PACIFIC RIM
Your escape begins here.
The sign on the door of the travel agency screams out the words in bold purple letters. I want to believe it, because escape is something I desperately need. So does Mom. Ever since Dad left, Mom's been going on and on about taking a real vacation. Europe maybe, or an African safari.
"I want to do something on the edge," Mom keeps saying, "something special."
I'm all for it. After all, I've lived my whole life in Phoenix, and the farthest away I've ever been was a vacation in Disneyland, which wasn't too adventurous, if you know what I mean. So anything that involves passports and places where they don't speak English would be the best thing as far as I'm concerned.
So Mom and I walk into the travel agency, all wide-eyed and gawking, ready to see the world. The place makes me feel like we're already on vacation. Colorful balloons are suspended everywhere, and loud Caribbean music fills the air with such a contagious beat that I feel like doing the limbo. The staff are all wearing bright Hawaiian shirts, and the walls are plastered with exotic destinations so beautiful that I want to visit every single one of them.
A woman with perfect hair, perfect, teeth, and earrings much too big steps up to greet us. "Welcome to Lifetime Travel," she purrs. "How can I help you?"
"We want a vacation," my mom says. "Something different."
The travel agent snaps open a drawer and pulls out one brochure after another. "How many will be traveling?"
My mom tries to hide the pain the question brings, but her pursed lips and sorrowful eyes tell all. "Just me and my son, right, Alex?"
I force a weak smile, and the woman looks away. She can't know all the things that happened between Mom and Dad before he left, but she knows enough not to ask any more questions. I suppose she dealt with shattered families like ours before, trying to find a vacation that will somehow, magically, fix everything.
The travel agent fans out the brochures like they're an oversized deck of cards, babbling on about prices and meal plans--but I can tell Mom's not listening. Something's caught her eye. There on the corner of the desk, a
brochure sticks out--something the woman didn't seem anxious to show us. There's enough of it visible to show the bow of a boat. Mom pulls it out from beneath the pile. On the cover is a cruise ship, tall and wide, with a least a dozen decks. It's a magnificent thing, with a shiny white hull and ocean-green portholes.
Bright letters across the top of the brochure read pacific rim cruises. The name of the ship is the Heavenward. The pages of the brochure are filled with happy people swimming and dancing and eating, in a kind of splendor I can barely even imagine.
The travel agent eyes us warily. "Oh, you don't want that," she says, waving it off. "It's…uh…out of your price range."
My mother snaps her eyes up. "How would you know what our price range is?"
"Well…uh…I mean, I just don't recommend it." She quickly digs into another drawer. "If it's cruises you want, I can book you on dozens of others."
But Mom holds her ground. "Tell us about this one."
The woman looks to Mom, then to me, then reluctantly begins to speak as Mom and I leaf through the brochure.
"The Heavenward is a new ship," says the woman, "from a new and inexperienced cruise line.…
I raise my eyebrows. "Says here it's the largest cruise ship ever built."
"A hundred and twenty tons," says the woman. "But--"
"And where does it cruise to?" asks Mom, cutting her off.
"Nowhere yet. Its maiden voyage isn't until next month."
I can tell that Mom's frustrated by the way this woman doesn't quite answer her question, so we find the answer in the brochure ourselves. Mom's eyes widen happily.
"A cruise to the Orient!" Mom says.
"Yes--to the Far East," says the travel agent, as if there's a difference.
According to the brochure, the Heavenward will depart from Honolulu and sail west across the Pacific, bound for Japan, China, and Thailand. A three-week cruise with ten ports of call!
I look up from the brochure and catch Mom's eyes. They are the same eyes she had when she saw that painting in the art gallery. The one that cost way too much…and then two days later ended up in our living room.
The travel agent must see that look in my mom's eyes, too.
"I should explain something about Pacific Rim Cruises," says the travel agent in a calm, calculated voice, as if she's trying to talk someone in from the edge of a building. "They've built a magnificent ship…but they don't know much about world travel. This cruise that they're doing…it's going a little too far…"
"Nothing's too far for me," says Mom. "The farther the better."
The woman pales a bit, and I realize that she isn't trying to be rude. She's trying to warn us of something…something she wouldn't dare speak aloud…
But Mom doesn't care much for warnings. So she pulls out a wad of credit cards the size of a bar of soap. "We're taking that maiden voyage," Mom says. "Best room available. Money is no object."
And so the travel agent has no choice but to give us what we want.
* * *
It begins on July fourth. A flight to Honolulu, a taxi ride to the port, and there we are--staring at the Heavenward--a majestic white giant, impossibly huge. The ship fills up my whole mind when I look at it, leaving no room for other thoughts.
Everything on board is perfect, from our stateroom filled with luxurious wood and polished brass, to the nine-story atrium in the middle of the ship, where four glass elevators ride up and down. It's hard to believe this is all on a ship! There's even an entire kid deck filled with video games, pizza places, and just about anything else a kid could dream of. I now know why they named the ship the Heavenward, because as far as I'm concerned, it's like I've died and gone to heaven.
It's during that first evening at the midnight buffet that I see the strange old man.
He's in the kitchen--I catch glimpses of him every few moments through the swinging kitchen door. He's not a passenger, but a member of the crew. I don't think he's a cook, because he's not dressed like the rest of the kitchen workers. He wears a rumpled Hawaiian shirt that has seen better days, and his face is covered with beard stubble so dense that even the sharpest of razors would shy away from it. He seems out of place here, with a way about him too dark and brooding for a fun-filled cruise like this.
I can't get his face out of my mind, and even though I pile my plate high with food, I begin to lose my appetite. The old man's eyes seem worn and worried, and for some strange reason, I get the very clear sense that I should be worried, too.
* * *
Two days out of Hawaii, with wild parties raging on every deck, I get tired of the all-you-can-eat ice cream parlor, the free video games, and the dance-till-you-drop teen club. There's only so much pleasure a person can stand. So after dinner, I decide to explore.
Ships are great for secret exploration. They're like mazes filled with hallways and dim corners, and everywhere on the great ship you can hear the eerie rumble of the huge engine somewhere down below.
Finding the engine room is my goal. Sure, I could take the engine room tour, but it's much more fun to find it myself and be there when I'm not allowed.
On the lowest passenger deck I come to a door with a sign that reads no admittance, and I admit myself. Suddenly the luxurious beauty of the ship gives way to a dull beige corridor lined with the crew's quarters. I push farther and find a set of stairs leading down. I take it deck after deck after deck, deep into the bowels of the ship, wandering aimlessly through narrow access-ways until I finally stumble upon the engine room.
You'd think the engine room of a great ship like the Heavenward would have a huge crew of engineers--but a ship as sophisticated as this must practically run itself. There's only one man on shift. A man I recognize.
It's the old man from the kitchen the night before.
He turns his weary eyes to me. He has an intense gaze, and now that I get a better look at him, I can tell that he's an educated man by he way he carries himself--as if the crushing weight of some secret knowledge hunches his shoulders, like Atlas holding up the world. The shadows are deep here, and in those shadows his face seems cragged and cracked, like the Grand Canyon seen from an airplane. I can see that he's not so much old as he is worn. Worn and tired.
"You don't belong here, boy," he says. "Go back up. Party while you can." His words give me a shiver that rises up my spine, but I force it back down.
Around us the engine roars, and through an iron catwalk I can see the silver cylinder of a propeller shaft leading to the stern. Beneath that, the two sides of the hull come together, like an attic turned upside down. It reminds me that no matter how huge this thing is, it's just a boat, with miles of ocean beneath it. The thought unsettles me, and suddenly I want to be anywhere but he engine room.
"Uh…sorry," I say, "I took a wrong turn." I spin and hurry off, fully prepared to spend the rest of my cruise playing free video games, swimming, and eating myself into blimpdom.
But the old engineer calls out to me.
"Hold on there, Alex!" he says.
The ship lurches beneath me, making my stomach feel queasy. Or maybe it's just the face that the old man knows my name. I can't figure how he'd know it.
I turn, and he grins mysteriously. "The name's Riley," he says. "Third engineer. C'mon, I'll take you back to the passenger decks."
Soon the roar of the engines is far away once again. We wind down the narrow corridors and up flights of stairs, until reaching a doorway. Beyond the door I can hear the sound of distant partying; thousands of people drinking in a lifetime's worth of good times. As if there's no tomorrow.
It's then that I realize that I'm wearing my Little League shirt, with my name plastered rig...
