"Go home," I told her. The plum in my throat was still there, and I had to work to keep my voice steady. "Get dressed, and go home. There's nothing I can do for you."

I turned, and walked away from her. At the door, I looked back. She was staring at me, still clutching that towel. I left her standing there, and went to catch the Carnival Queen.

Nine hours later, I squared the deck for the last time that night, and collected two hundred and twenty dollars from the Kreiskes. I took the money into the Cockatoo Lounge, and spent some of it at the bar. While I was there, I followed Sammy's advice and kept my mind open, taking in the flow from the crowded room. Not completely open, I would have been swamped, but open enough to pick up streams of thought. It was, as usual, a sad business. Unless you do what I do, you have no idea what garbage runs through most people's minds.

… off-white with a skin like that makes her look like an oyster…

… Mary had a little lamb…

… right in the middle, I'm ready to come, and she asks me if I made the car payment…

… wedgies, already, she still thinks it's the fifties…

… Jesus, what an ass…

… to school one day it was against the…

… could have sold at 44, but he had to be greedy…

… can't help it if it hurts, can I help it if it hurts?…

… could bury my head in that all night…

… rules. Mary had a little…

… must have been the lobster at dinner…

… three seventy-five a gross less ten percent…

Satisfied, Sammy?

I lowered the volume. The second purser was at the bar, natty in uniform, drinking slowly. That was part of his job: to stand at the bar, show the uniform, answer questions, and drink slowly. I waited until he was ready, and bought him one.

"Cheers," he said, lifting his glass. "Saw you in the card room earlier. Any luck?"

That word again. "Can't complain."

"Absolutely amazing, you card players. Spend all this money on an eight-day cruise, and never leave the card room."

"I'm not as bad as that," I assured him. "I have other interests."

"Should hope so. Lots of things to see and do. You traveling alone?" I nodded. He looked at me owlishly. "Lots of things."

"Female things?"

"That's the word I was searching for."

"I thought you had mostly couples on board."

"Mostly, yes. We get about three-quarters couples and one-quarter singles. That still leaves several hundred bodies groping around in the dark."

"And the married ones?"

"More so than the singles, some of them. I don't know why it is, but you get people out beyond the three-mile limit and all the rules disappear. Especially with the regulars."

"Who are they?"

"The repeaters. On any given trip, at least one-third of the passenger list has been with us before. Some of them come back two or three times a year. There are people on board who know their way around this bucket of bolts better than I do."

I heard the word then. I was still tuned in, and I heard the word that snapped me back to full attention. Calvin. And then another. Hey, there's Calvin.

And then a flood of it. Calvin's here… look, there's Calvin. "Of course, Calvin has a lot to do with it," said the second purser, looking toward the door. "Some of the regulars come back just to see Calvin."

A strident voice called, "Hey, you people, loosen up. Whadda you think this is, a morgue?"

I turned to see Calvin Weiss come into the room. He was short and sandy-haired, with peaked eyebrows and a button nose. He threw up his arms in a greeting to the crowd. "Never saw so many stiffs in my life," he yelled. "Not that I got anything against something stiff, but there's a time and a place for everything."

"That's our Calvin," murmured the second purser, and explained, "the entertainment director. On the first night out he hits all the lounges and loosens up the people."

"Funny man?"

"He thinks so. Amazingly, so do a lot of other people."

Weiss called over to a fat man at a far table. "Hey, Kaplan, you back again? I hope you brought your wife this time."

The fat man protested, "Come on, I always bring my wife."

"If that's your wife, then I just changed my position on the abortion issue." He paused. "And in her case, I'll make it retroactive."

He got his laugh, and began to go from table to table, saying hello to the people he knew, introducing himself to the others. Watching him work the room was like watching a politician at the state fair. He greeted men with a firm handshake, gripping the elbow with his free hand. He greeted the women with the burlesque of a bow. He never stopped talking, and he never stopped moving, working one table with his eyes already on the next. He bowed over a seated woman, stared down the front of her dress, and said something that made her laugh.

"I'll never understand it," said the second purser. "He's rude, he's crude, and he's obvious, but they adore him. Of course, most of them would also like to kill him."

That sat me up straight. "Do what?"

"Kill him." The second purser said it cheerfully. "Actually, I wouldn't mind killing him, myself."

I heard it then in the ear of my mind. I had missed it at first, but now it was like a mental murmur coming from every part of the room, building in volume as Weiss went from table to table. People were thinking: Kill Calvin, kill Calvin, kill Calvin. Not just one, but dozens of them. They were all thinking the same thing. I couldn't believe it. My eyes went around the room, staring at all the innocent faces that were covering murderous minds. Kill Calvin, kill Calvin, oh God, how I'd love to kill Calvin. Their thoughts roared in my mind.

"Actually," said the second purser, "as much as I'd like to kill Calvin, I can't. I'm ineligible. Only a passenger is allowed to kill Calvin."

I held on to the bar for support, and said, "I think you'd better explain."

10

AFTER a while, The Prisoner stopped going to the women who were brought by truck to the camp each month. The women were the scourings of the brothels of Benghazi. They were unwashed and shapeless, long past the freshness of youth, and in any other circumstance the men of the camp would have rejected them scornfully. But these were men who now loved without women, who were enjoined by a fierce discipline from seeking the traditional substitute, and so the day before the monthly visit was marked by a keen anticipation, heroic posturings, and a ribald good humor. On the day of the visit there was an animal roar when the truck came through the gates, a rush to claim the dubious prizes, and later on, after the women had left, the inevitable braggings of who had done what, and how many times.

In the beginning, The Prisoner was no different than the men he led. He made the jokes, coupled with the whores, and if, in the evening, he did not join the crowing of the cocks, he nodded and smiled at each gasconade. But after the first few months, that changed, and he no longer went to the women. He was at the gates each month when the truck arrived, making sure that order was maintained, but once the men had made their choices, he would absent himself from the scene. He offered no explanations for his conduct, he simply stopped, and it was an indication of the esteem in which he was held by his men that his abstinence did not lessen him in their eyes. In a world in which masculinity was judged by the simplest of standards, they did not judge him as they would have judged themselves. He was, to them, beyond such measurements.

On that day each month when the other men went with the women, it was the custom of The Prisoner to retreat to the privacy of the squad-room tent, and while the rest of the camp was busily rutting, he would play his music on the phonograph. No Verdi or Puccini at those times, no opera at all, but music from a small collection of tapes that he kept at the bottom of the pile. "Rhinestone Cowboy" and "Laughter in the Rain," Elton John singing "Philadelphia Freedom," "San Antonio Stroll" with Tanya Tucker. Yeah, and "Dust and Ice." Songs of a certain part of his life, a certain year, and that one day each month was the only time when he allowed himself the luxury of thinking about it. Linda Rondstadt singing "You're No Good," and with the volume turned down low he could close his eyes and let himself drift away back to those days when the four of them would lie around for hours in the Poodle's rooms playing the music and drinking herbal tea.