Captains Outrageous Page 5

  “Well,” John said, “have a good time.”

  Leonard and John kissed. I felt a little uncomfortable. Two men kissing still sort of jacks me around, especially with me standing next to them. Too much East Texas Baptist background, I guess.

  Leonard, knowing this, said, “John, give Hap a little peck on the cheek.”

  “No,” I said, holding up a hand. “I wouldn’t want to steal any of your sweetness away from Leonard.”

  Leonard cackled and John smiled. Leonard said, “At least we didn’t give each other blow jobs in the lot here. Isn’t that what everyone expects of queers? Blatant sexuality in public places?”

  “That, smooth dancing, and interior decorating abilities,” John said.

  Leonard and John hugged and kissed again. John got in his car and drove away and Leonard and I hauled our bags into the terminal. We stood in a long line there, showed our passports and papers, got our room key, eventually boarded the ship.

  Our room wasn’t quite as small as a Lilliputian clothes closet. There were two very narrow beds and a wound-colored curtain that opened on a solid wall. Since we were in the middle of the ship, I should have expected that, but somehow I had hoped for a porthole and a sea view.

  Then again, since I didn’t really like water that much, especially the ocean, I decided I was better off without the porthole. Then I started to wonder what in hell I was doing on a ship. Just reading A Night to Remember, I had gotten seasick.

  How had I talked myself into this? I had done some dumb things, but outside of agreeing to rescue a whore and kill people in the process, this was the dumbest thing I had ever done.

  Well, there was the time I talked Leonard into going to Groveton during a flood to deal with the Ku Klux Klan. And there was the time we tried to get a stolen treasure out of the Sabine River bottoms. My idea again.

  Come to think of it, my life had sort of been a series of dumb ideas. Some of them mine, a few Leonard’s. Hell, I had even voted Republican once in a Texas governor’s election.

  We put our suitcases on the bed and took out our clothes and hung them in the closet, which was a gap in the wall with a metal bar for a clothes rack.

  We put our suitcases in there too. It was a tight fit. We put our shaving kits in the bathroom. I took time to brush my teeth and put the book I was reading, along with my reading glasses, on the nightstand, which was bolted to the wall.

  We sat on our beds across from one another. I looked over the itinerary they had given us as we entered the ship.

  “Well, here we are,” Leonard said.

  “Yep,” I said.

  “We haven’t left dock yet, have we?”

  “Nope.”

  “Are you bored as I am?”

  “Reckon so.”

  “They have movies on this ship?”

  “I read how they did when I got the original stuff from the cruise line, but this itinerary they gave us, I was just glancing through it. Looks like we don’t have movies. Wait a minute. Here’s a few, but you watch them on the TV.”

  “TV?”

  “I don’t believe I stuttered.”

  “I heard they had theaters, regular movies, you know.”

  “John tell you that?”

  “He did.”

  “Did he say they had them on this ship?”

  “He don’t know from this ship.”

  “There you are. We got the tub of cruise lines. Our luck is still in, Leonard. Only it’s bad luck.”

  “Oh well. What are the movies?”

  “The Postman.”

  “Oh Jesus.”

  “Harley Davidson & The Marlboro Man.”

  “I seen all this shit and didn’t like it on the big screen. I could get my money back on that Postman, I would. Least the other one had some good fistfights. Or was it gunfights? It kind of runs together. But that Postman, I thought maybe I was in some kind of purgatory with popcorn. Someone had locked the door there would have been suicides. What else is there?”

  I read off the two remaining movies.

  Leonard said, “That last one sounds promising.”

  “It says it has subtitles.”

  “God. Next to sitting next to someone wants to talk about crystals and astrological signs and the nature of their diseases, I like subtitles better. But just.”

  “French subtitles.”

  “Guess that beats subtitles in Ebonics.”

  “Hey, we didn’t go on a cruise to watch television or movies, did we?”

  “I did.”

  “That’s not the proper spirit.”

  “What kind of spirit is proper? I thought I’d just hang out, read, and watch movies.”

  “You can. On TV.”

  “Yeah, maybe one movie out of four.”

  “You git what you git.”

  “I wanted a big screen, Hap.”

  “People in hell want ice water.”

  “How long before dinner?”

  I glanced at the clock on the nightstand, then the itinerary. “Two hours. You hungry?”

  “No. Not really. Anything else going on?”

  “Shuffleboard will start shaking in about half an hour.”

  “Want to go up on deck?”

  “Sure, maybe we can swim back to land before we actually disembark.”

  “There’s a thought.”

  We locked our cabin, went up a flight of stairs, then another, and finally onto the deck. It was a pretty afternoon out, starting to gray some, but there was still plenty of light. Our ship had started to sail.

  We leaned against the railing and watched the New Orleans dock retreat.

  “Didn’t a ship run right into this dock once?” Leonard said.

  “Yep,” I said. “Couldn’t stop.”

  “In a hurry to get back to land, I figure.”

  “Think it’s too late to swim for shore?”

  “ ‘Fraid so.”

  We stood on the deck until the dock and New Orleans were out of sight and the brown water turned blue. Then there was no more dock or New Orleans visible, just the water and our ship pushing into the Gulf and the night coming down soft and the Gulf air sweet with the occasional bite of dead fish, and there was the Gulf itself, washing hard against the ship, washing us steadily with the assistance of a great engine, on out to the deeps.

  8

  WE STOOD OUT THERE by the rail and talked and watched the night fall on the blue water, first making it purple, then black. The wash of it against the side of the ship was hypnotic, and once we got past our initial sensation of feeling like mice trapped in a tin can, we began to relax.

  We finally went back to our room to wash up and brush our teeth and shave. It was just something to do. We were finishing up this when there was a singsong whistle on our cabin’s intercom. It was followed by a voice telling us all to meet on the deck to find out which was our lifeboat and to learn what to do in case the ship sank, other than drown.

  We went out on the deck for our words of wisdom. Essentially, the wisdom was, the big boat started sinking, in an orderly fashion, you got in a smaller boat that was supposed to be lowered over the side of the larger sinking boat. That was about it.

  A little later, back in our room, the whistle sounded again, this time with an invitation to all passengers to have dinner, and it ended with the words: “Bon appétit.”

  We wandered outside and saw the cattle call moving in the direction of the dining room. According to our information, there were two dining rooms. One that served more formally, and presumably better food, and another that was a kind of buffet.

  The menu that came with our cabin information said the meal in the main dining room was lobster this night, and we both wanted that.

  When we got to the dining room, a fellow in a white coat, white pants, white shirt, and a black bow tie was kind enough to tell us we couldn’t come in without coats.

  “Why not?” Leonard said.

  The door usher, or whatever his title was, was a tall man with dark
skin and dark hair with a bald spot at the 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.”

  I put it back and we watched The Postman for a while. It put Leonard to sleep. I got up and took off his shoes and covered him, turned off that Flying Dutchman of a movie, undressed, and went to bed.

  I lay there for a while and looked at the ceiling and thought about Brett. I thought about other women in my past, two of them dead. I certainly had the touch.

  About midnight the ship began to pitch and I realized why the TV had been placed on the floor.

  9

  LEONARD AND I were up at the same time. I flicked on the light.

  Leonard said,
“Oh God,” and dashed for the toilet. I heard him in there upchucking, which prompted me to do the same. I let fly into a trash can all my bad lobster, wine, and culinary accouterments. It wasn’t all that good going in, but it certainly had smelled better than it did now, and it had looked better too.

  The ship leaned way port and I felt as if it would never right itself. I let out with an involuntary cry. I heard Leonard yell in the bathroom, then I heard him upchucking again.

  The ship came up high and went starboard and it was all I could do to hold the trash can so the contents didn’t slop out.

  A little later the commode flushed and Leonard came out and lay on his bed and moaned.

  He said, “Oh, God, kill me. Kill me now.”

  “Fuck the seasickness,” I said. “I’m scared to death.”

  I managed to set the TV on the floor, and by bouncing off the wall, I made it to the bathroom where I poured the glorious contents of the trash can into the commode and flushed it. I sat the trash can in the little shower stall, but it rolled out and I hit the wall and banged the back of my knee against the commode.

  I lodged the trash can between the wall and the commode and tried to make it back to my bed. I understood what was meant by sea legs now. I didn’t have some. In fact, I’d have given anything for us to have run up on a spit of land, a reef, any damn thing solid.

  I just knew we were going to flop so far to one side we’d never right ourselves. I kept thinking about that movie The Poseidon Adventure, where the ship turned over and trapped people underwater.

  I swear, at times it felt as if that damn ship were actually lying completely on its side, then it would fling itself upright and go the other way. You could hear the ocean banging on the sides of the ship. It made you realize how fragile, what a paper cup the thing was, and it made you realize even more how fragile you were as a collection of blood and bone. All I could think about, after that realization, was just how dark and deep the goddamn ocean was.

  I managed to wobble, fall, and crawl over to the closet, reach in a side pocket of my suitcase, and pull out Dramamine tablets. I punched a couple out of the aluminum side and gave Leonard one. I took the other. No less than two minutes later Leonard said, “Hell, give me another one of them sonsabitches.”