Chapter 7: Day 3
Losing Our Shirts Under the Bahamian Moon
I swaggered up to the blackjack table with as much cool as I could muster, given my overall shabby appearance. "The name is Banks. Dawn Banks."
The dealer eyed the fresh set of beads in my hair - no doubt the same set of beads worn by countless tourists before me. He leaned over and quietly said, "We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Give me all your money."
"I prefer to play, thank you."
He shrugged, and without saying anything else, dealt me my first two cards. I'd never seen a card with eleven spots on it before, much less two such cards in one place. Unfortunately, this was not to be an isolated event.
The day started with someone pounding on the door to our berth telling us that it was time to get up. In any circumstances (these included), this is identical to saying that the day got off to a really shitty start. What was even worse was that Gary and I were supposed to fix breakfast.
Since we were still in the marina, the idea of getting up before noon and eating greasy bacon and eggs was only objectionable. Doing so just before setting sail on rough seas (Georgia's favorite way of operating) would be downright suicidal. In the balance, I guess objectionable beats suicidal any day.
Before I get too full of myself over my simple problem of waking up a half a day too early, I should mention that others had it worse. Tom, for instance, was nursing the Mother of All Hangovers, having been up until all hours the night before, drinking and doing stupid things. Evidently, he so much missed feeling seasick that he had to manually induce nausea with excessive amounts of fruit punch drinks (mixed with 151 rum), followed by a quick trip around the marina in the dinghy (which he broke).
With that in mind, Gary and I had a great time cooking up breakfast and watching Tom get totally green. Waving a couple strips of bacon under his nose only enhanced the effect.
From here, everyone pretty much took off in pursuit of whatever they wanted to pursue. People were scarce enough that we punted the idea of having the official lunch. As a matter of fact, we punted all official activities, preferring to sit around in the sun and sleep instead. Another prime activity of the day was buying batches of post cards and stamps, followed by long bouts of sitting around puzzling over addresses that couldn't quite be remembered.
Sometime during the day, a bunch of people decided to charter a boat from the hotel to take them out to open water for a spot of diving and snorkeling. There isn't much to report from this expedition, other than Kathy's dramatic attempt to steal Tom's Heavyweight Honker title. Evidently, she spewed all over the deck of the boat, missing the water entirely. When you consider the relative proportions of the Caribbean compared to those of a motor boat, you'll realize that this was quite a coup on Kathy's part.
One of my big tasks for the day, and for days to come, was to try to get Roger's transportable cellular phone to work. By some stroke of luck, I happened to have the only phone on the entire trip that was registered with a company that Batelco (the local phone company) knew how to do business with. That meant that I was able to make calls freely from my cellular phone after a mere three or four failed attempts.
By the same stroke of luck, the other three cellular phones belonging to our group were totally unable to place calls. Any attempt to do so would give you a recording, listing two phone numbers to call if you needed assistance. Roger's phone operated in this fashion, and the two main problems that we found with this system were that any attempt to call either number would yield the same recording, and that the recording was just that -- a recording, rather than a voice belonging to some warm body, capable of doing anything to correct the problem. This left any poor unsuspecting cellular user (such as Roger) high and dry, with no apparent means of rectifying the situation.
Here's where I came in: Not only did I have more knowledge of cellular phones than any sane person has any right to lay claim to, but I also had a phone that could place calls to destinations other than a recording. For purposes of helping Roger, though, I had a phone that could successfully place calls to a line at Batelco that never got answered. Rather than looking at this as a failure, I preferred to see this as an adventure, and a source of entertainment, expense, and exasperation for days to come.
Interspersed in this little telco-drama was me doing something characteristically stupid: I'd been looking for something to take home with me. The thing that made this a challenge was that after a year's worth of vacation traveling with someone (otherwise irrelevant to this story) who couldn't go to the drug store without bringing all her life's belongings (and returning with half the contents of the store), I'd gotten into the habit of always returning with less stuff than I left with.
When you think about it, this will happen all by itself if you simply buy nothing en route, since an immutable law of traveling states that you can't go out of town for more than two days without losing at least two priceless family heirlooms, even if you didn't take any with you in the first place. Except that I'd blown it on the first day, what with buying those sailing gloves and foul weather jacket. This meant that I had to frantically consume (or at least lose) half of what I brought along, and make damn sure that if I got anything else, it didn't take up any room in my duffel bag.
Which brings us to the stupid idea du jour. In this case, Roger (while waiting for me to "fix" his cellular phone) was marketing the services of a buxom Bahamian woman named Jennifer, who was going tourist to tourist, offering to "cornrow" tourists' hair for $2.00 per braid. What the hell, it sounded stupid enough to me.
In the end, I had twelve braids done, six on each side of my head. I'd like to say that it was fun, but if I want to be honest, I'd have to admit that it was a lot more like getting a face lift without the benefit of anesthetic. Her technique was to grab a clump of hair, separate it into three smaller clumps (suitable for braiding), pull them so tight that her victim's face is frozen into a taut smile, and about the time the drool and tears start flowing, start braiding. The only thing I've ever experienced that's more painful is what happens when I try to comb my hair out and forget that I have those braids in.
All this telephone and cornrow activity took place on the Vanessa Rose, and this was the first time I'd managed to get a good look at that boat since we left Florida. Now, being a lazy person, it follows that I keep my energy expenditures to a minimum. My philosophy in life (as faithfully learned in my Chemistry and Thermodynamics classes) is that any time any energy is expended to do anything, there'll just be more crap to pick up.
With that in mind, it was clear that a considerable amount of energy had been expended on the Vanessa Rose. In that short span of a couple of days, the Vanessa Rose had metamorphosed into the Animal House, complete with dirty laundry everywhere, dirty people everywhere, loud music, and broken CD player below decks. In other words, it was exactly the sort of environment that nearly everyone on the trip was dying to get in the middle of. Everyone that is, other than Captains Judy and Yakov, who preferred to be able to see their boats under the mess.
I'd just managed to get settled into the melee when I was interrupted by the enforced dinner. That evening's dinner was stir fried shrimp and fried rice, which was generously shared with Jennifer. (What the hell. She had all our money, anyway.) My face was still a bit tight to be chewing anything, but I did manage to slurp down about a pint of fried rice through a straw.
Dinner was followed by a trek to the now rather ramshackle "Courtesy Room" in the hotel proper, where about half of our group lined up for a shower. (As close as I could tell, that room had seen round the clock occupation by our group since we arrived.) While waiting, we traded insults, and I won. While this doesn't add any relevance to the story, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to brag.
The big event for the evening was to go to the Princess Casino so that each and every one of us could prove to ourselves that Casinos make tons of money for their owners. For the most part, that's what we did.
It started with a limousine ride from the Xanadu over to the Princess. That was pretty uneventful, until we got to the Princess, where Tom convinced the other seven passengers to stiff the driver, leaving Brooks responsible for our bill. Tom's plan worked admirably, and as far as anyone knows, Brooks is still about fifteen bucks down on the deal.
Casinos are one of the fastest ways I've ever seen to convert money into history. This was the first time I'd ever set foot into one of those places, and if I'm really smart, it'll also be the last. Roughly one sixth of the interior was devoted helping the customers obtain cash from the financial institutions of their choice. There were money machines, there were machines for obtaining cash advances on credit cards, and there were holding pens for pawning family members.
The other five sixths of the interior of the casino was devoted to taking all that cash back. Slot machines, electronic poker machines, roulette wheels, craps tables, blackjack tables, and nice neat little tables where you could just throw money away directly without having to fool around with those silly games.
I got $60 from the cash machine, and wandered around for a while, trying to find the cheapest blackjack table in the place. There weren't any. My vague intention was to play Junior James Bond for an evening. While I didn't harbor any serious notions of walking out of that casino with my $60 intact, much less a profit, I did have this idea that I'd get to sit at some table, and over the course of the evening, watch the ebb and flow of my stack of chips as they migrated to the dealer's pile.
Well, that isn't the way it works in real life. Ok, that is the way it works in real life for most people (like everyone else there), but it wasn't the way it worked for me. The cheapest blackjack table had a minimum bet of $5, meaning that my $60 got me twelve chips, which evaporated from the table before I'd even gotten comfortable in my chair. Sixty dollars at five dollars per bet meant that in the worst case scenario, I could lose it all in twelve hands.
Consider this to have been a worst case scenario. I'll readily admit to being a poor blackjack player, but I'll also readily point out that I had a bit of help in losing that money. I'm not accusing anyone of cheating or anything, but ten of those twelve hands were lost because I busted on the deal. Shit, I never knew you could do that before, but then again, things always seem to happen just that much more emphatically in my presence.
After that bloodbath, all that was left was to go drop all my quarters in a slot machine somewhere, just to make doubly sure I'd be totally broke.
I felt sort of bad about this. Like I said, I more or less expected to lose the money, but just once in my life, I wanted to have the experience of gambling, and maybe thinking for a few fleeting moments that I actually had a chance. Or, I just wanted something to do for a half an hour. I eventually consoled myself by reminding myself that this happens to everyone, and that all I needed to do was take a quick tour around the casino to see how everyone else from our group was doing just as poorly.
Except that they weren't. Oh, to be sure, most everyone lost something sooner or later, but it took most of them an hour or two to lose fifty dollars, and then only because they'd slumped over on the tables (intoxicated from the free drinks), and the dealers had quietly stolen all their chips.
Georgia, of course, was a different matter altogether. I found her sitting at the roulette table, with a tuxedoed entourage looking on, playing the table like a money-harp, and watching her pile of chips double in size with every spin of the wheel.
"Gee, Georgia, you look like you've played this before."
"Nope. I don't even know the rules."
Hell, she was doing so well, even the pit bosses were discreetly slipping her their room keys (and quietly removing $300 of her chips at the same time).
That was it. Robert, Cap'ns Judy and Yakov, Trevor and I caught the next cab back to the boats. It was enough for one night.
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