A Commodore of Errors (36 page)

DOING FOR OTHERS

M
ogie had sent his first telex to the
God is Able
before the ship even departed Singapore. He was evidently desperate to know if Mitzi had any trouble with the Malaysian taxi drivers in Singapore who, Mogie heard, liked redheads. The next telex from Mogie came when the ship was still in the straits of Malacca, and then there was nothing for several days. Then the one about the stool arrived, and after Sparks wrote back, pretending to be Mitzi, the telexes began to arrive in bunches —two, three, sometimes four or five in a day.

When Captain Tannenbaume first discovered, years before on a long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope and across the South Atlantic to Brazil, that Sparks was reading other people's mail, he was mortified. He told Sparks it was an invasion of privacy and that he would not stand for it. But time after time during that voyage, he entered the radio shack only to find Sparks's nose buried in a telex meant for someone else. Captain Tannenbaume knew that he could not stop Sparks from reading other people's telexes, and it eventually dawned on
him that it might be better, in the end, if Sparks did read them. Radio officers had a tendency to get squirrelly on the long sea passages, what with all that time on their hands, and if reading other people's mail provided some degree of respite for Sparks, then perhaps Captain Tannenbaume ought to turn a blind eye to the questionable practice.

It wasn't until later, on another long sea passage, that Captain Tannenbaume realized that not only did Sparks read telexes that were not meant for him, but he responded to them as well. Again Captain Tannenbaume tried to stop him, and again he found his efforts frustrated by the ever-persistent Sparks. Although he did not approve of what Sparks was doing, he had to admit that every once in a while he found his curiosity piqued whenever Sparks was deep in a back-and-forth with an unsuspecting pen pal. But until this voyage, he had resisted the urge to find out what exactly it was that Sparks wrote in his telexes.

Maybe it was the stress of having his mother and wife on board. Maybe he was feeling restless over his impending life change, but something had made Captain Tannenbaume pick up and read a telex that he well knew was not addressed to him.

The telex was from a man named Mogie, and it was about a stool.

Captain Tannenbaume was disgusted by his lack of discipline. How could he read something that he knew was meant for someone else? And after all of his lecturing about invading another's privacy? Although he was indeed curious about the nature of the telex—who Mogie was, and what this business was about a stool—Captain Tannenbaume quickly got a hold of himself, walked out of the radio shack, and banished from his mind all thoughts of reading any more telexes.

Until he heard Mitzi say that Mogie was her boyfriend.

He didn't know why that affected him so much. Was Captain Tannenbaume so naïve as to think that a woman like Mitzi did not have a long trail of suitors? That a woman so dexterous, so capable, so
in charge
did not have a boyfriend on the side? For all he knew, maybe it wasn't just one. Maybe there were others, lots of others. She was, after all, carrying on with the chief. Oh, Captain Tannenbaume knew that the big Swede was all talk when it came to women but who really knew what went on in her cabin after the chief let himself in with the breakfast
tray every morning. And what about that electrician? The little shit was probably changing out her lightbulbs this very moment. Well, Captain Tannenbaume could not very well snoop around on Mitzi and the chief, and he didn't want to look silly by ordering the electrician to stay away from Mitzi's cabin, but he could find out about this Mogie character. He could, if he wanted, just sneak into the radio shack and read the telexes from Mogie himself. He could.

And in the end, he did.

When Sparks was at coffee time one morning, Captain Tannenbaume snooped around the radio shack until he found the telexes in the top left-hand drawer of Sparks's desk. Sure enough, Sparks had written back that he (she) did not miss Mogie's stool, that there were plenty of stools aboard the
God is Able
. Sparks, pretending that he was Mitzi, said he (she) was in stool heaven.

Sparks's response produced an outpouring from Mogie. A new telex was on the wires before the last had printed. Sparks answered each one. He clearly had a way—born of long practice, Captain Tannenbaume was afraid—of pushing Mogie's buttons with one word. The telexes from Mogie kept coming until the top left-hand drawer was crammed full.

When Sparks came back from coffee time that day, he found Captain Tannenbaume at his desk. Captain Tannenbaume didn't even try to hide the fact that he'd read the telexes.

“So what exactly does Mogie do with this stool of his?” Captain Tannenbaume blurted out.

“I . . . I don't know. I'm still trying to guh . . . get it out of Mogie. When you're pruh . . . pruh . . . pretending to be someone else, you can't ask any obvious questions.”

“Right, well . . . keep me in the loop regarding this Mogie. It's a matter of security.”

Sparks did keep Captain Tannenbaume in the loop. He showed him every telex he received from Mogie the moment it arrived. Soon Captain Tannenbaume huddled with Sparks every morning so that he would be there when the first telex arrived. Together he and Sparks crafted a response.

Mogie wrote that the thought of so many stools on board was driving him foolish. He wanted to know what the sailors' stools looked like. Sparks wrote
back that they were handcrafted of exotic hardwoods and covered in Spanish leather. Sparks wrote to Mogie that the ship's carpenter was making a new stool just for him (her). Mogie was furious and wanted to know why Sparks (Mitzi) needed a new stool.

Captain Tannenbaume was so preoccupied with the telexes that he holed himself up in his cabin and shut out the world. He did not hear the danger signal his mother blew at every passing ship. He was unaware that Swifty had abdicated all of his watch-keeping duties to the sailors and engineers who crowded the bridge every day. He no longer joined his shipmates for coffee time. He even replaced his own lightbulbs for fear the electrician would say or do something to get his goat. He simply could not afford the break in concentration.

Captain Tannenbaume became desperate to know what exactly Mogie did with his stool. But he and Sparks just couldn't figure it out.

“Tell me again what you like best about the stool?” Sparks asked. Mogie wrote back that it made him feel like a king.

“What else?” Sparks asked. Mogie said it made him feel tall.

Captain Tannenbaume couldn't understand that one. How could Mitzi sitting on a stool milking Mogie make him feel tall?

Mogie wrote long telexes reminiscing about the many times—and places—he and Mitzi used the stool, but still he did not give a glimpse as to what the stool was
for
.

Captain Tannenbaume became convinced that Sparks should be more direct in his questioning. Sparks told Captain Tannenbaume that one had to be careful when playing this game. One false move would blow their identity. “Patience,” Sparks counseled. “Patience.”

Patience my ass
. And so without thinking too much about it, when the ship was in the Suez Canal and Sparks was on the bridge sightseeing, Captain Tannenbaume fired off a telex of his own.

Sylvia left the bridge without saying goodbye to anyone, not that anyone on the bridge even noticed that she left. Things were beginning to get a little crazy up there, what with Mitzi being fully booked and every sailor aboard wanting
either a manicure or a pedicure, or both. The sailors, who used to compare the buildup of their varnishing jobs, now compared the buildup on their nails. They even showed Mitzi how to scuff up the first few coats of nail polish so that the final coat would hold better and create a deeper shine.

The engineers, it turned out, were Mitzi's best customers, and the chief did not like it one bit when his engineers began showing off their manicured hands at coffee time. The chief had long prided himself on being the only one in the engine department with clean fingernails, and he wondered aloud if anybody down below was slinging wrenches anymore. The engineers told the chief that slinging wrenches would damage their cuticles, that Mitzi had told them that they should be able to see a—air quotes—“half-moon” in their fingernails, that a—air quotes—“half-moon” was the sign of a healthy cuticle. The engineers used air quotes more than ever, now that their cuticles were healthy.

Sylvia just wanted to lie down. She had spent the entire morning getting her hair blow-dried, her eyebrows tweezed, her nose hairs trimmed, her toes painted, and now she just wanted to get away from Mitzi for a little while. Mitzi had let Sylvia know this morning that she was not happy with the progress she was making in her assertiveness training. But Sylvia could not imagine being any more assertive than she was already. She asserted herself everywhere—on the bridge, in the lounge, not to mention in the officers' mess, where she had never sent back so many things in all her life. Just yesterday in the officers' mess she had sent back her ice water (too icy), chocolate cake (too chocolatey), sweet tea (too sweet), and her ice water again (not icy enough). She bossed her husband around without mercy, meddled in his business, and
kvetched
without letup. Sylvia complained about everything in her life from morning ‘til night, but still Mitzi was not satisfied. And on top of the complaining and
kvetching
and meddling, Mitzi now informed Sylvia that she was not doing enough for others! A Great Neck wife feels compelled to “do for others,” Mitzi had told her. The first thing Mitzi asked Sylvia when she arrived on the bridge every day for her daily pedicure was “are you doing for others?” So now Sylvia spent what spare moments she had in the day putting together care packages for the needy children back home in Phuket. Sylvia was beginning to feel that the life of a pampered Great Neck wife was not all that it was cracked up to be. Between
getting herself made-up every day, not letting anyone push her around, and doing for others, she was exhausted. It was no wonder the women in Great Neck only
schtupped
once a week.

Sylvia opened the door to her cabin and found her husband sprawled on their bunk with pages and pages of telexes all around him. He had his face pressed into one of the telexes and did not notice that Sylvia had entered their cabin. When the phone rang, he didn't notice that either.

Sylvia answered the phone.

“This is the chief. The damned—”

Sylvia shoved the phone against her husband's ear.

“What,” Captain Tannenbaume said.

“What?” the chief said. “The damn whistle woke me up from my goddamn nooner again, that's what.”

“What whistle?”

“What whistle? The whistle that has been blowing all day every day for the last week. That whistle.”

Captain Tannenbaume cupped the phone to his hand. “Have they been blowing the whistle on the bridge lately?”

Sylvia threw her hands up in the air. “Hang up, honey.” She moved a pile of telexes out of the way and sat on the edge of the bunk.

“Look,” she said after her husband hung up the phone. “Do you mean to tell me you haven't heard the ship's whistle blowing nonstop for the past week?”

Captain Tannenbaume merely stared at Sylvia with an uncomprehending look on his face.

Sylvia threw up her hands. “What has gotten into you? Your ship is going to pot right before your eyes and you act like you could care less.”

Captain Tannenbaume could not look his wife in the eye. He gripped a handful of telexes. “I guess I've been busy with these.”

“What is it with these telexes?” Sylvia picked one up off the bunk but Captain Tannenbaume snatched it out of her hand before she could read it.

“It's important business from the home office. The company is buying a new ship and they need my help.” Captain Tannenbaume gathered the rest of
the telexes up off the bunk and clutched them to his chest. “It's a complicated transaction.”