One

My mother forks into her lobster as she watches me mow my filet mignon into slices, “They undercooked it. I can have them take it back,” she insists, her first bite sits plump and upright on her fork, butter and juices running down and through the prongs. The yellow inching toward her palm.

I suck in a deep breath and land my bite between my teeth, staring back and nodding as the first taste passes my tongue. “It’s medium. Like I asked.”

She lets out one impassioned scoff, “If you say so.” She bites down and continues her eye contact. “Yesterday, your dad’s steak was tough. I couldn’t even listen to him eat it.”

“Mine is okay today. But it’s nothing to write home about.” My father qualifies.

“It’s the best bang for our buck with the plan we have. Where else do we get to eat steak every night?”

My father is simple when he answers me, “True.”

“Are you packed? You need to be ready to go tomorrow.” My mother’s cheeks are still round with her meal.

The lie flows through me, “Finished before dinner.”

Two

Black water glimmers and rolls behind the port window as light creeps toward my lips. Plastic slides around in my palm sweat, bouncing into my lap after my cigarette latches onto the flame. Sucking upward, a stale stream of grey tousles the hairs along my nostril.

The man next to me stretches his legs out into a ray, the relief of his popping bones pushing out a groan of glory. He vacuums the foam off the head dripping in his hands. Grey mustache with a thin line of white at the edge. His limp hand wafts his cigarette around his wrinkled forehead.

A thick sphere rolls down his throat

Head held up with sighs of refreshment, “I love alcohol…I would drink gasoline because it has alcohol in it!”

His chin points up at the chandelier in the center of the room. Clear, dripping crystals twinkle above his foamy lips, “I’m practically retired now. All I ever do is go on vacation!” His hearty, lengthy laugh swallows the room until the whip of a cough sends him back into his armchair. Hand rising from his den, he exhales, “Richard.” We clasp our palms together in a firm wobble as I reveal my name.

“I sell antiques in Chinatown—my daughter runs the store now. It’s passive income for me.” He hands me a card from his breast pocket, “Easy work for her. Our customers are very easy to please. Stop by sometime. We have the best couches in the city!”

A crowd of middle-aged women in gaudy, pink party sashes and one cape stumble in as he explains the logistics of early retirement to me. I forget it as quick as I learn it.

“I have couches older than your mom that are softer than this! They think we’ll smoke less if we’re uncomfortable…”

I nod. They must.

“…I’ve smoked in Canadian blizzards. In dirty barns. Nowhere to sit but a bucket while horses shit and pigs screech like bitches in my ear. But still, I could have 50 smokes back to back to back in there. It’s impossible not to relax with this in my hand—”

A scraggly voice yells out from the crowd of women. “Let’s get some music on in here! It’s too quiet, even with me in here!” An ad for weight loss shots softly plays moments after her proclamation. “Can’t even hear some Madonna without being reminded of my place in this world, huh!” Her group’s laughs are soft and scattered.

“Even with that. I feel fine.” Richard concludes.

After two more smokes, the waning and refreshing of his lager, and the bridge of “La Isla Bonita”, he excuses himself with a firm “Well, that’s it for me,” slap on his lap. We shake hands goodbye, bald spot bouncing as he exits the now bumping lounge.

I slink back in my seat and shut my eyes. My lungs tighten from the burning of a Spirit in the corner.

Three

Silver charms clinking beside me command my awareness. “Could I bum one off you?” follows. Frizzy blonde hair and brown glasses meet my fluttering eyes.

“If you like menthol.”

“Love it!”

She cups her hands together below my knees, giggling as her friends watch her grovel. I plop a square into her dish. She stumbles as she stands and her plastic tiara tumbles to the side. “I can count on myself to have a lighter.” She starts her journey back to her side of the room. “Come join us!”

I elbow my spritz on my way up. The splash hits my ankle.

“I hope you have a good alcohol package.”

“I was going to get another drink anyway. That one was getting warm—”

“Perfect! I need another soda…maybe instead of tequila, I’ll do vodka! We’ll mingle with everyone when we get back!” She gestures to her group. Everyone waves back with limp wrists. The bride, slinked back on the couch in her pink cape, flutters her fingers.

I wrap my hand in a thick white napkin and sop up my spill with a sweep. The lounge opens into the bar. It overlooks a pool on the deck. The water is a bright crystal blue.

I flatten my breasts in my lean against the wood bar as the bartender wrestles the cork off the prosecco with tight, white knuckles.

I breathe in my first gulp with the hunger of a shark. The fizz burns my throat. I hack up breath and liquor spit. The woman from the lounge is scraping orange lipstick against her mouth.

“—It’s the color for the wedding.”

“It looks nice.”

“No, it doesn’t. But thank you.”

Shoulders up, I sip my drink. She’s swirling a green bottle of beer in her hands. She wrinkles her lips as she swallows. Then wipes the little bubbles off her thin mouth, turning a corner of her painted lip into a muddy stream across her chin. I’m quiet. The night should be over soon.

She shakes her head. “I’m excited for her, but there’s better colors to use than rust on the happiest day of your life. I tried to get her to choose baby blue,” She folds her arms, “Or periwinkle.” She leans in and scowls through me as if to find her friend’s face below my skin, “But rust.”

My skin is cold, “Is it so horrible?”

Her neck retreats until her head is up straight. “It’s not the color of love!”

I blink. “I think you should smoke that cigarette I gave you.”

Four

There’s a new man smoking in a corner when we revisit the lounge. He’s staring out the port window. Frizzy-haired woman throws her hands up, “The hell did everybody go?”

“It was empty when I came in.” He puffs on his cigar, gaze fixed on the water.

The woman scoffs. She rips her tiara off her head and winces at the comb stuck in her ends. She throws it to the side and it clatters against the trash can. “They must be tired.”

Myself and the man nod in silence.

“I took a week off work for this! And who am I to them? They don’t even say goodnight. Who do they think they are?” She looks down at me, a tuft of her hair sticking up at the back of her head like it’s ready to lurch forward. “The cattiness never ends!”

“I’m sorry.”

She slams her bottom down into an armchair. “I came here to set everything aside. To give them another chance and who do they treat me like? Who am I to them?!” The cigarette I gave her is trickling out crumbs of tobacco in the end as she flicks her thumb to turn it on.

Myself and the man turn to each other. He looks at me as if to ask if I know her. I shake my head.

“This is the first time we’ve all seen each other in years since her ex—my best friend—killed himself. She’s mad because I wasn’t mad at him for doing it. Who am I to say no to what he wants? I think people should have the right! If someone feels so hopeless, that that’s the only choice, they should have the right to do it! She never lived like us! She doesn’t know what it takes for some people to be alive.”

My cheeks are cold. The man pushes more smoke out of his mouth. The woman’s cheeks are hollow as the end of her smoke burns orange. Then her face swells with an exhale.

“I knew that man from when I was an idiot in the military, sexy guy—”

She looks at the ceiling, red eyes, middle finger guiding her glasses up the bridge of her wet nose. “—Real sexy guy. We went through a lot together.”

Her eyes draw down to mine like a wilting flower to the ground, “We were just shooting the shit like we always do. And after some silence, he asked me, ‘How would you do it? How would you kill yourself?’ I had to think about it…pills, maybe.”

Her chin lowers to the ground. Dark, penciled in eyebrows stretch up to her widow’s peak while she shakes her head. “He said gas…and then, what do you know? Months pass…” Voice lowering, “Months pass…he’s covered in chunks of vomit in his garage. Our other friend found him. He was always calling people. But he wasn’t for a bit. We were scared to check for a few days.” She chuckles and nods her head, “Someone checked on him. Eventually.”

“So the bride didn’t see what was up?”

She scoffs through her sniffles. “I won’t get into the logistics of that.”

The man in the corner pipes up. “My cousin did it last year.”

“How?” The teary, shaky woman asks.

I jump a little, “You don’t have to answer that.”

He waves me off, “He hung himself.”

Mouth agape with a shaking head, the blonde woman asks:

“Did he…hang himself slow…or?”

I struggle to shove the shock back into my mouth, the absurdity sends me into a laugh. I breathe in until I can apologize.

He grips the condensed curves of his whiskey glass, piling on slip with his sweat, stares at the carpet: “Lost his job. His car. His girlfriend dumped him. He told her to take their dog. She went to pick him up…walked in…screamed…dog ran away.”

Our necks cracking from nods fill the silent room with percussion. Now I want to ask a weird question. I want to know where the dog is now.

Five

“What have you been through?” The blonde woman points at me. I shrug. “Oh, come on! Every woman has something.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You know what I mean.”

“What do you mean.”

“How many times have you been raped? It’s happened to every woman I know.”

I’m silent. The man chimes in for me. “I don’t believe that. It’s never happened to my wife,” he insists.

The woman’s back straightens up. “You ask her.” She points at him with her bottle in hand.

“Why the hell would I ask her that?”

“Why the hell wouldn’t you?” The woman looks to me to prove her point. “How many times?”

I shake my head until tears fall down my cheeks. I want to say something. I don’t want to have a number. A maid walks in and turns on the light. She starts her vacuum. I rush out behind her. I jump over the cord.

Six

I walk out on the deck. The last of night is bleeding into orange. I’m still stumbling off my spritzes and coughing. I kick off my sandals. The air is brisk and salty. I’m shoving it into my nose. My lips are cracking. I lick down the flakes. My wet soles flop along the deck. I slide my hand along the cold rail.

I’m thinking about the waffles at the buffet. The heat of syrup and crunchy batter hard against my slick tongue like my tensing back against a silk sheet.

I’m thinking of burning coffee onto my tongue to stay awake. It should take fifteen minutes to shove everything into my suitcase. I look at the clock looming over the deck. Three hours until we disembark.