by kc dyer
In a different lifetime.
Dom’s fingers stop flying across his tablet keyboard, and when I glance up again, I realize he’s closed his eyes. It’s remarkable how a person’s face changes when the eyes are closed. Dom’s irises are light brown, almost hazel, and they light up his face, even when he’s tired. But now, his long lashes are brushing his cheekbones. As his breathing evens out, I watch the tiny creases around his eyes relax. The ridge of his cheekbone stands out more sharply in his face than I remember. I’m pretty sure we’re both thinner than when we started this crazy quest.
He’s still wearing the clothes he had on this morning, mismatched woolen socks and all. We’re set to be on this ship for a week, so I have no doubt both of us will make a trip to find the crew laundry, and the Hong Kong stains on his jeans will soon be a memory. In any case, they don’t take anything away from his overall look. Since he’s had a shower, his usual dusting of flour is missing. Still, even when he’s relaxed like this, with his eyes closed, he gives off a kind of pirate vibe.
My laptop suddenly shifts to my screensaver—the photo I took of Sumaya that first day on the Wahash Mahat—and it snaps me out of my reverie. Pirate vibe? What the hell am I thinking? As soon as we drop Sumaya with her auntie in Vancouver, I’m the one who needs to be a pirate. I need to forget these chiseled cheekbones, and steal this race out from under Dom, so I can collect the bonus from Teresa Cipher.
The future of Two Old Queens depends upon it.
My sense of gentle happiness evaporates immediately on this realization, and to get my mind off the sick feeling that has somehow returned to my stomach, I go back to typing my report with new vigor. When Dom’s head slides down the wall onto my shoulder I slip away quietly, close the lid of my laptop, and go looking for Sumaya.
Okay. It’s possible that before I leave, I pull my blanket around his shoulders. And maybe I brush a stray lock of hair out of his face, but anyone would do that for another human being. Of course they would. Only common courtesy, after all.
ExLibris Destination Report, submitted by Ramona Keene
CITY/REGIONAL SUMMARY: Hong Kong, Former British Colony, Current Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China
TOP PICKS TO SEE AND DO: Don’t miss the light show every evening, visible from both sides of Victoria Harbour. Best viewing spot is high above Hong Kong on the Mid-levels Escalator. All the iconic Hong Kong sights are wonderful—Victoria Peak, sunset cruises, and the Tian Tan Buddha—but for something extra special, check out the street art while wandering the back alleys of Wan Chai, and don’t miss the villain-beaters under the flyover at . . .
* * *
—
Luckily, Dom wakes up and joins us in the galley long before eighteen hundred rolls around, so the whole sleeping-in-the-women’s-quarters thing doesn’t become a problem. His little catnap has done him good, and before long he’s wheedled his way through into the kitchen. Every time the door swings open, I can see him in there, apron-clad and showing off for Cookie.
Dinner that night is scrumptious, some kind of roasted white fish, accompanied—why am I not surprised?—by Samoan coconut bread rolls. Captain Jack practically weeps with joy, and scarfs at least a half dozen.
As usual, Dominic has become the most popular person on board. Between his baking and Sumaya’s new material, I settle once again into my accustomed role of third wheel. That night we all crash hard, but before I fall asleep, I vow to make my own mark the way I know best—organization. Forget social media followers. There’s more to life than popularity.
My Hong Kong report, now safely delivered via satellite Wi-Fi, is a thing of beauty, but I refuse to rest on my laurels. The next day, we make good time traversing the choppy waves of the East China Sea. Thinking ahead to my next report, I head up to the bridge to see if the captain can spare me a few minutes for an interview.
One thing being on board all these ships has taught me is that while every ship’s captain I’ve met loves to talk, they take their responsibilities seriously. This is a busy shipping lane, but at the moment, there isn’t any traffic in sight beyond a collection of five or six birds flying beside us, which I assume are seagulls. I assume wrong. They are, in fact, called black-naped terns, and they wheel and dive, riding on the wind behind the Arctic Björn. Every once in a while, one of them surges ahead of us, carrying a small fish in its beak.
Captain Kapena is indeed available, as evidenced by the fact that I find Dom on the bridge, leaning casually against a large chart table and chatting with him. I mentally kick myself for, once again, losing the edge to my competitor.
Because, warm hazel eyes or not, that’s who he is. This is the way it has to be.
I pull out my phone, hit the “record” button, and listen in while Captain Jack tells stories from the glory days of Greenpeace.
chapter fifty
IMAGE: Yokohama Harbor
IG: Romy_K [Yokohama, Japan, April 18]
#ConcreteSail #JapaneseSushi
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I waken the next morning to an unexpected quiet. The ship’s engine is off, and from the feel, we are definitely docked. Which means that sometime while I slept, the Arctic Björn has made it to Japan. Sumaya is not in her bunk, so I throw on my hoodie against the morning chill and follow the unexpected smell of bacon to the mess.
The smell is particularly luscious, and for some reason, seems almost decadently foreign. I’m not sure why, until I see Sumaya spooning out the last of a large bowl of oatmeal, while Dominic’s plate shows the greasy remains of a full bacon-and-egg breakfast.
Of course. We’ve been traveling through Islamic countries, but I didn’t miss pork at all until I smelled it this morning.
Cookie—land name Susan—slides a full plate toward me through the hatch into the galley. I collect it and walk over to where Dom and Sumaya are sitting with Margot, but I hesitate before sitting down.
“Are you okay with me eating this?” I ask, but Sumaya waves her spoon magnanimously at an open chair.
“No worries,” she says as I pull out the chair, and then points her spoon at Dom. “He didn’t even ask.”
Dom looks puzzled, so I indicate the bacon on my plate.
His expression suddenly changes.
“Oh, shit—I mean—ah, shoot,” he amends, looking apologetically over at Sumaya. “It didn’t even cross my mind. We haven’t had any bacon for so long, all I could think of was cramming it into my face.”
She grins over at me. “Cultural insensitivity much?”
I lift my plate. “I can go sit somewhere else . . .”
“I’m kidding,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I wouldn’t mind trying it myself—it smells quite good.”
“No way!” I exclaim, jumping back to my feet. “At least, not on my watch. You can do all the teen rebellion things when you are safely with your family. Until then—you keep . . .”
My voice trails off as I realize I nearly used the word kosher.
“Islamic,” I say at last.
“Halal,” Dom and Sumaya chorus together, then bump fists.
“Right. Halal.”
“I’m pescatarian,” says Margot as I dig into my food. “So I think you’re all terrible people.”
Sumaya laughs and gets up to take her bowl into the kitchen.
Margot smiles across the table at me. “Heading into the city today? It’s gonna take us three hours to load all the fuel and supplies for the trip, so you have time.”
I think about improving my ExLibris report. “I’m not sure,” I say slowly. “I haven’t exactly ever been to Tokyo before, but . . .”
Margot shrugs. “Well, first place, we’re in Yokohama, not Tokyo. A little further south. Still, all the cities run together in this part of Japan, for sure.”
“Are you going?” I ask Dom, but he shakes his head.
<
br /> “I’m thinking customs,” he pauses, and glances over at Sumaya, “might be a problem.”
I remember the clerk in Kolkata’s words: We cannot, of course, guarantee the reception of the refugee in the receiving country.
“Good point,” I mutter.
“Look,” Dom says. “If you go in for an hour, take a few pictures, and get a bit of info on the city for ExLibris, I’ll stay here and keep Sumaya busy. She said she’d help me fix my hair.”
Sumaya flexes her fingers and beams.
“I’m going in to the market for Cookie,” says Margot. “She’s going to make sushi tonight, and we need rice and fish for that. I’m happy to show you around, if you want to tag along.”
“Deal,” I say, grinning at both of them.
chapter fifty-one
IMAGE: Bulletholes on the Bow
IG: Romy_K [Yokohama, Japan, April 18]
#CupNoodles #SpyShip
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Things I learn in Japan that may or may not make it into my report:
1. Yokohama is located south of Tokyo, on the island of Honshu, and is Japan’s second-largest city. Also? You can shop till you drop here. So. Many. Shopping centers.
2. Yokohama looks brand-new. The city was devastated by the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, and then again by American airstrikes in the Second World War. This depressing thought brought to you by the elegance of the Landmark Tower, built in 1993, and by the design innovation of the InterContinental Yokohama Grand, a hotel shaped like a gigantic concrete sail.
3. Japan and North Korea really, really do not get along. Case in point: the Japan Coast Guard Museum has the wreck of a North Korean spy ship inside, with the hull all shot up. Turns out the spy ship blew itself up and sank, so badly did they not want to be captured by the Japanese.
4. Case in second point: an unknown number of Japanese citizens have been kidnapped and taken to Pyongyang over the years, to aid in spy training. North Korea actually admitted to this, though there is some dispute as to numbers.
5. A few blocks away from the somber museum where I learned all about points three and four, is the CupNoodles Museum, devoted to my favorite Japanese food. A greater contrast in museum subjects I have never seen.
That night, over an excellent sushi repast, as the Arctic Björn pulls out into the Pacific Ocean, Sumaya is uncharacteristically silent.
“What—no afterdinner set?” teases Dom, sliding a large wooden spoon across the table. “I thought that’s what you were working on today. I’ve even brought your microphone.”
Sumaya arches an eyebrow up under her hijab. “I was in the ship’s library,” she says, and lifts a book onto the table. “Learning about whales.”
She adds that she’d been interested in the history of the ship, so when Dom fell asleep, she pulled a few books off the captain’s bookshelf.
“Dom fell asleep?” I ask, shooting him a glance. “What happened to the hair styling?”
“Postponed until tonight,” he says with a shrug. “Who am I to get in the way of higher learning?”
Sumaya pulls a heavy set of binoculars onto the table. “When I returned his books, Captain Jack leant me these,” she says proudly. “I’m going to keep a close eye out. It’s nearly time for the migration of the right whales—they spend their summers in the Bering Sea, and we’ll be floating right by there.”
“I think whales swim pretty deep,” I say. “Don’t be disappointed if you don’t see much of anything. This is a big ocean, you know.”
Sumaya rolls her eyes at Dominic. “Uh, Romy? You do know whales are mammals, yes? Which means they have to surface to breathe.”
“Yeah, Romy,” says Dom, imitating both her exasperated tone and deadpan expression. “What did you think? They scoot along the bottom like submarines?”
The two of them giggle like idiots.
“No,” I say stiffly, even though it might be possible the thought had crossed my mind. “I know they’re mammals.”
“Right whales have been around for millions of years,” Sumaya adds, flipping open the book. “It says here they’ve been around since the Mio—the Miocene Epoch,” she says, enunciating carefully. “That’s longer than Iceland has been an island.”
“I did not,” I say, shaking my head. Even though I know that she received English tutoring in the camp she was in, I’m constantly stunned by Sumaya’s interest in the world around her. Not to mention her mad skills at reading English, which by my count, is her third—or possibly fourth—language.
“And you know what? Now there are only a few hundred left, when there were once thousands—hundreds of thousands—swimming in all the oceans in the world.”
“What? Really?”
She slides the book over to me, open to a page with a picture of an enormous baleen whale, leaping high above the waves.
“It’s bad enough when people hurt each other,” she says softly. “But it seems worse to kill something off that’s so giant, and so beautiful.”
I nod slowly as she reaches for her binoculars and stands up. “I’m going to spend as much time as I can looking out for them. I wish there was something more we could do.”
Tucking in her chair, she grabs the binoculars and heads for the door.
* * *
—
Margot’s contribution to the dinner is a bottle of sake, and she slides it across the table to us, as she heads off to bed.
“I don’t really drink,” I say primly, to which Dom rolls his eyes.
“Since Port Said?” he asks, deadpan.
Margot shakes her head. “Nobody drinks in Port Said,” she says. “Muslim country.”
I refuse to meet Dominic’s eye.
“Anyway,” she continues. “There’s only a drop left. You two should finish it.”
When she leaves, Dom drains the bottle into two glasses.
“That’s more than a drop,” I say. He tings his glass against mine.
“To our final ocean,” he says, and of course, I have to drink to that.
“What’s been your favorite city so far?” he asks, leaning back in his chair.
I shake my head, overwhelmed by the question.
He sips his sake and winces. “I really liked Paris,” he says, his voice a little hoarse.
I remember my smashed camera, and the dash through the ancient tunnels underground.
“It was—interesting,” I admit, hedging.
“I got to tour this tiny apartment in the top of the Eiffel Tower,” he says. “Did you see it?”
I shake my head and take another slug of the sake, which is growing on me. “I didn’t get a chance to see it. But I may have heard something about it.”
He pulls out his phone and shows me a few shots from his Instagram.
The first is a breathtaking panorama of the city, followed by a shot of an elegant dinner set on a tiny table. The plates are rimmed in gold, the cutlery gleams, and a cluster of brilliant gerberas act as a centerpiece.
“That looks really—vivid,” I admit. “Were you there on a sunny day?”
He shrugs. “It was pouring, as I recall.”
Suddenly I recall it too. “But—how do you get everything to look so bright?”
“I dunno,” he says, draining his glass. “Maybe just practice?”
He slides a long finger across the screen, and my own feed pops up.
“No!” I mutter, and reach for his phone.
“Why not? I want to look at your work.”
“I’m—ah—going for a different aesthetic than you,” I say hurriedly.
He starts flipping through my shots.
“Hmm. I see what you mean. Mostly black-and-white. More moody and bleak, right?”
“They’re not moody. Or bleak, actually,” I say defensively. “More . . .”
“Gloomy?” he says, grinning.
“Now you’re just giving me a hard time.”
“No.” He shakes his head firmly. “I really am interested.”
I shrug. “I’ve—never thought about it, to tell you the truth,” I admit.
“What do you mean? You have to think about these things. It’s a choice, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess. I dunno, I’ve always considered black-and-white to be—uh—better. More artistically appealing.”
“It’s more dark, if that’s what you’re going for.”
“Dark?” I lean forward, disturbed by how much his use of the word bothers me. “My pictures are not dark. They’re stark—they’re biting. It’s intended as social commentary.”
“Social commentary? Okay, now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Well, what do you think—I’m doing this for fun? I mean, I’m trying to say something, okay?”
“Okay. Which is . . . ?”
“Which is—you don’t seriously expect me to sum it up? Each shot means something different, Dom. They’re all little pieces of me—of where I’m from. Of who I am.”
He leans forward and takes back his phone. “No, you’re right, you’re right. You shouldn’t have to sum up your whole body of work in a few words. Let’s pick an example. How ’bout this one?”
He holds out his phone, with one of my earliest Insta shots cued up. It’s a picture of the water tank on the roof of the building across from the bookshop.
I look up at him. “That’s one of my earliest posts, and I like to think my work has grown quite a bit since then. I mean, my number of followers is way bigger now.”
He gives me a crooked grin. “Yeah, mine too. Took a giant surge this week, for some reason. But I don’t care about the numbers—I’m talking about the actual pictures you take. So, humor me. Why this shot? It’s taken in the rain, right?”
