The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death (25 page)

Just as Jamie and I were engaged in an act of no-contact spooning over the threshold of the balcony as we attempted to change places, there was a knock at the door.

We both paused for several seconds and stood very still.

“Okay, listen,” Jamie finally said. “There is no room in this cabin for regulated personal space, and we are currently in the most challeging Twister position known to man. There’s no way to get out of this clean. Let’s count to three and make a break for it, and I apologize ahead of time for whichever body part I Bad Touch you on.”

“Likewise,” I agreed. “Whichever base we get to, I will not read anything but necessity into it. One, two, three!”

With Jamie flying north and me jumping south, we shot apart like a pair of magnets repelling each other as Jamie bounced off the cabin door and I landed on the balcony.

Jamie opened the door and there stood two young men, one tall and one short, with the smaller one holding some nice, clean, passenger-quality white sheets and the other one carrying two plush, puffy comforters.

“Hello,” the shorter one said with the nice, warm smile we had seen replicated on faces all over the ship, worn by anyone wearing a uniform of any type. “You called to get the bed separated? We are your stewards. I am Ardhi from Indonesia.”

“I am James from Jamaica,” the taller one followed.

Jamie turned and looked on me with a smile that said exactly what I was feeling.

Holy shit, we have servants!!!!

I have never, in all of my experiences on earth, felt more elated.

It was better than turning nine and seeing the hulking silhouette of a wrapped Barbie townhouse next to your birthday cake. It was more incredible than realizing that the guy who just asked you to marry him was no less than 68 percent sober. It was more amazing than not only eating the most delicious and high-fat-content meals of all time and steamrolling on to an equally guilt-infused dessert, but then also not having to work the calories off on the treadmill because you lost them by getting a mixed-cocktail-inspired flu.

“I feel like we’re in a Merchant Ivory movie!” Jamie whispered as she sidled up against the wall to permit our butlers entrance.

“I’m Laurie,” I said as I waved from the balcony. “I’d come closer but I’d be arrested for some garden-variety assault.”

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” Jamie added. “I’m Jamie, and you just saved our friendship.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “The last thing we wanted to do on this ship was share a bed!”

From the doorway of the bathroom, Jamie leaned out and gave me a stern look.

“Don’t,”
it said. “Please don’t. Let me enjoy this for at least a minute more, because I will never be here again. I will never be sitting on a bathroom sink with my feet propped up on the toilet lid watching my butlers change my sheets
again.
PLEASE.”

But the duration of the silence in our cabin continued for too long as the stewards split the bed apart into two smaller ones and left a cavern of wonder and speculation wide open and ready to be spelunked into. It was like a fluffy, perfect mound of whipped cream just demanding to be demolished. And I was just the one to kick the air out of it.

“Jamie watched a behind-the-scenes show about cruise ships and their working conditions,” I ventured as Jamie rolled her eyes and shook her head at me. “The show reported that cruise ship employees have to share a bed.”

Ardhi and James looked at each other but didn’t stop working. Ardhi smiled at me, then nodded. “Yes, we do,” he confirmed.

“You’re kidding,” I replied. “Even on this ship? I thought it might be true of the Disney cruises, because Disney even makes their characters share underwear and the creepy crawlies, like Pooh Lice, that come with them, but I didn’t think
this
cruise line would! They make their commercials seem so love-filled and friendly, like a place that would provide a bug-free bed for everybody, or at least a can of personal pesticide!”

Sensing a sympathetic ear, James piped up as he continued making up one of the separated beds. “Not only do we share a bed, but we sleep in shifts. We share with three other people, taking turns.”

“What happens if the person before you is a lazy bed sharer and hasn’t changed the sheets before it’s your sleepy shift?” I asked. “And please tell me you don’t have to share a pillow!”

Ardhi and James simply burst out laughing. Although we hadn’t set sail, I was very unsure whether it was sea sickness or revulsion that had just socked me in the gut.

“Do you share a bed with the captain?” I prodded, eager to gross myself out further. “Or Devon? I’d bet he never changes the sheets and he produces a wide variety of nighttime noises.”

Both Ardhi and James giggled again but said nothing.

“Where do you eat?” I pressed further. “Do you eat at the buffet?”

“No, no, no.” James smiled as he shook his head and tucked the last edge of the sheet under the mattress. “We have a cafeteria on our deck. We aren’t allowed up to the passenger buffet. We would lose our jobs if we did that.”

“Do you have the same food there as we have?” I asked hopefully.

“No,” Ardhi replied slowly, and then added a chuckle as he flung out a comforter on one of the beds. “It’s not the same food. It’s not very good down there. Hot dogs and things you microwave.”

James nodded his head in agreement.

“You know what I think,” I replied, despite the fact that I knew by the silence that was sitting on the bathroom sink that I had said enough already. “I think you should get a drool-free pillow! You deserve a clean pillow. Everyone does!”

“Your beds are ready!” Ardhi said as he straightened out the last wrinkle on a comforter. “Embarkation is always very busy for us. Have a great dinner!”

And with a little wave, Ardhi and James shuffled out of the room in short, little steps and closed the door behind them. Immediately Jamie poked her head out of the bathroom doorway.

“All of the asshole colonialists in the room raise their hands,” I announced as my arm sliced into the air.

“God job, César Chávez!” Jamie said as she hopped off the sink. “Who do you think you are, every disenfranchised college-aged male trying to establish his identity by hanging a Che Guevara poster in his dorm room and keeping a beat-up copy of
On the Road
in his backpack? Do you want to see those boys left on the pier with sad Ardhi and James faces as we leave the next port?”

“No, but I feel so bad for them,” I replied. “They are both so nice.”

“We can do other things for them besides urging them to unionize! We can leave them a big tip at the end, and proclaim their excellent customer service on comment cards. But this ship is not an American ship, and they play by different rules. And the last time I heard, there were no unions in Jamaica or Indonesia, and sharing a pillow was probably not a big deal until you brought it up and mentioned slobber. I’m ready for the buffet, but I will only eat dinner with you if there’s a promise of not mentioning boycotting grapes to anyone working near or around the salad menagerie and fruit carousel. No hissy fits, provoked or otherwise. Agreed?”

Stymied, I nodded my head, but the moment after we entered the buffet dining room, I knew all bets were off. What I witnessed there was unbelievable. I have honestly only seen that kind of chaos on news footage when the United Nations drops sacks of rice and grain into the middle of a country experiencing prolonged famine or when the Marines pull out of a war zone and there’s one helicopter for the 10,000 civilians attempting to escape with them. Typically, Americans are only most likely to behave in a manner that frantic if they are exposed to something free and sample-sized, but clearly, in the gauntlet that formerly was a buffet line, the passengers lost sight of the fact that they had already paid for the food they were swarming on, which under normal circumstances usually takes the thrill right out of the hunt. Willful ignorance prevailed as the buffet that we had visited earlier in the day became not even remotely recognizable; people elbowed each other in an attempt to outnudge everyone else to the vat of macaroni salad; dirty looks were exchanged when a desired piece of fried chicken was plucked from the poultry mountain by a fellow marauder; and faces were concealed behind towers of brisket and barbecued ribs piled onto dishes as passengers uneasily wavered in a balancing act to an empty spot at a table.

I have to be honest and say that all of the food that was wonderfully desirable only hours earlier lost all its appeal once it was apparent I would have to fight for my meal. I felt like a Christian in the Colosseum, on display and ready to die for my belief in a ciabatta roll. A mere three seconds after we got in line, I was separated from my friend by the hungry hordes swathed in Wal-Mart resort wear, and my pledge to her was challenged by a man who, at the salad menagerie, dug his virus- and bacteria-laden hand into the raisin bowl to scoop up a dozen or so wrinkly nuggets, only to delicately place them on the community spoon provided for his protection and
then
transfer them to his plate. When he turned around to leave and search out additional food to fondle, my eyes were still wide with horror and my jaw gaping, and when he looked at me for a brief split second, I had no control over my innate reaction to throw him an expression of disgust and cry “YUCK!” over the din of serving spoons clinking on china.

When I finally found Jamie at the fruit carousel twenty minutes later, my plate was empty and so was my reserve of fear concerning blatant confrontation. I had been pushed, cut in front of, and stared down by fellow passengers, including a streetwise sixth grader who should have been in school to begin with but apparently had the identical attraction for the same mini quiche Lorraine that I did. I was ready to bite someone. I was able to calm down a bit after I spied triangles of juicy, blood-red watermelon lined up like fallen dominoes on a silver tray. They looked so refreshing and delicious and serene, just waiting for me to reach forward and pluck one. I was going in with a pair of tongs when the woman in front emitted a throaty gargle and open-mouthed coughed, sending a direct hit in on the pineapple, the grapes, and my watermelon, all of which now fully deserved boycotting.

“Jamie,” I yelled in a booming voice to my friend and everyone between us, “avoid the Tropical Delights Tray! This one in front of me just coughed all over it like she was a terrorist. I can see little noroviruses—which cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea for an average of one to two days and will require you to stay in your cabin with your roommate for a twenty-four-hour self-imposed quarantine—dancing all over every formerly delectable slice from here.”

It was at that moment that Jamie and I wisely decided that we were not buffet people after all but dining room people, and this was confirmed with our first step into Château de Versailles, the ship’s grand and mirrored cuisine hall, decorated exactly as if the specter of Marie Antoinette was expected to appear any minute in a cloud of ectoplasm and proclaim all of us “provincial” in a ghostly howl. I gawked in amazement as I walked down the steps into the hostess area that provided a full view of all the tables. Look at that, I thought to myself, no one’s coughing or spraying saliva on a whole flock of baked chickens, no one’s juggling three plates, each representing the cuisine from a different continent, and no one is already shoveling forkfuls of lasagna into their pie holes while waiting to scoop themselves up the fixin’s of an entire meat-loaf supper and some chicken fingers.

Ah, the dining room, I comforted myself as I looked at Jamie with a smile in my eyes and nodded. This was where we belonged!

True, the selection of entrées wasn’t as vast, but that hardly mattered when I realized that the lady at the next table had never had an opportunity to dribble her saliva all over my dinner before I did. We had our very own waiter who was only too eager to suggest which bottle of wine would best accompany our dinners and urged us to go on ahead and order a spectacularly crafted dessert.
The buffet?
Who were we kidding? This was a cruise, not a nonstop all-you-can-eat gorge at a Furr’s Cafeteria! We loved the dining room so much it barely bothered us when the man who was seated one table over asked the waiter if the mango salad had meat in it, if the vegetable soup had meat in it, if the peach compote had meat in it and then went ahead and ordered a hamburger. His wife was also no day in the park; she wanted to know how everything “was prepared,” and that included salad, soup, the main dish, and everything else she could possibly think of, including the ice, asking if it was “prepared with filter, mountain spring, or distilled water?”

After that question, the waiter stood there, silent for a good several seconds, deciding, I’m sure, whether he should deliver a nice, sharp slap to her with the laminated menu, bother to actually find out the origin of the water, or jump overboard and catch a cargo ship hauling very messy but very quiet wood chips back to his homeland of Croatia, where people were too busy trying to keep frostbite at bay to inquire about such ice-making nonsense. Initially, I thought perhaps the wife’s madness had a method, as in maybe she was kosher or a vegan, but it didn’t. She was just an average run-of-the-mill pain in the ass who paid eight hundred dollars for an interior cabin with no window and then expected to be doted on simply because she was an asshole with an extra eight hundred bucks from her tax return who wanted to take a trip on the ocean but was too cheap to pay to
see
the ocean, just to get seasick from it. You know from the moment you spy the hordes of passengers in an enclosed space who has a window cabin and who doesn’t. The people who dress identically in style and palette or in T-shirts from another vacation have a window. The people who didn’t brush their hair this morning don’t. The people who eat with utensils have a window. The people who subsist on a diet solely consisting of finger foods, mostly fried and of some variety of meat, and are more than adept at using a toothpick instead of a fork, don’t. The people who encounter the man-sized dolphin character that stalks the ship both day and night in search of passenger prey and get a picture taken by his evil sidekick photographer for ten dollars have a window. The husband who stubbornly insists that his wife sidle up to the dolphin while the dolphin isn’t looking and quickly snaps a frame, then proclaims, “I just saved ten dollars, Dolphin! What do you think about that? Watch out for that tuna net!” doesn’t. They are the same people who would travel in the wheel well of a jetliner for a discount on the fare, then complain that the snack mix only had one almond in it. Damn right they’re getting in the lifeboats last should it come down to that. And my neighbors the next table over were just of that ilk. That became all too evident when the waiter would explain a menu selection, as in, “It’s chicken broth and vegetables,” and she’d ask, “Is that French? Is that the French way do it? I only want it if that’s the way the French do it,” or “Do you have anything with ginger in it? I am captivated by the taste of ginger. Ginger fascinates me.”