Eighty Days to Elsewhere Read online

  We pass several other rooms on the way to my own—many of them with bathrooms and showers—but apparently, these are all assigned to crew members on this journey. I am the sole passenger. And so, I find myself taking the space of a sorely missed Swedish couple, who from the size of the room must have a very close marriage indeed.

  My room very sadly does not have a shower, but does contain a tiny cubicle with a sink and toilet. I have just enough time to get settled in and read the information pamphlet provided by the second mate before the ship’s horn sounds again. With rain spattering against my window—my porthole!—the Guernsey Isle is underway.

  In spite of the rain, the movement of the ship feels smooth and stately under my feet. A deep thrumming from the engines vibrates through my entire cabin. I jump up to peer out the porthole, but rain and dark cloak everything. The feel of the engine through the soles of my feet as we pull away from the dock gives me a shiver of fear so visceral, it sends me running for my little bathroom.

  I’m leaving New York. Leaving America for the first time since I was a child. Leaving North America for the first time in my life. Outside my porthole, the darkness is suddenly replaced by a figure awash in white light. It is Lady Liberty, looking out across the ocean toward France, the country of her origin.

  One of the countries I’m about to visit.

  In person.

  I lean over the toilet, convinced the feeling inside me is nausea. Is this what facing death feels like? But I’m not sick. Not yet, anyway. I am, it turns out, wildly, deliriously, flamboyantly excited. Excited in a way I cannot remember feeling ever before.

  This delicious, anticipatory feeling lasts just about nine hours.

  Most of which? I sleep through.

  * * *

  —

  Rollercoasters have never been my thing.

  Whenever our class visited Coney Island, I was always the kid who stayed on the ground. I held everyone’s bags while they roared overhead, shrieking; upside down and enjoying every minute.

  I enjoyed every minute too, because I was never the kid who threw up. I was never the kid who had to go sit with the teachers until the dizziness passed. I stayed on the ground, organizing the daypacks alphabetically for when the unnecessary risk-takers returned. I liked it that way.

  Of course, these days the MTA gives me excitement enough. Subways are a way of life in Manhattan. I’ve got a monthly MetroCard, and hop on and off all the time. I’ve never had any reason to believe I would be subject to motion sickness.

  It doesn’t take much time for me to learn the sorry truth.

  I awaken, still fully dressed, lying atop the tiny bed. The strange euphoria of the night before is so far gone, it might never have happened at all. Instead, my dreams have been filled with the deep certainty of exactly what happens when people go out into the world. The world is dangerous, and I know from experience that sometimes? They never come back.

  I almost choke on the sob that emerges from my throat, and when I reach to rub the sleep from my eyes, I find my face is wet. Yanking up a corner of the tightly tucked sheet, I wipe the tears away. I haven’t dreamt of my parents in years.

  Before I have a chance to think this through, I realize I’m looking up at my feet. I stare at my socks, brain addled with sleep, as my feet, unmoved by any effort on my part, drop out of my line of vision once more. On the floor, my suitcase slides across the room and hits the door with a thump.

  Sitting bolt upright, I clue in to the long slow roll the ship is making. Through the porthole, the window is awash in spray, but outside I can see a grey line, limned in white. The horizon. It slides briefly by, before the prow of the ship points upward again.

  I don’t see much else, apart from the inside of my toilet bowl, for the next forty-eight hours. The second officer, a dusky-eyed, no-nonsense Italian woman called Sylvia, pops by several times, worried when I don’t show at meals. Once she establishes that I have not thrown myself off the side, she returns periodically—the first time with something called barley sugar, and later with ginger ale.

  While it feels closer to a full year, it’s really just three days that pass before I’m able to show my face outside my cabin. Time crawls painfully when one is hanging over a small metal toilet bowl.

  I wake the morning of the third day to find the ship has once again resumed the stately forward motion she exhibited on leaving harbor. Perhaps not so coincidentally, I’m ravenous. After a meal of spaghetti Bolognese that might be the best thing I’ve ever tasted, I hunt down Sylvia, who reluctantly gives me the password to the ship’s internet.

  “It’s a satellite,” she whispers, in an accent thick as the sauce on my pasta.

  She hands me a scrap of paper with the password scrawled on it. “Don’t leave this anywhere, eh? We have problem with some of the guys watching pornos, and eating up all the bandwidth, you know?”

  “I only need to check my e-mail,” I assure her. “And send my boss a report.”

  She pats my hand. “Good girl,” she says. “I trust. You no watch that filth.”

  Which, of course, makes me wonder what I’ve been missing.

  She perhaps senses this, and doesn’t release the scrap of paper until I swear that I won’t download so much as a YouTube video.

  Clutching the precious password, I power up my laptop, only to have it die after less than a minute. My brief moment of panic vanishes when I remember that I carefully packed charger cords for both the laptop and the new phone. They are at the bottom of my suitcase, neatly coiled under my hair straightener, which I haven’t had a moment to put into use. Vowing to do a better job of personal grooming after my next shower, I smugly fit the cord in place, only to find—my cabin has no outlets.

  This seems wildly improbable, considering there’s a small lamp screwed firmly into the wall beside my bed. But when I pull out the plug, all I find is a weird round sort of two-slotted thingy which will not take my charger, no matter how hard I push. In the end, I’m forced to return to Sylvia, who explains the ship is wired to European standards, and the weird round thing is, in fact, an outlet. Luckily, she has an adapter she can loan me, but I trail back to my room feeling ignorant.

  I mean, I would have Googled it, but how do you Google something you don’t even know exists?

  I’m a well-read person. I’ve got a degree. You’d think I’d know the rest of the world doesn’t necessarily channel electricity the way Americans do. But until today?

  Nope.

  Once I’m safely plugged in, I start to get a sense of just how much work I have to do. It’s enough of a job documenting the ship in pictures and firming up my itinerary for when I reach land, but as soon as I get online, a new problem arises. I open my e-mail to find a veritable flood of messages from Tommy, ranging from worried to guilt inducing. I decide to find a way to placate Tommy later, and settle myself into writing my first ExLibris report.

  chapter twelve

  IMAGE: Sea Birds

  IG: Romy_K [Atlantic Ocean, March 21]

  #StormWarning #Seasick #50Shades

  25

  ExLibris Transit Report, submitted by Ramona Keene

  TRAVEL SUMMARY: The Guernsey Isle, an Algol-class ship, is among the fastest in the world. Currently traveling in excess of 33 knots, aided by a substantial tail wind, and heavy seas. Suitability for elite traveler: low. Will investigate other options that may be available on the client’s timeline.

  TOP PICKS TO SEE AND DO: Not much aboard ship. I can’t really go up on deck, because it turns out sea spray is pretty much freezing in March . . .

  Even though I modify the format a bit, the report is four full pages long by the time I finish it. Tucking my feet under the thin blanket, I press send and flop back onto the metal cot that serves as my bed. This is the first update I’ve managed in three days, what with 1) the whole unexpected vomiting thing, and 2
) the raw fear of leaving home by myself, for the first time ever.

  It’s possible the awareness of 2) has led pretty much directly to 1), now that I’ve stopped barfing long enough to think about it. To take my mind off this, I open my e-mail again. Merv has never taken to e-mail, so I read through all the irate notes from Tommy.

  “Is this your shot at Eat Pray Love?” he writes, adding that Merv has been unable to sleep, plagued with worry since I’ve been gone.

  “Just tell him it’s a sort of one-woman Amazing Race,” I reply guiltily, trying to ignore the mental image of Teresa Cipher’s disapproving expression as I type the words. “It’s all fun, no risk, I promise.”

  The last thing I want is to worry my uncles, but it’s too late now. My relationship with Tommy has always been a bit rocky, but his disapproval has never felt quite so overt. My e-mail must have caught him while he was on the computer, because fast on the heels of my reply comes another note, informing me that Call Center Jonah has been around the shop for tea.

  “He’s deeply disappointed you didn’t take the job,” writes Tommy. “He thought he sensed something special between you. And I must admit, I did too.”

  All of which I’m deeply grateful to leave behind, as I steam across the Atlantic Ocean.

  The next day, Captain Anhelm grants me an interview. This is the perfect kind of detail to add to my ExLibris report, and I’m determined to get all the extras Teresa Cipher’s special client could ever ask for.

  We sit in the captain’s office, which holds several tables piled in rolled charts, but he dismisses my questions about them immediately. “We don’t use these anymore,” he says, and points instead to a sleek monitor. “All nav is online these days.”

  For a moment, I’m at a loss what to ask him, as all my Captain Ahab questions dry up in the face of this modern technology. But behind his desk, I see that his shelves are lined in copies of books of every description. I toss my prepared questions aside and pull my uncle’s copy of the Jules Verne book out of my bag. The rest of the interview is taken up by the captain’s theory on how my trip will compare with the story, which turns out to be one of his favorites.

  I also learn he expects to make Liverpool in nine days total, which means we still have five more days at sea. This seems a horrifyingly long time, compared with what it takes to fly. Still, there’s nothing I can do about it, so I upload another report with a review of how easy the journey has been. I carefully avoid any mention of my metal berth. And that night, I settle in to read Uncle Merv’s book, gingerly turning the old pages and smoothing out all the dog-ears. I fall asleep as the members of Fogg’s Reform Club, one by one, turn against him, and lay wagers on his failure.

  The next morning, I’m wakened by being pitched from my cot onto the floor. We are south of Iceland, and anything easy about the journey vanishes. Sylvia tells me that we’ve hit what’s called a Force 10 storm. The ship’s internet is satellite, so the conditions prohibit me from looking up what that even means. In any case, I’m not looking at much besides my toilet bowl again. Sylvia appears once more, but only to pass on the news that I’m to be confined to my quarters for my own safety. Her eyes are wild—she tells me there’s a very real danger of cargo going overboard.

  After another endless day of being trapped in my tiny rocking room, and still desperately seasick, I creep up onto the deck in search of relief from the vomiting. The sea is every color of grey—fifty shades and more. She’s also deeply into domination, which I learn as the first wave lashes me with an icy hand. The spray is freezing the ropes the crew are using to further tie down the huge cargo bins, but the icy air feels good in my lungs, and smells so clean. I snag someone’s hat as it blows past me and jam my hair under it, then make my way into the central section, where most of the crew are working.

  Sylvia points wordlessly toward the stairs when she catches sight of me.

  “Please let me stay,” I bellow into her face. “I’m so sick down below.”

  She rolls her eyes, but minutes later, she returns to stuff a weatherproof life suit into my arms, complete with heavy work gloves. With a glance over her shoulder, she helps me into it.

  “If you stay, you work,” she hisses in my ear. “And keep that hat on. You so tall, captain no spot you, long as your hair cover.”

  As soon as I’m suited up, she drags me off to work under the supervision of a crew member whose name might be Carl. I spend the rest of that long night tying knots in the comparatively safe—but still freezing—central section of the outside deck, and I don’t vomit even once.

  chapter thirteen

  IMAGE: Ferry Cross the Mersey

  IG: Romy_K [Liverpool, UK, March 26]

  #ManOverboard #AnotherPlace

  27

  I awaken to the sound—of no sound. The wind has gone, the labored clang of the engines is muted to a low hum, and we are mercifully, mercifully, no longer rocking. Everything I own is strewn across the floor of the tiny cabin except for my laptop and camera, which, in the end, I took into bed with me. I figured if I got dumped onto the floor in the storm, I could at least protect my electronics with my own body.

  Priorities, man.

  As I glance out the tiny porthole, the horizon is pink and gold where the water meets the sky. Either we’ve survived the massive storm or this is the entrance to a watery afterlife, bathed in an appropriately celestial glow. Throwing on my heaviest hoodie, I grab my camera and head upstairs to see if I can somehow capture the astonishing colors for my Insta page.

  The sight that meets my eyes as I hit the deck renders me fully speechless. Dashing toward the stern, which has the only really open space near a railing, I’m shocked to see we are no longer in open ocean, and in fact, appear to be gliding toward the mouth of a river. The golden glow is still there, but the sun is streaming not across the vast expanse of water but over a low rise of land, speckled with a few small oblongs that mark distant buildings.

  We have made it across the ocean.

  Yanking out my phone, I check the date. March 26th. Which can’t be possible. The captain had said nine days, absolute fastest.

  Seconds later, footsteps clang up the metal staircase, and I whirl to see the first mate pop out of the stairwell, carrying a clipboard and a tablet, one in each hand. This is Sylvia’s boss, Martin Sixsmith, whose name I know only because she’s pointed him out to me, using hushed tones. He’s always running somewhere or doing something, and I haven’t exchanged more than a hello with him for the entire trip.

  But now, Sixsmith pauses a moment, and points at me. “Oy—Ramona, is it?”

  His cockney accent is so thick, I have to strain to recognize my own name.

  “Thanks for the assist last night, luv. Your extra pair of hands helped save them containers. Captain’s right chuffed—a storm like that can cost us dearly in cargo when luck ain’t on our side.”

  I was only trying not to vomit, I most certainly do not say. Instead I smile, as if wearing a survival suit and hauling rope and chains is all in a day’s work for me. “No probs.” Jabbing my thumb at the coastline, I add: “Is that—Ireland? How . . . ?”

  He laughs delightedly. “Oh, y’er behind the times, luv. We blew past Ireland two hours ago—that’s why it’s so calm in here. What you’re looking at is the Welsh coast. We’ll be pulling into the Mersey within the hour.”

  “The Mersey?” I say slowly. “Isn’t that . . . ?”

  “Liverpool. That wanker blew us in more than eighteen hours early. Eighteen hours! How brilliant is that, then?”

  He tucks the clipboard under his arm and trots off to where a group of the crew is gathering near the bow. I lean against the railing. Eighteen hours early? Suddenly, it’s like all the fear and nausea of the past few days never happened.

  I grasp the handrail and take a deep breath of the chill morning air, suddenly feeling on top of the world. I’ve
survived my first ocean crossing—and early too. I’m determined to take the extra eighteen hours and use them to their greatest advantage. Martin Sixsmith said we’d be entering Liverpool within the hour, which gives me just enough time to pack up and write a killer report for Teresa Cipher.

  Turning back to face the rising sun, I start taking shots of the coastline to illustrate my report, when I notice something strange. A man—I think it’s a man—is standing waist-deep in the water along the shore.

  I crank my telephoto to the highest setting, and sure enough, there he is. It’s too far to make out his face, or even what he’s wearing. But waist-deep in the icy waters of the Irish Sea in March?

  All my good feelings drain away, and fear rises in my throat. There’s no reason—no good, non-suicidal reason—for anyone to be where he is standing. I tuck my camera strap around my neck and wave at him with both hands.

  “Hey—HEY! What are you doing?”

  My voice is whipped away by the wind, so I try a series of wild jumping jacks, waving my arms and leaping in the air to get his attention.

  “Hey—buddy! BUDDY!”

  Nothing.

  The deck of the Guernsey Isle is horizontal, and the ocean—or more properly the Irish Sea, I guess—is very calm, but waves are still splashing the man. We’re moving so fast now, he’s almost out of sight.

  I turn, ready to dash up to the bridge to alert the captain, when I hear Martin Sixsmith’s voice in my head. Eighteen hours early. How brilliant is that?