Dancing Girls and Other Stories

A Travel Piece

Annette is wiped right out. She never used to be this wiped out after a job; she supposes it’s the medication. Any kind of a pill is a drain on the system, she doesn’t like taking them but there you are.

She chews on one of the vacu-packed peanuts, thumbing through the travel brochure from the seat pocket, letting her mind drift among the coloured pictures. Thirty-six vacations in the sun, described in glowing terms, with the prices, all-inclusive it says but of course there are extras. A gem of an island almost undiscovered by tourists, with brilliant white sand beaches and bluegreen lagoons complemented by the friendliness of the people. Annette is returning from just such an island and she too writes pieces like this, but hers are not advertisements, they’re for the newspaper and, when she gets lucky, for the glossy magazines as well, so the things she writes have to be less bland: little anecdotes, the personal touch, details on where to eat and how good the service is, jokes told by the barman if any, where to go shopping for bargains, all those straw hats and curios, out-of-the-way things you might do, such as climbing an extinct volcano or cooking a parrot-fish on a coral reef, if you had the energy and the desire. Increasingly she doesn’t, but she puts herself through the paces anyway, she would consider it cheating to recommend these things without having done them. This is what makes her a good travel writer, among other things; and she has a knack for discovering local oddities, she knows what to look for, she has an eye for detail.

She’s learned though that she has to strike the right balance between what she manages to notice, spontaneously and candidly—and she always takes a camera with her, just in case, though for the glossies they usually send down their own photographer—and what she chooses to leave out. For instance, by lifting her head slightly she can read: LIFE JEST INDER FRONT OF YOUR SEAT. It says LIFE JEST because the lettering, which is embroidered right into the cloth of the pocket, has been worn away by the outgoing and incoming thighs of countless passengers. It would strike a humorous note but she can’t use it; the airline company would resent the implication that its planes were falling to pieces and that would be it for the complimentary tickets.

People, she found, did not want any hint of danger in the kind of articles it was her business to write. Even the ones who would never go to the places she described, who could not afford it, did not want to hear about danger or even unpleasantness; it was as if they wanted to believe that there was somewhere left in the world where all was well, where unpleasant things did not happen. An unspoiled Eden; that had been a useful phrase. Once, it seemed a long time ago, staying home meant safety, though tedium as well, and going to the places that were her specialty—the Caribbean, the northern half of South America, Mexico—meant adventure, threat, pirates, brigands, lawlessness. Now it was the reverse, home was the dangerous place and people went on vacation to snatch a few weeks of uneventfulness. If small black beads of oil were appearing on the white sand beaches, if the barman’s niece had stabbed her husband, if things were stolen or it rained, they did not want to know about it; if they felt like disasters or crimes they could read about them in the other pages of the newspaper. So she did not report such things and she tried her best not to notice them. There was that pig on the beach in Mexico, being killed by a man who didn’t know how to do it properly, because some tourist had wanted a Polynesian feast. That was the sort of thing you had to filter out. Her job was to be pleased, and she did this well, she was evenly tanned and in trim physical shape, she had direct blue eyes and a white smile and was good at asking interested, polite questions and coping with minor emergencies, such as lost suitcases, cheerfully and without becoming irritated. She seldom had trouble; there was something about her, an air of professionalism, she was too thorough to be an ordinary tourist; those in the industry sensed it would be bad for business to upset her.

So she went her way undisturbed among the green trees, along the white beaches, between the blue sky and the indecently blue ocean, which more and more lately had come to seem like a giant screen, flat and with pictures painted on it to create the illusion of solidity. If you walked up to it and kicked it, it would tear and your foot would go right through, into another space which Annette could only visualize as darkness, a night in which something she did not want to look at was hiding. Things were being kept from her, she had begun to feel, especially in lobbies and in cars taking her to and from airports; people were watching her, as if they were aware of this. It was the constant surveillance that was exhausting her, and the effort she had been making not to find out.

She attempted once to describe these feelings to her husband, but the attempt was not a success. Her capacity for being easily pleased, delighted even, had pervaded their marriage as well as her job, and he reacted at first with a kind of restrained, offended outrage, as if she had complained to the maître d’ about a wine. Very well, madam, it shall be replaced, and a look that says: Stupid bitch. Jeff seemed hurt that she was not totally and altogether happy, that she had been coming home from her trips too tired to go out for special little dinners with him, that she crawled into bed and remained there between her mock vacations, emerging only long enough to plod through the required exercises at the typewriter. When she said, “Sometimes I feel I’m not alive,” he took it as a comment on his love-making, and she had to spend half an hour reassuring him, telling him that wasn’t what she meant; she’d been talking about her job. But his view of her job was that it was a lucky accident, she was a very fortunate girl to have a job like that. He himself was interning at a hospital—she’d put him through medical school on her own salary—and he felt abused and overworked. He could not understand why she wanted to stay home more; finally he swiped the pills for her, telling her they would steady her nerves. Which they have, she supposes, but then her nerves have not been unsteady, quite the contrary. It’s the unbroken calm, both within and without, that is getting to her. Real events happen to other people, she thinks, why not me? And then there’s her conviction that they are happening, all around her, but that they’re being kept from her.

Once she took Jeff along with her, to Bermuda, though they couldn’t really afford it as his way had to be paid, of course. She thought it would be good for them, he would see what she really did and stop idealizing her; she felt that perhaps he had married her because of her tan, he found her glamorous. And it would be fun to get away together. But it hadn’t been. All he’d wanted to do was lie in the sun and he’d refused to eat the pumpkin soup, he was a meat and potatoes man. “Relax,” he kept telling her, “why don’t you just lie down beside me and relax?” He hadn’t understood why she needed to go shopping, to explore the markets, to visit all the possible beaches and restaurants. “It’s my job,” she told him, to which he replied, “Some job, I should have a job like that.” “You’re not suited for it,” she said, thinking of the fuss he had made over the fried plantain. He could not understand that being pleased was hard work, and he thought she was being too friendly with the taxi drivers.

The plane starts to tilt down as Annette is finishing her martini. Jeff told her she should go easy on mixing the pills and liquor, but one wouldn’t hurt, so dutifully she ordered only one. For a minute or two no one notices; then the stewardesses are at their posts and a blurred, alarmed voice is coming through the intercom, but as usual it’s inaudible, and half of it is in French anyway. Hardly anyone is screaming. Annette takes off her high-heeled shoes, Cuban actually, they’re better for walking, slips them under the seat, and rests her forehead on her knees, protecting it with her arms. She’s following the instructions on the card tucked into the seat pocket; there’s a diagram on it too, about how to blow up the life vest by pulling the knobs. When the girls went through their routine at the beginning of the flight she didn’t watch; she hasn’t watched for a long time.

By twisting her head to the right she can see the card sticking out of the pocket of the seat next to her, and the edge of the vomit bag as well; they don’t say vomit but discomfort, which fits. Next to the vomit bag is a man’s knee. Nothing seems to be happening so Annette looks up to see what’s going on. A lot of the people don’t have their heads down on their knees the way they’ve been told, they’re sitting bolt upright, just staring, as if they’re watching a movie. The man next to Annette is white as a sheet. She asks him if he wants a Rolaid, but he doesn’t, so she eats one herself. She carries a small arsenal of patent medicines with her on these trips, laxatives, cold remedies, vitamin C, aspirins; everything you can get she’s had a dose of at one time or another.

The plane is going down in a long glide, it’s a lot easier than she would have expected. There’s a faint smell of burning rubber, that’s all, no explosions; she feels hardly any discomfort, though her ears are popping. The descent is silent too because the engines aren’t working, and except for one woman who is still screaming half-heartedly and another who is crying, none of the passengers is making much noise.

“Where you from?” the man beside her says, abruptly, perhaps it’s the only thing he can think of to say to a woman on an airplane, no matter what the circumstances; but before Annette can answer there’s a jolt that knocks her teeth together, it isn’t at all like hitting water. More like a slightly bumpy runway, as if the sea is hard, like cement.

It must have damaged the loudspeakers though, because the blurred voices have stopped. The passengers crowd into the aisles, released, their mingled voices rising excitedly, like children let out of school. Annette thinks they are being remarkably calm, though real panic, with stampeding feet and people being trampled on, is difficult when the aisle is so narrow. She always notes the locations of the emergency exits and tries to sit near one but she has not managed it this time, so she decides to wait in her seat until the jam is over. The back door appears to be stuck so everyone is shoving to the front. The man sitting beside her is trying to elbow his way into the lineup, which is like a supermarket queue, they even have bundles. Annette folds her hands and looks out through the oval porthole window but all she can see is the surface of the ocean, flat as a parking lot; there isn’t even any smoke or flames.

When the aisle is clearer she stands up, lifts the seat as the instruction card has told her and takes out the life vest. She has noticed that many people, in their rush to get out, have been forgetting to do this. She collects her coat from the overhead rack, which is still crammed with other coats, abandoned by their owners. The sun is shining as brightly as ever, but it may cool off at night. She has the coat with her because when she steps off the plane at the other end it will still be winter. She picks up her camera bag and her large purse, which doubles as a flight bag; she’s familiar with the advantages of travelling light, she once did a fashion piece on crushable dresses.

Between the First Class cabin at the front and the Tourist Class is the tiny kitchen. As she goes through it, at the tail end of the line, Annette sees a rack of lunch trays, with plastic-wrapped sandwiches and desserts with snap-on lids. The drink trolley is there too, parked out of the way. She takes several of the sandwiches, three bottles of ginger ale and a handful of vacu-packed peanuts and stuffs them into her purse. She does this as much because she is hungry as for any other reason, but she is thinking, too, that they may need provisions. Though they will certainly be picked up soon, the plane must have sent out a distress signal. They will be rescued by helicopters. Still, it will be nice to have some lunch. She considers momentarily taking a bottle of liquor too, from the drink trolley, but rejects this as a bad idea. She remembers having read magazine articles about delirious sailors.

When she gets to the chute leading down from the open doorway she hesitates. The blue watery surface below her is dotted with round orange discs. Some of them have already made considerable headway, or have they been blown? From a distance the scene looks delightful, with the orange circles twirling on the sea like wading pools filled with happy children. Though she’s a little disappointed; she knows this is an emergency but so far everything has been so uneventful, so orderly. Surely an emergency ought to feel like one.

She would like to take a picture of the scene, with the orange against the blue, two of her favourite colours. But someone at the bottom is calling to her to hurry up, so she sits on the chute, placing her knees together so her skirt won’t blow up, holds her purse, her camera and her folded coat firmly on her lap, and pushes off. It’s like going down a slide, the kind they used to have in parks.

Annette finds it odd that she should be the last one off the plane. Surely the captain and the stewardesses ought to have remained on board until all the passengers were safely off, but there is no sign of them. She doesn’t have much time to think about this however, because the round boat is in a state of confusion, there seem to be a lot of people on it and someone is shouting orders. “Row,” the voice says, “we’ve got to get away from here… the suction!”

Annette wonders what he is talking about. There are only two paddles in any case so she settles herself out of the way and watches while a couple of men, the owner of the voice and a younger man, paddle at either side of the boat as if their lives depended on it. The boat moves up and down with the waves, which are not large, it rotates—one of the men must be stronger than the other, Annette thinks—and it moves gradually away from the plane, in the direction of the afternoon sun. Annette feels as though she’s being taken for a boat-ride; she leans back against the swelling rubber side of the boat and enjoys it. Behind them, the plane settles imperceptibly lower. Annette thinks it would be a good idea to get a picture of it, for use when they are rescued and she can write up the story, and she opens her camera bag, takes out her camera and adjusts the lens; but when she squirms around so she can get a better view, the plane is gone. She thinks it ought to have made a noise of some kind, but they are quite a distance from where it was.

“No sense in getting too far away from the crash site,” says the man who has been giving the orders. There’s something military about him, Annette decides; maybe it’s the trimmed moustache or the fact that he’s older. He and the other man ship their paddles and he begins to roll a cigarette, taking the papers and tobacco from his breast pocket.

“I suggest we introduce ourselves,” he says; he’s used to directing.

There are not as many people in the boat as Annette at first supposed. There’s the two men, the one who says he’s in insurance (though Annette doubts this), and the younger one, who has a beard and claims to teach at a free school; the older man’s wife, who is plump and kind-looking and keeps saying “I’m all right,” although she isn’t, she’s been crying quietly to herself ever since they’ve been in the boat; an overly tanned woman of forty-five or so who gives no clue as to her occupation, and a boy who says he’s a university student. When it comes to Annette’s turn she says, “I write a food column for one of the newspapers.” In fact she did this for a couple of months, before she got onto the travel page, so she knows enough about it to be able to back it up. Still, she is surprised at herself for lying and can’t imagine why she did. The only reason she can think of is that she hasn’t believed the stories of any of the others, except the plump, crying woman, who could not possibly be anything other than what she so obviously is.

“We’ve been damn lucky,” says the older man, and they all agree.

“What are we supposed to do now?” says the tanned woman.

“Just sit around and wait to be rescued, I guess,” the bearded schoolteacher says, with a nervous laugh. “It’s an enforced vacation.”

“It’ll just be a matter of hours,” says the older man. “They’re more efficient about these things than they used to be.”

Annette volunteers the information that she has some food and they all congratulate her for being so resourceful and foresighted. She provides the wrapped sandwiches and they divide them up equally; they pass around one of the bottles of ginger ale to wash them down. Annette doesn’t say anything about the peanuts or the other two bottles of ginger ale. She does say, however, that she has some seasick pills if anyone needs one.

She’s about to toss the plastic sandwich trays overboard, but the older man stops her. “No, no,” he says, “can’t throw those away. They might come in handy.” She can’t imagine what for, but she does as he says.

The plump woman has stopped crying and has become quite talkative; she wants to know all about the food column. In fact they are now a festive bunch, chattering away as if they are on a huge sofa in a recreation room, or in the waiting room of an airport where the flights have been temporarily held up. There’s the same atmosphere of time being passed, from necessity but with superficial cheer. Annette is bored. For a moment she thought something real had happened to her but there is no danger here, it is as safe in this lifeboat as everywhere else, and the piece she would write about it would come out sounding the same as her other pieces. For exploring the Caribbean, a round orange lifeboat strikes an unusual note. The vistas are charming, and you have a body-to-body contact with the sea which is simply not possible in any other kind of boat. Take some sandwiches and plan to stay out for lunch!

The sun sets in its usual abrupt, spectacular fashion, and it’s not until then that they begin to get worried. No helicopters have appeared, and none of the other lifeboats is in sight. Perhaps they paddled away too quickly. They haven’t even heard any sounds of distant rescue operations. But “They’ll be along, all right,” the older man says, and his wife suggests they have a singsong. She begins with “You Are My Sunshine,” warbling in a church soprano, and continues through a repertoire of once-popular favourites: “On Top of Old Smokey,” “Good Night Irene.” The others join in, and Annette is momentarily amazed by the number of words to these songs that she herself can remember. She goes to sleep during one of the choruses, her winter coat pulled over her; she’s glad she brought it.

She awakens feeling groggy and clogged. She can’t believe they’re all still on the boat, it’s beginning to get annoying, and she is boiling hot under her coat. The rubber of the lifeboat is hot too and there’s no wind, the sea is as flat as the palm of your hand with only a sickening groundswell. The others are sprawled listlessly around the boat’s circumference, their legs in awkward tangles here and there. Annette thinks to herself they’d be better off with fewer people in the boat, but immediately censors this. The two women are still asleep; the plump one, the singer, lies with her mouth open, snoring slightly. Annette rubs her eyes; the lids feel dry and gritty. She seems to remember getting up in the night and squatting perilously over the edge of the boat; someone else must have made this effort and failed, or not made it at all, for there is a faint smell of urine. She is very thirsty.

The older man is awake, smoking in silence; so is the one with the beard. The student is drowsing still, curled in a heap, like a puppy.

“What should we do?” Annette asks.

“Stick it out till they come for us,” says the older man. He doesn’t look so military any more with his day’s growth of stubble.

“Maybe they won’t come,” says the bearded man. “Maybe we’re in the Bermuda whatchamacallit. You know, where those ships and planes vanish without a trace. What made the plane go down, anyway?”

Annette looks at the sky, which is more like a flat screen than ever. Maybe this is what has happened, she thinks, they’ve gone through the screen to the other side; that’s why the rescuers can’t see them. On this side of the screen, where she thought there would be darkness, there is merely a sea like the other one, with thousands of castaways floating around in orange lifeboats, lost and waiting to be rescued.

“The main thing,” says the older man, “is to keep your mind occupied.” He flicks his cigarette butt into the water. Annette expects to see a shark emerge and snap it up, but none does. “First off, we’ll all get sunstroke if we aren’t careful.” He’s right, they are all quite red.

He wakes the others and puts them to work constructing a shade, which they make from Annette’s winter coat and the men’s suit jackets, the buttons of one inserted into the buttonholes of the next. They prop it up with the paddles, lashing it on with neckties and stockings, and sit under it, with a fleeting sense of accomplishment. It’s hot and stuffy, but it is out of the sun. Again at his suggestion the men turn out their pockets and the women empty their purses, “to see what we’ve got to work with,” the older man says. Annette has forgotten everyone’s name and suggests they introduce themselves again, which they do. Bill and Verna, Julia, Mike and Greg. Julia has a pounding headache and takes several of Annette’s aspirins-with-codeine. Bill is going through the assortment of handkerchiefs, keys, compacts, lipsticks, travel-sized bottles of hand lotion, pills and chewing gum. He has appropriated the two remaining bottles of ginger ale and the peanuts, which he says will have to be rationed. For breakfast he lets them each have a Chiclet and a cough drop, to suck on. After that they take turns brushing their teeth, with Annette’s toothbrush. She’s the only one who has travelled light and thus has all her toiletries with her. The others used suitcases, which of course went down in the hold of the plane.

“If it rains,” Bill says, “this boat is perfect for catching water,” but it does not look like rain.

Bill has a lot of good ideas. In the afternoon he spends some time fishing, with a hook made from a safety-pin and a line of dental floss. He catches nothing. He says they could attract seagulls by flashing Annette’s camera lens at them, if there were any seagulls. Annette is lethargic, although she keeps prodding herself, reminding herself that this is important, this may be the real thing, now that they have not been rescued.

“Were you in the war?” she asks Bill, who looks smug that she has noticed.

“You learn to be resourceful,” he says. Towards evening they share out one of the bottles of ginger ale, and Bill allows them three peanuts each, telling them to scrape the salt off before eating them.

Annette goes to sleep thinking of a different story; it will have to be different now. She won’t even have to write it, it will be her story As Told To, with a picture of herself, emaciated and sunburned but smiling bravely. Tomorrow she should take some pictures of the others.

During the night, which they spend under the sunshade, now a communal blanket, there is a scuffle. It’s Greg the student and Bill, who has hit him and now claims he was making a try for the last bottle of ginger ale. They shout angrily at each other until Verna says it must have been a mistake, the boy was having a bad dream. All is quiet again but Annette is awake, she gazes up at the stars, you can’t see stars like that in the city.

After a while there is heavy breathing, surely she’s imagining it, but there’s a distinct sound of furtive copulation. Who can it be? Julia and Mike, Julia and Greg? Not Verna, surely, in her corset which Annette is positive she has not taken off. Annette is a little disappointed that no one has made a pass at her, if that sort of thing is going around. But it was probably initiated by Julia, that suntanned solitary voyager, this must be what she goes on vacations for. Annette thinks of Jeff, wonders how he reacted to the fact that she is missing. She wishes he was here, he would be able to do something, though she doesn’t know what. They could make love, anyway.

In the morning she scans their faces for signs, revealing clues as to who did what, but finds nothing. They brush their teeth once more, then rub hand lotion onto their faces, which is refreshing. Bill passes round a package of Turns and more cough drops; he’s saving the peanuts and the ginger ale for the evening meal. He devises a strainer out of his shirt and trails it over the side of the boat, to catch plankton, he says. He brings in some messy green stuff, squeezes out the salt water, and chews a handful thoughtfully. The others each take a mouthful, except Julia who says she can’t swallow it. Verna tries, but spits hers out. Annette gets it down; it’s salty and tastes of fish. Later, Bill does manage to catch a small fish and they eat chunks of that also; the hot fish smell mingles with the other smells, unwashed bodies and slept-in clothes, which are rubbing against Annette’s nerves. She’s irritable, she’s stopped taking the pills, maybe that’s why.

Bill has a knife, and with it he slices the plastic sandwich trays in two, then cuts slits in them to make sun goggles, “like the Eskimos,” he says. He has definite leadership ability. He unravels part of Verna’s sweater, then twists the pink wool to make the strings to tie them with. They have abandoned the coat sunshade, it was too hot and the paddles had to be held upright all the time, so they fasten the plastic trays over their faces. They smear their noses and lips and the exposed parts of their foreheads with lipstick from the purse collection; Bill says it will be protection against sunburn. Annette is disturbed by the effect, these masks and bloody markings. What bothers her is that she can’t tell any more who these people are, it could be anyone behind the white plastic faces with slit eyes. But she must look like that too. It is exotic though, and she is still functioning well enough to think of taking a picture, though she doesn’t take it. She ought to, for the same reason she’s kept her watch conscientiously wound up, it would help morale by implying there is a future. But suddenly there’s no point.

About two o’clock Greg, the student, starts thrashing around. He lunges for the side of the boat and tries to get his head over into the sea. Bill throws himself on top of him and after a minute Mike joins him. They hold Greg down on the bottom of the boat. “He was drinking sea water,” Mike says, “I saw him, early this morning.” The boy is gasping like a fish, and he looks like a fish too in his impersonal plastic face. Bill removes the mask, and the human features glare up into his. “He’s delirious,” Bill says. “If we let him up, he’ll jump overboard.” Bill’s plastic mask turns, pointing itself toward the other members of the group. No one says anything, but they are thinking, Annette knows what they are thinking because she is thinking the same thing. They can’t hold him down forever. If they let him up, he will die, and not only that, he will be lost to them, wasted. They themselves are dying slowly of thirst. Surely it would be better to … Verna is rummaging, slowly and painfully, like a crippled bumblebee, in the heap of clothing and debris; what is she looking for? Annette feels she is about to witness something mundane and horrible, doubly so because it will be bathed not in sinister blood-red lightning but in the ordinary sunlight she has walked in all her life; some tacky ritual put on for the tourists, tacky because it is put on for tourists, for those who are not responsible, for those who make the lives of others their transient spectacle and pleasure. She is a professional tourist, she works at being pleased and at not participating; at sitting still and watching. But they are going to slit his throat, like that pig on the beach in Mexico, and for once she does not find it quaint and unusual. “Stay out of it,” the man in the light-green suit had said to his wife, who was sentimental about animals. Could you stay out by wishing to?

I can always say it wasn’t me, I couldn’t help it, she thinks, visualizing the newspaper interview. But there may not be one, and she is therefore stuck in the present, with four Martians and one madman waiting for her to say something. So this is what goes on behind her back, so this is what it means to be alive, she’s sorry she wondered. But the sky is not flat any more, it’s bluer than ever and recedes away from her, clear but unfocused. You are my sunshine, Annette thinks; when skies are grey. The quality of the light has not changed. Am I one of them or not?