High Seas Drifter (Cruise Confidential 4)

by Brian David Bruns

  She strode toward the pillar with purpose, mind bent on reaching and clearing that plate and the hideous body parts before the freak came back. He was nice and all, but just too damn creepy. At least he tipped well. The white-haired Mr. Arno had come every day for a full week, every day eating his bizarre pyramid of shrimp. The routine had varied only in volume, which was the creepiest thing of all: it had grown by an additional plate for every day! As if he hadn’t cut into her free time before… now she was getting genuinely angry. His screwed-up ritual took longer and longer every day.

  Snarfing down all those prawns was showing on him, too. His formerly trim figure had begun to stretch outward. Within just a week, Lisa had witnessed his belly move from flat to pouring over his belt. Apparently he had a larger wardrobe ready, because his pants were not stretched.

  Lisa snatched up the empty plate, then hastily scooped shells and tails and legs and lemon rinds onto it. There was far too much for her to collect onto the one plate. The realization was revolting. The unpleasant task was not finished, but temporarily eased. She scurried back toward the service station, desperate to rid herself of the disgusting load. Near the folding screen that blocked the view to the service area, she was halted by the high-pitched tone customers preferred when addressing their waiters.

  “Miss?”

  Lisa froze in her tracks. Fortunately the word was not spoken by him. No, it was the ladies at table 26. They were two middle-aged housewife-types enjoying a late lunch out. One wore the most profound purple hat Lisa had ever seen, even in the dining room. It was nothing short of a sombrero, albeit with birds stitched onto it. Lisa instantly sized up their character as only a waitress can.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “We were wondering, what’s the secret of this shrimp?”

  Her nerves flashed like lightning, but she realized their request was completely innocent. They had no concept at all of Mr. Arno’s fierce shrimp predation and bizarre eating habits. They had both shared a small, appropriate portion of the peel-and-eat prawns. Mercifully, the discarded shells rested neatly on a side plate.

  Smiling her most charming smile, Lisa answered, “The secret? Well, we all have secrets, but…”

  She leaned forward conspiratorially. They mirrored her with interest.

  “Some say, when the moon is full… they dance around the fire in their underpants.”

  Eyes widened in surprise. Silence hung heavy. Suddenly Purple Hat burst into laughter. Her laughter was even more profound than her hat—if that were possible—growing and growing until she began snorting. Lisa smiled, pleased to have read her guest correctly. Purple Hat’s friend, however, did not react well at all. The woman frowned deeply at such unwarranted levity. Her friend’s continued snorts only seemed to annoy her more. Before the woman had a chance to voice criticism, Lisa smoothly continued, “I’m sorry, it was just a silly little joke that came to mind. Of course you were asking about the recipe?”

  Through her frown, the disgruntled guest nodded. Purple Hat’s snorting had settled into snuffling. She wiped away a few errant tears, then playfully slapped her friend’s hand, chiding, “Really, Amanda, you must lighten up.”

  “As far as I know,” Lisa said, “They just boil them. I’m sure there’s something in the water, though. I know Chef takes great care in selecting his ingredients. Let me see if he can come out and speak with you.”

  Lisa shot through the service station, down the carpeted hallway’s ramp, and plunged into the noise and bustle of the kitchen. She was only too happy to be rid of the horrid pile of shells and legs. Disgusting, the leftovers of other people’s food. Even after a week, she hadn’t gotten used to the repulsive eating habits of Mr. Arno. His mouth was like a garbage disposal with a mustache.

  Wayne materialized from the dining room bearing a tray loaded with plates. He deftly eased the weight onto a folding stand. Despite herself, Lisa had to admit his strength was impressive. What he held aloft with one arm, she would struggle to hold up with two—balanced on her shoulder. But that didn’t mean she wanted to talk to him.

  Spying Chef walking by—it was impossible not to—Lisa quickly used the opportunity for escape.

  “Uncle Tony!” she called across the kitchen. “Chef!”

  “Oh, hey Lisa,” he said, shuffling over to her.

  Chef Tony was a remarkably tall man, reaching nearly seven feet. Lisa’s little figure brought her forehead barely past his waist. But today he did not stand tall. Rather, he drooped like a flower pummeled by a hard rain. No doubt he was hungover again. He had been drinking a lot lately. A week ago, he’d shaved off his hair because he didn’t care anymore. Meanwhile he had not shaved his face at all. He had gone from a polished up-and-coming professional to a scruffy back-alley drunkard. Certain habits were ingrained deeply, however: his chef coat—though wrinkled—was fastidiously clean.

  His sudden transformation made sense, though. He was going through a rough divorce. Tony’s wife—Lisa’s own Aunt Lisa—was really dragging him through the coals. It was such a shame because he was a nice man. His ambitions of opening his own restaurant had been utterly shattered by her selfish behavior. Every penny he had saved for years went to lawyers just to keep what he had before he met her. He might as well hand it all over and save himself the crippling stress. His money was surely lost anyway. Lisa loved her Uncle Tony and felt embarrassed to be named after his witch of a wife.

  As her uncle slumped forward, Lisa suddenly found herself reflecting upon not his issues, but her own. Tony had a real reason for his haggard appearance. Lisa, on the other hand, was undergoing a trial she didn’t understand at all. Even a little help was all she wanted. She wished she could hide her hair behind a chef’s hat. She hadn’t bothered with the tangle in a week. You’d think that a pixie cut would be easy to maintain, but it wasn’t. When she’d had a ponytail, she’d just grab, wrap, and go. Now her short hair looked frizzy, or uneven, or it spiked weirdly. It wasn’t just that she was out of time—though she was, courtesy of Mr. Arno—but what little time she had was spent on fixing her other problems.

  She’d gotten very thick around the middle all of a sudden. Her pants were always tight—Wayne would say wonderfully so—but now getting them on was a chore beyond reason. She was used to the roller coaster of weight, but this time was different. Her jeans were so tight that she couldn’t zip them closed. Luckily she had a wide belt that hung over the open zipper. What had her confused, and a little alarmed, was her eyes. Being a college student, she was used to chronic bags under her eyes from lack of sleep, but this was something else entirely. Her eyes were puffy all around, as if she’d been partying all night, eating too much salt, something. They didn’t hurt, but they looked awful. She felt like a frog.

  “What can I do for you, Lisa?” Tony asked quietly, rubbing reddened eyes.

  Lisa followed his motion with envy. Even with crappy eyes, he still looked better than her. Men had it so easy. Tired of his hair? Chop it off. Five extra pounds? He was already two hundred, who would notice? Nobody wanted a man too skinny anyway. Don’t want people to focus on this or that? Grow a beard. That’s all anyone’ll talk about.

  “Can you talk to some ladies at table 26 for me?” Lisa asked, her focus returning to work.

  “Sure,” he replied with a forced smile. “Introduce me?”

  In the dining room, the sour lady was suitably placated by the presence of Chef Tony. Purple Hat, however, continued to prove she needed no further attention. “When the moon is full!” she repeated with a giggle, a snort, and an all-around obsessiveness that freaked Lisa out. She and Mr. Arno were made for each other. Was she doomed to be surrounded by stupid people?

  “Miss?”

  Lisa’s shoulders tensed. Yes, it was her lot in life.

  Keeping the fake grin on her face—the perma-grin all waitresses had mastered—she spun on her heel to face the pillar. There he was at his little table by the pillar, hands buried in a mound of pink husks. His belly, grown alarm
ingly fast, squeezed under the table most disagreeably.

  “What was that about the full moon?” he asked. “It’s not for another eight nights.”

  Lisa squirmed in embarrassment and said, “Yeah? Well, it was nothing. Just a little joke.”

  “Please, I want to know.”

  “It wasn’t funny. Really,” Lisa said. She did not want to have any conversation with Mr. Arno regarding shrimp!

  “I insist you tell me,” Mr. Arno said firmly. His tone was domineering, but he looked nothing short of ludicrous. His arms remained buried in the mound of shrimps, as if he were praying and somebody just happened to pour on several pounds of shrimp. He pushed, “You must tell me. I love the moon. She is so important.”

  “Important?”

  “Oh yes!” he said earnestly, pulling his hands out from the mess. Lisa was astonished. She had not seen him alter his routine even once that entire week. His eyes glinted strangely, and he intoned, “She is the most perfect pearl set in the most perfect sea of all—the sea of stars. Though she changes in appearance every night—why, even disappearing entirely from view once a cycle—she is always there. Always. She affects every tide of every sea and every ocean everywhere. All life depends upon her. But more than that, there is much she knows—much indeed. Secrets of the sea, secrets of the stars. She knows things.”

  “…right,” Lisa droned slowly, unsure of a proper response. This guy was officially nuts. She mumbled some excuse and fled.

  Back to the service station she ran, so fast that she nearly collided with Wayne. He seemed genuinely unhappy that she had not bumped into him. He bobbed before her, flashing a rosy, pimply grin. Out of the frying pan, into the fire!

  “Get out of my way, Wayne,” Lisa demanded, trying to step around him.

  “You read the paper today?” He asked, bubbling.

  “No, Wayne, I didn’t,” she answered flatly, moving around him. “I don’t read the paper. Who reads the paper? Will you please excuse me?”

  “They found the waitress from that other restaurant!” he called after.

  Lisa stopped up short, then retreated from her descent down the hallway, asking, “What did you say?”

  “Yeah,” he continued. “Found her in a dumpster. She had that same disease the other server had. You know, the one who died a couple months ago?”

  “The fat thing?”

  “KBS,” Wayne clarified, “Kheoghtom’s Bloating Syndrome.”

  Lisa was stunned. Though she generally acted as if she had no time for anything Wayne had to say, it was only a cover. There was no denying his intelligence. He read the paper and everything. She’d heard about the waitress who’d gone missing. Everybody had. Lisa was glad to hear some details.

  “It’s really rare,” he continued. “I don’t get what’s the big deal. The paper said she put on a lot of weight before she died anyway, from what I understand.”

  “What do you mean, ‘anyway’?” Lisa snapped. “You make it sound like it’s okay to die if you’re fat.”

  “Hey,” he defended hastily. “I didn’t mean anything by it. But I don’t like fat chicks. If she got fat… well, I don’t know. What do you want from me?”

  “Wayne,” Lisa chastised, “She’s our age and she’s dead. Don’t talk about her weight.”

  “Our age?” he repeated excitedly. “You saying we’re the same age now?”

  Lisa rolled her eyes for answer.

  “I don’t know what’s the big deal,” he said again. “Women are scared to talk about weight, as if it doesn’t exist or something. I’m trying to gain weight. I gained twenty pounds in the last four months. All of it muscle.”

  Lisa noted his neck tense, his veins pop––early warning signals she never missed.

  “Whatever, Wayne,” Lisa dismissed. “Tell me about the waitress. Where was she?”

  Wayne shrugged and said, “Guess she was hiding out in her apartment. They said it looked like she lived as a shut-in for a couple weeks. Probably ran out of food, so she had to go out. That’s when she died.”

  “So she wasn’t kidnapped, like they were saying?”

  “Nope. Just busy eating herself to death, apparently. That’s amazing to me. Thad—he’s my training partner—and I have to eat six times a day, and we’re still calorie deficient. I lose eight pounds every night in my sleep, no matter how much I eat during the day.”

  “Nobody cares, Wayne,” Lisa scolded, then continued down the hallway ramp to the kitchen. She didn’t want to hear about gaining weight—intentionally or otherwise. This whole KBS thing was a little unnerving. She’d been feeling bloated the last few days herself. It wasn’t the right time of the month for that. And she’d had cramps, too—bad ones. Usually she didn’t have any cramps. Now she understood why everybody bitched about them.

  It could have been stress, she thought. Stress can change things, and she’d been totally freaking out over her role as Roxane in the play. Surely that was it. Lisa sighed with envy at her roommate, Catherine—again. She was on the pill, and said it made her period stick to schedule no matter what. If Lisa could just be accepted into the Emoting Society—like Cat—she’d be able to afford the pill, too. Just a few more weeks, that’s all she had to handle.

  Behind her, Wayne entered the kitchen. Feeling up his own biceps again, he murmured, “Damn, I’m good.”

  Waxing Gibbous

  1

  Large hands manipulated the boiled prawns, deftly removing the small amount of meat from inside the shell. The legs, which had been curled below the small body, were ripped off and dropped to the linen as waste. Though the movements were done with a mechanized precision, they sometimes erred. The shrimp slipped from Mr. Arno’s swollen fingers, bounced off his ponderous belly, and landed on the floor. Wayne approached table 29.5, his cheap dress shoes crushing the small pink body into the carpet.

  Mr. Arno did not pause his procedure.

  Wayne did not say a word.

  Finally, Mr. Arno glanced up. Upon seeing the young man towering above him, he returned his attention to his beloved shrimp. Disinterestedly, but politely, Mr. Arno said, “Good afternoon.”

  Wayne nodded, flaxen hair flapping, and said, “What’s up? What number you on?”

  “This is my fifth plate,” Mr. Arno responded.

  “That’s a lot.”

  Mr. Arno shrugged. Enlarged bulk shivered.

  “So why you only eat shrimp?”

  Without looking up at the busboy, Mr. Arno answered simply, “I am required to daily ingest a certain quantity of these benevolent sea creatures.”

  “No shit,” Wayne said. “For the protein? Thad—he’s my training partner—and I eat eight hundred grams of protein a day.”

  “For the connection,” Mr. Arno corrected, eyeing his procedure closely. “Only in this manner can I properly splice into their tidal connection. If I vary from this schedule, it will have horribly adverse effects.”

  “Tidal connection, eh? Okay. So you know about nutrition?”

  “Nutrition?” Mr. Arno repeated blandly. “I referred to appearance. Perception is everything.”

  “Sure is,” Wayne agreed heartily. “But you’re not doing it right. You gotta eat lots of small meals, not one big one. If you keep eating more and more, you’ll keep expanding your stomach, which makes you hungrier at other times.”

  “That is not a factor.”

  “Sure it is. It’s showing already. Now, if you lift weights, you can change that.”

  “You lift weights?” Mr. Arno did not seem the least disturbed by the reference to his rapid weight gain.

  Wayne instantly flexed beneath his shirt. Proudly he answered, “Twice a day!”

  “Twice a day?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You have much time to waste.”

  “It’s not a waste,” Wayne defended, absently caressing his biceps. This was a mechanical action done so frequently it had become second nature to him. Mr. Arno continued peeling the shrimp in much the same
manner.

  “When you are older, you will see that there are more important things to spend your time on.”

  “Like eating shrimp?”

  “Yes, if you’re smart enough to learn what she has to teach.”

  “Who?” Wayne asked. Before Mr. Arno could answer, he continued, “How much shrimp do you eat a day, anyway? I don’t think Thad and I together could eat all that shrimp.”

  “After finishing the prawns on this plate, I will have had five today,” the man replied.

  “How do you know?”

  “I designate one hundred prawns per plate. I lost one to the floor just now, so I’ll have to take up an extra next plate.”

  “Why are you so specific if you’re not working out?”

  “Because I am required to ingest a designated amount of prawns a day to splice into their tidal connection,” he replied irritably. This was the first emotion he’d shown with the boy. “That is why I don’t gain weight.”

  Wayne frowned in confusion, noting the obvious. “But you have!”

  Mr. Arno did not seem concerned by the apparent contradiction. He merely said, “You will see. This moment is far from permanent. I assure you, next phase I will appear as if I had not gained a single pound.”

  “But gaining weight is good,” Wayne commented, confused.

  “Most people, I think, would disagree,” Mr. Arno mused as he pulled the last prawn from the dripping, greasy plate. This round of his ritual was nearly complete.

  “Like who?” Wayne scoffed. “All you have to do is work out a little, and you can be huge.”

  Mr. Arno halted his process of peeling. This was an unusual occurrence. Languidly he asked, “Being huge is good?”

  “Yeah, just look at me.”

  “You are huge?” he asked, eyeing the average-sized busboy. Neck veins bounced. White brows knit together in thought.

  “Not as huge as I’m gonna be,” Wayne defended, noting the man’s dismissal. “I want to be over two hundred pounds by the summer’s end, like Thad. I already gained forty pounds.”