Stories from The Delux

By Milt Abel

Join The Delux for a week at sea, the only cruise ship registered to the landlocked country of Luxembourg. Follow eighteen humorous and touching stories aboard this former Soviet hospital ship refurbished in a meteorological motif for cruising; with The Low Pressure Cafe, The Pre-shower Gym, The Aurora Borealis Showroom, its curtains made of "fabric that changes color when it moves." The Sunset Dining Room with seating at six and eight-thirty every night, and all the decks named after cloud formations; The Nimbus, The Cumulus, etc. So you can, as the brochures say, "Come float among the clouds on The Delux."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Milt Abel
• Release date: Jun 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452477510

Milt Abel

A stand-up comedian traveling the world trapped in my immediate surroundings

Book preview

Stories from

THE DELUX

Milt Abel

Stories from

The Delux

Copyright 2011 Milt Abel

Smashwords edition

Bon Voyage

A Jar of Jelly

The Delux

Captain Hugh

The Fire Drill

Covering your Seat

Eno a Busboy

A Pang of Pity

At Sea or The Lair of Idleness

Rumrunners and Pirates

Bingo Blood

Something or other is in the Details

The Isle of Floary

Show Business for Everyone

A Ghost at Dinnertime

The Private Island

Unholy Holiday

Go Home

Bon Voyage

Standing in line to check his and his wife’s luggage Owen Knight turned to see a father with his seven year-old boy standing immediately behind him. Both were carrying sleeping bags and wore Boy Scout shirts and handkerchiefs but only the boy was blotched with calamine lotion. A scene near a campfire immediately came to mind for Owen, What's this, Daddy? Put that down, son. Let's go wash your hands, that exchange, plus dreams of a plant identification merit badge receding into the misty future.

It was the boy's right hand that held most of Owen's attention. Ground Zero. It was completely covered with the crusting lotion save for a few islands of skin, and at every edge where the lotion ended bubbly red skin peeked from underneath. The hand, for that matter any affected skin, was a weapon of potential extreme discomfort for Owen and the kid was gesturing and waving his arms about wildly, a drunk with a loaded gun. Owen was highly contagious to poison oak, ivy and sumac, and the slightest brush would necessitate a change of clothes or worse, and he was about to hand over all his changes of clothing to a complete stranger at the ticket counter. If the kid just wasn't so animated. He exaggerated every mood, melodramatically, like a TV sit-com actor; slapping his palms to his cheeks for exclamation, scratching his chin in confusion, circling his hand before pointing with a finger; and while it may have been cute to adults around him to see their gestures characterized by someone so young, they now carried some consequence and the dollops of lotion drying on his face were there to prove it.

It was a red-eye flight. An overnighter that left Seattle at 1:20 in the morning, an hour Owen had not seen since Henry Fisk's bachelor party a couple of years ago. It was Henry's third marriage in as many years and to hide their skepticism, the guys, all of them married themselves, hung around until well after one in the morning, well after the point of liveliness. They wanted to say to Henry by their endurance, as they rewound the videos, separated the aluminum and glass beer containers, and picked popcorn out of the shag rug, 'See Henry, we're in this for the long haul, maybe you should be too.'

You'd think at 12:40 in the morning no one would be at the airport and you could stroll right up to the agent at the ticket counter, smile that, 'Well, here I am, the reason you're open so late,' smile and hand her your ticket. That's what Owen thought, and apparently the other fifty people in line did too. He was in the back half of the line and everyone was feeling pressed. He could see the board behind the ticketing agents and this was the last flight of the night so everyone here was meaning to get on his plane and it was beginning to look like either you or your luggage made it on, but not both. A palpable sense of fear was beginning to compress the line, those toward the rear began to compress the line by closing the distance between themselves and the person immediately ahead. Immediately behind Owen was the histrionic seven year-old with the ability to merely touch you and bring days of irritation. Owen stepped closer to the woman in front of him. She didn't move, just turned quarter profile to show she noticed, to hint at her displeasure. Owen wanted to explain himself, point behind him and in a mouthy whisper and report, 'Poison oak.' But why start a panic? The situation was desperate enough as it was. At least his wife would have plenty of time to find him for her seat assignment.

You check the luggage, I'll park the car. Susan had said it like she was claiming territory for Spain, decidedly and with a faint inflection of, 'It would serve no good purpose to contest this.' Owen knew that inflection and got out of the car. Ever since they put cable into the house Susan had embarked on a path of self-improvement, being more decisive, delegating responsibility, and taking on responsibilities she normally wouldn't have, like parking the car.

B fourteen. Susan said it aloud as she stood next to the car and read off the parking section sign. The car is parked in B fourteen. With her hands full she elbowed the car door closed and thought it might be best to write this down, it would be eight days before she was back here again, she might forget. But her hands were full and here was a solitary chance to exercise some reliance on her faculties. She'd remember it, she wouldn't forget. Then a wave of panic breached her fortitude, did she forget the keys in the car? They were in her hand, she clutched them tighter and began drifting into other worries of forgetfulness. Did she forget anything in the car? Did she turn off the lights at home? The stove? The newspaper? Lock the side door? When it occurred to her she had asked all these questions just thirty minutes earlier as they were pulling out of the driveway she wondered, how many times am I going to ask myself? She couldn’t answer, but she knew it would definitely stop by the time they got back.

Owen had noticed the change in his wife started shortly after they had cable installed several months previous. They got cable because they had replaced their old VCR with one that was much easier to program, to record things they would never get around to watching anyway. It's not easy to lose the mind set that once a show has aired, and you didn't see it, you missed it, it didn't matter that you had it on tape. And nothing on broadcast television was motivating them enough to make pre-arrangements with the VCR. Maybe if they got cable. All those channels at all hours being reined into a tape that they could watch at their convenience. But all the new channels were as disappointing as the rest, just more of the same, often worse. Owen declined the premium channels because it was an unnecessary expense, all those movies would be at the video store in a couple of months and that, coincidentally was how long the few shows they did tape sat unwatched, a couple of months, until those were taped over by shows they were absolutely going to watch this time, in the next day or so...

But Owen had tagged the change in Susan coinciding with the introduction of cable into the house. She had become a little more independent, decisive -bossy is what it might appear to the outside observer, thought Owen, and he found himself secretly pouring over the daytime listings in the TV Guide for the disruptive influence. Out in the garage, with the hood up on the RV, leaning into the engine, he'd flip through the listings. Oprah? No, that had always been around. Here was something on cable, Women Aloud. That sounded contentious. How about this one, Necessary Evils. That could be a militant feminists' show about men. He'd have to tape it while he was away at work.

It was during that thought when Randy Gault, Owen's next door neighbor, came into the garage to borrow the mower again. What's the matter Owen? The Camper not getting channel five?

Owen slapped the TV Guide shut and thought wildly for an excuse.

No, ...uh, the antenna's not working. And Owen grabbed it with such an embarrassed energy he broke it off right there.

Cable television had set Susan Knight on a course of growth and decisiveness for the same reason it had disappointed her husband; its arrival had brought only more of the same, thirty more channels of the same, nothing was really different, and for her there was a lesson to be learned in that. If you didn't ask for something really different, really different, you were just going to get more of the same. So she began to ask for things she normally didn't.

Not that she was unhappy, even dissatisfied would be too strong of a word if you asked her. She loved her husband, her children, and herself for that matter; but she wanted more adventure in her life, wanted Owen to be more attentive, wanted a bigger house. So she began to ask for those things. But it did little good. Owen was so set in his ways, and still only thirty-eight years old. So she cranked it up a notch and moved from asking to deciding. She decided they were going on a cruise. They were going to have an adventure. Leave the kids with mother and just the two of them sailing around the Caribbean. She was going to navigate them into new waters. Shake things up a bit.

At the airport Owen was standing perfectly still when she spotted him in the check-in line. Everyone else in line was fidgeting about, leaning left or right, trying to see those ahead. But Owen stood perfectly still, not relaxed, motionless. He looked frightened, and with his luggage beside him he looked as if he was on safari somewhere, had walked unawares into a pride of lions and to keep from becoming dinner was standing perfectly still. The real threat for Owen was the boy behind him. The seven year-old had launched into a vivid retelling of an encounter with a lunch time bully and was practicing his semaphore in the telling. When a hand shot out past Owen, ahead of him in line, Owen took another step closer to the woman in front. She turned coldly and asked, Do you want to climb on my back? Owen could think of nothing else to say other than coming right to the point. No.

With no noticeable contact with the boy, Owen and Susan got their luggage checked with time to spare. The ticketing agent had been nonchalant, It's like this every Saturday night. When they passed through the metal detector Susan thought briefly about her underwire bra. She hadn't flown more than half a dozen times in her life but she was going to do her best to appear the veteran. She read the gate number to herself as they made their way down the concourse, trying to remember the particulars. They were in seats twenty-three E and F, their flight number was three-eighteen and it left from gate D-nineteen at one-twenty, they were just now walking past gate D-ten. Weren't they flying in a DC ten? Or was it a DC eight? Before they reached gate D-eleven Owen turned to her and asked her where she had parked the car.

It was a horrible time to ask. She had D's and F's and C's floating near eighteens and eights and tens, and the parking space of B fourteen just got lost in the soup. She couldn't remember.

Right underneath a light near the elevator, she said. It's safe.

Good. Said Owen, and considered adding, 'We don't need another punk breaking off another antenna,' but thought better of it.

They took their seats, he in E, she in F, Owen gave her the window seat because he had seen it all before, besides there wasn't much to see at night anyway, just the occasional city. At least she'd have something to look at besides the inside of the plane. They watched a video about how to buckle their seat belts and listened to the carefully chosen expression; In the unlikely event of a sudden loss in cabin pressure... 'Unlikely' was a good choice of words, Owen thought, something like; It's not going to happen, but if it did... would have sounded too defensive and cause a stirring of suspicion.

Well. Better make yourself comfortable. It's going to be a long flight. Owen said it with a grunt as he twisted still deeper into his seat. Owen liked playing the role of the world-wizened paternal captain of the ship, even if he only had one crew member, his wife. He patted her forearm, Don't worry. Once we're in the air we've got it made. Ninety-percent of all airline accidents take place during take-offs and landings. He put that last bit in there to worry her some, make her feel needy, even lucky, to have Captain Courageous sitting right next to her.

Susan was clutching the armrest out of fear; not fear of flight, but fear of forgetting something more besides where she left the car. And when the engines began to roar and shove the airplane down the runway her fears began to accelerate too. There was no going back now. When you left home with a trip in the car and forgot something you could always turn around, provided you were willing to recover the distance. You had some choice. But that was being taken away from her here. It would be hopeless to suddenly remember something you forgot, unbuckle your seat belt, and tell the flight attendant, Excuse me I forgot something. Could you tell the pilot to pull over? The muffled scream of the engines was telling her this was not a car trip at all. And seeing the gray tarmac speed by in a blur made her think how much faster these things go than cars. She would in no way be able to jump from the plane and roll into the oncoming tarmac. No, this was it. She had to let go of all her earthbound concerns. And the plane lifted off the ground and Susan sucked in a breath and they were in the air and she exhaled and let herself be borne. A child in the bosom of adventure carried into the night.

By three a.m. she was asleep and Owen had finished the first chapter of the book she had surprised him with as a gift when the fasten seat belt sign went off. It was a horror novel about a cruise ship, Unholy Holiday.

What's this? He had asked.

It's a bon voyage gift. She said.

When have I ever read horror novels?

I thought you would like it. It's a surprise. I didn't think you were into that type of thing either but then I ran across that tape of Necessary Evils the other day and I thought I might indulge you a bit.

Oh. Okay. Yeah. Thanks.

Most everyone was asleep now. Just two overhead light were on, Owen's and one other. He leaned across Susan and looked out the window. Below, on the black earth a city twinkled with all its lights. It was beautiful, like something out of a Spielberg movie. And he thought of all those lights below, how each of them had a story. What were their homes like? Were they like my home when I was a child? He thought of something from his childhood. He remembered how he would stand at night in his fenceless backyard and look up to the distant rumble of a jetliner passing over and see its flashing lights heading across the stars. He would wonder then, who was in that plane? Where were they going? That must be exciting. And it was. Was someone down there now? Looking up at this plane? Owen's plane? Not likely, not at this hour. And in a rare moment of expanse he wondered if those night travelers so many years ago had wondered back at him. Not likely. Some things you had to be down to earth about.

He leaned back in his seat making sure not to wake Susan. She slept there on the edge of his light with her mouth slightly open and still clutching their tickets. He looked at her for a long time. He didn't get to see her like this very often, she seemed to sleep less than he did so he took a long look. He loved her. He loved being in love with her. What a simple pleasure to sit so