The Snow Globe Favor

I keep a snow globe on the shelf above my bunk. It's cracked down one side. Has been for eleven years. Mona dropped it the week we got engaged, on the stairs outside my mom's apartment, and I never fixed it because fixing it felt like erasing something.

Inside there's a tiny lighthouse and some glitter water. Cheap thing. Probably cost three dollars in a boardwalk gift shop. But here's why it matters. When Mona was twenty-three, before we were married, her family hit a bad patch. Mom got sick, Dad was between jobs, and there was a month where I honestly didn't know how rent was happening. Mona was twenty-three. She had a little savings from her arcade job and she handed it over. All of it. Didn't even blink.

She said, "You'd do it for me."

I would have. But I never had to. She did it for me.

So yeah. I've been keeping score for ten years, even if she doesn't know it. The snow globe is the receipt.

We both work the same ship now. She runs the arcade on deck four, I sit in a chair by the pool and watch tourists pretend they can swim. It's a transatlantic crossing, so there's not much to watch. Water. More water. Eight days of it.

That Tuesday things went sideways.

We were in our cabin, both off shift, and Mona was eating crackers on the bed and telling me about some kid who jammed a taffy machine when her phone rang.

She looked at the screen. "It's Mom."

"Answer it."

She did. Put it on speaker because she always does.

"Mom? What's wrong?"

Miriam's voice came through all windy, like she was walking fast somewhere. "Mona, honey, I'm so sorry, I know you're at sea, but I need a favor and I need it big."

"What happened?"

"I have to fly to Tucson. My sister. It's serious, I won't go into it. But I leave Thursday and I can't take Moose and I called everyone and everyone is useless."

Moose is her dog. A fat little terrier with an attitude.

"Mom, we're on the ocean," Mona said. "We don't land for five days."

"I know that. I know. But Jerome's cousin Devon lives near me, doesn't he? The one with the yard?"

I leaned toward the phone. "Devon works nights, Miriam, but I can call him. He might do it if we cover the dog food and something extra."

"Oh, would you, Jerome? You're a doll. I'll pay you back, I promise, I'm just..."

Her voice cracked a little. Mona's mom is a talker, a worrier, but she doesn't crack much. Mona sat up straight on the bed.

"Mom. Is Aunt Svetlana okay? Actually okay?"

"They don't know yet. That's why I have to go. I have to be there. I have to..."

"Go," Mona said. "Call Devon, Jerome, do it right now. Mom, pack tonight. Go get the tickets."

Miriam thanked us about nine times and hung up.

I called Devon. He hemmed and hawed and then said yeah, for family, fine, if we sent him money for food and a hundred for his trouble. I sent it before Mona even asked. That part was easy. Money stuff, you settle it fast and clean. That's how my dad raised me and I'm not changing at thirty-four.

The hard part was after.

Mona sat on the bed with her crackers untouched and her face doing that thing where it goes still. She goes still when she's scared. I've known her since she was twenty-two, and I can read the still face like a menu.

"Hey," I said. "It's going to be fine. Devon's good with dogs."

"I know."

"Aunt Svetlana's probably going to be okay. People are okay more often than not."

"I know, Jerome." She picked at the cracker wrapper. Then she put it down. Then she said a thing I did not expect.

"I've been thinking about something and this is a terrible time but you always say I never bring things up and I'm bringing it up."

"Okay," I said, slow.

"Do you remember, years ago, I told you a fantasy I had? That night in the old apartment, after my cousin's wedding?"

I did remember. I remembered it word for word, actually. But I said, "Refresh me," because I wanted to hear her say it out loud again, sober, in daylight, on purpose.

She turned red. My wife is thirty-three years old and she can still turn red like a sunset.

"You know what I said. About wanting... about there being another man. With you there. You watching. Not a secret. With you."

"I remember," I said.

"And we never did anything about it. And I never pushed. Because it felt greedy, after everything, after you already..."

She stopped herself. I knew where the sentence was going. After you already owe me, she almost said, which is funny because she doesn't think of it as a debt at all. She thinks I'm just a nice husband who fixed her leaky sink once. She doesn't know about the snow globe math I do in my head.

"Hey," I said. "Look at me."

She looked.

"That's not greedy. That's a thing you want. We've been married ten years. I think we can talk about a thing you want."

"You're not weirded out?"

"A little," I admitted. "But weirded out isn't the same as no."

She laughed. It was small and wet but it was a laugh. Then her phone buzzed again, her mom, another flurry of texts about the dog's medication schedule, and the mood sort of drained out of the room like a bathtub.

"I should call Aunt Svetlana," Mona said. "And Mom keeps texting. And I have an early shift."

"Go call."

She kissed the top of my head on her way out, which is our thing, and went to the corridor by the crew stairwell where the signal is better.

I sat there looking at the snow globe.

I decided this right then. She gave us her savings when we had nothing. She never once held it over me. She's carried this want around for years like a stone in her pocket and never once asked for anything in return.

I could give her this. I wanted to give her this. Not as payment, I told myself. The debt and this were two separate things, and I'd keep them in separate pockets.

The problem was finding a guy. You can't exactly post a notice on the crew board. ARE YOU DISCREET AND CLEAN AND COOL WITH A HUSBAND IN THE ROOM. That gets you a meeting with HR.

Then I thought of Jacques.

Jacques is a passenger this crossing. Quiet guy, twenty-nine, takes photos of the water and the birds and pretty much nothing else. Carries one of those old cameras with film in it. We got to talking at the rail one evening because he asked me an actual question about lifeguarding instead of the usual "is the pool deep." He's easy to talk to. Doesn't fill silence with garbage.

And here's the strange part, the part that made me sit up in my chair. Mona already knew him. Months ago, back in the spring, there was a crew party in port, and a friend of a friend brought along some photographer she'd met, and Mona talked about him for a week. "The quiet one with the camera," she'd said. I'd forgotten all about it until this crossing, when I saw his face at the rail and something clicked.

I hadn't connected it until that night, sitting with the snow globe. Same guy.

Was that a sign? I don't believe in signs, really. But I believe in convenient timing, and that's close enough for me.

Mona came back in around eleven. She looked wrung out.

"Aunt Svetlana's stable. It's a bad fall, hip stuff, but she's stable."

"That's good."

"Mom's already at the airport hotel. She left Moose's meds on the counter so I had to text Devon a photo of the bottle from my camera roll. It's handled. Everything's handled." She flopped on the bed. "I'm sorry about tonight. About what I said. You don't have to answer it. We can pretend I never..."

"I don't want to pretend," I said.

She turned her head on the pillow to look at me.

"Get some sleep," I told her. "I want to talk to you tomorrow. About all of it. When you're not wrung out and your mom's not in an airport."

"What kind of talk?"

"The kind where I say yes."

She stared at me. Then she smiled, this slow thing I haven't seen in a while, and pulled the blanket up over her shoulder.

"Goodnight, Jerome."

"Goodnight."

I lay in the dark after that, listening to the engines, doing math in my head. Eight days of crossing. Five left. I'd need to talk to Jacques before port. Carefully. Like a man picking up fine glass.

I looked at the snow globe on the shelf. The lighthouse sat there in its cracked little world, glitter settled around it like snow that never lands.

Soon, I thought. Not to pay her back. That was a separate thing, and I'd sort it out on my own. This was just me wanting her to have what she wanted.

The next day I got off my shift at two. Mona got off at three. I texted her from my chair by the pool. Meet me in the container lounge at four. Wear the good shirt if you want.

She showed up in the good shirt.

The container lounge is this weird little thing on the top deck. Some of the staff quarters are shipping containers stacked up back there, and somebody with sense turned one of them into a bar. Six stools, a window, a guy named Pieter who pours heavy if he likes you. Pieter likes us. He keeps the good bottle under the counter for crew.

We took the two stools at the end. Mona ordered her usual, gin and something citrus. I got beer. The ship was doing that thing it does mid-crossing, where the horizon just sits there and doesn't move.

"You said you wanted to talk," she said. She turned her glass a quarter turn on the bar. "So talk."

"You asked me a question last night."

"I withdraw the question."

"You can't withdraw the question. I already answered it."

She looked at me sideways. "You answered it at eleven at night while I was spiraling about my mom's dog. That doesn't count."

"It counts. Yes. The answer is yes."

Pieter set down a bowl of the little crackers he puts out. Mona took one and did not eat it. She just held it.

"Okay," she said. "Say more. Because yes is a big word and I want to know what's under it."

Under it was ten years of snow globe math, but I couldn't say that. So I said this.

"Under it is that I love you and I trust you and the idea doesn't scare me as much as I thought it would. I sat with it. It's actually kind of hot, if I'm honest with myself."

She put the cracker down. "Really?"

"Really. You've been carrying this thing around for how long? Since before we even got married?"

She winced. "Don't say it like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I've been secretly dissatisfied for a decade. It's not that. It's just a thing I think about. Like how some people think about skydiving. I don't need it. I'm curious about it."

"You want to go skydiving."

"You know what I mean." She finally ate the cracker. "I think about what it would be like to be with someone new, with you right there. Someone new touching me while you watch. Or not watch. I don't even know the mechanics. I just know the idea doesn't go away. It's been maybe eight years since it showed up."

Eight years. Not quite the age of the crack in the snow globe, but close enough that I didn't say that either.

"So who," she said. "Because that's the hard part, right? It can't be crew. Crew is a fishbowl. It can't be a stranger off the street, we're in the middle of the ocean."

"I might have an idea about that."

She stopped. "Jerome."

"There's a passenger. Photographer. Quiet guy. You might know him, actually. Jacques."

Her face did something complicated. "Jacques? From the party? The one Steven brought?"

"That's the one."

"How do you know him?"

"Talked to him at the rail a couple times. He asks real questions. He's not creepy. He's not pushy. He watches the water and takes pictures of birds."

Mona was quiet a while. Out the little window a container crane on the far deck creaked. The engines hummed through the floor.

"He's twenty-nine," she said. "I remember that. He was the youngest guy at the party and everyone kept asking him to fix their phones."

"He's twenty-nine now. I'm thirty-four. You're thirty-three. Everyone's a grown adult, that's the first box checked."

"You've really thought about boxes."

"A few." I turned on my stool to face her. "But this is what matters. None of this happens unless you want it. Not because I decided to pay anybody back for anything. This is you asking me for a thing and me saying yes because I choose to say yes. Can we be clear on that?"

"We're clear."

"Okay. Then boundaries. We should do boundaries now, sober, in daylight, and not in the middle of it."

She nodded slowly. "God, okay. Boundaries. Um." She held up a finger. "One. You're in the room the whole time. I don't want to be alone with him, ever, not even for a minute. That's a hard rule."

"Agreed. Easy."

"Two. If anyone says stop, we stop. All the way stop. Not slow down, stop."