The Nowhere Cruise

June 2006. Port Canaveral, Florida.

4:00 P.M.

“It’s going to be alright, Jack. Breathe.”

Victoria helped her husband onto the Lady Zephyr, a two thousand-passenger cruise ship

looming over the port. As she climbed the ramp in her black and gold Versace headscarf and matching shirt, Prada shades, Victoria felt like she was on a runway. For a moment, she even thought she heard clapping, which turned out to be the ramp creaking beneath their weight.

Beside her, Jack was clinging to her elbow like an accessary hanging off her arm. A starfish stuck to the bottom of a luxury yacht.

Once onboard, they were greeted by a member of the crew – a perk for passengers staying in the premier suites. He was a lanky boy, with bad posture and dark eyes that were set a touch too far apart.

“Welcome aboard,” the boy said, with his best service-industry grin. “My name is Roy and I’ll be showing you to your room.”

Roy looked at Jack, registering his naval uniform. His energy shifted to somber veneration. “And thank you for your service, Sir.”

“What’s that?”

“Roy the cabin boy just thanked you for your service to this country, sweetheart.”

“Oh.”

Roy stood smiling, doing his best to stay professional and not show surprise at the fact that these two weren’t in fact father and daughter, but husband and wife. He recovered quickly.

“You know, it was once a dream of mine to join the military, Sir.”

“What happened?”

“I – well, I couldn’t pass the physical exams.”

“It’s no place for the weak,” said Jack, his eyes hard as gunstocks.

It was plain to see that Roy was hurt by Jack’s comment, but wouldn’t allow the pain to seep through his voice. “No, Sir. Of course not.”

They walked along the side of the deck, sun dancing on the surface of the sea. It’d taken weeks of convincing to get Jack to board a ship, until eventually his ego wouldn’t allow him to appear a coward in front of his wife. In the end, Jack agreed to take this nowhere cruise – two nights at sea without a single port of call. There would be spas and massages, high tea and casinos. People come to indulge, to unwind. To escape.

They stopped so Jack could rest his legs.

“Where are the lifeboats on this vessel?” asked Jack.

“One deck below, by the engine rooms,” said Roy.

“We won’t need those,” Victoria said through a veneered smile. “Isn’t that right, Roy?”

“No, Ma’am. This ship has twenty-nine cruises under her belt. She’s seasoned. Getting seasick should be your only concern.”

Jack was silent for a moment. Victoria knew what was coming and could sense the tension in the air. Like a bomb about to be dropped.

“The Indy had done fifty-two sailings before it was torpedoed by a Japanese sub.”

“Sir?”

“This was right after we’d delivered the parts for Fat Man and Little Boy to the base on Tinian Island, on course for Guam. And if there’s one thing I learned that night, it’s that it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve gone to sea. Your last is the only one that counts.”

Roy stood frozen.

“You… were on the Indianapolis?”

“Some days I could swear I’m still there,” said Jack. His gaze locked tightly onto the horizon.

4:32 P.M.

When they got to their room near the edge of the deck their bags were already waiting for them – Victoria’s Louis Vuitton suitcase comically juxtaposing Jack’s small, canvas duffel.

“What’ve you got in there,” said Jack, “a bazooka?”

“Something like that.”

Victoria had known exactly what Jack would say. A symptom of their ten years of marriage.

In her previous life before she married Jack, Victoria made minimum wage as a caterer. That was how they’d first met – a veteran’s charity event supplied with food from her company. Jack had been the keynote speaker.

Though most people were usually too polite to comment on the appearance of their relationship to her face, she witnessed the mystified looks, the double-takes. Victoria was beautiful, young. What could she possibly be doing with a guy like Jack?

What indeed.

Jack was old, rich, mired with health issues, and had no family. He’d capitalized on his notoriety after the tragedy as much as he could – there was the bestselling memoir, which was optioned for a movie adaptation. Then the speaking engagements, followed by more bestsellers. He’d been a shrewd investor, and over the years had piled up a sizeable fortune.

“I’m gonna get some rest before dinner,” Jack said. “Could you wake me up in an hour?”

“Of course.”

Victoria took Jack’s disk of ocean sounds out of her bag – the one he fell asleep to every night. She put it into his CD player and placed his headphones over his head. “Sweet dreams my love,” she whispered, before she pressed play.

The problem was the prenup. Jack was obviously smart to make one, ensuring she couldn’t inherit his money until his death. The problem was that their marriage had actually improved his health, motivated him to start taking care of himself more. So over time, as Jack continued to live and enjoy his decorated life, Victoria just garnered more resentment and impatience. She saw her friends living regular lives, with loving relationships, while she was stuck in this prison of her own making. And she was running out of time.

Victoria sat on the side of the bed, staring at Jack’s limp, fragile, sleeping body. The pillow under his head.

Of course, she’d thought about it before. But she’d also had the foresight to know she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she did something to directly harm Jack. So, for a while, she banished the thought from her mind.

Until another thought took over. One she couldn’t shake. A memory.

It was summertime. Her and Jack had taken a daytrip to the coast, visiting his editor Marshal and his family at their summer home. After lunch they sat by the pool, smoking cigarettes and sipping vodka sodas, when suddenly the town’s tornado siren went off.

“Don’t worry about that,” Marshal laughed. “City’s just testing their emergency systems.”

Then a splash. It was Jack, diving into the pool in all his clothes.

Later, wrapped in a towel, face dripping not in water but sweat, Jack told them that the siren had brought him back to the night the Indianapolis was struck by the Japanese torpedo. He said he’d woken up to almost that exact sound. And as the ship went up in flames, he survived by jumping overboard, into the dark water below.

Now, with Victoria’s eyes set upon Jack’s unconscious body, it was this moment that played on a loop in her head: her husband, without any thought or hesitation – like he’d been possessed – diving into Marshal’s backyard pool.

Again, and again, and again, and again.

7:23 P.M.

At dinner, Roy the cabin boy found them again. Something about his eager-to-please demeanor reminded Victoria of herself, her old life before Jack. She knew what it was like on the other side of that table, serving rich bastards who seemed to see right through you, down to your broke bones, worn from the weight of stress and uncertainty.

“Evening, Sir. Ma’am.” It was obvious Roy revered the old sailor, and wanted badly to impress him.

“Good evening, Roy,” said Jack, playing into the role of proud Naval hero. “How’s the sea this evening?”

“Excellent, Sir. Still as a bathtub.”

“Good to hear.”

“Sir, if you don’t mind, I wanted to ask –”

“Careful, Roy,” Victoria chimed in. “I think I know what you’re going to ask, and you should know that Jack has a hard time discussing it. Especially here.”

“That’s alright, Vic,” said Jack, clearly wanting to impress the boy despite the beads of sweat that were forming on his brow. His shaking leg rattled the cutlery on their plates.

“Well, I want to know how you did it. How you survived those three days in the open ocean.”

Jack closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath and held it as if he was preparing to submerge under water. Then, just like he was telling the story to a packed auditorium, he opened his eyes and slowly expelled the stale oxygen out of his chest.

“The truth is my survival had nothing to do with being any stronger or faster or smarter than any of the men on that ship. But I was luckier. My quarters were located right next to the edge of the ship. That was lucky break number one. As soon as I heard the siren, and Captain McVay’s command to abandon ship – as soon as I saw the flames succumbing us – I knew there was no other choice but to jump into the water. It turned out to be the right one.

When I jumped in I was immediately covered in the ship’s black oil. We were in the open sea for three days before help arrived. Three days of scorching sun reflecting off the surface of the water – water none of us could drink. But it turned out the oil on our bodies acted like sun repellent. That was lucky break number two. The men who were drenched in oil would be the only ones who didn’t die of dehydration. I saw one guy slice open a dead man’s throat and drink his blood just to get liquids into his body, Roy. To this day I can’t seem to stop seeing that.

My third lucky break was the raft. When the ship went down all of us were scattered. I was alone, trying to stay afloat and shake off the teeth of the nipping sharks. I wouldn’t have lasted more than a day unless I spotted one of our life rafts. Many didn’t. Many fell to exhaustion or the hungry monsters circling below. Nine hundred men were strewn across the ocean that night, Roy. By the time rescue came, only three-hundred and sixteen of them survived. It was all a roll of the dice. I had no more right to surviving that wreck than Miles or Frankie or Carlos. You know, sometimes I think it was retribution. After all, it was us who brought the A-bombs to Tinian. All that carnage and all that horror in Japan. That was us. Maybe it was God who sent that torpedo hurling at our ship. Maybe it was the universe itself that wouldn’t allow us to leave that island unscathed.”

Roy had been riveted into uncompromised attention, not saying a word, even after Jack was done speaking.

“Does that answer your question, Roy?” said Victoria, dismantling the awkward standstill.

“Yes. It does. Thank you, Sir.”

“Maybe not passing those tests was your lucky break, Roy,” said Victoria. “Now, my husband is tired…”

“Of course, Ma’am, I just wanted to tell him how brave it is to want to return to the seas. Even after all this time, I can see it’s not easy– “

“And you’re not making it any easier, Roy.”

“But Ma’am, I was just– “

“Have a nice night, Roy,” she interrupted again.

They locked eyes. He stared at her for a long time, almost like he could see all the way through her. Like he saw something there, lurking below the surface. Something dark. Something hidden.

Finally, he smiled.

“You too, Ma’am,” Roy said, walking away to the tune of clinking cutlery.

9:31 P.M.

After dinner Jack was beat. He had no energy for any of the cruise’s nightlife or entertainment – the Billy Joel cover act, 90s Night at the club, the Naughty and Nautical comedy show. Victoria knew telling the story had wound him up, so they decided to turn in and go straight to bed. She placed his disk of ocean sounds into his CD player, put his headphones over his ears, and kissed his chapped lips – dry from the salty air.

“Sweet dreams, my love,” Victoria said, laying down beside him with a copy of Thérèse Raquin in her hands, illuminated by her reading light. “I’m just going to stay up a bit longer and read.”

But Jack was already asleep.

12:20 A.M.

Victoria was alone on the deck of the ship – directly above her and Jack’s room – looking out at the sea before her. It smelled of life and it smelled of death. Otters feeding on forests of kelp and tying it their feet so the waves wouldn’t carry them away in their sleep. Hermit crabs scavenging for mollusk shells. Writhing octopi feeding on whale carcasses sunk to the ocean floor.

She thought about her life with Jack. It had been a good life, a comfortable life – one she would always be grateful for. But now she was ready to get on with her next life. And if the universe wouldn’t intervene to make it happen, she had no choice but to do so herself.

It was just as Jack had said at dinner. For Victoria, being born into poverty had been a roll of the dice – an unlucky break which charted a bleak course for her life. Meeting Jack had been dumb luck, too. A fortunate gust of wind in a more favourable direction. But now it was time for Victoria to be her own navigator. No longer subject to the whims of fate.

After Jack had gone to sleep, Victoria stayed awake for hours. She finished her novel. Then at half past one she got up and removed a lamp from her bag – one that spun and glowed bright orange, sending silhouettes of what almost looked like flames dancing upon the ceiling. Next, she took out a candle scented like burning firewood, and she lit it with her plastic disposable lighter. Finally, Victoria removed the familiar disk from Jack’s CD player, and in its place inserted another disk – a disk with no markings upon its blank surface. One she’d put together herself.

That disk had fifteen tracks. The first fourteen were Jack’s familiar ocean noises, lasting precisely thirty minutes. But track number fifteen was something else entirely.

It was the sound of a blaring air siren.

In exactly two minutes Jack would awaken to that noise, would smell the burning wood, would see fiery shadows on the ceiling above his bed, and then…

Then…

Victoria thought back to that day by the pool, just as Jack was climbing out – clothes drenched and smelling like chlorine, hair clinging to his face, sobbing uncontrollably.

“I thought I was there, Vic. I thought I was back there again.”

When it was over she’d go down to the room and collect the disk, the lamp, the candle. Throw them overboard. She’d try to go to sleep, and come morning she’d raise the alarm. Topple the first domino.

They’d ask questions. Yes, her and Jack fell asleep together. No, she didn’t feel him stir in the night. They’d scour the ship, and once they eliminate every possible location on board, they’d assume the last, horrid alternative. They’d call search and rescue, but by that point it would be too late. There would be no chance of Jack’s aging body surviving the open water for that long. Not again.

If they asked her why, she’d tell them about his PTSD, his nightmares and perpetual anguish. Yes, she’d say, it was entirely possible he would take his own life.

The final domino would be Jack’s funeral. With any luck, there wouldn’t even be a body. A hero’s funeral, complete with twenty-one-gun solute. She’d shed tears, of course. Some of which might actually be genuine.

Then it would all be over.

Soon Victoria would go back down to their room, prepare to trigger this chain of events. But, for now, she just looked out at the sea. She closed her eyes and breathed it in. How calm it was tonight, how serene. This eternal sea, stretching endlessly past the horizon, across the entire world. Filled with so much possibility.

She checked the time. One minute to go. The seconds counting down.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

It happened instantly.

The bang of their cabin door, his running steps.

His headphones were still over his ears when he leaped over the railing into the darkness. There was a beat of silence. Then, at last: a splash. So quiet she might have imagined it. And just like that, in the matter of seconds, her husband was gone.

Victoria gazed into the water below from the top deck, wiped her eyes with her sleeve, and breathed a sigh of relief.

But just when she thought she’d succeeded, that she was free, she heard the emergency sirens go off. She jumped and saw members of the crew running onto the deck.

“Over here!” yelled a voice she recognized. It was Roy the cabin boy. “He jumped here!”

3:25 A.M.

The coast guard worked fast. They sent a search party of boats and located him within the hour – alive, in the early stages of hypothermia – and sent a chopper that flew him out to a hospital on the mainland. When they told the young wife, who’d been advised to remain in her room to wait for any news, she started bawling with joy.

They took Roy’s statement. He told them the whole story – how he welcomed the couple when they first got on board, how he met them again at dinner. How he sensed something was off about the young wife from the start. Having worked on cruise ships for a few years, he could always tell when a storm was brewing.

His shift had ended, except instead of going to sleep, he followed the couple back to their room and stood guard. Watching, listening for anything out of the ordinary. Around midnight she slipped out by herself. She stood alone on the top deck above the room, waiting for something. Roy waited too. For what, exactly, he didn’t know. It was around 12:30 when he saw Jack sprint out of the room in a panic and jump overboard.

She did something, he was sure of it. He didn’t know how, exactly, but she did.

The coast guard took his statement carefully. They’d already spoken to the wife. Her room looked normal, clean. Smelled good. But they believed Roy’s story. They knew that something wasn’t right. They also knew they couldn’t prove a goddamn thing.

However she’d managed to do it, if it hadn’t been for Roy, the execution would’ve been nothing short of flawless.

11:38 P.M.

The cruise ship was a day out from Florida, where Jack was in intensive care at Cape Canaveral Hospital. On the Lady Zephyr, the excitement about the man who jumped overboard had died down. People were back to losing in the casino, forcing laughter at the ventriloquist show, contracting mono at the nightclub. People wasted no time moving on.

Victoria was alone, smoking as she leaned over the railing, feeling warm and drunk despite the cold ocean wind. What looked like a wide-open sky last night now felt like a snow globe. How many more years would she have to wait before she could move on?

Why couldn’t the old fucker just die?

“They say one cigarette shortens your life by eleven minutes.” Roy startled her.

“I’ve wasted enough of my life as is,” she said as she stubbed it out into the ashtray next to her. “You know, Roy, I never got a chance to thank you for what you did for Jack. Without you he’d be gone.”

“He’s a fighter, your husband.”

“That he is,” she said. “Well, I’m glad you were there when it happened.”

“You were there, too.”

“And I didn’t see a thing. It was so dark. I already told the coast guard. I was just out for a smoke – “

“How’d you do it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“How. Did you hypnotize him?”

“Do I look like I’m with the onboard entertainment?” laughed Victoria.

“Well, it doesn’t matter now. Because I know you did it. I just can’t prove it.”

Roy was breathing heavy, stopping for a moment to regain composure. “You know, there’s nothing I find more despicable than dishonor, especially when it’s left undisciplined.”

“Spoken like a real seaman.”

The ship hit a rough patch of waves, and Victoria’s cigarette slipped out of her hands and into the sea.

“Careful,” Roy said. “I can tell you’re drunk. Water’s choppy tonight. You wouldn’t want to fall in.”

There was something about his voice that sounded different. Less service-industry and more…detached? Like he was an alien imitating human speech. Maybe she’d misjudged him, thought Victoria. Maybe Roy wasn’t who she thought he was at all.

She was right. Victoria knew virtually nothing about Roy. She didn’t know that his dream had always been to join the military, because he believed adamantly in two things: the ultimate superiority of the United States, and the systematic extermination of the enemy. He dreamed of combat. He shot terrorists and deserters in his sleep.

She didn’t know that it wasn’t the physical exams Roy didn’t pass – it was the psychiatric evaluation. The army flagged his application right away. A history of psychopathic tendencies throughout his teens. Disturbing classmates. Hunting neighborhood pets. He’d been training to kill for years. He would’ve been a fucking asset to his country. Too bad the army recruiters didn’t see it that way.

“You remember,” said Roy, “when your husband talked about the sharks, how they circled the survivors, picked them off one by one. Monsters, he called them. I think that’s what you are. A monster, circling your husband for who knows how long, biding your time.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re – “

“Yes, you do. You know exactly what I’m talking about,” said Roy, his voice sounding farther and farther away. “You betrayed your own husband, your country. No. There’s no place for people like you in this world. Your kind belongs in the sea.”

Victoria did her best to keep composure. She tried to light another cigarette with her shaking hands, but the wind kept blowing out the flame. She looked around. There was nobody else there. She met Roy’s stare. He looked her dead in the eyes.

In the dark, it was hard to tell who the monster was.