Cabin Buddies

I had to agree. "And the way it's so completely self-contained. I mean, what could we possibly want that they aren't already completely stocked up on? The whole rest of the world could just go ahead and blow itself up and we wouldn't even notice."

--

It had been a pleasant evening. And Denise had been right: it had been fun to have a buddy to share it with. But now we were heading back to our little room, and we had to turn our attention to the more mundane aspects of cabin sharing. Molly went to the bathroom first, and then I did, and then neither of us was quite sure how to proceed. It was becoming pretty clear that she wasn't any more familiar with cabin sharing than I was.

Both of us kept looking at the bed. It was up against the outer wall, and almost as long as the cabin was wide. It was going to be awkward getting to the side against the wall without disturbing the other person. Presumably the cabin-sharing etiquette book would have had something to say.

I decided that one of us should at least try to pretend that they knew what they were doing.

"Would you mind if I took the side with the ocean view?" That seemed like the most gentlemanly arrangement.

She didn't argue, and in fact I think she was relieved to have the issue resolved. She opened her suitcase and brought out a pair of frilly, sky-blue pajamas. She looked around again and then turned her back like she had before.

I sat down at the foot of the bed. I hadn't even thought to bring any pajamas myself. Well, there wasn't much I could do about it now. I took off my shoes and socks and tried not to pay any undue attention to what she was doing.

She stepped into her pajama bottoms and pulled them up under her skirt before taking it off. Then she pulled off her blouse and put on her pajama top so quickly that I caught only the briefest glimpse of her bra strap. Then she reached in under the top, unhooked her bra, and fished it out.

Meanwhile, I'd taken off my shirt and pants. I figured I could slip under the covers without her seeing me in my underwear. But then I realized that she'd had a perfect view in the bathroom-door mirror all along. She didn't let on, though. That seemed to be the universal rule of cabin sharing, for girls as well as for guys. Just go about your business and let your cabin mate go about theirs.

I crawled up onto the far side of the bed, trying not to notice if she was paying any attention. She turned off the light and got in on her side.

I'd had to share beds with other guys before on occasion. What you do is turn your back, keep yourself perfectly still, and imagine that there is an invisible force field that insulates your half of the bed from the entire rest of the universe. I quickly discovered, however, that this technique is not that effective when the person lying beside you is a pretty girl in frilly pajamas. I got such a hard-on that I was sure she could sense it, even though we had our backs turned.

So I thought about my algorithms. I rehearsed an upcoming seminar presentation of their salient features. And then I rehearsed it again. And then I rehearsed it again.

--

Sunlight was shining in through the porthole again when I woke up the next morning. Molly was still asleep, but I needed to pee. I edged out of bed, trying my best not to disturb her. I went to the bathroom, then quietly got dressed and slipped out of the room.

There were only a few people up on deck at this hour. We'd sailed during the night and were now anchored at the entrance to the harbor at Catalina Island. It was a beautiful morning, the water a rich cerulean blue, the harbor dotted with rows of pretty boats. I came back down and found a dining room that served breakfast. I had a bite and brought back coffee and a roll for Molly.

She was up, but still in her pajamas. I told her about the island and tried to show her through the porthole. The way the ship was facing, though, we were only able to see the rugged hills of the island and not the harbor itself.

By mid morning she had talked me into going in to shore with her. It was like being transported back in time to the sunny southern California you see in old-time newsreels: palm trees, cute bungalows, handsome, sun-tanned people sitting at outdoor cafes or lounging under colorful beach umbrellas. We walked all the way along the beachfront to the palatial ballroom at the end, admiring its lovely art-deco mosaics of naked mermaids cavorting amidst swirling kelp forests and playful schools of fish.

The huge round floor of the ballroom itself was dark and empty on this weekday morning, but photos along the walls showed elegantly dressed couples waltzing at the annual New Year's Eve ball. Molly was enchanted.

"Let's come back for it, want to?"

"I'm afraid my ballroom dancing is a little rusty."

"Well, you'll have to brush up then."

We strolled back along the main boulevard amidst tourists and tradesmen and shopping housewives. We looked in the windows of the boutiques and souvenir shops and had lunch at one of the sidewalk cafes. Molly filled me in on all the latest gossip about the interns and nurses at her clinic. I told her a bit about my algorithms. I may have gotten a little carried away, actually, but she did her best to follow along.

Our map showed a botanical garden a couple miles out of town. Molly was game, so after lunch we rented a tourist cart and headed off to look for it. I drove and Molly navigated, and after a few wrong turns we found ourselves bumping along into the dusty interior of the island.

It was a warm, sunny afternoon, and we had the place pretty much to ourselves. It had never even occurred to me that there were botanical gardens devoted almost entirely to cactus. I'd certainly never imagined there were so many different varieties: towering suaros like in the cowboy movies; rough organ pipes that shimmered like coral formations on the floor of some strange alien sea; fuzzy white phalluses that tried to lure you into thinking they were cuddly enough to pet; plump barrel cactus with swirling patterns of pristine spikes as geometrically perfect as Faberge eggs.

Molly discovered a sprawling specimen that must have taken up a half a city block. It was covered with prickly green Mickey Mouse ears, and on the whole rugged plant there was one lone ear that held a single tiny delicate yellow flower. "That's what I want for my corsage," she said. "When we come back for New Years Eve."

We eventually bumped our way back into town and dropped off the cart. The tender back to the ship was pretty full, and Molly and I had to press up shoulder-to-shoulder on the bench. She closed her eyes in the afternoon sunshine.

"A perfect day," she murmured. "And tonight's the gala dinner. And gambling!"

"Gala dinner?"

She opened one eye just enough to give me a look. "You were supposed to bring a sports coat. It was in the brochure."

--

When we got back to the room we found our towel on the nightstand, folded into the shape of a jungle cat, ready to pounce. I had brought my sports coat, but it was pretty creased from being crammed in my suitcase. Molly hung it in the bathroom when she went in to take her shower. Then when she was done I took my own, making sure to give her plenty of time to get dressed.

I cracked the door to see if the coast was clear. She was making her final adjustments in the mirror and stepped aside to let me out. She was wearing a lilac gown with a sequined top and a long swishy skirt.

"I got it on sale," she shrugged. But I could tell from the way she kept looking at herself in the mirror that she was pretty pleased with it.

Now I was the one who had to get dressed in front of her. I just went at it cabin-buddy style, turning my back and pulling things up under my towel like she had done. When I fetched my sports coat from the bathroom, the creases were a little less noticeable.

We made our way up to the dining room. It was nice, actually, being a little dressed up. I found myself walking a little taller, standing a little straighter. Molly took my arm as we made our way to the table, and everyone paused to look.

Molly and Ciara chatted about shopping on the island. It turned out that Jack knew something about cacti from his landscaping work and was interested to hear about the botanical garden. The appetizers were oysters on the half shell. It was my first time eating them, and Molly showed me what to do.

By the time that dinner was over, the ship had gotten far enough out to sea that the casino was open. Molly walked right in as if she knew what she was doing. She got ten dollars worth of quarters, and I pitched in another ten, trying my best to match her air of confident sophistication.

She went to one of the poker machines, and I drew up a stool beside her. "So what's this system of yours? Or is it a secret?"

"I only play until I run out of quarters. That way I never lose more than I'm willing to spend."

I didn't think that that was what people meant by a "system," but I didn't say anything. I watched her play a few hands. The machine would deal out five cards. She would select which ones she wanted to keep, and the machine would replace the others.

"I usually just bet a quarter. But if we're going to pool our money, we can bet two at a time, OK?"

I finally figured out how it worked. If we got anything less than a pair of jacks, the machine would keep our money. If we got jacks or better, it would give us our money back. If we got an even better hand, like two pairs or three of a kind, it would pay out according to a table posted on the screen. All the way up to a hundred bucks for a royal flush. We lost our first few quarters, but then we got three aces, and the machine clunked us six shiny new quarters back out.

Molly would study each hand carefully before making her selection. She pretty much chose the same cards that I would have chosen, except she was a little over-optimistic about our chances of getting a straight or a flush.

On one hand the machine dealt us the jack and king of diamonds, along with a pair of eights. She eagerly selected to keep the jack and the king.

"No, no," I told her. "Keep the eights."

"But we have a chance for a royal flush."

"But the odds are better for getting another eight."

She gave me her look of patient exasperation.

"Because look..."

But she wasn't particularly interested in my analysis. "OK, Mr. Algorithm." She changed the selection. The machine dealt us a queen, a three, and a six and beeped the forlorn tone that meant "better luck next time."

Molly flashed me her told-you-so eyebrows.

"Well, we wouldn't have gotten the royal flush either."

"Not if we didn't even try!"

There was one moment of genuine excitement when we got a full house, sixes and queens. The machine clanged like crazy and quarters came pouring out. But eventually every one of them got re-deposited, never to be seen again. It wasn't really gambling so much as just playing a video game. An enjoyable one, though. There was the dress-up aspect, the battle of wits, the allure of the hundred-dollar jackpot. Molly certainly enjoyed playing, and I enjoyed watching her.

--

I noticed that it was almost time for the show.

"Juggling?" Molly wasn't so sure. She rattled our cup. "We still have a few quarters left."

"Yes, juggling! I'll have you know that I minored in juggling in college. Come on. It'll be fun."

The show was in the forward theatre again, right next to the casino. The Flying Garbanzo Brothers! Hup! Hup! Four strapping guys with streaming hair and Frank Zappa mustaches, dressed in colorful gypsy blouses and billowing pantaloons. They juggled everything from tennis balls to bowling pins to pineapples to power tools.

One of the brothers, Yakov, had a rakish, devil-may-care attitude and was always grinning at the ladies in the audience. In one of the acts, as balls were whizzing back and forth across the stage, he started making eyes at a blonde in the front row. He began paying less and less attention to his juggling, occasionally letting a ball fly past him, which one of the other brothers would then have to lurch out of formation to keep in play.

Finally he just gave up on the juggling altogether and sat down on the edge of the stage, chatting the lady up. The other brothers were flailing frantically to keep all the balls in the air. They began to retire them, one by one, but somehow the very last ball went out of control and arched way up high toward the front of the stage. Yakov casually reached his hand out to the side and caught it without even looking.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" announced Ripov, the black brother with dreads, "For our grand finale, a feat of blistering dexterity so flagrantly dangerous that it has never before been attempted within the enclosed confines of a luxury liner!" The brothers proceeded to arrange a panoply of torches and hoops and bales of combustible material all around the stage. Yakov came out sporting a mischievous grin and lugging a big red can labeled 'gasoline.' Just as he was about to douse the first bale, the stagehand stormed in, a short oriental fellow in a white lab coat and thick black glasses, squawking in a barely intelligible accent and waving the ubiquitous ship safety placard--the one with the picture of the lifesaver on it.

Yakov's grin collapsed into a sneer, but he put down the can. "Still never attempted," he muttered under his breath. The brothers juggled the torches anyway, unlit but unwieldy, back and forth through the hoops and over the bales. Suddenly red and orange crepe-paper streamers unfurled and rose up, flickering like flames and giving the impression, at least, of a roaring inferno. All in all, it was enough to get your blood pumping.

When the show was over there was a bit of a traffic jam getting out of the theater. I grabbed Molly's hand and dragged her toward a less crowded side exit. Hup, hup! We found ourselves in a stateroom passageway, and I kept dragging her along at a rapid pace.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"C'mon," I replied. The fact is, I didn't really know. At the end of the passage was a short stairway up to a bulkhead door. We went through and found ourselves outside on a little deck by the lifeboats. The sun had set, but you could still see the frothy wave caps.

At the end of the deck was another stairway, and at the top was the entrance to the miniature golf. I still didn't know exactly what I was looking for, but it wasn't miniature golf. There was another way to go, though, even further forward, right along the edge of the bow.

Molly was panting from our frantic pace, but she was keeping up. We'd reached the very front of the ship. The image of Leonardo DeCaprio holding Kate Winslet on the bow of the Titanic flashed into my mind. That's what I wanted! Moonlight! Sea spray! Violins!

But the forward view was all walled off. The only thing you could see, if you turned around, was the bridge, looming up above us, ominously dark except for the eerie glow from the radar screens. There was a stairway leading up to it, but the sign said "Authorized personnel only."

"Kind of not what I was expecting," I said.

"Oh, well," she said. She pulled us across to the other side where another deckway led back aft. The wall there was not so high, and we stood for a while, watching the foamy caps and the unbounded emptiness. We had engine noises instead of violins and a stinging wind instead of an enchanted spray.

"Do you think they'd even bother to tell us?" she wondered.

"Tell us?"

"If the world blew itself up."

But the wind was just too fierce. We retreated back to the more sheltered parts of the ship.

--

This time Jack and Ciara were in the Salsa Club. They waved us in.

"What are you having?" Jack yelled over the music, heading for the bar. Ciara and Molly had to half shout to hear each other. Jack came back with something tall and fruity for Molly and something short and amber colored for me.

The music was catchy and persistent. Jack held out his hand and led Molly onto the dance floor. They made a handsome couple: Jack rugged and manly, Molly fresh and pretty. I felt a twinge of jealousy. Molly knew a lot of steps, and she was clearly enjoying herself. I gave Ciara an awkward smile and we walked out to join them.

It turned out that Ciara was quite a dancer too. She would lose herself in the music, letting her willowy body become an instrument of its expression. I felt kind of bad that she was stuck having me as her partner, but the dance floor was crowded and she didn't seem to mind.

When the song ended, she smiled and put her hand on my arm as she caught her breath. She was attractive, with long, honey-blonde hair and a captivating smile. A bit older than me, but not that much. I tried to picture the two of us going out after we got back home.

By the third song it was no longer really clear any more who was dancing with whom. Ciara and Molly were dancing next to each other and laughing together at something one of them had said. Then Ciara turned her attention to Jack, and he gave her a few of the moves that her dancing so richly deserved. They made a striking couple too, in a different way than Jack and Molly. They seemed more appropriate for each other, somehow, a better fit. And there was a genuine cozy affection between them that I could imagine outlasting the cruise.

Meanwhile, Molly was dancing beside me now, her freshness and joyful enthusiasm now beamed my way. That seemed more appropriate too.

--

Molly and I finally called it a night. It had been a long, eventful day: mermaids, cacti, sea spray, dancing. We made our way down the corridor to the little room that was beginning to feel more and more like home.

I took off my coat. Molly's hair was a bit mussed, but she looked happy, as if her day had been as full and eventful as mine had been.

I brought my arms up to give her a little hug. I figured that the rules of cabin etiquette wouldn't begrudge us one little hug. But she stepped into it, and before I knew it we were kissing, a kiss that continued as we shuffled our way toward the bed.

We sat down. I put my hand on her shoulder and ran it over her sequined back. She touched my face and let her tongue brush my lips. I stroked her side and whispily brushed her breast. She drew in her breath, then reached behind herself and undid her clasp. Her bodice slipped down like a sequined snake skin, revealing the more luminous, more tender skin beneath.

Her breasts were perfect, pale and shy, each one frankly punctuated by a bashful, yearning nipple. I couldn't help but lean in and encircle one of them with my lips, tasting it gently with my own tongue. She held me softly there. The rules of cabin etiquette, it seemed, had been suspended by mutual consent.

She lifted herself just enough to slip her gown off the rest of the way. She draped it over the chair and gave me the bashful version of her shrug. We had to get ready for bed after all. I undressed too, placing my clothes on top of hers. She lay down, wearing only her panties. I took off everything and lay down beside her.

We glided our hands over each other's arms, over each other's sides, over each other's hips. My penis was sticking out like a sore thumb, but I just let it. I caressed her firm bottom and hitched her closer so that our thighs touched, so that her nipples grazed my chest. I slipped my hand down inside her panties to be even closer to the smooth, cool touch of her skin.

Always before, one part of my brain would already have been working out the logistics of getting us back where we would need to go when we were finished. But tonight those concerns were blissfully absent. We were both already right where we needed to be, right in the very bed where we would be spending the night.