“I respect authority,” I told him. “It’s being ordered around I don’t like.”
“I find American humor quite feeble.” Click-click.
We were off to a fine start. Damon and Pythias in reverse! It was brotherly hate all the way.
“I’d like to go over the dossiers of the passengers and crew,” I remembered.
“I will so inform Chief Purser Yenta.” Click-click.
“I’d also like to meet the ship’s doctor and look over the medical records.”
Captain Maldemerde nodded cold agreement. Click- click.
“That’s all I can think of at the moment.”
“Then you are dismissed.” Click-click.
Call it a draw. I left the Captain’s stateroom. I went back down the deck the way I’d come, mulling over the hostile meeting in my mind.
As I approached Cabin B-47, I saw that the porthole was once again open. The lights were on in the stateroom. I remembered the Breast. The Derriere! Eighty-two years old? Unbelievable! I had to check it out.
I stuck my head through the open porthole, into the cabin. Across from it, at an angle, the door to a luxurious bathroom was wide open. Water was running in the shower-stall. The door to the shower was steamily transparent. I could hazily make out the figure behind it.
Pushing my shoulders through the porthole, I stretched my neck for a better view. The water in the shower was turned offf. The shower door opened. A hand reached out and groped on the rack beside the shower stall for a towel. It was a long stretch for the arm attached to the hand. So long that it caused a breast to bounce into view.
I’d have known it anywhere. It was the Breast -- or possibly its mate. It retreated in advance of the towel vanishing inside the stall.
I wedged my shoulders still more solidly into the porthole and craned my neck even further. I figured she’d be stepping out of the stall in a minute, and I wanted to be sure I finally saw her face. Intimate as we’d been, I didn’t even care particularly that she’d catch me spying on her.
Sure enough, the shower door opened again. A voluptuous body which included the Breast and its mate emerged. But two hands and a towel, vigorously drying the head, blocked the face. Just as the towel was lowered, the figure turned around. I nodded hello to my old friend, the Derriere. A moment later an easy back-kick shut the door to the bathroom and my view was closed off completely. I cursed to myself and decided to wait for it to open again. She couldn’t stay in there all night!
“Do octogenarian ladies have a particular attraction for you, Mr. Victor?” Chief Purser Yenta’s voice came from the deck behind me.
“Old wines are best.”
“Still, my duty is to protect Miss Amanda Lowell-Cabot’s privacy, as flattering as your attentions may be to her. So I hope you will forgive me if I request that you withdraw your head from the porthole to her cabin.”
“Oh, all right.” I gave up. I wriggled backwards to free my shoulders. No soap! They were wedged so firmly they wouldn’t budge. “I seem to be stuck,” I told Yenta.
“Come come, Mr. Victor. You really must remove your head from Miss Lowell-Cabot’s stateroom.”
“I can’t, I tell you. I’m stuck!”
“I find it difficult to believe that a man with your experience as a voyeur is unable to extricate himself from a position which must surely be common to his deviant behavior.”
“It’s not common! I’ve never been wedged in a porthole before!”
“But surely there must be parallels in your experience with windows?”
“No. Windows are much larger.”
“Transoms, perhaps?”
“Dammit! No!” I struggled in vain to free myself.
“What’s going on here, Yenta?” came a new voice from behind me.
“This gentleman is stuck in the porthole, Doctor,” Chief Purser Yenta explained.
“I can see that for myself. How, Chief Yenta, did this gentleman become stuck in the porthole?”
“I was bending over to tie my shoelace and I slipped,” I told the unseen newcomer through clenched teeth.
“Really? What an amazing mishap!”
“Mr. Victor, may I introduce Lieutenant Quotabusta, the ship’s doctor?” Yenta was ever one to remember the amenities.
“Glad to meet you,” Dr. Quotabusta said.
“Hi.” I waved my foot behind me to acknowledge the introduction.
“OOF!” Dr. Quotabusta replied.
“You kicked Dr. Quotabusta in the groin.” Yenta clucked disapprovingly.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” There was agony in the doctor’s voice. “Yenta, what the hell are you scribbling there?” he asked.
“I’m just updating Mr. Victor’s dossier,” Yenta replied. “ ‘. . . sexual hostility toward black men . . .’ Just a notation.”
“That’s not true!” I protested.
“Now, Mr. Victor. Please don’t be concerned. It’s not a judgmental comment. I’m just fleshing out your personality picture so I can help make the cruise more enjoyable for you.”
“But I don’t have any sex hostility toward black men!”
“Well, what the hell would you call it?” Dr. Quotabusta grumbled. “Kicking me in the crotch before we’ve even met face-to-face?”
“It was an accident!”
“That’s just another name for a Freudian slip,” the doctor told me. “They’re always sex-derived. And in my experience, sexual fear, manifested by aggression, is universally focused on black men by white men.”
“But I didn’t even know you were a black man!”
“Perhaps you can block out my racial identity, but the days of collaboration by black men in that particular crime are over!”
“Kick me back,” I suggested, frustrated.
“ ‘Masochist.’ ” Yenta made another note.
“Dammit!” I was still straining to extricate myself.
“Allow me.” Dr. Quotabusta’s hands slid up under my armpit. He braced his knee against the middle of my back and twisted. My vertebrae crackled like frying bacon. My shoulders slid out of the porthole as easily as if they’d been greased.
“How did you do that?” I exclaimed, turning to face Dr. Quotabusta for the first time.
“In the part of Rhodesia I come from, blacks are not permitted to practice medicine,” he explained. “So I set myself up as a chiropractor. Before that,” he grinned, “I practiced as a witch doctor. The white governor, whose drunken brother was the only doctor in the village, didn’t mind that so much. But I don’t think John Hopkins, which is where I took my degree, would have approved.”
“Did you get me out as a witch doctor, or as a chiropractor?” I wondered.
“As a physician,” he assured me. “Which doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the highest of the three callings.
I found myself liking this tall black man with his Afro hair style and colorful dashiki. “I guess I’m lucky you came along,” I told him.
“I was coming from the Captain’s cabin. He called me down there to tell me to cooperate with you, Mr. Victor. I understand you want to take a look at the passengers’ medical records.”
“Tomorrow will do.”
“Not tomorrow, Mr. Victor,” Chief Purser Yenta said firmly. “Tomorrow is the day the passengers board. Only a few have boarded already. We sail at midnight tomorrow night. From midmorning to midnight will be the most hectic time of the voyage. That’s when the bon voyage parties take place.”