The Last Crossing

Kurt had been spinning records on the MV Celestial Dawn for eleven years, and if he never heard another drunk accountant request "Sweet Caroline" again, it would be too soon. He was sixty-two, this was the last crossing of the season, and in six weeks he would be retired and standing in a kitchen wondering what the hell had happened to his life.

Two things you should know right up front, because this story would get weird without them. Kurt was sixty-two and still had all his own hair, thank you very much. And Bonnie, the woman in the silver dress at table seven, whose name he only knew because the waiter kept saying it, was forty-five and had been watching him all night like she was deciding whether to buy him or send him back.

He felt her eyes on him while he blended into the last song of his career. Being a ship DJ had that quality. Nobody remembered you, and everybody stared right at you. It was a strange way to be invisible.

Kurt had spent eleven years being good. Good to the crew, good to the passengers, good to the little voice in his head that said behave, Kurt, you have a pension. But tonight the voice sounded tired, and the North Sea was black outside the club windows, and the woman at table seven was still looking at him.

So when the set ended at eleven forty-five and the room emptied out, he was not even surprised when she walked up to the booth. She moved like she owned the floor it stood on.

"You're better than this room deserves," she said, setting a room key on the turntable case like it was a tip.

"Well, thank you, ma'am, I..." Kurt started, all eleven years of small talk coming out at once.

"Stop talking," she said, and she was smiling when she said it, which somehow made it worse. Or better. He honestly could not tell. "There's a note. Read it. Decide. Midnight. Don't be early, don't be late."

Then she walked off toward the elevators, and Kurt stood there in his empty nightclub holding a key card like it might bite him.

The note was tucked under it, written in slanted, expensive-looking handwriting. Suite 914, midnight. No names. No morning.

Kurt read it four times. Then he laughed out loud in the empty club, because what else could a man do? He was six weeks from retirement. He had a folder at home labeled FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT CRUISE SHIP PENSIONS. He had never once, in eleven years, so much as had a drink with a passenger.

He went to his cabin, changed his shirt, and told his reflection he was being an idiot. His reflection did not look convinced. Neither of them believed a word of it.

***

Midnight on a ship is a funny time. The corridor carpets swallow your footsteps, the engines hum under everything like a big contented animal, and every door looks the same except the one with a number that means yes.

Kurt knocked on 914 at exactly midnight, because apparently even his rebellion was punctual.

The door opened and there she was, the woman from table seven, wrapped in a black silk robe that went from her throat to her ankles and somehow showed more than the silver dress had. Her hair was down now, dark red and loose over her shoulders.

"Right on time," she said, stepping back to let him in. "I like that."

The suite was big and dim, one lamp burning, the sea sliding past the window like something alive. Kurt stood there holding his cap, feeling about fourteen years old and sixty-two at the same time.

"So," he said. "No names, the note said. That's a new one for me."

"It works," she said. "Rules first, because I have rules and I don't bend them. Sit."

He sat. She stood in front of him with her arms crossed loosely, like a professor about to give a very popular lecture.

"One. No kissing on the mouth. Anywhere else, use your judgment. Two. We don't talk about our lives. Not where you're from, not why you're on this ship, not your pension, nothing. Three. You leave at five a.m. and we never speak again. Four..." she paused, and her mouth curled, "...you do exactly what I say. When I say it."

"That's..." Kurt cleared his throat. "That's four rules, you said rules first and then gave me terms of employment."

"Are you negotiating?"

"No, ma'am. God, no. I'm agreeing. Loudly, if you want."

That got a real laugh out of her, short and low, and Kurt felt it land somewhere below his belt line.

"Stand up," she said. "Take off the jacket."

He took off the jacket. So far so good.

"Shirt."

He unbuttoned the shirt, and his sixty-two-year-old chest was out in the lamplight before he could start feeling self-conscious about it, which was probably the point. She looked him over slowly, top to bottom, no hurry at all, the way you look at a car you're thinking about buying.

"Not bad," she said. "Not bad at all. You've kept yourself together."

"I try to. Well. Some years I try harder than others..."

"Stop talking," she said again, and this time she said it softer, and it was somehow the most exciting thing anyone had said to him in a decade.

"Stand in front of me," she said, turning her back to him and letting her hair fall forward over one shoulder. "The robe. Untie it. Slowly. I mean slowly, like it costs money, because it does."

Kurt's hands were not steady, and he was not ashamed to admit that, at least to himself. He found the belt of the robe and pulled it loose, one slow pull, and the silk sighed apart down the middle of her back.

"There," she said quietly. "Now the shoulders. Push it off them. Slow."

He pushed the silk off her shoulders and there she was, bare to the waist in front of the window, the whole black North Sea behind her like a curtain. Her skin was pale and smooth and she stood absolutely still, letting him look, not helping him, not rushing him.

"Oh my," he said, before his brain could stop his mouth. "You're just... yes!"

"Eloquent," she said dryly, but she reached back and put her hand over his, moving it from her shoulder down to her waist, placing it where she wanted it. "This is how it goes tonight. My hands put yours where they go. You don't guess. You don't wander. Understood?"

"Understood," Kurt said, and his voice came out lower than he meant it to.

She guided his hands around from her waist to her stomach, flat and warm, and then up, slowly, over her ribs, and she breathed in when his palms covered her breasts, a small sound, quickly controlled. Her nipples were already hard against his hands, and she pressed herself into his touch like she was checking a temperature.

"Firm," she said. "Not squeezing. Just there. Good. Now the other one."

Kurt obeyed. Eleven years of reading a crowd had taught him something about timing after all, and it turned out the skill transferred. He moved his hand the way she moved it for him, and her head tipped back against his shoulder, and for one second the control in her slipped and she made a low sound in her throat.

"There," she murmured. "Keep that. Don't get clever."

"I would never," he said, and she laughed again, and his fingers were still on her and the sea kept going by, and Kurt thought, with something close to giddiness, that retirement was going to have a very hard time competing with this.

Bonnie turned around in his arms, and Kurt thought for one glorious second that she was going to let him look at her properly, all of her, but she had other plans and her plans moved fast.

"Sit on the bed," she said.

He sat. The bed was enormous and soft and the lamp behind her turned her into a silhouette with pale edges, and then she knelt down in front of him like she was getting comfortable for a long evening.

"Oh," Kurt said. "Oh, okay!"

"Hadn't you figured this part out yet?" she asked, and her fingers were already working his belt.

"I figured... well, I hoped. There's hoping and then there's..."

"Quiet."

She got his trousers open with the calm efficiency of a woman defusing a bomb she'd built herself, and Kurt lifted his hips when she tugged, and then he was out in the lamplight and her hand closed around him, cool and firm and completely unbothered.

He was hard before her hand finished its first trip. Sixty-two and nervous and she had him aching in about four seconds, which Kurt found frankly humiliating and also wonderful.

"Hm," she said, looking at him the way she'd looked at his chest, like an appraisal. "Better than not bad."

Then she bent her head and took him into her mouth.

Kurt made a sound he was glad there was no recording of. Her mouth was hot and wet and she went down slow, all the way, and then came back up with her cheeks hollowed, and it was not clumsy and it was not shy and it was not anything like a gift. It was a service being rendered. It was, and this thought arrived fully formed in the last rational corner of his brain, a professional at work.

Her tongue did something complicated. His hands found the bedspread and gripped it.

"Oh my god," he said. "You've... you're very..."

She hummed, which was not helpful to his sentence, and went down again.