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Show lit. We step to the first cabin door and enter. Inside the cabin it is not much brighter, but I can see easily enough that more men than usual have gathered, fifteen, or perhaps twenty. Some of them are leaning against the walls, some are sitting or lying on the dozen bunks arranged in stacks of three, others sit at a large wooden table in the middle of the room. The table's surface is cluttered with bottles and cans and glasses, a backgammon board, magazines, playing cards. The phonograph music I don't recognize at all. It is full of high flutes and the soft strings of a dulcimer weaving through the talk, various languages. The room is full of smoke, drifting white smoke that smells of sweet tobacco and hashish, smoke that burns the eyes. And the air is hot. A few of the men I recognize from other parties or from other parts of the ship. One, an old man I have talked with on deck, greets me with a nod and unshaven smile from a lower bunk and motions for us to come over. But Elisa is already talking with a young sailor at the table, probably the one that invited her, and we sit down across from him. He cannot be more than twenty-five, and from his olive complexion and curly hair, and from the nearly empty bottle of ouzo in front of him, I think he is probably Greek-and probably drunk. I am Alexis, he says, and squints at me. Elisa puts her hand on my thigh and squeezes lightly as she repeats her name. Paco, I say. She smiles. The young Greek looks at me suspiciously, although I am sure that my name is the last thing he |