The Rebellious Tide Read online

  “Do you know why, Nikos? It’s because he thinks we’re his slaves. He wants to tell us what we can and cannot do, who we can and cannot fuck.”

  “The rule isn’t black and white.”

  “Exactly. The rule applies to anything they might find offensive. And you told me yourself. They’re disgusted by people like us.”

  Nikos’s face flushed with embarrassment.

  As if on cue, Kostas descended the spiral staircase. Holding him by the hand was his elegant wife with the pointed nose. She wore a satin dress that hovered above her knees. It was white like her husband’s uniform.

  Sebastien watched as the crowd parted to make way for them. The prestigious couple held themselves proudly, gliding through the lounge to their exclusive corner of fellow officers. His stare was so intense that the woman looked startled as their eyes connected. He felt his throat go dry.

  “It seems like you’re upset with me,” Nikos said, “so I’ll go.” Sebastien pulled his gaze away from the couple in white. “What do you know about Kostas’s wife?”

  “Alexis? Not much. She isn’t very talkative but seems like a good mother. Lives with the kids in a posh part of Athens. Comes on board for a sailing or two every few months. Why?”

  “Just curious,” Sebastien said, a distant quality in the tone of his voice. “I’m not upset with you. I’m just disturbed by what’s happening. You should be, too.”

  Nikos was about to respond when someone called his name from the officers’ corner. “I’ll find you later,” he said before forging through the crowd.

  The young commander made his way to Kostas. Something wasn’t quite right in that corner of the lounge. Amid the sea of white suits stood a woman in black whom Sebastien didn’t recognize. She was young, with straight dark hair and eyes wide as an owl’s. Kostas pulled Nikos close to him and said something into his ear. Nikos nodded, took the woman by the arm, and led her to the back of the room. She resisted at first, but his grip was firm. He pushed a panel in the wall to reveal a secret door leading to a brightly lit corridor out of bounds to guests. They stepped into the rectangle of light before the door closed behind them.

  Sebastien was trying to make sense of what he had just seen when he was interrupted by loud cheers from the crowd around him. Storming the raised dance floor was the ship’s cast of dancers, a flurry of fiery colours punctuated by fitted white shirts and slim black pants.

  The line of athletic bodies parted in the middle to reveal Contessa Bloor. She stood apart from the others in a white dress that shimmered beneath the spotlights. A burst of flowers was tied into her hair.

  Ilya returned to Sebastien’s side. “So it begins,” Ilya said. “Welcome to black-tie night on the Glacier!” Contessa announced as the audience cheered around her. “Just sit back, relax, and let us take you to paradise.”

  The staccato rhythm of a Latin dance song blared over the speakers while Contessa’s voice filled the disco. Her dancers twisted and spun behind her in a dazzling blur of salsa, rumba, sequins, and skin.

  Sebastien eyed a tall man in a white uniform standing near the base of the winding staircase. It was Giorgos. His gaze was fixed on Contessa, clearly captivated.

  A dignified woman in her forties stood rigidly beside him. She wore a sleek silver dress and a gold mesh necklace. She seemed less impressed by the entertainment.

  Must be his wife, Sebastien thought. The poor lady is going to regret falling for the uniform, if she doesn’t already. He looked at Contessa and saw she could pass as a younger, more hopeful version of the woman who stood beside Giorgos.

  Diya stood against the wall, several paces from Sebastien. Her attention was also captured by the proud woman beside Giorgos. Diya knew her name was Elena and that they’d been married for several years, but everything else about her was a mystery. Did she love her husband? Was he kind to her? Gentle? Did she know about the affair? Did she care? These questions drifted through her mind as she tried to read what was behind the woman’s impenetrable eyes.

  Contessa whirled across the floor, her arms sweeping through the air in theatrical motions. Only one person in the audience noticed a faint purple blemish on the skin of Contessa’s arm. Diya had no doubts about what it was. The combination of makeup and bruised skin was one she knew well. Anger and sadness wrestled within her belly. She watched the singer smile through the performance while Giorgos observed her like prey.

  Suddenly a disorderly noise blasted through the speakers and resounded throughout the disco. The lights that swirled across the video screens on the walls were replaced with unsteady footage of the scene from B Deck four days earlier. Dozens of black-clad protestors huddled together on the steel floor of Styx. They shouted and held onto each other as security guards and officers attempted to pull them apart.

  The hotel commander’s face towered above the audience as it appeared on the walls, every muscle tense with contempt. “A right to protest?” The speakers amplified the undercurrent of madness in his voice. “What makes you think that?” The man’s eyes blinked mechanically on the enormous screens. “This is my ship. You have no rights unless I say so. You are powerless.”

  That final line repeated three more times to drive the point home. Groans rippled through the crowd of spectators. Contessa and her dancers stared in awe at the performance that had eclipsed their own.

  The footage of the protest was spliced with scenes that were almost pornographic. Anonymous legs wrapped around naked hips. Mouths kissed sweat-speckled skin. Every combination of man and woman and other took part in the indulgence of each other’s bodies. They twisted across the walls in an uninhibited display of sexuality between fragments of the staff and crew’s defiance.

  A message materialized in stark white letters.

  Don’t light matches on paper ships.

  The video faded to black, and a final message flashed on the screen.

  Love, The Powerless

  TEN

  Little Rebellions

  Those final words were a love letter scrawled across the walls of Sirens. An effusive roar rumbled throughout the crowd. Confetti rained onto the dance floor from the group of spa therapists standing on the mezzanine.

  As if to drive the point home, two female dancers on stage held each other’s faces as they shared a passionate kiss. Two male dancers turned to each other and did the same. Soon, everyone on stage was kissing as though it were a provocative New Year’s Eve special.

  A satisfied smile tickled Sebastien’s lips as he saw Kostas. The man wasn’t pleased. His mouth moved rapidly and his hands sliced through the air, though his words couldn’t be heard above the noise. Nikos, who had returned from the hidden door in the wall, appeared anxious with his hands on his head. After an animated exchange with Kostas, he looked at two of his guards and pointed to the stage.

  The applause quickly turned into jeers as the two blue-suited guards charged forward to remove the kissing dancers. They resisted. A guard tried to grab one of the women by the arm. She wrenched herself from his grip and screamed profanities at him. The other dancers swarmed, standing between the men and their targets like a human barricade.

  The guards stood helplessly on the edge of the stage, the lights of the tiled floor dancing beneath their feet. They turned to their commander, eager for him to make their decisions for them.

  Nikos exhaled loudly, visibly irritated, and his shoulders slumped. He recovered with the next inhale, expanding his chest until he resembled a figure of authority. He shot Sebastien a disapproving look as he stepped onto the stage. It was clear he knew who was to blame.

  Two days after Sophie discovered the illicit photographs, Sebastien and Jérôme arrived at their shop to find the front windows covered in paint. The letters spelled FAIRIES in jagged strokes of red. They didn’t say a word to each other as they unlocked the door, filled a bucket with soapy water, and went to work on the red.

  The shame Sebastien felt during the previous two days had been crippling, his thoughts co
nsumed by panic. But the feeling passed and was replaced with indifference. Nothing much had changed, really. The townspeople had always avoided eye contact with him. This wasn’t an irreparable fall from grace because he’d never earned grace to begin with. Now they knew he was queer, but he’d always been accused of that anyway.

  Jérôme’s reaction was different. He wanted to be accepted, and he had come close, but he wasn’t prepared for how ugly the town could be. Red paint on windows. Snickers and sidelong glances. Mothers shielding their children as they passed on the street. Unlike Sebastien, he wasn’t used to these everyday slights.

  The effect on their relationship was immediate. There were no dramatic fights, no words of blame. It just felt different when they touched. There was hesitation when there hadn’t been before, heavy silences when there used to be laughter. With the business now at risk, they agreed to focus on that instead. The bond between them never recovered.

  “Are you gay?” Sophie had asked that day, confused and distressed. She nearly spat out the words, and it sounded like an accusation. Sebastien felt so guilty that he couldn’t even be angry at her for her violation.

  “I think I was destined to be queer. But I’m still attracted to women.”

  “So our relationship wasn’t just a cover-up?”

  “Of course not.” He held her closely against his chest and rocked her back and forth. Sophie knew it had begun. Sebastien was returning to her.

  Nearly half of the red paint was gone from the storefront when Ruby walked over. “What’s wrong with being fairies?” she asked. “They’re beautiful, magical creatures. It’s like trying to insult someone by calling them a doctor. People here are stupid.”

  Jérôme laughed for the first time in days, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I can’t argue with you there, Ruby.”

  When he disappeared into the store to refill the bucket, Ruby sidled up to her son. “He’s a good man.”

  Sebastien nodded.

  “I’m no expert on love,” Ruby said. “You know that. But I’ll tell you this. When that man looks at you, he sees you. When Sophie Lamoureux looks at you, she sees who she wants you to be.”

  Nobody in the Odeon had ever seen the ship’s palatial theatre filled with staff and crew before, rather than the well-heeled guests who normally sat in the rows of plush seats. It was a strange sight, so many of them gathered somewhere other than the crew bar. They filed into the theatre, their uniforms demarcating social classes in streams of white, gold, turquoise, and grey.

  Sebastien, Diya, and Ilya arrived together and found seats in the centre of the orchestra section. They felt the tension in the air, as heavy and substantial as the icicle chandelier that hung above their heads.

  It was the day after black-tie night. The Glacier was docked at the island of Naxos, and most guests were enjoying the afternoon in port. Off-duty staff and crew would normally be doing the same except that Kostas had called a mandatory meeting in the Odeon. No one but the guests and shore excursion guides had been permitted to leave the ship.

  “This is going to be interesting,” Diya whispered.

  “His move,” Sebastien said. “Let’s see what he does with it.”

  “I wonder what inspired their aesthetic,” Ilya said, looking at the stage. It was empty except for a frosted-glass podium that stood in the middle. A black velvet curtain provided the backdrop. “Soviet Russia or the Empire from Star Wars?”

  The hum of the audience became quiet as Kostas made his way down the richly carpeted aisle. He wore a jolly smile on his face, nodding at certain people as he passed. Sebastien recalled the look of rage from the previous night, the blood surging through the veins in his forehead as he hurled verbal abuse at Nikos. Much of the audience had seen it, too.

  Smile all you want, Sebastien thought. We know who you really are.

  The spotlight from above followed Kostas as he climbed the stairs and travelled across the stage. The golden stripes on his shoulders shone under the beam. By the time he stood in front of the glass podium, there was silence.

  “My beloved staff and crew of the Glacier,” he said, hands sweeping outward in a dramatic gesture of inclusion. “I consider every single one of you my friend. Better yet, my family. I treat you as I treat my own children.”

  Diya and Ilya shifted in their seats and passed each other the subtlest of glances.

  “I want to guide you. I want to protect you. I want to give you the best life possible.” Kostas’s head nodded along as if agreeing with itself. “But there is a disease on board this ship. Something toxic. It kills gratitude and spawns entitlement. It feeds on respect and vomits contempt. It replaces dignity with immorality.”

  His gaze drifted upward. Sebastien turned in his seat to see that the balcony was filled with the white-and-gold suits of the officers. They hovered above the sea of staff and crew in an overt display of power. Nikos’s eyes met his. He was seated in the front row beside Giorgos, the polished gold buttons of their uniforms shining in the light.

  On stage, the smile faded from Kostas’s face.

  “I find the recent spate of misconduct very troubling. It’s one thing to disrupt order in the lower decks, but the disgusting display in the disco last night was unacceptable. This is not your ship. You are here because we allow you to be. That is the arrangement. If you don’t like it, you leave. It’s that simple.”

  Sebastien’s temperature rose a degree with every word that came out Kostas’s mouth. His hands gripped the velvet armrest on either side of him.

  “I received this letter today.” Kostas unfolded a sheet of paper with theatrical flair and cleared his throat. “‘We, The Powerless, as you like to think of us, condemn the recent morality code as an attack on our human rights and freedom.’ Blah, blah, blah. Oh! Here’s the good part: ‘We propose a council made up of elected representatives from staff and crew to aid in governance of all affairs that affect us. We also call for the removal of the divisive class distinctions between staff and crew, including the associated privileges, so that all employees may enjoy the same decency and respect.’”

  He looked up at the audience, comical astonishment on his face, before laughing so heartily that his entire body convulsed. The laughter stopped as suddenly as it had started. With a swift closing of his fist, the letter was crushed and dropped to the stage.

  “Acts of insubordination will not be tolerated. I don’t take demands from anonymous cowards. Four dancers were evicted today for their involvement in last night’s fiasco. Do you want to be next?” A few boos were shouted from the entertainment staff seated behind Sebastien.

  “Settle down, settle down,” Kostas said, his palms held out to the crowd. “They broke the rules. They defied authority in open view of guests and their commanding officers. It was a stupid thing to do. Now, I know not all of you have been infected by this disease. Most of you, even, are probably innocent. There is a small band of provocateurs stirring up trouble. They are ruining things for all of you.

  “So here’s what I’m going to do. I will reward one thousand euros to anyone who comes forward with legitimate information about who is leading these little rebellions. Until then, staff privileges will be suspended. That means staff will be no different from crew. No gallivanting around guest areas unless on duty, no more captain’s cocktail party, no more black-tie night, no disco, no spa, nothing. You want class distinctions removed? Well, now you have it.”

  The tension that once filled the immense space turned to anger as shouts echoed across the near-perfect acoustics of the theatre. Diya turned to face Sebastien and Ilya. “He’s trying to divide us.”

  “We are also implementing a curfew for all staff and crew,” Kostas went on. “Unless you are on duty, you must be in your cabins before midnight. These rules will be strictly enforced by Nikos and his security team. Violations will result in immediate eviction. That includes the morality code.”

  Sebastien’s chest contracted and expanded as breath heaved o
ut his nostrils. He felt the rage seeping out of his lungs. It was so pure, white like his father’s uniform. He wanted to let go, like he’d done before, but he fought it. He couldn’t afford the risk of being evicted. There was still so much that needed to be done.

  “Remember,” Kostas said as the shouts died down. “These latest rules only apply until we’ve identified those responsible for spreading this corruption. Help us find them.”

  Sex with Nikos felt like an act of rebellion. Their bodies came together at the altar of the House of the Heel, their secret temple. This little room with the starlit sky painted above them was designed to be a place of worship, yet the two men used it to worship each other instead of god. They bowed their heads and confessed sins in each other’s ears. The purity of the white curtains spread out from under them.

  This rebellion was against man, not god. Only man could hate something as pure as sex.

  They wrapped themselves in the sheets and each other’s bodies. “I’ve never met anyone like you.” Nikos ran his fingertips along Sebastien’s cheek.

  “How so?”

  “I can’t be angry with you. All I want to do is hold you and put my lips on you.”

  “But you wish you could be angry with me?” He tried to read the mystery in Nikos’s eyes.

  “Sometimes. I wanted to be angry last night. That was a risky stunt you pulled in the disco. I know it was you.”

  Sebastien pulled away ever so slightly. “That wasn’t a stunt, Nikos. It was a message. It came with its consequences, but it was received loud and clear.”

  “What did it achieve? You won’t accomplish anything with these little acts of defiance. There will just be more punishment until this ship is miserable.”