The Command

After that things started getting fuzzy. So instead of one thing, and then another thing, there were scenes, like postcards. Like snapshots in a cruise book. Our Port Visit in Palma.

ON THE BUS TO MAGALOUF

They pull themselves on giggling and screaming and the bus driver gives a sour look but nobody cares. The ship rents the buses and there’s nothing but Horn dudes aboard anyway, and they’re noisy, too. There’s nothing the driver can do.

Looking out as the straining engine carries them uphill and then down, through a city. She blinks, fascinated at the passing cars, shops, people. All the signs are in Spanish. Sure, what else! This isn’t fucking Bumfuck, Louisiana, anymore. She doesn’t feel exactly safe, in a funny way she’s never felt before. What if somebody asks her a question? She took Spanish at Acadiana High, but right now she can’t remember hello or thank you. Behind them the guys have the windows down, hooting at the babes on the street. They’re smaller than Americans, with long dark shiny hair. Most are wearing dresses, some, the ones who look like office workers, pants suits.

The bus drives for a long time, out into the country, up and down hills and ridges. Then they see the sea again and tall buildings. It looks like Fort Lauderdale, where she went on the senior trip. The guys are going nuts, throwing things out of the window, until a first class tells them to knock it the fuck off if they don’t want to get everybody restricted to the ship for the rest of the cruise.

A paper bag comes back, hand to hand, somebody stole one of the pitchers from the Pizza Hut. The bus bumps, and it runs down her neck onto her shirt and she says angrily, “Shit. Fuck.” And Lourdes is rubbing at it with a paper napkin from her little purse.

THE DAIQUIRI PALACE

Magalouf’s like a TV show about the rich and famous, a long curving beach with hotels and clubs. The Daiquiri Palace is a two-story blue house with an outside bar overlooking the beach, then farther down a little concrete wall. Then nothing but beautiful, fine white sand, and beach chairs lined up like tombstones, that regular, except where people had pulled them together and were lying on them. She has her suit on under her jeans so all she has to do is pull her clothes off. The sand’s so hot it burns her feet, but the water’s warm and blue. Back at the bar somebody’s riding the mechanical bull. They’re yelling and screaming, and when he falls off, everybody dumps beer on him. Then some guy from Oklahoma gets on, and he can actually ride. They carry him around on their shoulders, then pour beer on him, too, and throw him in the water.

SHOPPING ON THE STRIP

There are lots of English girls out shopping. The clerks are Spanish, but they all speak English and French and probably two or three other languages, too. She starts to feel like she didn’t get a good-enough education, listening to them switch from one language to another. She gets to talking with one of the English girls. Everybody goes to Palma or the Canary Islands, she says. Ina here’s from England, Cobie says. The English girl’s curious, wants to know if Ina plans to go back. Ina says no, she’s a Yank now.

Cobie buys a new swimsuit. A two-piece, made in France. It’s expensive, but she really likes it. It makes her look taller. She wishes she wasn’t so damn short.

THE COWBOY BAR

Patryce takes them there in a taxi. She says you can meet Spanish guys there without a lot of Americans around. Cobie isn’t sure she wants to, but they’re following Patryce because she knows where everything is. Only when they get there it’s closed. So then Lourdes says she’s hungry, and they go to another place, all dark wood inside and heavy wooden tables and the menu’s all in Spanish, which Lourdes reads to them. Everything’s roasted meat. Beef and lamb and pork. She’d like chicken, but there isn’t any, so she has beef.

Now it’s starting to get dark. Cobie feels sick, almost like throwing up, from the T&O and the beers and all the meat, but she keeps trying to think about something else and it goes away.

THE TATTOO BAR

Another bar, she’s not sure where, someplace on the Strip. Guys from the ship in back. Lots of mirrors. Paintings on the walls. A little old guy with a beard is hunched on a stool with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and shot glasses on a metal tray painted in an Arabic pattern. The tray’s cool, her mom would like it. Maybe she can find one at one of the shops.

The guys are getting tribal tattoos. Complicated designs on their chests and arms and shoulders. Barbed wire. Lion’s heads. The old guy doesn’t speak English. He pours shots of whiskey and shows them other designs. Butterflies. Teddy bears. Rainbows. Unicorns. He points to her neckline. A rose design looks pretty. She could feature that. But then the machine buzzes and blood runs down the guy’s arm who’s getting tattooed.