Okay, maybe we all have cruise ships on the brain lately, but today I decided this particular story doesn’t have anything to do with the book, so I’ve taking it out. In honor of it’s extraction, I’m putting it up here for all to see.
Coalition Forces
May, 2004
“Two for dinner?” The super-friendly hostess had a nondescript European accent. I looked to my wife, who smiled and nodded.
“Two alone if it’s available,” I said.
“Sharing is okay? Yes?”
“No, two alone would be better,” I said.
“Right this way,” she said, as she led us to a table for six.
“Right,” I said under my breath, offering my wife my arm as we walked across the dining room.
Everyone we’d spoken to about taking a cruise talked primarily of two things. The first was the expense. The second was the food. No one could believe how much they fed you! The food was really good! The service was great! It was fun to dress up! The reality was there were different types of dining experiences on the ship. Our norm had become going to dinner in one of the three formal dining rooms—nice digs with tablecloths and china—where the left side of the menu had a default selection of standard dishes prepared the same way every night, and the right side had meal choices customized by destination. The wait staff was swift and extremely polite, although they knew only enough English to take orders and deliver food. We wore nicer, but not formal, clothes.
And we reconciled ourselves to eating with strangers every night for two weeks solid.
But by Day 10 of a 14-day Grand Mediterranean Cruise, I’d started to notice things. Like despite the fact that the surroundings were plush, it was loud in the dining room. Loud like a college cafeteria. In fact, I’d come to realize cruise ship dining was a lot like college, only with sport coats and glitzy earrings. The food was pretty good, but not exceptional. You could eat all you cared to eat. The menu choices were not without limits, and it was just plain hard to find a good dessert.
Our dinner table on Day 10 was partially occupied by a man and two women, all busy looking at the evening’s menu. Our waiter pulled out our chairs and laid our napkins in our laps. I sat to the right of the man, and Alana, my wife, sat on my right, directly across from the women.
We were five at a table for six at half past eight. I figured the chances of someone filling in the last seat were slim.
I glanced at the menu. The right side included consommé with tapioca pearls, crème d’asperge or duck confit in beef broth with vegetables. Arugula, mixed greens or spinach salad. Veau à la crème, roast squabs or beuf bourguignon.
“Well then, all right,” the younger of the two women said. “Why so much soup? I mean, cahn’t we have a little variety for entrée?” She was British. I placed her accent somewhere south of London. Bright and toothy, she was nibbling at the bow of reading glasses hung from a thin gold chain around her long, tanned neck.
“We’re headed for Frahnce, after all,” her husband said. He too was British, and bald by choice. He leaned back and closed his eyes when he spoke. They both laughed out loud at the mention of France.
“I was just thinking that myself,” I said.
“Oh?! My name is Jean and this is my husband, John.” The woman seemed startled to see us.
“I’m Grant and this is Alana.”
“Oh! Hallo, Grahnt!” Jean said. I tried to conceal my delight at hearing my name pronounced with a British accent. It is, after all, a very British name.
“Hallo, Alayna?” Jean asked.
“Alahna,” my wife said.
“So. This is Phyllis,” Jean said. She gestured toward a stout older woman to her left dressed in a bright caftan. Phyllis appeared not to have noticed our arrival. “She’s from Malta, I think,” Jean said, just loud enough for Phyllis to look up.
“Hello?” Phyllis asked.
“Yes, Phyllis, we were just saying this is Grahnt and Alahna,” Jean said loudly. Phyllis regarded us over the top of her menu. “They just joined us!” Jean half-shouted.
“Yes, I’d love to,” Phyllis said.
“Excuse me?” I asked.
“Yes, from Malta,” Phyllis said.
“Yes. Right. Nice to meet you!” I shouted.
“Oh, perhaps,” Phyllis said, and glanced back at her menu with concern. I looked at Jean who looked at Alana. They both shrugged and smiled.
“Would anyone like something to drink?” Our waiter was a small, chubby man. His name tag bore a collection of consonants and two vowels, under which read Hungary—his country of citizenship.
“Good God, yes!” Jean said.
“We’ll each have a glass of number 227,” John said. Then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a small token and placed it in the waiter’s hand.
“I’ll have a Crimson Royale,” Phyllis said, reaching for her cruise card—a piece of plastic dangerously akin to a credit card. She looked at both John and me as she handed the card to the waiter.
“Ah, yes, um Szabolcs? I’ll have a double Stoli on the rocks with some olives, please,” I said, and handed over my own cruise card.
“Thank you, Mr. Bringington?” the waiter answered. Touché Szabolcs, touché, I thought.
“What’s number 227?” I asked John.
“Well, it’s a lovely bottle of burgundy we brought from home,” John said, leaning back and speaking toward me. With his eyes closed, it was difficult to tell if he was being friendly, or formal. Either way, I found it unnerving.
“Yes, you pay a fee, but in the end, it’s really worth it, isn’t it?” Jean asked no one in particular, her focus remaining on her menu. I’d heard of this custom, but was daunted by the thought of carrying my own bottles of wine to a cruise on the other side of the world.
I glanced back down at the menu and quickly came up with what I thought would be everyone’s dinner choices. I’d concocted this game—a combination of intuition and culinary acuity—to help determine what, if anything, I had in common with my dinner companions. I predicted Jean would have the veal with a light soup, most likely the consommé. John seemed like a steak and potatoes man, so I’d pegged him with the beuf bourguignon (but I’d been tricked by the Brits with the beef lately). Phyllis had squab written all over her. I knew Alana would most likely go for the default salmon fillet, as French food was too rich for her.
The waiter returned with Phyllis’s cordial—a champagne cocktail with grenadine—and my cocktail. He quickly took the dinner order without writing anything down. As it turned out, I’d done fairly well: Jean would have the mixed greens (miss) and the veal (hit); Phyllis just wanted a large bowl of consommé and a diet soda (miss). John wanted a shrimp cocktail, a well-done sirloin steak, French fried potatoes, the asparagus soup and the arugula salad (indirect hits). Alana would have the salmon (hit).
“So then, tell us, where are you from?” Jean asked.
I was happy to find that Jean was perfectly content to drive the dinner conversation. We’d suffered through a few meals with people who weren’t willing to ask or answer questions, and found it to be a stroke of luck to have someone like Jean at our table. Cruise ship table talk was all about finding a common ground. Without it, you were doomed to have the same conversation every time you ate. With Brits at the table, I was hoping to get their perspective on the only current event our countries had in common—the war in Iraq.
“Vancouver,” I said.
“Ah! Canadians!” Jean and John said simultaneously.
“No, no, no. Vancouver, Washington. It’s in the U.S. Just north of Portland, Oregon.”
“Oh,” Jean said, crestfallen, “We’ve never been. We did have a lovely stay once in Bodega Bay, though. You know, where they filmed The Birds?” Jean asked John.
“Yes. Lovely,” John said.
“Oh? I thought that was filmed near San Diego. Doesn’t Jimmy Stewart take Kim Novak south to some mission and see her jump out of a bell tower?”
“Honey,” Alana began.
“I think Kim Novak has some sort of problem, like being a kleptomaniac or something. I remember there is a scene in San Francisco, but I thought they went south, not north,” I continued.
“I think you have the wrong movie,” Alana said gently.
“No, Barbara Bel Geddes is his secretary and he drives a Karmann Ghia,” I said. “I remember that distinctly. And Kim Novak is this shop girl that he dressed up to look like his old girlfriend, Tippi Hedrin.”
After a moment, Jean said, “Grahnt, I must confess I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
“Yes. I believe you’re getting The Birds mixed up with Vertigo and Marnie, which is pretty hard to do, I must say,” John added, his eyes still closed. This retort was accompanied by an over-rotation of his head. He was clearly scolding me, but it looked like he was talking over his shoulder. I opened my mouth to apologize, but Phyllis stopped me.
“Too many blondes in green suits! It’s no wonder he can’t keep ’em straight. All those women looked alike. My husband used to make the same mistake,” she snorted, and went back to her Crimson Royale.
“Well, that’s another country heard from!” Jean said, after a moment. She winked at Alana. “We’re from Edenbridge, in Kent,” she said.
“That must be just south of London,” I said.
“Why, yes! Yes it is. How did you know that?” John seemed pleased.
“Hours with Standard British Dialect tapes,” I said.
“What’s that? Tapes? Why would one listen to tapes of other people’s dialects?” John asked.
“We’re both interested in the theater,” Alana said, somewhat apologetically.
“Oh! I see,” John said. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. His eyes were closed.
“First cruise?” Jean asked.
“For Grant, yes. I took a ship across the Atlantic when I was a girl, but that was more an ocean voyage than a cruise,” Alana answered.
“I’ve always wanted to take a cruise since I read about them years ago. We wanted to travel to as many sites in Europe as we could without having to schlep our luggage around Turkey, Greece, Italy, France and Spain,” I explained.
For us, the cruise was a way to get from city to city without the added anxiety of how we were going to travel and where we were going to eat or sleep. On a cruise you fell asleep in Naples and woke up in Rome.
“How about you? Is this your first cruise?” I asked. Jean and John looked at each other.
“Oh! This must be our seventh or eighth,” Jean offered.
“Seventh,” John said.
“Or eighth,” Jean concluded.
“Phyllis, is this your first cruise?” I asked.
“It’s champagne and grenadine,” Phyllis said.
“Oh! Uh-huh. Right,” I said.
“Look! Soup!” Jean nearly shouted.
Szabolcs arrived with first courses. My soup was exquisite. The shredded duck, braised in its own fat, was succulent and sweet. Everyone else seemed disappointed. John picked at his shrimp, Alana added salt to her salad, and Jean poked at her greens and moved the plate away. Phyllis simply smiled and sipped her champagne.
“Do you come here often?” Jean asked.
The question had an infinite variety of answers. As I pondered just what Jean could possibly mean, Alana said, “Yes. We like this dining room more than the others. Although it’s identical to the one upstairs, we prefer this one for some reason. I don’t really know why that is, but there you have it.”
“Yes,” Jean said. “We’re up on Deck 14, just one floor down from the buffet, but we hardly ever go there.”
“No. Quite. Except in the morning,” John said, carefully examining another shrimp.
“Many mornings we have to throw on our togs to pop up to grab a cup of coffee. But I must say, some mornings, the spigots are all wound up and you can’t get a drop,” Jean said.
“We call room service as soon as we get up,” Alana said. “The coffee comes very quickly, as long as you don’t order any food.”
Jean and John stopped eating.
“Room service?” John asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I must admit, I’m getting kind of spoiled by the 24-hour complimentary room service.”
Jean and John were spellbound. I thought perhaps they were fascinated by the blitheness of my comment.
“I kind of love the fact that they can show up any time with a pot of coffee. We’ve even taken to having tea in our room most afternoons,” I said, hoping this might snap the Brits back into the conversation. They remained perplexed.
“We did make it to High Tea on Day Three, but were a bit overwhelmed by the rushed service. That, and the fact that most of the passengers there were from Hong Kong,” I said. “And it made for very tricky conversation,” I added, smiling.
Both Jean and John blinked and stared.
“Because neither Alana nor I know Chinese,” I offered.
They stared even harder. In fact, John was starting to grimace a bit.
“Neither Mandarin nor Cantonese,” I said finally. Then nothing.
I’d exhausted my contribution to the topic.
I started to turn to Alana and suggest we abandon ship when Phyllis piped in, “I take tea in my room too! It’s lovely,” she said, “Though not quite a very good blend.”
That was two saves for Phyllis. I owed her a drink.
“Room service!? Whatever do you mean, Grahnt?” Jean was aghast.
“Yes,” John said, “What?”
“Complimentary room service. The menu is somewhat limited, and if you order food it takes longer, but the drinks are just fine. Although it sounds like Phyllis has some issues with the tea. It’s Lipton’s, isn’t it Phyllis?” I tried to pull Phyllis back into the fray.
“Lovely,” Phyllis said, tipping back her champagne glass to get the last drop.
“But you have to offer them gratuity, don’t you?” Jean pressed.
I was silently alarmed by the fact that I had somehow alienated the entire population of Great Britain with the mention of complimentary room service. Up to that moment, I thought the Brits invented room service. Apparently not.
“Well, the line suggests you tip everyone at the end,” Alana said, saving me. She even pressed her elbow into my side. I had hit a bit of a bad patch. “You know, a standard amount per day,” she said.
There was a moment where I simply stared back at them and cocked my head slightly. I was about to apologize for even bringing up the subject (which, of course, I hadn’t) when John spoke up.
“But, I don’t know Grahnt … I mean … ” John sputtered and stalled.
“Yes, exactly,” Jean added, “I don’t think I could let people into my room! I mean, no, I mean, I don’t like that … ” Jean said.
In the ensuing silence I contemplated what had evolved. Just what did Jean mean? Do British people change once they’ve entered a stateroom? Induced by the grandeur of the drapery and the motion of the ship, I imagined long, slender British ogres unpacking dead rabbits into the mini-fridge. No room service for them, oh no. Maybe Jean and John were closeted nudists. Or maybe they had only packed evening clothes and togs—whatever the hell togs were.
“Well, sometimes I don’t really let the steward into my room,” I said, slowing down on the last couple of words for emphasis. “I take the tray at the door,” I said, and returned to my soup.
The entrée arrived, and with it a sort of conversational détente. There would be no further talk of room service. We did, however, chat about Jean and John’s two daughters, whom I imagined to be lean, blondish and toothy, like their mum. The eldest, Delilah, was headed off to university at the end of the summer; the same school where John taught physics or something adequately remote and logical. Phyllis was a widow. Her seven children sent her on a cruise every summer. By herself. Although she was from Malta, it turned out she actually lived in New Zealand, having moved there with her husband after the Second World War. The main course came and went without any talk of Iraq, and I began to fear that I might miss my opportunity. These were obviously intelligent, affluent folks. I was interested in their position, but found the topic difficult to introduce.
The conversation took another tumble when I introduced the topic of dogs. Up until Day 10, this had been a great topic. Everyone had a dog story. All of our dinner companions either owned dogs or knew someone with a dog. It seemed a safe bet to me.
“Do you have any children?” Phyllis had asked.
“No,” I said. “But we have a couple of dogs that keep us pretty busy.”
There can be assumptions made about you when you don’t have children, I suppose. Those assumptions never seemed to bother us much. Fact is, we are more than happy to talk about people’s kids. We like it. And, as much as we try not to, when people ask us about kids, we almost always mention our dogs. We don’t think of our dogs as our children, but rather as something pleasant we can talk about instead of rehashing the story of our failed attempts to have children. The dogs are infinitely more interesting.
“Did you say dogs?” Jean asked.
“Yes. We have a couple of Soft-coated Wheaten Terriers,” I said.
“Are they brown, Grahnt?” Jean asked, her brow furrowed.
“Well, no, not really,” I said. “They’re brownish. More beige, really. The color of wheat. Hence the name. And they aren’t really terriers in the sense that most people think of terriers. They’re midsized dogs, not small and yappy like a Jack Russell or a Yorkshire.”
“What do you think, John?” Jean asked. “They have a couple of doggies. Don’t you think, after the girls leave, we could get a little doggie?”
“What’s that you say?” John said.
“We were just discussing our dogs,” I said, perusing the dessert menu without reason. By Day 10 I’d tried all the desserts and hadn’t finished any of them.
“Have you noticed something?” Jean asked. “That many of the homeless seem to have doggies?”
“Many of them do, I suppose,” Alana said.
“They always seem to have a doggie of some sort on a rope or some pitiful thing,” Jean said.
“Would anyone care for an after-dinner drink? Perhaps a glass of sherry or port?” our waiter asked.
“Chocolate mousse for me and Jean will have the petit fours,” John said.
“Could I get a dish of vanilla ice cream?” Phyllis asked.
“We’d like to split a fruit and cheese plate,” I said, wagging a finger between Alana and myself.
“I don’t know if being homeless predetermines that you own a dog, though,” I said.
“Well, I think they’re doing it to get more money out of people. You know, when they beg and such,” Jean said.
“Really?” I asked and winced immediately. I’d discovered that I often used this word inappropriately, and wasn’t sure if I used it by reflex, or if I truly needed more information. At any rate, I was trying to quit. And I was failing.
“Well, yes!” Jean said. “I’m more inclined to give someone money who has a dog to feed, I think. And most of the doggies seem to be brown. Always brown. I must admit, I find that upsetting, Grahnt.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it quite like that,” I said.
“What’s that they say? That the older a man gets, the less tolerant he becomes of talking about another man’s dog?” John asked.
I thought for a moment before I said, “Hmm. I’ve never heard that, John. Interesting.” But it wasn’t. I’d just about had it with John. He wasn’t holding up his half of the social contract.
“Really?” John said, his eyes unusually open and bright.
That was it. He was squaring for some sort of fight.
“Szabolcs? Could you please bring me an Irish coffee?” I asked the waiter when he placed our dessert between my wife and me.
“Irish?” Szabolcs asked.
“Yeah, coffee with a shot of Irish whiskey and heavy cream,” I said.
“Certainly, sir.”
“Are you interested in Formula One, Grahnt?” John asked.
“No, not really,” I said, “For a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I have a hard time with loud things. Why, do you race?” I asked.
“No,” John said.
“Curious,” I said, doing my damnedest to peak my eyebrows.
Alana must have noticed the edge in my voice. Or she picked up on my passive aggressiveness when I ordered an Irish coffee at a table full of Brits. She swooped in and took up the talk like a pro.
“Do you go to the theater much?” Alana asked.
“Well, not as much as we should, really. We did see an excellent musical production, though, about footballers in Belfast,” Jean said.
“Really?” Alana said, I thought somewhat reflexively.
“Yes, quite. It was very good, but I don’t think it lasted very long. What was it called, Johnny?”
“What’s that?” John asked.
“That show we saw. Good God! It must have been five years or so ago. You know, in the West End that time?”
“Oh, I just don’t remember those things, you know,” John said. “It had a good woman in it, though, I remember that, but I don’t remember much about it, really.”
I knew they were talking about an obscure musical called The Beautiful Game by Andrew Lloyd Weber. It had closed shortly after it had opened. I’d only heard the soundtrack a couple of times. And although I had every opportunity to save them from conversational obscurity, I sat and savored my weak Irish coffee made with shitty whiskey and burnt decaf. Here’s to you and your snotty comments about dogs and Hitchcock, I thought. It was Day 10, and I suddenly realized I’d grown tired of vacationing.
“How is it?” Phyllis asked.
“Oh, the cheese is fine and the Concord grapes are slightly bitter but sweet in the end. Not very well-paired with the cheese, though,” I said.
“No, the drink?” Phyllis asked.
“Dreadful,” I said.
“Yes, that’s been my experience too,” she said with a sad smile that melted me.
“Did you have a good day today?” I asked Phyllis.
“Lovely, but I really did want to see inside the Duomo. I stayed in my room, working my puzzles instead,” she said.
“We didn’t see the inside of the Duomo, either. It’s Sunday and it was closed for services. But we did see the Duomo museum, somewhat by accident. The real baptistery doors are there, and they are really something.”
“Oh, I should have loved to have seen that,” Phyllis said, her eyes glazing.
“I’m so sorry it rained today. It must have spoiled Florence for you, Grahnt.” Jean said.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said, unlocking my hands and fishing my napkin from my lap. “I had a pretty good day today. Alana and I had a great cup of coffee and an exquisite pastry at a little shop off Santa Croce. Then we walked around the outside of the Duomo and spent about two hours at the Galleria dell’Accademia, staring first at the David and then watching other people’s faces when they saw the statue for the first time. We had lunch with an old friend and then took a terrifying cab ride to the Piazzale Michelangelo. They have the most unusual church there. The frescoes are downright bizarre, really. Crammed with demons and temptresses. The view of Florence is pretty cool from up there too. We took a bus down to get some gelato and then, just as it started raining, we rushed through the Uffizi,” I said.
Then I noticed that no one but Alana was listening to me. So I finished with, “All in all it was a pretty good day, I guess. I regret rushing through the Uffizi, though.”
“It sounds horridly busy,” John said.
“What did you do today?” I asked Jean.
“We bought a handbag on the Piazza della Signoria, then we came home. I don’t really find rushing around foreign cities relaxing, I must admit. Besides, the real world is so depressing, especially when it rains,” Jean said.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Oddly enough, at that moment the only thing I could think of was the war in Iraq. But it simply didn’t exist on the cruise ship. Although we were onboard for both Memorial Day and the 60th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, the current war was a silent undercurrent, not spoken of in the laundry room or between chapters of The DaVinci Code at the Tradewinds bar on the Lido deck.
Jean was right. The real world could be depressing. Especially when it rained.
I wanted to say something, but I didn’t. Instead, I used the opportunity of an open mouth to fake a yawn, stretching my hands high above my head and settling my interlocked fingers behind my neck, my elbows pointing at both Alana and John.
“That’s true. I have to admit, some of my best afternoons have been spent at sea. Just me on the balcony in my bathrobe with a good book. In fact, on those days, it’s like I’m the only soul on board,” I said.
“Really? What are you reading?” John asked with his eyes closed.
“The Agony and the Ecstasy,” I said.
“Oh my! That’s a tedious book for a holiday!” he said.
I would have argued otherwise, but it was Day 10, so I merely pretended not to hear him, smiled and excused myself from the table.
On our way back to our stateroom, I thought about the unusually large groups of police assembled in Rome to ensure a quiet visit between George W. Bush and the Pope. I thought about the rainbow-colored flags waving from windows high above the main streets of Florence, imploring pace—peace.
I told Alana I’d prefer to eat in the room or at the buffet for the next couple of meals, as the ship sped through the night bound for Monte Carlo.