A Ship Story

The man was undeniably rotund. He filled the doorway. At first only his belly was visible but then the rest of him came into view as he entered the red room. In addition to being rotund he was, by some metrics, an undeniably evil man. Like all evil men he was named Cedric and he took great pleasure in this for some reason, despite being quite dumb.

“Hello Cedric.”

“Hello Martha,” he responded curtly from behind his great, grey, bushy moustache. There was an equally rotund woman reclining suggestively on a red, velvet day-bed.

“I take it you’ve already glutted yourself on the buffet.” She glared at him. “You smell like shrimp.” she spat. “I’ve been sitting here all dolled up ready to go play shuffleboard and here you come smelling like shrimp and being generally just...just awful. Is that...cocktail sauce on your lower lip? I can’t hardly…” Her bottom lip quivered with indignation as she waited for him to notice that she was going to cry.

Cedric shifted nervously. His bulging eyes scanned the room. They scanned the floor. Lingerie. Suitcases. Red. Velvet. He discretely licked the cocktail sauce off of his lip. He scanned the porthole of the cabin that looked out to the ocean. The ocean was big and round. He looked down at himself. He liked his shoes. He liked his Hawaiian shirt. He did unfortunately smell like shrimp he admitted to himself, but it made him feel, in the best possible way, like a big, wet, salty oyster sitting coyly on a warm kitchen plate.

“Martha dear…”

“Yes Cedric.” she spat again.

“There is...still time to go play shuffleboard. You know that right? The Third Deck doesn’t close until midnight. They’ll start serving happy hour margaritas in about twenty minutes from now.”

“I hate you.”

He paused. “I know. But...let’s go have a look around. Do you remember how delightful you thought those little tiki lights were? Darling please…”

“Well...I guess I will try and recover myself. I won’t like it though…”

“Okay. But we need to leave soon. There’s always such a godawful line to get in.”

The Tiki Bar on the Third Deck was a sight to behold. A hundred or more festively dressed cruise-goers milled about guffawing, cackling, snickering, and drinking salty, salty margaritas. Steel drum music played loudly. Franklin, the most intellectually advanced chimpanzee in the entire world, wandered through the crowd carrying a tray of margaritas. He was smoking what looked at first to be a short, white, cigar, but upon closer inspection proved to be four cigarettes bound together with scotch tape. In a gruff and flat monotone he half-heartedly advertised his goods, which was his duty. “Margarita. Margarita here. Get your margarita. Hello there ma’am. You look like you could use some margarita. I love this margarita, best of the season I think. This kind margarita comes from Spain. Yes, mhm, probably 1995 vintage. Strong citrus and salt notes. ‘95 was a good year.” And so on. The whole time, the PCP he had smoked earlier was beginning to gain more and more momentum in his tortured brain.

Meanwhile, Cedric and Martha were having the absolute time of their lives. They were dancing like they never had before. The stars were out. The moon was bright. The sea breeze was fresh and exhilarating. They wandered off to a quiet corner with a view of the dark waters receding behind the ship. Martha threw herself drunkenly into Cedric’s arms.

“Oh my. Cedric.” She caught her breath between fits of laughter.

“What is it dear?” he stroked his moustache dashingly, his face warm and heavy from several strong margaritas. She paused for a few moments.

“Why are the stars up there? I mean I know it’s kind of a silly question, but sometimes it all feels like a dream. It doesn’t feel real,” she giggled.

“Darling what on earth are you talking about?”

“Sometimes I just feel like if I shut my eyes and thought about it really hard I would wake up as someone else with a whole different life...of course I would miss you darling...but…” she sighed and smiled and looked up at the moon again. “To tell you the truth I’ve really hated you for the longest time, but I think this cruise was just the greatest thing we could’ve done for ourselves. We don’t have to worry about the kids and everything and it’s just...so great. I feel like I did when I first met you. I know I was kind of mad at you earlier today but I’m sorry darling. I feel so good now. And the moon and the stars...why are they up there and why are we down here. And why am I me and why are you you, Cedric? I mean, am I wrong to be asking these kinds of questions?”

“Well darling, I won’t deny that it is indeed quite strange. I often thought about the same things as a boy but I realized it got me nowhere and then my head would start to hurt. And I would call myself a fairly intelligent man, but even for those real geniuses – philosophers and physicists and the like – I think they don’t even really like truly thinking about those things because it probably gives them a headache too. I wouldn’t trouble yourself too much.” He smiled handsomely and leaned in to kiss the sweating and smiling Martha all rumpled in her evening gown against the balcony.

At that very moment Franklin, the most intellectually advanced chimpanzee in the entire world, burst out from inside a nearby trash can with a high-capacity, semi-automatic pistol in each hand and four cigarettes in his mouth. His eyes were glazed over and looking off into the distance somewhere far beyond the moon, the stars, Martha, Cedric, and his own tortured sanity. He unloaded on Martha and Cedric in a wild frenzy that lasted until every last bullet had been expelled from the magazines. He breathed heavily and turned round to the balcony and shouted out to the rotund ocean--to the whole rotund world sitting coyly like a warm oyster in infinite space.

“Peace be upon ye!” he yelled ferociously at the top of his lungs. He jumped into the ocean.