High Seas Drifter (Cruise Confidential 4)

by Brian David Bruns

  But not all French culinary ideas were so successful that day. Cosmina and I discovered this to our chagrin that afternoon. Alas, there was no room for us in the kitchen, nor at the tour's dinner table. We had gotten all hot and bothered at the prospect of real French cuisine prepared by real French chefs. As a consolation, Fabrice recommended his favorite restaurant. Right on the canal, he said. The real deal, he said. Methinks the restaurant, like Sete itself, was perhaps viewed by the French through rose-colored glasses. The restaurant was not a hidden treasure of fantastical culinary delights, but rather a place of sardines and mackerel, of heavy oil fish that could keep your heart pumping smoothly despite an overabundance of heavy cream and cheese.

  We sat at a table right on the sidewalk, overlooking the canal. The water was just low enough where we couldn't see its algae. Too bad we could smell it. It took the waiter a long time to arrive, which was good because it took us a long time to figure out the menu. Neither of us knew French, though Cosmina claimed to. She was not particularly pleased at having her bluff called. Because the waiter did not speak English, we merely pointed at the largest selection of seafood. It seemed to cover everything wet, so surely we'd find something we liked.

  Cosmina immediately launched into a long narrative of why everybody was stupid. She rattled off so many names, so fast, I quickly lost track. I stared at the canal, wondering which would get her to shut up faster: me jumping in or throwing her in.

  "Are you listening to me?"

  "Yes! Yes, of course. Susie is a bitch."

  "That's not what I said," she chided, blowing out deep from her cigarette. The smoke rushed to the neighboring table, where it curled around a steaming bowl of bouillabaisse. I marveled at how the patrons didn't mind.

  "Susie's not a bitch," I corrected.

  "No, dummy, she's a total bitch," Cosmina snapped. "I was talking about Rick. I knew you weren't listening. Why do men never listen?"

  "What's wrong with Rick?" I asked. "Besides the obvious, I mean."

  "Oh, you mean besides his beer belly? He's stupid, that's what. I don't know how he got to be manager of the spa. He must have bribed Steiners or something. God! I can't believe the stupid things he says."

  "Like what?"

  Cosmina shot me a dangerous look, so I just shrugged and dropped it. She's the one who brought it up, but, well, whatever. Once more I gazed to the dirty canal with longing. To my surprise Yoyo walked by.

  "Yoyo!" I said, waving him over. Delighting in the noise that Cosmina made, I added, "Care to join us?"

  "Oh, thanks, Brian," Yoyo said, "but I can't. I'm meeting someone."

  "You know somebody in Sete, too?" I asked, surprised. "Rome's huge, but in tiny Sete? For being from a small village on a small island in Indonesia, you sure know a lot of people."

  "He's an... internet friend," Yoyo explained. Seeing Cosmina openly glaring daggers at him, he waved goodbye and skipped off.

  "God I hate him," Cosmina spat. "I hate gays."

  I rolled my eyes, not really sure I wanted to bother discussing the subject with her. Her culture was fatally macho and ignorant about social issues like sexual orientation. If you didn't beat your woman, you were gay. If you didn't look manly enough to beat your woman, you were gay. If you weren't a male whore—whether married or not—you were gay. To a Romanian, it was really that simple.

  "You don't even know for sure Yoyo's gay," I challenged. "And what about Francois? You like him."

  "Oh, I love Francois," Cosmina agreed. "He doesn't take crap from anybody."

  "You hate Yoyo because he's effeminate, but love Francois?" I protested. "I agree Francois is tough as nails, but he's flaming gay!"

  Looking at me like I was a complete idiot, Cosmina easily explained away the incongruity by saying, "He's French!"

  The food came, which I thought would save me from an unpleasant lunch. Was I ever wrong. We had ordered the big mixed seafood platter for two, which cost the equivalent of about a hundred bucks. At that price, I thought it had to be fairly good. Wrong, wrong.

  "What the hell...?" Cosmina gasped, cigarette dangling dangerously from her lips. "It's all raw!"

  The oysters were raw, yes, and not very good. The mussels were raw, too, which I had never before encountered. So were the clams. Both had a strange, metallic tanginess, so they tasted as gross as they looked. The remaining seafood was cooked, but was downright menacing. I'd never before noticed that crustaceans looked like aliens. The lobster's antennae were over a foot long and jabbed outward to probe things even in death. The beast had been split in half down the middle, revealing that no one had bothered cleaning out any of the inedible innards. The guts were startling multi-colored and waxy, like eating a box of melted crayons. An entire crab sat crookedly atop the pile of seafood. It was whole, and we had no idea how to open the shell. Once we figured it out, we wish we hadn't. There was all sorts of creepy stuff in there. I was reminded of dissecting a frog in biology class. The escargot—in their snail shell, of course—were boiled in salt water. I think. I couldn’t really tell if they were cooked or not because they were astoundingly slimy.

  "I got to pop off the heads and tear off all the slimy shit? I don't think so," Cosmina said, grimacing, as she dropped a large shrimp to her plate in disgust. Its three-inch antenna stuck out over the edge of the table to tickle her belly. There we were, the whole freakin' restaurant around us loaded with beautifully prepared mussels in nice broths, or rich crab bisques and crusty French bread. We had the only raw—or at least horrendously boring—food in the restaurant. No doubt we were just culinary barbarians.

  "And don't you go looking into my paisana," Cosmina suddenly said. "Talk about a bitch."

  "What?" I asked, confused. I'd been focused on the seafood. "Your paisana?"

  "Don't play stupid with me. I expect it from everybody else, but not you."

  "You mean Aurelia?" I asked. "What about her?"

  "Don't go there. That skinny little girl's got nothing for you. Stick with me, and I'll show you amazing things. In fact, tomorrow you're coming with me. I've got the whole day planned. An offer you can't refuse."

  I wondered if she was aware of the menace those words implied.

  Chapter 16. Malaga, Spain

  1

  The day shall forever be known as the "Spain in the Ass." It was one bitch fest after another. I thought I'd had an earful during the "Raw Meal of Sete," but that was nothing compared to the waves of discontent I weathered the next day. Neither Cosmina nor I particularly liked Sete, so bitching seemed rather par for the course. But that big day in Spain was different. We weren't visiting some crappy little fishing village with delusions of grandeur—oh no. I had been promised amazing things, world class things. Cosmina had made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

  The Surf moored just off the pier of Malaga. I was always fond of Malaga, being as it was the birthplace of the greatest artist who ever lived. Thusly its Pablo Picasso Museum, unlike its counterparts in Paris and Barcelona, featured a tremendous amount of his earlier work. In Picasso's case, earlier meant hornier—as if that was possible. Good ol' Picasso: not only did he change the very definition of art for all time, he was also delightfully pornographic.

  But our destination was not on the shores of the Mediterranean. Our destination was inland hills west of Granada; the site where Queen Isabella finally defeated the occupying Moors, the site where she met Christopher Columbus and gave him the go-ahead for the New World, the site where Cosmina vomited in the garden.

  We were going to Alhambra!

  The problem—for there was always a problem with Cosmina involved—was that she was sick. I wasn't particularly surprised, seeing that she was a chain-smoking, bitter misanthrope. That much sourness sooner or later comes to the surface. As nice and tidy as that theory sounded to me, it didn't explain her diarrhea. No, her problem was eating all that nasty raw seafood in Sete.

  The drive wasn't two hours: it was eternity. We sat together in the front of a packed t
our bus. The whole time Cosmina was sneezing on me, blowing her nose on me, hacking on me, farting on me. At first I felt bad for her. Then I felt bad for me. It wasn't necessarily her fault—though some vegetables other than cocktail onions would have done her some good—but she should have remained on the ship.

  "Why didn't you go to the doctor?" I asked, grimacing as she fidgeted and farted with wild abandon.

  "And have the witch doctor put me in quarantine?" she scoffed. Hack! Sniff! "No way. The tour operator said this place was amazing, so here we are."

  "You don't even want to see this place, do you?" I asked.

  "My job is to get you off," she said in a pathetic attempt to sound naughty. Wiping her nose simultaneously undermined the effort. "You get off on old rocks."

  Eventually the great fortress rose before us. A veritable forest of cypress trees jut above the parapets to poke the sky, proving this was no mere battle stronghold. Though the dry hill overlooking Granada was first fortified in the 9th century, it wasn't until the 13th century that the royal residence and gardens were built. They took well over a hundred years to perfect—time well spent. Centuries of visitors have been seduced by the unique combination of columned arcades, fountains, and light-reflecting water basins found in garden after garden, courtyard after courtyard, level upon level. Certainly it was one of the most beautiful palaces I had ever seen, and was a superlative for Islamic architecture. Indeed, it is considered the finest example in all of Europe and one of the top two in the world.

  What really blew me away were the intricacies of geometric patterns in the architecture. Walls, alcoves, niches, columns, and doors—you name it—all were hand-carved with a mesmerizing mesh of geometric patterns and Arabic calligraphy. Inside some chambers I was reminded strikingly of the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs, as flickering light illuminated ancient, sacred messages cut into walls, floor to ceiling.

  Geometric decor was not merely stamped onto the surface, but fully integrated into the architecture. Cavernous domes reared overhead, dripping mathematically perfect stalactites by the thousands. It was like walking into a beehive built by a mad geometrist. Dome after dome, fountain after fountain, pool after pool; all were astounding. America had nothing like it, for even our most accomplished buildings were completed quickly. We simply cannot understand what it means to continually craft a building over centuries. How could we? To Europe a hundred years is a blink, to us it's an epoch. America's superlatives—and we have many—invariably revolve around innovation.

  The really stunning thing was that Queen Isabella didn't raze it all to the ground. She who expunged all Muslims; she who exiled all Jews; she who started the Inquisition; she who tortured thousands of Christians; she who oppressed thousands of Native Americans—she thought the Alhambra simply too marvelous to destroy. She bucked centuries of Christian/Muslim tradition of destroying each others' places of worship.

  Ultimately then, and ironically, the Alhambra was a lesson in humility. The reign of the Moors lasted a whopping seven centuries. Nobody thought it could fall. Isabella, while victorious, realized her place was not absolute. I was reminded strongly that America, by comparison, has only been on top of the world for seven decades. Don't get cocky, my dear America: time tells all.

  Most of the attitude that day, however, came from Cosmina. She thought she was sophisticated simply because she was from the capital city. There she had learned how to work the system, any system, to get ahead—not far ahead, mind you, just ahead. She watched the bottlenecks and lines and instinctively knew when to cut in front or when to get an almost equal view for a fraction of the wait. For each obligatory snapshot in front of whatever thing it was the people were into—a fountain, a window, a pool—Cosmina would pose. In standard European format, she didn't smile. Being sick just added to her looking like hell. On the plus side, she stank so badly that most people gave us a wide berth.

  What Cosmina didn't get—and I heartily argue most tourists don't—is the vibe of a place. It isn't about the perfect picture moment, it isn't about proof you were there. The Alhambra was a pasha's pleasure palace, where his harem lived and cavorted. Tall hedges exploding with flowers had once hidden musicians who'd been blinded so they were unable to see the Pasha being intimate with his 300 wives. Personally, I would hate to be in a place dominated by hundreds of bickering women fighting over rank. Then I discovered that the Pasha's mother was in charge of them all. Who's going to mess with that mother-in-law? The women were gone, but the romance remained, visible in every intimate meeting of stone and sand, every tryst of flowers and water. Yet while I was enchanted by a kitten quietly lapping water from a mirror pool, Cosmina waited impatiently in line for a photo op with a crowded fountain.

  Cosmina's not caring about anything did not bother me, of course. Her loud complaining did. She was louder than the guide. I would shush her, she would sneeze on me. Repeat. In all, the three hours at Alhambra were more nauseating than the two hours in the bus getting there. I was so inured to her abrasiveness—be it verbal or olfactory—that I didn't care about the return anymore. But one of her gripes set me off. It had nothing to do with the Alhambra. No doubt she only dropped it because I had begun ignoring her. She said somebody was going to get fired from Wind Surf.

  "What?" I said, surprised. "What did you say?"

  "Nothing." Sniff!

  "You said you knew somebody was going to get fired from the Surf."

  "Did I?" Hack! Cough! "Maybe I know something. I've got the ear of some high level people."

  "Who?" I pressed.

  But Cosmina was not playing. At that point, neither was I. With great disdain I snapped, "Anyone who drops a hint like that and doesn't follow through is either lying or a bitch."

  Cosmina was about to retort, but suddenly stopped up short. She held up a finger as if to make a point, then released a horrid, violent belch. Several passersby were so shocked they stumbled into each other. Cosmina abruptly began running. She pushed aside two Japanese tourists and buried her face into the nearest shrubbery—in this case, roses. She promptly vomited, long and hard. Several people snapped photos of her raised backside. I tried not to laugh at that.

  When she was finally through, she pushed herself up slowly. She staggered a bit, looking around sheepishly. I started laughing. I couldn't help it. Of all the shrubbery she could have chosen... she'd cut her cheeks on the thorns!

  2

  The Spain in the Ass was not over upon returning to Wind Surf, however. Oh no, things were just getting started. I decided to head down to the Marina and help out Eddie and Susie. Thought I'd be a team player. Boy, was that ever a mistake.

  Like Cosmina, Susie had suffered a rather nasty stomach issue. Doctor Faye was 90% sure it was just a bug from a local meal in port somewhere, but ships never take chances with a stomach virus. Thus Susie was quarantined. For three days she was trapped in that tiny little cabin. No fresh air, no exercise, no choice. Food was delivered. That was bad enough. But what was really bad was that Eddie—being her cabin-mate—was quarantined with her. Three days locked in that tiny cell with a volatile, cramping Susie. Poor bastard.

  The Spain in the Ass was Susie's first day out, and boy did she lay into everyone. She'd had a huge argument with Cosmina in the morning before the excursions left. Apparently Susie thought Cosmina was nothing but a spoiled princess. That was a no-brainer, but did it really need to be said? But for whatever reason Susie felt the need to launch into Cosmina about how she was a petty, selfish, arrogant, manipulative slut. Susie highlighted each item with great emphasis and clarity, overlooking the rather obvious fact that she was listing all of her own faults—obvious to the rest of us, anyway. Of course Cosmina, too, was feeling under the weather. She retaliated with great fury. Watching those two duke it out would have been a spectacle worthy of buttered popcorn, had Eddie and I not been stuck with the fallout.

  But that had just been the beginning. Susie then swept through the spa and nearly reduced Natalie to tears. Natalie took no
offense at being called petty, but was astounded to hear she was also a slut—especially considering she was a virgin. After one look at his dark countenance, Susie carefully avoided sparring with Rick. Alas, gift shop manager Mel had no such luck. She received a particularly nasty rebuke about her life because she was also Canadian—apparently that meant she should know better. Better than what Susie never bothered explaining. We need not mention the grisly details of Susie's encounter with Yoyo.

  I was not above a hearty bitching, either. I had shamefully organized an excursion of crew friends while she'd been in quarantine. This, apparently, was the height of selfishness. I had replied that I was unaware mourning was required and added, rather drily, that next time she was under the weather I would smear mud over my head, shred my clothes, and wail funeral dirges. That had not gone over well. The fact that I was volunteering my time to help them that afternoon did not blunt her fury in the slightest. She was only assuaged when I told her she was in charge of the get-together in St. Tropez tomorrow. To save my skin I was also required to invite her to a traditional Flamenco dance that evening.

  And so, as the sun snuggled with the dry mountains on the western horizon, four of us from Wind Surf—Eddie, Susie, Yoyo and myself—went ashore to see the Flamenco dance. I had only seen such things in movies. I knew it would involve acoustic guitar and clapping. I hoped it would involve hot chicks. Then again, I hope everything involves hot chicks.