Take It Off (16 page)

“Stop them!” Barker yelled. Just then the boat stopped with a grunt, and the workers down below began securing it to the dock. Patch ran over and pulled Mickey away from Arno. They all stood panting for a second. Mickey's lips were peeled back, like he might start biting.

“Yo, what are you guys doing?” Patch asked.

Arno straightened his shirt defensively, and Mickey shook Patch off. “Nothing,” they both said. Greta came up next to Patch.

“I think at first they were fighting over me,” she whispered in his ear. “But then it started being about something else entirely. Mickey started talking about how Arno's mother was a home-wrecker, and then Arno basically said that Mickey's mom was a whore. That's when they started fighting.”

“Oh.” It occurred to Patch that without Jonathan calling them up all the time and putting out their fires, the crew was really falling apart. He was trying to think of a way to convey this to Mickey and Arno, but then
he felt Stephanie's hands on his arm.

“Are you all right?” she gasped.

Barker jogged up behind her, breathing heavily. The minister of tourism was close behind, and Barker seemed to be apologizing under his breath. He looked embarrassed. And furious. Arno stepped forward, smiling. Usually Arno was smooth enough to get himself out of these situations, but in this case he was too out of breath to fend for himself. Mickey howled and ran at him with a closed fist, landing it squarely on Arno's jaw. Arno recovered, and leaped on Mickey, and before long all the kids were cheering them on.

It took a few minutes for Patch and Greta to pull them apart, and by that time Barker was practically frothing at the mouth.

“You ungrateful little brats!” he hissed. “There is no drinking on my ship as you know, but there is also no fighting. I made the mistake of selecting you as the winners of the survival test. You have proved yourselves most unworthy. You are banished! Banished!”

Patch tried to intervene, but Barker waved him away.

“Pardo and Wildenburger, go to your cabins and pack your bags. When this ship sets sail tomorrow, you will not be on it!”

At this point in the trip, I should have figured out that pretty much everything was going to go wrong. But I wasn't prepared for what happened to us at the Mallorca ferry dock.

When we got there, we saw a lot of sunburned people with vacation backpacks sitting on the benches and floors of the ferry building. Suki conferred with the ticket agent, and then asked me for a hundred and twenty euros. I handed it over and she took me aside and explained that, because the royal family was at their vacation residence in Mallorca, there was tightened security and they were only letting one ferry in and out a day. That meant we had to wait for the eight o'clock boat.

“You mean, the Spanish royal family?”

“Yeah.” She giggled. “You weren't hoping for Prince William, were you? Just kidding.”

I'm not sure what that meant, but I rolled my eyes at her.

“Um, but listen. This is probably fine. They say the trip takes about eight hours, so we'll probably get into Barcelona early tomorrow morning and we should still be able to make it on the boat before it leaves.”

“Fine,” I said. I had no watch, so I could only guess, from the height of the sun, that it was about ten o'clock, leaving us about ten hours. “What are we going to do until then?”

Suki released one of those pealing little laughs that I could so do without, and she said, “Oh, I don't know, enjoy a gorgeous day in one of the most sought-after vacation spots in the world? Jonathan,
come on.
”

So, for a morning and afternoon, we were proper tourists. We ambled through the twisted streets, reading old signs that described the history of ancient squares and looking up at crooked buildings with precarious-looking wrought-iron balconies. We saw a few little cathedrals, and one really big one, with soaring ceilings and an apse the size of my apartment in New York, and lots of very graphic paintings of horrible things that happened around the time of Christ. For those of you who haven't been, Spain is a very, very Catholic country.

At some point, I told Suki that I had about negative ability to do more sightseeing, so we decided to stroll slowly down the main promenade, where all the shops and things were, and maybe try and get a bite to eat before we got on the ferry. I was focusing on the restaurants we were passing, and trying to decide what looked the least romantic so that nobody would insinuate that Suki and I were a couple again. Suki wasn't as interested in this, and she kept staring moonily at beautiful Spanish people and saying,
“Buenas noches, buenas noches.”
Then, all of a sudden, she said: “Isn't that the racist that stole your watch?”

I looked across the street. A lean, painted man disappeared into the crowd of evening strollers. I started running after him, pushing people aside and darting after the quickly receding figure. People all around me were laughing and yelling,
“Cuidate!”
and
“Perdón!”
annoyed as I ran by. I wasn't even sure Suki had followed, until I became aware of flip-flops smacking behind me and a distinctly American voice yelling,
“Ladrón! Ladrón!”
When the crowd heard that, they started yelling,
“Andale! Andale, Americano!”

Soon we were off the main drag and back in
the warren of the old town. The streets and the buildings were all made of the same brown stone, and both were narrow and weathered. I would catch a glimpse of the Savage, and then lose him around a corner, catch a glimpse, and lose him again. All of a sudden we were out on the Paseo Maritimo, and the Savage was gone. Suki came up behind me, breathing heavily.

“Where'd he go?”

“That way?”

So we trotted east, trying to keep an eye out but not sure whether we were going the right way. Suki stopped a man who was wearing an official-looking uniform. I looked around for the Savage, and then back at the man. It was a hotel uniform he was wearing, and the man looked very familiar. He was the concierge of the Miramar.

“Señor, Señorita,”
he said in a sarcastically hospitable voice. “You must have come back to settle your bill.”

Suddenly I couldn't breathe, and I imagined that every one of my internal organs was about to fail one by one.

Suki grabbed my hand and started pulling me away, but then the concierge grabbed my collar
and pulled us back. He was stronger than he looked, and we went smacking into each other. He ushered us into the hotel—which, we should have noticed, was right behind us—and brought us over to the counter.

“Let me see. Two ‘American-style omelets' at twenty-two euros each. Two continental breakfasts at eighteen euros each. Two bottles of champagne, at fifty euros each. Three minibottles of cognac, at ten euros each. Two crystal champagne glasses, replacement charge, thirty-five euros each.”

He looked up at me and paused. I held my breath.

“… and there seems to be this other little charge. What could this be? Seven hundred and eighty euro at the hotel boutique?”

I looked at Suki and let out a little whimper. She had been fidgeting with the hem of her Prada sundress, and now I feared that she might rip it.

“That comes to thirteen hundred and eighty euros with tax and service charges, please.”

Suki leaned over to me and whispered, “Maybe we could offer to wash dishes.”

“Our boat's leaving at eight. And I think that's really soon.”

“Ahem.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the remainder of the fifteen hundred Rob had wired me. After I had counted out eight hundred and forty-six euros, I was left with thirty-four euros. This was not good. I handed over the cash.

“Gracias, señor,”
he said sarcastically.

Suki and I looked at each other with panic-stricken faces, and then she grabbed my hand and we ran out of the Miramar and down the dock like our lives depended on it. Which they pretty much did. I ran faster than I probably have ever, because I knew—and Suki must have known, too, because she was running even faster than I was—that this was our last chance.

There is nothing more humiliating than running to catch a cab, or a train, or, say, a boat. You get all sweaty and everybody knows you're desperate. Plus, it's sort of counter to my whole theory of it's not cool to need anything that badly. Of course, that sort of humiliation is increased exponentially if, having run and sweated and begged for them to wait for you, you are held in traffic for hours and hours. Or, on the ocean, as it were.

When we reached the ferry, breathing heavy and scared shitless that we would be left behind again, the blasé stewardesses took our tickets and ushered us on. It was a big, modern boat, with several levels and a bar, and I promptly wasted a heaven-sent twenty euros that I found in my pocket on gin and tonics for us.

We settled into our seats and looked out at Palma with all its busy streets and the night just about to begin, and agreed that we almost
regretted leaving it. Then a few hours passed, and we still hadn't moved. Nobody seemed particularly restless for what seemed like a really long time, and I got very agitated and Suki could tell, so she suggested that maybe it was a Spanish tradition to wait two hours in the dock and that I should lighten up.

Eventually Suki went up and talked to one of the stewardesses, who was drinking red wine and smoking and looking very bored over by the bar. When she came back, she said:

“Well, you'll never guess what. The boat's captain has been invited to dinner at the Spanish royal family's Mallorcan residence, and the boat won't be leaving until they dismiss him.”

“Oh.”

Then we decided it would be a good idea to combine the very last of our euros and spend it all on more gin and tonics, which we did. I don't know how the hours passed, but they did, and eventually I made myself stop praying that, somehow, the
Ariadne
would be delayed as well, and fell asleep. When I woke up it was the dead of night, and the ferry was moving. Suki was sleeping next to me, her head rested on my shoulder. I looked out at the endless dark sky, and
the endless dark water, and wondered how we were ever going to get home. An austere, rocky little island came into my view for a few minutes, and then it was gone.

“Wildenburger!”

Arno staggered to his feet. He had spent the night in one of the very dark, very small lower level detention cabins. When the door opened, the light was almost unbearable. He blinked several times, and then began to make out the face of Barker.

“Wildenburger, I've contacted your parents and informed them that you won't be completing the voyage with us. They are a most valuable client, but I'm afraid your behavior has been reprehensible.”

Arno nodded and shifted on his feet. He hoped he could just be out of there soon.

“Stephanie will escort you to the dock,” Barker continued, “while I inform Pardo of his situation. There is a car waiting to take you to the Barcelona airport, where your parents have arranged for a flight back to New York.”

Barker turned and strode down the hall. Stephanie appeared, smiling apologetically at Arno. She was wearing
the same cutoffs she always wore, and an oversize sweater that did nothing to disguise the size of her breasts. Her hair was down, and she looked pretty, like she'd made herself up in a new way or something. She put her arm around his waist and led him away from the cabin.

“Your parents weren't really that mad,” she said. “I could tell, because Barker was still angry after he talked to them. Usually, when the parents grovel he's really nice afterward and feels good about kicking bad students off the trip.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Arno said. “That guy needs to get over himself.”

“Uh-huh. He couldn't even get ahold of Mickey's folks, which would usually mean that he couldn't kick Mickey off the boat. Legal issues, you know. But he talked to someone named Caselli? Who, like, basically claimed to be Mickey's caretaker. So that made him
extra
mad, that he didn't even get to yell at an actual parent.”

Arno made a sound of disgust. Caselli was Ricardo Pardo's studio manager, and he
was
sort of like Mickey's caretaker. He didn't go easy on him, but he probably wouldn't bust him, either. This reminded Arno, unpleasantly, of how pissed he was at Mickey.

“I think Patch is really going to miss you,” Stephanie
said as they stood waiting for Barker to arrive. He looked at her, because he wasn't sure why she'd said that. He caught a whisper of a smile, before she continued, “I mean, he's probably going to feel really
alone
.”

“Oh, yeah?” Arno said suspiciously. “Well, he's still got Jonathan.”

“Oh,
Jonathan
,” she twittered. “Yes, let's hope he gets out of bed sometime in the next five days.”

One of the other faculty members appeared with Mickey's and Arno's luggage. Then Barker appeared, with Mickey behind him. Arno gave him a long, cold stare. Mickey stared right back, and Arno could see he that hadn't slept all night and was probably still sort of drunk on anger.

“Pardo, Wildenburger, you two have been a great disappointment to me,” Barker said. “Now take your things and go.”

Arno grabbed his bag and put it over his shoulder. He walked down the plank without looking back. But he heard Mickey, sure enough, coming along behind. When he got to the dock, he saw the black car waiting.

He looked at Mickey and said, “You can have it. I wouldn't ride with you anyway—you'd probably just fuck everything up.” Then he turned and walked quickly down the dock and into the city.

“See ya!” he heard Mickey yell after him. Arno made a bitter waving gesture over his shoulder, but didn't bother taking one last look at his friend.