Shy made like he was placing the money in her hand, but the second her manicured fingers started curling around the bill, he snatched it back and shoved it in his pocket. “Gotta be quick,” he told her.
Carmen made a face and pinched the back of his arm.
Shy felt better when he noticed Kevin laughing with everyone else. Whatever he wanted to talk about couldn’t be that big a deal.
“Lemme get this straight,” Marcus said, wiping his hands on a paper towel. “If you would’ve just peeped the tip right away, you could’ve saved this cat’s life?”
“How you figure that?” Shy asked.
“I’m saying, someone slips me a Franklin, my ass goes on high alert.”
“Maybe I’m just good at what I do.” Shy shot him a sarcastic grin.
“Not,” Carmen said.
“Yeah, okay.” Marcus laughed and bit into his pizza slice.
“Some passengers just like to tip like that,” Kevin said. “They wanna impress everybody.”
“I got tipped fifty for adjusting a karaoke mike,” Carmen said. “Two voyages ago.”
“Man or woman?” Rodney said.
“Man. Why?”
“You know all these rich white dudes got a warm spot for you, Carm. You’re like their jalapeño chalupa fantasy.”
Carmen reached across Shy and slugged Rodney in the shoulder. It was impossible for Shy not to stare at her shirt riding up her beautiful brown back.
“Shoot,” Marcus said, “fifty seems kind of high for the Mexican platter.”
Carmen grabbed a piece of crust out of the half-empty pizza box and heaved it at his head. Marcus ducked in time, though, and the crust went sailing over the railing, into the Pacific. “I guess chicken and waffles are supposed to be fine dining,” she said.
“Compared to a bowl of wack taco salad?”
Everybody was cracking up now, including, Shy noticed, the group of Swedish crew members at the next table over.
“For the record,” Rodney said, “everyone here is the fine-dining version. Look around you, bro. Paradise only hires attractive people.”
Shy watched them all sort of glance around the table at each other. They didn’t need to, though. Rodney had it right. Pretty much everyone on the crew was attractive, especially the group Shy kicked it with.
Kevin was a rugged, outdoorsy Australian. Messy blond hair and three-day stubble. At twenty-two he was the oldest and most worldly at the table. When he wasn’t mixing martinis on a Paradise cruise ship, he was posing for pictures all over Europe as an underwear model.
Marcus was the ship’s resident hip-hop dancer. A pretty-boy black kid from Crenshaw who was a secret tech head. He was all cut up from popping and locking, contorting his body in ways that didn’t seem possible. Whenever Marcus dropped his uniform top on the pool’s main stage, during a scheduled dance demonstration, Shy would watch everyone stare at his abs without blinking. Even skeletal old white ladies from Confederate states.
Carmen was the only female in their group. She was eighteen and half Mexican like Shy, from a town not far from Otay Mesa called National City. She hosted karaoke every night and sang in some of the shows. First time Shy met her, he could barely speak. She had to wave a hand all in front of his face, laughing, and ask Rodney if he was mute.
Only problem with Carmen was she had a fiancé back home. Some wealthy white kid in law school. She left the diamond in her cabin, she claimed, because wedding rings work like kryptonite on tips.
Eventually their eyes all settled on Rodney.
He lowered a half-eaten sausage slice, said: “What?”
A table full of grins.
“Bro, I don’t count,” he said. “There’s a reason they keep my big ass locked up in a kitchen.”
Everyone laughed.
Rodney was a six-four farm boy with a bad flat top. Crooked teeth. A few months ago he’d moved from Iowa to Irvine to try and play college football for the Anteaters. His strength coach hooked him up with a job on the ship assisting the head chef in the Destiny Dining Room. In his free time, Rodney read romance novels and ate Costco-sized bags of gummy bears and listened to Christina Aguilera on oversized headphones.
As everyone finished eating, Shy thought about how he fit into the equation. He wasn’t an underwear model like Kevin, he knew that. But he was tall for being half Mexican. And he played ball. The girls back home called him “pretty boy” and said he was a catch—though a catch in Otay Mesa was probably different from a catch on a Paradise cruise ship.
Shy was still kicking this around as he weaved through the balcony crowd to toss his greasy paper plate into the trash by the bar. When he turned back around, he found Kevin standing there. “Ready?”
“Sure,” Shy told him. “But what’s going on?”
“Overheard something earlier.” Kevin threw away his plate, too. “Figured you should be properly warned.”
Warned? A wave of nerves passed through Shy’s middle.
“Lido Deck, right?” Kevin said.
Shy nodded. As he followed Kevin through the crowded balcony tables, toward the exit, he looked over his shoulder at Carmen.
You okay? she mouthed.
Shy shrugged and went through the door.
3
Man in a Black Suit
Shy followed Kevin up several flights of stairs, through the ship’s atrium, which was straight out of an art magazine. Oversized paintings hanging from every wall, fresh flowers arranged in large colored vases, cascading chandeliers, classical music playing softly on well-hidden speakers.
They gave smiles and subtle head bows whenever they passed a passenger couple out for a late-night stroll.
“Ma’am.”
“Sir.”
They trekked all the way to the other end of the ship and out onto the Lido Deck, where Shy was to spend the majority of his working hours this voyage. The ship psychiatrist had decided it was best to keep Shy off the Honeymoon Deck—at least until he’d had the proper amount of time to “deal with the suicide.” Then he’d handed Shy a bottle of pills that were supposed to ease his mind. But all the first one did was make him feel hollow and numb. Like a fake person. He tossed the rest of the bottle in the trash.
They crossed to the far end, where the infinity pool sat sparkling in the moonlight. There were some people still hanging out in the Jacuzzi, even though it had been closed for over an hour. A guy and three girls. When they saw Kevin and Shy approaching, the guy stood up and said: “Time to wrap it up, right?”
“Sorry, sir,” Shy told him. “I have to close down for the night.”
The guy hopped out of the Jacuzzi dripping wet and looked down at the girls. “You heard the man. Time to move it indoors.”
Shy watched the three bikini girls climb out of the Jacuzzi. They were younger than most of the passengers, mid-twenties maybe, and they looked good as hell. Only a few fractions of a notch below Carmen when she was in a two-piece—and that was saying something.
The guy had already put on a shirt and cargo pants, and he walked over to Shy and Kevin, saying: “Must be a hassle shooing people out of the tub every night. Sorry ’bout that, guys. I’m Christian, by the way.”
Shy shook the guy’s hand and introduced himself.
Kevin did the same.
Christian was straight out of a GQ ad. Light-blue eyes and chiseled chin. Tiny bit of scruff around his face. Longish sandy-blond hair to his shoulders, still wet and dripping down his shirt.
“Come on, Dr. Christian,” one of the girls called.
The guy winked at Kevin and Shy. “Just made it through med school. We’re doing a bit of celebrating. See you guys around.” He turned and started toward the atrium, the girls falling in line behind him. Shy watched them go, wondering what it would be like to live another kind of life. To be on the path to becoming a doctor. To be the one waited on instead of the waiter. It was something he’d never even considered before stepping foot on a luxury cruise.