Antsy Floats (18 page)

WHEN WE GOT BACK TO THE PLETHORA, IT WAS
close to the “all aboard,” so there was a long line of people trying to get through security. I scanned the line looking for Tilde and maybe some faces I would recognize from the beauty shop, but I didn't see a single one. Once I was on board, I wandered the ship, searching through the crowds for signs of her and the others. Then I finally realized I wasn't going to find her that way. I went to the suite and fished through the dresser drawers until I found the passkey that Tilde had given me.

I was going to have to pay a visit to Bernie and Lulu.

•  •  •

Bernie and Lulu's door had a Do Not Disturb sign hanging on the knob. I paced the hallway, trying to figure a way to get onto their balcony, and then realized that maybe I didn't need to. Each of the
Plethora
's lifeboats covered the length of maybe half a dozen “obstructed view” cabins, and each of those cabins had a balcony.

I knocked on the next door, but that cabin was occupied, too. I wasn't surprised. It was that time after everyone was back on the ship but before dinner: the time when everyone was either dressing or napping. Finally, four doors down from Bernie and Lulu, I knocked and no one answered. I used the passkey to get in and immediately saw steam coming out from underneath the bathroom door. Someone was taking a shower and singing a really bad cover-your-ears karaoke version of “Mack the Knife.” I knew as long as I heard the shower and the singing, I was safe. So I made my way to the balcony as fast as I could, slid open the door, and stepped outside.

When I looked to the lifeboat, I could see why Tilde had chosen Bernie and Lulu's cabin. Because of the tapering design of the lifeboat, all the other cabins had a larger gap between balcony and boat. The balcony where I stood was toward the far end of the lifeboat, and the gap was pretty huge.

The ship hadn't set sail yet. If I jumped and missed, I'd either fall about fifteen feet to the next deck and break a few bones or my momentum would be enough to miss the ship completely, in which case I'd splat on the concrete of the dock ten stories down—because there was no gap between the ship and this dock the way there had been in Miami. Behind me, the guy in the shower stopped singing, the shower turned off, and the bathroom door began to open.

I've done a lot of things in my life that my teachers would call “ill advised,” but few things could be iller advised than leaping like a maniac from a balcony to the very end of a lifeboat.

I landed halfway on, halfway off, with the boat rocking from the force of my jump—which made me start to slip. Panicking, I kicked my legs up. Thank God, I got new sneakers for this cruise and wasn't wearing the treadless wonders I usually wore. One foot found a grip and then the other. I pulled myself up and lay sprawled facedown on the bright yellow roof of the lifeboat, my fingertips spread out, clinging like Spider-Man, until I felt sure I wasn't going to slide off. Inside the cabin, a guy in a towel was admiring his physique in the mirror and had no idea I was now the key feature of his “obstructed view.” Carefully I crawled the length of the boat to the little roof hatch, pulled it open, and dropped in.

I found myself in the company of a whole bunch of very serious people.

“About time you got here,” Tilde said.

It was pretty dim in there. There were lights, but Tilde said they'd know on the bridge if a lifeboat's electrical system powered up, so we all sat in darkness with nothing but the faint light coming from a few small portholes.

“Did everyone make it on?” I asked.

Tilde shook her head. “A few people panicked at the last minute and ran away.”

But there were also success stories.

“There was a guard as I was getting on,” said one man. “He was staring at me until I start to talk to my wife about the price of tequila. Then he just checked our cards and let us on.” The man smiled and gave me a thumbs-up.

Beto was there with his parents. Jorge was there. The woman who dyed people's hair was gone. All told, we had nine new passengers. And now that the reality of the situation had hit them—the truth that in just a few minutes they'd be sailing away from their old lives—they looked, well, scared. Like they had no idea what to do now. Like maybe they had made a wrong decision.

“You did good,” I told them, trying to be positive. “The hardest part is over.”

“They still have to make it through US Customs,” Tilde reminded me. “
That's
the hardest part.”

“Yeah, but they have two days until then, right? And it is the Fourth of July. Time to celebrate.”

A few people began to cheer and applaud, but Tilde shut that down real fast.

“
¡Callate!
No one must hear you. You can't talk; you can't move. If someone sees the lifeboat rocking, or hears a voice, or notices an open hatch, or looks from their cabin to see a face in a porthole—then it's over.”

Through everything, I'd never seen Tilde this stressed. I realized with all of her planning, there were parts of this she was flying blind. Now the others weren't looking at her; they were looking at me for guidance and comfort. To tell you the truth, it made me feel like pissing my pants, so I tried to take the attention off of me. I looked over to all the food that Tilde had stockpiled: big cans of tuna, vegetables, even olives. Like what were they going to do with a ten-pound can of olives?

“Is anybody hungry?” I asked.

“Yes,” someone said, “but we have no can opener.”

I looked at Tilde and grinned. “Big picture, bad with details?”

She stuck her tongue out at me.

“Okay, I'll get you a can opener,” I told her, “but there's no way I'm going out the way I came. We'll have to wait until Bernie and Lulu leave before I can jump to their balcony. I just hope they don't lock that balcony door.”

“That door doesn't lock,” Tilde said. “I made sure of it four cruises ago.”

Suddenly the entire lifeboat began to vibrate, and people braced.

“It's just the thrusters,” I told them. “The
Plethora
's pulling away from the dock. We're on our way.”

Then one of the men—one I hadn't even spoken to before—reached out and grasped my hand, firmly shaking it.

“Gracias,”
he said.
“Gracias por todo.”

I didn't know his name; he didn't know mine. And yet it was the most heartfelt handshake I'd ever received.

•  •  •

Thankfully, Bernie and Lulu were big gamblers, so as soon as the ship was at sea and the casino opened, they were off, and so was I.

I got a can opener from the buffet line. All I had to do was ask, “Hey, you got a can opener?” And since, on this ship, passengers got what they wanted with no questions asked, the buffet dude gave me a can opener with a smile.

“Yes, sir! Here you are, sir! Did you have a good day in Cozumel, sir?”

“The best!”

It was pretty easy to make my way back into the lifeboat now that I had access to the right cabin, but I knew that each time someone came in or out of the hatch, it was like pulling a Russian roulette trigger. If we kept doing it, eventually someone would notice. So once they had the can opener, Tilde told them they were on their own until the ship reached Miami. Then she would come for them. I could tell Tilde didn't want to leave them, though.

“Trust us,” Jorge told her. “We know what we have to do. Keep quiet. Keep still. Think American thoughts.” Then he gave her a warm hug, and I realized that they had probably once been more than friends.

“Remember,” I told her as we left Bernie and Lulu's cabin, “you have to act normal for the rest of the cruise. Skip out on dinner, turn up in places you're not supposed to be. Be a general pain in your father's aft.”

Tilde sighed. “This is going to be a very long two days.”

And then we went in opposite directions. I realized at that moment that if all went smoothly, I might not see her again.

But the
Plethora of the Deep
wasn't bound for smooth sailing. And neither was I.

I HAD THIS REALLY ANNOYING CONVERSATION WITH
Howie once.

“I saw this thing on TV about something they call ‘the cosmic theory of chaos strings,'” he told me. I think he'd gotten two different things confused, but when you're dealing with Howie, you gotta be willing to roll with it.

“According to a bunch of brilliant scientists,” he said, “random events tend to clump.”

“That doesn't make sense,” I told him. “If they clump, then they wouldn't be random, would they?”

“Hey, don't blame me. Blame the scientists.” Then he went on to talk about the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards. “Do you know they have this random number generator at some college somewhere? And they noticed that when like a gazillion people are focused on a single event, like the Super Bowl or the Oscars, the numbers that were generated were less random.”

“Where did you hear this?”

“Cartoon Network. But it was a very serious cartoon.”

It would have been easy to just dismiss this as classic Howie, but it bugged me enough that I went to check it out. Not on Cartoon Network, but on actual online sources. I even avoided Wikipedia. My teachers would have been proud. And you know what? It's true. Somewhere out there are these scientists who believe that random events clump together and that human focus makes stuff less random. Call me nuts, but isn't most religion based on the idea that stuff ain't so random?

Thinking about science and God sharing the same bathroom was enough to make my head explode or send me to hell or wherever—but isn't it both cool and creepy at the same time that randomness might not be all that random?

So the next time you got nothing to do all month except for six random events that all fall on the same Tuesday, think about those brilliant scientists and maybe send them some hate mail.

For me, my random events all came down on the Fourth of July, rolling in like a perfect storm that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Well, okay, maybe my
worst
enemy, but no one else.

At eight o'clock that evening, with the lights of Cozumel like a distant line of fire on the horizon, I went up on deck with most everyone else on the ship. The Independence Day party had started, and a salsa band had taken the main stage on the pool deck, launching into a set of rousing yet highly danceable patriotic songs with a Latin beat.

Then the fireworks started. Sure, my parents' clothes iron was confiscated from their luggage as a fire hazard, but they could still do fireworks. I guess you could call that “ironic.” Anyway, these fireworks, unlike mine from last year, did exactly what they were supposed to do. I could only imagine what the folks in the lifeboat were thinking about all these explosions. It made me think about Tilde and where she might be. I kept trying to remind myself that the whole thing was no longer my problem but still felt way too connected to it, and to her.

I was surprised to find Crawley in the corner of the Lido Deck—but maybe I shouldn't have been surprised, because my parents were the ones who had brought him out.

“I detest fireworks,” he complained, “and all these gyrating people on the dance floor are making me sick to my stomach. I demand that you take me back to my cabin now!”

My father patted his shoulder. “In a few minutes,” he said.

“Things will only get worse for you,” threatened Crawley.

“How could they possibly?” answered my father.

Crawley saw me and turned to me for help. “Do you see this, Anthony? Your parents have chosen to torture me on the day before my eightieth birthday. They're probably hoping I don't survive to see it.”

“They kidnapped you,” I said, and winked at him. “What a novel idea.”

He grabbed his cane and tried to whack me with it, but I was out of range.

My mother brought over a huge plate of french fries for everybody to share, and to my utter amazement, rather than complain about the grease, Crawley ate them along with the rest of us—although he did throw one at a guy who passed with a lit cigarette.

“Far too many smokers on this cruise,” Crawley said. “They should all get cancer and die.”

With all the things going down today, it was a relief to have a few moments to relax, without worrying about stuff that was out of my control. I thought that maybe, just maybe, I might be able to let go for the rest of the cruise and enjoy myself.

Then Crawley asked, “Have you seen Lexie?”

To be honest, I hadn't even thought of Lexie for most of the day. My brain could only juggle so many knives without cutting my hands off. From experience, I knew that Lexie did not have a love of fireworks either. “The sound of fireworks,” she once told me, “and the feel of the concussive blast is far less pleasant than the visual spectacle must be.”

Up above, the sky exploded with color. The crowd oohed and aahed.

“She's probably off with Gustav somewhere,” I told Crawley.

“Who?”

I realized that I slipped something Lexie may have wanted to keep secret—but then again, she never specifically asked me not to tell.

“Just this guy from Switzerland,” I told him. Then I thought about what Gustav's stated goal was and realized there was only one day left of this cruise to accomplish it, and I started to get worried, like I maybe should have been two days ago. It had been easy to tell myself that Lexie knew what she was doing and that she could take care of herself—but she was not herself on this cruise anymore than I was myself.

The band finished up something that sounded like a cross between “America the Beautiful” and “Low Rider,” and the fireworks reached their grand finale. The crowd applauded, and the party continued, but I went inside, where you couldn't quite hear the music, just the rhythm of the drums. I went to all the places Lexie might be. The teen lounge, the arboretum, the bowling alley, the roller coaster, but there was no sign of her or Gustav anywhere. I couldn't even be sure she was still on the ship, and I started to think, how well did I really know this Gustav guy?

I knew I was probably making a mountain out of a molehill, but at this particular moment I had no parallax, and now that it was in my face, this molehill might as well have been the Matterhorn—which I'm sure Gustav could see from his stinking Swiss chalet.

I paused in a stairwell, trying to think this through. If I was Lexie and Gustav, where might I be right now? I didn't like any of the answers I came up with. That's when I heard the distant barking of a dog.

“It's Jorgen Ericsson's ghost hound,” said a kid passing me in the stairwell.

I knew for a fact that aside from the goats and llamas in the petting zoo and ponies on the trail, there was only one other four-legged creature on board: the one who belonged to that bark. In all my years of knowing Lexie, I had never heard Moxie bark like this. Sure, he'd whimper and whine from time to time, but Moxie, as far as dogs go, was the mellowest of the Crawleys' fifteen dogs. Now I was getting really worried.

“Moxie!” I called out, as loudly as I could. The bark came again, but this time it came from a different direction, like maybe it really
was
Ericsson's ghost hound. “Moxie!” I went from deck to deck looking down each hallway, but there were so many decks and so many hallways, and he didn't sound like he was staying in the same place.

I finally found him down a hallway on Deck Five, way aft. “Moxie!” He came to me, panting and yipping and more freaked out than I had ever seen him before. I knew that fireworks messed with his head, like they did with most dogs—but I also knew that on the Fourth of July, Lexie made a special point of sitting with Moxie, stroking him to calm him down. So why wasn't she doing that now? And why was he still wearing his guide harness? Lexie never left him in his harness when he wasn't guiding her. That must mean that he took her somewhere and somehow got shut out or forgotten about. There was something about all this that had me about as freaked as Moxie.

“Do you know where Lexie is, boy? Take me to Lexie.”

But Moxie was not like one of those ridiculous TV dogs. He wasn't going to lead me to Timmy in the well. He was just a dog—a smart one, but also confused and scared. He whined a bit and circled around me, then took off. I followed him upstairs and downstairs, down one hallway and up another. Finally he ended up at the door of Lexie and Crawley's suite—the only place he really knew how to find. I let him in and he went out onto the balcony and did his business in the sand box that the cruise line had provided for him. Then he came in and lay down about as low as a dog could get, with his jaw pressed to the floor, and just whimpered.

I let him out of his harness. I knew Crawley would be down soon, once his protests got real and my parents had to give in. I swore to myself that I would find Lexie first and have her here before he got back.

On a hunch I went up to the loft bedroom. Lexie's bed looked like it hadn't even been sat on since the cabin steward made it this morning. Next to her bed was a little pad that was completely blank to anyone who didn't know what to look for.

I turned on the side-table lamp and tilted the pad at an angle. The sideways light revealed a bunch of tiny little bumps—exactly what I was looking for! Lexie would sometimes use the tip of an empty ballpoint pen to make notes for herself in freehand Braille. She prided herself on it, even though she had blind friends who thought it was weird.

“The sighted can handwrite, so why can't I?” She would make the symbols backward, pressing the pen tip firmly into the pad, then flip the page and voila! Instant Braille. Much more convenient than the Braille typing machine she used.

I ran my fingers over the bumps. I couldn't read Braille by touch, but Lexie, in one of her own attempts to expand my horizons, had taught me numbers and letters in Braille, if not by touch, then visually. I still remembered most of them.

I sat down and began to decode the messages on each slip of paper. Most were times and places around the ship. Something about her aromatherapy massage. And then I came across a single capital
G
and four numbers. Eight. One. Three. Four.

I took off for cabin 8134.