Captains Outrageous by Joe R. Lansdale

behind us. The man looked at the brochure. He said, “Yes.”
    “It says coats and ties are suggested,” Leonard said. “You can suggest it, I can choose not to do it.”
    “And you can choose to go to the buffet.”
    “I paid—he paid—for us to go on this cruise. Let us in.”
    A Filipino fellow in white shirt, black pants, and black bow tie came over. He asked what the problem was. White Coat told him.
    “It’s suggested, Phileep, not required.”
    White Coat grew red-faced.
    “Thanks,” Leonard said, walked past White Coat and I followed. Leonard said to White Coat, “Dick cheese.”
    I told the Filipino who was showing us to our table, “We’re not trying to be a pain—”
    “No problem,” he cut in, leaning close to me. “He’s an officious little fuck. All the staff wishes he’d fall off the boat and get eaten by sharks.”
    We wound our way between tables of mostly elderly people and were placed at a table with four other diners. Wine was served and menus were brought.
    The Filipino was headwaiter on the cruise. His name was Ernesto. He was a short solid-looking guy with black hair well combed except for a sprig that was determined to hang down on his forehead.
    Ernesto stood at the table and smiled and talked to us all about what specials were being offered. It was kind of cool really. They didn’t do that at Burger King. He leaned down and spoke to Leonard and Leonard, smiling big, talked back to him in a whisper. I caught the words “Thank you” in there somewhere.
    Ernesto went away and our actual waiter came and took our choices and left. Ernesto showed up again three or four times. Talked to us all, talked to Leonard a little more. Just chitchat stuff. I finally got a line on it. He was gay and somehow knew Leonard was. What was it? A secret handshake? A mark in the middle of the forehead only gays could see?
    When Ernesto finally went away and the food came, I leaned over to Leonard, said, “What would John think?”
    “We’re just talking. He’s friendly.”
    “Is he gay?”
    “I think so.”
    “You look pretty happy.”
    “We queers just love to make contact. We have secret messages about the nature of the universe that we only pass along to one another. Sorry, Hap.”
    We ate. The food was not as good as I had hoped, and the lobster was downright awful. I thought it might be a big boiled cockroach.
    We chatted with our table partners. One of the men was wearing neither coat nor proper tie. He was a big white-haired Texas guy with a Western shirt and bolo tie. Fit the stereotype. So did his wife, who was about fifty, maybe ten or fifteen years younger than he was. She wore a kind of Western-cut dress, which didn’t look bad on her. She was attractive in a plastic surgery kind of way. Her hair looked like a beehive wrapped in a bleached blond sweater. They looked rich. Their names were Bill—he went by Big Bill—and Wilamena. Right out of Central Casting, both of them. I liked them immediately, even if he was a little loud. I asked him how he had gotten past the coat-and-tie Nazi.
    “I gave him five dollars. I figured it wasn’t worth five dollars to walk back to the room.”
    “They haven’t got the right to keep you out anyway,” Leonard said.
    “Yeah, but five dollars keeps him happy, me happy, and no animosity.”
    “This here is our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary,” Wilamena said, “and we ain’t gonna let no suit-and-tie monkey throw it, ain’t that right, Big Bill?”
    “That’s right, honey.”
    A plump matronly looking lady with glasses said, “The ship has Argentine papers, so they’re allowed to sail in Cuban waters. We’re going to go right by Cuba. Won’t that be interesting?”
    We agreed it would. Bill said, “We can buy Cuban cigars too, in Mexico and Jamaica, but we got to smoke ’em on board.”
    “Frankly,” Leonard said, “I ain’t buyin’ nothing from them commies.”
    Things went quiet for a moment, then Big Bill, who obviously