“I can see it now,” Leonard said. “A sheet-covered corpse in a wheelchair in the food freezer with our dinner lobster and a bag of green peas in his lap.”
“Maybe it wasn’t the rough seas killed him,” I said. “Maybe it was the food.”
On that note, we went to eat breakfast in the buffet dining area.
Later in the day we shot skeet off the back of the ship. If there’s one thing I can do it’s hit a target with almost any kind of long gun. Leonard did fair, but I was really on, and me and Leonard got to betting with Big Bill and this other guy, a Yankee named Dave who looked to be about sixty and turned out to be my and Leonard’s age, late forties.
I made about ten dollars off the deal, and Leonard made five. We used our gains to buy drinks for all of us in the bar. I was the only one not drinking liquor. We sat and drank and talked for a while. It wasn’t anything special, just talk. Bill and the Yankee were all right if you didn’t have to see them on a daily basis. Then again, there’s days I feel that way about all Yankees, but I promise I’m trying to get over it.
Later in the day Leonard and I walked around the ship, bored to death. Finally we holed up in our cabin and read. I read from a good Larry McMurtry book about the size of a cement block. Leonard read from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and laughed out loud a lot.
We had dinner in the buffet room that night. Leonard had made his point and didn’t care if he pissed the doorman off again or not.
The food wasn’t any worse or any better than where we had eaten the night before, just more casual. I couldn’t help but think about that dead guy, maybe in the food locker. Did they have a morgue on board? Maybe. Surely people died on these things now and then. Perhaps more than now and then.
We went to a bad floor show later. I had seen better high school productions. It was a tribute to rock and roll with a Filipino rock and roll band that had probably learned its material that afternoon. Little Richard would have had a heart attack, and I bet Buddy Holly was rolling over in his grave.
The singers were so awful they hurt my feelings and their dancing was a bit more like contained stumbling to music. I noticed however that I kept my eye on one of the female dancers who wore only feathers and had big tits, and I got to thinking about what Leonard had told me, and I had to sit there and do some deep soul searching. I kept my eyes on the tits just the same. I can get over bad dancing.
That night the sea was rough again, but not as rough as the night before. I went up once to check the night seas, and on the landing was the lady and her kids and the teddy bear. The kids seemed to think this was all great fun, but the mother had her back against the wall and she had carried a trash can out with her and she had that in her lap, puking. The teddy bear was hanging tough.
I opened the door, but when a mist of sea washed into my face, I closed it. Wasn’t anything I wanted to see out there. I had taken to carrying a packet of Dramamine in my pocket, and I gave it to the lady and her kids.
“It takes time to work,” I said, “but it does work. It won’t do anything for being scared, however. You know, you’d really be more comfortable in your cabin.”
“No,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. You’re the boss.”
I went downstairs and to bed. About midnight I began to think the woman had the right idea. Perhaps I should get our trash can and go up and join her to be close to the lifeboats. The sea really began to pitch us.
When morning crept up the sea still tossed but the day was bright and things seemed less frightening. About midday we came to the coast of Mexico. It was a thin strip of brown in the distance.
The sea was bad and the ship could not go into shore, as there was no proper place for it to dock. The ship anchored and they sent out from shore what they called a tender – a small boat to haul us tourists in.
While we were waiting on the tender, we saw the snotty doorman from the dining area. He looked at us, then stuck his hand out to Leonard.
“I’m sorry about the other night.”
Leonard nodded, stuck out his hand to accept the apology.
They shook. No one offered to shake my hand. I felt kind of left out.
The guy said, “Going ashore, huh?”
“Oh yeah,” Leonard said. “What time do we need to come back?”
The man paused as if remembering.
“Four-thirty.”
“Okay. Good.”
“Yeah. Well. Have a good time.”
“Sure.”
The guy went down the corridor.
I said, “He’s all right, I guess.”
“No, he’s still an asshole.”
I had been to Mexico many times, but never this spot, so I was reasonably interested in going ashore. Besides, I was ready to do anything to get off the ship, and I thought maybe Leonard and I might get a good meal in a restaurant or cafe. We went to the purser’s desk, signed up for a tour to some Mayan ruins called Tulum, then got in the departure line.
The tender tossed up alongside the ship and we had to walk out to the side of it on a rickety collapsible dock and try to jump on board when it wasn’t leaping too high or too low on the waves. A woman nearly caught her leg between the boat and the ship but pulled it back just in time to the delighted screams and yells of those on our little platform and those who had already boarded the tender.
More screams and sighs came when a kid, eight or nine, tore lose from his parents and leaped when the tender went down and landed on deck with a thud and got up laughing. When his mom and dad got on board the tender they promptly whipped his ass to the delight of us all.
An elderly man vomited over the side and a young woman I had my eye on lost her straw hat to the wind. It hit the ocean, the waves leaped on it, and it was gone. I could have jumped in the water to save it so I could be her knight in shining armor and maybe get laid.
I balanced the idea.
Big waves.
Pussy.
Big waves.
Pussy.
Naw. Waves too big. Pussy uncertain. She might just thank me. And the idea of drowning with a woman’s straw hat in my hand didn’t appeal to me.
One thing, though, she didn’t have big tits. I’d have to tell Leonard that later as an example of my maturity. I wouldn’t mention the dancer from last night and what I had thought about her.
On board, Leonard and I seated ourselves next to Big Bill and his wife. We were then borne by a chugging motor and churning waves toward shore, tailed by black diesel smoke.
There were lots of folks throwing up over the side and one idiot thought a log floating in the water was a whale and started screaming about it. When the log bumped against the boat he shut up and looked straight ahead like maybe he had spotted an important smoke signal in the distance that only he could translate.
Our tender pilot seemed oblivious to it all. Logs. Whales. He didn’t give a shit. He was probably more concerned about capsizing. Two guys with blankets and trinkets wandered about trying to sell them to us. No bites from anyone, but that didn’t stop them from making the rounds several times, the prices dropping dramatically with each tour.
I looked back at our ship. A real cruise ship was anchored not far from it. It looked twice as big as the Titanic. Our ship looked like some kind of fishing lure next to it.
I wondered if that poor woman and her children on the landing were coming ashore with their trash can on the next tender. I wondered why I had ever thought this would be fun.
I wondered what Brett was doing right now. I wondered if she wondered what I was doing. I wondered if Tillie was making big bucks pulling the train in Tyler. I wondered about that poor girl in the hospital with her face stomped in.
Hell, I didn’t have it so bad.
