I was amazed my hands were steady enough to keep the cards from bending at the corners. I might have even seemed confident. I did my best to commit the different hand values to memory but was only somewhat sure I did it correctly. For all I really knew, I was completely off and truly making a fool out of myself.
Luckily, I somehow managed to put down five hearts—a full flush. I understood instantly that I had won by Polo’s seal clap and the way Charlie pushed out his chair with his fist out shouting, “Yah!”
Yuri gave Ben a slap on the back. “I can’t believe she beat you, boss.”
Ben looked skeptical. “Are you quite positive you’ve never played before?”
I smiled through my blush. “Yep.”
Reid reached across to gather up the cards. “Charlie Boy just knows how to pick ‘em.”
I quickly lost track of how many games were played, the number of plastic chips I lost, and how many times someone or other would get frustrated and knock over poor Polo. But as the night wore on, the amount of fun I had steadily grew, and before I realized it, I was laughing with ease and even joining in on the conversation.
“You really think that The Stranger was Welles’ best movie?”
I feigned offense. “Excuse me,” I could hear my voice raising a few notes but the laughter revealed me, “but that is exactly what I’m saying! You really don’t think Citizen Kane is the greatest film of all time, do you? Let alone his best work?”
Charlie took me by the shoulders and pulled me towards him playfully. “Careful, Yuri, I can’t hold her back much longer.”
Chapter 10
It was after midnight when we all scattered off to our separate dwellings.
Ben shouted down to us from a loading covered in cables and hanging wires, “Don’t you kids get lost now.”
Charlie shook his head, completely exasperated. From down the hall I heard Reid laughing.
“It’s too nice to be inside, too early,” I declared. I was so excited I could feel the rush of the night cooling in my bloodstream.
“Let’s go do something,” I teased Charlie as he walked me back, threading his arm with mine and pulling on his elbow. He already had a cigarette in his mouth and was reaching for a lighter, patting his pockets. Every few seconds I would try to bat the cigarette from his mouth, but he clenched it with his teeth and swiped at me.
He mumbled through the stick, “Like what? There ain’t exactly a drive-in ‘round here.”
I took him by the elbow and dragged him up a stairwell I recognized led to Deck B. “Ha, ha, very funny. Come on!”
He feigned annoyance but was all smiles as I tugged him along. “You’re outta control.”
I stopped momentarily and smiled back at him—I could barely see through the shroud that was my hair. “I know. Isn’t it fantastic?”
Other than bright flood lights at the ends of each deck station, there was very little light on the deck itself. And for those first few seconds until my eyes adjusted, I could barely see my own shadow. Charlie hadn’t been lying about it being one of the busier times of the day—there were more people in their life vests and safety helmets wandering about than I had seen so far. Several individuals were working with large wrenches on a piece of machinery that I couldn’t have named if my life depended on it; others were loading barrels into a crate, while some were stringing cable. It was really quite eerie the way they had that ability to ignore me.
Reading me, Charlie said, “It’s a good thing, trust me.”
“I do.” My eyes searched his, but I saw some sadness there I didn’t care for. It made my own heart twinge with hurt to think of him in pain, so I smiled and tried to change the subject.
“What is this called?” I gestured to the back of the ship. Without the Internet or a library, I was going to have to do research the old-fashioned way.
Charlie smiled and smacked himself in the head. “You ain’t never been boating, have you?”
“Only in books.”
His smile grew wider and he turned me around, wrapping his arms around my torso and resting his chin on top of my head. From an alternative perspective I thought we must have looked like a totem pole.
He reached his hand out and touched the side of the ship’s back. “This is the keel. The—”