The Stowaway
IN MY family, no one went to sea. We were not seagoing kind of people. The idea of sailing across an ocean or around the world was as foreign to us as taking a rocket to the moon. So, it was something of a surprise when I took a job on a cruise ship at the age of thirty. I did it because I was single again, after several years of marriage, and because I had nothing better to do. When you have nothing better to do, you might as well go to sea. The job was writing a daily newspaper for the passengers, a position I didn’t know existed. It paid more than writing the occasional story or book review, which I’d been doing for a while, and there were some perks. Free room and board. Meals in the dining room with the passengers. Complimentary laundry service. A maid to clean my cabin and make my bed every morning. I’d been making my bed all my life, and I was curious how someone else might do it.
The man at the interview, a tall, light-skinned Nordic fellow who had worked on ships himself, cautioned me: “If you take this job, you’ll have to put your things in storage and say goodbye to all your friends. You’ll be out of the country for months at a time. It’s a very different kind of life. Are you sure you want to do this?” No one had ever tried to discourage me from accepting a job at the interview, which made me think the last person in the position must have gone crazy and jumped off the ship, but I knew if I hesitated, I was lost.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to go to sea.”
“Ah, so you like to travel?”
“Very much,” I said, though I had never gone anywhere.
They gave me the job and flew me to Hamburg, Germany, to
