’t get it.”

  I knew part of it, `cause Shamus and I had done it as kids. “The coins are to shim the doors shut, right?” He nodded. “But shutting down the phones?”

  “When the passengers find out they’re locked in their rooms, what do you think they’ll do?”

  Rick answered, “Cuss a lot probably, but then try to call out. I get it. We could trap them all in their rooms, and no one would know for hours. And I have coins from all over the world in my room. Every time I buy something at a port of call, I came back with a pocket full of strange change.”

  “You’ll probably never see them again. You okay with that?” I asked.

  “It’s totally worth it. I can’t remember where most of it came from anyway. When should we start? I can knock the phones out whenever.”

  “The phones right before we start, and I’m thinking maybe a little past midnight. Which means I need some coffee.”

  I ended up joining them for coffee, though mine wasn’t Eirish like theirs. I had really planning on going to bed at a decent hour—the training with Ramón would be starting early and it was almost midnight—but I had a horrible idea in my head that I just couldn’t shake.

  When they were ready to start their little op, I told them I was turning in and wished them luck. I went back to the room for a few supplies, then hunted around outside the entrance to the dining hall for a good hiding place. The emergency rowboat proved the perfect spot. It gave me a clear view of the door, and due to its being unlit and out of view, the likelihood of me being seen by a casual observer was slim.

  I figured after their reign of terror, Rick and Sha would come back for an after-party before bed. It was a risk—I could have waited all night for nothing—but luckily they returned a couple hours after they left. It was a good thing they were yucking it up when they returned, because I nodded off at some point and would have missed them if they hadn’t been so loud.

  I knew where Sha’s room was, but not Rick’s, so when they left I followed Rick back to his room from a discreet distance. Once he was in for the night, I pulled a handful of coins from my pocket and shimmed his door. After that I did the same to Sha’s. With that finally done, I dragged back to my room with the intention of sleeping till dinner. Training had slipped my sleep-addled mind until I opened the door to my room and found Ramón sitting at my table drinking coffee.

  “Where have you been? I tried to call you but my phone wasn’t working, so I just came over.”

  “That’s weird. I was having breakfast and I lost track of time I guess. Did I leave my door unlocked?”

  “No.”

  “Then how did you get in?”

  “I have my ways. The strange thing was, you had a bunch of coins jammed in your door frame.”

  “That is strange.” It wasn’t at all. Shamus had assumed I went straight to my room. That made my victory even sweeter. “So knives?”

  “Knives, brother. I think you’re ready, and just in time. We’ve only got a few days till we reach port, and I want you to be dangerous by then. Just in case.”

  The energy work had produced results that I honestly wouldn’t have believed possible. I could
flip a switch in my head and match whatever Ramón threw at me right from the get-go, and now it didn’t feel like my heart was going to explode out of my chest after a few minutes of exertion.

  And so we trained knives, all day and into the evening. We used real blades; they were just completely dull. It still hurt to get hit, only it left bruises rather than gouges.

  The style was different than I had seen on the street. Of course those were just punks looking for a beating. Ramón kept the blade in the back hand, leaving the front hand for cover. It took some getting used to, but once I had the hang of it, I had a much more literal overhand right of death at my disposal.

  We called in room service for lunch—the phones were working again by then—but by the end of the night I was too tired to even eat dinner. When Ramón left, I forced myself to take a shower, then fell into bed exhausted. I didn’t move until the phone rang the next morning, starting the day again.

  We spent that day roughly the same as the previous one, training from sunup to sundown. Now that I had basic offensive skills, Ramón turned his attention to teaching defense and disarming techniques. Ramón could overwhelm me anytime he wanted to, but if he kept his speed around the normal human variety, I could parry and counter pretty well.

  By early evening, Ramón was satisfied with my progress and decided to call an end to the training. He said I was now good enough that I probably wouldn’t cut myself if we got in a scrap. I chose to take that as a compliment.

  We had passed the Pillars of Hercules shortly after lunch, and we were bound for the port of Capri by late morning the next day. Capri is a beautiful little city at the end of a peninsula on the southernmost coast of Vitalia. It would have been a great place to vacation, what with the beautiful beaches, the temperate weather, and the half-naked and nubile young ladies. Unfortunately, the plan was to meet up with some military types and leave for a less auspicious locale soon after docking.

  I hadn’t seen Shamus since prank night, and I knew he was on the lookout for retribution. I was expecting something new and horrible, and I took to propping a chair under my front doorknob, just in case Shamus or Rick tried to sneak in while I was sleeping.

  My new friend Brook didn’t seem to mind the precautions. She was returning home alone after a stay in the States and had been bored out of her mind till she met me. I used pickup line number seventeen, which works great while on buses—and now I know while on a ship at sea. After the last day of training we had dinner together and spent the night dancing.

  On the way back to my room, we were talking, and I almost didn’t notice that the hallway was darker than it should have been. But I did, and I quickly spotted the sconce on the wall with what looked like a burned-out bulb. As expected, it was loose, and when I screwed it back in, the light came on.

  Once there was a little more light on the situation, I found an almost invisible fishing line going from the door to a circulation vent above it. I figured when I pushed open the door, the line would pull a bucket over and soak us. I was really feeling superior at that point. I pulled out my shiny new knife and cut the line.

  There was a weird noise from above, and then we were dripping wet. Shamus had known I would see the light out and find the line, and he set me up. Wet and embarrassed, I opened the door to find a sea of tiny little paper drinking cups, filled to the top with water, covering as much of the floor as I could see from my doorway. Brook suggested that we go back to her room and get out of our wet clothes. The rest of my night worked out just fine.

  Chapter Eleven

  I woke up when my eyes opened naturally, for the first time on that boat ride, with a stunning brunette who wasn’t Katina lying next to me. And you know what? It felt just fine. So fine, in fact, that I woke Brook up for another round with the champ.

  This was the morning of dock day, which necessitated calling an end to our fun little boat romance. It actually worked out rather well. We lived on different continents and only had this small window of time together. That type of arrangement doesn’t lead to misunderstandings about relationships and commitments.

  The only potential sticking point was her interest in being pen pals. At first I played along, thinking that it was just the normal nonsense you say at goodbyes that you really don’t mean. But it soon became apparent to me that she actually wanted to send letters back and forth across the Atlantic.

  I made the command decision to go with honesty, which was perhaps a departure from the norm, but she was a nice girl, and I wanted her to think back on this as a fun time with a cool guy instead of with that lying jerk who broke her heart.

  So I was pleasantly surprised when the honest approach worked out well, and our forever goodbye was drama-free. We both promised to think fondly of our time together, and—unspoken in her case—lament all the poor lovers that would follow, but never hold a candle to, me.

  I was sort of in a pinch in regards to clothing. I had plenty of clothes in my room, separated by several hundred little cups of water. I was really hoping housekeeping had gotten there early and cleaned it all up. When I checked on the progress and saw just about every member of housekeeping milling about in front of my room, I decided to go to breakfast in a wrinkled and slightly musty outfit.

  I found Shamus, Willie and Rick eating breakfast in the dining room, and after filling up my plate with eggs and every type of side I recognized, and some I didn’t, I joined them at their table. It was still a bit early for Shamus to be up, and after seeing their bloodshot eyes and general slouchiness, I figured I was not the only one whom they’d played a prank on last night.

  “Hey, fellas. You look like you’ve had a long night.”

  “Our last night for some truly epic pranks,” Shamus said. “The ride home is going to be boring without Rick.”

  I was just hoping we would live to take the trip back, but I kept it to myself.

  “The rest of my career is going to be boring in comparison.” Rick looked a bit depressed, but his expression suddenly changed. “What if I got you a job as my medical assistant, Shamus? You wouldn’t really have to do anything, and then we could screw with the passengers every night.” Then he looked at me. “I could probably get you a job shoveling coal in the engine room. We would just need a few solid references and a really great interview.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, but either way I was starting to dislike this arrogant jackass. I wasn’t sure what the consequences were for assaulting a ship’s medical officer in open water, but before I could find out, Shamus smartly changed the subject to something else.

  “Helmut, are those the same clothes you wore yesterday? I only ask because I saw you out with some hottie last night, and those clothes look a bit lived in.”

  He really wanted to know if I had stayed at someone else’s cabin and missed the water extravaganza he and Rick had left for me. So I played dumb.

  “Yeah, I stayed with Brook last night. I went back to change, but I saw the maids out in front of my room, so I decided to eat first.” To not know that his prank of the century actually worked must have been killing him. “By the way, what was the fallout from door night?”

  I tried not to smile as I thought of the two of them waking up locked in their rooms along with everyone else.

  Rick answered excitedly. “It was great. Initially the staff was wondering why there was no breakfast rush. Then, when the cleaning crew started reporting in that the doors wouldn’t open and people were pounding on their cabin doors and yelling, maintenance was called in to free them.

  “They discovered the phones were out when the first passengers freed from their confinement complained about trying to call out and not having a dial tone. That was just a matter of replacing a fuse, but after that they were inundated with irate calls from the rest of the trapped passengers. It took most of the morning to undo our dirty work.”

 
He stopped to take a breath, so I asked him who they suspected.

  “The captain suspects class warfare. Some jealous passenger in the cheap seats messing with the rich folk.”

  “You could have played a prank on the third-class passengers and passed it off as revenge.”

  Shamus took a break from fork-feeding Willie to give me the scoop.

  “Do you really think you would have thought of that and I wouldn’t have?” It was a rhetorical question so I just stared at him. My stare is meant to look intimidating, but he’s immune to it. “Of course we pranked the bottom dwellers. We did this really cool thing with a whole bunch of little cups of water...”

  My eye twitched, just a little, but he saw it.

  “Ha! We got you. Did the balloon drop on your head? You cut the wire right? That’s why your clothes look slept-in.”

  I didn’t say anything, but he already knew he had gotten me.

  “What did you think when you opened the door and were confronted with that ocean of water?”

  I decided to stop being coy. It was just dragging out the moment for him anyway. “I wondered why you couldn’t work half that hard at either of your paying jobs. And since we’re being so honest, how long were you two locked in your rooms?”

  They looked at each other and Shamus shrugged. Rick answered, “Only an hour or so for me. I didn’t show up for my shift and they came looking. It actually provided me good cover. I went and freed Shamus’s door, but I didn’t bother him because it was before ten, so I knew he was sleeping.”

  Shamus was smiling because he slept through my prank and destroyed me with his. He continued to smile as he finished feeding Willie and wiped his mouth with a cloth napkin. I wanted to get him back, but there’s really no winning, what with his devious mind and general lack of anything better to do.

  Rick had to go back to work, but he promised to see us off before we disembarked. I was fine with never seeing him again, but I tried to smile and nod for Sha’s sake.

  Shamus filled his coffee mug three-quarters full from the carafe on the table, then topped it off with a flask from his hip pocket.