by John Straley
“What about the doctor?” I asked.
“The doctor is an American,” Sonny replied without showing the least of a smile. “He stays to himself mostly. He eats the first few meals with the captain and passengers, but after that he has his own schedule.”
“Does he have a good record in treating most of the patients? I mean, is he good at what he does?”
“The passengers love him!” Sonny enthused. “That’s another reason we have to be extremely delicate in this matter. He’s great with them. He’s treated all kinds of conditions and made people comfortable. Some of our wealthy passengers have even tried to set him up in private practice in their own hometowns. I mean, he has a following!” Sonny was wide-eyed.
The ship lurched again to port and Sonny stood up, looking again at his watch. “Listen. I’m sorry about our rocky beginning. Just try to settle in. Find out what you can about the doctor.” He pointed to the door and smiled. “I’ve really got to be going. I’ve got a ten o’clock presentation and then some entertainment on the schedule. There are a million people looking for me right about now. It should tell you something that they’d never think of looking in my office, huh?”
I decided not to answer that question. Instead I asked, “What’s the doctor’s name, and where do I find him?”
“His name is Allen Edwards. Doctor Edwards. He keeps clinic hours. Get sick if you have to. You’ll find him soon enough.” Sonny opened the door and disappeared. The door closed.
I looked around his office and my eyes fell on a back-lit publicity photo of Sonny: Faded blue wash with a halo of light surrounding his boyish hair. The door opened again and Sonny himself stuck the hair back into the office.
“Oh . . . I forgot to tell you. Gee, I’m sorry but your bar privileges have been cut off, Cecil. At least until Ketchikan. We’ll just see where we are then. Okay?”
“You mean in Ketchikan?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s easy, Sonny. We’ll be in Ketchikan.”
He smiled winningly and pointed his index fingers at me, six-gun style. “Ouch . . . Good stuff.” He squeezed his imaginary trigger fingers, then disappeared again.
Out on the fantail, passengers were stepping through their paces at day one’s aerobic class entitled “Making Friends.” The song “Getting to Know You” was blasting out of a pair of speakers near the stern. Two dozen or so participants, mostly fiftyish white women, were stretching their arms above their heads and swaying. “Getting to Know You” shifted into a thumping disco beat and a slender, older woman with a remarkable helmet of yellow hair began to lead the group. The sign said she was our exercise “clinician,” Tricia. Tricia had the smallest, tightest butt I’ve ever seen. She snapped out cues to the assembled.
“Good now, two three, back now, four five, go nice and easy back to one . . .”
The sunlight was pale and milky. It was perhaps sixty degrees and it could rain at any time but that wasn’t a concern to the exercisers. We were outbound, past some rocky headlands. The ship had a gentle but pronounced roll. Gulls wheeled in the eddies of air behind the stern. Occasionally one would dive down into the foam, come up with something and then, working awkwardly to pull away into the air, glide back to the others.
Todd was exercising. He had his new tan slacks rolled up and his shoes off. For whatever reason, Todd is spectacularly uncoordinated. Although he tried to keep time with the disco version of “Getting to Know You,” he was consistently at least three commands behind the others. He waved and floundered around like a broken windmill but with each effort Tricia would smile at him and give her own legs an extra kick in his direction. “Good! . . . Good!” she told him. “That’s it. Perfect. Now up a little higher.” The song ended and everyone clapped and shook their arms to their side. The woman working out next to Todd was dressed in shiny tights and pink leggings with a T-shirt that read “I’m spending my grandchildren’s inheritance.” She patted Todd on the back and said, “You’re doing just great.” And Todd beamed at her as he awkwardly imitated the last of the stretching exercises. “I love doing this,” the woman gushed. “I just feel I can eat all that much more.” She laughed unashamedly and so did Todd.
The music changed to something by the Miami Sound Machine and I couldn’t bring myself to watch. Jane Marie was sitting in a straight-backed chair with her feet propped up on the port side rail. She wore a spaghetti-strap shirt with her sweater bundled in her lap. Her dark glasses were perched on top of her head and she scanned the ocean with her old green rubber-armored Zeiss field glasses. She looked like a movie star. Carole Lombard, maybe. I pulled up a chair next to her.
“I lost my bar privileges,” I said.
“Do tell . . .” She kept scanning the ocean. The shadow of a gull brushed the white skin of her shoulders.
“That’s not to say you couldn’t buy me a drink now and then,” I said out to the Pacific.
She put her field glasses down on top of her sweater and looked at me as if I had just peed on her foot.
“Not me, pal. I’m looking to keep my privileges. I’m going to meet some people on this trip.” She picked up the binoculars. “If you ask me, I’m pretty well positioned here to make some contacts. This is a good spot for a single woman.”
“Yeah, too bad you don’t know any single women.” I tried to sound amusingly sarcastic and confident at the same time.
I looked out to sea. The waves rolled in undulating columns with only a slight chop on top. The horizon was a wavering line dividing the gray sky from the gray sea. The sun was blocked by a cottony gauze. My eyes ached to find detail. It was a mild, mild day.
“There!” Jane Marie stood up and pointed.
Five hundred yards from the ship, the slick black form ploughed the surface of the sea. A quick puff of breath came from a blowhole just behind a round pumpkin of a head, then the dagger shape of a long dorsal fin.
“Killer whales! Port side. Nine o’clock, five hundred yards!”
About a dozen of the exercisers ran to the rail. The Miami Sound Machine kept churning. Tricia kept right on with her routine. Several of the passengers kept doing their leg lifts standing at the rail. Back under the covered bar there was a flurry of activity and I heard someone call, “Whales? I’ll drink to that, by God!” and gales of laughter.
There were seven animals. One large male with the tall dagger-shaped dorsal fin. Two juveniles. Four females or perhaps young males. They traveled swiftly, on a course parallel with the ship. As each came to the surface, the white of the head marking and saddle patches rippled through the green water. Their backs curved in a smooth muscular motion. Dorsal fins sliced like blades into the surface. The whales stayed near the ship for perhaps forty seconds. Then they dropped behind, cut across the wake, and were gone.
A young woman stood with an older man near us at the rail. The woman had dark hair and eyes. She tried to keep her eyes on the whales long after they had vanished. “I’ve never seen anything like them . . .” she said softly, almost to herself.
A gray-haired woman in a turquoise workout suit lit a cigarette and looked at me quizzically. “Whales?” she said. “That’s it?”
I shrugged my shoulders apologetically and the turquoise woman drew on her smoke and walked back inside. I could hear her athletic shoes squeak on the decking.
Still scanning the sea, Jane Marie had walked to the other side of the ship. Off to my left was a woman with long frizzy dark hair. She was sketching in a book. Her hand worked furiously. I walked over and looked across her shoulder. She had scrawled several lines but, amazingly, the lines captured the motion of the swells and the big animals cutting through without showing the whales themselves. It was as if she had drawn the sound of their breath. She looked up and caught me staring at her drawing.
“Have you ever seen anything like it?” she asked breathlessly.
“I mean whales!” She grabbed my hand. “Whales, on our very first day out. Can you believe it!”
“No, I can hardly believe it,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster.
“I’m Rosalind Kench.” She twisted her hand around into mine, pumping a more formal handshake. “I used to live in New York. The City, right in the middle of the City, it’s incredible, isn’t it? I mean the City. Well, really it’s incredible because I’ve just moved to Portland, Oregon. Lake Oswego really. It’s fabulous there. I never thought the world was so green, really I mean, it’s a different kind of green. Vermont, New Hampshire, of course, are both pretty green, but there is something about the light on the Pacific. The evening light especially, of course I love the light on the Cape, particularly in the morning, but this . . .” And Rosalind dropped my hand and spun around. Her arms took in all of “this,” which I guessed was the western edge of the Northern Hemisphere. “But this is, well, you know, different . . .”
Her voice trailed off and as she came around to face me again her expression fell. She stared down at my feet and I realized suddenly that her eyes had an odd kind of presence. As if they were flashlights that could only cast shadows. She bit her lower lip.
“I’m babbling, aren’t I?” Her voice was soft and she would not look at me. “Oh God, I’ve been babbling. Please say something quick so I won’t say another word.” Her hands started to shake.
“You have very strange and beautiful eyes,” I said without knowing why.
Rosalind Kench squeezed her eyes shut as if we were playing hide-and-go-seek and she was “it.”
“Ooooh, that’s . . . sweet, but now I know you’re making fun of me.” She kept her eyes closed and we stood together on the deck silently. I started to shift on the balls of my feet thinking that maybe I was supposed to go hide now.
“My name is Cecil Younger,” I said and I took her hand as she had mine and pumped her forearm up and down in a greeting. Rosalind opened one eye a crack.
“Hello, Cecil. That’s a very interesting name. What kind of work do you do?” The other eye opened slightly and I could feel something in my chest fall into shadow.
“I . . . well, I . . . actually I’m retired.”
“Really! You seem young to be retired. You must have done very well for yourself, if you don’t mind me commenting, I don’t mean to pry. I mean . . . I’m sorry.” And she squeezed her eyes shut tight again.
“No. No, don’t worry. I don’t mind. I’m retired . . . I’m retired because of certain health problems.”
Rosalind opened her eyes and clutched my forearm with both her hands. I felt her breath on my neck. I didn’t dare look into her eyes.
“Isn’t that just the dickens?” she said.
“The dickens?” I echoed.
“Well, you know, the body. I mean, we’re all just machines wearing out. I mean, if you think about it too much it just gets incredibly depressing.” She pulled on my arm to get my attention and unwittingly I looked down into her dark eyes.
“I know this is going to surprise you,” she said slowly and solemnly as if we were about to share a forbidden intimacy, “but I’m not going to ask you about your health. I just hate that. I mean, I’ve been going through it myself and I hate to have to answer questions. Not that I mind sharing but it’s just when you tell people about your illness then they feel like they have to tell their own story and before you know it you’re talking about bladders or uterine cysts, for Pete’s sake.”
“I hate that.” I tried not to think about a uterine cyst, which was turning out to be impossibly hard for some reason.
“I’m just going to say one thing,” Rosalind continued in the same solemn tone, still gripping my forearm. “You look really good, Cecil. So just keep doing what you’ve been doing. It’s working.” And she winked, leaning back and giving me the covert thumbs-up of a co-conspirator.
I nodded toward her sketch pad. “What kind of work do you do?” The gulls whirled close to our left and she spun to see them. “You must be an artist,” I continued, awkwardly trying to look back into her eyes even though she had turned away.
“Oh Gawwd.” She brushed her dark hair out of her face. “I’m an illustrator. I mean, I do books. Well, now I’ve got just one book.” She turned back to me, smiling. “I mean, it’s really great. This is my very own contract. This book I’m doing now. It’s my own.” Her face fell again. “But I’m way behind on it. I mean, that’s what this whole trip is about. You see . . .” She looked out over the stern wake. “I’ve spent the whole darned advance on this trip. I thought, you know, it would be good for inspiration. But I don’t know. I’ve got all my stuff with me. I just don’t think I can do it.” The gulls banked to the west and receded into that gray horizon.
“What’s the book?” I asked her.
“Oh, I don’t know. It started out a good idea. I mean, they liked it. The editor liked it. She said the marketing people were wild about it.”
“Just what is it they are wild about?”
“Angels,” Rosalind said in a whisper. “The Encyclopedia of Angels. Portraits and descriptions.”
She said nothing for a while. I shifted on my feet again, scanning my knowledge for all the interesting conversational hooks I could use for “Angels.”
“Oh,” I said rather smartly.
“You’re right,” Rosalind said. “It’s a dumb idea. But I started it. I’ve been reading all the stuff. I mean, people are crazy about Angels. I’ve read all the stuff and I’ve gotten started. And now I’ve spent every cent of the whole gosh-darned advance and I don’t think I can do it.” Her voice disappeared into the wash of wind.
A large seabird came into view from our starboard: huge wingspan skimming the tops of the swells, curving and looping on the slightest change in the wind.
“Isn’t that an albatross?” I asked Rosalind.
“I think so.” Her eyes followed the invisible lines the bird’s wingtips cut into the wind. Her head turned with each curve the bird made across our wake. Rosalind followed the albatross so intently it was as if her own personality had dropped away momentarily.
“I understand they can go days without a beat of their wings,” she finally said.
“Angels?” I asked her.
“No, silly.” And she looked at me shyly. “Albatrosses. I don’t even want to think about Angels today.” The tips of her fingers brushed my wrist. “Do you know where the clinic is? I swear I was there once but I’m not sure how I found it.”
“I do.” I said this with the air of an old salt. “I’ll walk you down there.”
We walked past a group of people standing in the full wind on the back deck. A dark-haired woman with a silver scarf lashing the air around her head held a champagne flute in her thin hands. I heard her saying to the four men clustered around her, “Don’t even talk to me about hunting. There is no literature of hunting. All of that fake sensitive crap about killing animals. It disgusts me. Same with the whining businessmen on the farms. This is no literature of farming or hunting. It’s just boys being boys.” The men in the group stood silently as I walked past them. Rosalind came closely behind me. As we turned into a stairway, I turned and looked back at the group. The woman was flattening her hair and clutching the ends of her silver scarf as she finished the last of her drink. “Well then . . . what’s next, gentlemen?” The four men laughed. I closed the door
behind Rosalind.
I swear I had to clear my ears, too, by the time we made it down to Acapulco Deck. The motion of the ship was an odd sway in gravity, making walking unsteady and tempting seasickness. I walked past my stateroom and down toward the clinic. I stopped at Acapulco 800, apparently too abruptly, for Rosalind bumped into me. She braced her hands against the foam-green walls.
“I didn’t know they even had rooms down here.” She had her eyes closed and I could tell she was trying to peel back the tentacles of motion sickness.
“I’m just going to try my room,” I told her and then tried to turn the knob of Acapulco 800. It was still locked.
“Damn! I forgot my key,” I said hurriedly and walked toward the clinic. The ship lurched to the port and our bodies pulled against the walls. We were both using the inside handrail when we turned the corner to the clinic.
Men’s voices were arguing. “Don’t tell me about the numbers. I don’t want to hear any of that.”
The door was open through to the examining room. There on the table was the pale girl from the evening before. She was dazzling in her colorlessness, as if she were already a spirit of pure light. Standing above her was the large white man with the graying beard I had seen with her last night. He had on a military-style mess jacket with braided epaulets. A stethoscope was draped around his neck.
He spoke and his voice was deep and soothing. “I understand, Isaac. Please don’t misunderstand me . . .”
Then the doctor saw me and he was clearly startled. He quickly turned and in one motion zipped up the green rubber bag in which the pale girl rested. Her hands lay crossed over her sunken chest. Somehow the light in the room seemed to dim. The doctor turned and swiftly kicked the door shut in my face and I found my nose within an inch of the metal door.
“Just one moment, please,” I heard the doctor’s voice say distantly behind the closed door. There was a long silence. Then the doctor walked out the door, pulling the bottom of his jacket down and rolling his shoulders to straighten the fit. “I’m very sorry,” the doctor said and he placed his hand reassuringly on my shoulder. “I’m dealing with an extremely serious situation. Everything is fine, but it just needs my attention. I’ll be able to get back to regular clinic hours soon. I’m sorry, but why not check back with us later? Why not come back in say . . . forty-five minutes?”
