Chapter five

We took a service elevator, which should have tipped me off that I was dreaming. What the fuck ship has an elevator, besides a cruiseliner? If it was a pleasure cruise, the cruise director was a fuckin’ dickwad. We didn’t pass through the long, long hall to get to the deck either. There was an elevator right next to the door to the Sorting Room, and it took us directly up to the level Dex desired. And of course, as always, none of this was here before.

As the elevator made its way to the top of the ship, I wondered about the black guy. Would he be there on the deck when we arrived? Though Dex made no effort to explain who else was on the ship, he did say “we” earlier, which couldn’t possibly have included me, a lowly rat. I hoped it was the dude anyway; he seemed like a nice guy. Besides anyone else would seem like Ma Theresa compared to this megalomaniacal fuck.

I tried to imagine what the Ocean would look like before we arrived. Would it be like the waves I’d seen on the California Coastline: cold and frothy, beckoning you to come for a swim? Or would it be the torrential, turbid waters I had come to know through old books and pirate movies? I was hoping for the former, but my imagination settled on the images of old surfing movies – a happy medium of sorts.

“Ding!” And what a satisfying ding it was. I stood before the metal doors like a kid at Macy’s just before the long queue to Santa was unveiled by the opening elevator. Dex looked at me, shaking his head, and grimacing a little. I stepped back from the door, remembering the glee he experienced when he showed me my new “office.”

Since it was nighttime now, as I discovered in that stateroom, we didn’t see much when the doors parted. The surface of the deck looked the same, but from what I could see, it was covered in filth! All of it glistened a little in the odd moonlight. Was this where all of the trash was coming from? I remembered the warnings of my former, waking consciousness; the perils of human impact, and the looming onset of global warming. Perhaps this was the result of wasteful humans over the course of millennia.

I couldn’t see the water, but I figured it must contain the same refuse of the deck and the Sorting Room; I smelled the same awful, chemical smell. Then I espied black dude. He was Pyrrhically fighting to collect the pieces of trash that fell upon the deck as the waves washed over the edge of the gunnel – and fiercely as he fought, the trash appeared to be winning.

“I leave for twenty fuckin’ minutes,” Dex shouted, loud enough for my fellow Californian to hear. “This deck was spotless then. Now it’s a mess.” Dex kept walking and talking, so I followed and ignored him. He was just talking to himself, anyway. At least he wasn’t laying in to me per usual, classifying me as the rodent of choice.

“Come and see the rat I told you about,” Dex said. Guess I spoke too soon. The big, black fellow put down a snow shovel, and came walking over to us. He had shed the nerdy, short-sleeved uniform worn by most computer geeks. He was working hard, digging through the trash, and I imagine the button-down shirt should’ve felt like a hair-shirt in all that muck. His sweaty triceps and chest bulged as he slowly made his way across the ridiculously long deck. It took more than a minute for him to reach a distance that would allow for a conversation. I should’ve figured it was a fuckin’ dream.

“What’s up, bro?” I asked him. He smiled his big old smile at me. He really looked happy to see me; he must’ve realized from my reaction that he was smiling overmuch. So he gave me a head nod, you know, to let me know “we were cool.” And me being the white boy I am, nodded back with a half-smile.

“You’re the rat, huh?” the colossal man said, completely at ease.

“That’s what the kid tells me,” I said.

“Well, you’re not on the list, bub,” Dex said.

“I know, I know,” I sought to appease him. “We’ve been over it. I’m the rat. What the fuck is this place?”

“Hush,” Dex said, only to me. Then Dex addressed Blacky: “I’ll need you to come up with a better process, man. I can’t keep coming up here every half hour to check on you. I’ve got a lot of shit to do onboard before we arrive.” I wanted to ask, “where are we going,” but I knew he was just going to tell me to shut it, or else he’d begin to wind-up a punch. Maybe the other guy new. I looked at black dude, as if to ask him where with a glance. He must’ve heard my thoughts, because he nodded again.

“Pipeline is what Dexeter called it before,” the guy said, smiling still. Dexeter? They looked at each other, and obviously Dex was pissed that I learned something new. I wasn’t sure if he was mad because I now knew this place to be called “Pipeline,” or if he was livid because I gleaned his full name. What a dumb name! I started to laugh uncontrollably, and looking at black dude, he got caught up in all the mirth, too.

“Dexeter?” I managed to chortle out. “What kind of a pussy name is that?”

When I came to the second time, the black guy was still laughing, and now my jaw hurt like Hades. Dex’ fucking cold cock has a fucking hair trigger! Even though he would’ve punched me again, I considered saying that exact sentence to his face. Glad I didn’t though: in retrospect, it sounds pretty gay.

“You all right, rat?” Black dude’s laughter had subsided, and he helped me up from the ground. “I learned first thing that Dex is a stick of dynamite waiting for a spark. Just do what he says and he’s actually pretty nice.”

“Damn straight, I’m nice,” Dex interjected. “And I’ll pummel any rats who say otherwise.” With that he saw fit to separate me and my new friend. “Time for you guys to get back to your duties. You can socialize when you clean all this up. Come on then. You, back to your station in the Sorting Room.” He pointed back toward the elevator that opened up onto the deck. As I waited I saw them walking toward a basket that black dude was using to collect refuse.

The elevator was taking a long time, but I could wait. I thought about my brief exchange with black dude. Why didn’t Dex introduce him or why didn’t he just introduce himself? I was mad at that dumb Dexeter; he must have told the big man not to tell me about himself.

I was watching them, way out there on the prow, and they were discussing something else. Something other than how to pick up trash. I wish I could hear what they’re saying, I thought briefly. I could almost hear it, maybe if I got closer, but I didn’t want another thrashing from the little brat. I thought of shouting good-bye to them, but I couldn’t imagine what to call them – I certainly didn’t want to cause any alarm.

Then I thought of something strange: something one would only think to do within a dream. I remembered how Dex slipped up earlier, how he said another name rather than the name I gave to him. Now, every time he says my name, Lester, he says it ironically, as if to prove some point. He was certain that it wasn’t my true name. Damn, that elevator took a long time, even to a man as accustomed to waiting as I was.

“Maybe if I think hard enough, I can figure out black dude’s name,” I said nonchalantly to myself. I closed my eyes, thought of when we first ran into eachother on the docks. I thought of the statement “what’s up, bro,” black dude’s stellar smile, and the geeky tee he wore before. A dozen more details flickered through my head, but suddenly – and this part is fuckin’ weird to talk about – I began to hear an oldies song, deep in my mind.

Here, let me sing it for you...[“I'm the type of guy who will never settle down/ Where pretty girls are well, you know that I'm around/ I kiss 'em and I love'em 'cause to me they're all the same/ I hug 'em and I squeeze 'em they don't even know my name/ They call me...”] And it sounded just like that inside my head. Naturally, I knew the song well, entitled “The Wanderer,” by a musician named Dion.

Before I could stop myself, I screamed: “Dion!” Oddly enough, both Dex and black dude looked, and Dion was nice enough to wave good-bye at me. I’d done it! I figured his name out. “Ding!” the elevator arrived. I waved back to Dion and Dex; Dexeter didn’t wave at all, he just maintained his rigid gaze. I couldn’t see well in the low light of that weird moon, but I presumed he was brimming with anger. For some reason, he didn’t want me to know Dion’s name. I waved back and I smiled at them anyway, knowing that even at that distance that they couldn’t really see my face at all.

Somehow I had done it! Somehow, I drew up Dion’s name right up-and-out of the ether just by thinking about it. Of course it all makes sense now; I mean, I was dreaming after all. But this moment made me think that I had somehow manipulated the laws of physics, or tapped into some part of my consciousness that no human had ever tapped into before. Picture yourself doing something like this on any given day, and you’ll understand my cause for joy in that moment. It was like I read his mind (or at least some fading mental image of his birth certificate).

Jovially, I boarded the elevator, for I knew the grip that Dexeter held over me had weakened. For I, Lester, had convinced the mountain to come to me, and it was only a matter of time before the silly little man would come to recognize that I was in control. As the elevator doors closed, I looked at Dex, whose gaze still held me in contempt, so I threw him the appropriate hand gesture. You know, a flick of the wrist that would properly convey that I achieved victory in this particular exchange; I was a bit surprised to find that the gesture still held meaning in this time and place. I could tell he was pissed off even from so far away when I flipped him the bird, the one that in this case signified that I had won.