New Passengers

There are a lot of characters on the boat this week. Here are the most important.

Sport Billy and Sport Lily: These are two deeply in love recently graduated college athletes. I first saw them working out together at the gym on Sunday. Usually most people in the gym enter it as if they are walking onto the surface of a new planet. They tentatively touch the rowing machine, they mount an exercise bike and seem bewildered when the pedals move beneath their feet, and then they take several pictures of themselves and leave. Yet these two attacked the gym with a confidence unseen in the past month. They did a series of complicated exercises on two of the gym's three benches for forty-five minutes (people usually just stay on the bench for forty-five seconds, lift something too heavy, strain a muscle, and then leave). I could hear him tenderly correct her posture during her military press in the same tone that one would use to recite Italian love poetry. She admitted that she hated doing lateral raises as if she was confessing that she had never been in love before. I saw them at Bayside in Miami on Wednesday and I imagined they had probably dove off the ship in perfect pike dives and then swam ashore to shop for ankle weights.

The Family That Smokes Together Stays Together (or TFTSTST): TFTSTST usually sit in patio chairs just outside the buffet, right before you get to the pool. There are usually three generations together, all puffing away. They move their position around the pool throughout the day, whip out their Marlboro Lights, and then puff away.

Law & Order Guy: I saw Law & Order Guy at the gym a few days ago. He is a slightly overweight red-cheeked young man who wears glasses. He has brown hair and sounds a little bit like Ernie from “Sesame Street.” He got on one of the exercise bikes and then began the following conversation with the attractive woman two bikes away.

Law & Order Guy: Hey, do you know how to work this thing?

Attractive Woman: (taking off her headphones) Excuse me?

LOG: Do you know how to work this thing? Do I just press “start?”

AW: Yeah, you just press start and then it will prompt you to select the program.

LOG: Thanks a lot. What's your name?

AW: Oh…it's Erin.*

LOG: Hi, Erin, I'm Bill. I met you the other night, didn't I?

AW: I don't think so.

LOG: Yeah, I met you at the bar. Are you having a fun time on the cruise?

AW: (hurriedly putting her headphones back on) Yeah, it's great.

(long pause)

LOG: So what does “Fat Burning” do? Burn fat?

AW: (stares intently ahead, pretends that her iPod is turned up so loud she can't hear any outside noise)

(brief pause)

LOG: So what does “Fat Burning” do? Burn fat?

AW: (still staring ahead, the song is just too loud for any outside noise to filter in)

(Two minutes pass. AW gets off her bike and positions her body that when she walks by LOG she is looking at the wall and not at him)

LOG: Bye, Erin. It was nice meeting you.

AW: (iPod is still up too loud to hear anything, plus the articles posted to the wall about the Zone diet are too engrossing for her to possibly be broken from her reverie)

(Three more minutes pass. LOG gets off his bike, pulls out a camera, takes a picture of the bike, and leaves.)

I call him Law & Order guy because the whole exchange reminded me of the opening scenes of Law & Order, when you know something violent and terrifying is going to happen, but you don't know what it is. I am sure if you were to go in LOG's room on the ship, you would find an elaborate collage of AW, pictures of her taken surreptitiously on the ship carefully arranged among images of exercise equipment. I hope she's okay.

*I have changed their names, but I am sure that they weren't using their real names in the first place. She was fending off advances from an unwanted admirer, and he was trying to muddle any identifying traits because he is a serial killer.