Ship for Brains (Cruise Confidential 2) Read online

  We spent a few minutes in silence, contemplating. As far as I was concerned, labeling the best trainees was easy: Cindy Lou Who and her husband Sammy Hagar were the best. I figured I was about number five. But who should I judge as the worst? That was a toss-up between Jimmy Stewart and Elvis, but I couldn’t decide which had the dubious honor.

  Suddenly the door opened up and Elvis burst in. His eyes were even wilder than his hair. I promptly filled in the last line.

  “Elvis! Thanks for joining us this morning,” Gene said. “I trust you have a good reason for being late?”

  “Uh, yeah!” he replied, haphazardly thinking on his feet. “I had to take a cab here because I got in so late. I had to entertain a guest at the hotel until late this morning, if you know what I mean. She’s the daughter of a high powered industrialist and I gave her a lesson on Picasso.”

  Chuckles rose from those of us who knew he had been smoking outside and merely lost track of the time.

  “Well then,” Gene said. “This seems like an excellent time to do something important, but fun, before the tough stuff later. I want to make sure none of you have the embarrassment gene. Elvis here obviously does not. Now we’ll see about the rest of you.”

  “The embarrassment gene?” someone asked.

  “Yes, we want to make sure none of you are nervous getting up in front of a large group of people. As auctioneers you will control groups of several hundred people. When you make presentations at the beginning of the cruise, however, you will be on stage before thousands. We want to know you can handle it.

  “So, I want everyone to stand up in the center and tell us in detail about your most embarrassing moment. Whoever goes first will have to top Elvis’s BS story about scoring with Lisa that we all heard at breakfast. So if your story does not involve a beautiful woman, or at least some sex, I think we’ll all be very disappointed. You are going to ships, after all. So, who volunteers?”

  The room plunged into silence. Beside me Hot Cocoa squirmed. Alanis practically fainted.

  “Buzz volunteers,” Lucifer shouted. “Buzz! Get up there and show us all how lame you are.”

  Reluctantly I rose and walked to the center of the circle of some twenty chairs. I glanced around at all the trainees and auctioneers and instructors, desperate to recall something embarrassing.

  “Well, I can’t think of anything at the moment,” I said slowly, stalling. “I haven’t been embarrassed since I discovered what girls were, it was all downhill from there.”

  Lucifer gloated. “That’s crap! You’ve never even kissed a girl. Your mummy doesn’t count.”

  “All right, then,” I said, rising to the challenge. “I have a phobia of lobsters that came about from my near-death experience in the desert wastes of Nevada.”

  The circle fell silent, no one even guessing where this was leading.

  “My ex-wife and I had foolishly driven from our hometown in Iowa straight through to Reno, but taking a long route through Colorado so we could see a town called Crested Butte. So I had already driven some twenty hours more or less straight at this point. I was thoroughly exhausted, and the unending desert was not stimulating enough to keep me awake. So we, uh, added some stimulation.

  “We decided to have sex while driving. We hadn’t seen anyone else on the road for hours and hours and hundreds and hundreds of miles. The cruise control was set to 80mph, and she pulled off her pants and got on me as we sped along. It was kinda awkward, but exciting, you know? Fortunately I was very young at the time and knew the whole thing would last only a minute or two at the most.

  “Anyway, right as I was about to climax we passed a sign by the road that warned, ‘Lobster Crossing.’ I didn’t think anything of it, of course, but through my haze of intense fatigue, desert boredom, and sexual ecstasy I actually saw a small herd of lobsters moving onto the road.

  “I lost control… of the car, I mean. My Saturn careened out of control and I had a hell of a time staying on top of it with her on me. We ran off the shoulder, spiraling on the flat desert and plowing through scrub and sage. The soft sand grabbed the tires and threatened to flip us sideways at that speed, but I jerked the wheel to the side with all my strength. I overcompensated for a moment and it seemed like we would tumble end over end the other way, but finally we straightened back on the road.

  “I remember us panting and shouting as having gone through a great ordeal, but the massive desert just ignored us, the sun kept blasting down, and everything was as if nothing had happened. It turns out that some bored locals had posted the sign and nailed a bunch of rubber lobsters by the road as a joke. I thought we were going to die, man. I’ve never been to Red Lobster since.”

  The circle was silent for a long, long time.

  Gene then mused quietly, “Why, Buzz, I had no idea.”

  Chapter 10. Bitter Butter

  1

  Thursday night I sucked lovingly on my cigar and watched the smoke rise up until the bar’s funky sideways fans shredded it. I sat at the polished wooden bar of Teddy’s Grill across the street from the hotel. It was a deceptively large and quality establishment hiding in an otherwise ugly strip mall. All week I had avoided coming here, focusing instead on my work. But today had been very rough, and we were nearly finished so I indulged myself.

  Tomorrow we had the test auction, but my only concern was that we would skip the auction preview part and focus only on the auction itself. I had learned that my best talent was dripping, and had hoped to strut my stuff for Lucifer.

  That morning we slogged through hours of learning the auctioneering software. The customized program was impressive, to be sure. The art-related sections were straightforward enough: a biography on the artist, description of the artwork, sometimes a picture. You could toggle through all works from that artist, and even see the highest price paid for one, were it a limited edition. We learned about how each ship’s art data, or POS, depended on the cruise line. Carnival buyers were generally different than Radisson buyers, for example.

  What made the day so fatiguing, however, was the nightmare jumble of numbers on the screen. It was designed so that a passing glance would not reveal the lowest allowable price. Therefore a freakishly large, complex chart of numbers dominated the screen to overwhelm curiosity seekers and, unfortunately, new auctioneers.

  Commissions paid for selling the work in question varied based on tiers of overall cruise sales, so that each work had five different numbers listed vertically. This was cross-referenced with a horizontal row of numbers corresponding to the higher commission based upon the higher price sold. As if this chart were not enough numbers, along the side ran a vertical row with suggested bidding increments.

  All afternoon we practiced using small groups. This made the pressure less than that of real life, but Lucifer’s horns were sharp as ever. His rebukes echoed in my head, criticizing my typing while holding a gavel and a microphone simultaneously, even as I searched the group for bids and input them. I needed four hands to look as smooth as the pros.

  The dark recesses of Teddy’s opened to reveal Rebecca de Mornay, stunning as always in painted-on jeans and a frilly, lacy pink halter top. She could legitimately wear anything fashionable on a young woman, yet exuded an aura of mature self confidence in her own femininity. Rebecca was more commonly seen in a dress, for example, than most American women I knew. No pant suits for her, and certainly no baggy men’s jeans and T-shirts. She leaned against the bar and settled into a wonderfully wiggly pose.

  “Buy me a drink, sailor?” she asked, getting a sniff from me as a response. “Just kidding. I need to borrow your body for a minute.”

  “I fear at my age a minute is overly optimistic.”

  “Don’t worry. After that story in class, you’ve already exceeded my expectations.”

  “Figures. My best efforts are completely inadequate, but my premature ejaculation story exceeds expectation.”

  “I need you to help me illustrate something. We are discussing the way wo
men get protective of each other in groups, or on the defensive if they are alone and pretty, or single or whatever.”

  “Uh, OK. So what do you need me for? Please don’t say I make an ideal stalker.”

  “Here,” she said, hauling me before Alanis and another trainee named Laura Dern. Rebecca stepped in front of me and tugged my arms around her as women sometimes do. “This is what I was saying, ladies. This is how women stand when they claim ‘ownership’ of the man. You’ll note that arms or not, I would never stand before a man like this if he was just a friend.”

  The others nodded, apparently understanding whatever point she was trying to make. All I could focus on was her firm bottom pressed against me. She proceeded to push and pull, yank me around and generally manipulate me to illustrate her various points, and I quietly acquiesced. What, like I would really protest?

  “Thank you, Buzz,” she finally said, releasing me. “You know, you have quite a strong grip. You work out a lot. I saw you in the gym today making those muscles rock hard.”

  I paused, nervous at the way she had emphasized ‘rock’. I knew something was coming, but wasn’t sure what. The word hung in the air awkwardly for a moment, but then came the coup de grâce.

  “Rock lobster!” all the women sang simultaneously.

  “I knew it!” I exploded. “I wish I hadn’t made up that damn story.”

  “Oh, no,” Rebecca disagreed. “You didn’t make that up. There were way too many little, inconsequential details for that to not have happened. You just might be the most eligible bachelor here.”

  “After Lucifer was done with you,” Alanis added, “I would call you grilled lobster.”

  “Ha ha,” I said bitterly as they mocked me. I must have been called red lobster a dozen times already, or steamed lobster, boiled lobster, grilled lobster, as well as lobster bisque, lobster newburg, and lobster thermidor. I felt like Forrest Gump’s friend Bubba had taken a fancy to the coast of Maine instead of the Gulf.

  “You remind me of my son,” Rebecca commented. “That’s what he always says and he wants to be a writer, too.”

  “I didn’t know you were a mother.”

  “Grandmother,” she corrected. “I have three children, the oldest is nineteen. And a grandson.”

  “Wh-what? I’ve been fantasizing about a grandma? No way, how old can you possibly be?”

  “Buzz!” Alanis squawked. “Oh my God! What is wrong with you? You can’t talk to a woman about her age!”

  “I am forty-three,” Rebecca admitted with a self-satisfied smirk. “It’s OK. I am proud of my grandson.”

  I had to add this one to my list: flirting with a grandmother; check. She was so pretty, though, who wouldn’t? I tingled with pride that she had thought I was an eligible bachelor.

  “Oh, I’m not surprised he said that,” Laura muttered with disdain. All eyes turned on her. “I’m talking about a lot more than your cocky attitude. It’s the way you present. You are really intense and a little scary. You talk down to everybody.”

  “You mean I’m not charming and witty?” I joked.

  “You are arrogant,” Laura affirmed. “And I think you beat your girlfriend.”

  “Wow. I’m arrogant?” I protested, intentionally not responding to the domestic abuse barb. “Have you, like, met any auctioneers? And here I always thought I was a nice guy.”

  I did not take her seriously at all, but Alanis watched with big eyes, worried something big was brewing. She really needed to lighten up! Not surprisingly, she had read the moment better than I had.

  “Oh, you pretend to be a nice guy,” Laura continued. “You claim to be the innocent, Boy Scout type.

  “I was a Boy Scout,” I defended. “Troop 63. My father was a Scout Master, as was his father, who opened the first racially integrated scout lodge in Kansas City. And my big brother was an Eagle Scout.”

  “I think something is lurking under there,” Laura scoffed. “I think it’s all a façade. Is it?”

  Now all the eyes focused on me. Laura was adamant enough that I realized she was sincere in her accusations. Rebecca observed curiously in silence, and Alanis’s huge teeth nibbled her flesh absently, as if on hors d’oeuvres.

  “No, it’s not a façade. I am a nice guy, but I am under a lot of pressure. I must get a ship so I can be with my girlfriend. My strength is my knowledge and experience at sea, so I push that. I have fought harder than you can possibly imagine to be with my girlfriend and been shot down before. I won’t let that happen again.”

  “Girlfriend, you say? Hardly. You flirt shamelessly,” Laura pressed. “Besides, we are all under stress.”

  “Doesn’t seem so bad,” Alanis commented austerely, tasting her pinkie.

  “You think you are better than everyone else,” Laura maintained. “And think all the women want you. Why else would you flirt so shamelessly?”

  “Flirting with shame defeats the purpose,” I snapped. I kept waiting for Rebecca to stand in front of me protectively again, but it wasn’t happening. I couldn’t figure out where Laura’s animosity stemmed from, but was getting tired of it.

  “And yes, I do think I’m better than some here,” I continued. “I don’t want to be counted among the lazy kids and their lack of preparation. I think Sundance intentionally hires them young and impressionable so they can mold them. Have you noticed how different all the returning auctioneers are? They are all middle aged, unattractive, hard headed, and arrogant. I prefer to stand with them. Excuse me, I’m here to learn but I’m not a lump of clay.”

  Laura backed down before my outburst. Without a rebuttal, she suddenly leapt off to the protection of Lucifer as he walked by. Rebecca patted my arm in understanding, though I was more upset at Laura’s observation than her adversarial manner of expressing it. I had always been a borderline egomaniac and took pains to temper it with genuine kindness and honesty. Unfortunately, under pressure my impatience sometimes surfaced as cutting remarks or, in this case, condescension. Whether I agreed wholly or not, I resolved to accept her rebuke.

  But stop flirting? Never! At sea, flirting was sacrosanct.

  Unlike anyone else present, I knew that on ships one was surrounded by exotic, foreign people who wanted nothing more than a one night stand with a new nationality. As the ‘rare American,’ below the waterline, I was the greatest prize. For a Green Card, some damn hot women offered to do things that made my head spin. With Bianca gone for months, I had somehow maintained a perfect record of resistance. I was proud of my willpower, though it surely cloaked a bit of insecurity. I had never considered myself a lady’s man, despite my talk. But with all the rampant sexuality of ship life, I had learned that flirtation was a very justifiable and very necessary release valve.

  Bill Shatner approached, having departed Lucifer’s side. He oozed up to our group with enough slimy self-importance to make me look like a garden snail in comparison. “You gonna let a woman talk to you like that? Lift your skirt and grab your balls, man. And here I thought you were my main man.”

  “Your Maine lobster, you mean?” Alanis piped up, smiling hugely.

  “You’re just like my associate: a pussy among ladies. Enough talk! I saw you holding Rebecca. She’s much closer to my age and I should have her. Start that silver tongue, why don’t you, and convince her to sleep with me.”

  “I’m right here, Bill,” Rebecca said drily, arms crossed beneath her breasts.

  “Buzz, come on, man! You gonna help me get these bitches in bed, or what? We have two of em’ right here, but a bush in hand is worth two at the bar.”

  “Or in your case,” Rebecca retorted, “A jerk in hand is worth two in the bush.”

  “And Laura says I am arrogant?” I marveled.

  “Come on, turn on that charm. I have none. Help me out.”

  “Oh, Buzz won’t help you,” Alanis said, chortling. “He’s too shellfish.”

  “That’s it!” I barked in defiance. “I am leaving!”

  “You know why he’s a re
d lobster?” Alanis shouted after me. “Because he’s embarrassed that his seaweed!”

  2

  Friday morning the trainees bundled together like raw nerves: tense, temperamental, electric. Sprinkled throughout the classroom were yawning, bored auctioneers and several trainers.

  “Today is your last day,” Gene began with a grin. “You all remember what that means: auction day! Now, we started with twenty-six students, you’ll note we are down to… let’s see, how many now?”

  “Fifteen,” Lucifer called from the back of the class. “Two are here as permanent associates, though, not auctioneers.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s right,” Gene said. “I assume you all knew Rebecca and Cocoa were doing so? So, first: let me explain why you all rated yourselves the other day. Instructors cannot see all the habits of the trainees, some of which may blossom on the ships without any supervision. The temptations of ship life are phenomenal, after all, and if a trainee can’t handle his liquor or whatever here, he’ll never survive at sea. So if one of our favorites is repeatedly listed very low by his peers, we’ll know something is being hidden from us. It’s quite simple, really.”

  He cocked his head to the side and smiled. “Would you like to know who was rated the highest?”

  Gene paused for dramatic effect, and I actually found myself tensing. Funny, I was likely to rank about five, yet there I was listening with bated breath. Maybe Laura was right. Was I really that arrogant?

  “Cindy Lou Who!”

  We all gave a soft round of applause. None of us were surprised, of course. She and her husband, Sammy Hagar, were a fantastic auctioneering team. Cindy Lou Who was petite, adorable, and focused. Upon reflection, her striking similarity to the child cartoon character from How the Grinch Stole Christmas made me a bit more forgiving about my own nickname.

  “So, we have a champion of the class,” Lucifer said, strutting to the front of the room. I watched Laura’s eyes trailing his every move, her eyelids actually fluttering. No wonder she hated me so much, she was in love with Lucifer! How could anyone find that hyena attractive in appearance or manner? I guess Bill was right: women must want to be treated like dirt. The wonders of the world never cease.