crown. He looked about thirty and wore his uniform with all the grace of James Bond in a tux. He said, “It’s required.”
“What’s it required for?” Leonard said. “Are we gonna spread it on the ground and eat off of it?”
“Leonard,” I said, “let’s just go back to the room and get coats. It’s easy to solve.”
“You’ll need a tie as well,” said Mr. White Coat. Then, after a moment’s reflection: “There’s no use coming back without a tie.”
“What if I borrow yours?” Leonard said.
“We have security on board,” said the man, finally showing a bit of nervousness.
“It’s all right,” I said. “We’ll put on a coat and tie.”
I took Leonard by the elbow and turned him around. We started down the corridor, back to the cabin.
“Let’s eat in the buffet area,” I said. “They don’t require anything but that you don’t go naked.”
“You sayin’ we’re not good enough to eat in there?”
“No. They’re saying that. Leonard, everything is not personal. Them’s the rules. You’re one goes on about rules all the time, and those are the rules.”
“Yeah, but those are stupid rules. And since when am I one for the rules?”
“All that Republican shit,” I said.
“I just don’t think I ought to be made to wear a coat for a meal I paid for.”
“I paid for it.”
“Whatever. But it’s paid for. It didn’t say anything about a coat and tie in the brochure.”
“It said evening wear is suggested.”
“Ah ha! Suggested.”
We were back at the cabin. I unlocked the door and we went inside and sat on our beds across from one another.
“I’m hungry,” I said. “I want to eat. Where are we going to eat?”
“I want my lobster.”
“Then let’s put on coats and ties.”
“I didn’t bring a tie.”
“Now that you mention it, neither did I.”
We put on sports coats and went back. Leonard had the brochure with him. White Coat stopped us at the door. “I see you have coats, but you still need ties.”
“No, we don’t need them,” Leonard said.
White Coat said, “Those are the rules, sir. I did not make them up.”
Leonard showed him the brochure. A line was forming behind us. The man looked at the brochure. He said, “Yes.”
“It says coats and ties are suggested,” Leonard said. “You can suggest it, I can choose not to do it.”
“And you can choose to go to the buffet.”
“I paid – he paid – for us to go on this cruise. Let us in.”
A Filipino fellow in white shirt, black pants, and black bow tie came over. He asked what the problem was. White Coat told him.
“It’s suggested, Phileep, not required.”
White Coat grew red-faced.
“Thanks,” Leonard said, walked past White Coat and I followed. Leonard said to White Coat, “Dick cheese.”
I told the Filipino who was showing us to our table, “We’re not trying to be a pain-”
“No problem,” he cut in, leaning close to me. “He’s an officious little fuck. All the staff wishes he’d fall off the boat and get eaten by sharks.”
We wound our way between tables of mostly elderly people and were placed at a table with four other diners. Wine was served and menus were brought.
The Filipino was headwaiter on the cruise. His name was Ernesto. He was a short solid-looking guy with black hair well combed except for a sprig that was determined to hang down on his forehead.
Ernesto stood at the table and smiled and talked to us all about what specials were being offered. It was kind of cool really. They didn’t do that at Burger King. He leaned down and spoke to Leonard and Leonard, smiling big, talked back to him in a whisper. I caught the words “Thank you” in there somewhere.
Ernesto went away and our actual waiter came and took our choices and left. Ernesto showed up again three or four times. Talked to us all, talked to Leonard a little more. Just chitchat stuff. I finally got a line on it. He was gay and somehow knew Leonard was. What was it? A secret handshake? A mark in the middle of the forehead only gays could see?
When Ernesto finally went away and the food came, I leaned over to Leonard, said, “What would John think?”
“We’re just talking. He’s friendly.”
“Is he gay?”
“I think so.”
“You look pretty happy.”
“We queers just love to make contact. We have secret messages about the nature of the universe that we only pass along to one another. Sorry, Hap.”
We ate. The food was not as good as I had hoped, and the lobster was downright awful. I thought it might be a big boiled cockroach.
We chatted with our table partners. One of the men was wearing neither coat nor proper tie. He was a big white-haired Texas guy with a Western shirt and bolo tie. Fit the stereotype. So did his wife, who was about fifty, maybe ten or fifteen years younger than he was. She wore a kind of Western-cut dress, which didn’t look bad on her. She was attractive in a plastic surgery kind of way. Her hair looked like a beehive wrapped in a bleached blond sweater. They looked rich. Their names were Bill – he went by Big Bill – and Wilamena. Right out of Central Casting, both of them. I liked them immediately, even if he was a little loud. I asked him how he had gotten past the coat- and-tie Nazi.
“I gave him five dollars. I figured it wasn’t worth five dollars to walk back to the room.”
“They haven’t got the right to keep you out anyway,” Leonard said.
“Yeah, but five dollars keeps him happy, me happy, and no animosity.”
“This here is our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary,” Wilamena said, “and we ain’t gonna let no suit-and-tie monkey throw it, ain’t that right, Big Bill?”
“That’s right, honey.”
A plump matronly looking lady with glasses said, “The ship has Argentine papers, so they’re allowed to sail in Cuban waters. We’re going to go right by Cuba. Won’t that be interesting?”
We agreed it would. Bill said, “We can buy Cuban cigars too, in Mexico and Jamaica, but we got to smoke ’em on board.”
“Frankly,” Leonard said, “I ain’t buyin’ nothing from them commies.”
Things went quiet for a moment, then Big Bill, who obviously wanted to defend Cuban cigars but didn’t want to be thought a commie or mess up a wedding anniversary, said to me: “Pass that wine bottle, will you, son?”
After dinner, on the way out the door, Leonard leaned over to White Coat, said, “You work cheap. Five dollars is no kind of money. I think you ought to go up to six-fifty, and give a blow job with it.”
White Coat did not respond. He just looked as if he had eaten a persimmon and it was caught tight in his bowels.
Down the hall on the way to our room, I said, “Commies?”
“Did I sound like Joe McCarthy?”
“A little.”
“Well, you know what, Cuba is a communist country. They haven’t ever given us anything but the back of their hand. Fuck them and their goddamn cigars.”
We went back to the room. It had been made up in that short time. The TV was on the floor.
“Why’s that?” Leonard said.
“Guess he dusted and forgot to put it back.”
