The Laundry, the Engine Room, and a Pie I Did Not Share

The crew continues to quiz me on the quality of the key lime pie, as if to say I should have shared. They do not know me well. I do not share desserts.

The laundry

I found the laundry yesterday, tucked below the accommodation block behind a door I had assumed led to a store room. It is the cleanest room I have ever seen. The floor is a colour I can only describe as aggressively white. The machines are industrial, front loading, and apparently capable of handling a full set of overalls in one cycle. There is a folding table with edges so sharp they look surgical. I stood in the doorway and thought that open heart surgery could be performed in here without anyone changing the lighting.

I asked Elena, later, whether the room had always been this clean. She said, "we have standards." She did not elaborate. I have decided not to ask again.

The clothes line

There is a small outside deck, aft and low, where I had imagined hanging a few shirts on a line in the sun and the salt air, like a person in a film about a simpler life. Tiny saw me looking at it with a clothes peg in my hand and said, simply, "not allowed." He did not explain why. On reflection, this is a good call. A shirt overboard would be an incident. A pair of my trousers wrapped around a radar would be a headline. I am folding things neatly and using the dryer, which is, I am told, the civilised option.

Missing the road

I am walking several miles a day along the external walkways of the ship, from the accommodation block forward to the bow and back, counting containers and trying not to look like a man with too much time. It is good exercise. It is not driving.

I miss driving. I miss the act of it, the feel of a wheel, the small violence of acceleration, the way a car answers a pedal. I miss deciding to go faster. On this ship, speed is a collective decision made by people in boiler suits and I am not one of them. I have started thinking about my old Mazda Miata with the kind of fondness usually reserved for a first pet. I turbocharged that car, you know. I rebuilt the engine. I changed the timing belt in a garage in December with a torch held in my teeth. I was, briefly, a person who knew what he was doing with machinery.

Now I am a person who knows where the laundry is.

Breakfast with Kev

This morning I sat down across from Big Kev with a plate of eggs and the confidence of a man who has, in his past, replaced a head gasket. I told him about the Miata. I told him about the turbo. I told him about the time I drained a gearbox on a slope and spent an hour lying under the car while oil ran up my sleeve.

He listened without interrupting, which I now understand was a tactical pause.

When I finished, he looked at me with what I can only describe as professional pity, put down his fork, and said, "son, I will show you a turbocharger the size of a cathedral."

He said it the way another man might promise a beach holiday. Then he went back to his eggs.

I have not yet seen the turbocharger. I have been thinking about it all day.

Priya

I passed her on the bridge walkway this afternoon. She was carrying a clipboard and a mug of coffee and did not appear to have slept. She said, "I hear you have been explaining cars to Kev."

"I have relevant experience," I said.

"Mm," she said, and kept walking.

I am fairly certain that mm now means something specific and not entirely flattering.

Tonight

The laundry is running. The sea is dark. Somewhere below my feet, an engine is turning a propeller the size of a small building, and Kev is probably standing next to it, quietly offended on its behalf by everything I said at breakfast.

I have no pie. I have no car. I have, however, a clean shirt and a promise of machinery on a scale I cannot yet imagine.

This is still better than a road bike.