The Regal Azul

The Regal Azul Jesse Lee Brooks (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution NASA image created by Jeff Schmaltz End Page 110 They were somewhere over the Atlantic, south of the Grand Bahama, but beyond that, Lang couldn't say. This absurd cruise ship, outfitted with every form of entertainment imaginable, obliterated the question "Where am I in the world?" from the consciousness of most passengers as they moved across this ostensibly endless ocean. Having been forced to go on a number of these cruises, Lang had noticed how few places there were for passengers to sit or even stand along the railing. The design of these ships directed your attention to everything but the ocean, not allowing you to dillydally, contemplate, loiter, or gaze into the offing and attempt to make sense of anything. If there had been places to stand or sit and take in the shoreless expanse, surely more people would feel inspired to climb over the railing and jump—though his wife, Corine, said this was complete nonsense; he needed to stop projecting his thoughts and emotions onto others. Not everyone here had cancer. End Page 111 A bit of bile shot up from Lang's writhing stomach. Barely even registering the action, he caught the acid in his mouth, as he had hundreds of times before, and reflexively swallowed it back down, never breaking his gaze, as he sat in a chaise lounge that he had turned away from the pool and toward the bespeckled ocean. The Regal Azul was headed to Nassau. And to keep the guests distracted in the meantime, the ship provided a basketball court, racquetball, a track, three pools, two steam rooms, two rock walls, countless bars, a full casino, a half casino, a twenty-four-hour yoga studio, satellite cable, subscriptions to every streaming platform, and an endless wave, which was really just a plastic platform with a steep incline pumping water upward into the arc. Lang had "surfed" the wave many times on other ships, even learned how to ride it well enough to do a three-sixty; Corine had it on video. But that was about as much as he could do, limited by the fact that the wave and surfboard weren't real. Nothing else on the ship was challenging enough to justify videoing. And it was difficult to imagine Corine going back after Lang died to watch her husband three-sixtying a plastic boogie board on a stationary wave and then looking into the camera, smiling stupidly with pride. The fact that Corine would bury the videos of their many trips didn't upset him. Eventually she would want to date again, and that would be impossible if she became one of those archivist widows, dutifully preserving the record of a past marriage. The idea of Corine dating also did not upset Lang. Their children were grown, all married, and half of them lived on the West Coast. So no—no shrine atop the mantel, no hard drive filled with past vacations, or even a grave, please. It was all a waste of space, especially the graves. Plow them all over and return the fields back to the forests they had once been. He wanted Corine to have someone in her life, and the only way for her to do that was to forget him as much as she could. Corine sat next to Lang, facing the pool, typing ferociously on her computer, having mastered the ability to work remotely in a bikini. She worked resolutely, without being distracted by the cacophony of screaming adults and children. If this place annoyed her, she hid it better than he could. Lang wasn't angry that he was going to die; he just hated these fucking cruises. Maybe he was afraid, though. Definitely a little afraid. The transition to nothingness. After that, what did it matter? But in this moment, from the precipice of a failing body, looking down into the murky End Page 112 depths of oblivion? Yes, he was little bit scared to contemplate no longer being able to think or feel or project these inner complexities onto the world, even if it was a...