Who Are You?

My eagerness to start the day had me up before dawn. I’d barely slept, waking continuously throughout the night at every small noise. Checking the security cameras incessantly as each girl put herself to bed, until only Sam remained awake, seated on the sofa with the binder of contracts in her lap. She had other books around her as well, but I couldn’t make out their titles. From the blue water on their covers, I guessed them to be cruising guides.

My locker contained a wardrobe of the same white shorts and Gethsemane polos I’d sported the night before. I pulled on a clean one of each, and went to the galley to make coffee. When it finished brewing, I brought two full mugs with me upstairs to the middeck. Sam noticed me the moment I appeared, and moved to cover the guides with the binder when I approached.

“Morning, Sam.”

She rubbed her eyes and stretched. “What time is it?”

“Almost six. Sun should be coming up any minute.” I indicated the port side of the boat where a reddish glow presaged the coming dawn, and set one of the mugs down in front of her. “Coffee?”

Sam regarded it but didn’t move to take it. When I drifted back to the bar and lifted the lid on the wooden box for a cigarette, I found it half empty. “Have you seen the lighter?”

She made a play of looking around the area where she sat. “No.”

With my back turned, she couldn’t see my smile. If she didn’t have it, then Ronky probably did. From one of the drawers in the bar, I retrieved one of several spares and returned to join her on the sectional. She watched me light the cigarette, and I could tell she wanted one. When my eyes fell to the guides hidden underneath the binder, she tucked the pile behind her legs.

“Have you been up all night?” I asked, knowing that she had.

“Is that alright?”

I blew out a lungful of smoke and shrugged. She followed the white cloud with her eyes as it drifted out of the room to the open deck and disappeared over the back of the boat.

I held the cigarette up. “Want one?” She feigned disinterest. She still hadn’t touched her coffee either. “Interesting reading, no?”

Sam briefly glanced at the binder behind her, but again said nothing. She looked tired. I wondered when she’d last slept.

I gestured over her shoulder. “Here it comes.”

Just as she turned, the sun crested the horizon, unfurling a golden carpet of light across the Caribbean Sea, leading directly to our yacht. The salon glowed in rich amber hues. Long shadows, cast by chairs and window frames and structural buttresses, crept across the hardwood flooring. We sat quietly for a few minutes to watch the fiery disk rise higher, until the bottom finally disconnected from the sea, and the sun hovered unsupported in the sky.

When she turned back around, I smiled at her. “Pretty awesome, huh?”

Her russet eyebrows came together. Then one drifted up, as if confused by the question.

I lifted my shoulder. “I don’t know. I think it’s awesome.”

Sam reached for the binder and held it up. “Is all of this for real?”

I sipped my coffee, and took a long drag on my cigarette. “I think you know it is.”

Her hand, along with the binder, dropped into her lap. She stared at it and dragged her fingers over the cover, as if the answers to her myriad unspoken questions were somehow locked away inside. When she looked up again, her eyebrows drifted apart and her voice sounded small.

“So, what happens now?”

“What do you mean?”

She put her palm on the binder. “I mean, this. This program. When does it start?”

“It already did.”

My answer surprised her. “It did? When?”

I finished my cigarette and stubbed it out in a clean ashtray sitting on the coffee table. She must have tossed her butts overboard. “It started the moment you stepped aboard this ship.”

“But...,” she began, then faltered. She opened the binder and flipped through a few pages before closing it again, then exhaled a frustrated sigh. She fixed me with a serious look. “Why don’t we have any underwear?”

“Good morning, Julia.”

Sam turned to look where Julia had paused mid-ascent into the salon from the lower deck. She wore the same clothes from the night before. A pair of shorts and a tank top, with a bikini top underneath.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, resuming her climb. She looked through the open portside wall at the blazing glory of the morning sky. “Oh, wow.”

When she took a seat on the sectional next to Sam, she noticed the steaming mug of coffee still sitting untouched on the table. She picked it up to take a sip before noticing Sam’s look.

“Sorry, was this yours?”

Sam waved her hand. “It’s fine.” She returned her attention to me. “So?”

“So what?”

“The underwear.”

“What about it?”

“Why don’t we have any?”

Julia moved her eyes back and forth between us, before settling them on me. Then she gave me a quick once over. Her eyes didn’t linger and I almost missed it. When she noticed me watching her, she let her gaze subtly drift away.

I asked, “Do you need it?”

Sam scoffed. “Yeah, of course we need it. What kind of question is that?”