1
The train, not yet moving, shimmied on its track, shuddering from a close call by a passing neighbor. The offender was on a separate track, of course, but with Italian driving you just never know. Fog left over from a passing shower steamed the windows, obscuring the view out across the Bay of Naples. A shame, that, for the cliff-top city of Sorrento offered an unparalleled overlook at one of the world's most celebrated World Heritage Sites.
Tickets in hand, the four of us found seats facing each other and sat down; Natalie beside Rick, Janie by me. Literally the very second her bottom touched the bench, Natalie piped, "Okay, I'm bored."
"That makes two of us, Natalie," Rick groused, saying her name with a mocking emphasis: 'NATlee'. "I wanted to go to a bar. You've really let me down here."
"You're really not curious to see this?" I asked Rick, surprised.
"Rather see the inside of a bar, mate," he answered, absently tugging on the small gold hoop in his ear.
"That makes two of us," Natalie agreed.
Such support did not please Rick, but rather incensed him. He snapped, "You're the one who suggested this stupid field trip! You're supposed to be my drinking partner."
"That's because nobody told me it takes an hour twenty to get there," Natalie whined.
"Good!" Janie said with obvious relief. "I need to get away for awhile. Francois' all up in my shit about goals. He called me into his office twice last cruise! Sometimes I think he forgets the shops are closed while in port, and we're always in port."
Natalie snorted. "You're lucky! You get to see the ports. The spa's open all the time, so I have to work most ports."
"I don't want to think about it," Janie said. She patted Natalie on the knees and said, "Come on. Let's make a cheer."
"Do I look like a cheerleader to you?" the massive brunette grumbled. "I was bigger than half the team."
Brushing aside Natalie's smart replies, Janie clapped her hands in the air and began chanting.
"Explosive! Dynamic! Sure to pass the test—
We explode with spirit, and eliminate the rest!"
In unison, the entire train turned to stare at Janie. Rick moaned, "Does this train have a bar?"
We were on our way to visit the fabled city of Pompeii, doomed by the most famous volcanic eruption of them all. In the year 79 A.D., Mt. Vesuvius erupted and buried the thriving city of Pompeii in a flood of ash. Though sheer hell and searing death for the inhabitants, the fine ash proved most gentle to the city itself. Smothered beneath the protective blanket of volcanic debris, Pompeii remained safely preserved through the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, through the Dark Ages, through the Renaissance. Only when the Industrial Revolution approached did the ash give up its prize.
Now the city stands open and inviting, as if ready to once again house all 20,000 ghosts of the fallen. Street after street after street, all there. The houses, the markets, arenas, brothels, all there. The ash made a particularly effective preservative, leaving bodies where slain and household goods where abandoned. Archeologists even found unbroken jars of fruit preserves and loaves of bread! That an explosion one hundred thousand times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima could leave so much for posterity was incredible. So, too, were the numbers of tourists. Two and a half million people from all over the planet flocked to the site every year, hoping for a glimpse, a taste, of what the Roman world was like. They flew from hundreds of nations across thousands of miles.
Natalie couldn't make it an hour.
"Hey, sandwich lady!" she cried, flagging down an elderly woman offering snacks. Natalie rose to her full six foot two-inch height and jumped around, meter-long hair whirling in a black arc. As if that weren't enough to arrest attention, she wore a cut off pink top over a lime green bra. Her long nails were bright blue, as was the heavy ring of liner around her eyes and, for that matter, her plastic sandals. Decorating her front tooth was a diamond. Though archeology bound, Indiana Jones she looked not.
Soon Natalie was unwrapping a baguette piled with cold cuts. And complaining.
"This looks awful," she muttered, pulling the poor, wretched sandwich apart. She used the top half of bread to scrape off as much mayonnaise as possible, which she then discarded. She downed the sliced cheese in wolfish fashion, then proceeded to do... something... to the salami. Holding in her open palm the slices of meat, she began excising the little chunks of fat with surgical precision. A two-inch fingernail removed the fat like a scalpel, but was unable to smear it onto the waxed paper. Instead she had to use her palm, which soon mushroomed with smudges of white grease. The operation was both mesmerizing and revolting.
"You are so bizarre," Rick marveled.
"Biglietti," a small, foreign voice called from the aisle. We looked up to see the train's conductor holding out his hand. The Italian wore a crisp blue uniform and snappy hat, but his posture was wrinkled with boredom. That changed when he laid eyes upon Janie. She was a cute and solid woman, despite a year of beer having taken its toll on her once athletic body. An extra layer around her middle indicated beer as surely as it would on any man. Thickly muscled thighs had softened considerably along their way into post-high school reality. But ever enthusiastic Janie didn't mind because now her boobs were bigger. The conductor obviously concurred, for despite four arms flapping with tickets, he saw only Janie's breast-bulging T-shirt.
But duty soon took precedence. He frowned at our tickets and launched into a long and irate narrative. Recognizing that none of us understood him, he switched from Italian to English.
"You no validate ticket," he said sternly. "You must validate ticket or be fined."
"Fined?" Rick roared. "We bought your bloody tickets, didn't we? Who cares if we validated them? You can see the time stamp right on it."
"Yes," Janie added, trying to sway the man. "You can see we paid the right amount. Please forgive us if we didn't know the right procedure."
"How I know you buy ticket? Somebody else give them to you!" the conductor accused.
"You mean somebody else who didn't validate them?" Rick challenged. "I already told you the time stamp is right there. We bought them five minutes ago. Use your eyes, man!"
"Stolen ticket," the conductor said, shaking his head with feigned sadness. "Is fine much larger than no to validate ticket. The Carabinieri will be at our arrival in Pompeii. You want to deal with them?"
Rick was angry. Extortion does bring that out in people. "That's a great idea! Why don't you bugger off until we get there?"
"Rick," Janie soothed. "You're not helping. Sir? What's the fine for not validating our tickets?"
"Twenty-five euros," he replied to her breasts. After a pause, he swiveled his gaze back to Rick and added haughtily. "Each."
"You bloody wanker!" Rick cried, rising to his feet. He leaned over the slender Italian. As they faced off, however, somebody else rose to tower over them both. Both men stared, awestruck, at six-feet-two-inches of irate Natalie. One hand thrust to her hip—still holding the mangled, drooping sandwich that bobbed with her anger—she waggled the other in the conductor's face. His eyes widened further and further at each globule of fat dripping from the two-inch blue talon flashing before his eyes.
"This ends right now!" Natalie declared fiercely, light flashing from the diamond set into her tooth. "This is bullshit. No fines!"
The man forced himself to gulp, nodded, then stammered, "D-do you have a-a pen?"
"Who has a pen?" Natalie snapped. Rick—also suddenly meek—handed the conductor his pen. The Italian scribbled his initials on each ticket with a wavering hand, then returned each ticket to its owner. Without a further word, he retreated in search of easier prey.
We finished the ride to Pompeii with better spirits. Natalie was happier, anyway, because she'd had some action. But the setting was not one for gaiety. The sky drizzled a sad drizzle, the ruins wept. Uncounted thousands had died here most horrifically. The fear was tangible once beyond the gates. The crowds murmured anonymously to drone a low, morose hum. Hugging each other as couples beneath cheap umbrellas, we wandered through the untrammeled streets of a doomed city. The disparity was fascinating.
"So tell me about Pompeii," Natalie said from beneath the umbrella she shared with Rick. "But don't give me an answer that's boring."
After a glance at the map, I decided on a proper course of study. We entered a large, grassy yard ringed by neatly preserved columns. Most were a full twelve feet in height, though the east wall had a row of incomplete and thusly shorter columns. Behind those east columns were uneven brick walls forming a series of small rooms, now roofless and lumpy. The other three sides surrounding the yard had walls mostly intact, indicating the yard was once ringed on all four sides by covered porticoes. One roof still remained, slanting tiles shrugging off the rain. We moved under its protection.
"See these columns lining the yard?" I began.
"They special?" Natalie asked eagerly.
"Oh, yes. You can tell a lot about the purpose of this place by the columns. There are three main types of Roman capitals, you see. See how the caps are all simply just a flat rock?"
"You mean their hats?"
"Yes, their hats," I replied. Stifling a smile, I continued with an intentionally droning quality, "To understand Roman architecture, it's important to understand the differences between Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian columns. The first were Doric, which evolved from a simple post and lintel system used by man for millennia—think of Stonehenge, which is merely a large-scale post and lintel system. Posts and lintels of stone have a terrible tensile strength and it took centuries of innovation to come up with brick archways—used on Roman aqueducts still in use to this day—and, eventually, arched vaults reinforced with concrete—the Romans invented concrete, of course—and—"
"Oh my God," Natalie interrupted with a groan. "Shoot me now."
"I'm just messing with you," I laughed. "This was the gladiator's training yard."
"How do they know that?" Natalie asked, peering around.
"Lots of reasons. One is because behind us are barracks that don't have any of the usual trademarks of being military. Another reason is this yard and its columns. Since Pompeii was during an evolved era of the Roman empire, the use of Doric capitals—a simple, early style—means they were made on the cheap. Gladiators were slaves, remember. These columns weren't meant to look pretty, but simply served to keep the roof up."
"Jesus, Brian," Rick groused. "We could be talking about gladiators fighting each other with fireballs falling from the sky and you're talking about bloody boring columns."
At least Janie came to my defense. To the tune of the ubiquitous high school cheer about bananas, Janie jumped, waved, and sang:
"Go, Vesuvius, go go Vesuvius.
"Steam to the left and steam to the right,
"Feel that rumble and BOOM!- Take flight!"
"This is going to be a long day," Rick grumbled. I was starting to agree.
"I'm serious," Natalie pressed. "How do they know any of this crap? Everybody died."
"Not everybody," I replied. "Pliny saw the whole thing and wrote about it. Pliny the Younger, I think. Yeah, because it was Pliny the Elder who was killed by Vesuvius. You'd like him. Do you have freckles on your butt or anything?"
Natalie stared at me as if I'd gone completely mental. This was not by any means an unwarranted thought. She stammered, "What the hell are you talking about?"
"In Pliny the Elder's book Natural History, he wrote that ghosts were scared of freckled people. Thought they were impure. You don't have freckles, but maybe if you've got a bunch hidden somewhere the ghost of Wind Surf won't show up in your massage room. Anything you'd care to show us?"
Natalie just stared at me, open mouthed.
"I'm great at parties," I defended sweetly.
The sun eventually burned through the clouds, making the dead city a hot one. Humidity rolled off rock, sweat rolled off skin. We wandered the silent stone streets and compared them to other streets of other eras. Like today, via concrete, or the Old West, via boardwalks, we walked on raised sidewalks. But everything in Pompeii was solid stone. Many side streets were narrow and deep—sidewalks raised a full two feet!—making the street more a wide gutter than anything else. It was just wide enough for a single cart to be hauled through behind a donkey. This kept the prosperous Pompeiians from getting dirty, but still allowed the lesser folks to go about their business throughout the entire city. If a citizen wished to cross the street, bridges were provided as stone steps, neatly spaced to allow wagon wheels through. Pompeii was a showcase for the best of Roman engineering: simple, efficient, strong.
It was the little things of Pompeii that made an impact, such as a public fountain placed at a crossroads. Via ancient hydraulics, water had poured into a wide basin for people to wash their hands in. The edges of the large bowl were fairly crisp, but for one spot. There people had placed their hands to lean in and drink the flowing water. Thousands of hands after hundreds of years had worn that spot smooth; a reminder of how incorrectly humans comprehend time. We think that because Pompeii was preserved so perfectly, so long ago, it must have been young when buried. Not so. Pompeii was quadruple the age of the United States—nearly 900 years old—when Vesuvius slaughtered its citizenry so long ago.
Then things turned ghastly. Seeing the preserved buildings and streets was one thing. Seeing the birds and flowers painted on intimate bedroom walls was even more enchanting. Seeing the preserved owners was devastating.
The pyroclastic blast of angry Vesuvius did not kill the men, women, and children of Pompeii; they did not mercifully liquify in a split second of scalding heat. Oh, no. Hot ash fell and fell, turning day into night, and kept on falling. Screaming in the darkness, lost, bewildered, the people struggled to survive an event utterly beyond their comprehension. Hordes of victims mobbed the docks, intent on escaping what had once been their home. Dozens died in a writhing mass waiting for boats that would never come. There was no escape for so very, very many. Some dropped alone in the street, others cowered in basements before supporting roofs—unable to bear tons of ash—collapsed upon them. Still others clung to each other as they succumbed to suffocation, hugging each other with their last, dying breaths.
Yet still fell the terror, burying the bodies in powder-fine ash. The ash enveloped every nook and cranny of their bodies, rippling within folds of cloth, filling gaping mouths. When the corpses finally succumbed to time and disintegrated, the ash that housed them had long since solidified. What remained were cavities of exquisite detail. Archeologists discovered countless such hollowed out moments and decided to fill them with plaster. The result was a shocking, city-wide panorama depicting the terrifying moment of death.
I had been excited to see the infamous plaster casts since discovering their existence in a contraband National Geographic magazine. The photos were far too graphic for a child of my tender years. Maybe that's what set me off into the realm of horror fiction and film. But vampire and zombie fandom is merely imagination at play. These were people. Worse, they were people in pain. I was not prepared to feel their pain. But how could I not? The details were staggering: visible were belt buckles, purses, boots. You could see expressions still on their faces. One screaming, plaster mouth lay open to reveal very real teeth, preserved after all this time.
More powerful than expressions were positions. Many hugged each other. One man gently cradled the head of a woman as they together waited for the end. Perhaps the most heart-wrenching was the lone man huddled on the street, knees to his chin, sobbing into his hands. His form conveyed all the animus of Rodin's Thinker.
Astonishingly, Janie was not at all effected by so many human remains preserved in eternal agony. She bounced from displayed body to displayed body. She wasn't just fascinated, she was downright enthusiastic. She even repeated her previous 'Go bananas' chant:
"Go, Vesuvius, go go Vesuvius.
"Steam to the left and steam to the right,
"Feel that rumble and BOOM!- Take flight!"
Caught up in her own moment—for none of us shared it—she added with a jump:
"Ashes to ashes!
"Dust to dust—
"Feel that steam—
"Escape is a must!"
Rick looked like Janie was singing about him rather than Vesuvius. His face swelled a blotchy red and looked about to blow. He snapped at Janie with sharp bitterness. "Will you shut up? Shut up! Shut up! Shut the fuck up!"
Janie's arms dropped to her sides, chastened, stunned.
Rick stormed off. We watched him go, shocked at his sudden, violent outburst. From afar we could see him pacing, extremely upset, muttering with vehemence about 'steam pits'. His thick shoulders bulged with anger and he looked utterly unconsolable. None of us dared try. Needless to say, the tour was over. We slowly made our way towards the exit, taking our time. Eventually Rick caught up to us. Though once again composed, he offered no explanation. We did not pry. I was just glad Cosmina wasn't there to blame me for killing all these guys, too.
It was time to return to our home, our Wind Surf. I bought a book about Pompeii—in English, of course—and we made our way to the gates. A register beckoned, and Janie skipped over to sign it.
"The pen's dry," she said. With a hint of hesitation, she asked, "Rick, can I borrow your pen, please?"
Recognizing an opportunity for an olive branch, Rick nodded and reached for his pocket. He suddenly paused, then began wildly patting his person. "Son of a bitch!" he swore, face darkening anew. "My Mont Blanc cost me fifty bloody pounds sterling—and that bloody wanker conductor stole it!"
2
You have to learn how to be rich, they say. While I certainly wasn't rich, I did understand the axiom. Being an art auctioneer necessitated rubbing shoulders with the rich, in order to convince them you were one of them and thusly could be trusted with monetary decisions. That sort of thing. Learning how to be rich also meant accepting certain privileges you felt warranted. I still couldn't bear to have a valet handle my luggage, but I sure did know how to dine with the best of 'em.
Dining on Wind Surf, like all cruise ships, was segregated by rank. Officers dined in the Veranda—one of two guest dining rooms—because there was not room below decks for both a crew mess and an officer's mess. During breakfast and lunch the privileged few were allowed to dine with the guests, which was an enjoyable prospect on such a small, familiar ship. At dinner time passengers congregated to the larger, Main Deck Restaurant for their repast, leaving the Veranda for the officers and certain staff.
Only a few dozen were allowed to dine in the sun. The rest of the crew shared a tiny room on a lower deck. Numbering well over a hundred, they were almost criminally crammed into a box around eighteen feet squared. The food offered in the little hot bar was not particularly bad, but it was not particularly good, either. Nobody in his right mind would choose that over the Veranda Restaurant. Yet Yoyo did. Then again, Yoyo was hardly of right mind. His predecessor, Ardin, had dined in the Veranda. He had learned how to be rich, as it were. Most likely Yoyo just felt more comfortable dining with fellow Asians, of which he was alone among officers and privileged staff. Unfortunately, Cosmina was also one of the worthy few allowed to dine in the Veranda—more's the pity.
"I just want to get drunk," she groused into her plate opposite me.
With only a handful of people present, the restaurant felt very empty. It always did, for an interior that sat eighty for lunch served only a few dozen for dinner. What occupied most of the space was sunlight, slanting in through the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the Veranda. It was unbearably hot, but the view of the cliffs of Sorrento rising just off the starboard bow more than made up for it. So, too, did the roast pork loin. Food in the Veranda was actually pretty good. Like the U-shaped room lined with glass, the gleaming metal counters were also mostly empty, but for a few buffet decorations. Hot wells gently steamed two meat entrees and three side dishes, all of which rotated nightly. The salad bar, of moderate quality, did not.
"Dead drunk. Muerta. Kaput."
"I heard you," I offered hesitantly. On a good day I didn't really want to engage Cosmina in conversation. But when she opened a dialogue with 'I just want to get drunk'? Hell no. Thus it was wonderful when the chief officer, Emmet, sat down beside me with a plate full of peas and carrots. This was not a particularly unusual step, this joining of senior officer and mere mortal. Emmet was an exceptionally down-to-Earth kind of guy; always cheerful, he enjoyed being around others of the same mien. Needless to say, it was not to Cosmina that he first spoke.
"Oh, my," he said, looking down at my plate. He shook his head ruefully at my rather large helping of pork, pork, and pork. "Where are your vegetables?"
"Coming," I answered. "I tend to eat in phases, for some reason. After the meat I'll get a plate full of veggies. I promise."
"You're doing it completely wrong," Emmet said. Gamely smoothing his white uniform in a professorial manner, he explained, "Always eat your vegetables first. That way you don't forget to eat them. I can't imagine you'll still be hungry after all that meat."
"Don't bet on it," I said with a smile. "I'm from the pork capital of the U.S. In fact, my grandfather was a hog buyer. How you can make a living buying and selling pigs is beyond me, but I hear he was quite good at it. I have pork in my blood."
"Gross," Cosmina chided, idly pushing peas around her plate.
Emmet chuckled. Pulling from his pocket two plastic wrapped cigars, he handed them to me.
"Here," he said. "I thought you'd like these. The port authority gave them to me and wouldn't take no for an answer. He seems to think the trading of tobacco is some sort of sacred bond or something. You're the only cigar smoker I know on board, so I thought you'd enjoy them."
"Thank you, Emmet. Why don't we smoke them together after dinner?" I gave a slight nod to our sullen companion and added, "I sense our usual table in the Compass Rose will be occupied before too long. Some pleasant conversation would be most welcome."
"Yeah," Cosmina murmured. "We can all plan Yoyo's murder."
Emmet's lips compressed into a wry smile and he said, "Ah, no thank you. I see Eddie has just entered, and we need to schedule a dive."
Emmet rose, gathered his plate, and gave me a wink. "Eat your vegetables."
And so I was alone with Cosmina. Joy. She was arrogant and manipulative and fiercely opinionated about things that were, quite simply, ignorant stereotypes. She was also one of the few people aboard with a schedule matching my own. We were thrust upon each other at every turn, even when we weren't helping each other out. On the big ships I was used to non-ideal companions—namely the dancers—but of those Surf had none. No, I was stuck with Cosmina or Yoyo or the TV. I was seriously considering the latter. But booze held a very powerful draw to me, and the Compass Rose was the preferred place to get it. And really, Cosmina could bitch all she wanted if I could sit on the open deck and watch night descend over the Bay of Naples.
After dinner we moved to our usual table—under the port steps leading up to the Star Deck—and proceeded to drink and smoke. Rather, Cosmina did the former while I did the latter. She wasted no time downing record quantities of gin and tonic. She said nothing.
So she was angry. Or sad, hiding it behind anger. You can tell a woman is angry when she's silent. You can also tell a woman is angry when she's yelling. There's also the heavy clue that they're angry when they act different. Then again, a sure sign of anger is when they don't act differently. Interpreting women's emotional cues was hard enough when sharing their culture, but guessing a Romanian woman's game was like fencing blindfolded. Strange it was, indeed, that I was a shoulder to cry on for this woman I didn't even like. Bianca surely had just as many troubles, but had been far too stubborn to let me help. Even after years together, I had to pry out what ailed her, her hopes, her fears. And what did I get for it all? A greater ability to be 'in tune' with another selfish Romanian.
Cosmina downed another drink—hard and fast—started to sniffle, then immediately hid it behind a snap at the waitress to bring her another.
"So you're mad at Yoyo," I finally said after several minutes of utterly failing to figure out what the hell was going on. "Just get it out. What'd he do?"
"You mean other than losing eight passengers in the ruins of Pompeii?"
"Are... are you serious?" I asked, flabbergasted. Her glare was answer enough.
"He wasn't supposed to be responsible for any passengers at all," she spat. "Thank God Fabrice was in charge of the bus or I'd have lost everyone! The idiot was only supposed to take photos. Oh, and you know what he did? He took a photo of each person as they entered the main gate. Not inside by the ruins and pillars and whatever. He took photos of them outside the stupid gate by a bunch of cars of the Carabinieri! What an idiot. The local guides split up the passengers into two groups. The buildings they go into are small, so they don't want more than a dozen at a time. Fabrice took a dozen and the idiot was responsible for the rest."
"So how did he get lost if he had a local guide?"
"The guide gave them a tour for two hours then dropped them off by the gate. His job was done. Everybody was supposed to have half an hour to do their own thing. Stupid Yoyo forgot what time the bus left, so he told everybody to meet back at the gate at three o'clock. The bus was supposed to leave at two! Not that the idiot would know: he didn't even have a watch. Can you believe that? Who the hell goes that far from the ship without a watch? Idiot. Luckily Fabrice did a head count or we would have left without them. He had to hire guides on the spot to go find the passengers, who had wandered all over the damn place. That's why people aren't given a lot of time to themselves: they wander off. The very expensive guides found everybody and Yoyo was all giggly and shit. He had no idea how much trouble he'd have been in if he lost eight passengers in a foreign country, an hour and a half from the ship."
"At least it all worked out."
"Not for my budget," Cosmina growled, downing another drink. "Those Italians knew exactly what happened and charged an arm and a leg to go find them all. My budget is screwed for the whole goddamn cruise. I just want to get drunk."
Cosmina lent actions to her words. She downed drinks so fast I truly began to worry about her. Worse, her chant no longer was just to get drunk, but 'to get drunk and forget'. I didn't know what that last tag meant, but growled repetition made it ominous. She was obviously burdened by something greater than Yoyo's mishap. After Rick's sudden outburst that day, and now Cosmina's ambiguous self-torture, I was beginning to wonder what kind of dysfunctional family I had been adopted into. But nobody goes to sea unless they're running—either to something or, more likely, from something.
I did the usual tricks to slow Cosmina's drinking: swapping alcohol with water, ordering food, asking the waitress to avoid our table, that sort of thing. None of it worked, and I knew I had a potential mess on my hands. Cosmina got absolutely plowed. She was a big girl and if she wanted to make an ass of herself, fine by me. Yet it was painful to sit next to someone you know and work with and see her going under. How could I in good conscience not involve myself?
What saved me was the arrival of a group of others: Fabrice, Barney, and Faye. They were intent on a quality night of social drinking. That meant gaiety, it meant laughs. They dispersed the swelling gloom. Everybody was in a fine fettle. Everybody but Cosmina, of course. But now outnumbered, she merely stewed over her drinks. She didn't even attempt to condescend to Faye—a truly rare thing, even if unattainable.
Eventually the time came to disperse and we rose from the table. Cosmina wavered dangerously, but Barney placed a sturdy hand on her shoulder for support. He offered his large frame for her to ease into.
"Whoa... how about I escort you back to your cabin?"
"I'm fine!" Cosmina snapped. "I need Brian."
The curt dismissal obviously hurt Barney, but he said nothing. I looked at him in a lame attempt at apologizing for her behavior. He shrugged.
"We need to talk... business," Cosmina continued, eyelids fluttering past bleary eyes. Then she blurted, "Tours!"
"Whatever," Barney replied. He eased the noodle-like Cosmina my way and asked kindly, "You good?"
"She'll be all right," I replied quietly. He watched us depart with mild concern, then went on his way.
Getting Cosmina back to her cabin was a chore. She could barely walk. Her key dropped from useless, alcohol-soaked fingers. When I bent down to pick it up, she all but collapsed onto my back. Very awkwardly we managed to get her into the cabin. She flopped onto the bed with a curious mix of giggle and groan.
"Just lay back and fall asleep," I soothed. "I'll set your alarm."
I did so, then began pulling off her shoes. Before I was even through, her eyes flew wide open and she hollered, "No, not the socks! Not the socks!"
My hands shot back defensively. "I wasn't going to. Just your shoes."
Already succumbing again to the alcohol she had so heavily plied, Cosmina still managed to paw at me. "I just want to feel good," she mumbled pathetically. "I need a man to make me feel good. My socks are on."
I didn't know what she was talking about, but she was drunk enough where it didn't matter. I placed her hands at her sides and kindly said, "You don't need a man. The trick is to make yourself happy first, then find someone to share it with."
Her response was snoring. I tip-toed the hell out of there.