The Conscience of the C.O.D.

By James Terminiello

We've all had bad days, but nothing compares to Trip Torrent's. PR director of the luxury cruise ship Climax of Dreams, he awakens to the discovery that the ship's owners have donated it to house 4,000 squabbl

• Language: English
• Publisher: Koehler Books
• Release date: Jun 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798888243503

James Terminiello

To make money, James Terminiello spent forty-plus years in marketing, public relations, and communications. To salve his soul in a family wracked by Alzheimer's, autism, and dementia, he has authored six books and contributed to a compilation of film reviews, Seen That, Now What. He has also written more than 150 columns for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Courier Post, and other publications, and blogs on subjects ranging from the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris to Victorian Christmases. He has been married to Tara for thirty-seven years. His son, Alex, suffers from autism, and he has a daughter, Gillian.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Just as Trip Torrent’s morning shaving foam reached optimum whisker-withering temperature, on popped his favorite newsfeed brimming with tidbits to further darken the gloom of his already depressing dawn.

On this day, the Earth was in a fidgety mood. Whole populations were shifting, each for their own reasons. Some were motivated by the usual time-honored succotash—war, famine, overheated financial fiddling, religious nitpickery. Other factors emanated from the outer stratosphere of reason. It was a sort of planetwide, bubbling discontent with human society as a whole, coupled with minimal, cuckoo, or ersatz notions about ways to change things for something resembling the better. The effect was so widespread that some speculated a mischievous alien prankster had sprinkled itching powder over the collective necks of the global population. Pundits blamed social media, Hollywood, and diet soda.

Whatever the cause, the various streams of discontented humanity had one thing in common: The place to be was that fat, evil, conniving, racist, corrupt, bloated, money-grubbing standard-bearer of all of mankind’s vices and ills, the United States.

Since those running things in the federal government had long ago caved into the alluring financial danglings of the various powerbrokers who demanded fresh meat for their nefarious purposes, the gates were wide open. The border defenders were almost always outmaneuvered, outfoxed, or outmanaged by those seeking to inject new exploitable fodder into the population’s ranks.

Fortunately for his conscience, Torrent had long ago allowed his adolescent political idealism to wilt on his overtaxed mental vine. All this news passed over him as if he had splashed some deity-prescribed blood on his stoney doorstep.

He was holding out for the business news report and the latest Kwang Blast. Kwang, or the Mysterious Mr. Kwang, or, as his employees knew him, The Hot Breath of Oriental Death, wielded the controlling hand of KwangX. This multitentacled corporate concoction was a Chinese-Korean-Kuwaiti-Australian conglomerate that owned the Climax of Dreams, a massive cruise ship for which Torrent was the publicity director  . . .  for the moment.

The Climax of Dreams, or the C.O.D. as the crew called her, was a legend of her own making. Her decks had witnessed movie premieres, royal weddings (the minor ones from countries that nobody even knew still had royalty), summit conferences, peace negotiations, war declarations (often on the same voyage), celebrity suicides, and product launches.

To this day, Torrent remained embarrassed that for a few forgettable weeks he was contractually obligated to wear men’s slit-down-the-side slacks inflicted on the universe by the multisexual fashion designer Hercule Brobding. When Brobding realized his creation would not leach beyond the embrace of the gay male market, he launched himself off the C.O.D.’s lido deck. The terminal stunt worked, and slitslacks enjoyed a brief vogue until winter set in and most men rejected frozen thighs. It is not known if Brobding heard of this posthumous sartorial success in his chosen afterlife.

Torrent sensed that something was bubbling in the murky and impenetrable mind of Mr. Kwang. The owner seemed to have lost interest in the C.O.D.. He cut budgets, canceled events, and reduced advertising to a bare minimum. Kwang even jettisoned that country and western singer Martine Matty McCoy, whose C.O.D. Cooing brought in big bucks from the American South. Meet me at my Climax! was one of Torrent’s favorite lyrics from her many audio pitches.

As the last bristle fell to Torrent’s trusty razor, the newsdisher mentioned that word on the street was that Mr. Kwang was thinking seriously about his position in shipping and cruising circles. The report, while not totally oracular and clearly lacking substance, was quite accurate in its timid, noncommittal, information-parched sort of way.

Torrent disagreed.

Thanks gobs, infonit! he blasted at his bathroom mirror. Big-time investigative reporting! A dronefly on the wall could have told me more!

Torrent eyed the business end of his razor for a fleeting moment, shrugged, and then resolved to send out job hunting feelers at lunchtime. PR directors are usually among the first to get flipped out the door when change is on the wing. The electronic tealeaves were telling him that his job, and maybe even the old C.O.D. herself, were headed for drydock.

A quick subway ride got him to his new Manhattan office, a ratty affair on Tenth Avenue and another sign that Kwang’s nautical interests were wavering. Maritza, the office manager of a now skeleton crew, gave him the halt sign before he even took off his coat.

Who owns us today? quipped Torrent, figuring to add a bit of jaunty spice to the already bleak office atmosphere.

Don’t seet daun, chiquita, said the smiling Latina. You, my friend, are going to Bayonne.

No man goes willingly to Bayonne, was his only possible reply. He mused that he might have just coined an axiom, but he chose to let it fly off, undocumented, into the indifferent ether.

Bayonne, New Jersey, a once dilapidated old town, had the good fortune to be situated on a peninsula between Newark Bay to the west, Kill Van Kull to the south, and New York Bay to the east. It was ideal and cheaper to dock cruise ships there, to the detriment of New York City and the delight of all succeeding Bayonne mayors. And, at that moment, the C.O.D. was docked there, waiting for her next cruise.

Big announcement coming. Better get there râpido, sweetie, added Maritza.

And me being the PR guy, do I get a molecule of advance warning about any of this? He hated being so logical this early in the morning, but there it was.

And who are you working for amigo? She now had her hands on her knowing and ample hips. Kwang only sends out a press release to you after he takes a piss on your back!

It was an unsavory analysis, but it had the authority of truth. Torrent was off to Bayonne prepared to double-talk his way, with ringing authority, through whatever was going to happen. That was, after all, his job. For the moment.

CHAPTER 2

Waiting for his ride from midtown Manhattan to Bayonne—a ninety-minute to two-hour trip despite being only twenty miles away—was made all the more difficult by the rampaging panhandling happening all over the city. New York had indeed become the Crossroads of the World. It was now a common street game to guess the accent of the specific cash grabber accosting you. The pickings were many and varied. Chileans, Somalians, and Sierra Leonians mixed it up with Uzbeks, North Koreans, and Syrians. The occasional Montenegrin and Laplander tapped Torrent too. The gates were wide open, and the many diverse streams just didn’t stop. Why should they when the goods were there for the taking?

New York Mayor Josephus4, a transgender, paraplegic, reformed African Jew from Uruguay, had spoken at the United Nations about funding for housing for the never-ending immigrant hordes. His federal funds had recently dried up. He was in a major pickle with elections only a few months off. His party, the Democratic-Socialist-Neo-Nonsexualist Vegans, was too busy directing propaganda funds for a possible Senate bid by a left-handed albino leper engaged to an otter. Fresh meat was, after all, fresh meat.

Torrent’s driver got him Jersey side with only a few scratches from the more aggressive money-reachers, and he wondered what he was going to be up to when he reached the C.O.D.. His mobile device was annoyingly silent. He was certain Maritza would text him if she had any news, particularly if it was bad. She relished delivering bad news. He liked that in a woman.

At dockside, all seemed normal. Conveyors were pouring stores and food into the ship, which was laying in for a soon-to-be fourteen-day, multi-island Caribbean excursion. A couple of limos were parked near the main gangway, so some politicos were already there. He spied lights being set up on the deck outside the bridge.

Maybe they are rigging for a commercial. That could be positive. He speculated and then kicked his optimistic side out of metaphorical bed.

Then he saw the ship’s resident comedian, Sonnie Chance Arain, at the top of the gangway.

Yo, Trips! What gives? yelled Arain.

Torrent scurried up to meet the portly jokester, who was far from jolly.

Hey, Sunshine. Gimme a quick one, joshed Torrent.

The comedian hesitated. Uh, yeah. A rabbi wearing war paint, a priest with two left hands, and an Episcopal bishop with a rabbit on his head walked into a bar—

And the bartender says, ‘What’s this? Some kind of a joke?’

You heard it before?

My grandfather heard it before, snarked Torrent.

Suppose I have the rabbit say, ‘I’m not the punchline?’

No! DOA! said Torrent.

Sorry, Trips. Not in the mood. You should see the PC comedy guidelines I’m stuck with these days. I can’t even pick on a Frenchman anymore! Arain took a deep depressed breath. You coulda told me, he said this with eyes down and his right shoe picking at the deck.

Told you what?

I’m out.

Out?

Yeah, out. Like the guy who woke up naked next to another guy.

The guy with the rabbit on his head? said Torrent, going for extreme absurdity.

What? No! This ain’t funny, Trips. They told me to pack.

Torrent held back his irritation. Sonnie, I don’t know what’s going on. I’m here to find out, and I’ll let you know. He had absolutely nothing to back that up. He was merely exercising his confidence in the face of ignorance routine. Meantime, don’t pack.

Sure?

As sure as anything in this world was his fully noncommittal and highly accurate response. Yeah, he was ready for anything.

Okay.

Torrent added a further word of encouragement. Maybe you can do something with a man with a rabbit on his head waking up next to another guy with a rabbit on his head. Has potential.

You mean, have him say, ‘Are you one too?’ Nah! My grandfather told me that one!

Then dig up some Martian jokes. That could be safe for the time being, advised Torrent as he headed for the bridge with too many things on his mind that did not include joke rabbits and diversity, equity, and inclusion-corrected Martian encounters.

Just outside the bridge where the camera crews were setting up, he pulled aside Captain Dacosta, master of the C.O.D. and the KwangX Line’s first and only Jamaican officer. Dacosta came from a line stretching back well into the dark clutches of the slave days of mariners who kept to the sea to elude certain coercive employers. With blue seawater gushing through his veins, he had risen to the top out of hardcore seamanship and was now cruising into retirement as the all-knowing, barnacle-encrusted, tale-telling captain of a party boat. He had that artificial permanent welcoming smile that clicked so well with passengers but became annoying to those he worked with every day. He knew it. He didn’t care. He was the captain.

Don’t know how ya gonna spin me laying off most of da crew, said Dacosta while letting out a wave of smoke from some hand-rolled object that did not even hint at burning tobacco.

How can she sail? asked Torrent, instantly damning himself for being logical once again.

Dacosta sighed the sigh of a man squinting into the headlights of a career-ending express train whistling in his direction. My poor C.O.D. ain’t gonna see da hinder of Bayonne for a long time, PR boy. Maybe we’ll roll over ta Manhattan, but dat is it, puffed the captain, who handed Torrent a private printout from the company’s internal channel. It read:

The KwangX Line is proud to do its small part in alleviating the immigrant crisis that has befallen the great City of New York.

We have placed our prized flagship, Climax of Dreams, at the disposal of Mayor Josephus4 to house as many as four thousand new welcomes who have placed their dreams and hopes in our hands.

May all prosper who seek refuge within her.

Torrent read the printout three times to make sure he hadn’t fallen into a bad waking dream or missed a well-placed escape clause.

They’ll wreck her! he blurted.

Dat’s sure! concurred Dacosta as he popped open his phone to further update his own resume. Perhaps Uncle Jamba had a tourist boat captaincy open back in the old country. He gave over to happy thoughts of tipsy and leggy women with free-flowing money.

They’ll loot her six ways from yesterday! said Torrent, running his hands through his hair and coming up with more than a few strands, some gray.

In da satchel! Dacosta snapped back to unpleasant reality.

There won’t be enough left to sink her for an artificial reef!

My poor C.O.D.. She won’t even sleep wid da fishes, mused Dacosta with an odd smirk.

Torrent eyed Dacosta suspiciously. You’re taking this with annoying equanimity.

"Leesen, mon. When you grow up under my tin roof, you come to recognize when da man has made his move and da jig is up. Well, my PR friend, your jig and mine are boat up.