Ride the Titanic! (28 page)

Xia’s face turns ashen. ‘If you knew, then why did you agree to see us in the first place?’

‘The man who listens only to the singing cricket, misses the nightingale.’

‘A woman hears both.’

‘Precisely.’ She brightens. ‘Continue with your interesting song – that is, if my colleagues agree with me?’

They don’t dare do anything but nod. Mother Doll adds, ‘Tell us about this famous ride of yours, and how it will produce the impressive ROI you claim.’

‘You’re serious?’

Silence.

‘And if we convince you?’

‘I would not be acting in the best interests of our bank if I did not take advantage of a sound investment opportunity.’

And so the curtain unexpectedly rises on a different presentation. True, we’re missing the scale model that Scooter built long ago to win Xia’s heart, but thanks to Ellie’s CGI re-creation of the ship and the
White Star Grand Hotel,
we try to hit the ball out of the park. And I think we do, because when the
Titanic
finally slips beneath the Las Vegas waves and the music rises on cue, Mother Doll’s eyebrows rise as if pulled by secret wires and her mouth falls open, aghast, at the story about which Shakespeare would have written a tragedy, if he were alive in 1912.

Joe handles the
White Star Grand Hotel
presentation with typical Italian operatic flair, giving a sweeping overview of the various casinos, function rooms, restaurants, and most importantly the rooms, or ‘cabins’ themselves, outfitted in authentic period detail down to mahogany furniture, silk damask bedspreads, brass lamps, and portholes that look out to a moving ‘sea,’ as projected on cleverly-placed HD video screens.

I jump in quickly. ‘Not a single window in the entire hotel, no matter how large or small, will look out onto the Las Vegas desert. We have non-exclusive contracts with Samsung and Shenzhen, to install and maintain over eight-thousand screen units, with the understanding that next year we’ll sign an exclusive contract with one of them for all our future sites.’

‘An electronic war,’ Mother Doll says.

‘Japan versus China, winner takes all.’

‘Those are the best kind. No bloodshed, just spreadsheets. How many future sites do you propose?’

After I tell her, Lewis takes his cue as deftly as a Broadway lead. ‘‘Like to gamble?’

‘Depends on the stakes.’

‘You’ll find great ones here.’

The projected image of a first class stateroom dissolves to one of three period-accurate casinos. Ornately carved wooden pillars, potted pairs of gracefully swaying palms, Tiffany glass fixtures and distant waltz music set the scene for the CGI-generated crowds of ‘passengers’ – as we refer to our customers – dressed in contemporary clothing mixing casually with our hotel staff dressed as
White Star Line
stewards, seamen, and officers, while our female staff mingle as various class passengers and maids, depending on their functions as croupiers, wait staff, and security.

All of this takes place against a backdrop of a video wall of LCD monitors displaying a soothing expanse of the Atlantic Ocean rising and falling at sunset, as seen on a series of forty foot-high ‘windows’ looking out onto the sea. The video cycles through twenty-four hours every hour, including the night scene and the approaching iceberg.

When I point out that detail, Mother Doll halts the presentation. ‘Won’t that slow casino play? Even stop it?’

‘For a while, yes. But the relief of not going down with the ship will trigger them to gamble even more.’

She nods but says nothing. The video continues. I keep my mouth shut and consider our fate hanging in the balance in this foreign bank conference room in the middle of a smoggy Shanghai sea. When the music ends, the casino image fades, and Mother Doll says, ‘You have captured the full experience.’

‘No, ma’am,’ Joe deadpans. ‘We failed.’

‘In what way?’

‘Nobody gets seasick.’

She slowly smiles, and then, one by one, so do her doll colleagues.

Max and Joe exchange pleased smiles as they put away the projection screen. Lewis hides his pleasure by fussing with his laptop. A long silence ensues. Nobody, it seems, wants to come back to the present. But eventually Mother Doll sighs.

‘But is the ride as safe as you claim it will be?’

I nod to Max, who somehow, without standing, comes to military attention.

‘
Signora
,
Fincantini Navali
has been building highly complex submarines for many years. We would never have taken on such a grave responsibility of ensuring the utmost safety of the
Titanic’s
riders unless we knew without a doubt that their ship will never be ‘unsinkable’ like the original. Thanks to a perfectly manufactured pressure hull the likes of which the world has never seen, this
Titanic
will sink over and over again.’

Mother Doll says, ‘If only that had been true back then.’

‘
Signora,
had
Fincantini
built her instead of Harland and Wolff, she would have had a long and prosperous life.’ He thumps his chest, centurion -style. ‘This I vow will be the case with our
Titanic.
’

‘I admire your confidence.’

‘It is easy to have
confidenza
when you work with a team like ours.’ He sweeps his short, muscular arm in a tight circle and delivers his dazzle-smile. ‘And a team like yours.’

Mother Doll turns to Xia. ‘Your team’s enthusiasm is admirable.’

Xia touches Joe shoulder. ‘Not all men listen to crickets.’

Mother stacks her papers in front of her, neatens the edges, and leans forward slightly, so as to make eye contact with her male colleagues, and then raises one eyebrow in query. One by one the loan officers nod fractionally in agreement, and as they do, I imagine them nesting into each other, one by one, until Mother Doll swallows them up safe and sound and rolls them all home.

‘We have consensus, it would seem,’ she says.

To Xia’s credit she doesn’t break out in a happy shout. Instead she says, ‘And which loan will you be assuming?’

‘Which bank do you prefer?’

‘Postal Savings is the larger. Can you manage that?’

‘Of course.’

She gulps. ‘That is welcome news.’

I clear my throat. ‘When we approach the other banks, may we use your name as a reference?’

Annoyance touches her smooth face. ‘Absolutely not.’

I start to protest, but Xia shoots me daggers, then says, ‘May I ask why?’

‘Because I propose a better idea.’ Mother Doll stands and her team does the same as if on marionette strings. ‘Why not permit us to assume CITC’s loan as well? That way you can focus on what you do best, instead of what you do not do best; lying about failing banks.’

‘Which you knew about all along,’ Xia says.

‘Yes, but I also knew that telling us the truth about this exciting proposal would serve your needs far better. And so it has.’

We rise as one. Xia bows. ‘My father will be most displeased.’

‘Most fathers are when daughters disobey. Am I right, gentlemen?’

Her team nods somewhat reluctantly, as do Joe and I.

‘It is only when they understand that both the blossom and the thorn make the rose do they admire the garden from whence it came. Good luck with your garden, Ms. Zhu.’

Joe says, ‘Thanks for the fertilizer.’

Mother Doll’s momentary puzzlement brightens into a peal of laughter.

Meanwhile, back on the Strip,
Ride the Titanic
has become the talk of the town, not for what it’s going to be, but for all the commotion it’s already created. Not a day passes without swarms of pedestrians poking their heads inside the ‘portholes’ we’ve silkscreened onto hundreds of feet of construction-grade vinyl stretched over the chain link fence surrounding the building site to give our “sidewalk superintendents’ a great view.

As far as the broadcast and online news outlets are concerned, we’ve become the “Big Buffet” at
Bellagio
with one exception; our ‘food’ is free. So whenever their twenty-four hour news cycle gets sick and tired of North Korea, Afghanistan, ISIS, and the debt ceiling, there’s always a
Titanic
tidbit they can pile onto their hungry customers’ plates – including our dig, which ‘conveniently’ runs into trouble while Xia and I were in Shanghai selling our souls to Mother Doll.

HUMAN REMAINS FOUND

WILD WEST GRAVEYARD?

NATIVE AMERICAN BURIAL GROUND UNEARTHED

WILL
TITANIC
EVER SAIL?

The strip happily buzzes with speculation, opinion, rumor and gossip by the time we land at McCarren. Another one of Grayson’s setups on behalf of the guys who don’t want us here? Of course it is. Bottom line? A prohibitively expensive two-week site shutdown until the remains are forensically analyzed – at our expense – and confirmed to be non-human (probably canine), and about sixty years-old at most. Not a Native American, not a dinosaur. A damned dog.

But it takes another week of news conferences – at our expense – feeding answers to reporters who have nothing else to chew on, a final week of scrubbing the internet clean of negative references – and where that’s impossible– flooding internet search engines with enough positive links to submerge the bogus story deeper than the real
Titanic,
asleep in rusting peace at the bottom of the sea.

After that nightmare, excavation resumes in earnest, night and day, until we carve out a massive, steel-reinforced, concrete cavity big enough to make a five hundred foot-long ocean liner disappear from the sight of the thousands of onlookers and lucky riders wanting to brush up against death without having to kiss it on the cheek.

A month later, the pressure hull assembly is finally complete, minus its massive end cap. Soon after that, the surrounding ‘exoskeleton’ of the
Titanic
comes together quickly, beginning at the bow, where a swarm of outrigger cranes install the carbon fiber structure and forecastle. After that comes the outer hull sections, the towering superstructure and masts, and finally her four massive funnels. The hinged stern section, with its three carbon-fiber propellers painted to look like bronze lays sideways on the construction site like a gigantic part of a model kit, waiting until the end cap that will seal the pressure hull for good.

No easy task.

It takes a team of eight welders a solid week, working three shifts to pre-prep the mammoth section that resembles a gigantic, trash can lid, sixty feet in diameter. But once in place the ride will be officially sealed-up, waterproof, and ready for submersion tests.

A week before this final step is to take place, Max calls me from Trieste, insisting we fly the Esposito sisters to Vegas to head up the capping operation. Business class, no less.

His voice rings in my ear like an English translation of an Italian opera aria.

‘The success of Fincantini’s
Todaro
-class submarines rests upon principles of perfect construction by highly trained technicians that allow these lethal, underwater weapon systems to patrol deep beneath the sea. We must bring those same technicians to your beautiful city to help you launch your glorious ride that will – when that wonderful moment arrives – sink beneath the waves.’

‘No oceans in Nevada.’

‘I am Italian. I speak poetically to make my point. Now, about our welding team. . .’

‘What makes them so special? Other than looking like a million bucks, of course, and knowing which end of a torch to hold.’

‘I do not question God’s hands in creating their undeniable beauty, nor the talent given them to make equally beautiful welds. But this I vow; our inspectors weep whenever they behold their sweep-count-per-mil.’

‘Real tears?’

‘They wear welding masks, so I am only presuming, but I have heard rumors they are in bliss when they tensile-test the girls’ work. One hundred percent approval every time.
Bravissime!’

‘Welding is welding.’

Max’s operatic voice vanishes. ‘On land I will yield this point,
Michele
,
but underwater it is the difference between life and death. You want your ride to be the safest? Fincantini’s lead welders must perform this most critical end cap step. Do not argue with me. Trust me instead.’

‘Who explains their business class airfare to Accounting?’

‘That is your job,
signor
. My job is to build you a most magnificent desert submarine, and to do so I need my welding team to arrive fresh, rested and ready to go. Besides,
Alitalia
is giving us a wonderful rate.’

‘Our guys will do nothing but stare at their asses, and you know it.’

‘C
ertamente
. Beauty deserves proper adoration and respect. But if it turns to seduction, acetylene torches are very dangerous weapons.’

I surrender, and Max arrives with the Esposito twins in happy tow, a bit dazed and dazzled at the explosive excitement of Vegas. With their magnificent bodies hidden inside virginal white jumpsuits with the
Fincantini Navali
logo emblazoned on the back, the girls take up their torches and go straight to work non-stop for three solid days.

Their welding environment is hot, smoky, cramped and precise. Internal temperatures often rise above 120 degrees. But these trying conditions have no visible effect on the ever-cheerful sisters. Christina takes the day shift, Carlotta the night to create a 24/7 presence, which in turn makes the sisters seem like goddesses in the eyes of the male welders, whom they supervise with charm, wit, laughter, and brazen commands that their fellow welders can’t help but obey.

Today, with the finish line in sight, both sisters are on-site, shoulder to shoulder with their fellow welders, arms crossed, seemingly nonchalant, but clearly nervous as they wait for the swarm of city inspectors to finish their final examination of the end cap welds. Despite the fact that more money has exchanged hands between more inspectors and officials than I care to admit, I still expect rejection. Don’t get me wrong. The welds have to pass a real inspection, safety is paramount. When it’s up and going the ride will submerge with ride personnel still inside the Ride Bridge. The Esposito sisters’ skill guarantees their safety. Therefore, the supposed ‘rejection’ about to take place will be yet another bogus attempt to slow us down to a crawl.