Page 139 of Damaged

“Yeah! Do they know—” I nod at the men carrying my bags.

“Yep! All the crew’s bags go in the same place until rooms are assigned. There’s a lottery.”

“A lottery?”

“Some rooms are worse than others. It’s not the biggest deal, but we draw straws.”

“You didn’t mention this in the interview…”

“It’s new this year,” he says quickly over his shoulder.

We go inside, and what I notice first is the smell of diesel exhaust. The hallways are in the shape of rounded rectangles. The walls are white and bright with a fresh coat of paint. The ship is not state-of-the-art. It’s older than the pictures I saw on Instagram made it look. At least this part of it.

“We’re in the crews’ quarters,” Michael says. He starts going down a metal staircase. We’re now in the belly of the boat. There are rows of doors on either side of us. “This is known as the underground. It’s where we’ll be staying. Some rooms suck. Those two”—he points forward, down the hall—“are right by the engine room. Not the most pleasant. And these, well… They have their quirks.”

Michael ducks into one of the rooms, and I follow.

Two guys are sitting on a mattress pad that hangs from a metal frame off the wall. One has his hair up in a messy graying bun. The other has a long orange beard. Beard has his sandals up on the mattress pad, where he’s deposited quite a bit of sand.

They’re both wearing headphones. Bun is on his phone. Beard writes on a notepad.

“Luke, Kerry, this is Sophia.”

Neither says hello. They just raise their eyebrows in recognition like moody teenagers.

“They’re just busy. Departure day has a lot of shit to get organized.” I look at Beard’s legal pad. He’s drawing what looks like a psychedelic version of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. But instead of Venus standing on a seashell, it’s a butthole.

“Okay,” I say. These two guys don’t seem very friendly. I’ve yet to see another woman other than Melissa.

There’s another metal bunk that hangs off the wall but no pad. “Didn’t you say we get our own rooms?” I ask Michael.

“Yeah…” He sucks air in through his teeth. “I just found out today, we’ve got more crew this voyage. Everyone has gotta bunk up this year.”

“Oh.” I wonder if he’s telling me the truth. He could’ve just lied during my interview with him to get me to come out to sea. To be stuck on a boat with him for months. The thought makes me sweat. It doesn’t help that the air is thick and smells briny down here. It’s like a pickle jar left in the sun.

My eyes are wide at my ignorance. This place already did a great job with social media. Their Instagram makes it look swank. They don’t show the underground.

No wonder it pays seventy thousand dollars. It’s not because it’s super technical. It’s because it sucks.

Michael also told me the food was only alright. I imagine that’s going to be code for prison slop.

What have I gotten myself into?

A voice crackles over the intercom. “All hands to the research deck. All hands to the research deck. The captain has arrived.”

Beard and Bun roll their eyes and take out their headphones, and we all shuffle back up the metal stairs and to the wide-open space at the back of the boat. This must be the research deck.

I see who the captain must be. He’s wearing a white naval uniform and matching captain’s cap. He’s standing on the pier and waving at us and the people next to him on shore. He’s dressed like this is the goddamn Titanic, and then I frown.

Long white hair sticks out in a ponytail from behind the cap.

“Wait…” I say. “Is that Claude Bernard?”

“Yeah,” says Michael. “Don’t worry. He just goes by Captain. He doesn’t steer the boat or anything like that. The first mate is the real captain.”

“Great.”

Someone hands Bernard a bottle of champagne. He raises it, and the crowd cheers.

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