High Seas Drifter (Cruise Confidential 4)

by Brian David Bruns

  "Beer?" I said. "It's not even nine o'clock in the morning!"

  "Better get a move on!" she agreed.

  "At least you're not vivisecting a salami sandwich," I grumbled, snatching the bottle. Nails released it with a click. To Rick I asked, "This is your plan?"

  He tugged once again upon the hoop of mischief and answered, "One beer at every stop! You won't get to see all you want anyway. This way I guarantee you'll have a story to tell!"

  I thought his proposition highly dubious, yet found myself sipping the beer to completion. The others each downed an additional beer before the train pulled into Rome. The ride was sunny and warm, with sweaters wrapped around waists. Setting foot on the platform changed all that. In Rome itself, the weather was cloudy and very cool. Well, not for Ingrid, but she was Norwegian. Not for the Aussies, either, because they were drunk. Maybe they had a good idea after all. We all gathered up a fresh beer and pushed into a double-decker tour bus—ye olde Hop-on Hop-off.

  The first stop was nothing less than the Coliseum. This was the real deal; site of slaughtered Christians, slaughtered beasts, slaughtered everything, really. This was living history—er, dead history. And it was exactly what I thought it would look like. And why not? I'd studied the intricacies of the structure in depth during college, seen a zillion pictures of it in books, watched Maximus slay Commodus within on the big screen. We didn't have time to wait two hours just to see the interior—which I would surely recognize just as much as the exterior. Suddenly it occurred to me just how right Rick was. I spun on my heel and snapped off half a dozen pictures... of a beer stand. Then I marched over to it and ordered a beer and a panini. This tour was about to get rocked.

  From the top tier of the tour bus we drank and laughed and, sometimes, looked around. So many domes, so many pillars, so many statues, so many traffic lights. And they were intolerably long, too. We soon developed a game for each red light. If we spied a sandwich stand on the corner—which we always did—and if they sold beer—which they always did—one of us would rush off to purchase four beers. Drinking down the entire bottle before the next light was the hard part.

  The Coliseum. The Forum. Circus Maximus. The Trevi Fountain. Oodles of monuments to dead saints, leaders, and Romans. The omelette panini. The mortadella panini. The porchetta panini. There were a bunch of churches and cathedrals, too, but since none of us were Catholic we skipped them. But not the sandwich carts, oh no. By ten o'clock I had already feasted on four sub sandwiches—for in Italy a panino means 'bread roll', not necessarily the small, machine pressed sandwich of the States.

  The weather turned even cloudier and cooler. Rain threatened. Ingrid, being Norwegian—and drunk—cried aloud that if it rained she would strip naked and prance in Roman rain. Rick heartily encouraged the clouds to open up. I may have also indicated support for the idea.

  Before we knew what was happening—not that we could understand anything at that point—we were standing before the Vatican. St. Peter's Square was one of the largest squares on the planet, but everything else was very large, too. No sense of scale was possible until one started looking at the tiny figures of people. The colonnades stretching out from the Basilica to form the Square were a whopping four columns deep. It was an ostentatious display of wealth I'd only seen in one other place—Las Vegas. Go figure.

  Ultimately, the line to enter the Vatican itself was approximately two hours in length. The Sistine queue was about four hours. We had one. But all was okay, because there was a beer stand right there. Even better, a tabacchi stand! Let us not forget that Italians all chain smoke cigarettes. Luckily, I was able to procure a cigar. And beer. And panini.

  Lighting up, I blew a cloud of smoke in the air and regarded the majesty of St. Peter's Square. It wasn't square, of course, but round. The colonnades surrounding it were designed by the great Bernini. They extended far, far out from the main structure of the Vatican itself, angled outward to imply the wide embrace of the church. Regardless of one's spiritual orientation, St. Peter's Basilica and Square were most impressive. And speaking of spiritual orientation, Rick proved his lack thereof when he began thrusting his hips in the direction of the square's central feature, an Egyptian obelisk. More than a few tourists stopped and stared at him in wonder. Several Vatican gendarmes glared from afar.

  "What are you doing?" Natalie asked, aghast at his suggestive dance. She slapped his arm and chided, "You're being disrespectful!"

  "I'm doing a rain dance," he chortled.

  Ingrid raised her eyebrows suggestively and blew him a kiss.

  "We're not at Uluru," Natalie continued. "It's the Vatican, you heathen."

  "Fine," Rick acquiesced via slur. He clapped his hands together and prayed, "I do beseech you, oh Lord, to let it rain, for I am desperate to see Ingrid naked.”

  “Amen,” I added cheekily.

  By then I'd had five sandwiches and one hot dog. That was about the only thing I knew for certain, other than that it hadn't rained—more's the pity. I lost track of how many beers I'd had. So did the others. We argued over how many street vendors we'd stopped at. When did you get that candy? Stop four? Three. No way, three was when we all ordered a round of Peroni. Two, then. No, two was when Brian had the hot dog. Our drunken arguments were as sloppy as Rick's rain dance.

  In a moment of sheer brilliance, Natalie suggested we use our cameras to go over our day. As one, all four of us pulled out our cameras and started flipping through photos. Each narrated the progression aloud, much to the consternation of those around us who had come seeking something a little more momentous than four babbling, blaspheming drunkards. Get past the Forum there... aha! Vendor four. How do I skip all those pics of the Trevi Fountain? Vendor five was that one—outside Circus Maximus. Oh yeah! All told, I had a blurry photo of the Coliseum, two of the Vatican, and about twenty of beers, cigars, and panini.

  We had a grand ol' time circling Rome. We were flying high by the time the tour bus dropped us off at the train station. We tumbled out of the bus and seemed to roll right up to yet another sandwich stand. We ordered beers and sandwiches all around—for the road, of course. Then we sat down to wait for the train returning to Civitavecchia.

  "When's the train coming?" Natalie asked. "I'm bored of Rome."

  I perused the train schedule intently. Because we had obtained a guide written in English, there was no need to translate. That did not mean it was easy to decipher the print, however, for it kept morphing and jumping across the page. "Says here there should be a train leaving in... we gotta go! It's leaving right now!"

  We leapt to our feet and started running. We must have been quite a sight: an American, an Australian, an Englishman, and a Norwegian running across platform after platform, shrieking, a beer sloshing in one hand and panini flapping in the other. Yet it was all for naught. There was no such train. In fact, the guide had been incorrect. As if in our drunken state we needed more challenges! After asking around, we were informed of a direct train to Civitavecchia arriving in twenty minutes. Assuming we didn't miss that one, Rick and I would still make our stupid meeting with Francois. So panting, wheezing, and dizzy, we sat our thick bodies and thicker minds on a bench to wait.

  The train finally arrived and we shuffled aboard. While selecting our seats, I noticed a small Asian man sitting alone. His eyes were mere slits, and he stared dreamily into space. I couldn't blame him: after the crisp air outside, inside the train was stuffy and moist.

  "Yoyo!" I said in recognition. "I'll be damned. You went to Rome alone? What, d'you see the Coliseum?"

  "Hmm?" Yoyo said, looking up slowly. "Oh, hi Brian. No, I visited a friend."

  "He looks like he's been to a whorehouse," Rick observed.

  "Rick!" Natalie cried, giving him her usual slap on the arm. This caused him to spill his beer, prompting a growl.

  "He's like you," Yoyo defended lightly. "He gives massages for a living. I fell asleep!"

  "People do that all the time," Rick muttered, unwrapping his san
dwich. Taking a huge bite, he continued talking with his mouth full. "Just last week I had this middle-aged guy fall asleep in just five minutes. I left him there and finished my paperwork."

  "You what?" Natalie asked, shocked. "You left him there?"

  "Charged him, too," Rick continued, still chewing. "I checked on him every few minutes, but he was still out."

  "What if he woke up?" Natalie demanded. Though his employee, she was ever his conscience.

  Rick shrugged, took another bite, and said, "I'd have told him I stepped out for a second, that's all. He didn't know any better. He felt great, he said. Uptight bastard needed a good nap."

  "Did you get a good tip?" Ingrid asked with a smirk.

  "Always," Rick replied.

  "The other day I had a client with a huge erection," Ingrid popped up. "And I do mean huge. Freaked me out."

  "Did you get a good tip?" Rick shot back.

  "Oh my God," Natalie said, suddenly remembering something. "When I first started with Steiner's, I was cutting this guy's hair one day. He started moving his hand up and down under the gown—a lot. I slapped him with the comb, called him a dirty effer, and pulled off the gown. Turns out he was just polishing his glasses. I think I would have been less embarrassed if he'd actually been wanking off."

  "Bah," Rick scoffed. "That'd do you some good. I still can't believe I have a virgin working for me."

  I raised an eyebrow and teased, "A virginal Steiner? Isn't that an oxymoron?"

  "You mean a virgin virgin?" Ingrid asked, slightly surprised, "Or just a virgin to a naked guy's hard on in the spa?"

  "Both," Natalie answered. "I'd freak if I saw some guy's hard on at work."

  "Bah," Rick scoffed again. "One cruise I had this gay guy come in every day and pay double if I'd give him a massage fully naked. Him being naked, I mean, not me. Anyway, he was very polite and made it clear he didn't want any sex or anything. He just didn't want to wear a towel and didn't want me freakin' out that he was hard the whole time."

  "So you did it?" Yoyo piped up suddenly. We thought he'd fallen back asleep.

  "Of course! After six years in the military I've seen a million guys naked. I don't care. Made a killing."

  "I hate it when people fart," Natalie suddenly declared. "I'm sure in some places they're rubbing oil on sexy bodies, but not on ships. Here it's just lots of fat, middle-aged people farting. It's gross."

  "Spa shop talk is interesting," I commented lightly. "But I gotta tell you, my first massage was a freakin' nightmare."

  Laughing at the memory, I share the story.

  "The first massage I ever had was in Las Vegas. I was with my girlfriend. We didn't have much money in those days so we went to Chinatown. We hadn't asked for a couples massage, but they put us in the same room with two beds. I guess they're supposed to be relaxing and romantic or whatever, but not this time! The two Chinese ladies started yammering at each other and didn't stop until the massage was done. I mean, really, do you have any idea how obnoxious Chinese can sound? Some languages are pretty, and some are not. These two had high-pitched voices that were penetratingly loud. They crawled all over us, too. I know you guys use your elbows, but these chicks literally crawled on top to dig their knees into our backs. I think their knees were sharper than their elbows. An hour of that, squawking in our ears, kneeing in our backs. At the end my masseuse shouted in this wangy voice, 'You want happy ending? I give happy ending!'"

  "Oh my God!" Natalie said, throwing her hands over her mouth. "She actually said that with your girlfriend there?"

  "Yes," I answered. "I'm sure she could've cared less about my girlfriend being there. She was just going through the motions. In hindsight, I should have said yes, just to see my girlfriend's reaction. Instead I said 'Not today, I have a headache,' which was true enough."

  The train began to slow. This prompted immediate worry.

  "There's no way we're there yet," I said. "We didn't get on the wrong train, did we?"

  We peered out the window as the train pulled up to a station. Bodies came and went, and the train throttled up again. So much for our direct train to Civitavecchia—damned Italians were incorrect again. Ultimately we stopped half a dozen times. We arrived in Civitavecchia just as Francois' staff meeting started. Rick and I left the others and sprinted across the platform and out of the station. We shared a groan upon observing not a taxi in sight.

  "Come on, mate," Rick said gamely. We rushed out of the station, down a hill, and through the streets. With no sloshing beer and flapping sandwich to encumber us, we made good time—but not good enough. Sweaty and panting, we rushed through the Wind Surf to the dining room. There, Francois sat about a cleared, round table with the ship's management. When we thundered in, everybody looked up in surprise. Rick collapsed onto his knees before he even reached a chair, gawping madly for air. A hand wavered up from behind the chair back, and Rick called weakly, "We're here."

  Eddie of the sports deck, Mel of the gift shop, Dimitar of the casino, the bar manager, the restaurant manager—all were amused. All but Francois.

  Calmly looking at his watch, the hotel director finished Rick's statement by adding, "With two minutes remaining."

  Needless to say, we got in trouble. As much as I hated to disappoint Francois, I had to admit it was a helluva good time!

  2

  The coastal town of Sete was France's Venice, or so they liked to call it. They were the only ones to do so. Anyone having visited Venice would scoff heartily at such a comparison. For Sete was not a sprawl of wondrous, crumbling palaces rising from a labyrinth of canals, a collection of bridges and backwaters and whispers, of forgotten fountains, of moldy statues. No, Sete was—and had been for millennia—a fishing village. Sure, it had canals. It also had dozens of smelly fishing trawlers.

  So Sete was not the coolest of ports. Wind Surf made it into one. The head chef, a Frenchman named Neill, personally led an excursion into Sete's market. Because the market was so chaotic, the two dozen guests required four chaperones to keep them from getting lost or, more likely, bought and sold. Thus it was that Cosmina and I joined the Frenchmen Neill and Fabrice into the madhouse of fish, flowers, cheese, and produce. Neill didn't know what he was going to buy, but promised to come up with something special from whatever looked best.

  I am ever a fan of farmer's markets. The only thing better than the people watching was the food watching. Though from the farming hub of America, I had to admit I'd never seen anything even remotely compare to the produce plied in Europe. They had centuries of focus on perfecting taste. We had decades of focus on maximizing profit. Agribusiness was a dirty word in Europe, and even just dipping your toe into the culture explained why they were so vehemently against genetically modifying foods. America, by contrast, didn't even bother labeling Frankenveggies. Maybe it was because most Americans don't eat vegetables!

  The market was a large warehouse-style building, inside of which was row upon row of heaped, fresh awesomeness. Entire schools of fish crowded mounds of ice, pyramids of multicolored onions rose to glorious peaks, and refrigerated cases held carved wheels of cheese from cow, sheep, and goat milk. And the baked baguettes? They looked so sexy I would have robbed an old lady for one.

  A morning in the Sete market with Chef Neill was vastly enlightening. Though a classically trained French chef—meaning lots of heavy cream and perfumed liquors—he personally preferred simple items. His first order of business was to show us how quality can make the simplest items sublime.

  First he approached a vendor selling radishes. After a mere glance at the heap of finger-long icicle radishes, he began mercilessly interrogating the tiny, ancient grandmother who sold them. She seemed utterly unfazed by his barrage of questions. Satisfied by her answers, Neill then began painstakingly selecting the goods. Each radish was the size and shape of a man's finger. Below the thick tangle of green they shifted from a fat purple to a white tip. He handed each of us a radish, then moved on.

  "He's not going
to make us eat this, is he?" a rather portly American lady asked, aghast.

  Overhearing her, Fabrice reassured her in his thick accent, "Not to worry, eez already washed."

  "How do you know?" she challenged with growing alarm. She held the offending vegetable at arm's length, staring at it with nothing short of dread.

  "Do you see any dirt?" Fabrice asked lightly.

  "Pesticides! Chemical fertilizers!"

  "From ze French countryside?" Fabrice scoffed lightly. "Ze only fertilizair eez manure. Eez as natural as yoo can get."

  "Manure! Oh my God!"

  "Eez been washed," Fabrice repeated, growing annoyed but doing a very admirable job of hiding it.

  "Says you," she huffed. Then she reaffirmed with a jiggle of determination. "How do I know she didn't spit on it?"

  Fabrice glanced at the little old lady in her crocheted shawl. She smiled back up at him. Fortunately he didn't have to say anything further, for another man—Mr. Portly, presumably—shushed her.

  Next Chef Neill went to a salt peddler. Here he rubbed into his palms samples of crystals ranging in color from clear all the way to black. After narrowing it down to three, he delicately tasted each. Finally he purchased a small bag of a coarse, frosty-white salt. Again, he moved on.

  The last vendor sold butter. I had no idea there was such a wide variety of something as simple as butter. I'm not talking about butter vs. margarine or any other processed spreads—I'm talking about plain old butter. That vendor was nothing less than the Baskin Robbins of butter. Eventually Neill selected a freshly churned, non-salted, cow's-milk butter. Then he led us away from the crowds and into a relatively quiet corner.

  Everyone was ordered to line up and hold out their hands. Into each outstretched palm Neil delivered a small, circular scoop of frigid butter.

  "I didn't wash my hands!" proclaimed Mrs. Portly. Chef Neill ignored her to move back down the line again, adding a pinch of salt. We were ordered to take a bite of the radish and then a bite of the salted butter. The combination did not sound particularly engaging, and more than a few people hesitated. But after looking at the almost orgasmic faces of those who ventured forth, soon all hurried to obey. The radish was arresting in its sharpness, yet the tongue was soothed by the creamy butter. After swallowing, the boldness of the radish faded into a delicate tingling of salt. The combination was so astounding that one woman blasphemed by saying she'd take it over chocolate.