At Sea with Maurice

I found this very frustrating. David—at least after my jockey career was shot when I stopped competing and putting horses through their paces so that I could respond to his every whim—had never let me forget that sex was my price for any favor or spending money. I hadn’t needed to beg for the responsibility or right to pay my own way with the only coin available to me with David. I couldn’t figure Maurice out.

My confusion and funk continued after I had gone back to my cabin, stripped down to my sleeping shorts, and tried, unsuccessfully, to read from one of the paperbacks I’d brought. The ship wasn’t churning in the disquieted seas too violently yet, but it was pitching and yawing enough so that my eyes couldn’t remain focused on the small print of the paperback. I had left the night lights on as Maurice had cautioned me to do with the comment that you never could tell where the furniture would wind up at night at sea and it would be best to be able to get your bearings if you had to get up in the night. But the lights cast an eerie red glow around the cabin that fought hard with every attempt I made to sleep.

I rose and padded barefooted out to the covered deck at the back of the passenger cabins, overlooking the wide span of the open hold in which the containers were stacked. Those of the deck crew who so recently had been heartily eating and laughing in the communal dining room were still hard at work, checking cables and tightening up anything loose on deck. It had grown dark now, as much from the black clouds scudding in from overhead as from the end of day. The White Russian, still naked to the waist, torso gleaming from sweat and salt water spray in the lights beaming down from the bridge, was there, not more than ten yards from where I was standing at the railing of the covered passenger deck. What came next came to as if in a dream.